She watched the world through windows, counting number plates. Everybody seemed to be going someplace. Her place (just for now, she told herself) would be here, where she was needed. But she could count the wrinkles forming around her eyes now, and like the number plates, she too was moving even though she wasn't moving at all. It was the kind of moving she was helpless to stop though she prayed, to a god she did not always believe in, to slow it down a little so that she could catch up.

She'd read biographies and maps, using her mind as a blender to create new histories that she might play out, one day, on paper. But she didn't have the courage to write. Writers bared themselves. She hid behind words. They protected her, a coat of armour that held the world at arms length, so that she could be free to be trapped from where she could not leave. Most importantly, it concealed the need for saving.

She was still young enough that every so often, a nice man would come around, don a white cloak and try his hand at a rescue. But she didn't believe in big transcendental moments. Her first thoughts always extended to 'what happens after?'

They believed she needed to be removed from the bad place, though she knew it was her duty to make sure the bad things ended before she left. It was up to her, because she saw it, and knew it, for what it was.

But she had trouble speaking – this much was true. And it was possible that she had never made herself clear, or perhaps, they simply did not want to listen. From her brain to her lips, thoughts struggled for birth into words that were consumed by her tongue. Nothing could get past her tongue, putting to bed all that she could not articulate.

It was not a bed she lay in. An insomniac since her early teens, she had not truly slept in over a decade. Always, she broke from fitful dozing with a migraine. As time went by, it became a blurring of the sense, and she began to lose balance, memory, stumbling from one thought to the next, falling to the edge of herself. At times, suicide crossed her mind but yearning for the end was never because she wanted to die, only that she wanted reprieve for a bit. Sleep.

She prayed to sleep before the sun came up, so that she could be part of the night for a time. She was able to sleep the day away, often, because she was homeschooled through Damelin, a long-distance correspondence school officially recognised by the government. Thanks to the example set by her two older brothers, the first, a drug dealer who was second-in-command to the Paris gang in the Cape Flats, and the second (perceived as the more evil of the two), a first year medical student who was also gay. But there was another reason, her mother, who didn't seem to like her too much, had Cushing’s Syndrome and was in a bad way. Her father ran women for cash. She saw few people beyond the doctor and nurses at the clinic, the cashiers at the grocery store, the bus drivers. The girls in her area were too hard for her. The boys too rough. And her mother, too needy for company, a punching bag, a hand to walk her to the bathroom. Once a beauty, the mother has lost herself in the bottle, and now, seeing her face in her daughter's was both a blessing and a curse, of all that once was and had been taken so quickly. She could not see the faraway look in her daughter's eyes that indicated the letting go.

But she felt, innately, that both were of the same essence, and so she encouraged her daughter to keep her head in a book, away from all the bad things. And she strived to compose herself into something that could catch the attention of a nice man. Young girls, the mother knew, could easily get attention, but they could not keep it. Her daughter, she knew too, did not seek it, and would never be able to shape herself to the kind of world that bought beauty as a commodity. She was too rough and too real to play.

And yet, at the ripe age of 17, when her breasts felt heavy in her hands, and her hips moved from straight lines to curves, she became the paid company to a very rich man. At least, that was how it sounded. She bumped into him on a rainy day while waiting for the bus. He offered to pay her cab fare home. He marketed his money like Africa's young lion Thomas Sankara did revolution. She had never been with anyone before but he seemed to like her body and she wanted to be with him. With his clothes off he was a very different man: brutal gentle tender dominating and then submissive, finally, when she placed her hands on his chest and closed her eyes, trying to find her balance.

It was easier to let go of reality with him. In the daylight hours, he was 'acclaimed', people shook his hand and try to tell him their thoughts, that he might 'recognise' them and they would suddenly feel validated. He spent all day thinking, as she did, and they understood that of each other.

The freedom was that he wanted nothing from her but the moment, and she tried for nothing more, knowing she could promise nothing. Though there existed a 20-year age difference, they came together on a different plane of existence, one bypassing the high walls and norms that said 'Do not cross go'.

