Winter Bloom.

No matter how much I struggled, I couldn’t undo the knot. Whoever had tied it really knew what they were doing. The ropes were not hurting my hands but I couldn’t untie them either. I was laying in an extremely uncomfortable position. Whatever had been used to close my eyes had now been taken off but that did not make anything better because all I could see was darkness. It’s either the sun had gone down or I was enclosed in a very dark space. I could smell clean air. It seemed as if this place was free of dust. There was a lingering smell of pine in the air as if the floors had been mopped with pine gel. At least I was in a clean place. It didn’t smell of urine or any funny odors.

I tried to change the position that I was laying down with to no avail. At least I could kick my feet around. It was the hands that were tied behind my back that were proving to be a huge challenge. I trained my ears to listen for any movements. I desperately needed someone to rescue me from my predicament yet at the same time, if any of my captors were around, I didn’t want to alert them that I had awakened. There was radio silence. Where was I? How long was I out? Who had captured me? Was my family aware that I was missing? Was anyone looking for me?

At this point, I reasoned that crying would not help matters at all. It would only make me sad and not focus on finding a way out of the predicament that I was in. I needed to get out of these ropes and leave this place. I gingerly turned myself and managed to sit upright. I wasn’t hurt anywhere. I was just clueless as to what had happened to me. It felt like I had not been beaten. Nothing was broken. Now on to standing up blindly. I couldn’t see anything in the darkness. I had nothing to hold on to. I had to find a way to kneel down and get up blind.

How I wished I had been serious with exercising. If only I had taken my squats seriously. My thigh muscles were screaming. My hands couldn’t help in any way. They were tied behind my back. I had to make it out of this place alive.

I managed to maneuver until I could stand up. I was now out of breath. My heart was racing. I couldn’t hear anything except the beat of my heart. I stopped any movements. I had to calm my racing heart. I also had to calm myself down. I had to think beyond my present circumstances. I took deep breaths and exhaled until I could feel my heart rate going down. After a few minutes, I felt better. Now which direction was which? Was this a level floor? Where was the door? My mind was still racing when suddenly a door was wrenched open. I was startled because I had not heard any footsteps, neither the unlocking of a door nor the turning of a door handle.

“Melissa, you need to get up. How can you sleep so sound in the middle of the afternoon? Look at the way you’re sweating! Some people will die in their sleep, I’m telling you.”

That was Manuela's voice. I’m sleeping? I’m not kidnapped? My hands are not tied? I’m at home and not in some dark hole with a monster kidnapper? What?

I opened my eyes only to be met with my bedside clock. It was 2:38 P.M. It was almost late noon. What day was this? My clock said it was still a Thursday. I came back from work early today because I worked half-day on Thursdays. I went to sleep as soon as I finished the cup of tea I had brewed for myself. I lived with my three sisters. All four of us lived in a two-bedroomed flat that was on the second floor. The building was old but decent. Manella was the youngest of us all. She was working at a coffee shop and she was training to be a barista. Thursday was her day off. I had not seen her when I came in. Manuela was a neat freak. She most probably was upstairs hanging the laundry or in her room that she shared with Rita, my other sister, packing and scrubbing away. She could never sit still. It was even worse if there were some dirty dishes or dirty clothes lying around. It was always a standing joke amongst us that Manuela could clean for all us. In fact, we left cleaning duty to her because if anybody cleaned, especially if she was home, she would clean after them.

“Are you okay?” She put a hand on my forehead, probably to test my temperature.

“I’m fine. I thought I was just going to take a nap for 30 minutes. I guess I overdid it. Where were you?”

“I went next door to ask Kelly to plait my hair.”

“Oh, I see. What did she say?”

“That one! You know she wants to be worshipped. She said she could only do it on Saturday. Today, she’s got a date.”

“With that long brothers?”

Manuela burst out laughing. “But why do you hate that guy?”

“I don’t hate him. I didn’t even know him until I saw him at Kelly’s.”

“Yeah, she’s going with long brothers. And why were you so tired today?”

“I left some assignments till last minute. I had to submit two of them yesterday. The deadline was yesterday and I was racing against 11:59.”

