“You’re home early,” his mother was startled by his unexpected entrance. “Did you not have an afternoon class today?”
“No, they gave us a day off.”
“I didn’t even cook anything for lunch. Don’t you have any change left so you can buy some bread?”
“Oh yes I do, I’ll go to the shop.”
“Let me see the school shoes you bought.”
He felt a shiver go down his spine. His head went blank with startle from his mother’s inquest. His heart beat fast and violently. There was a long pause.
“I am talking to you.”
“I will show you when I return from the shop.”
“I want to see them now,” his mother insisted.
Pule reluctantly took his bag off his back and slowly removed the shoes from inside. His mother’s expression changed immediately.
“What is this?”
Silence.
She raised her voice, “Are you deaf?”
Silence still.
“What the hell is wrong with you child? That was last of the little money I had! Who told you to buy these things? Why did you buy them?”
“I need them.”
“Like hell you do! What you need is a serious beating!”
“What I need is a father!” Pule burst.
To his mother’s surprise, the expression of remorse and regret was now replaced by that of fortitude and severity. Even he almost surprised himself. His mother gasped with shock, struggling to take in what her son had just said.
“What did you just say?” she was calm and low, more so defeated.
“Maybe he may have had a better understanding of what a boy child really needs.”
“What?”
“You don’t know what it’s like to be a boy, what it’s like to be me.”
“I understand…”
“No you don’t! You don’t understand what I have to live up to everyday out there, what survival requires. It’s not the same thing as spending your days preying on hopeless men at taverns for drinks and braai pack money so we may have a meal every day.”
Pule was ambushed by a slap that set him on flight. He landed on the wall with his head.
“Next time you talk to me like that I am going to kick you out of my house.”
The tears that now poured from her eyes and the eyes were a reflection of a broken heart shadowed by sorrow. Since the inception of her single motherhood, she had convinced herself that when it came to her son, no burden would be greater than her own capabilities.
“You think I don’t want you to know who your father is? You think I don’t wish for him to accept that you exist?”
“So he is alive after all?”
“Yes… he is.”
“And he doesn’t wish to see me?”
“My son, if I could change the past I would but I can’t. So I have no choice but to accept circumstances as they are, and I need you to accept and understand that somethings…”
“You could have just said so, Ma. You could have just told me that my father doesn’t wish to see me, that he hates me, his own son.”
“I’m sorry, my son.”
“It’s OK mother. I guess some dreams were meant to remain just what they are, dreams.” He picked himself up and walked quietly to his room. He locked himself and never came out for the rest of the day.
***
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