At first, she hadn't known that she was his because she was paid for. She liked him and he had been nice to her, made time for her. But then he spoke of his women and she understood and didn't break away even though something broke. He had spent over R10,000 a month on his previous girl, he told her, a 21-year-old art student who had spent time as an au pair in Paris. He had shown her the bills and informed her that this time around, he could only afford R5,000. 'Don't go buying any shit you don't need,' he had said. 'If you're going to buy underwear just to take it off for me, don't bother.'

She could not leave home without having an excuse, so she begged leave for an early morning job. They would expect her to bring back a salary so she asked the rich man for 50% of the legal minimum wage, for half a day's work, five times a week. But he could not see her every morning. They came to an agreement that she would be paid on a daily basis. Everyday she appeared on his doorstep, dressed in almost the same clothes (she didn't have many items of clothing) and he would welcome her in, talking to her as if she were a colleague. It was the dignity that he conferred which made her forget what it was.

And when he once joked, afterwards, while he pulled his pants on, before he placed R38 on the side table, that she was 'very cheap', she made as if it didn't hurt. Even though she was only paid company to him, almost as soon as he'd said it, his eyes became darker and he apologised, once, lips pursed together. That morning he said he had no work and would she want to take a walk with him?

But she left in the same way she usually did, soon after, money clutched in her hand so as not to forget and become inappropriately affectionate, and always, as painfully and awkwardly shy as she had arrived. He knew she would be back because of the beautiful and dark things she had let him do to her, and she knew too, because she had wanted to be the one he did those things too. He saw that she liked him and would become happy when he became less brusque and indifferent and he felt a funny tightening in his chest sometimes when she forgot what she was to him and allowed herself to become chatty and open, as she might with a close friend.

Once, he asked her whether she wanted any more money for the things she might need. She lied and told him that her parents provided everything that she needed. But the next day he had caught her buying milk and bread soon after leaving and her hands were shaking as she ate on the bench, waiting for the bus. He understood her better then, knew perhaps a bit more about her than even she did, this strange girl with rough edges, who stuttered and was not very much, he told himself. She ate quickly, shoulders hunched over, and when she had finished two slices, he saw her counting what was left, before re-tying the knot. Before he knew it, his legs were moving towards her. He would have taken her home and made her a steak, something substantial; held her so that the shaking would stop.

Then he remembered that she didn't know even know the names of capitals and reminded himself that she was a dunce who wasn't even that pretty. I'm doing her a favour, he said to himself, as he got dressed for his date with a beautiful Swiss filmmaker. Brushing his hair, he thought to himself that she had probably never properly brushed her hair, but the funny tightening wouldn't go away. She had asked him to lend her a book, a bent-up paperback, and he had done so telling her not to destroy it. It was how he had first seen her, head bent over a book.

Bringing home groceries had opened up a Pandora’s box. Her family's grocery list started expanding upwards and sideways, from medicines to shoes. Take an advance from your boss, said her mother. And then, if he likes you as a women, take what you can.

She knew that she would have to get a real job soon and that she would no longer be able to see him. She informed her mother she would have to finish up the month but would thereafter look for another form of employment. For the next few weeks, he began leaving R100 on the side table next to the bed, telling himself he didn't have any smaller change and that he couldn't be bothered to bother himself about peanuts. She took it silently and he felt a grim sense of satisfaction and sadness, that she was just a whore, albeit a cheap one who could not negotiate for herself, and hurt too, that she did want him partly for money. The next day, she got a text message in the early morning telling her not to come over, that his date had spent the night.

She didn't respond to him again for three weeks when she told him that she would drop his book off. He had sent her messages, many of them, asking her to come over for a bit, making jokes about extra health benefits. Each time he did so, he understood that he should have been speaking to her in a different way, but he didn't know what way that was or how to change the shape of things that he had created.

