When I was in first grade I got framed by another kid over a theft. I've never stolen anything outside my house my whole life. A girl had lost money and somehow I ended up getting blamed for it and I didn't have a sufficient alibi to prove that it wasn't me. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. My only fault was to be honest to the teachers. I can't remember correctly because this was back in 1994 but I must've gotten detention for a month. However long it was, it was torture and seemed like forever. It was lunchtime detention. It seemed that for the rest of my stay at that school, I was confined to that prison of a detention room, serving time for a crime I never committed. It was a miserable little dark room, cold and cruel, away from the wonderful sunshine in then playground outside where the rest of my monkey friends ran wild and free. I remember that I had to stand there and face the wall the whole time. When I got tired I was allowed to sit on the floor and face the wall but that was it. No looking around. Absolutely no talking to the other detainees, if there were any. A teacher would supervise lunchtime detention but for a long while, while I was the only one in there most break times, they would wonder off and I would stay there, honestly and still like I was told. At that point in my life, 6 years old, I was aware I was not popular. The other kids hated me. I had the best grades, always. I spoke the best English. I wouldn't do anything naughty. I was always clean and my uniform never got dirty. I ran fast and I could climb the highest of all the girls. I had a different religion and I stuck to it with all my might. Sweet Jesus I prayed every day in that detention room for courage and strength. I prayed to endure like him and I prayed for it to be over. I had one friend. Just one. She believed me. She knew I was innocent. But after a while even she went to play with the other kids and stopped hanging around the detention room as moral support. We were 6. She became friends with the other girls, my bullies. I wasn't mad at her.
I wasn't silent about my pain. I didn't want to bother my parents. There was always some kind of trouble at home that needed attention. My moms best friend, gobo Ndimande, had just passed away. A woman I loved too. She had a huge house. I loved it there! She always had cookies and tea for me. It was at her house that I had met my first ever best friend. His name was Njabulo. He was 6 and I was 5 when we met. I told him he would be my husband one day. We played all day,all the time. I used to remind him that I'm a girl so he shouldn't be too rough with me. He complied. We played hide- and- seek, catches, did homework together, cartwheels, even baked with his mother at some point. He was a sweet little boy. By that time though, we were going to my moms friend less and less. She was ill for a long time until she passed away.
One day, during the winter holidays I had gone to my grandfathers house in Durban to visit. Njabulo and gogo Ndimande had come to my house for a visit. At that stage I had started expressing my writing skills on the walls at home, to my parents disappointment. I had found the perfect spot in the bathroom, hidden from the authorative eye. Njabulo found my writings. He wrote me a letter. That was the first ever letter I have received my entire life and probably the only one I've ever gotten from a boy! In his letter, my bestie wrote that he was sad that he visited me and I was absent. Then he wrote about the writings on the wall and pleaded with me to stop that bad habit. He said it wasn't good but perhaps I can write on paper. I still think about that letter and smile. That was the last time I ever wrote on the walls. Mom asked me if I wanted to write back to him. I was upset that I'd missed their visit, upset that I'd missed my best friend. I wrote a letter of thanks.
That was the last time I heard from Njabulo and gogo Ndimande. Gogo passed away a few months after that. She had been weak and sickly and my mother wouldn't take me to see her in hospital. Cancer, it was. She was someone very dear to my whole family, not just mom. A woman who's reputation preceded her. A mentor to my mother and almost like the maternal grandmother I never had. It was the first time and probably something I will never see again. I remember one day around that time, dad had picked me up from school in his white Ford Saphire and we were driving home. He was unusually quiet. Ever since I remember, my bonding time with dad was the trip on the way home from school. That's the only time we would really talk. I was in the car yapping away. I was complaining about school and the nasty kids. I told him about the bullies, and my wonderful test grades. Dad just pulled the car over. He wouldn't look at me. In the rear view mirror I noticed his eyes were red. It was weird. He sat there for a moment and then he blew his nose. I knew daddy was crying. It was just very strange for me and confusing. I didn't know what to do so I kept quiet the rest of the way. I never told anyone,ever. We got back on the road and as soon as we got home, dad acted natural.
Anyways, I was serving time and one day I had to ask for help. I remember telling dad in the car about my prison sentence. What I remember now is that I told my father about it and he questioned me. He asked me how long I had been in detention and why I hadn't come to him sooner. I had told him that I hadn't expected to be in detention this long. The teachers had put me in detention indefinitely until I confessed to the theft. I couldn't confess to something I didn't do. By principle in my 6 year old mind, confessing would be lying because I hadn't done the crime and that was very wrong. My father didn't step in like I expected him to. He didn't take me out of that school like I though he should've.He let them win. My peers were bullying me,the teachers and even my favorite teacher had turned against me. I don't even remember our dialogue but I remember that my father didn't do anything. He didn't protect me. I felt alone through all of it. Me with my Jesus and my prayers. I remember praying and asking to be more like Jesus because I was being persecuted like him, although I had done nothing wrong. Asking for patience and a way to forgive the people that caused me pain. I remember in my prayers pleading with someone I felt understood what I was going through. Little did I know at 6 that that would be a mantra I would keep for the next six years. I felt like my father had abandoned me to suffer something that I knew he had the power to rescue me from. I didn't understand why. He was a school principal, a person of authority. He knew how these things worked. I still don't understand why. Nowadays I wonder if he even believed me. I was miserable for the rest of the year. As for Njabulo, I'd like to see how he turned out in the end.
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