Regular Monday

By Dimpho Leatile

“For nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light.” –Luke 8:17.

~*~*~*~

05:34

Just before the sixth hour of that Monday morning, when the sun was still stroking Gaborone’s eastern horizon and the city had not yet begun her flurry, a broad-shouldered figure stood in the threshold of Tshepang’s bedroom door. A voice like authority came from that silhouette; it commanded him rather sternly with the maxim, “Rise before the sun and your day shall surely be fruitful.”

And young Tshepang Diphiri peeled himself off the bed, gracing his father with a mild smile and groggy eyes. “Good morning, Papa.”

“Good morning, Son.”

“Which verse is that?” he asked.

The answer was, “It’s not. Now go get ready for school,” and the son put up no protest; to disobey Elias Diphiri was to disobey God.

“Yes, Sir.”

At a quarter past six, he had finished cleaning himself and now stood in front of his mirror, winding a tie around his neck like a noose. When this was done, the boy appraised the entirety of his person, the way his school uniform wrapped around his body like a python, and his reflection flung back disdain from those murky brown eyes. They hated each other, his reflection and himself, the dutiful preacher’s son and the stranger in the glass.

“Look at you,” spat the stranger with a noxious tone, “you’re pathetic.”

“Shut up,” Tshepang spat back.

“Pack your bag.”

He took one glance at his backpack in the corner and replied, “It’s already packed. All the day’s books are in there.”

“I wasn’t talking about the books, Bible Boy. Today is Monday, remember?”

Right. Monday… Mondays were different for Tshepang Diphiri. Mondays belonged to the stranger in the mirror, and so he went to his wardrobe and rummaged through it for a fresh outfit. Once satisfied with the clothes he’d picked out, he stuffed them inside the school sack alongside his books and went to the kitchen where the aroma of sour porridge, coffee, and lavender held dominion for the morning.

He offered his parents a respectful, “Dumelang.” And they hummed greetings back to him. Taking a seat across the dining table from his father, he noted his mother’s elegant German print garb and asked, “What’s the occasion?”

She stirred the pot of cereal a final time before heaving it off the stove to set next to the vase with a sprig of lavender jutting from its mouth at the centre of the table, and then she said, “Today is the first Monday of the month, Tshepi. Did you forget where I go on the first Monday of every month?” Exchanging a knowing glance with her husband.

Of course. “The motshelo meeting.” How could he forget? Her stokvel was second only to God. Tshepang admittedly got second runner-up. Third if you counted Elias.

“That’s right,” she affirmed, and began doling out servings of porridge to her two men. “The church ladies and I are gathering at Mmapula’s for contributions today. I expect we’ll be there all day.” Deferring to Elias, she added, “If that’s all right with your father, of course.”

The man didn’t look up from his copy of The Sunday Standard. “Fine with me, darling.” And she bowed her head in reverence, even if it went unnoticed by him. “I myself will be over by the church working on this coming Sunday’s sermon.” No permission required from Lesedi Diphiri, who Tshepang was convinced only put up with him because divorce was out of the question.

Naturally, Elias Diphiri was a respectable man, venerated in their community by all who knew his name, a name synonymous with dignity. He sported always a debonair demeanour and owned an array of expensive watches which he wore in rotation with his impeccably pressed shirts. Today’s shirt was pink (prawn, according to him), and Tshepang reckoned perhaps a forthright tongue might even go as far as to call his old man a dandy.

“Your father is the great disappointment of my life.” He remembered the words of Ntate Botshelo—Elias’ own father—whose tongue was as forthright as they came. “Look at him fussing over his clothes like some kind of sissy.” Tshepang had watched his grandfather turn to face him with those endearing wrinkles all about his face. The dinosaur had directed direly, “Promise me you won’t turn out like that, Son.”

“I won’t, Ntate,” the twelve-year-old kid had sworn, and then guilt like a viscous substance had clung to his skin, sealing each and every pore. Now he was seventeen, in Form Four, and he thought so often of that Christmas, pondering why his grandfather would ever be disappointed in a man like Elias Diphiri, a man who was one of, if not the, preeminent Pentecostal preacher men this side of Botswana. His cleanliness wasn’t something to lower your brow at, but rather something to commend; their church’s congregation surely did. They also swooned over the priest’s eloquent sermons and his gentlemanly warmth…a warmth which soured into an ever-present sternness when he walked in through the front door of their modest Kgale View bungalow every Sunday after church.

