Song of Praise

By Keabetswe Molotsi

Afa opens the door just as I’m about to knock. She stands before me, her ample curves clad in threadbare, pink pyjamas. The bags under her bloodshot eyes do not match her watery smile. A spike of concern shudders through me.

 “Are you okay?”

She doesn’t answer immediately, leading me into the flat and through the archway to the living room. As soon as I’m sitting on the battered sleeper couch,  cautious not to let it tumble off the cement block bricks, the words rush out of her. “I’m pregnant.”

A very long silence envelops us. In this silence, I swallow anger, exasperation and the compelling urge to ask how this happened again. Instead, I drop my head into my arms, which are folded over my knees.

“Is it his?” I ask stupidly, my voice muffled. I know it’s his, of course it’s his; Professor Adeyemi – or Henry, to her. A very married, very 49-yearold lecturer at the University.

“You know it is,” she responds.

I suppress a sigh and try to school my facial features into a neutral expression, finally looking up at her but she won’t meet my eyes and I realise then that she is scared. That makes me a little sad. “Are you sure this time?” She flinches, and then I feel a little bad for asking that way. “I mean, have you taken a test?”

“I have and I’m sure,” she says.

“What are you going to do?” Are you keeping it? is what I actually want to ask.

Afa remains silent, her right hand subconsciously rubbing her presently flat belly, as if to convince herself that indeed something real and alive lies in there.

“I don’t think I can go through that again,” she says softly.

After that I cannot stay mad at her. I unfold myself from the couch and kneel in front of her. My arms wind themselves around her and squeeze. I feel her muscles relax as she allows herself to sink into the embrace and be eighteen and in her first year of university and confused and scared and lost and young.

I don’t dare judge her then. Instead, I distract her with the only thing clinically known to cure teenage depression: a good old-fashion house party. “Are you still up for hosting tonight?”

She sniffles, nods and starts to pull away from the embrace. “Hell yes. I need the distraction badly.”

I give her one last squeeze and then go to the bedroom to get her some tissues. She accepts one with a watery smile and cleans herself up.

“If I have a baby, my dad might actually have a heart attack, do you realise? Like, I really believe this could do it for him. And then Mum will hate me. At least she’ll finally get the chance to say ‘I told you so’ about what would happen if Dad let me live in Gabs alone.”

“Akere, you didn’t exactly prove them wrong,” I tease.

“Mxm. Don’t you forget they caught you o kgwa in my bathroom that one time and they gave you the longest lecture of your life.”

I groan, cringing before she’s even done. “Why are you still talking about that night?” Her laugh lets me know she’ll be alright. “We don’t talk about that night. Do you need anything for later?” I add.

She feigns contemplating something deeply. “Just one thing,” she says. “Don’t come in those god-awful slides again or I’ll pretend I don’t know you.”

I launch a throw-pillow at her.

***

 When I return that evening, my feet are clad in brand new, white tennis shoes. After helping Afa put together some snacks in the little dining area, I head to the kitchen while she connects to the Bluetooth speaker to play some music. It’s immediately too loud. I hide in the kitchen. I’m pouring garishly pink wine into a Styrofoam cup when the front door swings open without a knock.

“The party is here!” says a comically deepened voice.

I roll my eyes but can’t help a small smile coming to my lips. Keli is a sweet, excitable little thing with an insatiable appetite for cheap wine. She walks into the kitchen bearing a three litre box of sweet Rosé and wearing a white shirt dress with the buttons open almost to her navel. Long and lean and mixed-race, with a cloud of curly blond braids and fair skin, she is almost irritatingly beautiful. She wraps her bony arms around me and squeezes briefly, leaving the residue of some floral perfume all over me. We exchange loud pleasantries, which almost distracts me from seeing the hulking figure that sweeps past us both to enter the flat.

I glance over briefly and catch a glimpse of someone very tall and very dark hugging our host in the living room. Keli, always with the keen eye, must notice my interest because she has that notorious, knowing smirk on her face when I look back at her.

“Right?” she says, over the reverberating bass. “That’s Jahmil. He’s from Grenada.” The foreign sound of his name rings brightly in my ear.

Keli stretches her face into a silent scream of excitement, clearly delighted about her latest catch, and retreats to the living room to welcome the guest. Seemingly of their own volition, my feet carry me into the living room as I sip again, deeply, from the cup. I don’t wince at the cloying sweetness this time.

