The Two Of Us

Chapter 6: Heavy Skies & Heavy Hearts

"I never should have said
goodbye but maybe that's what
stupid people do 'cause you gave me
peace and I wasted it"

-Jaymes Young- Happiest Year

NOKUKHANYA MTHEMBU

Life is one unpredictable journey, you can never know what coming next no matter how much you try to plan and mold it in your own way. Or is that how we console ourselves when things go wrong, when our biggest secrets are revealed to the world or when people we never thought will ever leave our sides, finally let go?

Maybe, just maybe.

But at least we know the truth of life. At least we know that Karma knows everyone's address and sure is a bitch.

At least we know that we can never run away from anything because it's always come down to haunt us. At least we know that the truth has its own way of revealing itself no matter how many people we bribe or kill to get rid of it. There's always that ounce of evidence we leave behind.

Not that Khanyo has killed anybody but maybe she has tried molding her own life, the way she wants it to be. It is something anyone else can do but you'll never know when Karma will come and knock on your door.

Today is supposed to be a big day. It's supposed to be like her first day at work. Well, maybe it is since it's her first day at work with the real boss and she's going to meet thee 'Mr Khumalo' everyone has been talking about for the first time.

But then things tend to never go our way. She's totally not feeling this day. She even think of dismissing the damn alarm and go back to sleep but she has tons of bills to pay.

After getting ready for work, she calls her mother back home, just to check if she's okay. Maybe this uneasy feeling is a sign, maybe something bad is going to happen to someone close to her heart. But the old woman is perfectly fine, "Just be careful then, please Ma", she says before dropping the call.

At least she'll see her daughter off to school and ensure that she arrived safely. Maybe she's just stressed and nervous about this whole Mr Khumalo thing and there's nothing bad that is going to happen to anyone. But she's not ready to lose her daughter too.

Ukhona is her one and only daughter that she love more than anything. She would do anything for her hence she's tried her best to give her the life she can —the life she's supposed to be living.
Having Ukhona was not part of the plan but then that's what you mostly get out of a teenage relationship. It was a very unplanned and the most surprising pregnancy but it was quite a life experience and eye-opening. Wasn't?

She was not a good girl like her sister, Nomusa. She was that type of a teenage girl that goes missing for a week only to be found in a boy's house. The type that never hesitate to run away with a boy because 'she's in love with him'. The type of a teenage girl that is warned and beaten by her parent over the same boy in the township. Lucky for her, she didn't get much of beatings from her parents since she was a last born - the egg of the family. Her mother would at least protect her from her father's harsh beatings, the one that leaves you with scars—striped like a zebra.

She reached puberty few years earlier than Nomusa had. At the age of thirteen, there were already rumors of her dating a certain boy in the township. It's like they were obsessed with one another or maybe she was the only one who was because if he was, he surely was not going to move on quickly like that. Never have she ever thought that one day she'd raise his child alone but why blame him? She brought this whole single parent thing to herself.