Ndalwenhle POV
By 5 a.m. I force myself to take a bath. My body is failing me, but I refuse to give up. Even if the doctors say I have only months left, I will not go until my story is finished.
I have stage four pancreatic cancer. No one knows and I would like to keep it that way.
By the time Nomonde arrives, I'm already outside in the garden. The wool chair beneath me offers little comfort, but the fresh air reminds me I am still alive.
"How are you today?" she asks, settling into the chair beside me.
"I'm fine," I answer with a faint smile.
"That's right," she says, glancing at the sky. "The weather is good today."
"Yes. And your sunny dress looks good on you."
She smile a little. "Thank you." Then, professional again, she flips open her journal, switches on the recorder. "Can we continue?"
"Yes," I breathe. "Let's go back to that hell hole."
Nobahle came home with a baby in her arms ...sorrow stitched into her face. She was broken. She had expected the gossip, the laughter, the whispers behind her back. But she hadn't expected how relentless it would be.
Her mother's comfort wasn't enough. The man who had promised her heaven had left her with venom instead. She knew she couldn't stay in that village where shame clung to her name. So she packed her life into a bag, held her baby close, and left for Durban
By the time Nobahle left home with me on her back, sorrow had already carved its place in her chest. She carried me to Durban, chasing a new beginning, thinking maybe the city would wash away the shame and whispers. We ended up in Mayville, a place of tin shacks and loud nights, where survival was the only thing people prayed for.
A high school friend had found her a small job at a retail store. It wasn't much, but she clung to it as if it could stitch her broken heart together. I was left with a woman who took care of children in the area. That's how it went she worked, I grew.
At four months, I was just a baby in blankets. At seven months, she was already moving out of her friend's place, paying five hundred rand for our own shack. It was nothing, but to her, it was freedom.
When I turned one, she started seeing him in me. The man who had broken her. The man who left her in the theatre and walked straight into another woman's arms. At first, it was only hints ...my eyes, the shape of my mouth. But by two years old, I was his mirror. Every smile, every frown, every small thing reminded her of the revenge that had ruined her life.
She tried, God knows she tried. Church. Prayers. Her mother's words. But nothing healed her. Because forgiveness never came. She only learned how to mask the hate, wear a smile, and keep moving. Inside, she was still bleeding.
One day at work, she saw him. Nhlalo. With his wife. With their son. A boy who looked just like me. She froze. Watching them laugh, watching them play family, watching the man who had sworn to love her act like she never existed. Right there, she died all over again.
She told herself she was fine. She wasn't. The venom was already inside her, slow and steady. A poison that lived in her veins. And every time people in the village called her homewrecker, every time the community whispered that she had trapped him with a baby, the poison grew stronger. They never cared for the truth. They only cared for the story that made sense to them.
And me? I was her burden. Her reminder. Her cage. The piece of him she could never escape.