She told him about exams and thanked him for writing and being nice to her. He waited the morning she mentioned she would drop the book off but she did not appear. He found his mood becoming darker, more aware of the tightening in his chest that didn't seem to leave. He wondered if something had happened to her but he knew, somehow, that she was a hermit and just meeting him had required of her some courage she normally did not have.

Walking past the doorman that day, he was handed a book, a new version, because she was clumsy, he reminded himself, and probably spilled something over his copy. ‘Did she leave any kind of a message?’, he asked the doorman. She said ‘thank you’, the doorman responded, and that she liked it very much.

‘Doesn't take much to make her happy,’ he'd told the doorman. The doorman went on to say that he had missed her company even though she didn't smell very good or dress in anything but baggy pants. They'd spent time talking together many mornings while she waited for her bus. The rich man remembered that he had never asked her where she was coming from or how she would return.

‘Where does she live?’, he asked the doorman. Forty minutes away, replied the doorman. She lives in the Cape Flats. In the book was an envelope and inside the envelope money. Later, on counting it out, he realised that she had subtracted her daily side-table money and left him the excess cash.

He wondered if he had ever made her cry. She had always seemed happy or quiet around him, but never sad or teary. He spent the day thinking about the buses she took to see him, the times when he'd made her feel as if she had been taking too long to get ready and leave. He remembered when he had told her he couldn't leave her alone in his apartment in case she took something. He'd said it in jest and she'd smiled, but knew he did it to get the reaction that told him he had the power to hurt her because she cared. But he could not change things now so he left the subject alone and told himself, as he unlocked his BMW, that he didn't care whether she visited him again.

For six months, they did not see each other. During this time, she'd begun work as a secretary in an office selling holiday packages in South Africa. He came across her accidentally when he called in about a special. She answered the phone and the sound of her voice made him remember her bony knees, the chipped tooth in her mouth, the scars on her back, the millions of questions she would ask him afterwards about himself about his favourite colour and bird and pair of jeans. Once, he'd told her to shut up, but only because he had drunk too much the night before. She didn't ask him many questions after that. Instead, she took to wrapping herself in his sheets and cuddling near him, curled up in a ball. She never let herself fall asleep because as soon he made a motion to leave, she got the message it was time to leave.

But now he wished he'd held her and asked her questions about herself. She got happy when he did that, seemed lighter, like she had shrugged off the heavy blankets that tended to cloak her smile and her eyes. But she was working at an office and he didn't want to ask her anything as a client after he had kissed her in her most private places.

He found himself driving several times a week, 30 minutes east, to the travel agency, only to park his car on the side of the road, and watch the door. He did this for just 10 minutes each time, watching the clock to ensure that he did not go a minute over. But although he was fastidious with the clock when it came to her (as always, it dawned on him), the rest of the day would inevitably unravel, fragment, as if time were pieces of a puzzle whose bigger picture he could no longer remember with exactitude.

He noticed that she never went home immediately after the store closed at five. Instead, she hung around outside reading on the bench, head bent over her book, using her finger to follow the words. Sometimes she watched the cars or read the newspapers, if any had been discarded in the bin adjacent to the bench. He timed it so that his 10 minutes would coincide with her reading time. He felt contempt for her, that she had no place to go, nobody to meet, and contempt for himself for feeling that way, and he clung to that feeling, bundling it together with her dishevelled hair, her wardrobe (two pairs of jeans, three t-shirts, a hat for colder days), her unshaved legs, bitten nails, countless scars. And who could forget the torn underwear? He'd ask her for it several times when they first began spending time together. But she didn't respond until she told him, one relaxed day, completely out of the blue (both the day and the statement), that she only had five panties.

He wondered whether this was a coded demand for money or clothing – maybe a credit card for her pleasure. But when he asked her outright, she began shaking her head and rubbing her hands vigorously up and down her jeans. ‘I just mean that I don't have any to spare,’ she'd said, ‘and mine aren't very nice.’ ‘But it’s yours,’ he'd responded, ‘and that’s why I want it.’ Her underwear hung off her body, a size too big. He'd joked how kinky it was to take her mother's hand-me-down panties off before they got into bed. She commented that she would buy a new pair easily if he wanted, but that it didn't bother her at all.

