THEME: KNOCK YOURSELF OUT
TITLE: THE MELTING POT
Written by Asive Vukaphi
Life is a journey; it is never a destination. To some people, it is hard. To some, it is a walk in the park. Life has its uncertainties but it is better if you meet all those uncertainties on the road of life, not where you were birthed and nurtured. It is hard to withstand the trials and shamefulness that comes with life’s uncertainties when you get to experience them in a place called home, in a place where you should feel loved and cared for. In a place where you expected to feel the warmth of home and run to when life has you on choke hold.
For years, I had to endure being ill-treated. My parents never saw me as their precious cargo as daughters are affectionately labelled these days. It’s as if I was not what they envisioned me to be. It’s like they had a different idea of the daughter they wanted and boom, they were surprised with a curly haired caramel girl. Much to their annoyance, God created a carbon copy of my father.
Surprisingly, I am brilliant, just like him. I possess so much of his attributes. I have his character and my whole persona is a replica of him, his exact duplicate, his carbon copy – that is what I am. The only difference is that I am a girl. Almost all my life I tried impressing them and that… that made me to be not as free as I would have liked to be as I had lived under their shadows for most of my life.
Living under their shadows never impressed them nor did it ever made them to love me. If there is anything it did, it was to infuriate them.
“You’re an annoying bastard, Sakhe,” he, the one I came from his scrotum, would say without flinching and this would crack up his wife and make her have her fair share of rants.
“Mkruu! Andizange ndizale ndabola amathumbu apha,” she would say. “Akasoze abento yanto lomntwana yiva ndikuxelela.”
Every time she’d say this, my heart would break into a million pieces. It would shatter and dissemble itself and scatter around my intestines. I would carry it with my stomach until it gathers enough strength to assemble itself again and locate itself in its designated place.
My life revolved around being validated by them and for the love of God, they never saw the need to, and I kept shackled up and the need to liberate me from all these shackles they tied me with never aroused in them.
I grew up with so much resentment in me. It’s funny how, when you’re a victim of circumstances – the victim of birth in my case – you’re seen as an easy prey by predators. I got raped – not once, not twice but numerous times – and I never told anyone about those ordeals. I didn’t even tell the people who brought me on this earth. How was I going to explain how I rebelled and gave myself away to rapists? This is the narrative they’d take in all that I would tell them.
“Siyithini thina into yokuba uhambe wayozoneka emadodeni wakho uzenz’idini? Hay, susifundekela thina.”
My rape stories would be trivialised and reduced into me being promiscuous. I could’ve never let myself go through that heart-wrenching phase after experiencing such traumatic pain. Unguarded bitch, that’s what my parents viewed me as. A bitch that went above all else to show her promiscuity to the world. I don’t know how they came to that conclusion, but I remember that I got into a fight with one of the girls in my location because of a minor glitch and the gossipmongers fabricated lies about what we were fighting about. They said we were fighting over a boy. I used to laugh at this story until it latched on my back and had my parents calling me all sorts of derogatory names.
Hiding the fact that I was raped never gave me peace; it tormented me. Day in and day out, I got consumed by it like slow poison in my body. Every day, I woke up with my sheets and blankets drenched in urine.
“Ulixelegu elizichamelayo, usisinyemfu, ulinuku,” these words coming out from my parents’ mouths felt like daggers lodged in my heart and slicing it into pieces.
My confidence went straight to the dust because everybody knew how my bladder couldn’t contain urine for a long time, for I always relieved myself prematurely. “Sakh’okuhle, you’re an embarrassment,” my mother would say. “Have you ever seen an old woman like yourself peeing on themselves? Ulihlazo maan, phu!! Hamba apha, lento le enuk’umchamo. Kwawena ungu Sakh’okubi ngoba akho kwanto endakha ndayakha yantle oko wabakho. Ungumgqwaliso unezothe.”
And her husband would back her up like she has uttered the most beautiful and melodic verse ever. “Into ayaziyo kukuphuhla nokuncanca umnwe kodwa mdala. She’s indeed an embarrassment. Singamahlazo kwalapha endaweni ngenxa yakhe. Isidima sethu usirhuqela phantsi nxx!”
My heart would divide itself into two. I wouldn’t know what to say nor what to do. My mind would be on standstill and refuse to function well while my eyes cried rivers and dams.
Life for me was just a dusty, rusty stairs with cracks and holes. I had no back-up to fall on. Some days I would just wish I’d drop and die. I never understood why I had to live such a dissatisfying and distasteful life. I never understood why I was born in the first place.