“Did you win?”

“Yeah, I submitted them. I don’t know about the quality of the work though.”

“Why do you leave the assignments at the last minute?”

“Uyazini?(You know what?) It’s a problem. Every time I race against a deadline, I always tell myself that it’s the last. Then next assignment, bam, I’m at it again. I guess, my brain doesn’t work until last minute. If I decide to sit down and write way before deadline, I always draw a blank. All the points come hours before the deadline! Hai, I give up. As long as I’ve submitted on time. That’s all that matters.”

I was doing my degree online. I couldn’t afford to go to college full-time because I needed to work. I also couldn’t afford to pay for it. Good thing was there was no difference anyway between the degrees that were offered online and the one obtained full-time. COVID had not brought all bad news. Learning from home was one of the good things that came out of the pandemic.

Rita and Emilia, my other two sisters, were not home yet from work. Our occupations and our schedules were so different that sometimes we would only regroup on Sunday before we went to church. No matter how busy our schedules were, it had been drummed into us so hard by our parents and grandmother that going to church on Sunday morning was the default setting. That’s the only day we were sure to be in one place at the same time. Rita was a preschool teacher, Manuela was still training to be a barista, Emilia was a nurse, while I was a marketing consultant.

Chatting with Manuela had energized me and I decided to change into something cozier. I had just passed out in my work clothes. I had only taken off the jacket. Manuela went into the kitchen to carry on with her chores. That girl could not sit still. Well, it was good for us because it meant a well-cooked meal in our stomachs in the evening without lifting a finger. I checked my study schedule and saw that I had three weeks before my next assignment was due. Freedom! Yay! I needed to get in touch with my group at church to know about our weekly gathering agenda. I also had to check in with my pastor at church so I could pencil in anything that needed to be passed on to the relevant departments.

Work, study, church, you would have summarized me. I was not a very outgoing person. Crowds were not my thing. I loved being alone with a good book or an interesting movie. I was the kind of a person who went into town just for work. I would go shopping when it was absolutely necessary. Not that I didn’t have the money to shop, but the exercise of dressing up, dragging myself around Johannesburg or shopping malls was a lot of work for me. Many times, I would just think about going to a mall and grow so tired from the thought itself that I would not have the energy to go. Because of my aversion to crowds, you wouldn’t find me in clubs or a park or all those normal places that normal people my age would go. The only gatherings I would go to were at church. Honestly speaking, I would wiggle my way out of those if I could. How did I enjoy church? Well, church is like being with a crowd but focusing on what’s best for you. I mean, they tell us to focus on God and nothing else. After church, I would go straight home. I think that attitude was what my pastor was trying to deal with when he gave more responsibilities at church.

My social life was nonexistent and I didn’t mind. People are a lot of work. I had two close friends, one from work and an old school friend. They were enough. My sisters could fill in the rest. Boyfriend? Those beings were not on my list. We didn’t have a pleasant history. Currently, my life was fine as is.

“Where is your sister?”

“Oh, hey Sethu. I didn’t hear you coming in. Isn’t she in the kitchen?”

Sethu was our neighbor. Her sister Kelly would do our hair sometimes.

“No. There’s no one in the kitchen.”

“Let me check for her. She was going to the kitchen not long ago.”

Mellisa was a social butterfly. She would make acquaintances wherever she would go. Sethu and Kelly were a product of her excursions. Our personalities, though we were sisters, were very different. Probably that’s what made us a mean team.

“It’s fine. I just wanted to invite you girls to our place next weekend. We’re doing ka small party nyana for Nessa.”

“Yho! You guys have made money patown. You’re now throwing surprise parties?”

“ It’s her birthday so her boyfriend wants to surprise her. He wants to propose.”

“Lucky girl, hey!”

Sethu and Kelly were our neighbors and they were sisters. Sethu had a 3-year-old son and she was in second year at a tertiary institute in the city. Her sister, Kelly, was a hairdresser and makeup artist. They had different mothers but were born from the same father. Their father had practiced child spacing very well. He had three children with three different women from three different provinces. His fourth wife, the one who was the mother at home when he died, had three children as well, two daughters and a son. Kelly was one of her three children. They stayed in a two-bedroomed flat that their brother paid for.

