A Rainbow in Your Eyes

Chapter 10

Irielle woke up groggily to a dark bedroom. Groaning she burrowed her face back into her pillow, wondering when the level in loadshedding* changed during the night, that her power was still out. When her cellphone alarm went off a second time, she forced herself to get out of bed and walked over to the bathroom where she splashed cold water onto her face.

Winching she tried the hot water tap, but the burst of brown mucky water made her change her mind. Instead, she moved towards where her fridge stood in her makeshift, one room flat. Putting on the kettle, she sighed when her slowly waking brain realised that she truly did not have any power and would have to do without coffee.

Grabbing her towel, she moved past her front door when she noticed the piece of paper that had been slipped underneath. Notice: Cut of electricity eminent. To avoid cut off make urgent p*****t.

Slowly sinking back onto her bed, she could feel the total weight of the world seem to settle on her shoulders. s**t, she missed the cut off. Reading the full notice, she winched at the amount outstanding. There was no way she could afford that. She would have to go to the municipality offices to ask for a postponement, but doing so would mean taking a day off from work, something she could barely afford. And going out always ran a risk of someone in her father’s employment noticing her. If only she had money to flee far, far away, but that wasn’t to be.

Swallowing the bile that threatened to overwhelm her, she slowly got up, realizing that she would be forced to take a cold shower to get ready for work. The sun was already peaking over the horizon and if she didn’t start doing something, she would be in trouble. Ishmail didn’t take kindly to his employees arriving late. But the cook, Jessie, might see her way open to at least help Irielle with some coffee on the side if she was early enough.

Looking around, Irielle sighed, she lived in a one room apartment, where the bedroom and kitchen was forced together. A small bathroom containing a shower, basin and toilet was to the left side of the bed and the front door right next to it. The paint in both rooms left much to be desired, flaking and patchy, you could sometimes even smell the mould. There was no window. Instead, Irielle had put up a bedsheet in the middle of the room. If you moved around it, the room was transformed into a small dance area. A stretch bar was set underneath the only window and the wall across was covered with mirrors.

This was where she taught dance and art classes to a couple of children from the street when chance allowed. Now a days though, these moments were getting less and less as the income from these classes were even less than what Ishmail paid her in less than minimum wage at the coffee shop a couple of streets down.

Sometimes, on days like today, surviving felt like a losing battle. When did she stop living and instead just surviving, Irielle wondered as the cold water streamed over her body while a feeling of hopelessness threatened to drive her to her knees. She was just thankful it was summer and not winter, otherwise she would have been freezing!

She showered as quickly as possible, before drying off with goosebumps all over. Walking over to her fridge, she took out her last cup of yoghurt. It will have to do for breakfast, she thinks, when a load banging on her door made her look up in surprise.

“Hello?”

“Iri! Open, please!” The voice on the outside was urgent, low, barely audible through the closed door.

When Irielle opened the door, the woman on the other side thrust a little girl forward. Glancing behind her as if all the hounds of hell were coming, she whispered with clear desperation. “Take her! Please!”

The woman was Jenny, one of Irielle’s neighbours and the girl was her daughter, Thandi. They lived one floor up and Thandi used to come to Irielle’s dance classes before the girl’s father had complained it cost too much and was a useless skill. Instead, he wanted her and the mother on the street corners selling drugs and scamming unsuspected passersby.

The pounding of feet on the stairs made Jenny’s eyes grow even wider and she shoved Thandi inside before taking off. Thandi seemed to scramble inside in fright even as Irielle closed the door.

What the heck? She thought as she looked at the girl who made herself small and tiny before slipping underneath Irielle’s bed even as a second, even loader banging on her door, reverberated through her small space. As she opened the door for a second time, she winched. It was Thandi’s father and Bashir was not the type of person you wanted to anger.

“Where the hell are they? I f*****g KNOW she was here, so where are they?!” The man exuded violence and Irielle flinched back. She had never been a fighter and the display of his anger frightened her.

A small squawk behind her, from under the bed, made her square her shoulders as she tried to stare him down.

“What was that?” He demanded.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” Irielle tried her best to sound firm even as she was shaking inside.

“That sound! That noise! Where are you hiding them?!”

“Hiding whom? Really Bashir, I haven’t even had time to dress, and I need to get to work, or Ishmail will have my hide! The noise is probably my geyser failing due to the lack of electricity or the plumbing or something.”

Her words seem to make him register her near nakedness for the first time and he leered at her in a wolfish way, making her shudder. “If I don’t find them, I might just come back for you instead. For that matter, who cares, I might just come back here for some sport anyway.”

Slamming the door and flicking the lock, Irielle bristled at his attitude. When his voice sounded through the door, she had to close her eyes and take a few deep breaths to calm her racing heart.

“A f*****g door won’t keep me from what I want, Iri! So, you better damn f*****g open when I come by next time. And if I so much as hear you were keeping them here, I promise you will regret it!”

Out of the pan and into the fire, Irielle thought with a shiver. How the heck did she think running away could ever resolve the problems she had previously? Instead, things are just getting worse. Now she had a little girl to take care of as well!

And she was going to be late for work!

* For those that don’t know. Loadshedding is a South African thing where the Government switches off our electricity for 2- or 4-hour periods every day and it’s been going for a long number of years already.