1. The Stoep
By the time the bottle hit the concrete, I already knew how the day would end.
It was a Sunday. Late afternoon. The kind of light that turns everything golden but warms nothing. Ma was on the stoep with one sandal off, the plastic chair bending under her like it might give up too. Her lipstick was smudged by the cigarette in one hand and the glass of wine in the other. The empty bottle rolled slightly from where it had tipped near her heel, still catching the last bit of sun like it was holy water.
I stood in the doorway. Not in the house and not fully outside. Just…there.
Inside, the fan made that lazy clack against its casing, slow and rhythmic, the sound of something struggling to keep going. The air smelled of last night’s cooking and sour mop water. And sweat. Always sweat.
The twins were on the bottom step of the stoep, legs touching, backs hunched over a broken toy they refused to throw away. With the care of someone mending a wound, Marco gently twisted the head while Devon just watched.
They don’t talk much anymore, I remember thinking. That can’t be good.
Then came his voice. “…whore!”
Just one word. Slurred. Loud. Sticky with spit and anger. Then a door slammed somewhere inside the house. Ma flinched—the word had hit her in the back. But she didn’t cry. She never cried when he yelled. She only cried when he didn’t say anything at all.
“That’s the third time this month,” Devon said softly, still not looking up.
“Fourth,” Marco corrected, just as soft.
I stepped outside, one bare foot at a time on the warm stoep. I had crossed my arms without realising it.
Ma hiccupped and wiped her face. The skin was clean, but she kept wiping, chasing something that wouldn’t come off.
“He didn’t mean it,” she said.
She said it like she believed it. Or maybe she needed us to believe it, even if she didn’t.
“He just…he gets worked up. You know how he is.”
Yeah. I knew.
I knew what his “worked up” looked like, what it smelled like, what it left behind. I knew the sound of it—the sharpness of a slap that wasn’t loud, but heavy and biting. I knew the difference between when a plate shattered on its own and when it was thrown. I knew how Ma’s breathing changed when she heard his car door outside—how mine did too.
“Ma,” I said.
She didn’t look up.
“Ma.”
She turned towards me, a calm steadiness in every motion—the type of calmness that came only after a storm. Her eyes were glassy and tired, drunkenness still lingering on her breath.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” she whispered.
“Not yet, Ma,” I said.
She blinked at me, not understanding.
“Not yet,” I said again.
Because if I started telling the truth, the real truth, I wouldn’t stop. And if I didn’t stop, I’d burn the whole house down just to be warm.
Ma’s voice sharpened, then got defensive, like she’d felt the judgment before, from us, her children. I never wanted to judge Ma, I loved her. Sometimes it just got a bit heavy, sometimes we all just buckled a bit from the burden of loving someone who had stopped loving herself. Someone who had stopped choosing herself a long time ago.
“You don’t understand,” she said. “You don’t know what I’ve been through. What I’ve given up. You think it’s been easy for me to stay? To keep this family together?”
***
2. The Last Time She Left
Chanté didn’t come closer. She stood near the gate, half-turned, as though the house might open up its jaws and swallow her whole again.
Ma cleared her throat. Straightened her blouse. Pulled her chair upright—a small attempt to cover the cracks and restore some dignity. The last of what she had, held in her posture.
“What are you doing here?” Ma asked, not sharp, not warm. Just… brittle.
Chanté tilted her head a little, a smirk barely hiding her sarcasm.
“Heard the bottle hit the floor all the way in Hochland Park.”
I knew why she came, I knew Ma had called her, drunkenly sobbing about the life she no longer wanted to live.
The boys didn’t laugh. Neither did I.
“Don’t be lelik, Chanté,” Ma said, voice tight. “Not in front of the kids.”
That made Chanté smile—not a happy one, just a tired one. Chante was tired of Ma’s act. It got old, fast. Whenever we had visitors, Ma liked to pretend we were a normal household. She always made sure to let Chante know in whatever passive way she could, that she was now a visitor. Sadly, Ma could pretend all she wanted, it wouldn’t change the fact that Chanté was once one of “the kids”. Nothing would change that.
“Trust me, they know,” Chanté said, eyes flicking towards Marco and Devon. “Don’t act as if they haven’t seen or heard worse.”
Ma bristled. “You don’t know what it’s like anymore.”
“Ma,” I warned, but it was too late.
“You left,” Ma snapped. “You think because you have a fancy job and live uptown, you understand everything? Well, you don’t.”
Chanté’s mouth twitched. The start of something cruel she no doubt wanted to spit back at Ma. Instead, she looked at me.
“Still the same, huh?” she said, scanning the stoep for anything that may have changed.
I didn’t answer.
Because yes—it was still the same house. Same cracked stoep. Same flickering porch light. Same cupboards that didn’t close properly. Same angry man inside, slamming doors and poisoning the air we breathed. Same man who naturally towered over Ma. The giant we could not escape.
