VOID Novel Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

SINENHLANHLA

When my father died, his family slammed the door in our faces. I was too young to remember the details, just fragments, really. But my mother told me enough. She told me how they threw her out like a stray dog the same day they buried him. As if she’d never been his wife and pregnant with Kayise. They didn’t let her stay and mourn. They took everything and gave us nothing.

Now, twenty years later, this woman stands in front of me at my workplace, tears streaming down her face, calling me ‘mntanomnewethu’ like I’m some long-lost lamb returning to the herd.

I’m out of the office now, looking her in the eye, anger simmering.

“I don’t know you and I don’t want to know you. Please.”

She wipes her eyes, voice trembling. “I’m your aunt. The youngest at home. We’ve spent twenty years looking for you, every lead taking us to a dead end. To think I swapped places with a friend last minute so I can come here, now I see it wasn’t coincidence. It was meant to be, so I could find you.”

I let out a dry laugh. “Looking for us where? Didn’t your family kick us out? Your parents threw my pregnant mother onto the street and took my father’s inheritance. Don’t you dare act as if you ever cared.”

“No one kicked anyone out,” she insists, suddenly firmer. “Siphokazi left the same day Butho was buried. My father begged her to stay, even just a week. She refused. An argument even escalated and there was a soldier wo threatened to have my father arrested for abusing a widow. I remember everything. You wore a pink dress, black shoes and a pink bow with a black rose which I gave you to match your outfit. You even—”

“We are not talking about outfits!” I snap. “I could’ve been naked for all I care! My point is your greedy family cast us out and stole what was ours. Now you come here, dripping fake tears, calling me family like you didn’t let us starve while you feasted on my father’s blood money? Uyanginyela sisi wabantu.”

Gift nudges my elbow. “Mind your language, Nhlanhla.”

I whirl on him. “Don’t you dare tell me what to mind. This woman can’t just waltz here and claim kinship like it’s a gift.”

I charge to Lihle and stand before her with my chest out. “I raised myself. I raised Kayise. I went to school on handouts from NGOs that sometimes forgot to pay my fees for two terms. And all the while, your family sat in comfort, living off the pension of a man who died fighting for this country while his daughters ate dust.”

Lihle’s hands shake. Tears fall faster. “What money? No one applied for Butho’s pension. We didn’t know where you were. My mother never stopped talking about you, wondering if you ate or in school wherever you were. She fell apart after your father’s death. She’s still on depression medication.”

“I hope that medication runs out,” I hiss. “I hope she dies the way she lived, like a witch. I hate her. I hate you. And I hate that I had to inherit these owl eyes of yours.”

I grab her by the shoulders and shake her hard. My fingers dig into her collarbones like I could rattle the lies right out of her. “I hate you,” I spit, voice trembling with fury. “I hate your family. I hate your dead brother who left behind people who never once asked if we were alive! I hate you, Lihle! Do you hear me? I hate you!”

I say it again and again, like a chant or a curse.

“I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.”

As if repetition could carve the truth into her skin. As if saying it enough times would make her feel even a fraction of what we felt, abandoned, erased and starved while they enjoyed my father’s money.

She doesn’t fight back or pull away. Instead, she shuts her eyes tight and lets the tears stream down, silent and endless, as though she’s not defending herself… but accepting it. She deserves every word. Her silence makes me want to scream even louder.

“I hate __”

“What’s going on here?” Mr. Khabo’s voice cuts through the air like a whip.

I let go of Lihle and cross my arms, still trembling with rage. He takes in the scene and his face smooths into that practiced mask of professionalism.

“Welcome to our school,” he says, suddenly warm, shaking hands with Lihle and her colleagues like nothing happened. “Please, come this way.”

He leads them off without another glance at me.

“That- was-bad,” Gift mutters, already backing away.

I get back inside the office. Tears stream down, endless. It hurts. Not just in my chest or throat.

It’s physical. I can’t even breathe. My lungs burn. My hands tremble. My knees threaten to buckle. It’s not just grief, it’s suffocation. Like the fire that took my house didn’t stop burning, it followed me here, wrapped its smoke around my neck and pushed me deeper into the water of my own past.

I’m drowning. Not in tears, but in twenty years of anger. With every sob, I feel myself sinking further, dragged down by the weight of a family that abandoned us when it mattered most. Now they want to claim us when it’s convenient for them? That’s crazy.

There was a time, when I was younger and hopeful, I wished for this moment. I imagined meeting them, looking them in the eye, and asking them why did they abandon us and if ever they thought of us. I used to hope that if they ever saw me, they would be happy. But Siphokazi never wanted to talk about them, even my grandmother. Not once. My father’s name was always spoken in whispers, if at all. It was as if saying it too loud might summon ghosts.

I remember one afternoon; I must’ve been twelve. I’d found the only photo we had of him tucked inside an old Bible. I showed it to Kayise. Sibongile saw us. She didn’t say anything, she just hit me hard across the cheek and snatched the photo from my hands like it was poison. I never saw his face again.

