Scattered Stars

Chapter 45

Naledi

Have you ever had your head dunked in and out of water repeatedly? Whether it's because some idiot is shoving it in the toilet bowl or because you are bobbing for apples? That's how I felt.

I was laid on my side in an ambulance because my back was badly burnt and the one-shoulder I wasn't laying on was dislocated, they had put an oxygen mask on my face to help clear out the smog in my chest constricting my lungs. I was struggling to stay awake because I was in so much excruciating pain that I couldn't even scream I had reached that level of pain, only tears ran down my face but the paramedic insisted on keeping me awake because they had to monitor my oxygen levels.

My mother was torn between going with me and staying with my other siblings as they awaited other ambulances because they had inhaled smoke but she decided to go with me while Thabang stayed with Lesedi and Lethabo to wait for the next ambulance. But I wanted my brother here with me.

I tried pulling the mask they had on my face off because it was so tightly pressed against my face I thought I couldn't breathe like someone was trying to smother me but I was in too much pain and too tired to even try so I just laid there in pain. Then a painful cough began to form in the pits of my thorax it felt like a fire was being lit with the ambers of my lungs and being pushed up my bronchi then up my trachea till it reached my mouth, I coughed so hard I was afraid I would end up vomiting my insides, my mother just watched with tears rolling down her face, nothing could be done for me she had to sit there and watch her daughter suffer. She looked so helpless just like when that wooden beam fell on my back and she couldn't reach me, she couldn't do what was instilled in mothers from the beginning of time, she couldn't protect her child and I watched it ripe her apart.

The paramedic reached for the mask and pulled it down to my chin when the coughing became excessive. Again I felt like I was being dunked underwater and I just laid there in unimaginable pain.

"Naledi, ngwana ka, " Naledi, my child, I heard my mother sob. Ever the strong one but now she was barely holding on by a thread, her chocolatey eyes were drowning in tears as they glistened with misery and her mouth was quivering withheld back sobs. There was this belief in the African culture that if your child ever got hurt and you cried because of it they would be stuck like that, honestly, it was complete bullshit it was just the older women telling that to young mothers so they could be strong and not weep.

When my mother married my father she had to move to the village where my father grew up, he wanted to be a teacher, he wanted to teach literature, he was so passionate about it that it was how he met my mother.

They met at a public library while my father was in the mystery section and my mother was lost looking for the medical section. He spent so much time there that he was able to direct her to the right part of the library, they met with one another every day after that and they fell in love. My father got my mother pregnant in her first year of nursing school and that's when her father kicked her out of the house because he felt that she had disrespected him and more so that she was going to marry my father who had left his dream of studying teaching so he could financially provide for his family.

When they were supposed to get married my father had no one to send my mother's lobola or dowry too because my grandfather rejected all of his letters. So he ended up marrying her without paying lobola but because she was a new bride and mother it was suggested she live in the village so she could learn to be a Sotho wife and mother, she learned to speak the language and cook the food and it came easy to her because her mother was actually black and Sotho. She was given a name as per our tradition Teboho which means thanks, but after my brother Thabang turned two my ever stubborn half coloured mother left the village, saying how could she raise a family with a man that lived kilometers away from her in a different province. My father felt the same so they moved in together in the hostel my father initially lived in but it was dangerous and was not a place for a man to raise his family as the place was normally filled with testosterone high males and he didn't want to put my mother or his son at risk. Then they moved into a single room but the rent price was too high so after one of his friends told him about the township where he could build his family a new home the family quickly packed their bags and moved.