She looked at the boys next. “They’re taller.”
Devon nodded slowly. Marco didn’t move.
“They still sleep with the light on?” she asked.
I flinched.
“They don’t sleep much,” I said, my voice low.
A pause hung between us, thick and heavy. Full of everything that had never been said, of milestones that had been missed. I wanted to shout, to ask her how she could leave me, when we were all we had. I wanted to cry, to run to her and wrap my arms around her waist like I used to. I couldn’t. I was no longer that little girl. So I nodded and offered her a tight-lipped smile instead.
***
3. Flashback: The Door That Closed
The last time she left, she had slammed the front door so hard it cracked the frame.
It was after one of those nights—him, drunk, shouting, Ma crying into the sink, Chanté yelling back. She was seventeen. Brave. Too brave. She’d screamed at him to leave and told him she’d call the police. Told Ma she was pathetic for staying. Told me I was a coward for keeping quiet.
Then she packed a bag, took her school shoes and her small box of journals, and walked out. I had been standing in the passage, holding Marco’s hand. He was trembling. He always trembled after the fights.
“She’s not coming back,” he whispered.
“Don’t say that,” I whispered back.
But he was right. We didn’t see her face for three years. Until now.
***
4. Apologies And Lies
Ma stood up, a tremble rushing through her body as she wrapped her arms around herself. The alcohol was gone from her breath now, replaced by something tighter: pride, pain, shame. A cocktail she’d been choking down for years.
“I did what I had to do,” she said, her voice sharp with what sounded like betrayal.
“We all did,” I snapped before I could stop myself. “You act like we’re not going through it too.”
Ma turned on me then, her eyes burning. “You don’t know what it’s like to be me, Leandra. You don’t know what it’s like to love a man and still be afraid of him. To build a whole life just to watch him tear it apart. I have given up everything. My job, my music, my friends. Everything. For this family.”
“You got apologies,” I said, quietly. “We didn’t.”
She froze.
“You get the snacks,” I continued. “The cuddles on the couch, the sweet words after the storm. You got the cycle of hope. The lie that maybe he’d change.”
I could see her swallow hard, the words gathering at her mouth, bitter, half formed, but she swallowed them.
“Devon sits with you guys, hoping it’ll last. Hoping this time it’s real,” I said. “He believes in the good moments. Still does.”
Marco and I? We just drifted through. Quiet. Avoiding eye contact. Hoping to stay invisible. The snacks he brought tasted like manipulation. Tears swallowed whole. Everytime he said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it,” what he meant was: “You don’t really matter.”
Chanté looked at me then—really looked—and I knew she saw it.That I wasn’t the girl in the passage anymore. That I’d stayed and grown, stayed and survived.That I’d been burned by every apology that came in the form of a bag of chips and a fake laugh.
***
5. Leandra’s Fear
“Why now?” I asked her. “Why come back?”
Chanté hesitated. And when she answered, her voice was softer than I’d ever heard it.
“Because you’re next, Lee,” she whispered, then turned her gaze away.
The words hit me in the chest.
“You think you’re stronger than Ma. You think you’re smarter, faster. You think it won’t happen to you.”
I didn’t say anything. Nothing I could say would change the truth.
“You’ve got her fire, Leandra,” Chanté said. “And he’ll try to put it out the same way.”
She started to walk away, as if that was all she had come to say. But then she stopped—something in her shifting, like the weight of memory had pulled her back. She looked at me and in that moment her face wasn’t cool or distant. It was something else entirely. Something raw.
She stepped in closer, just a little, just enough, then whispered, so only I could hear, “He tried it with me too.”
***
6. Ghosts In The Kitchen
That night, I couldn’t sleep. Chanté’s words looped in my head like a whisper I couldn’t unhear.
“He tried it with me too.”
Everything clicked into place. The way she’d left so suddenly. The bag that had sat packed. The fury behind her eyes back then, so much louder than fear. She wasn’t just running from what she saw. She was running from what had almost happened. What she wouldn’t let happen.
I lay on my bed staring at the ceiling, the fan slicing slow, uneven circles of shadow across the walls. I could hear Devon’s soft breathing from the other room. Ma’s muffled voice—too gentle, too sweet—talking to Gerrit like nothing had happened. Pretending the bottle hadn’t shattered, that she hadn’t flinched.
They were on the couch again. Cuddled up. Pretending. I knew it without looking. It made my skin itch. Down the hall, Marco’s door creaked. I waited, listening. Then I heard him in the kitchen. Quiet, but not quiet enough. I got up.
He was sitting at the table, bare feet tucked under him, holding a cup of rooibos like it was the only thing keeping him grounded. His face was pale. Not just tired—pale.
“Can’t sleep?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Too loud.”
