Sindie

I cry out, willing myself not to scream out loud.

My mother looks at me with no ounce of sympathy showing and a beer in her one hand. “You are the one who went and spread out your legs to every guy who was willing to give you R50,” she says shaking her head. I almost shouted this is not the time but I don’t, not because I respect her cause I don’t, she had never been a mother to me; she left me when I needed her the most. I even doubt that she has ever loved me. I don’t allow myself to cry as I remember her words that she continues to say whenever she’s drunk:”you were a mistake.”

I had to drop out of school at grade 10 not because I was lazy but because I had to wake up at 3 am to fetch my mother at the bar where she had fights or where she collapsed cause of her drinking.

I had to drop out of school because I needed something on my something; that’s when I ventured into prostitution, chills ran on my body as I remember older man, old enough to be my dad on top of me and now I was pregnant and ready to give birth at any second.

I spread my legs on the floor already feeling the baby ready to come out. I screamed at the worst pain that I ever felt in my entire life.