No matter how much I tried to ignore Mother’s Day, it was right in my face.

Papa and I had stopped at our local mall the night before; the place had turned into a perfumed garden. Now on the way to school, a sing-song voice on the radio had announced: “Ten per cent off all perfumes till Sunday.”

The guy who sold stuff at the busiest intersection in the city was getting ready too. Usually he had cellphone chargers, rubbish bags, clothes hangers, sunglasses and other such stuff, but on this Friday morning he was surrounded by red roses. Over his jeans and T-shirt he wore a cardboard apron. It had ‘MOTHER’S DAY SPECIAL. ROSE R5’ splashed across it in red capitals. He pulled out a rose from a metal bucket and offered it to the driver of the car in front of us. A man’s arm stretched out of the window and dropped a few coins into the seller’s upturned palm. The woman in the passenger seat leaned over to kiss the driver’s cheek when he handed her the rose.

I rolled my eyes and got my phone out to update my Facebook status: “Please spare us the mama songs this Sunday.”

Papa stared straight ahead when the flower seller approached our car but the man didn’t give up. He pointed to his roses and Papa shook his head. Then he tapped on Papa’s window and smiled. Papa banged his fist on the steering wheel and I swear he stuck his middle finger up too and said, “Damn this idiot!”

I willed the robots to change: Green. Green. Green. They ignored me and continued to glare red. When we finally started to move again, the flower seller waved at us before crossing the road. He twirled and skipped like a ballerina. Papa’s frown deepened. He seemed angrier than usual. Like me, the coming of Mother’s Day used to fill him with excitement, but not anymore. We arrived at my school. Papa pulled off the road and stopped by my school gate.

“Study hard,” he said.

“I will, Papa. Have a good day.”

I waited for Papa’s car to rejoin the road and watched it disappear into the early morning traffic. As I crossed the road, I heard brakes screeching and metal clanging. The zebra crossing flashed a green man but I did not move. A scream was building up inside me and I closed my eyes. Nooooooo! But when I looked again Papa’s red car was zigzagging through the traffic. It wasn’t him in the accident. I steadied myself before continuing to walk. When I got to my classroom, my English teacher was already there.

“Morning, Ma’am.”

“Morning, Naledi,” she responded, but her eyes were fixed on a white envelope that she was opening. She pulled out a card and smiled as she read. Before setting it down on her desk she kissed it. About the size of an exercise book, it had pink flowers. I guessed that it had a syrupy verse about motherly love inside it. On her desk was a vase with a red rose.

Damn! There was just no escaping Mother’s Day.

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Tell us what you think: What kind of relationship do Naledi and her father have? Why do you think she doesn’t like Mother’s Day?