A Reason to Snow in Summer

The room I walked into was dim, no summer lighting source could penetrate the curtains that were closed so carefully stretching out at each end of the curtains, as though reaching somewhere it knows it cannot get to. The bed wasn't inviting but I made the bet to sit and adjourn the meeting I was called in for.

"Hi how have you been?" My aunt asked.

"Fine. I've been fine," I responded.

Although it was human decency to always start a discussion with caution I was camouflaged.

"Good," my aunt responded, "that's good." She took a moment to gaze at me as though in search for more. 

"I am going to start off by apologising, for having failed you as your mother and you as my child. We've been distant and I don't know what happened." She went on, "I feel that there are things that I have let slip off and I now need to urgently address them," she finally stated.

I narrowed my eyes to the forehead of my aunt to take myself into a space of total safety, where I couldn't feel seen and I couldn't hear nor see anyone. My cousins played in the background in a racket of laughter and little whines of arguments with one another. It was the sort of noise I couldn't resist even in my slightest silence of focus and meditation.

"The etiquette to hold relationships is important. You will learn when you grow that connection with people in any manner is important and must be respected." she tailored the word when as an emphasis of the child she's always seen me to be. As though the space between when we started drifting apart wasn't a sign of my change regardless of the woman I now stand as. 

"You've been disrespectful responding late to my text messages without saying you're sorry for responding late. In future apologise, it's only right that you do that especially to someone who cares about you." Her clarity was so near and in reach, it felt like a cleanse of what I already know of myself. She spoke as passionate as a rehearsed public speaking candidate. Here I sat with a woman undeniably entitled to my apology, I was far from a conversation of my thoughts with her, just as the wind always hurled me this way and that way because of my slender weight. It was the coating on our relationship that could have been her ideology.

The Little knowledge of our head space for the past 6 months that have had moments of an exchanged greeting and good night's said absent minded was a drifting sign we both chose to ignore. I noticed her back turning away in the early days of our staying together. I noticed a quick response without thought in our morning greetings. I noticed that when I worked, and made time to teach my cousin her homework and doing house chores that it was not enough and more of my glass was expected to be emptied. In my control, I openly communicated the things that I committed to so she would was always aware of the activities under her roof. I did not notice that growing into my womanhood was becoming more out of her control and in my own order, as I made sure to prepare her for any changes that I felt in me, but gave her full access to listen when I told her to be aware.

She continued her rehearsed monologue, and persecuted me in her second count. "The thing about hiding food isn't welcome in my house. I have worked extremely, EXTREMELY hard to make sure I sustain this home." She swung her arms over her head to exalt an energy she couldn't control. Her eyes were shut, her voice strained, and the head wrap over her head counted towards her emphasis of motherhood that bare loose in her feelings. I waited for the next count, but she continued to talk of her current. "So you hiding a can of juice and a packet of chips in your drawer is incredibly disrespectful. You came and brought in a bad spirit!" She exclaimed. "I am correcting you now, and I know in this house we have big throats, food doesn't last, so if you want to buy something and you want to enjoy things on your own, do it outside this home," her confidence was daring and spoke from a core of loosening a tightly rooted dying tree. The stomping of my two cousins came in the room and the heat of the blocked light did not resist it’s presence.

My experience with lonesome was not new to me but this time there was a deep cutting edge that settled between the 2 meter distance we sat in. "On your own" is what I already knew from the beginning when I moved here. To communicate my own mental instabilities, find my own way of life, my own hopes aspirations solitude independence highness. Even under her roof full of people I was all on my own. Perhaps that's why I felt that buying my own juice when I fell sick was part of my medication and when I healed, the chips became my piece of cake. These were things I had to think for celebrations of my health on my own. 

A ball of laughter entangled itself in our presence to lighten the mood; but in their laughter, I looked at my cousins with a bit of shame, a bit of resentment, a bit of pride and a bit of pitty - a feeling that I could not, for a very long to, get right. 

"No guys, Sthembile and I are still talking. Mummy will call you when she's done," she stiffened her voice. I instinctively straightened my back.

"But mom when are you..."

