Three times he asked me to finish him off, three times I refused. This was before, before I allowed myself to think anything I want. If I had been then what I’ve become today, I would have killed him the first time he asked, his head turned toward me, his left hand in my right.

God’s truth, if I’d already become then what I am now, I would have slaughtered him like a sacrificial sheep, out of friendship. But I thought of my old father, of my mother, of the inner voice that commands us all, and I couldn’t cut the barbed wire of his suffering. I was not humane with Mademba, my more-than-brother, my childhood friend. I let duty make my choice. I offered him only mistaken thoughts, thoughts commanded by duty, thoughts condoned by a respect for human law, and I was not human.

I know, I understand that I should not have pushed him with my words to demonstrate a kind of courage I knew he already possessed. I know, I understand that it was because Mademba envied me and loved me at the same time that he went out first, as soon as Captain Armand blew the attack whistle on the day of his death. It was to show me that you don’t need beautiful teeth, you don’t need beautiful shoulders and a broad torso and very, very strong arms and thighs to be truly brave. So in the end I think it wasn’t just my words that killed Mademba. It wasn’t just my words about the Diops’ totem, as hurtful as those grains of metal that fell on us from the sky of war, that killed him. I know, I understand that all of my beauty and all of my strength also killed Mademba, my more-than-brother, who loved me and envied me at the same time. It was the beauty and strength of my body that killed him, it was the way all the women looked at me, at the middle of my body, that killed him. It was the way their eyes caressed my shoulders, my chest, my arms, and my legs, the way they lingered on my well-aligned teeth and my proud, hooked nose that killed him.

She agreed to marry him out of respect for keeping one’s word, out of respect for Yoro Ba. Penndo had come to love my father because he was her exact opposite. He was as old as an immutable landscape, she was young like the changing sky. He was immobile as a baobab tree, she was the daughter of the wind. Sometimes opposites fascinate each other because of the differences between them. Penndo had come to love my father, the old man, because he contained all of the wisdom of the earth and of the recurring seasons. My father, the old man, idolized Penndo because she was what he was not: movement, joyous instability, novelty.

I am black, and have been plundered and have lost my body. But perhaps I too had the capacity for plunder, maybe I would take another human’s body to confirm myself in a community. Perhaps I already had. Hate gives identity. The nigger, the fag, the bitch illuminate the border, illuminate what we ostensibly are not, illuminate the Dream of being white, of being a Man. We name the hated strangers and are thus confirmed in the tribe. But my tribe was shattering and reforming around me. I saw these people often, because they were family to someone whom I loved. Their ordinary moments - answering the door, cooking in the kitchen, dancing to Adina Howard - assaulted me and expanded my notion of the human spectrum. I would sit in the living room of that house, observing their private jokes, one part of me judging them, the other reeling from the changes.

““So, it looks like you were right. I would be hearing your name. Caster Semenya.” He smiled and held out his hand. I took his hand, and with that simple gesture we began an easy friendship that would last several years. Oscar and I began to train together, we pushed each other, and gave each other advice. Not that long ago, Oscar and I could not even eat at the same restaurant, much less speak or train as equals on a running track. Herenwe were from completely different backgrounds. He was a middle-class Afrikaner boy from Johannesburg, and I was a Black girl from the most impoverished province in the country. Oscar was twenty-two years old when we met—barely an adult himself. We were linked by something that went beyond running. We were drawn to each other and found comfort in each other’s presence. Maybe it was because of the way the world looked at us—our difference written on our bodies. Our conversations will stay with me and me alone. No one could foretell how our lives would eventually play out. Each of us would come to be seen as both heroes and villains, admired and scorned by the world.