Two weeks later I saw for myself that my mother was unraveling and I suspected, with a dread that tore every part of me to shreds, that she was going to take me with her to her own special hell. I knew it when I spoke to her on the phone and I knew it when she arrived unannounced at my doorstep with only a small bag in one hand, wearing no lipstick and her hair tied back in a stiff ponytail. She said, with great effort to appear nonchalant, but betrayed by her own tears, “Your father and I will get a divorce.”
It was only one hour before Sediba was due to arrive. I swallowed and pushed away my shameful thought but it kept coming back: how was I going to get rid of her? Her sadness engulfed the room, taking away the joy that had recently floated in and filled my home. Her face was the picture of the house I had grown up in: glum and desperate. Her scent—jasmine and roses—was so powerful and captivating, so heavy that through it I could hear a sad Motown love song on a lonely Sunday afternoon back at our house. When her eyes lifted she was looking in my direction but not quite at me, so consumed was she by her own misery.
I hurried around the room trying to tidy up even though there was really not much to do and I was just busying myself to keep my panic in check. She sat on the sofa and stared outside without saying a word.
“What . . . what happened? Did something happen?”
Without turning to look at me she said: “Ag . . . I told him he had to explain it to you.” Then she took off her shoes and put her feet on the sofa.
“I haven’t been here in such a long time! I like it. I like what you’ve done with it. It’s so tidy and pretty. And look at this,” she pointed at the paintings and photographs on the wall. “You decorated it so nicely.”
My mother was not looking at me or seriously taking in my place when she spoke; then she was staring at something outside. Her voice was so flat that I couldn’t stand to hear its sorrow. I brought her a glass of wine. “This is a really good one, from Stellenbosch. I know you’ll like it.”
She took it without looking at it.
“Sit down. Sit down next to me. Let me look at my only child.”
I sat and then waited for the smile that came but was so fleeting that I thought I might have imagined it. She took a sip.
“Do you like it?” I asked her, anxious.
“Hm? Yes it’s lovely. Listen. Your time here is almost over. You have to go and start working somewhere else. You have to do your work somewhere else, right?”
“Yes, Ma.”
“How do you feel about doing it here?”
The question felt like a trap, although I couldn’t understand why, exactly. I said, confused, “It was always the plan to go back to Maimela. I know the area, the language. I could be close to papa and that way when I do eventually work with him I’ll know all the patients really well.” Why was she asking? She had known the plan from the beginning. And of course Sediba was already upset about this very topic.
“I’m thinking of moving here. If I did, you could be close to me.” She smiled, but it was a pleading look, desperate, and it made me want to flee the room.
“OK,” I forced myself to appear at least a little bit enthusiastic. “OK. We could do that, but Mama, tonight I have to go out. I’m supposed to see friends now, maybe you can go and lie down and we can see each other when you wake up? You look very tired.”
I was thinking that I would go outside and wait for Sediba and tell him that my mother was here—that we couldn’t be alone in the flat this weekend and that I hoped he understood.
Luckily my mother liked the idea of going to sleep and I stepped outside to wait for Sediba. I sat down on the steps downstairs facing the gate and waited with a heavy heart. What would I tell him? He couldn’t drive back now or stay at his aunt’s. He hated staying there. We had had made plans to drive down the coast. The last time he had said, “You know, just because we hate clubs doesn’t mean we have to stay in. Why don’t we drive down the coast and see what’s there? Stop for lunch and things like that.” I had looked forward to it all week. Now I tried breathing slowly to calm down but I couldn’t. I stood up and paced up and down the small garden area in front of the building.
Finally he arrived, using the spare card I had given him to get through the gate. He smiled and waved at me as he turned into a parking spot and felt I the dread rise and rise and rise until I couldn’t breathe and ran over to him, panting with panic.
“Hi,” he leaned over to give me a hug. “I almost kissed you right here,” he said.
I stepped out of the embrace.
“What’s wrong?”
“My mother is here.”
“Oh. That’s OK, we’ll just say that I’m visiting.”
I said, “No!” and it came out more forceful than I had intended.
He was completely taken aback. “No?”
“No. She’s miserable. Depressed. She wants to stay here for the weekend.”
“That’s fine.” He was opening the boot now.
“That’s fine? Where will you go?”
Sediba folded his arms and threw me another look of astonishment.
“You and I are going down the coast. You can tell her that we’re just going for a drive. We’ll return later today and I don’t mind staying with my aunt for one night.”
I bit my lip and waited, trying to find the right thing to say but it was not coming to me.
“What is wrong? Do you want me to go and then come back?”
I nodded. “I need to think.”
Sediba took my hand and squeezed it quickly before letting it fall.
“Fine. Think. I’ll be back later.”
“Thanks,” I said but when he leaned forward I took a step back.
“Not outside,” I said, and he held up both his hands.
I waited for him to get in the car and reverse it. When he reached me, he stopped and winked. “As long as I don’t leave here without . . . ,” he said with a grin. It was an attempt at a joke and I appreciated it, so I chuckled in response. When his car had disappeared down the road, I ran up the stairs, back to my mother.
