I was in the kitchen getting a glass of cold water. Thoughts of last night were still playing pleasantly in my head. What a night! My feet ached, but I was going to spend the day in bed with my feet up, doing nothing.

As I stood drinking, looking through the kitchen window, I caught a movement at the gate. It was probably Aunty or the gardener arriving for work, I thought, and went to press the security buzzer to let them in. But when I looked into the camera, I saw a strange man there, looking around him, up and down the street. He looked suspicious. I had never seen him before and I was considering pressing the panic button when he rang the intercom bell. I was wondering whether to answer, when I saw him push something through the letter box, then turn and walk away quickly, without waiting for anyone to answer the ring. It was unsettling: there’d been so many robberies the past few months. Even with a wall and electric fence and alarm and armed-response security guards, we were all talking about how unsafe our part of the city was getting.

But he was gone now and the sun was well up. It seemed safe enough for me to go outside and find out what he had left behind. It was a white envelope. I studied the handwriting on it. Written in a firm hand that reminded me of my teacher’s, black ink formed cursive letters that leaned to the left and made spikes instead of smooth loops. The person who wrote the letter was left-handed, like me, I thought. It was addressed to ‘Miss Senzeni Jonas’.

I was so absorbed I did not see Mama standing at the door.

“What’s that you’ve got there?”

“A letter.”

“From where? Why would the postman come today, Saturday?”

“I saw a man pause by the gate, buzz the intercom and then put it in the box. But who is ‘Senzeni Jonas’?”

Mama seemed to startle at that, then held out her hand. “Let me see!” she demanded. She turned the letter over. “No return address. Did he say who he was?”

“He didn’t say anything, Mama. He just dropped the letter in the box and left.”

“What did he look like?”

“I wasn’t really paying enough attention to notice.”

“Nothing? He said nothing at all?”

“Mama, the man left the letter and took off.” I didn’t understand why she seemed to be getting so agitated. We received all kinds of junk mail all the time.

Taking the letter, Mama turned and walked into the living room and I was left perplexed. I so wanted to tell her about the dance, but it seemed she wasn’t interested. I followed her.

“So, Mama, do you want to hear about last night? I had such fun and I even won a prize!”

“Not now Mpho. Later! I’m … er … busy with something right now,” she snapped, frowning at the letter which she held out in front of her, her hands shaking. She was breathing deeply, as if she was about to cry.

I had never seen her act like this. She was always calm. She never raised her voice. She was usually interested in all my doings. I have done nothing to warrant this kind of reaction, I thought. What could be in that envelope that would cause her to fall apart the way she was doing?

She was panicking. She hurried into her bedroom, closed the door and soon I could hear her talking on the phone. It seemed like just a few minutes later that my father was striding into the house.

“Where’s your mother?”

“In the bedroom. Papa – what’s going on?”

Then my aunt, my mother’s sister arrived, wearing a worried look. As she walked through the front door, she stretched out her arms to hug me. She held me like that for a while and I became even more puzzled about what was going on. Maybe someone had died?

“Make us tea, please, Mpho,” she said eventually. “Bring it to you mother’s bedroom.”

When I took them the tea, Mama was sitting on the edge of her bed, rocking from side to side, twiddling her thumbs agitatedly round and round, and it struck me that it looked like she had aged since I last looked at her. She looked like my grandmother.

“Take the letter, Mpho. Sit down. Read it,” she said.

“I don’t need to sit down, Ma. I’m fine.” I tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter. I read the salutation:

To my darling daughter, Senzeni.

“It says, ‘To my darling daughter, Senzeni.’ So who’s Senzeni?”

I searched my mother’s face. She was looking at my father. My eyes went to my father’s face. He lowered his gaze. Only my aunt looked at me, and nodded like she was encouraging me to go on.

“Read the letter to the end, Mpho and then we can talk,” said my father quietly. “It’s your letter. Then your mother and I have something to tell you. Something very important. We should have told you before but, it never really seemed the right time.”

* * *

Tell us: If you were in Mpho’s shoes what emotions would you be feeling, reading a letter from a stranger that begins, ‘To my darling daughter’.