The radio played the Coming Times midnight news song five minutes before they began. The hour for Samson to come home crawling like a zombie. The winter never stopped him from going out.
“If I just woke up in a new world, maybe I’d quit my addiction,” he’d sometimes say to himself.
The dogs barked at his crackly loud singing as if they cheered for his homecoming. He kicked the gate open and followed it to the ground, walked up the steps with both hands and legs, and leaned against the door.
“Lulu! LaNkalanga!” Samson yelled.
“Samson,” Lulu whispered.
She waited long behind the door for him so he’d not wake their twelve-year-old son, Sihle.
“Baby?”
“Samson, my love, I can’t take it anymore, please! Change your way of life, I need the old you. I need the Samson I fell in love with, the one who used to make me laugh, smile, feel special and cry from happiness, not because of pain. Please, my love, I beg you,” Lulu pleaded.
“Open the door, maybe if I see your tears I’ll collapse and wake up a different person. I’ll fulfil your lonely desires. I’m not doing this by myself, I think I’m possessed. Even the light of innocence in my heart keeps fading away day by day, but I love you, Lulu.”
“Then why can’t you change?”
“I don’t know, you don’t get to know.”
“Samson.”
“Open the door, please.”
“You’re even starting not to care about your only son. He waited all day for you with an assignment and you never came.”
“I’m here now, open the door so I make it up to him. Please, you’re both the last light in my life. My pure African queen, the only reason for my existence,” Samson cried.
“Oh! Samson my husband.”
Lulu stood up and opened the door. She helped him get up and, with his weight, he wrapped his arms around her and they walked to bed. She took his shoes off and put him into his pyjamas. She smelled alcohol coming out of his mouth and coughed.
“Are you really the husband given to me by God? Please forgive me, but I don’t think I’ll hang on any longer. Yes, I prayed for a husband and marriage, but no, it’s enough. I can’t endure the same pain over and over again.”
She covered him with a blanket and went to sleep on the floor to weep. The night of winter played its terrible work, and so she couldn’t take it and went back to bed.
What really happened to Samson? His world crumbled down when his four-year-old daughter passed away a couple of weeks ago of food poisoning. He was told that she was playing with her friends out on the street when an unknown woman came and offered her a soft drink. The woman told her to drink it right before her and then to run straight home. When Siya arrived home, she had already drunk half of it and within a few minutes she started to cough blood and bleed from her nose. Lulu rushed her to the clinic but unfortunately she passed away on their way there. When he got home from work, his family told him what happened. He got angry, sad, confused and fought with his wife over her carelessness, allowing his child to lose her life. Their families got involved and they were separated until he cooled down. He stayed at work and didn’t even come to Siya’s funeral. But now he’s come back.
***
Tell us: What would you do in Lulu’s position?