I found a completely different woman.
My mother had touched-up her makeup and was standing at the bathroom door, one hand on her hip, the other behind her. Her lips were now painted a glossy reddish brown, her black eye liner was darker, bolder. She had even decided against the ponytail, her hair now brushed back, flat, its tips touching her shoulders. There was no trace of the subdued woman who had walked in a few minutes before. This woman was more livid than sorrowful.
“Are you with someone? Going out with someone?” she asked.
“What? Why do you ask?”
“Are you?”
I was gripped with panic. Had she seen me and Sediba outside? I was trying to think, how could she, you couldn’t see the entrance to the flat complex from my room. There were two buildings in this complex and mine faced the ocean while the other faced the street. She couldn’t have seen us. Had she walked out? Seen him hug me?
“Not . . . well . . . I’m . . . I’m dating—”
“Why do you have two toothbrushes and two shaving kits?” From behind her, as if she had been saving it for effect, my mother pulled up one of the two kits. It was actually mine and not Sediba’s.
I had read a lesbian woman’s story once, where she said her mother had found out she was gay when she walked into the room and she and her girlfriend were sitting across the table from each other. They were not holding hands, they were not looking at each other in any special way—they had only been sitting and eating and the mother just guessed. You never know what it is about you that will reveal your secret. I had always imagined it would be something dramatic like being caught kissing or in bed. In the end it was only a shaving kit—and my lover had not even been there.
My defense was feeble.
“Why are you looking at my things?” I took the kit from her. Back in the sitting room, I tried to think of ways to appear indignant, but this was my mother and I was no longer a young teenager without the experience of how cruel life is outside of home. I needed my mother, I didn’t want to fight. I needed her to say it was fine, that she’d be all right with it.
She had opened the windows and there again came that whiff of lemons from the tree I hadn’t yet seen. I had a passing memory of Sediba’s arms around me and my head on his shoulder, taking in that scent. My mother came to sit across from me and leaned her elbows on her thighs. I could see what was happening here: whatever she thought was going on with me had helped take away her own misery for a moment. She had something to take care of now. There was my mother’s old sense of purpose.
“I want you to tell me something. You said you were dating, but you have two shaving kits. Why?”
There was no way out of here. I could open every door I had known to let in a little air but there was no door to step through. There was nothing to do but say what was really going on. I didn’t want to, because I didn’t trust her to stay calm and tell me it was all right, that the nation’s constitution says blah blah blah . . . I was at the top of a table and I had to tip it, let the rope pull me up by the neck. It had been many years of running but this was the end. I thought of Rodney and wondered for the first time if he had sobered up for his conversation with his mother or if he had been high on something—if that was why he had been bold enough to tell his mother that he liked sleeping with men.
My mother folded her arms, legs crossed, one red high-heel shoe dangling back and forth like it was a red pendulum above my sitting room mat. Her eyes were narrow and her lips pursed into a reddish-brown O, waiting. I picked up the bottle of wine that I had placed in front of her and took a long swig from it, wiped my mouth with my palm, and surrendered.
“I’m gay.”
I felt the room spin, the wine glass blur and suddenly there were two glasses. I shut my eyes and pressed them with the heels of my palms.
“Now you know,” I said, my best attempt at appearing nonchalant failing me.
I didn’t—couldn’t—look at her. For a moment neither one of us spoke. When I opened my eyes I had an uncontrollable need to grin, a need in me that often comes out of nervousness.
My mother picked up her bag and put it on her lap, her face towards the window as though contemplating a great mystery. I felt cold and then hot all at once. My body couldn’t find a comfortable position on the chair. A small bird came and sat at the window and quickly flew away as if sensing danger on the other side of the glass and I wished I could do the same.
Finally, when it appeared she had thought it all through, she threw her bag down and spoke. “Sies! A doctor, behaving like a dirty street person? A doctor? A gay? My own child, a gay? Sies! You’re a gay? What kind of thing is this? Is this from your White friends? Is this what you think is white? It’s so . . . it’s not proper, Kabelo. Even if you want to be White, Kabelo, this is repulsive, mara. Hao! Sies! A gay? A gay?” The more she spoke the word, the more I felt repulsed by it—I saw myself the way she did for that moment: disappointing, dirty, vile. She spat out the words and left them on my floor. A gay. The ground shifted. My head ached persistently.
What is there to say when someone expresses such blatant contempt? I couldn’t defend myself. I only looked down at the floor, my face in my hands.
I suppose soon it became clear that she would get no satisfying response from me, so she marched out of my flat and slammed the door.
And then just as quickly she was back. She opened the door and stood there, no intention of coming in. She had forgotten something, I thought. I stood facing her, waiting. Perhaps she had come to say it was all right, she was under a lot of stress, it was work; it was this thing with my father, times were changing—no matter what, I was her son. She loved me anyway. No such luck. She said: “Bona Kabelo. Do me a favour. Don’t come back to Maimela if you’re still practicing these things. I didn’t raise you to shame me.”
And that was the very last thing my mother said to me.