Afa’s generous body is still enclosed in the muscular arms of the tall stranger. I skirt carefully around them to say hello to Heavy, a walking contradiction by being possibly the skinniest boy I’ve ever met in my life. As usual, he embraces me warmly, but everyone knows he only has eyes for Keli. He peers at her over my shoulder when we part. Unfortunately for Heavy, Keli only has eyes for Keli. She’s looking in the entryway mirror and fixing something invisible in her hair. That brief, empty moment between greeting and conversation left room for Jahmil to suddenly materialise before me.

I am able to see the guy properly for the first time. At first glance, there is nothing remarkable about his appearance, save for his impressive height. I smile briefly when he catches my eye and that’s when Heavy finally snaps out of his Keli-induced-trance and introduces us. Jahmil offers his hand with just a friendly smile and no words. I hesitate at first, finding the gesture a little awkward, given the informal setting.

He doesn’t stay there long. In fact, we don’t speak a word to each other for almost the entire evening. As the night goes on, I’m embarrassed to say that I fail in trying not to stare at him. He possesses that demanding presence that all tall people seem to have. Every few minutes an invisible thread connecting my eyes to him gives a gentle tug. Whether I like it or not, a primal part of me desperately – unreasonably – wants him to notice me. Yet, another part is decidedly mortified by that desire. I am mollified by the knowledge that I am not the only beholder in the building: Heavy’s Keli obsession is without a doubt the worst it’s ever been tonight. Whether that is Jahmil’s doing or some other reason is unknown. Luckily, I’m distracted from deciphering that particular mystery when a second wave of guests arrive, making Afa’s little get-together uncomfortably crowded. There are a few boys from her Statistics class and a girl in a red tube dress who I remember as one of the TAs. It’s easy then to coalesce into the mass of bodies and ignore tall, exotic, irritating Jahmil.

At least twenty people are now crammed into the tiny living room. The music is louder. Heavier. Seeping into my bones in tandem with the alcohol. Unfortunately, this means that my body has begun to do all the thinking. My eyes constantly seek out Jahmil and that is how I notice that there is definitely something going on between him and Keli. As the party progresses, they continue to hover around each other, and, of course, there’s the mating call Jahmil makes to summon her. It irritates me to no end. Not because of the intimacy of it. Not because it’s pedestrian and juvenile. Not because I have heard it a million times tonight. But because I know that Keli has always hated such unimaginative pet names.

Baby Girl.

I don’t know why she tolerates it. Yet here she is, clearly enjoying it. Smiling at it. His accent, lilting and Caribbean, is clearly doing an excellent job of intriguing both she and I. He just seems to draw so much attention to himself as he walks around the room. Because of a few stolen glances, I now cannot deny that he is a conventionally attractive man – if one is into that sort of thing. Given that Keli has now attached herself to his side like lichen, I have to concede that she is, in fact, into that sort of thing. That sort of thing being a fuckboy frankensteined together from several stereotypes: brown eyes, dark skin, waves in his hair and a dangerous smirk affixed to his full mouth. He probably smells of Edgar’s cologne in “Sandalwood” or “Papaya” or something ridiculous like “Exhilaration”.

We’ve just begun a game of Do or Drink, so I head over to the drinks table to mix myself a new concoction and become the unfortunate eavesdropper of a conversation between the couple in question.

“You smell good,” I overhear Keli say, as I mix far too much vodka into my cranberry juice. “What is that?”

“It’s called Euphoria,” comes the lilting reply.

I almost choke on my wine, trying not to laugh.

“I just got it from that organic joint in Main Mall. I’ll take you there sometime.”

Keli smiles indulgently. “I’d love that.” He misses the teasing tone of her voice completely. She must really like him to let that one slip – Keli practically lives at that shop he’s talking about.

Regardless, her response seems to satisfy him and at this point I have dropped all pretense of making a drink. Everyone else is eavesdropping on their conversation; after all it is his turn to draw a card. He suddenly raises his pick in triumph, grinning wildly.

“Public display of affection coming up, you can avert your eyes!” Jahmil calls, before pulling Keli’s body close to his and kissing her indulgently.

Everyone responds with various sounds of adorable embarrassment and even encouragement. Am I the only one who knows he stole that line from Friends? What an ass. Using game as an excuse to –

A crash pulls the attention of everyone in the room. Heavy is sprawled awkwardly across the snack table, left hand still clutching a bottle of beer victoriously, right hand in a bowl of salsa. He rights himself quickly, sucking his teeth in irritation and clearly embarrassed, and I do not miss the hot flame of something fierce and ugly in his eyes. Some folks boo him good-naturedly and a few laugh as he sees himself out through the glass doors, without a word, and onto the balcony. Keli is amongst the latter. I follow him out, if only to escape the increasingly stifling room.

