Yonela’s phone rings. She stops doing the ‘Bieber Quiz’ in the Free 4 All and answers. It’s her friend Sylvie.
“What do you do when you feel like killing someone?” Sylvie asks angrily.
“What are you saying, Sylvie? Is something wrong?”
“Just answer me. What do you do when you feel like killing someone?” She says each word a bit slower, giving it the weight it deserves.
“Is it a she or a he?”
“It’s a she. Anyway, does it matter? Right now my head is a boiling pot about to spill over. What do I do?”
“Take one deep breath…a second one…a third one…”
There is a moment of silence. Yonela can hear Sylvie taking deep breaths on the end of the line.
“I’ve done it. It’s not working.”
“Go to confession.”
“You know I’m not Catholic. Besides, I haven’t killed anybody yet.”
“Thinking about it is already a sin.”
“Yonela, give me another reason, not a religious one – dammit, my airtime is finished!”
Yonela sends her an SMS:
Sylvie calm down cum ova 2
my place W8tin 4 u.
Sylvie looks at the pile of clothes waiting for her to wash. Her pot of anger boils over and she bursts into tears. The so-called little brother she is carrying on her back has woken up and is wriggling.
The door squeaks open as Sylvie’s uncle, Damascene, comes in from his shift as a security guard.
“Why are you crying, Sylvie? Is Dudu a trouble? Where’s your mother?”
She frowns at him. How can he ask her where her mother is? He knows that she died in the war in Congo. But he is not talking about her real mother; he is talking about her ‘stepmother’, Maman Brigitte, as everybody calls his wife.
“She has gone shopping again, with Nadia.”
The baby, who has recognised his dad’s voice, is squirming to get off Sylvie’s back.
“Oh! Come Dudu,” Damascene says, pulling the baby out of the towel and holding him up and spinning him around so that he chuckles.
Sylvie goes to her room and throws herself down on the bottom bunk-bed. It was a fight to get that bottom space. Maman Brigitte complained that her daughter Nadia, who is younger, might fall off the top bed. But it was her uncle’s say that counted in the end.
As she pulls the blanket up over her head to shut out the day, her cellphone beeps again.
Whr r u? r u k?
She wipes the tears from her face. Maman Brigitte is going to be mad when she comes home to find that heap of clothes unwashed. But Sylvie doesn’t care anymore. She is sick of being treated like a slave by her stepmother – like a piece of trash.
She looks at the time on her cellphone. It’s nearly twelve. She thinks of the washing one more time. What was Maman Brigitte thinking, leaving her all this work after what she did to her yesterday? And then Sylvie gets out of bed, grabs her bag and opens the front door.
She walks straight into Maman Brigitte who has come home with her hands full of shopping bags. Sylvie doesn’t look up. She keeps her head down and starts to run away from the house, away from Maman Brigitte who is always there – her and her shadow.
Nadia goes to her room. She is getting tired of these fights that are now occurring almost every day.
“Where are you going? Come back here. You need to prepare food!” Maman Brigitte shouts after Sylvie. “Come back here or you’ll be sorry.”
Sylvie blocks her ears to Maman Brigitte’s harsh voice as she runs. Tears spill down her face.
***
Tell us what you think: What can be difficult about living with a step parent or guardian?