Chapter 25
● Langa Gumede
'Gogo wants you here before the sun set and please bring two HUGE white goats. And that's an order' That's the text I got on my WhatsApp, message app and email before I was blocked again. My brother is not talking to me because of my baby mama. Even my mother is giving me the cold shoulder, all I have been getting from her is one-word answers.
I get up from my home office and go straight to my son room, which we have turned into a mini hospital for him. King isn't getting any better and that's just breaking my heart. Another thing that Is making me lose weight is the big brown envelop inside my safe that I don't have the guts to open it. I fear what the outcome from it will turn me into someone I'm not. I know I will kill Fikile if she played me. I start packing up his things for the long drive we are about to take after our flight.
"Are we going somewhere?" She asks when she finds me packing up his medical file inside the suitcase.
"Yeah. Please pack for us as well, my grandmother wants us home today."
"Why?" It comes out as a whisper. She lost weight as well. I understand her pain.
"Angazi. We will be back on Sunday. I promise." She nods and walks out to start packing. One thing for sure the past month has brought us closer. So close that I haven't even thought about Nokukhanya, that one makes me mad. I'm even angry at her that she has turn my family against me.
"Are you done?" She nods without turning to look at me.
"Is he ever going to get better." She asks softly, if I wasn't standing so close to her, I wouldn't have heard what she asked.
"We just need to have faith." I tell her pulling her close to me.
"I'm tired Langa. I want my son to get better. It's been long now. Why is this happening to him, to us?"
"He is going to be fine." I hope and pray that he gets better.
***
"Is there a ceremony here that we don't know anything about?" Fikile said quietly while picking up King from his car seat. We just arrived from a five-hour flight. The order was to be here before sun set. And we made it just in time. We stood in comfortable silence watching everyone busy running around doing God knows what. I had no idea what was happening in my own yard.
"Langa...whats all this?" As I'm about to reply to her, I hear my daughter's laughter, the voice I have been longing to hear for the past month. Her laugher is bold and so loud. Her voice just went from my ears straight to my heart makes me drag my wife and our bags inside the Gumede's household.
Why was my daughter here? The last time I checked I did not approve Nokukhanya's request to come here.
"Whats going on here?" Anger washed over me when my eyes landed on the one who as my heart. She was sitting next to my grandmother who had my daughter on her lap. Everyone went quiet and looked at us.
"What's going on here?"
"Is that how you greet your elders mfana wami? Is this what you have taught him? to disrespect us like this?" My grandmother asked my mother who looks ashamed to have given birth to me. my mother hung her head low and I saw her trying to blink back her tears. MaGumede's words can make you shed a tear or two.
"Ngiyamxolisela. Sanibonani BoGumede." My wife says next to me, and everyone gasp.
"Makoti. Hlala phansi."
"Ngiyabonga Ma." It took all the strength in me to stop myself from lashing out. How can she say something like this right now? Apologising on my behalf my left foot?
