When Sipho came to visit them Mvelo was happy to see him as usual. But she was surprised when this time, instead of letting her see him off, he asked Zola to walk him to his car.

A dark cloud hung over their shack from that day onwards. Zola’s silence became intense again. She visited the clinic regularly, and her demands for attending church became urgent. She and Mvelo became exemplary devotees.

One day she sat Mvelo down and reminded her of the day Sipho came from America. With hot tears pouring from her eyes, she said she had exposed herself to HIV that day. She had never been the one to talk with Mvelo about sex openly, but that day she spoke to her about having not used protection with Sipho since his return. Ever since she had broken up with Sipho she had not been friendly with men.

Mvelo felt a heavy stone take a seat in her heart. She hated Sipho for making Zola cry again. It seemed to her that her mother’s destiny revolved around Sipho. It took her time to be able to look him in the eye again.

Zola displayed the classic symptoms of someone who was confronting matters of life and death. She told Mvelo she better hurry up and get over her hate because life was leaving her behind. It was the fear of the disease that made Mvelo so angry. She hated Sipho for infecting her mother and for breaking up with Nonceba. She hated Joy because she wanted a scapegoat; she wanted to blame her for the misery that came into their lives.

The day that Zola told her about her HIV status, Mvelo took a long walk through the maze of shacks, without purpose, just trying to get away from her tears. A protruding, sharp piece of corrugated iron scratched her leg and she bled. But instead of pain, she felt a calming, warm sensation, and the sight of the blood gave her all sorts of thoughts about how to cure Zola. Under the moonlight she stared at her blood rushing out of her body, and she felt a release from the pressure that was building inside of her. She looked at
her clean blood and thought it could be possible. Some clever doctor could drain out the infected blood from Zola and inject Mvelo’s blood into her.

Now, on some nights, after listening to Zola quietly crying herself to sleep, Mvelo would wake up and cut her flesh with a razor, to see the blood and feel that calming feeling again.

Two months after receiving the news, Joy swallowed Jeyes Fluid and was found in the foetal position in the office toilet. Her suicide note simply read: ‘Wolves in sheep coats who pretend to be lovers… You might win some but you just lost one.’

The unfinished business began aggressively eating away
at Sipho. He deteriorated quickly after Joy’s death. His legs refused to carry him. His weight dropped off, leaving his tall frame looking shockingly weak. Zola and a group of home- based care volunteers visited him where he was holed up in his house, feasting on self-pity. They cleaned the house together, but Zola insisted on preserving his dignity by being the only one who changed his clothes and sponge-bathed him.

Mvelo simply shut down, she wanted to erase him from her memory. She was angry with Zola and banned her from talking about him to her.

The rumour mill was spinning. People spoke in whispers. It was then that Mvelo dreamt of him crying and drowning. In the dream she frantically tried to pull him out, but he let go of her hand. ‘If you ever believed anything about me, believe this, I love you,’ he said and he let go smiling. She woke up shaking and soaking wet. She had to see him at least one last time because she knew that deep in her rage she still loved him as the only father she had ever had. When she told Zola about the dream, Zola sat her down and said: ‘I know you think I am foolish for doing what I am doing but I tell you that if I hold a grudge against he who has done me wrong, I would
die quickly and leave you behind. And I am not ready for that. And as for you carrying hate at such a young age, I am afraid it will weigh you down and you will let life pass you by.

‘It is not for Sipho that I do the things that I do, it is for me. It is to keep me healthy and alive with a purpose. Besides, we both really did love him once; that love doesn’t just die.
I think it is stifled deep in your little chest. That’s why you
are dreaming things now.’ As Zola spoke, Mvelo saw that her mother had really shifted the way she thought about things. She seemed calmer and wiser.

Mvelo visited Sipho after months of avoiding him, and she gasped from shock. He was a shadow of his former self. His eyes filled with tears when he saw her, all grown-up and tall, a version of Zola. They didn’t say a word. Mvelo sat by his bed and they just looked at each other. They talked with their eyes and absorbed each other. At that moment Mvelo shifted the protective stone she had in her heart and allowed the pain and frustration to scrub her clean and make her feel again.

Sipho became weaker physically, but his spirit remained. On good days he still managed to make them laugh.

He gave the house to his brother, the river debris. Maybe if Mzokhona had a place to settle he would change, Sipho hoped. His practice was sold for next to nothing to his partners. Since he was not married, his affairs were handled by his mother with the help of his lawyer friends. He agreed to everything, but he stubbornly refused her offer to move him back home to eMpendle. He chose the hospice at Addington Hospital instead.

While he was there he made the nurses laugh and gave comic relief to the other patients with his jokes. Some
days were better; others unbearable. He sank in and out of melancholy, especially when the topic of Nonceba or Zola came up. Maybe it was guilt that ravaged him more than the illness itself.

The hospice was his last home. He never got to face Nonceba. One day they were all laughing, he was telling Zola a joke and the intensity of his laughter went up a notch, then his heart gave in. He died laughing.