A Mother's Struggle

Chapter 17

I am woken up by a buzzing sound from my small phone. I put my phone on vibration when I slept. I check my phone under the pillow. It's a text from Chris. This person keeps blowing up my phone. He is literally the only person who I am in contact with. My life is just so sad huh. I get into the text to read it.

Hey beautiful

What a nice text to wake up to. The text has little blocks after it, which shows that he attached some emojis but unfortunately for me, my small Nokia does not show emojis, I can text back emoticons though. Those are similar to emojis but numbers, letters and punctuation marks are used, that is very dull.

Morning, I text back.

How are you this morning?

He attached more emojis. He is trying to be sweet and flattering but I cannot see them so there is no use. He should know that since he saw my phone the other day when I was playing snake in the car, because I was nervous. I feel like snake calms me down. He probably thinks I have two phones, which is normal for people my age. I wouldn't blame him, he thinks I work anyway.

Chris does not even take five seconds to reply to my texts, as for me, I take the whole seven minutes. It's not because I blush when I receive a message from him so that takes up time. Yes I do, but it's not why I take so long to reply. I use a Nokia 105, it has twelve buttons, excluding the answering, hanging up button, back, options and the middle button. Every button has the numbers, one to nine, the hash and the asterisk. The twenty six, and I emphasize twenty six letters of the alphabet are all placed on those eight buttons and the one, hash and asterisk have punctuation marks and other options. Each one of those eight numbers have three letters on them, and if you want to press "c" , you have to press number two, three times. The struggle is real. Kids these days are very fortunate that they were born in the era when these are not popular anymore.

I am good thanks and you?

I press send and it keeps saying "could not send." It just came to my realization that I have no airtime, or money to buy airtime. He will probably think I am ignoring him. This is bad, this is so sad.

Today will probably be as boring as yesterday, it will be worse now that the children went to school. I wake up to clean. This house hasn't been cleaned in days, it is very dirty.

The fact that I am destitute, does not really mean I also have to be dirty. I was taught this by my Biology teacher. Only then I did not even care about that because I never pictured myself in these conditions. I never thought I would be considered "poor" someday.

When we are young, we have all these big dreams and we do not even put effort to achieve our goals and dreams. We also have these huge dreams, nobody ever thinks they would be poor someday. Especially if you have good education.

Well, as for me, this was a choice. I took my parents for granted and I wasted my own time and education. Look where that got me. I am cleaning a shack for goodness' sake, I cook on a two-plate stove, I do not even want to continue. Living in regret is the worst feeling in the world. I better stop thinking about this or I'll find myself downing my sorrows at Joseph's tavern in a few hours.

I was able to cook before I passed out from exhaustion. I suddenly feel so tired and weak, I have no idea why. It's probably nothing.

I get a text. When I open it, it says " Your airtime has been topped up with R250." What? It is obviously Chris but why? He is being too generous, it is so weird.

Hey, is it you that just sent me airtime? I send him a text. It was him so I thanked him. He said that he sent it because I did not reply to his text so he figured, I am out of airtime.
Aww! He is just too sweet.

Although, I do not like it when people are being too generous. I hate being pitied. Especially because I lied to Chris, it is going to break him when he finds out that I lied to him. I do not want to trust anybody at the moment, my friend recently broke my trust so I am not risking that anymore.

He said that we should go on another date, on Friday or Saturday when he comes to visit Nina and Joseph again. These dates are going to tire me, I am running out of outfits here. I don't want to repeat clothes, at least after a month of wearing then I can repeat. I don't have clothes that a person could go on a date with. Coming to think of it, I don't know what people wear on dates. With Thabo, I was in high school, it did not matter. I'm in my thirties and imagine showing up like a disaster there. Chris is decent, he takes me to decent places, my outfit has to matter. My impression has to matter. Since I lied, I cannot make it obvious that I did.  I have three or four dresses and two pairs of pumps.

I know I'm poor, but before poverty struck, my lifestyle was nice. With my parents and even better with Thabo because he had money and all. I can dress up in hot clothes, the problem is that I do not have hot clothes and I cannot even afford them. If I could, I would be very attractive. Not that I am ugly or anything but I would be breath taking, gosh! I just need money in my life for that to happen. Being broke is not even close to being nice. People that work would be broke once in a blue moon, I am always broke, I can never shower myself with gifts or anything of that sort. Gosh, I said I am going to stop thinking about this.

I agreed to go on a date with Chris. Who says no to free food? Plus if I say no, I will have to give a reason and I am out of lies now. That's a lie, I would never run out, I got a lifetime supply here. I'm very talented there, I am that good.

It's so sad that I am proud of such. I will embrace the sadness of it though, it's fine.