It wasn’t always easy for Sethu. When she was born, her father still had hot blood and a stupid heart. He denied responsibility and the poor woman had to go back to her father’s house. Life was not easy for the unmarried, uneducated and young mother. She had brothers but they were married and had their own responsibilities. The only person she could rely on was her sister, Sethu’s aunt, and her husband. When Sethu was three years old, her mother left her with her aunt and her family and she went to work on the farms. She would send some money every month end for groceries and Sethu’s aunt used that money to send Sethu to school.

Unfortunately, life did not continue to look kindly on Sethu. One day, the Dlamini family received a message from the police that Sethu’s mother had been attacked by a hyena at the farms where she worked and she didn’t survive. Six months later, her aunt died. That’s when her life took a really ugly turn for Sethu. Her aunt’s husband said he could no longer support her. Her uncles and their wives had distanced themselves from her and her mother before her mother died. No one wanted to take her in.

She tried reconnecting with her father. The man acknowledged him as a daughter and gave her a roof over her head, but that was all he could do for her. She had to put herself through school by doing piece jobs in other people’s houses. If she didn’t wash people’s clothes or clean their yards, she would have nothing to eat. New clothes were a luxury that she could not afford. Her father had made it clear that he would not do anything for her in life since all that he possessed was from his wife’s hard work.

She was thankful for a place to sleep. It was a cold and dangerous world out there.

Sethu’s stepmother was the typical evil stepmother. Seeing Sethu suffer was therapeutic for her. She lived for Sethu’s struggles. She had two daughters, Kelly Londeka and Selina Khethiwe, as well as a son Rueben Mdumazi. Khethiwe was her mother’s sidekick but Kelly and Mdu had embraced their sister.

Sethu finished her matric and passed but could not go to university for financial reasons. Her dream was to find a job, move away from home and put herself through tertiary education, but it seemed like the devil was on her case. One day she was coming home from one of her numerous part-time jobs when she was dragged off the road by two men and they assaulted her, physically and sexually. When she got home, no one believed her. Her stepmother said they were just her tricks. According to her stepmother, Sethu had been going out with someone’s husband and she was collecting money from him. The bruises she had were from the wife after she was caught red-handed. She never went to the clinic. Even though she was 18, mentally, she was still a child. A frightened, lonely, child with no one in the world to protect, comfort or love her. The case was never reported to the police.

Six weeks later she discovered that she was pregnant and her father chased her away from home.

She was an industrious person though. She did not let life drag her down. She rented a mkhukhu (a one- roomed portable zinc house) and began to work hard for when she would be heavy and soon after giving birth. She didn’t know how she was going to deliver her baby, natural birth or caesarean section, she just had to be ready. Her pregnancy was an easy one. It was as if her baby knew that his mother had suffered enough. Even her labor was very short. She was thankful.

Some time after she gave birth to her son, her father fell sick. He called all his children home because he didn’t want to die and leave them without knowing each other. It was on that day that she discovered that she had two brothers who were older than her. Her father did not get better from his sickness. He requested to see all his children before he died, one thing that Sethu was forever grateful that her father did. On that visit, her second brother brought his girlfriend, Vanessa with him. She was a breath of fresh air. Sethu and Kelly became fast friends with Vanessa. Three weeks after this, her father died.

The whole family gathered once again and Vanessa was present. After the funeral, Vanessa called her boyfriend together with the older brother. Reuben saw his brothers gathering together and he joined them.

Vanessa:” Sorry guys for calling you away. Do any of you know where Aunt Sethu lives?” Siphiwe, the older brother, looked at Reuben.

Siphiwe: “Bafo?” (Brother?) The eldest brother looked at Reuben.

Reuben looked down and began to shuffle his feet:” I’m not sure if she changed where she was staying but she was renting a mukhukhu KumaS.”

KumaS was the shortened name for KumaSewage. These were zinc houses that were erected at the outer part of the location. The terrain in that area made it easy for all the waters that flowed from broken pipes, burst sewers to flow that way. People would dump their trash there as well if the municipality guys did not come to collect it.