Today I remember the phone call about my father’s death, but the one about my mother’s comes to me every now and then as a jumbled mess of voices and words muffled by crying in the background. My father phoned from home, Aus’ Tselane wailing in the background. When you’re a medic you always think: I should have seen the signs. You look back on the time you were in class and you learned about these particular symptoms and you feel completely stupid for not having noticed them as they happened to you in your world. I wouldn’t have guessed that my mother would kill herself. That she would go silent for weeks, be cold and distant for some time towards me, that I would have guessed. But kill herself? No. A psychiatrist I worked with once told us, “I often think a lot of anger goes into suicide.”
I remember the flat was cold and unlit when Sediba came to sit with me, just before I made my way up north, having heard the news. I wouldn’t go with him. I had done enough to my parents, I felt. He was getting ready to leave when my father phoned. I had been in a state and had stayed up all night pacing around my flat while he woke up now and then and begged me to come to bed. I had left the windows open, my phone was on the floor, and I had not eaten or slept.
“I’m so sorry,” he was saying. “You’re going to be fine.”
“Why do Black people say ‘you’re a gay’ instead of just ‘you’re gay?’”
Sediba shrugged and flicked away the insignificance of my question.
“Maybe she had an underlying problem. Maybe it was . . . ” I was speaking in a whisper, my voice hoarse from shock.
When I looked up he was staring at me, his eyes so desperate and pleading that I couldn’t bear it. He couldn’t find me—couldn’t pull me close and comfort me. I kept darting away from his arms, moving in circles, stepping out of his embrace when he reached me. He wanted the person he knew to come back to him and sit with him in the room, but I needed to run away. Finally he was exhausted.
“Do you remember the first time we met? When my family moved in?” His voice was quiet and sad. I nodded, still not looking at him. I was curious where this was going. He stood up and came to sit next to me, so close that now all I wanted him to do was hold me, but he didn’t.
“I remember all your friends—I didn’t think they’d become mine later—but all of them were amused by me, the way people always had been. But you weren’t. You didn’t laugh when they did. There was something so reassuring about the way you looked at me . . . and then Lelo said I sat like a girl and the look you gave him,” he chuckled, rubbing my neck gently, “you were so angry he said that. I’ll never forget it.”
I got up to turn the light on. When I returned to the sofa I sat farther away from him. I said, “I was afraid of you. I didn’t know then but I know now.”
The gulf between us seemed bigger and my whole world felt lonely. He wasn’t gone yet but I knew he would be soon. I knew I would have to let him go, finally, and the knowledge brought with it a staggering sadness, so overwhelming that I started breathing faster, afraid of what this meant for me, for my life.
“You were afraid of yourself,” Sediba said. He moved closer and started to kiss me. It was so sad a kiss that I returned it wholeheartedly, feeling helpless and reassured all at once. But then he started inching his hand up my shirt and I heard my mother’s voice saying, “Sies!” and I was afraid that every time he touched me I would hear her voice again. So I caught Sediba’s hand and firmly pushed it away. When he pulled back he stared at me, his eyes begging.
I sat up and shifted away. I heard the wind whistling furiously outside, and one of the windows slammed shut. There was a storm brewing.
I said without facing him, “Look, Diba, this thing . . . we have to end it.”
He didn’t sound surprised. “We�
��re in love,” he said, matter-of-factly, “We can keep going. Can’t we? Because we love each other.”
“But it just broke my mother’s heart. Just because we want it doesn’t make it OK, you know. And where would we live, eventually? In Kasi? Come on. You know we have to end it.”
“I think we can find some way. I think you’re grieving and—”
“I can’t ever live there like this. Knowing what I did to my mother and having people look at me like, like I have no shame.”
He sank his head into his hands. “I love you.”
I said, “I love you too,” but my voice was so hoarse that it came out in a slight whisper. I had upset him more.
“Oh, now you say it. Now, Kabelo? All the time I hear, ‘I feel the same way.’ But now, today, when you’re letting me go . . . ”
He had called me by my full name. It sounded strange and formal and distant.
“You know I do—”
He walked away. One moment he was in the bedroom, the next at the window, staring out into the evening. “I don’t say anything. There are things . . . I don’t say anything, I just let you be. I know how you are and because I love you, I don’t even . . . and the way you just let people think . . . I just hope that someday it will change. Every time I come here I hope to . . . ” he stopped suddenly and then he walked towards the door. Through my teary eyes the room looked blurry.
“What do I let people think?”
He paused, turned around, shook his head.
“What? What do I let people . . . ”
“Always. Like we’re doing something shameful. That stewardess on the plane . . . ” He wanted to hurt me, I understood.
“Where will you go? You just arrived. I’m sorry. Let’s just . . . let’s look at it as taking time off. I just need a little time. I have to go back for her funeral. I just need a little time, I think.”
His face twisted in anger, his chin trembled, his eyelids fluttered furiously. “Do you? Just some time and then you’re fine? We’re fine?”
I hung my head. “It was never going to be . . . we’re not . . . allowed, you and I. It’s not like we could do this forever—”
Such a Lonely, Lovely Road Page 17
