Page 17 - The Mending Season

had pretended to be sick - but that would probably have led to her losing her job. Mmamane Mabatho said, “White people dont like to hear that Black women can be sick, sad or have problems at home.”The second possibility was that maybe, just maybe, it really was possible, they’d heard ofit once or twice - although very rarely - she had been given her holiday time and she would go back.While most women left their mothers’homes to get married and createfamilies, the Masemola sisters stayed together in the house they hadgrown up in, dreamed about having a big business some­ day, and never envisaged a life without each other. They kept their mothers gramophone and all her records, dancing to her memory longaftershehaddied. \Justabrokenheart,”Millicenthadtoldher girls the day she stopped dancing. “That’s all. Nothing else hurts. ” Herfuneral had been small and the neighbours had said their “I toldyou so’s”.Thefour women met every evening in the bedroom where both theirparents had died and listened to stories that Tumanepassed down about theirparents. The seventies had been brutal, killingpeople’s children and their souls. At that time, the Masemola sisters had clung to the thread o fanecdotes as w ell as the memory o ftheir mother because their lives depended on it. They had never learnt to play or have conversations with people outside their home, so they stayed and laughed, loathed, played and dreamt together. Itfelt normal to them but unnatural and dubious to their neighbours.The morning heat found me cleaning the kitchen - always the last room to clean - and looking forward to sitting on the stoep, watching people pass by and listening to the gospel music of our next-door neighbour, Mma Motsei. She was a Christian who went to church on Saturdays - mzalwane, a born-again.17