Orphans

4

"The food here is horrible." Those are Eli's first words when Nadi answers her facetime call.

"You have eaten already?" She asks surprised.

"No, the hotel manager gave me a welcome complimentary dish, I'm not even gonna taste it. It looks horrible. I think they want to poison me."

Nadi laughs. Eli's chest gets uncomfortable.

They talk about her flight, about Nadi's shift and nearly an hour later, they end the call, Eli's eyes dropping with tiredness and being jetlagged.

"Are you okay Miss Nadina?" Darina asks when she enters the living room seeing Nadi just staring at her phone with sad eyes. "I'm okay Dear, just a bit tired." She offers her a smile.

"I think I'm going to go to sleep early today. Goodnight Dear."

"Goodnight Miss," Darina responds. Later while she's studying for a test she has this Friday, she realises that for the first time since she started working for them, Nadina skipped supper.

She finds that Nadina's skipping dinner makes her worried and a bit sad. She loves seeing the woman's excitement whenever she sees the food she has prepared. Or how her face lights up when she sees her favorite meal on the table. It makes her love her job even more. She's a kind woman. Another realisation hits her- Miss Nadina is not happy because of Miss Elica's departure... those two have a strange and yet unbelievably tight bond and connection. For the first time in her life, she wonders if she will ever have a beautiful bond like that with another person.

By the time she was fifteen years, she had lost both parents. She was sad on behalf of her mother when her father passed away. She did not feel a sadness particular to her passing of her father. They were not very close. Her father worked in town, sometimes he spent months without coming to visit them or sending them money.

Her mother toiled from morning till sunset in the fields farming so  they could live. Even at night, they would stay up making grass mats so they could sell them at the market so they would be able  to buy themselves food, basic necessities and pay her school fees. She would go to her mother at the market after school. She would take the grass mats and put them on her head going to the bus rank and going from kumbi, to the taxis, buses selling them to the passengers and people. She often come back with all the mats sold, people taking pity on the ten year old girl selling grass mats while her peers played blissfully.

She was ten years old when her father passed away. Her father was diagnosed with AIDS in it's late stages. Exactly a week after being diagnosed and he passed away.

When her mother passed away just before she turned 15 years, she thought God was punishing her. But for what?

Her mother did not have AIDS. Neither did Darina. They had been tested after her father's diagnosis and found HIV negative. They tested every month after his death and the results were the same each time- HIV negative. Neither did her mother have any other sickness like diabetes or cancer... Her mother had not been sick at all.

Darina woke up one morning and her mother was dead. She felt it even before she saw it. She and her mother slept in one bed, her mother always woke up first. By the time Darina awoke, her mother would have long been up, prepared breakfast, cleaned the house and woke Darina up to take her bath. But that Monday, Darina woke up to the smell of death. There was no smell of her mother's delicious breakfast, the house did not smell fresh and clean like most mornings.

Before she even turned around to look at her mother besides her in the bed, she broke into a loud wail. She turned around to her mother's beautiful face that looked peaceful. "Mom. Mom. Mother!" She wailed shaking the still woman but to no avail... Madalena Brito-Leite was no more.