Siphiwe: “What? Why?” Siphiwe couldn’t hide his shock.

Reuben: “When she got pregnant, mum and dad kicked her out of the house.”

Siphiwe: “Uphi ubaba wengane?”(Where’s the father of the child?)

Reuben: “Eish bhuti, our sister has suffered more than she deserves, and myself, I’m sad that I’m young and can’t help her. She was raped but our parents didn’t believe her. She didn’t get any medical attention either.”

Thembalethu:(holding his head) “Oh,God!” Themba groaned. “Oh, God. What did ubaba (dad) say?”

Reuben: “I mean no disrespect to my mother, I love her but my mother made life difficult for ubaba (dad) if he ever showed any affection to Sis Sethu. It was one of her conditions for taking Sethu in. He was not allowed to show any affection to her lest he be transferring his affection of his dead lover to his child.”

The other brothers were speechless.

Vanessa: “Guys, that will not raise anyone from the dead now. Aunt Kelly and Bhuti Reuben, I mean no disrespect. Babe, I’m not trying to go over your head or anything but yesterday, we threw out a lot of leftover food and some ladies made a comment about how we were throwing food out and Aunt Vanessa would be starving after the funeral. In the morning again someone said the same thing when we were throwing away leftover tea. That’s what made me curious and thought I should ask you guys. I want to see where Aunt Sethu sleeps. I wanna see where she keeps her food. I wanna see how she lives. I will never feel good sleeping in my warm bed when she probably sleeps on an empty stomach with a small child, guys.”

Siphiwe and Themba had connected with each other way before their father called them over to introduce them to the family. They had liked each other and formed a strong bond. Vanessa was Themba’s girlfriend but these two always involved her in all the decisions that they made. Their mothers were aware of the relationship and even encouraged it. After all, they were brothers and they had each other.

Siphiwe: “Eish, I’ve never really had time to talk to her. So that’s why she’s so quiet and always keeps to herself. I thought she was just an introverted person. I thought ubaba (dad) said she got pregnant and moved away from home. So how does she survive?” Siphiwe could literally feel his heart bleeding.

Kelly: “Sisi Sethu has always been a hard worker. If she had half the opportunities we had, she would have gone further in life. She put herself through school and passed but she couldn’t go to tertiary. She lives on piece jobs at the moment. If she could get a course, I know she will be fine. I know her place because I sometimes babysit uLwando when she can’t take him with to her piece jobs.”

Siphiwe: “Kelly, can you please call her?”

Right at that moment, Selina came outside and saw the small gathering. The whole time, she had been sitting inside with her mother. She drew closer to her siblings but did not say anything. She caught the gist that they were talking about Sethu.

When Kelly came back with Sethu, the two brothers informed her that they wanted to see where she lived. Sethu just agreed and didn’t ask any questions.

Siphiwe: “Where is Lwando?”

Sethu: “He must be playing with the other kids.” Sethu answered.

Siphiwe: “Okay. And Sisi Selina, how is school?” Siphiwe decided to make smalltalk with her other sister. She had met her twice and on both occasions, she gave off some keep your distance vibes.

Selina: “Why do you ask?”

Keyy: “Selina! Is there a reason to be rude?”

Selina: “He is poking his nose in my life. I wanna know why. I had one father. He is dead. And wena Kelly and Reuben, what are you doing being chummy with Sethu?”

Sethu: “Bhuti Siphiwe, let me go and finish what I was doing. When it’s time to go, I will take you.”

Selina: “Take them where?” Selina scowled. “Kelly, mama wants you inside.” She turned around and went back to her mother.

Siphiwe and Themba were gobsmacked. Vannessa was not surprised. She had been on the receiving end of Selina’s uppity attitude already, she just had not told anybody for the sake of peace. Selina was in grade 10. She should have been in grade 11 but was held back because of her grades. She was the apple of her mother’s eye and her partner in crime. Kelly had failed her matric and Reuben was in grade 9. She had refused to go back to school and was busy with her beauty therapy course. Books were not her thing.