LULAMA
On occasions where I struggle to sleep I always wake up in the wee hours of the morning and keep busy in the kitchen, either by baking, cooking or cleaning up the cupboards, it keeps me sane.
I woke up and raided my mom's kitchen looking for baking ingridients, I got lucky and I've been busy since. I've been moving around the kitchen quietly because I didn't want to disturb anyone else's sleep meanwhile I'm trying to silence the thoughts in my head.
I always wondered why he never made any effort with me.
When my parent's divorce was finalized, I had just turned thirteen but we had already moved back to my maternal grandparents house three years prior to that and he no longer stayed with us in our own home anyway, he was squatting with his mistress for a long time so his affair wasn't really a secret to my mom and the entire village. But she still stayed... With everyone gossiping about her and our family, she stayed. When he went around parading his new found love, she still stayed, I may have been young but even I understood that that man wanted nothing to do with her anymore so I couldn't quite understand why she has stayed rooted there even when grandma begged her countless times to come home.
I never had a relationship with him, even on days where he remembered that he had children, I never felt his love and he never spared me a second look, now I know why. The two that come before me have their own issues with him and a lot of it has to do with how he treated mom and how he stopped making effort when we went back to grandma but I can say they know what a father's love is like, they got to experience it even though it didn't last and he chose to raise Violet's kids as his own instead.
My brain doesn't know what to process first. The daft that I have a chosen husband or that my father denied me. I don't know how I'm going to go forward, so I'm just going to bake.
"How long have you been up?" My brother asks walking in the kitchen still in his sleepwear and gown.
"Ahi Khale ngopfu [it hasn't been that long]" I reach for a bowl and offer him some scones. He happily grabs three.
"Hmm, still the best," He compliments and I smile at him then check the pan that's already in the oven.
"Lulama, you know you don't have to carry this alone, right? We've got you,"
"I know," I say sadly.
"And Kenneth is an idiot for ever denying you, he's the asshole in all this, not you," he says angrily. My brother has some serious anger directed at our father, hence he banned him from entering this yard when he built this house for mom, that was after he came a caused a scene acting like it was his house and mom was still his wife, that was the last strike for my brother. At this point I can say that Kenneth Kubayi has burned all his bridges with his kids and he couldn't care less, we mean nothing to him, well I know I definetly mean nothing to him.
"He really is, I think he claimed I wasn't him so he could taint mom's character. He needed to be cleared for double crossing him with her best friend and I was the perfect scapegoat,"
"My thoughts exactly, but you know what... You don't need him, none of us need him and we've been doing good for ourselves,"
"You're right, it's not like he's ever been a father to me and stuff," I say lightly and we both laugh.
"Tell me about this Bangizwe, what's he's deal? What's he like?"
"I don't really know, I mean I've only seen him twice. The first time at his wedding and the second time when he came to see me, when he tried telling me about this whole mess... And I didn't even give him a chance then," I mumble the last part.
