They take two taxis, her and Morena.

He was supposed to have left to go back where he stays in the township but his mother made him stay so he could travel with Aphiwe to school until she knows how to get there on her own.

“So she cut your hair? Just like that?”

Aphiwe nods. She is too upset to speak but she also doesn’t want to cry any more.

“They will laugh at me, Morena.”

“They will, but don’t pay attention to them. They will find other things to laugh about if you ignore them.”

She doubts that. She knows how kids can be. In her old school, she would have laughed too if someone came with hair like that.

She is not placed in the same Grade 8 class as Morena, and that scares her even more. Everyone has been laughing and pointing at her since she entered the school premises. All she has done is look down and stay quiet.

She is relived when they don’t have to take the taxis back home, but also worried because it’s her stepmother waiting at the gate to pick them up.

She drops Morena at his home first, which is weird, because Morena was supposed to stay with his mother for the whole week. Where he lives is not far from the school.

Her fear grows even more when it’s just the two of them in the car. She doesn’t like the way her stepmother keeps looking at her as she drives.

“So your mother chose a man over you, and thought it was a good idea to dump you with me?”

That is something Aphiwe has been trying not to think about, that her mother abandoned her to start a new family, just like her father abandoned her before she was even born.

She doesn’t answer her stepmother’s question.

“Nobody wants you. You are far older than Limi and Sengezo and I don’t want you spending any time with them. You will leave your room only when you have to eat. Your father is never home anyway, and I don’t want you telling him things he doesn’t have to know.”

Aphiwe looks out the window.

“Do you understand? You live in my house, it is not your home. It is Limi and Sengezo’s home. You are only here because your mother’s husband doesn’t want you in his house and your grandmother is dying. You will live by my rules, or disappear.”

Aphiwe is now well aware that her life is going to be hell going forward.

“Stop with the crying. And when people come over and they happen to see you, tell them you are Harriet’s daughter, nothing about my husband being your father,” her stepmother says, as she parks the car on the yard.

Aphiwe is hungry, but she runs upstairs to her bedroom and throws herself on the bed, covering her head with a pillow. Her stepmother is right, nobody wants her, not her mother and not her father, she thinks. He never wanted to live with her, he was probably forced by the law.

She has nobody to help her with her homework and sign it, and she doesn’t know if she will get any food any time soon.

She’s almost ready to sleep when Harriet walks in with a plate of food and a glass of juice. She decides she will not drink the juice because she doesn’t want to wake up in the middle of the night to go pee, not after what she heard last night.

When she is done eating, Harriet makes her sit on the floor between her legs, just like she did when she was plaiting her hair. This time she is cutting the remaining patches of the hair, in silence.

“Don’t worry, my girl. She won’t hurt you when your father is home.”

But her father is never home, Aphiwe knows that very well.

Tomorrow, she will run away and never come back to this house.

“Sleep now, my girl, things will get better soon, you’ll see.”

Tell us: What would you do if you were in Aphiwe’s situation?