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“That’s not possible.”
I got up and walked over to the car. I asked her a question in English and she gave me a
blank stare.
Bongani looked at me.
“How did you not know that your date does not speak English?”
“I…I don’t know.”
“Have you never spoken to her?”
“Of course I have—or, wait…have I?”
I started flashing back through all the times I’d been with Babiki, meeting at her flat,
hanging out with her friends, introducing her to Abel. Did I talk to her then? No. Did I talk to
her then? No. It was like the scene in Fight Club where Ed Norton’s character flashes back
and realizes he and Brad Pitt have never been in the same room with Helena Bonham Carter
at the same time. He realizes he’s been punching himself the whole time. He’s Tyler Durden.
In all the excitement of meeting Babiki, the times we were hanging out and getting to know
each other, we were never actually speaking to each other. It was always through Tom.
Fucking Tom.
Tom had promised he’d get me a beautiful date for the dance, but he hadn’t made any
promises about any of her other qualities. Whenever we were together, she was speaking Pedi
to Tom, and Tom was speaking English to me. But she didn’t speak English, and I didn’t
speak Pedi. Abel spoke Pedi. He’d learned several South African languages in order to deal
with his customers, so he’d spoken with her fluently when they met. But in that moment I
realized I’d never actually heard her say anything in English other than: “Yes.” “No.” “Hi.”
“Bye.” That’s it: “Yes.” “No.” “Hi.” “Bye.”
Babiki was so shy that she didn’t talk much to begin with, and I was so inept with women
that I didn’t know how to talk to her. I’d never had a girlfriend; I didn’t even know what
“girlfriend” meant. Someone put a beautiful woman on my arm and said, “She’s your
girlfriend.” I’d been mesmerized by her beauty and just the idea of her—I didn’t know I was
supposed to talk to her. The naked women on my computer, I’d never had to talk to them, ask
them their opinions, ask them about their feelings. And I was afraid I’d open my mouth and
ruin the whole thing, so I just nodded and smiled along and let Tom do the talking.
All three of Babiki’s older sisters spoke English, and her younger sister Lerato spoke a
little. So whenever we hung out with Babiki and her sisters and their friends, a lot of the
conversation was in English. The rest of it was going right by me in Pedi or in Sotho, but
that’s completely normal in South Africa so it never bothered me; I got enough of the gist of
the conversation from everyone’s English to know what was going on. And the way my mind
works with language, even when I’m hearing other languages, they get filtered into English as
I’m hearing them. My mind stores them in English. When my grandmother and greatgrandmother
were hysterically praying to God to destroy the demon that had shit on their
kitchen floor, all of that transpired in Xhosa, but it’s stored in English. I remember it as
English. So whenever I lay in bed at night dreaming about Babiki and the moments we’d
spent together, I felt like it had transpired in English because that’s how I remembered it.
And Tom had never said anything about what language she spoke or didn’t speak, because
why would he care? He just wanted to get his free CDs and get with the sister. Which is how