“It’s a bright beautiful morning out there!” declared the man on the radio. It was set to wake her up. She opened her eyes with a smile; she had been waiting for this day since the beginning of this year. It was a miracle! God’s grace and a genuine miracle.

She slipped out of the blankets to kneel by her bedside to do what she was taught to do at a tender age; she prayed every morning and evening. She knew that every day and night spent alive was a blessing. Well, daddy never let her forget it.

After she was done giving thanks to the Almighty, she moved the curtain away and let the sun’s rays through. They greeted her with the gold of their nature, and felt good against her face. “Indeed it is!” she pronounced, agreeing with the man on the radio.

She ran into the bathroom and disappeared for a few moments. She reappeared, dressed in her full school uniform. Everything was blooming around her, with the matric farewell dance around the corner, and today was her birthday.

She was running around the house like a mad kid. Who could blame her? She was HIV Positive and people out there had infested her young mind that she was not going to live for long. “Kids with AIDS don’t live past eleven years,” she was told years before they moved here, but it was not what the doctors and her father had told her.
“The longest lived AIDS life was that of Nkosi Johnson, and there won’t be another,” her uninformed friends and their drunken mothers kept on telling her.

When she confronted her father about this, he denied it and a few weeks later, they moved into KwaMhlanga, where they were still living. She was turning 18 today, and she felt like a million bucks.

She was one of the prettiest girls in her school. That’s why she was named Miss Silamba for the 2009-2011 academic years. This year, she had resigned to focus more on her school work as she was aiming for distinctions. Her second princess took over from where she had left off.

She made so much noise that her father couldn’t stand it anymore and he woke up too. “Coffee?” offered Sophie in the middle of her humming, to her father dragging his feet from the bedroom.

“Yah, Yah,” he replied rubbing his eyes. As soon as she handed it over to him, she disappeared into her bedroom, jumping and leaping around like a little calf.

“What’s with you today?” he asked, but remembered quickly that it was yet another anniversary for his mixed feelings, but he wasn’t going to think about it like that anymore: he would just celebrate the positives.

“Are you ready to take me to school, daddy?” she asked as she reappeared with her backpack, but daddy was still sipping his coffee and making irritating noises. He was nervous: he had a promise to keep with Sophie, to tell her the truth about her mother’s death.

Sophie hadn’t been properly informed about the history of her birthday. It was kept a secret so that she did not feel that she was the reason her mother died, but today she was turning 18 and she must know the truth, it was their deal.

As soon as he was done, he followed Sophie into the garage where she was waiting in the car. It was already idling, so he took over the wheel as she hopped to the other side. “Thank you…”

As he entered the road, from nowhere appeared the village’s famous BMW 325IS sprinting past them with one boy whistling and waving his school shirt in the air from the sunroof.

“Hey! Move it old man! Stop driving like my mother Mfundis” shouted one boy from the front passenger window as the car sprinted by. It was Bheki, one of the drug dealers at Silamba Secondary School, the owner of the car and Sophie’s classmate. She thought: He’s probably high, together with the driver and the half-naked whistler.

“Good Lord! The society we are living in these days…” said Pastor Mabhena, Sophie’s dad. “Have mercy on us, Lord!” he drove on, complaining about what was happening in this neighborhood just recently. The quiet village had turned into Hillbrow overnight, and he was worried about the future of his daughter in this place.

“God has His way of doing things; He has placed His servant here for a reason,” he extemporized, convinced. Suddenly he realised they had arrived, so he pulled over unawares next to the same BMW of the naughty boys, which was parked at the school gate. The boys were leaning on the car, smoking heavily. Fortunately, it was just cigarettes; they were smart enough not to smoke drugs in public.

Just before she could open the door, Pastor Mabhena held her hand gently. “I’ve got something very special to my heart. I’ve kept it with me for years and now I think it’s time I hand it over to you.” He broke the short silence that was growing in the car. “I love you, my love, and you are all grown up now, which makes you look even more beautiful, just like your mother.”

He reached into his pocket, and brought it out holding a silky smooth black jewellery box in his hand. He opened it and pulled out a thin, shiny gold necklace with a small rock hanging on it. “This was your late mother’s. She gave it to me the day she left us.” Pastor Mabhena sighed, looking and feeling very down. He couldn’t keep the promise he had made earlier. “Happy birthday my love, and please take care of it. Cherish it. That is what she asked me to tell you when I gave it to you.”

He fixed it around her neck. “Okay, okay… I promise I will respect it and protect it, daddy. This is the best present I have ever received.” She cried and hugged him. She wasn’t sad, in fact she was thrilled that the doors of the closet where her mother’s bones were kept were opening finally. She stepped out of the car, smiling and wiping the tears off her face with her fingers.

***

Tell us: What do you think of Sophie’s relationship with Pastor Mabhena? What do you think of Pastor Mabhena as a father?