But on the nights that he wanted to treat her to dinner at fancy places, she refused, saying that she was busy. He thought it might be her lack of clothing or maybe she was ashamed of spending time with an older man or perhaps she thought he might be ashamed of her. It was true, that he was ashamed someone of his stature, would consider, and be caught, by someone like her. But when she fell over her own untied shoelaces (because she was clumsy) or bit her fingernails, he felt cheated that he was not intimate enough with her that he could grab her hand away from her mouth and kiss her angry red fingertips, or kneel down and tie her shoelaces.

Three months after he had begun parking outside the store – and approximately nine months after they'd stopped seeing each other, the sign on the store announced its forthcoming closure.

She no longer showed up for work. Early one morning he walked in and requested her number. The storekeeper, a large coloured women, claimed that it could not be given unless it was with the owner's permission. The owner, he said, lived in Johannesburg and would not want to be bothered over the girl (so quiet, said she, you'd think she was retarded). But the large manager also mentioned that she would be back in the next few days to pick up her things.

He could not bring himself to wait outside the store for longer than ten minutes. He arrived the same time as before and watched the door, until the store was closed down, and for weeks after, while it was being renovated into a porn video shop.

He went on a date one night, with a gorgeous energy analyst who wore her infectious smile like a weapon of mass destruction. She'd studied four languages and attended an Ivy League school. The next day, he remembered only that his date had fake nails and an expensive handbag and knew that he was being unfair, but could not stop himself from judging other women as a taken man.

Then months later, the girl showed up on his doorstep. He had not been in a good mood for over a year and had forgotten how to smile, so he just nodded and let her in. She seemed taller, her voice strong and guarded. She asked him for a job at his company as a cleaner. He found an object and stared at it, feeling the tightening again. She told him her mother had remarried, that she was now attending UNISA, a long-distance correspondence university, studying literature, and would be able to work day shifts, that she had tried finding a job but hadn't been successful. He told her that they were not looking for any cleaners.

She was wearing a pair of baggy pants that he'd never seen before, though her white t-shirt was still the same. I like your pants, he said to her, watching the flowerpot carefully. She turned her head away too, and asked him if he was making fun of her. No, he told her, I just remember everything about you. He told her that he slept on the couch because the bed seemed empty without her. She apologised, explaining that if she could speak better, or if he could see better, he might have known what more there was to her and he wouldn't have paid for her company, like she was performing a service. I wanted to spend time with you, she said, but I had to have a reason to leave home so that I wouldn't get into trouble. My mother was very strict, she explained to him.

He was quiet, and thinking that she'd made him angry, she excused herself to leave. He walked her to the door and as she was leaving, thanked her for coming around and asked her to marry him when she turned 18, 'because he was looking for a wife’.

She looked at him for a long time then, and at her hands, and bitten nails, and lower still, to her shoes. He spoke quickly, telling her that nothing felt good without her, and he missed her voice, her messy hair.

She shook her head and said no, but he could not it let it go, finally, when he'd just found a way to change the shape of everything, because it occurred to him that whatever she didn't have, all that she was, was perfect. What made her conspicuous was the dignity that covered her like a second skin, irking him, as it fought to reach the surface of a mind educated in all things important. But not this thing, love, that did not require permission to bloom, and pushed everything out of place.

He told her, gripping the doorway with both hands, that for months he'd waited for her, and now that she'd come to him of her own choice, he wanted them to have rights over each other, so they could bypass all the jagged things that stood in the way. He wouldn't touch her, he said, until she wanted him, until she was ready, for whatever came.

What will we do, she asked, if not that thing we did? I'll watch you read, he said, and we can take it from there.

Because he had lots of books, and she liked him, and he liked her, she said okay, and went inside. They had time.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Khadija Sharife is the southern Africa correspondent for The Africa Report magazine and a visiting scholar at the Centre for Civil Society (CCS) based in South Africa.
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.