Esona lives in a two-room with her aunt in Slovo. Her mother’s a nurse, stationed across the country and I guess growing old there. For most of her life, that’s how it’s been between them. First there were nightshifts at Grey Hospital in King William’s Town, and then there was the move to Fort Beaufort, and then another to Grahamstown, and now she’s moored in Stutterheim. Sometimes, when Esona speaks, I try to imagine her mother. I see a woman with Esona’s face, her sleeves rolled up, creasing her brow in a ward full of crying children. Or maybe that’s Sis’ Thobeka. In any case, neither of them is around enough to see what we do on the floors here, so I guess it’s okay that my shirt and her panties already lie inside the fruit bowl on the coffee table.
I’ve been back a week since my initiation in eMthatha.
I went over to Luthando’s grave when my family was finally done with me. It was a clear day and I didn’t say much to him, down there. We never had to use words to discover an understanding between us.
I guess a lot has happened since then. I waved on my way out, and I said, later, Luthando, and that was about it.
Later, Luthando.
Now I lie stretched out on Esona’s cold kitchen floor.
I disclosed my status to her just a day after we’d met and we’ve worshiped at the altar of her caution ever since. Esona gets me to bring our condoms back from Sis’ Thoko’s shop.
I watch her now as she looks at the inflated flesh around the tip of my penis, still tender from my journey back home. She handles me with caution between her long, thin fingers, and her nails tickle my underside like the tip of an ivy leaf. Then she pushes her teeth into me and puts a hand on my chest when I begin to stir. For a long time, I just lie there, on the brink of screaming, and then I feel surprise when even this pain dissipates. On her knees on the kitchen floor, Esona releases me, grips my scrotum, and squeezes it before I melt and empty myself on her chest. Later, I fall asleep to the feel of her salt water drying on my face, and sleeping beside me, she breathes her air out as hot as a furnace, and I close my eyes; but this time, unlike so many others in my life, I don’t clench them.
Bhut’ Vuyo never explicitly reminds me of my promise, but I remember and live through it each day. My promise, what I told them then, is the same thing I’ll tell you now. My name, which my parents got from a girl, is Lindanathi. It means wait with us, and that’s what I plan on doing. So in the end, I guess this is to you, Luthando. This is your older brother, Lindanathi, and I’m ready to react for us.