I guess it all started the day my father lost his job at the furniture factory. He’d been working there for five years already. My parents fought less when my father had that job. My father drank less. There was food on the table and money for things. When my father was working, my brother Masego stayed at home. He didn’t roam the streets with ‘the wrong crowd’ as my mother called them. Yes, things were good when my father had his job. But then he didn’t have it – and everything changed.

“You’re home early,” my mother said that day.

My father kept quiet. He opened the carrier bag and put one of the quarts of beer in the fridge and then opened the other and sat down in the sitting room. He didn’t turn on the radio, which he normally liked. Or the TV. He just sat and drank his quart.

“So?” My mother wasn’t going to leave it. She wanted an answer. I sat at the kitchen table trying to concentrate on my Social Studies homework. Trying to memorise the countries of Africa and their capitals. Botswana – Gaborone. Ghana – Accra, Mozambique – Maputo, Zimbabwe – Harare. Some were easier to remember than others. Like Mozambique. My friend at school, José, was from Mozambique so I already knew the capital before Mrs Lundi wrote it on the board for us to copy into our books.

But it was hard to concentrate on my homework with my mother’s questioning and my father’s silence. Why couldn’t she leave him alone for a minute? Even I could see he didn’t feel like talking. Sometimes people don’t feel like talking and they ought to be left alone. That was something my mother didn’t understand.

She stood in the middle of the sitting room, her hand on one hip, looking down at my father, who kept his eyes on the quart that he held in one of his hands. “So?” she said again. “Why are you home from work now? Did you get part of the day off?”

My father looked up at her for a while but said nothing. After a few minutes he let out a long, sad sigh. “I lost my job.”

“Lost your job? Lost your job?” my mother said, working herself up. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You must have. People don’t lose jobs unless they did something. Did you go to work drunk? I knew you’d be fired one of these days for going to work drunk. I just knew it!”

“I didn’t get fired. They had to let me go. The economy is no good and so no-one’s buying the furniture. It’s just piling up in the storeroom. They had to let some of us go. They said if things pick up, if people start buying again, they’ll let us know. They might give us our jobs back then.”

“But why’d they choose you? Why you? Why not those two Zimbabweans? Why not fire them? They can go back to their country and find work. The jobs here should be for South Africans.”

My father shook his head. “Tendai and Sipho are craftspeople, trained carpenters. They need to keep them if they’re going to stay in business. I was just a workshop assistant. I’m untrained. They don’t need me unless there’s enough work. That’s just how it is.”

My father got up, still carrying his quart, and walked out of the door. My mother went to their room. I could hear her crying all the way in the kitchen. I stayed where I was. I tried to remember all of the African countries and their capitals but my mind kept wandering.

* * * * *

The next day at first break José was testing me on the capitals. After break there was going to be a quiz on the capitals and I wanted to pass. José knew all the countries and their capitals; he had had to learn them in Grade 2 when he was in Mozambique. As was usually the case, I soon let the conversation drift somewhere else.

“Did you live in Maputo?” I asked, bored with the studying.

“For a little bit, but only when I was very small. Then we moved north to Pemba. My father’s parents live there. They have boats and my father worked as a fisherman. It was very nice there, Kenalemang. Being a fisherman is a good job. It’s nice being out on the sea all day.”

“So why did you come here?”

“I think my father got confused after my mother died. He didn’t know what to do. Now he was all alone to raise me and he wanted to do it correctly. He was afraid I wouldn’t get a good education in Pemba, so we came here to South Africa, to this town, Nokeng. But we’ll go back one day. Pemba is nice and fishing in the sea is nice too. Catching big fish is very exciting – the best thing ever! I want to be a fisherman one day.”

“Me too,” I said, though I didn’t really know what fishing in the ocean was like. I’d never seen the ocean; we’ve always lived here in Nokeng, in Limpopo, far, far from the sea.

I wondered if I’d ever get to the sea with all of the problems at home. I was even starting to wonder if I’d be able to finish school. Things at home were going from bad to worse and I wasn’t sure what was going to happen to any of us.

* * *

Tell us: What do you think of the way Kenalemang’s mother behaved after his father lost his job?