A South African Love Story

Chapter One : The Help

Caleb.

The rent was due today.

Normally, this is not a problem on most occasions since I always work full-time and stopped attending high school. The problem was that I was ill this past week and stuck in my room with antibiotics (which cost as much as my rent), my boss was very kind enough to send me home after I still went to work that morning. He couldn’t risk his other employees catching my germs. I refused to leave, because I couldn’t afford to take an un-paid leave during the most important month of the year. Though I still went home unfortunately and suffered in a humid room surviving on pot noodles.

Let’s just say, this wasn’t the best week.

Quickly wrapping up the blankets I slept on, I dipped a piece of cloth into the small sink with water and washed my face thoroughly and brushed my teeth. The showers here required a lot of water and in South Africa, water is money. Money which as you by know I don’t have. So, I shower in the communal showers at the swimming baths down in town, it’s an hour walk away.

Working in the garment industry is tough, but it’s the best paying job for an uneducated teenage boy like me. According to the British our wages are lower than average, which surprises me because their average worker gets more than £12 a month!  Rich kids.  Though, I don’t aspire to be rich but successful enough to get through my whole life without worrying about the rent. I don’t know if that the same thing over there.

Getting up from my kneeling position I put on some pants which I have sowed myself from scrap fabric at the market. They don’t seem so bad, since I don’t have to buy clothes anymore.

The route to the market is nothing new since I worked from the age of 13. It’s ingrained in my mind that I can possibly walk without the use of my eyes.  Through my shanty village past the run down shops and down the hill which has the most beautiful lake. I usually sit and watch the night sky and fantasise how my life could’ve been any different if my parents were still alive.

Though I’ve stopped coming now, since my hopefulness is achingly disappearing.

This is one of the side effects of growing up too quickly I used to think. I don’t  want to think anymore of how my life went drastically downhill.The same robotic routine is ingrained in my brain since I began to live by myself whic has been a few years now.

 My parent’s funeral was the only time I interacted with family members in South Africa; they looked at me as if I was an endangered animal that needed saving. So I lied. I told them I’m going to a boarding school in London using my parents money.

Little did they know my parents major debts due to my school fees and their cancer treatment from the hospital.

Our family refused us. They didn’t help when we needed them. So now I don’t need them.

The only thing that keeps me not falling on the verge on depression is keeping busy at work.

Grace

All these stupid pictures surround me. It’s merely suffocating waking up every day of your life behind the shadow of your parents.  Big canvases of stick thin models are plastered all over the halls of the house.  They are incredibly elongated and posing at weird angles which looks good for a cover photo of a magazine. But seriously awkward in-between the doors of the servant residence.

My mother’s designs are deteriorating slowly and she is losing her unique essence in clothes. Her designs were full of passion and thought, I would stare at her and she wouldn’t have to tell me about her inspirations behind her label – because I already knew. This was before we were known as the –