"Hai Tlhoko! You and your brother get out!" Tlhokomela protested unknowingly that her mother was on a race speaking at me, and this time she had no patience to listen to her children argue with her as they always did. I admired their freedom to speak with one another, to have intellectual conversations on their thoughts and tickle fights here and there. But the freedom was also a chaos that filtered boundaries. They had taken a huge price of my mind and peace of solitude to having nothing left in me to say the least. I felt heat in the layers of clothes I had protected myself under.

"I hear you aunty," I reminded her that I am here.

"Three," She said.

My sigh was a trumpet! I relaxed, set my arms behind me as though sun tanning on the beach. She glared into me searching for my soul, searching for an answer only she and God had spoken of. I assumed this because her bible was sitting next to her faced down with some pages open.

"Three, I heard in the air that you're complaining of helping with my son's homework if that was the case I would have rather had you tell me you didn't want to do it rather than doing something unwillingly or half-heartedly." Her chest raised a pulse of furiousness. She would fight for her kids even when her understanding is far from truly knowing the story at heart. I further crossed my feet and stretched my legs. My yawn was coupled with the arch of my back.

CRACK!

My back fixed itself into its natural accuracy. I took a moment to listen to the television while she flipped her bible over into a page she'd marked. I had come to learn that Joyce Meyer was her primary go-to source for strength, and for the truths she was so certain were my faults in her life. I wanted to go to my cousin and have a conversation even though she wouldn't have answered nor understood me. Our relationship was that secretive that no one knew of our late night conversations and star gazing at little evening skylights. I listened to her, and she listened to me, but even when she listened she always found a way to bring my conversation to her own heartbreaks of her presidential mother.

In a short and coherent note I responded, "Thank you aunty. I hear you."

She sat up readying herself. I looked to her and a sudden cloud of neutrality came over when I spoke. She inspected me as though I am in a psychotherapy centre getting assessed of my mental state. 

"I just have one thing to respond to," I carelessly said and continued as she nodded in subtle excitement. "I complain moving forward. I live in truth, intentions and purpose," I wrapped up. But that response wasn't my truth. My ownership in complaining, had not been something I had expressed. But I owned it because between her truth for me and my own belief of me, it was the only thing I could have been so close to giving into but I didn't because belonging in that household was my only heartbeat that pumped for a reason to stay.

"That is all I have to say." I rummage my hand in my pocket and handed her the house key.

"Do you like your new place?" She asked cunningly. What more was she searching for? A reaction of how I feel, or how deeply unapologetic I am of serving myself in a modest and most honest way I knew how?

"Yes it's fine thank you," I responded tightly.

"I told you that you didn't have to move. You are always welcome to stay longer," she prowled.

I smiled.

“Oh and aunty, I did not like it when you told me last minute to stay longer at where I was stationed to work.” I was sure that having listened to her would allow me to leave my burden at our table.

“Oh no, that was a last minute request I needed to make when I realised it the morning you left for work.” My purity for her got spiked and within that instant I swallowed the surfacing tears from a mother I hardly understood. 

"Thank you aunty. Thank you for giving me time to stay with you," I closed the lengthy conversation and watched her take the head wrap off her hair, and I led off and out, leaving behind what seemed like a truth I could not carry on.

 ***

For those that left her home without dignity and in a rush to police their wellness for their own political reasons, I was sure to not be a repetition of their tracks. I was sure now that giving myself that freedom and the insightfulness of serving my higher self, led me into a new home. I walked down the staircase and entered into the sun lit room to collect my two carry bags that I came with when I moved in. I hold with me my space that the year and six months had given me while I stayed. The year was tolerable, the six months not so much. My bags gave me a belonging in having a shelter of clothing I called my own.

I left calling out my two cousins who rattled their voices excitedly to the sudden flakes falling from the sky.

“It’s snow, it’s snow, it’s summer snow they celebrated! Sthembile, it’s snow!” Tlhokomela barks my name as though knowing that this would be the last time she says it in my presence. 

Without a word I stepped out. The fall of flakes were the infinite whistle of grace and divinity that started washing itself over me. I am coaxed into an impromptu baptism of white iced flakes that reminded me of coconut before moving into my new home.