Untitled by Kgebetli Moele Read Free Book Online Page B

far away from the truth. Lebo does her thing in the mid of day as if it was the pitch-black night and by seventeen thirty she is home, busy with her books or television or something that she has to be busy with. And this is why Gas thinks that she is still a virgin.
    There is a thing that Lebo and some of the girls in my school do when a male teacher is teaching. Lebo does it mostly when a lesson bores her and the teacher happens to be a man. Then she will put her feet on the side bars that hold her table’s support together, and open her legs wide, showing off to distract him. It always works – the teacher will not want to look in Lebo’s direction and, when he does, he will lose his ability to speak.
    Mostly teachers never say a thing or complain, they just try very hard to avoid looking. In fact, the only complaint that ever came, came via a messenger, a female teacher. The teacher in question didn’t say a thing to Lebo after the lesson. Instead, he sent a female teacher to come and set us all straight. She shouted at us as if we had all done the thing that Lebo did and never directly confronted the culprit. We turned it into a joke and Lebo did it to him again the very next time we had a lesson with him. Lebo calls it a direct under-table challenge.
    â€œGirl, it is a statement, a direct under-table challenge. I can offer you this, that I have, nothing more, nothing less. If you want it, just say it out loud.”
    In the same way, Lebo got Shatale, our principal, interested in her. He was teaching us N Sotho and Lebo just laid all bare. Our principal, though not willing to show that he was enjoying the challenge, carried on with the lesson and, funnily enough, it ran over time.
    Shatale volunteered to drop her home after the lesson.
    â€œMy boyfriend won’t like it if he hears that I was in your car, and anyway he is coming to pick me up. Thank you, some other time.”
    Tumelo was Lebo’s boyfriend at the time. He was interested in me first but Lebo had a crush on him, so I introduced them. To be honest, Lebo had a crush on Tumelo’s car before she had a crush on him – I know she saw the car first – but I introduced them anyway.
    For a period of two weeks Lebo gave Mr S the pleasures of the under-table challenge. After every lesson they would talk. She said that she once asked him:
    â€œWhy, Mr LS?”
    Lebo called him Mr LS – the L was for Lordric, his first name, though Lebo always called him Mr Love Sex.
    â€œI mean, you are old, you have a wife. Not to offend you, Mr LS, but I feel sorry for your wife.”
    â€œYou have never had a chat with my wife. Talk to her first and hear her side of the story and you will be surprised.”
    I do not know where Lebo got his numbers from because he didn’t give them to her, but she got them. She called him the first time, but from then on she sent him please call me messages whenever she wanted to talk. Although Lebo thought that she had control of every aspect of the slowly but surely advancing relationship, she was actually never in control, she was playing his game by his rules. She was talking to him, thinking that she was wrapping him around her little finger, until one day when everything changed and I knew for sure that eventually Lebo was going to get undressed by our principal.
    â€œI sent him a please call me at around nineteen hundred.” She looked at me as if this was the only important thing that had ever happened in her life. “He called, saying that he would call me back at around eleven.”
    â€œYou didn’t have it with the principal?”
    â€œListen, listen, do not think before you hear what I have to say. Listen.”
    â€œI am listening.”
    â€œHe called me and we talked for four hours.”
    â€œFour hours?”
    â€œFour hours, twenty-eight minutes and forty-seven seconds. He called at ...” She checked when the call had come in on her phone.