Tshepang looked at him now. His dad’s studious face had moved on to perusing a copy of The Peaceville Oracle, whatever that was, and he supposed that bad fathers begat bad fathers. This curse would end with him.

The family ate in silence until a shrill whistle came tearing through the walls of their home, much to Elias’ displeasure. He knew that whistle well, and the boy to whom it belonged. When this alert roused his son from his chair and he began gathering his belongings to depart, the man said, “Ask Thabo Botlhole for me if he is averse to knocking like a normal person.”

It was no secret that Tshepang’s parents thought his best friend was a bad influence. His mother chimed in, “Why can’t you be friends with a nice, respectable boy like Thabang Petermann from across the street?”

Tshepang rinsed his bowl in the sink and stated quite obviously, “Thabang Petermann goes to Concord Prep, Mama. He’s an English medium kid.”

“So?”

“So, I go to Ledumang; when would we find the time to hang out? And what would we even talk about?”

His father’s reply was, “I don’t know, but it certainly wouldn’t be whatever foul things that boy has you conversing with him over.”

Lesedi then offered, “What about that sweet Muslim girl? The one who lives next door to Thabang, what’s her name?”

“Fatima?”

“Yes, her. She’d make a wonderful friend, don’t you think?”

“She’s a Muslim.”

“So? We worship the same god, don’t we? Just different names.”

For that, Tshepang had no good answer, so he kissed his mother goodbye and bid both parents farewell until the day was done. Shutting the front door, he heard his father hurl a last bit of paternal wisdom in his direction: “The company you keep, Tshepang! The company you keep.”

And that was that.

***

09:15

The first thing you need to know about Thabo Botlhole is that everyone called him Poison on account of his surname, and because he was, at first glance, trouble, although he liked to remark that it had a nose for him and not the other way around. His friendship with Tshepang was an unexpected one to say the least: the preacher’s son and the Pantsola boy; the wolf in sheep’s clothing and the misunderstood black sheep who was in reality a gentle lamb—the juxtaposition of the two was astounding. And yet, when your eyes fell on them for the first time, you would perhaps mistake them for brothers. Soon those eyes would settle and Poison’s weatherbeaten bronze complexion would give him away: Not brothers, friends. And if you were being generous, cousins.

The second thing you need to know about Thabo Botlhole is that he was the only person acquainted with the two lives of Tshepang Diphiri: he was the sole accomplice in a scheme which his best friend had concocted all on his own a while back. After a bit of cajoling, he’d been recruited by the preacher’s kid into a plan to get Mondays off from school indefinitely. As it turned out, it was Tshepang who was the bad influence.

The boys would show up at the same time, be ostensibly present for morning assembly and first period, then Poison would excuse himself for the toilets where he would then phone the administration’s office in his best impression of Elias Diphiri, “Hello? Yes, this is Pastor Elias Diphiri. I’m phoning to inform the school that my son, Tshepang, has a rather important meeting with his child psychologist again today?” Enunciating it like a question.

“Of course, Pastor,” the receptionist would agree immediately; it was all routine really, “right away, Sir.”

And Tshepang would be home free. Then, outside Ledumang, the escapee would retrieve his phone from his pocket and do the same for Poison, although the reasons for his being pulled changed weekly.

Reconvening outside the school gates, they performed their elaborate handshake.

“Easy-peasy, squeeze the lemon, ntwana.”

“It’s ‘easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy,’” Tshepang amended.

To which Poison sucked his teeth and said, “Semantics, my guy.”

So far, they had successfully bunked school with no repercussions whatsoever for seven consecutive Mondays. It was all foolproof. Not one wrinkle or a hiccup as yet. Of course, at first, they’d both had qualms about it. After all, who in their right mind would believe those boyish voices belonged to grown men? The school receptionist, Ms. Pono, that’s who. Their voices were apparently just pubescent enough that over BTC’s subpar reception, even a genius with bionic ears could be bamboozled.

“So!” Poison splayed his arms in the air like a jailbird freed as they rounded the corner, walking to a nearby tuckshop where they usually bought whatever junk food their combined money could afford them. “What’s on the itinerary for this Monday’s bad education?”

