Andisiwe

I would never have done it if Mama didn’t cry in the morning, when Bulelani asked for breakfast, and there was none.

I had just brought the hot water for us to wash, and then Bulelani fetched the plates and put them on the table. Mama just looked at him and tears started streaming down her cheeks. We had finished the mealiemeal yesterday, that Mrs Dhlomo had given us, and I knew that she had run out of money too. I knew that. But Bulelani was too young to know.

“Hurry up, we need to get to school,” I said to him.

“But I’m hungry,” he whined. “Why are you crying, Ma? Where’s my porridge?”

“We don’t have any! Don’t you remember?” I shouted.

“Don’t shout at him, Andisiwe,” my mother said, wiping her face with her apron. “It’s not his fault.”

“I’m sixteen now, Mama,” I said. “Maybe I should leave school and get a job.”

“No!” Mama’s voice was stern. “You go to school. I will make a plan somehow.”

Bulelani’s eyes were big as he looked at the two of us. He didn’t say anything more as my mother kissed him and gave him his school bag. And he hardly said goodbye when I dropped him off at the gate of the primary school.

At school I couldn’t help thinking about Bulelani’s face, and then about Mama. He would get lunch at school, and so would I. But Mama had nothing. And there was no-one to ask anymore. I knew how she hated begging from the neighbours, and her family in the Eastern Cape had hardly anything for themselves – they were hoping Mama would send them something. So we couldn’t get help there. What would she be doing in our little shack, with its empty shelves?

On the way to school in the train we passed the fancy private school where kids don’t wear uniform. Usually my friend Yonela and I talk about the cars, laugh at the boys with their pants falling down and their untidy hair. But my heart wasn’t in it today.

“Look at that girl! It looks like she got in a fight with a stapler,” Yonela said. I caught a brief glimpse of a girl with lots of earrings and stud piercings on her ears and face. I tried to smile. But my stomach was feeling empty and my mind was full of worry.

The whole day at school I thought about my mother. What plans could she make? What could I do to help? I could hardly concentrate. And so, on the way home, when I saw the big supermarket with its flags waving and enormous pictures of bread and baked beans in the windows, I told Yonela that I was getting out here and she should go on without me.

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