FALLING FOR MY STEPDADDY

YOLANDA XABA What is so painful about death? Is it the fact that people who die never come back, or is it how they actually die? My mother passed away today morning, but I still haven’t shed a tear. Everyone keeps on telling me that it is well because it was God’s will, so it shall pass. What exactly? What shall pass? What do they even mean by that? Do I just accept that my mother is dead and move on? Sigh. I am really fuzzed by how people can be so dramatic, crying for my mother whom they have not even seen in years. I am her daughter, and I still haven’t accepted her death yet. I am starting to believe that they’ve been waiting for this day for so long, and all those tears that are being shed are just crocodile tears. I do not even know most of these people here. Who are they? “Yolanda, why is Fana here? Did I not tell you that I do not want to ever see that boy again? Are you two still dating when you should be focusing on your studies? This is your final year in high school, and the time for boys is over. You need to be engrossed in your schoolwork,” My stepdad is a very strict father when it comes to boys, and my mother was always the nicer one. My mother married my stepfather. I obviously detested it because we were such a perfect family with my real dad. I am really battling to understand what went wrong, but anyway, this is my certainty and I just had to accept it. “I will go and talk to him, baba. I apologise,” I say, getting up and running my hands down my dress to smooth it before I walk out of the house to meet my “risk-taker” boyfriend. As soon as I see him, I grab his hand and rush outside the gate before anyone even sees us. “Are you mad, Fana? You know how my dad feels about you; why would you risk coming here?” I lash at him. “I am sorry, baby, but you were not answering your phone. I heard from Sindi that your mother passed away, and that is probably the reason why you did not make it to school, so, I came to say my condolences,” Sindi is my best friend from school. “Oh, that,” I say, nonchalantly. “Oh, that? You don’t sound to be sad or anything like that, Yolanda; are you okay?” “Yeah, I am fine. I just want all of this to be over, that is all. Come, let me walk you to the corner before my dad comes out with his belt and starts whipping both of us,” I quickly say, trying not to dwell on my mother’s death that got people shaken up. “You still have jokes even in times like this?” He asks, tilting his head. Why is he looking at me as if I am mad? “Should I be crying instead?” He looks at me for a while before he shakes his head. “No. Uhm, I am going to the gym, so I will call you later?” “Yes. Thanks for stopping by,” I smile before we indulge in a hug. His hugs are so warm, they make me want to melt in his arms. “Babe, you are doing it again. I am going to drop you to the floor,” He warns, jokingly. “I can’t help it, Fana. You give the best hugs,” “How about I give you the best kiss now?” “Mmm, I’d like that,” I excitedly look up at him and wait to be kissed, so I close my eyes and pout my lip, I feel his hands leaving me and the moment I open my eyes, I see a tall figure choking him. “Yolanda, go home, now,” s**t, it is my stepdad. How did he get here so fast without me even seeing him? “Baba,” I try to solve the situation, but he shoots daggers at me. “Yolanda, don’t make me repeat myself,” He warns, ferociously, in a firm tone with his hand not letting go of the fearful Fana. My poor boyfriend. I am sad I have to leave him in such a situation. I hope that my father does not hurt him. As soon as I get home, my stepfather’s relatives shake their heads at me with their lips wrinkled. I am tempted to ask them why they are looking at me like that, but I decide against it and walk into the house that is too busy for my liking. I walk straight to my bedroom and as I enter, I find my two stepsiblings comfortably going through my things. They are both girls, one is seventeen, the same age as me, and the other one is twelve. “What are you two doing in my bedroom through my things?” I ask, picking up after them. My room is messed up; what are these girls doing? “Oh, we thought we should familiarise ourselves with this room because it will soon be mine. Your mother is dead now, so you no longer have a place in our father’s house, step-sis,” Thando, the older one says. “Get out of here, both of you?” I warn them. “Or what, Yolanda? Do you forget that this is my father’s house? If I were you, I would start looking for a place to live in because my father is not looking for a burden like you in his house,” Thando spits, making me widen my eyes in disbelief. She is joking, right? She did not mean to let out those words. Is it because my mom is gone, so she is showing me her true colours? My mother is not even cold yet, but people whom I thought cared for me are already showing me their true colours. Did my mother not mean anything to them? My mother has given all herself to this family; was all of that for nothing? “I seriously have no time for this, Thando. Could you not just wait for at least my mother’s burial before you start showing me how much less you don’t care about me?” “Care about you? No, I only pretended to care, honey. I actually hate you because you stole my shine from my father. It was all about you in this house and how smart you are, and I think that you were doing it on purpose, so now that your mom is gone, I am going to make sure that you get to feel what I have been going through,” I try to open my mouth to say something, but I am too dumbfounded to speak. I didn’t know this is how she felt, and I honestly did not see anything wrong or do anything wrong on purpose to hurt her. I thought we both were equal to our parents, and I thought that we both received equal love. I thought we were best friends; what is wrong now? I look at the twelve-year-old Anele who is so quiet and not looking at me. “Please leave my room,” I calmly ask them. “We were already leaving. Come, Anele,” Thando says, walking to the door, not failing to bump my shoulder as she walks past me. Anele sadly looks at me, hesitant to leave, but her sister harshly calls her. “Anele, I said let’s go!” As they leave, my stepfather walks in. He looks angry, his eyes are fury, and I am taking steps back, scared because I have never seen my stepfather angry at me before. “Baba,” I whisper, calling him. “What did I say about that boy?” He asks in a coarse tone as he unbuckles his belt. Now I am so focused on what he is about to do, so I clasp my hands together and beg for forgiveness because that is the only way to get out of this situation. ‘Mom, you left so soon. Is this the kind of man that you were married to? Is this what killed you, mommy? I cannot even cry for you because your death is mysterious to me. I thought you were healthy and had no problems, yet I had to wake up to you being rushed to the hospital before you were announced dead. Why did you have to leave me, mommy, why!? Why did you leave me to suffer? They are all turning against me, mommy; take me with you.’ For a moment, I was lost in my thoughts, speaking to my mother as my tears streamed down my eyes when I felt a hot-stinging leather material coming in contact with my shoulder, and that is when I realised that my father stroke me with his belt. I did not fail to scream into a cry because I could not withstand the agony it brought to my shoulder into my body. More strokes followed, and no matter how much I tried to hide my body, the belt always found its way somewhere around my body. This incident has never happened to me before. My stepdad has never shown any signs of being capable of hitting a child – he has NEVER touched his daughter at least since I have been here. Is it my mother’s death that is making him this angry? I know that me having a boyfriend makes him angry, but for him to use his belt on me, I will never forgive him. The fact that no one bothers to come in here and stop him just proves that I am not loved, and now that my mother has left me, I am all alone. “Baba, you are hurting her,” I hear Anele say the moment she walked in. “Baba, stop!” She screams, crying. She has always been a cry baby better than me. “What are you doing here, Anele? Go!” He shouts at her. “No, baba… she is in pain,” Anele cries out. He looks down at me and warns me one more time before he leaves the room. “Stay away from that boy, Yolanda!” *** A few days later, we had just buried my mother, and I won’t lie and say I was not sad today. It really hit me so hard that my mother is gone, and I will never see her again. She is gone and has left me all alone. I tried calling my father, but his phone has been off. No one asks me how I am doing; no one even rubbed my back when I cried my lungs out for my mother’s coffin that was being rolled down into the grave. I wailed as I needed someone to tell me that everything was going to be okay – I needed my father because he is the only person that is my family. Now we are back home, and while everyone was in the family cars, I was put on a bus because “there was no space for me” in the cars. Guests were probably shocked as I am, but this is how I am being treated in this family. “Yolanda, may I come in, please?” Anele, my favourite girl says, peeping her head in after opening the door. I have been cooped up in my bedroom since we got back from the cemetery. I just did not want to be around the faces that hate me most. I do not mind Anele being here. She is the only person who is nice to me, and what she did for me when her father was hitting me with a belt will always be remembered. She even went as far as getting me on the bed, checking if I have bleeding wounds, but fortunately for me, the belt caused some swelling only, so she used a warm damped cloth to ease them. She is only twelve, yet she knew exactly what to do. She is the only person that cares for me in this house, and even now she just brought me some food. I haven’t eaten anything since morning. “My sister is going to be angry if she sees me here, but I came to check if you are okay, and I noticed that you did not eat the whole day, so I brought you some food,” Hearing that makes my eyes wet from my tears. There is actually someone that still cares about me. “Thank you, Squishy. Well, what can I say; my mother is gone, and it hurts so much but I will be fine, thanks,” I accept the plate of food from her because I am so famished. She sets the glass of juice on the pedestal before she sits on the edge of my bed. I do not mind her presence, so I start eating my meal. “I am sorry for what Thando, and I did in your bedroom the other day. You have always been nice to us, and if I mistreat you the way I did, who is going to help me pass my algebra?” She says, sadly playing with her fingers. “I am not angry at you, Anele. It’s okay. Do not apologise,” Anele looked sympathetic towards me, and it definitely was not her idea to turn my bedroom upside down. Thando is the problem here. “I feel responsible that I took part. Thando just said some things which got to me, but I realised that everything she said was to make me turn against you. I am sorry, big sis,” I raise my eyes at her before I set my food aside and open my arms for a hug. “Come here, squishy,” I like calling her squishy because of how chubby she is. She is so adorable. “You are so cute and too smart for your age,” I say as I envelope her in my arms. “Can I be honest with you, sis?” She asks in a breaking voice. “Of course, honey. What is the matter?” “I miss mommy. I know that I have only known her since I was nine, but she made a big difference in my life. She was nice, and kind, and would sleep with me in my room whenever it rained with thunder and lightning because she knew that I was afraid of it. Now that she is gone, just like my mother whom I never even met because she died a few days after I was born, no mother will ever do that to me. It hurts because I never had a mother figure in my life, and just when I thought God has given me a chance to have a mother, he decides to take her away. It just hurts.” She cries out. My tears don’t fail me. I am hurting too, but at least she still has her father and sister who both love her. What about me? My father is unreachable. I need him more than anything right now. Why won’t he reach out to me? I just want to leave this place because I have no place here. My stepdad suddenly treats me like trash, his family hates me, and Thando made it clear that she does not want me here. Where am I to go? Who am I to cry to? Five months left for me to graduate from high school. It does not matter where I live after that, but I just want to see myself out of this place. I am going back to school tomorrow after a long stressful week I had. I have not spoken to Fana, my boyfriend since the incident the other day, but I really hope that he is okay.