The bipolar diagnosis made me this delicate person. I just didn’t know how to express myself thoroughly, yet I had so many questions. I didn’t know why I had to be on this earth to live a miserable life. I didn’t know why I had to descend from my mother’s womb only for her and the man she happily made me with to dismantle me and make me this person who is viewed as crazy and unwell by the society. I didn’t understand why I had to be aborted by the scrotum that made me and the womb that carried me. Every day I would wake up with tons and loads of unanswered questions: “Did I come on earth to endure all these trials of life? Abuse, rape, bipolar, loveless parents? What else was I set to endure? What else was lurking in the shadows waiting for me so I can also endure it? What else was set to come my way? What other storms and calamities I was to await to dive and dip into?”
These questions would brew in my mind like an already to be drank Mqombothi every day and unfortunately, they’d go unanswered. I wished and prayed for a miracle every second of the day, every minute, every hour, every week, every month and years and none would come. A miracle from whom isn’t seen by the physical eyes would have cheered me up, but things do not always go as we hope and wish for. Unfortunately, that’s the lesson of life I came to understand.
I earnestly prayed for a change. A change at home. I prayed for love; I wanted to be loved by my parents and be accepted by them for who I was. I prayed relentlessly for my mother to make me her best friend. For my father to lend me his ear whenever he can and give me warmth and let me into his bosom, engulf and envelope me with a prideful hug from time to time. I prayed for him to love me and be happy for my grades. I wanted him to be proud of me and boast to his friends about how I took everything from him, even his brilliance. I prayed for my parents to heal from whatever pain I caused in their lives that made them to narrow and point their animosity guns at me. I prayed deeply for everything but dared not to pray for sudden death. Dying was never on my prayer item. I only visualised it when the going went tough and I would chastise myself firmly after realising that I had given suicide some thoughts. Bendikoyika ukufa! Ndiyakoyika ukufa! Period.
I didn’t understand the deep-rooted hatred my parents had for me. Whatever I mistakenly did even if it was as small as the ant’s hill, it was made to be long and tall like the Kilimanjaro Mountain. I paid a hefty price for everything, even for things that weren’t done by me.
I didn’t understand why I had to carry the yoke of others just because I am older. I never understood the notion of being a stirrer only because I am older.
“You should learn to lead by example. Bafunda ntoni abantwana apha kuwe? You’re an unguarded and a ratchet bitch. I don’t even know what to call you because you just… you disgust me. Uyadika. Unezothe. Unegqemfe. Sies! Uyinja nje!” This was one of the favourite utterings by my parents when I had defended myself for being beaten for something that wasn’t my fault. I paid the hefty price, always. I paid a price for not stirring my siblings into the right direction and I didn’t understand how I would do that when I was a lost cause myself.
You’d think I’d get used to the beatings, derogatory words and insults but every time those would happen and be said, my soul would prematurely leave me and would gallivant in the realm of the dead and be subsequently pushed back by an unknown force. It would vigorously land in my ribcage and swiftly down itself through the right pipes and wind itself on in my body.
Life was nothing close to amazingly beautiful for me, but I lived and loved. Perhaps I pretended to live and love while I only existed. I cannot stand here and lie and say I turned out normal after all these predicaments, trials and tribulations I endured. My parent’s treatment wounded me, but I tried not to let all those to swallow me. I am still a melting pot waiting to be moulded and nurtured by the gentle porter. I believe I endured all these to one day tell a story of a melting pot that changed into a golden pot. My story is that of David and Goliath. I will triumph at the end and the Glory of the Lord will rise again.
She wiped the tears that were cascading from her eyes and cutting furrows down her face. She kept wiping them with both her hands while smiling and laughing. She was proud of herself and what she has achieved despite all the things she went through growing up. She was proud that she was able to stand tall and narrate her story while inspiring people to persevere.
Sakh’okuhle beautifully and proudly narrated her story to the masses who were watching television and listening to the radios, and those who read newspapers and all the people who attended the launch of Sakh’okuhle Foundation at the regional hall where the launch was held. She was now a happy soul who has accomplished a lot of things and had accumulated enough wealth to keep generations and generations to come afloat. She was expanding her legacy. She already had set up the Melting Pot Foundation and other developed foundations, but now introducing Sakh’okuhle Foundation and she saw the need to first introduce the melting pot and how the name came about.
Her speech left all the masses with teary eyes and her parents were wallowing in guilt and misery, but their daughter had long moved from that.
PUBLISH’D AFRIKA Magazine Facebook Short Story Competition is funded by the National Arts Council, Department of Sport, Arts and Culture and Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme 3
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