After they procured a family pack of Simba chips, two Pepsis each, and Chappies bubble-gum which they would later use to disguise the smell of marijuana on their breaths when they made their return home, Tshapang answered, “Whatever the hell we want.”

***

09:37

First, a kombi ride with bad motswako music blaring over the speakers on RB1 all the way to Rail Park Mall. They bobbed to the raucous voice of the artist in fits of giggles that awarded them crinkled foreheads from elder passengers, one of whom asked, “Shouldn’t you boys be in school?”

“We are in school, Mmaago T,” proclaimed Poison. “The School of Life!”

Disembarking that kombi at the taxi station, Tshepang discarded their trash absentmindedly, and he was not surprised to see Poison turn back to pick up all the litter. Patiently and without complaint, the boy carried the empty bag of chips and cans with him until they came upon a rubbish bin.

When he tossed them inside, Tshepang remarked, “You really aren’t like people say you are, are you?”

The answer was a parable from Poison’s salad days in Zola: “When I was seven, Scavenger knew this guy whose girlfriend died in a car accident; we’ll call him Kabo. See, the thing about Kabo is he didn’t so much as sob at the girl’s funeral. Sometime after that, his best friend dies of a stabbing at a bar.”

“Jesus.” Where exactly was he going with his morbid tale?

“Everyone who’d been at the girlfriend’s funeral was convinced the stabbing was Kabo’s doing.”

“Was it?”

“It was, but that’s besides the point: they accused the guy of murder without being sure it was him, all because he didn’t cry when his girlfriend died, not because there was any evidence against him,” Poison concluded as they entered the mall’s airy, bustling atrium, his voice meeting to mingle with the overlapping chatter of hurry-scurrying consumers. “Immoral of the story: People see what they wanna see. They impose identities on us that are the farthest thing from who we really are, and in the end, we have no choice but to become the stories they tell about us.” Now he flung an arm over Tshepang’s shoulder. “In the end, the bereaved boyfriend becomes the heartless murderer, the innocent lamb becomes the wolf, and the actual wolf becomes the preacher’s son.”

The words were heavy, and they walked beside the boys as they sauntered into the bathrooms. They remained with them as each one entered a stall and changed out of their uniform into different clothes: A black ensemble for Tshepang, and stylish Pantsola attire for Poison complete with that distinctive hat they all wore to complement their regalia, for the subculture surely bordered on creed.

They whiled away the hours until Rail Park depleted the well of their meagre funds. Thereafter time was spent doing nothing and everything all at once. Shoplifting chocolate bars from PEP; spray-painting phallic imagery on warehouse walls; loitering back and forth along those iconic railroad tracks which flanked the shopping precinct; and dancing to splash music in back alleys, and very badly so. The swinging, jaunty movements of it seemed haphazard and uncoordinated to Tshepang, but there was a grace to them, a rigorous choreography beyond his own reach, eluding him like the horizon and available only in morsels to his best friend. An aimless Monday sizzling with languor, like all Mondays. This was the other life of Tshepang Diphiri.

“Splash isn’t just a dance or music genre,” Poison was lecturing in a desolate passageway, whilst they smoked his brother Scavenger’s weed. “It’s an artform, a performance. A ritual. You have to let the music take you, ntwana. Surrender yourself to the beat.”

Tshepang toked the joint and hacked acrid cannabis smoke from his lungs. Good God, these were terrible buds. “It all just looks like shaking to me.”

“It’s not, it’s a cleanse; we move feverishly like this as a way to rid ourselves of those imposed stories I was telling you about earlier, to shake away the demons.”

At that, Tshepang snorted and passed the spliff back to Poison. “Bullshit.”

Poison took a long pull, waited for his bronchi to acclimate to the smoke and released. “Is it? Or is it a cleansing ritual? Look me square in the eye right now and tell me you don’t feel free. Tell me that you don’t feel better from all that splash, ntwana.”

The boy in black giggled. With an eyeroll he conceded, “I do. But only ‘cos of the weed.”

A chuckle accompanied by a shrug. “That helps, too.”

“Shame it’s so bad, though.”