 The cool night air is like a balm against my feverish skin, especially after the stuffiness of the apartment. I breathe it in with gusto and feel my head immediately begin to clear. The music is soft and muted here, almost welcomed at this volume. It feels like a whole different world: a cocoon of calm.

Heavy is at the far end of the balcony, one arm braced against the railing and the other dangling over it with a lit something smoky held delicately between two bony fingers. I approach him slowly but purposefully.

“We hooked up last week, you know. Keli and I.”

The revelation shocks me into immobility. It explains a lot: the constant longing stares more intense than usual, his awkwardness around Jahmil and the fact that he was drinking. Heavy prides himself on being ‘soberish’, as he says.

“Damn…” I walk the rest of the way to stand beside him, sharing the support of the railing. “What happened?”

He huffs a humorless laugh. “Keli happened. Keli is Keli.” He brings the blunt to his lips, takes a long, deep drag, sucks some air between clenched teeth and allows it to settle in for a moment. When he is satisfied, he releases the pungent smoke. It flushes out in a perfect, white plume and dissipates into the chilly air. I steal the blunt from him and take two drags, following the same routine before passing it back. He’s right. Keli is Keli.

He continues, “I thought maybe something could happen between us. I don’t know, I…’ He doesn’t need to finish his sentence for me to understand him; for me to understand the hope that fills you up when desire matures into infatuation. It’s the reason my best friend is pregnant with her lecturer’s illegitimate child.

“I know,” are the words I use to comfort him, squeezing his shoulder gently.

He does his huffing laugh again, this time with perhaps a smidge of humour. “At least I know I’m not the only one who won’t be getting any tonight, Mma Jamaica.”

“Mxm,” I throw at him, lightly punching his arm for good measure. “Gape he’s from Grenada.”

“Ehe, so your mind immediately goes there, Mma Sean Paul?”

“I seriously regret knowing you.”

Heavy seems well enough to rejoin the festivities after that, but I remain a little longer, allowing my gaze to briefly travel across the landscape of kaleidoscopic lights on the horizon. The BHC flats may not be anything extravagant, but nothing compares to their view of the city at night.

When I return, it is clear that some immature idiot has suggested a game of spin the bottle – which is really just an excuse to make out with a stranger with no foreseeable consequences.

To my complete surprise, Heavy has found a place next to Keli on the carpet. He seems to have finally succeeded in entertaining her, which is generally not an easy feat. His glazed, doe-eyed gaze fixes longingly on Keli’s exposed décolletage as she stretches luxuriously, pretending she doesn’t notice his appraisal. Heavy just licks his lips and swallows almost audibly. That is just the kind of person Keli is. She is like a flame. You can never catch a flame but my god, you can feel it. I manage to escape to the kitchen under the pretext of preparing some food for the group, which is not a complete lie and is met with enthusiastic encouragement.

The kitchen promises a welcome illusion of solitude, yet as soon as I enter I am met with a broad chest clad in a plain, black t-shirt … and reeking of Euphoria. Startled, I jump back.

“Sorry,” says Jahmil’s loud baritone in that lilting accent. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

I look up and hold his gaze.. “You didn’t.” He takes the hint and steps aside, allowing me to enter the kitchen to get the frozen pizzas out of the freezer. My stomach is tingling childishly with nerves.

“Uhm, here, let me help,” he says, again easily pitching his voice over the music, and reaching for the stack of packages in my hands. I surrender them easily and stalk him like a lioness as he walks across the kitchen to put the food on the counter. God, what his body must be like under those clothes.

Taking a shaky breath, I turn away and use the opportunity, while his back is turned, to pull myself together and get the baking trays, putting them on the counter between us. The pounding music masks the awkwardness as we work to unpackage the pizzas together. I am vexed with myself for being so flustered but I cannot help it. Hating myself for it but unable to restrain myself any longer, I subtly glance to the side and freeze when I catch a pair of warm, brown eyes fringed with ridiculously long eyelashes.

He smiles and my eyes drop down to the work at hand.

“I can’t tell if you’re really quiet or if you just really don’t like me.”

Jahmil’s words take me by surprise, so much so that my gaze snaps to him again.

I open my mouth to defend myself and that’s when I catch the way the corners of his mouth are curled up into a teasing smirk. Relief floods through me and I smack his arm lightly in retaliation. Teasing. What a flirt. He only responds with another of his enthralling chuckles.

