So every month end I would become excited and wake up early to freshen up before he got home.  My mom sometimes  would say that I should stop bothering Sipho and let him rest, but he would disagree with her and say he just enjoyed spending some quality time with me.

The following year I turned 7 years old and had to start schooling. My mother searched for  public schools  nearby, but she couldn’t find space because they were already full. She went to a few private schools and they were expensive and there were few spaces available and they were ready to take me in but unfortunately my parents couldn’t afford the fees, then they decided to enroll me for the following year.

As life was so perfect for me I guess for my parents it wasn’t because now and then they would argue about something until it became physical and it was an unpleasant sight to see as a child.

And it became even worse as time went on, even so, Sipho never laid his hands on me and neither did he want my mother to beat me also. I remember one of their heated moments my mom decided to punish him by packing some of our clothes, his ID document and his bank card while he was at work and went to some motel nearby for a few days just to scare him. It actually did work because he got worried and looked for us every where he could think of. He even went to the last place my mother would likely to go, her parents house at Tembisa. I say this because she doesn’t really get along with her parents.

After he arrived there he had to explain everything because they didn’t know our whereabouts, but they contacted her and told her that there was a man called Sipho looking for her and she told them what had happened and where we were. Two days later we went back to him, but after she opened a case against him because the police called him in and told him that if he continued to abuse my mother they would arrest him next time, and after that he never laid his hands on her again.

As small as I was, I was really proud of my mom. She became my strong ideal woman and my role model and she was happier than before.

I had two close friends, Linda (a girl) and Thabo ( a boy). I remember one day Thabo’s mom had some urgent family issues to attend to but couldn’t go with him, she asked my mother for him to stay with us for a couple of days.

One of those days, while playing with Thabo, we stumbled upon an handbag outside the door of one of the rooms at my flat were I was staying and it was open. We peeped inside and saw a purse on top and decided to take it. We ran to my mother and told her a lie that we found it near a garbage disposal at the parking lot.

The purse had couple of hundreds, my mother took the money and kept it for us, and said she will give us bit by bit.