“Yeah,” agreed Poison. “Scavenger keeps two stashes—the good stuff for his best customers in Old Naledi, and the bad one for all those rich kids in Phakalane who wouldn’t know good weed from bad if you slapped a neon sign over each. He lets me dip into the bullshit stash every once in a while. If I want the good stuff though, I have to buy it like everyone else. Otherwise, it’s a castration from his partner in crime, Ziggy.” Laughter rose from his stomach like puke and left his mouth as marijuana fumes. “That chick might be in a wheelchair half the time, but her temper’s always on its feet.”

Tshepang shrugged. “Let’s go buy some of the good kind then.”

“With what?” And Poison turned his pockets inside-out to brandish the emptiness of them. “We’re all out of cash, my guy. And besides, we wouldn’t be able to afford it anyhow.” He pulled a long, wretched sigh, his shoulders deflating and slumping over theatrically. “Know where we can get some currency?”

“You know what?” Tshepang said, his face lighting up just then. Didn’t his dear old lady keep all that motshelo money under the mattress? “I think I do.”

***

14:26

They had just enough taxi fare for a trip back to Kgale View, where Tshepang skulked about the neighbourhood hoping to avoid the neighbours’ prying eyes. He slinked in through the back gate, leaving Poison there, and acquired a housekey from under the counterfeit rock next to the marigolds by the rear door.

Entering the abode, he murmured to himself, “Just a little off the top so she won’t know it’s gone.”

No more than ninety Pula, no less than sixty.

Out the kitchen, past the sitting room and into the hallway he walked with a spring in his step, the merry gait of a man up to no good and certain of no consideration when the time to list suspects came around. “But, Mama,” he would say, “I was at school the whole day, remember? How and when could I have possibly stolen the money?” Uttered with copious amounts of ease and those ginormous puppy-dog-eyes, the same ones that melted her heart and had previously gotten him out of all sorts of trouble.

No one would ever know it was hi—

His parents’ bedroom door was slightly ajar. It was the first thing he noticed, and Tshepang froze at the end of the passage. The second thing which raised his hackles were the sounds coming from that very room. Murmurings and laugher.

Murmurings and laughter and the smacking of lips, the salacious sounds of kissing. His folks were home. Damn it!

He meant to turn on his heels and creep away when he made out a voice beneath his mother’s… One that didn’t belong to his dad. A womanly voice with familiar inflections and a Tsabong twang. He knew that voice.

It couldn’t be.

Tshepang Diphiri stormed forth and burst through the door, swinging it open so forcefully that it slammed against the wall with a wince-inducing WHAM! There on the bed he saw his mother straddling Mmapula, lips locked, two feminine figures knotted into one. All in plain view—the pile of clothes on the floor; the incriminating looks on their faces when they saw him under the doorway; how they scrambled to cover their nakedness.

His heart sank. The rucksack lolling from his shoulder plopped like a dead fish behind him.

His body made a U-turn, and he beat a retreat back the way he’d come.

“Tshepang, wait!” His mother shouted after him, her voice carrying distress on its back. “Tshepang, it’s not what you think!”

It was exactly what he thought—his mother was having an affair, cheating on his father with a woman… Mmapula from church, no less. Oh, God, was there even a stokvel? Or had it all been just a ruse to cloak her sapphic infidelity this whole time? Was this what the monthly motshelo meetings comprised of? Outrageous trysts with the church ladies??

Oh, God. He felt sick to his stomach, like he’d just spun around and suddenly halted. The world whirled about his head as he staggered out the gate, passing Poison who was mid-ramble about some current social media scandal.

“Some kid from Concord apparently got his sex tape leaked. It’s crazy—” He looked up from his phone and clocked Tshepang’s discomposure. “What’s wrong?”

Words wouldn’t come. Air wouldn’t enter his lungs. He was certain his heart had stopped beating. And the universe kept on spinning all around him.

Poison grabbed his forearms and asked again, “Bro, you’re scaring me. Is everything okay? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

If only he knew Tshepang had just seen worse than a ghost, that he’d just witnessed the ruination of his family. But how would he even begin to describe it…?

“Tshepza, talk to me, man. I’m here—”

And that’s the last thing he said to his best friend, who wrenched himself violently from his grip and bolted. He just ran. To where exactly, he didn’t know. He didn’t care. He just needed to get as far away from this place as possible.

