LITTLE FOXES

1.

Litaisa looked at the message again, she took off her apron and picked up her glass of wine. A deep sigh escaped her lips. She picked up the bottle too.

‘I am working late,’ the message read. She poured more wine into her glass.

Tears pricked her eyes but she refused to see herself cry again. This was a new year, her resolutions were still fresh on the paper where she had written them. She had come home early, hoping she could cook a nice dinner for her husband and have a cozy evening out on the veranda like they used to do when they were dating.

She took the potatoes out of the oven and covered them with foil paper. Wasted efforts, she thought glumly as the aroma filled her nose. She turned off the warmer and took the glass and bottle with her to the window seat in the living room. It was dark outside, the security lights would come on any minute. At times like these, the house felt too big for her.

It was their home, she was paying for it. Imataa was still between jobs and struggling to make ends meet. She had taken out a mortgage to buy the house and things were not going smoothly for them. She had been asking her brother for a bailout every few months. Keenan never complained, he always helped out. He never even made fun of the bad choices she had made in the last few years.

She felt the loneliness as it came at her, the length of its ice-cold fingers gripping her heart. She gulped the wine in the glass and drunk more from the bottle. So unladylike. But who cared. No one was here to judge her.

Working late huh.

She pondered the sentence as if it were the most complicated thing she had ever read. He had been working late for some time now, and that’s where their fights had started. Because he worked late and brought nothing home to show for it! She felt tired, tired of this vicious cycle of life.

He left home early in the morning with her car and came home in the dead of the night, alcohol and cheap perfume hanging in the air around him. Now she no longer bothered with cleaning the car, unless she wanted to find reasons for more fights.

She ignored all his shenanigans, thinking it was a phase he would tire of. Thinking it was her fault for cornering him into this living together thing that he clearly had not been ready for. She let him in every night. Inside into the house she was paying for with her sweat, blood, and tears.

Sometimes she felt like going back home, the home she had so ungraciously left to be here, her pride wouldn’t let her. So stayed but she had made herself one promise to control her fertility. She swore to herself there would be no child in this house as long as Imataa behaved the way he did.

She gulped the wine, hoping it would fill the hole inside her.

XD

#LITTLE_FOXES_XD

2.

Imataa smiled tightly the discussion had slowly turned to politics, steering away from the wedding. His spoiled brother in law had recently married a young student. It was a small intimate wedding ceremony that he had not attended.

He would never be part of that family, not that he wanted to. He thought of his wife she was most likely waiting at home for him, well she could wait. The spoiled princess could wait for him all night if he wanted. If it was not for the encouragement from his friends he would never have married her. But she was from money and the only way he could lay claim to any inheritance was through marriage. A simple trip to the Civic Centre had made her happy.

They had made a plan, but she threw a tantrum about the lobola and decided to move into his house, ruining any chance of respect he could have got from her relatives. He was going to pay the lobola, he was going to find the money in time. But why bother with that now?

She and her family thought they were better than him. He resented her for it. He spent as much time as he could out of the house. Once upon a time, he had loved her, and sometimes he still did but there were just things about her that he could not understand. Like how much she spent on clothes and hair when they could barely afford it.

Sometimes the way she always spoke to him softly had his insides churning. She was always Miss Prim and Proper. Always displaying etiquette and good manners, one look at her and he just felt like she was looking down her pretty nose at him.

“You’re lost in thought baby, “ Shanice smiled at him.

Imataa picked up his beer and pointed it to her. “Just had a long day. “

“Are you coming home with me tonight, or rushing back to play house? “ she asked. She knew he was married, but she did not care.

“You sound jealous,” Imataa accused. “It doesn’t suit you. “

“Jealousy doesn’t suit anybody baby, I feel like I have to compete for your attention. “ she moaned.

He smiled stroking her face, in his mind this thing with her was fast-approaching expiry date. He did not like it when women nagged or became too attached he was sensing both.

It was after midnight when he finally stumbled through the front door. ‘arrive alive’ he thought as he locked the door. Getting home in one drunk piece was always an achievement for him. The lights were still on and Litaisa was curled up asleep on the sofa in the living room.

He peeked on her and decided against waking her up. He was not in the mood to fight with her. He found his way to their room, kicked off his shoes, and collapsed drunkenly across the bed.

XD