THE WRONG ONE: HIS SIDE

About this story

Langa Mkhize's father gave him one piece of advice about women: choose with your head, not your heart. Thirty-one years of marriage as evidence. A house being built on the edge of Middelburg as the foundation. A framework — not a spreadsheet, exactly, but something close — to separate the women who made sense from the women who didn't. Refilwe made sense. Sharp, ambitious, a woman who matched him move for move. She was his number one. Until she told him he wasn't hers. Esther didn't make sense at all. Congolese. Salon owner. Bright yellow underwear and amapiano and peri-peri chicken eaten on counters. She asked him who was going to dance in his kitchen, and he didn't have an answer. He kissed her anyway. Then he left before she woke up. Lindiwe made sense. Finance. Zulu. Composed. His father approved. The lobola happened. The house got furnished. Everything correct. Everything quiet. Then Langa discovered his wife had a list too — and he was number one. It should have felt like love. But instead, it felt like they both settled.