Words✔️

Chapter 11

There's only so much society can force you to do, but having them make you rip your own heart out of your chest had to be the worst thing ever.

Why was it that each time we made decisions, we conformed to what society wants? When you are parents, society expects you raise pastors, and when you are children, society expect you to be perfect. Men and women want you to raise daughters who wear long skirts and head scarfs and go to church every single day. They expect you to raise sons who don't smoke and drink, or party 24/7 and sleep around like male prostitutes.

You make curfew at five and lock the gates at six, and then sleep with the key under the pillow all in the name of the perfect parent. You make yourself a surveillance camera, watching your child all the time and think you know them, and before you know it, they prove you wrong and you realise that maybe you don't know them as much as you thought you did.

You start to ask yourself, 'how did she fall pregnant when she was always in the house?' 'How did he get her pregnant when she's always in the house?' But then you realise that you don't know what your children get up to when no one is watching. As if your interpersonal conflicts are not enough, they talk.

Their whispers are so loud that everytime you walk past the street, it feels like everyone is looking and laughing at you. They talk and ask how your daughter fell pregnant when she went to church every day of the week. They mock her, and pastors preach about her every Sunday at church, and then you start asking yourself what it was exactly that you were protecting your child from...

Throwing your child out into the streets with a newborn baby may seem like the best thing to do at that moment, as long as it got society talking again... especially if they now saw your perfect parenting again. But they are not the ones tossing and turning all night, wondering whether your child has a roof over her head, or if she had warm food to eat. They are not the ones who cry themselves to sleep everyday, wondering where they went wrong.

Whether your children turn out good or bad, you are the one who will either tear up with pride or crumble to your knees in pain; you go through all the emotions alone. That is how Anelisa felt as she held her daughter in her arms as she cried and apologised for her mistake, but Anelisa felt like she was the one who had to apologise for trying to make her daughter perfect instead of allowing her to make her own mistakes and learn from them.

She did not exactly support the idea of giving her granddaughter up for adoption, but she knew that she would not be able to raise the child since she barely managed to bring food to the table as it was.

After speaking to her daughter, they finally decided that it would be better if Zahara raised baby Anelisa, and Zekhethelo decided to go back to school, and her mother couldn't be more proud.

The following day, they visited social services and after endless questions, they were able to get baby Anelisa back. Her mother couldn't even look at the baby, but Zekhethelo understood where she was coming from.

Months passed and baby Anelisa spent most of the time at Zahara's. Zahara's speech was improving, even though she still spoke in broken sentences mingled with some hand gestures. She had even gotten a job at Dr Masuku's surgery as a receptionist in order to increase her chances of adopting baby Anelisa.

She was finally happy, and her life did not feel like a myth anymore. She found a family in a place she least expected, and that was more than she could ask for. She had finally fit in society without intending to; she could speak, she had a daughter, a job, and people she could call friends. Zandile, Nombuso, the Zungu's, Dr Masuku and his family, as well as Cassandra...all these people were always there. They didn't stick around only in her happiest moments, but they were there every time she felt like she couldn't handle life anymore.

Funny enough, she now bought her own medication, she could go to the spaza shop on her own, even the neighbours greeted her, and the church ladies and the pastor did not skip her house when they did home visits.

She had good and bad days, she made mistakes, she smiled, laughed, and sometimes cried...and she accepted that she was only human. She was not perfect, she was broken, but accepting that she was not perfect was what made her perfect.