I closed the chapter on them and accepted I will never have any relationship with that family. Seeing Lihle and her telling me I’m her late brother’s daughter is like a wound ripped open all over again. I don’t want her love. I don’t want her stories of being the caring aunt.

I just want the past to stay buried, where my mother put it.

A hand taps my shoulder. I look up and meet Mr. Khabo’s blazing stare.

“What was that stunt?” he demands, voice low and dangerous.

“That woman is my aunt and—”

“I don’t care who she is to you,” he cuts in. “Those are social workers. Sent here because of the student suicide last month. When you sit behind that desk, you represent this school, not your personal vendettas. I expect professionalism always. Not a public breakdown over family drama.”

“Professional to the people who abandoned me? Who treated me like—”

“Lihle is here as a social worker, not your aunt,” he snaps. “You could’ve saved your fury for after. But no, you chose to scream in front of her colleagues. Did you even think how that makes us look? Like we can’t control our own staff?”

I say nothing. There’s no point. He’s already judged me. He doesn’t know what it cost me to get here; how many nights I studied by candlelight or how many shoes I wore through to the sole. He doesn’t know that while Lihle sat in classrooms paid for by my father’s death, I fought for every scrap of education I could find.

“I think you’re in no state to work right now,” he says coldly. “Pack your things and go.”

“Sir, I’m sorry,” I whisper, hands raised like a beggar’s.

“Sorry doesn’t undo the damage, Nhlanhla. We’re all carrying burdens, but we don’t drag them into the workplace. You can’t sit at that front desk with your claws bared.”

I can’t look at him. My chest is hollow. I don’t know if I’m being fired or suspended. I don’t ask. One wrong word and he might make it permanent. I grab my handbag; there’s nothing here that’s truly mine anyway and turn to leave.

He holds out his palm for the keys. I hand them over without a word and walk out, dragging my feet like they’re filled with stone.

I think of saying goodbye to Gift or Olay, but with everything collapsing around me, the last thing I want is to bleed on people who’ve only ever shown me kindness.

“Sinenhlanhla.” A voice calls behind me. I turn and see the one and only Miss. Social worker, the aunt whose education was funded by money that should have taken care of us. I want to continue walking because I know what will come out of my mouth right now will be venomous. I don’t want to be accused of tarnishing the image of this school more than I have already did. But I decide to stop, I’m no longer representing the school anymore. I’m just me.

“You walk like your father,” she says softly. “Those long strides.”

“What do you want, Lihle?”

“To talk.”

“I have nothing to say to you. The only person I’d ever want to talk to is your depressed mother. Not you. You grew fat on my father’s money while I scraped mold off bread just to survive. And now you’re paid in bank transfers while I get my salary in a brown envelope at a rural school. Don’t pretend you love me.”

“That’s exactly why we need to talk,” she says, stepping closer. “I understand your anger. But Sinenhlanhla, you’ve been fed lies. Someone told you you were kicked out. But that’s not the full story.”

“Are you calling my mother a liar?” My voice is ice. “She had nothing to gain from lying. But you have everything to hide.”

“I’m not saying she lied,” Lihle says quickly. “But there are two sides to every story. Hear mine. Then decide who’s telling the truth.”

“I don’t need to decide,” I spit. “I lived the truth. Your version is just smoke.”

She takes a breath then asks, quiet and sudden:

“I heard you mention Kayise. Is she a boy or a girl?”

I stare at her. “Is that part of your social work now? Get lost, Miss Social Worker. Have a good day.”

She opens her mouth to speak.

I raise my hand. “Don’t.” Then I walk away.

I don’t look back until I’m at the gate. She’s still standing there, still as stone. A conniving bitch who inherited a life that was never hers.

I pull out my phone and call Siphokazi. She hasn’t spoken to me since the fire. I thought I will never contact her as well, but she needs to hear this.

“Sinenhlanhla,” she answers. “Stop treating my phone like your playground. Two calls in a week is invading my privacy.”

“You won’t want to miss this.”

“Your house burned, I heard. I told you I don’t have money and you cannot stay with me.”

“Lihle Ndlovu is here.”

Silence. Then, “Your father’s younger sister? Umntanomthakathi (daughter of a witch) What does that one want?”

“She’s a social worker. They came to the school on duty. You should have seen her crying, saying she ‘finally found her brother’s child,’ that they’ve been ‘searching for us for years.’”

“I hope you didn’t believe that snake,” Siphokazi hisses. “That family isn’t just evil, they’re witches Nhlanhla. They killed your father for his pension. I don’t want their shadows near you.”

“Of course I didn’t believe her. I told her exactly where to go.”

“You did right my dear. Don’t allow her near you or talk to her. She will tell you nothing but lies. Everything you want to know about your father, you can ask from me. They never cared about you, why start now?”

“I know mom.”

“Don’t even give her your contact details. She might bewitch you. I will talk to my husband and see if perhaps we can drive there and put this Lihle in her place.”

I knew Lihle was a liar. I’m glad I never gave a chance to explain anything.

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