By this time, the kids at school would be enduring an unsanctioned and excruciating Geography lesson during study period, Mr. Kayapo’s droning, lumbering, sedative voice lulling them all to sleep. And here he was in a waking nightmare. He’d give anything to be in school right now, blissfully unaware of his mother’s marital misdeeds.

His legs chugged on in their endless sprint, the wind howled past his face and sliced tears across his temples.

***

16:12

Before he knew it the sun was westering, and he was still running. But running to where?

To his father’s church. His feet, his instincts, had brought him to the house of the Lord and now young Tshepang Diphiri stood in the vestibule, meaning to enter, meaning to divulge everything to Elias. Sure, the man was an imposing figure in his life, the bane of his youth, but he was still his father, and he was still Lesedi’s husband. He was still part of their family. He deserved to know the truth.

With lungs aflame and a jackhammering heart, he walked into the building and floated along the aisle, between those innumerable rows of woody-brown pews, up to that pulpit where Elias should’ve been perfecting his sermon for Sunday’s service. His absence told Tshepang the man would be in his office.

He opened the door without bothering to knock, saying, “Papa, I just walked in on Mama with—” and the words died on his lips immediately.

How could they not, upon being confronted with the sight of a priest engaged in adulterous acts with Mmapula’s husband, Esau?

Both men scurried off the desk at his entrance, eyes agape, dark bodies glistening with sweat, faces culpable, manhoods still engorged and throbbing from stimulation.

What could he do but sigh with abject dejection as his father’s trembling grip wrestled to button up his prawn shirt, trousers donned but not yet fastened?

“Tshe— Tshepang, what’re you doing here? Y-you should be in school.”

“And you should be practicing your sermon, not bedding Mister Matlhare.” What else could he do but cast his eyes away from their indecency? What else could he do but slam the door shut?

He was nearing the exit, just about to leave this house of sodomy, when Elias’ quivering voice echoed from across the hall: “Christmas, about five years ago,” it said.

Tshepang stopped dead in his tracks. “What?”

“You were maybe twelve, sitting with your grandfather just before the braai. He thought I couldn’t hear him, the disdain in his tone while he watched me brush away the ash from my trousers after I’d just stoked the fire. He said…”

Elias didn’t need to conclude that sentence. Tshepang remembered it like it was yesterday. “Your father is the great disappointment of my life.”

“You know why he said that?”

No, not really. He could never figure it out. When he made no reply, Elias wistfully stated, “It’s ‘cos he knew about me. About the way I was—am. He found out when I was no older than you are right now; caught me playing doctor with a boy from school.”

Tshepang thought he heard his father’s voice break, his threadbare composure falter. He turned to face him, and the man’s swimming eyes tore down all his defences… This was no man, this was just a boy. Like him. A scared little boy sitting on soul-crushing shame.

“Everything I’ve done ever since has been in his honour… An attempt to win back his love.” Elias motioned around the room, around the church, around the life he’d built. “It’s why I became a priest.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because, Son…” He chanced a step toward the boy, chanced approach, but Tshepang regressed. “…my old man never looked at me the same after that. There was always a disgust behind his eyes, quiet hatred reminding us both of what I am. I’m confessing all this to you because I’d hate for my own son to look at me like that, too.” He sniffed, eyes welling up with tears. “I know I’m not exactly father of the year in all the ways that matter, but it would break me if I ever saw that look in your eyes… I don’t think I’d survive it if my own kid looked at me like that.”

Well, there it was then; Elias Diphiri’s truth, all out in the open. Only one question remained, “Does Mama know?”

And the answer was, “Yes.”

Tshepang had nothing left to say. He left the man in his humiliation.

***

18:30

He spent the rest of the day ambling about like a phantom in purgatory, hoping soon to wake from this unpleasant dream, but he never woke because he’d never slept, and that evening he came home to the smell of his favourite meal simmering on the stove—madombi le nama.

His mother didn’t so much as tut his way for showing up late. She said, “Supper will be ready in a few minutes,” and asked Tshepang to help set the table before Elias made his arrival. While they were doing this, more words came at last from her like a breath of surrender, “I got a call from your school today; apparently you and Thabo have been skipping Mondays under the pretext of a therapist appointment?”

