Chapter 43 - Chapter 42

I'm home.

Not sure I ever really stopped thinking of the house on First Avenue as home, but after days of not seeing my kids, not holding Naledi, they're here, so this feels like home. I didn't even bother going to my own place first, just drove here straight from OR Tambo. Over the last few weeks of clandestine hookups I've got into the habit of not knocking, of walking right in. With the kids home, I hesitate. We said we'd tell Sphe when I got back from Durban, but what are we telling him exactly?

Ma and Baba still like to fuck, but that's as far as it goes.

Got it? Good.

Is that even true? Is that as far as it goes? I hid it well, but when Naledi told Zinhle our divorce was a mistake, it tore something inside me right down the middle, something still hanging in raggedy shreds. The implications of her admitting that? Tectonic. Shifting and shifting the very ground under our feet.

We didn't discuss what she said. I didn't spend the night. Even though Zinhle knows now, it would have felt strange being in Naledi's bedroom with our daughter under the same roof. Our whole situation feels like it's happening inside a time warp, trapped between cycles. There are moments when we feel like the people we used to be. That passion. That connection from before. And at times this feels completely foreign, like we're strangers discovering each other for the first time. It makes sense, though. I'm one person made of two strands. The things from my past that keep shaping me, and the person I'm slowly becoming. My finger is still hovering over the bell when the door flies open.