Things turned when Sipho joined Nonceba in the States. He always knew that she was a contained fire that would consume flesh and lick bones clean if she was given the chance. When she met him at O’Hare Airport in Chicago, the cold February air hit him in the face like a strong fist of that beautiful legend, Muhammed Ali. He wanted to turn around and take the next plane back to sunny Africa, but Nonceba was there, bright with joy at meeting up with him again.

He only had to look into Nonceba’s eyes to know that whatever it was that he would face in America, he would
stay, because she had his heart. She told him about her grandmother’s funeral. To distract herself from the pain of losing Mae, she had started working in her old law firm again. She said it was just while she was figuring things out about coming back to Africa.

Her apartment was large, with windows that overlooked Lake Michigan. Sipho was amazed that she had left behind such a good life to be with him in Mkhumbane. He laughed long and hard about that.

When he arrived she made a barbeque at a friend’s house in Oak Park. To get there, they took the ‘L’ train, crisscrossing above the city through the maze of tall buildings and passing the magnificent home of the Chicago Tribune.

Sipho loved Oak Park. He told the gathering of friends stories of Mkhumbane and Skwiza’s shebeen, and about
the first time he had taken Nonceba there. As he spoke, a realisation dawned on him, that he belonged in Mkhumbane. He carried on talking, but he knew then that he would not last in Chicago if Nonceba decided to stay in America permanently.

The cold was freezing hairs inside his nostrils and something inside of him was losing balance. He was not used to walking on ice and he kept falling and hitting his ass hard against the cold ground. Then his tail bone started giving him pain.

He laughed and kept drawing strangers towards him. Unlike the tsotsis in Mkhumbane, these people were different. They didn’t want anything from him. They didn’t need his money, and they didn’t bask in the light of him being a lawyer. They were lawyers themselves. They had PhDs at the end of their names and they engaged with each other at an intellectual level.

Sipho held his own comfortably amongst these intelligent people. It fascinated them, because they could never have imagined this from a real ‘Aaafrican’. But he became exhausted with the mask he had to wear. He missed Skwiza’s and the times of indulging in mundane small talk of the Soweto soccer derby, with his brain soaked in whisky.

He loved the view of Lake Michigan. It was shiny at night. But the neon lights frustrated him because they added an unnatural golden light onto the water’s surface. He wanted the silver lights of the moon that he was used to where he grew up in eMpendle. Moonlight made everything beautiful to him. He felt spiritually connected to the moon. Lake Michigan gave him comfort.

He struggled to find work and it threw him into a crisis that he never thought possible. The problem for him was that he was a man being supported by a woman. For the first time in his life he felt the fears of women who had to depend on men. He began to understand why women would do anything to keep their men. He thought of Zola and how different
she was; how much courage it must have taken to leave him. Fear gripped his heart like the icy cold Chicago winter air. His laughter was no longer deep and joyful.

He began to feel insecure around Nonceba, who was out climbing the merciless corporate ladder. She worked day in and day out, with double the intensity that she had when she was with Sipho in Mkhumbane, and she became short with him. She had no time to spend with him.

The cold was taking its toll on Sipho too and he fell into
a deep depression. He slept all day, hating the thought of waking up to another grey sky. He stopped taking baths, changing his clothes and brushing his teeth. This put a nail in the coffin of their intimate lives. ‘I don’t know what to do, he’s not the man I fell in love with.’ Nonceba was in tears on the phone talking to one of her friends. ‘He’s a shell of himself. He repulses me now. It pains me to say it but, this man who used to make me feel like a queen, now I dread coming home to him.’

Sipho had become so clingy and insecure that he listened in to her conversations from the bedroom that only he used now. He wept silently on hearing what he had suspected, but dreaded to admit.

He woke up the next day after Nonceba had gone to work, and looked into the mirror, and what he saw reflected back at him was a picture of his brother, Mzokhona, the river debris. His hair was unkempt, his teeth were coated with a yellow film and his tongue was furry. He sobbed under a hot shower. The water revived him, then he scrubbed himself and Nonceba’s house clean.

He waited for her to come back to tell her that he was going home. He wanted to be where his feet were planted . This strange place left him feeling wobbly,
like a child learning to walk. Like an exile, he could no longer laugh. A heavy rock sat on his chest making it hard for him to breathe. Inhaling the air was painful. It felt as if his lungs were being assaulted with ice. He wanted to get back to his work, practising law and helping those who were on the periphery of society in Mkhumbane and the neighbouring shacks.

It was late in the evening when she finally got back. ‘I knew this day would come,’ she said. He ran out of words, and she cried.

Then, for the first time in a long time, they talked like they used to. She apologised for getting sucked back into her old workaholic ways. She had done some thinking of her own and knew that it was also time for her to return to South Africa. But it was clear to them both that it was time to go their separate ways.

‘Just do me one favour,’ she said wiping away her tears. ‘I will be going to my grandfather’s village when I get to South Africa. Don’t try to contact me. I’ll contact you when I’m ready to face you as a friend and not as a lover.’

She felt that she had unfinished business in a country where her mother had taken her life, her grandfather had died a violent death, and possibly she still had a living, breathing father.

They fell asleep on the carpet, spooning like the children of the shacks who share a single bed.