Chapter 9 - Luvuyo

"You were gorgeous today, baby," I tell Céline in the Student Centre after the game while she waits for more photographs to be taken.

She truly is. With her locs twisted into an elaborate updo, she wears a cream evening gown splashed with colour. Her Miss Fort Hare sash and tiara put the gilded finishing touches on her appearance. They read all three of her names out this afternoon—Céline Nomvuyo Zibi—and the middle one went past like it belonged to somebody else.

"I know the university has video of it, but I filmed it on my phone and sent the footage to your mother and Sizwe."

"You did?" Céline's face, already glowing, brightens even more. "What'd they say?"

"Your mother cried. Sizwe said 'That's my girl.'"

Céline's smile slips. "Were you . . . I'm sorry. Hayi, I know you're sensitive about him."

"About Sizwe? How so?" I ask, knowing good and damn well how so.

"Dad, you flinch every time I call him Tata."

"Is that why you do it?"

"No. I call him Tata because he was always there for me and I respect him like another parent. If that hurts you—"

"It doesn't hurt. It wasn't easy to accept. Not the part about him being another parent, but the implication that maybe I wasn't always the father I should have been. That's not your problem, though. It's mine. That was on me and the choices I made."

She stares back unblinkingly. She doesn't answer, isn't making this easy for me. I don't deserve easy. If I'm honest, I don't want it. Whatever she's holding back because I've hurt her, I want to earn it, so I'll take whatever she can freely offer now.