Tshepang thought she’d be cross, or at the very least disappointed, but no. She just chuckled pitiably, a wry, maudlin sort of laugh. “We’re some kind of family, aren’t we? ‘Ga Mma Pereko,’ as the saying goes.”

This settled around them like mud; the way in which it had been said, the allusion to some hidden truth beyond what he already knew. Tshepang caved to the curiosity and furrowed his brow. He asked, “What do you mean?”

Lesedi laid a fork gently next to an underplate and stood up straight to look at her son. “What you saw earlier, Tshepi, when you walked in on Mmapula and I; there’s more to the story than what you think. Your father and I…our marriage…” Whatever it was she was getting at was hard to explain. “Him and I are…we—”

But speak of the Devil; the front door creaked open, and the man came humming ‘Amazing Grace’ into the house.

Lesedi went to his side. “Welcome home, darling!” she sang as cheerfully as she could feign. “You’re just in time for supper. Tshepi and I made dumplings and beef.”

He took a big whiff of the tantalising aroma in their home. “Smells wonderful.”

Tshepang heard them exchange their pleasantries in the living room. He looked out the window and saw those two model teens, Thabang and Fatima, across the street. They were sitting on the former’s front steps, evidently engaged in meaningful conversation, off in their own twilight world, a world he would never be a part of. Even if he wanted to, he would approach them and the air would shift at the arrival of the preacher’s son. A fraught muzzle of appropriate topics would instantly ensnare their words.

This was the curse of Tshepang Diphiri. The stranger in the mirror reminded him of it often, but tonight that stranger had his back to Tshepang in the window’s reflection. All the young man saw in the glass was the back of his own head.

At last, when the family congregated around the supper table to conclude their day, he noted how his parents kissed and spoke to one another, marked for the first time the love there. It was love, no doubt about that… But it wasn’t romantic, not in the least. For the first time he saw it, that tender albeit platonic affection masquerading as something else, discernible only to a knowing eye. If you knew nothing beforehand, you would never be able tell.

And that’s when Tshepang Diphiri understood. That’s when he realised the nature of his parents’ marriage: they were not lovers, they were best friends. And that’s all they would ever be.

Best friends.

He thought, Some kind of family indeed.

“So,” began the head of the bunch after they’d said grace, “how was everyone’s day? Anything of interest happen to anyone?”

And Tshepang bartered a look with them, both parents eyed him expectantly…pleadingly. He deferred to the stranger, to the stainless-steel reflection in his fork, and saw that it was himself. The stranger was gone now, and he knew then that he would not return. At least not until next Monday.

Tshepang Diphiri smiled. “Nope. Just a normal Monday for me…”

The relief on them was stark, unmistakable, the ease which befell their body language palpable as the aroma of Lesedi Diphiri’s madombi le nama. For now, this pantomime of a normal family would remain unencumbered.

“What about you guys?” he asked.

“Same here,” his mother said, “regular Monday for me, too.”

His father echoed that statement in a shrug. An easy, content shrug. “Regular Monday.”

“Well, in that case…let’s eat.”

And that’s how the Diphiris spent the first Monday of November.

---

Dimpho Leatile is a Mokgatla writer who’s appalled to describe himself in third person. Hailing from Moshupa, a big village in the South of Botswana, and growing up under the bosom of a middle school teacher, Dimpho was exposed to storytelling at a very impressionable age. He has been weaving tales and creating worlds for as long as he can remember.

When he’s not writing, he’s singing, and when he’s not singing, you’ll probably find him hunched over a book or people-watching somewhere, pensively inventing the lives of strangers in his head.

Being the child of a teacher, Dimpho led a peripatetic childhood and was often the new kid. His characters were the only friends who came along every time he moved, so writing became a survival mechanism.

Now anchored in Gaborone, Dimpho finds that their nomad ways are with him more than ever, because he’s still on the move, this time moving between endless worlds on the page.

So if you like diverse characters in strange situations, unconventional plots and just good old fashioned storytelling, then be sure to look Dimpho’s way; chances are he’s got a story to tell. He always has a story to tell.

Dimpho Leatile has self-published only one short piece so far, entitled “Son,” and it is available to read here.

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