Lies That Bind

I took a moment to reflect on what I’d just told Zeus. I lied to him about where my heart was. I guess how he felt about me was a lot deeper than I thought, because he walked out on me. I followed him, rehearsing what to tell him to explain my situation, but no matter what I came up with, it didn’t justify what I had done. I should have told him the truth from the beginning. I should have mentioned Morena, Kgosi and the affair from the beginning. As a matter of fact, I shouldn’t have let him into my life the way I did. Now, after all this time, I feel horrible. Once I catch up to Zeus at the reception area, I pulled him back by the arm, looked into his eyes and tried to find the words to apologise (which I couldn’t). he kissed me on the forehead, said goodbye and left.

Watching two men walk away from me in one night was enough to get me to bed with the rest of the wine. I passed out and had the longest night of uninterrupted sleep in a long time. The next morning “happened” upon me like a sudden thunderstorm and work was intense. I could barely hear what anyone was saying in the meetings; I didn’t care anyway because I had bigger fish to fry. I got through my day, got back home to find MaMogale’s car outside. “Fantastic! Now I have to deal with her too…” I thought to myself. I said a short prayer, got my things together and left the car. The walk to the front door was the longest I had ever made because by the time I got into the house I felt so exhausted.

“Hi Ma, I wasn’t expecting you over. How are you? Is everything okay?”

“I want you to talk to Morena to fix this marriage. I cannot let him ruin another good thing in his life because he cannot handle his grief. Not again.”

“I don’t know if Morena spoke to you, but we tried counselling and he refused to acknowledge his part in the destruction of the marriage. I played my part, did everything I was supposed to do and suck to my word. I must learn to love myself first, Ma. That’s something I had learned during this healing process since Kgosi’s death. I must remember to look out for myself first before I do that for others. I can’t nurture Morena and myself. He is a grown man, and I think that the only person who can get through to him should be you. You’ve raised him to be the wonderful man he is sometimes, and I commend you for that. I refuse to ‘imprison’ him beyond this point, therefore if he feels that he can no longer be with me then I have to respect that and allow him to go.”

MaMogale held up an envelope, I guess it was mine. She placed it on the table, walked towards me and gave me the longest hug she’s ever given me.

“I hate to lose you like this… Please, take care of yourself. You have been an amazing daughter, and an even better wife. That fool will soon know what he took for granted. I love you, Ona. I will always love you.”

With that, she walked out of the house, and drove off. I opened the envelope and pulled out divorce papers from it.

The terms include alimony paid to me at about R20 000 a month, I get to keep the house and my car as we get to split the money in the savings account we opened together. He gets to keep the holiday home we have in the North West, as well as the other two cars we had. I didn’t hesitate to sign the papers because I know that this was the end. I drove out to Lesedi’s office to drop the papers off wherever they need to be. The first thing she noticed was the look of defeat on my face, so she poured me a cup of tea, and asked me to tell her what happened. After explaining what happen the previous night, and the conversation I had with MaMogale, she just hugged me.

She had nothing to say, really, because there was nothing left to say. The show is over, and I need to move on. She offered to stay over at the house with me, so I stuck around at her office until she knocked off and we drove home together. Having girl time with Lesedi was therapeutic because I got to talk about everything I was dealing with, and I got to pamper myself for a change. We had dinner, wine to wash it down and put some ingredients together to create our own face masks. We applied them, had more wine and went to bed.

The next morning, I woke up to the feeling of discomfort on my face. It felt unusually hot, a lot worse than a fever. I got to the bathroom, washed off the face mask and noticed a major breakout on my skin. I had pimples everywhere! Actually, they looked more like boils. I looked like such an ogre, is scared myself and screamed for Lesedi at the top of my lungs. She came rushing into the bathroom, screamed out loud too before she realised what had happened to my face.

“Eish, chomi I am so sorry. I think we missed out on a key ingredient for this one. Mama gave me the recipe, I think I might have missed one thing. I am so so—”

“Tsala how the hell am I supposed to go to work looking like this? I can’t even leave the house, bathong! I look like an infected foot, Lesedi! How do we fix this??”

“Bona, we can call in sick today. I'll go to the pharmacy and get some allergy meds for you. I don’t know what else to suggest. Make a decision.”

I obliged, however the medication Lesedi brought didn’t work so I had to go to the hospital to consult with my doctor. I was not about to head outside looking like a ghoul from Michael Jackson’s Thriller music video. No way. Turned out, I had to stay at the hospital overnight under observation. The “boils” on my face could have become septic, so the doctor had to monitor their progress. As we all know, hospital food is horrible, so I had asked the girls to save em from it and bring me some real human food. They came by, and I caught Thembi up on what happened with Morena, Zeus and I. needless to say, she was not impressed by how I handled things but she’s glad everyone is on the same page.

“Mgani, there is something I have to tell you… I saw Mbali looking for wedding gowns at one of the boutiques in Sandton City. She was with two other girls, just laughing and being all happy and shit. it made me mad--”, Thembi said.

“Thembi, let’s not update each other on what my husband and his fiance are up to, okay. I’m trying to move on, so should we. Deal?”

In that moment, I got a text from Zeus. he asked if i was home. i told him i was at the hospital, but i would be back home the next day. then there was silence from him for the rest of the night. The next morning, I woke up to find a huge bouquet of red roses next to my bed. I immediately got up to see the note attached to them.

Get well soon, Beautiful.

Zeus