“Maybe now I hate you a little,” I shoot back, unable to conceal a small smile.

“Well, prepare to hate me even more ‘cos I totally didn’t catch your name earlier.”

I roll my eyes and say nothing.

“Think about it. If you don’t tell me then how will I know where the hate mail is from?”

I snort derisively. “I don’t think forgetting my name warrants hate mail.”

“Glitterbomb, then?” he suggests.

 “Are you expecting to get more than one death note in the mail? Be honest, you’re a wanted man, aren’t you?”

A look of mock outrage and then sorrow takes over his face. “I didn’t choose the thug life…”

Unexpected laughter bubbles out of me. Judging by the light in his eyes, he seems pleased by it and I hate how good that makes me feel.

 When the pizza is safely in the oven, Jahmil leans against the counter with me, shoulder to shoulder. “Let’s start over. I’m Jahmil,” he says, offering his hand. Again I find the gesture odd, but deep inside I am delighted by the prospect of being able to touch his skin again. Oh, that is dangerous thinking.

“Praise,” I reply, accepting the gesture.

“Praise?” he echoes, a glint of interest in his eyes. “Beautiful.”

I am enthralled by his words but in truth, I cannot say anything because I have never been able to accept a compliment for my name; it’s something I have no control over. Also, growing up I used to hate my name. Couldn’t my mother have just called me Kgalalelo and be done with it? My teachers often waxed on about how blessed I was to have a name like that. I wonder how they would feel now knowing that it is being used as an uninventive pick-up line. That it has blessed the lips of this sinner before me.

“I kind of have to confess to something,” he purrs as he leans closer, the saccharine scent of the liquor on his breath washing over me. It does register that this man – this man who arrived with my friend – is hitting on me, but the effects of my impromptu cigarette break have become acutely real. I am positively floating.

I play along. “Oh yeah?”

He ducks his head shyly. I know his bashfulness is staged and that it is a technique he has probably perfected over the years, but I simply don’t care.

“I’ve been trying to dig up the courage to speak to you all night,” he says.

Another line?

It has to be.

I indulge in the heady rush of his attention and ask him, “Why do you feel you need courage for that?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” he replies, the timbre of his voice dipping just an octave lower as he leans closer to me.

I can barely take a breath beneath the weight of his gaze. The feeling is difficult to describe, but the enchantment is shattered when someone stumbles drunkenly into the kitchen, cackling raucously. I jump away from Jahmil as if a shock has gone through my body, self-consciously crossing my arms as I put some distance between us.

The guy, one of Heavy’s band mates, notices us standing together and gives us a skeevy grin.

 “Are you kids fornicating in here?” he says with barely restrained delight.

I roll my eyes and get out of the kitchen – the moment gone – leaving him to laugh at what he probably thinks is the most hilarious thing he has ever said. When I get back to the sitting room, claiming the couch, everyone is knee-deep in Spin the Bottlebut our affable host is nowhere to be found. I’m just glad to have some time to tame my heartbeat … and get progressively drunker.

Nothing notable happens until the third round, when the girl in the red tube dress spins the empty bottle of Savanna lying in the centre of the circle. It spins with a blur, slows down, then completes three sad, slow revolutions before finally landing on me. A flash of tension darts through me, hot like lightning.

What then unfolds can only be described as a series of unfortunate events designed to torture my sensitive psyche. Perhaps it begins when Jahmil chooses to rejoin the party at the opportune moment, pizzas in hand, and catches Tube-Dress’s attention immediately. Or maybe it begins when the gauntlet is first thrown.

“I dare you –” Tube-Dress says, a finger pointing at me, “– to make out with him.” The gesture switches to Jahmil. A black hole tears open my stomach, the sensation immediately chased by a flicker of delight. My eyes unconsciously dart, not to my unexpected paramour, but to Keli, who remains by Heavy’s side. There is a subtle edge to the smirk she gives me. It weaves a strand of tension through the air and adds a slightly sharper edge to a previously lighthearted game. To me, that tension is tangible even through the sultry R&B rhythm that now backdrops the party. Or perhaps it is exaggerated by all the substances coursing through my body. I don’t even flinch as the room fills with ‘Oooh’s, as Jahmil is suddenly before me. His large hands rise to frame my face and then he closes the distance between us and presses his lips to mine.

It is brief.

It is soft.

It is everything I imagined it would be.

It confirms the very thing I feared when I first met him. Dangerous.

