Robert eats supper with his family – hot stiff pap, juicy roast chicken and a mixed vegetable salad. A treat. They haven’t eaten like this for weeks. The fragrance of spices permeates the dining room. It was hard to cook this meal. His mother laboured outside over a fire in the shelter where the family stores garden tools. She is no longer used to cooking on the fire, and the strong smell of wood smoke stung her nose and eyes. Load-shedding meant a meal cooked on the fire and a candlelit dinner.

They eat in silence; the only sound is the raindrops pattering on the corrugated sheets of the roof.

Tshiwela looks at her brother across the table. Such delicious food but he doesn’t even taste it, he is wolfing it down so fast. Robert can’t wait to leave the table, thinks Tshiwela. He is angry. He has been angry for weeks.

“Why can’t you eat properly?” his mother says quickly, her voice tense.

“Please, Mma – please. Why all the questions all the time?” Robert doesn’t look at his mother.

She shakes her head.

“I understand it’s hard for you, son. It’s hard for us all. We loved your father. He loved us and cared for us. He was a good husband to me,” she says, sounding tired now. “He was a good father to you and your sister too. Yawee, mavu a la vhathu (Graves swallow the people)!”

“I loved Baba,” Robert says looking up. “Why did he have to die? Why him, Mma?”

Tshiwela’s eyes glisten with fresh tears as her brother says this. She can hear the hurt in her brother’s voice – it sits just under the anger.

Their father had been buried just a month ago. She turns to look at her mother. Mrs Mudau’s face looks sad but she holds herself together for the sake of her two children.

“There’s nothing we can do, Robert,” Tshiwela says quietly. “We just have to accept that he’s gone. We need to go on with our lives.”

Robert shakes his head. He has stopped eating. “I can’t,” he says.

His father had been away working in Joburg and hadn’t seen them for three weeks. He was on his way home when the accident happened. He was looking forward to seeing his family; it was all he was thinking about.

Robert slams his fork down on the plate. He gets up, walks down the passage and shuts himself in his room.

Mrs Mudau calls after him: “Robert! Son!”

“Leave him, Mma,” Tshiwela says.

“I know he is hurting, but he can’t go on like this. So angry,” their mother says.

“I feel sorry for him, Mma,” Tshiwela says. “I get worried too. It’s too heavy on him. He’s dropping marks at school. On Tuesday he was called to the staff room because he forgot to hand in his English assignment. I saw him there, just sitting with his head in his hands.”

“I need talk to him. I want to,” his mother says, “but he won’t let me.”

“You know what they are saying in the village?”

Their mother looks up quickly.

“He is spending time with Mashudu, that young tsotsi.”

“Who told you this thing, Tshiwela?”

“It’s what they are saying on the street.”

Tshiwela has seen Robert staggering home. She has smelled the booze and cigarettes on him. He has stolen money from her. He can fool their mom, hiding the booze and cigarettes by cleaning his teeth, or chewing gum, but he can’t fool her.

Tshiwela and Mrs Mudau eat in silence, each lost in their worry for their brother and son.

The next morning Robert doesn’t greet them. And he doesn’t speak to them for a week.

*****

Friday is the end of term. Mrs Mudau finds Robert’s school report lying on the kitchen table. Her son has shut himself in his room again. She picks it up. He has failed three subjects in his mid-year exams.

She goes down the passage and knocks on the door. There is no answer. She pushes it open. Robert is lying on his bed, reading SMSes on his phone.

“What is this?” she holds up the report.

He looks up and then goes back to scrolling on his phone.

“I failed, Mma. I am sorry,” he says without looking at her.

His mother loses her temper and yells: “Look at me!” She sits down next to him and snatches his phone away so that he is forced to face her.

“Read this,” she says, stabbing the report with her finger. “Go on – read it!” She’s shouting now.

“Robert has been playing truant from school…” he reads softly.

“Go on.”

“He leaves at break and does not return to class,” he stammers. “His marks have suffered. He could have performed much better. He has the ability.”

“Can you explain that to me? Why you bunk school?”

He is silent.

“What’s happening with you, son? Why don’t you listen to your teachers and obey the school’s rules?”

Tears glimmer in his eyes. He looks down and mumbles, “I obey the rules.”

“I am trying to build you up so you can have a future. You have a fresh mind. You are so clever – just seventeen years and in Grade 12. Next year you could be at varsity … but you are busy throwing it all away.”

Mma, you don’t understand–”

“I heard you coming home at midnight last night.”

He sits in silence until she gets up. She hesitates in the doorway. She has to stop what is happening to him before it’s too late. She has to be tough on him.

“If you continue to get home late, you’ll find my gate locked,” she warns before she leaves his room, shutting the door behind him.

***

Tell us what you think: How should Mrs Mudau handle Robert?