The house was silent. But I understood. I sat across from him. We didn’t talk for a while. The fridge hummed. A pipe groaned somewhere in the wall.
“Do you think she’s telling the truth?” Marco asked finally. “About… what he did.”
I didn’t answer right away. I didn’t need to.
“She looked different,” he said.
“Yeah,” I responded. “Like someone who escaped a fire. And we’re still inside it.”
***
7. Resentments We Don’t Say Out Loud
Some days I hate them. The twins. They don’t know it, and I’d die before I ever let them feel it, but there are moments when I look at them—hunched over that stupid toy, whispering to each other in that secret twin way and I think: If you hadn’t been born, she could have left him. We could have had a chance.
And then immediately, shame floods in like water through a crack. Because they didn’t ask to be born. They didn’t ask for him to be their father. They didn’t ask to be the reason Ma stayed. And yet, they are the reason. No matter what Ma says.
“He’s good to the boys,” she tells people when they ask about him. “He’s never raised a hand to them.”
As if that’s enough. As if kindness to one part of the family justifies cruelty to the rest. But I can’t stay angry at them for long. They’re kids, still soft in places life hasn’t reached yet, still quiet enough to dream. And they look up to me like I’m some kind of safety net, some promise they don’t even know how to name.
Still, when I’m scrubbing blood off the kitchen floor and they’re whispering in the corner about Pokémon, I want to scream. And sometimes I do. Not at them. At nothing. But they recoil anyway.
***
8. Where To Put The Fire?
4:12 PM. Monday.
I got home late from school, for no particular reason. I had idled in the library for a few hours, pretending to study, my eyes glossing over the same two pages of text. My grades were fine, better than fine. Anything to keep me from walking home too soon. By the time I reached the gate, Devon was already on the stoep with a ball under his one arm, wearing those dusty soccer shoes.
He didn’t speak. His eyes shifted from me to the house, then back again. Finally, he sighed–not the dramatic kind but the kind that says everything without words: You’re late. She’s been crying. You’ll see.
Then he stepped off the stoep and into the street, the ball bouncing ahead of him. His friends were out there already, barefoot on the tar, making up rules they’d all forget tomorrow.
I opened the door. The house was still, so still that I paused at the threshold. The fan in the lounge swung its head lazily. The kitchen sink was full of dishes, half-submerged in greasy water. Something buzzed in the light fitting.
Ma was on the couch, turned toward the wall. She didn’t move when I came in, so I dropped my bag quietly. She sniffed—the kind that comes when you’ve already cried yourself empty and your body is still catching up.
“I hate that he makes me feel grateful when he’s not here,” she said.
I stood next to the couch.
“I cry when I can. Not when I should. Just… when I can.”
She laughed, sharp and tired.
“They think I’m weak, don’t they? You all do.”
I didn’t answer.
“You think I stayed because I’m soft. Or drunk. Or stupid.” Her voice trembled. “But you don’t know what it was like when I met him. You won’t understand how hard it was giving everything up, thinking it would come back. Hoping it would.”
Ma liked to pretend I didn’t know. Like I was too young to understand. But I did: twenty-three, two girls to feed, a broken heart from the man who left her—her high school sweetheart. The choices she made, the life she tried to hold together anyway. I knew. It was all I’d ever known.
She turned to look at me. Her face was blotchy. Damp. Her mouth wavered like it still had more to say.
“I know what you think of me.”
“You don’t,” I said, staring directly at her.
“Then tell me.”
I paused, then spoke.“You’re the only one he ever says sorry to. I used to wish he’d say it to me too but now, I don’t.”
She was still.
“I know what it costs,” I continued. “To hear ‘I’m sorry’ from a man who’s going to do it again. I know what it means to keep accepting it. And I know what it means to stop.”
I stood up. “I’m not waiting for it anymore.”
She furrowed her brow.
“The apology,” I elaborated. “The one I never got.”
I sighed and went to my room. It was sitting right behind my door, where I knew it was, waiting for me to pick it up. She didn’t try to stop me—just sat there, shrinking into the corner of the couch like someone who didn’t know how to hold on without hurting.
“I love you, Ma,” I said. “But I need something that loves me back.”
The sun outside was warm on my face. Devon shouted something from the street. Marco nodded at me from the edge of the wall like he already knew it was only a matter of time before I walked down the street with the bag that had been packed for the last three months.
Simorne Januarie is a Namibian writer and poet whose work explores themes of identity, resilience, and cultural memory, particularly within the coloured community. Deeply influenced by the environments and traditions that shaped her upbringing, as well as the literary legacy of Pieter Snyders, she seeks to create a literary space that reflects and affirms the experiences of her community—something she longed for but rarely saw represented in her formative years.
Simorne holds a bachelor’s degree in logistics and supply chain management.