Left Unsaid (Short stories from Africa)

Let Me Be Sad

When they were children playing with their friends, Mondli had fallen on a rock and hurt his knee badly. He had been crying in pain, his knee bleeding when his sister who was only three years older than him came up to him and struggled to pick him up, but succeeded. She was trying to run him home to their mother, she always knew what to do. Their mother was sitting outside the house and she saw her daughter carrying the little boy and, as they were coming through the gate, Zinhle tripped, dropping her little brother and hurting herself too. Mondli tried to stand up to help her, but his knee was very sore and he could not walk over to her. Their mother fixed both of them up and sat them down with biscuits and orange juice. They were children, but both of therm remembered the words she said that day into their childhood. She said,  "I am very proud of you. No matter what happens you always take care of each other. I want my babies to always stay together, even when I'm not there." 

The truth is, he was afraid now. He could feel it in his bones that this was it. It was odd, thinking about illness. His sister had never been sick, but he had a few serious illnesses. He remembered a time when he was sick, the worst time, he could not breathe, stand or walk. Everyone had thought that he was going to die, they did not say anything, but he could see it in their faces. He even believed it. No one had wanted to be left alone with him for fear that he would die on them, everyone feared the death of a child. The truth is, the pain was unbearable, and he would have been glad for death to come. He was almost ready for it.

That was the first time he saw his mother cry.

He had never seen her so vulnerable and he imagined for a moment how the poor woman would feel if she lost him. He was all she had, him and his sister who did not live with them any more. He prayed that night, that the good Lord would save him, for her. The following day, he tried to stand up, as painful as it was, to show he that he was better, to see her sad face smile again. The truth is he felt horrible but it was worth it to see the sun light up in her face as she smiled at him in tears.

Now he walked into the dreary hospital room where his sister, Zinhle, sat right next to the bed. He hadn't seen her in months, but she stood up and embraced him. She wasn't crying but he could see that she had been. As he held his big sister in his arms, he was reminded of a moment like this, a little over a year again, when their mother had her second stroke, the one in which she lost all feeling in her left arm. They had both been afraid that she would not make it. He had a sudden realisation that this was the first time that the three of them had been in the same room since that day.

"How is she?" he asked.

"No change since I called you last night." Zinhle replied sadly.

He finally forced his eyes down onto the bed where his mother lay. Her breath was heavy and you could see her chest move up and down with every breath her lungs coughed out. She was sleeping now, and it broke his heart to see her like this. This woman who single-handedly raised two children in the harsh African economy, working multiple jobs every day, coming home tired and weary. She was the strongest person he knew, and yet here she lay under gray sheets weak and frail, barely holding on to life. Still, she had been strong, after the second stroke, the doctors had given her only a few weeks and if she was lucky a couple of months...yet she had fought against the pain in her body and made it through the year. She had worked hard.

He had been here just two weeks ago, and she barely spoke to him, he wasn't even sure that she had recognised him and he had been to afraid to come back, he had sat by the phone at work, waiting for the call to come. When his sister called the previous night, he was expecting the worst. He had braced himself for the news because she was crying so hard that he could hear his brother-in-law trying to comfort her in the background. He finally took the phone from her and spoke.

"Mondli, you need to come down here...things are not looking good." his brother-in-law said.

"So, she's still alive then." He heaved a sigh of relief.

"Yes, but barely brother, she hasn't been able to speak in over a week, she's been getting worse, we'll be lucky if she makes it through the night." he answered.

"I will be there as soon as I can." 

And so here he was, sick with worry. It felt like the last time. For real this time.

He sat down with his sister watching his mother struggle for breath, as if she could feel the presence of her children in the room, her eyes fluttered. Mondli grabbed his mother's right hand and felt a movement there as if she was trying to respond to him. She looked at him and she looked at his sister. The moment she realised that both her children were sitting by her side, he saw her eyes light up. He had not seen that kind of light in her face in a really long time. She opened her mouth as if struggling to say something, all that came out were a few words. 

It was a weak breathy sound as she whispered trying to smile, "My babies, together." A tear ran down her face, and she closed her eyes again. Her hand went limp in mine.

The machines around her started beeping wildly and the nurses came in running. He held out for his sister and she fell into his arms and they were both crying. It felt like the chord between their hearts had been severed and they were alone once more.

They buried her in her home, the village where she grew up. She would always tell them stories about growing up there, dreaming of a better life for her own family. She did not give them a perfect life but it was certainly better than her own. He had been to only one other funeral before, his father's, but he could barely remember it as it happened when he was only four years old. The only thing he could clearly remember from that day was his mother crying hysterically at the sudden death of the man she loved. He did not understand why she was so sad, and wondered how he could make her happy. She had looked down at him and said, "Don't worry yourself, I will be fine. Maybe if I had seen it coming, I would not be so sad, but and accident like this, you have to let me be sad, Mondli." 

She had been wrong though, seeing death coming did not make the pain any less real. It was his turn now to be sad...he had to let himself be sad too. He dropped a tear on the wreath as he placed it over his mother's grave. "Goodbye." he said.

After the funeral, Zinhle walked up to her brother, "This is it, the moment she told us about, all those years ago." she said.

"She wanted us to take care of each other...and we will." he replied.

"I think she was happy, to see us like that on her death bed. I'm glad she wasn't sad anymore when she died." she told him. He put his arms around her, hopeful that even in the wake of such a tragedy, their mother was still with them, her words, her love and her guidance would carry the both of them and their own families until they died. She was and always would be, the best person he ever knew.