Khanyile stood the podium. The children looked so angelic that morning in their blue and white uniform. And the teachers looked sombre. She looked down at the piece of paper written in her daughters untidy scrawl.
They’d ask for the memorial service. It was as if they had cared. It was as if Thandi had been wanted here. She hadn’t understood. She’d thought that Thandi just didn’t want to go to school. She remembered Thandi the morning it happened, the way she’d looked. Her just combed hair was already ruffled and somehow her knees had become ashy.
She’d pushed around her breakfast, refusing to eat it. She’d taken what had seemed like an age, then, to get her bag so that they could leave. Khanyile wished in that moment that she had stopped and hugged her daughter instead of screaming at her. She wished that she hadn’t been filled with irritation when Thandi slammed her car door. She should have gotten out of the car and kissed her daughter goodbye.
The children looked up expectantly. Thandi’s classmates were in the front rows. They were all crying. She looked behind her. Thandi’s class teacher was dabbing a tear. How could she start. How would she start.
Khanyile was suddenly filled with anger, she clung on to it.
“Thandi left a letter,” Khanyile said looking at the school, “in her bedroom. The day she died.”
She ignored the flashing light of a press photographer’s camera.
“You see, I am a working mother. I leave home with Thandi in the morning, drop her off at school and I come home long after her. Sometimes I get home long after she’s gone to bed.
“I didn’t listen when she told me what was going on in this school. I didn’t see when the light left her eyes. I, like many parents, didn’t hear the change in timbre of her laughter.”
Khanyile looked at the school children. These innocent looking children had caused her child so much grief. There was no justice in the world. They lived when her child died. Their parents still came home to the sound of their children laughing in front of the TV all the while her home was quite. Too big for only her.
“Thandi wrote a letter. Hoping that I’d understand. She was only twelve.
Dear Mom
Things haven’t been good lately. I’ve tried talking about it, hoping it could get better. But the longer I go on the worse it becomes.
I want to laugh again and really laugh. I am tired of being hurt, of being a failure and of everyone hating me.
Last week Mrs Shaw told me that I must such a disappointed to my parents. Two days ago, mom, you said the very same thing.
I’ve been afraid to go to school. My class mates push me down the stairs and the teachers just watch and they blame me.
On Monday Philip spit on my book and Mr Andrews laughed and told me to wipe it off. I spit in Philip’s book too, just to get back at him and I got thrown out of class.
I remember when I was young. How we’d go to Durban and I’d dig a hole with dad and climb into it and dad would fill the hole until only my head showed. I found that so funny then, but now I want to be buried whole. Never to have to wake up again. Never to hear my classmates calling me names.
I’d give anything to remember how it feels like to have a friend. To have people smile at me and mean it.
I’ll miss you mom.
Thandi
Khanyile looked up from the tear soaked letter. She looked behind her at Mrs Shaw and Mr Andrews. They looked shocked. She looked at the principal. She looked back the school filled with children who had chosen to hate her daughter.
‘Who should be held accountable for my daughter’s death. You?’ She pointed at Mrs Shaw, “you?’ She pointed at Mr Andrews. “Maybe you?’ She pointed at the principal, ‘for letting this go on and not doing anything about it.”
‘Who’s Philip. Stand up Philip and look at the mother of the child you’ve just killed. Be tough, just like you were when you spat at my daughter.”
Philip didn’t stand.
Khanyile drew in a deep breath. ‘Or maybe, I should be blamed. For not taking her out of here. For being too busy to listen.”
She closed her eyes and remembered Thandi, not as the twelve year old who had become withdrawn but as the baby who would cry her lungs out. In that moment she just wanted to hold that warm, noisy baby to her heart and promise her to be the best mother the world had ever seen.
She looked at the sea of blue and white before her. In a week, maybe by tomorrow, Thandi would be forgotten. Some would pray to God for forgiveness, and for her daughter’s soul. Others would tell their spouse that her daughter had always been unstable. And the children would grow and forget. Maybe find a new child to bully. Ultimately, nothing would change. Thandi would still be dead and no one would be held accountable for it.
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