Jahmil’s touch lingers, fingers grazing my cheek even as I pull away. His eyes are fathomless, even in their confusion. I search for Keli again but this time, neither she nor Heavy are to be seen…

“I need some air,” I whisper, and head for the nearest exit. I feel the room tilt precariously in response to the sudden movement, vision swimming, until I find myself out on the balcony again. It’s almost a replica of the scene with Heavy earlier. Afa is leaning against the railing, smoking one of her menthol cigarettes, one arm braced against the railing and the other dangling over it. Smoky tendrils spiral from the end of her cigarette, caressing her fingertips as they twirl away.

“Are you okay?” I inquire, even though I know she’s not. Even from here, I can see the glint of tears in her eyes. Instead of responding, she takes a drag of her cigarette.

“I told Henry about the baby.” She takes another drag. A pause. An exhale. “He blocked me.”

I am already by her side. I just hold her as she cries and damns the very invention of men and the slimy cocoon they crawled out of.

I agree vehemently, but it tastes bitter on my tongue.

***

Three months go by like a surreal dream. I allow myself to get lost in it. Time apart from Jahmil becomes like lucid intervals: sections of my life that seem like washed-out watercolours until I see him again, and then everything floods back in vivid technicolour. In the back of my mind I know that I ruined something between Keli and him, but I simply cannot bring myself to resent it whenever he looks at me like I’m the very end of life as he knows it. Or when he holds me, when the only thing between us is skin.

***

When Jahmil’s days in Botswana are almost over, we’re lying on our backs, side-by-side in the grass at my favourite park. The president’s park is beautiful but secluded, and not a place many frequent. The intersecting tree branches are our only protection from the unrelenting sun. They tattoo patterns on my skin where the sun does not penetrate. In the background, his blue-tooth speaker plays some R&B softly. His fingers play with my braids and his other hand holds mine.

“Humans are fucking weird,” he says softly, the break in the silence startling me. I follow his line of sight and see, tilted on her side, a woman holding a stark-white, wild daisy. She is smiling dreamily at the man sitting next to her on the bench. I feel myself smile back.

“What do you mean?” I ask him.

“I mean that humans are seriously fucked up. Look at that. Who else in the animal kingdom sees something, desires it and then their first instinct is to own it? That’s so arrogant. That’s fucked up.”

As he speaks in his soft warm-toned rumble, I continue to watch the man. He decapitates another one of the unsuspecting daisies, turns it from side to side with careful scrutiny and then, deciding that it is not worthy, throws it back into the bushes.

“It’s going to die eventually,” Jahmil continues. “Maybe things are only beautiful when we leave them alone.”

His words twist unpleasantly in my gut. It no longer sounds like we are talking about flowers.

“It doesn’t die. Not really,” I argue.

“No?” he counters.

“No. It doesn’t die. It just becomes something else. It becomes beautiful for a different reason.”

There’s a thoughtful pause. “What will it become, then?”

I’m not sure what he wants me to say or think but my skin crawls at the temperature of the conversation.

“It becomes the seed for something new,” I say, as my free hand moves to rest on my belly, absently caressing it.

“I guess,” Jahmil says, relinquishing my hand and resting his own against his chest. His fingers tap-tap-tap to the rhythm of the music. For the first time I notice that he’s wearing his favourite black shirt – the one he wore at that party that now seems like a million years ago. Funny how things turn out. How Keli has moved on to another muse. How Heavy has finally let her go. How Afa is back under the intense scrutiny of her parents’ eyes in Jwaneng.

In the silence that follows our conversation and with my eyes closed, I begin to wonder. I wonder whether we will have a ‘funny’ ending too, when he leaves. There was never any question that he would, after all. We had both chosen to stoically ignore the fact that he has to return to Grenada when his visitor’s permit ends.

Yet, I still wonder.

I wonder whether it will ever evolve beyond the dream we have been existing in, and cement itself in the real world. I wonder whether it will grow and mature into something that does not rely on proximity. I wonder whether that is the secret of beautiful things: the looming, desperate fear that they – like everything else – will end.

---

Keabetswe is a Motswana lawyer-turned-teacher, writer and poet who has been teaching language and literature for over 9 years. Her work has appeared in Saltwater Girl magazine and Brittle Paper. Her first published short story, Matlhalerwa, won first place in the 2023 Kendeka Prize for African Literature. Keabetswe’s writing style consists of vivid, imagery-rich descriptions and multi-faceted characters. Her 2025 debut poetry anthology, Lessons and Letters, is a self published offering of reminders, affirmations and poems in the form of free verse poetry and short form prose.