Shuuu!!!

I would say like any other family mine is full of drama but that would be a desperately vain attempt at toning down the madness that defines my family. For some unknown reason I have always survived the more volcanic of our episodes, and I want to keep it that way. As a newly wed I need to keep the new family I have as far away from the explosive Mdlulis as possible because this marriage might not last a year. Only my grandparent’s marriage lasted long enough for my grandfather to father all of my grandmother’s children. It’s almost been a norm that every marriage that came after, recognised or a case of eloping, ends in months because of endless baby daddies drama among the Mdluli females or kids showing up in search of their biological fathers.

The hilarious truth is that every one of them always find their father, because that’s what the Mdluli men seem best at….REPLENISHING the earth!

Since my wedding, I have given all sorts of excuses for not having any one of my family members visit me, as well as limiting my visits to their homes. It’s either been the fact that Nkosi and I are still settling into the new house and neighbourhood and have to hold off visitors; or it’s the Covid-19 scare that has us grounded in our home and unable to make visits. So far these excuses have held. BUT just as the devil would have it, my rebellious, or is it promiscuous stepsister Anele decides to show up at our door unexpected. This girl didn’t pitch up at my wedding even though she knew that I specifically asked her to be my best girl because she’s the only one of the six stepsisters that I had some form of an attachment with. And as a loner I could not exactly get a friend to play best girl. She was my only option and she just was a no show. The disrespect was enormous but even as she stands chewing gum on my front door, there is nothing in her countenance that screams remorse and possibly, “hey, I am here to apologise about six months ago I got mixed up in the usual drunken stupors and totally forgot that the only sister that doesn’t call me names was getting married and I was best girl!”

Even with all the anger that I felt boiling inside me, an apology could still have made me allow her into my home despite my earlier reservations around visitors during a pandemic. What came out of her mouth crippled my sense of composure. My fists went flying everywhere, my feet landing on any and every part of her body that I could reach. I was like a mad woman. I believe that for a brief moment I did actually lose it. It’s only when she lifted the bag she’d been holding tight onto that I noticed the baby bump. Even in my madness I knew not to hit her further. She deserved more than the few punches and kicks she had received from me, but that baby, whoever’s baby it was, deserved to be protected.

I hate this about me. The fact I still care when everyone around me doesn’t seem to give a dime about how they treat me. Especially when I have only shown them kindness and generosity.

To stand in front of me in my house, and tell me that I don’t deserve my marriage is an insult to my dignity. I, more than anyone in that Mdluli clan, deserve the escape out of the hullabaloo of that family. For a good 28 years I lived in that chaos and worked to be a better person, not for anyone but myself. When they made jokes about how I was “keeping myself for a men that’s probably out there gallivanting”, I stayed true to my principles. I knew from the get go that I did not want to end up like my mother, or my step sisters. That I wanted to be a mother to children whose father would take responsibility and raise them with me. My engagement didn’t move or flatter them. They had something else to say and this time it was the occasional sarcastic reference of how marriages in our family don’t last a year. I appeared strong but I lived my entire adult life in fear of slipping just once and ending up like the rest of them. Content in the mediocrity of fatherless children and single motherhood. Now listening to my youngest stepsister disrespect the one thing I have worked my whole life for is something I just would not have. She will either sleep outside or return wherever she is coming from. She has always been trouble and my marriage can do without trouble.

Just like they say, “it never rains but it pours!” My husband’s car flickers into view right before I shut the door in this devil’s of a stepsister’s face. I smile and wave at Nkosi as he drives in but for some reason his eyes glare dangerously at me. It doesn’t take a second for me to figure out the connect between this foreign facial expression and the woman that now sits bundled in my veranda. In my mind I had rehearsed my narration of the situation, and I already concluded in my head that he would take my side and we send Anele packing. What I had not profiled in my mental rehearsal was the possibility of my husband being angry at me for dealing as I saw fit with a woman that he too was angry at for almost ruining our wedding. Before I entangle my mind in confusion, I snap back into the moment and what I see and hear throws me off balance. Nkosi is on the floor helping Anele up (a little too cosily) and points her to the open door that I am standing next to. In my mind I need to stop him and bring him up to speed with how deserving she is of sleeping outside but alas! Nkosi burst out an,

I was going to tell you babe. I just didn’t know how to.”

That’s the last thing I remember. The next thing I am in a hospital bed and the doctor says I have been knocked out three days straight. I feel myself fade, into another of these dark holes. The Mdluli holes. I guess I was too stupid to think I could be any more different than what my blood predetermined I’d be. Another divorcee. The one that lost the husband, and the baby too!!!