Grade 9, Rena le Lona Creative Centre
The narrator of this story is an old woman. Her husband dies in a car accident on his way home. Her daughter is heartbroken by his death and mourns for a very long time. This old woman misses her husband a lot, but it is as if she has lost her daughter, too because her daughter is so sad. Men come to win over her daughter, but the old lady hates them and shows them that she does not want them to come. Eventually, two years after her husband’s death, her daughter decides to tidy the pantry. This room has a special meaning for the mother and daughter. Her husband would pour them ginger beer in the pantry. Cleaning and painting the pantry, helps them to overcome their grief and get on with their lives.
My daughter came back from death two years after my husband died. My daughter started living again late one afternoon.
Two men came dressed in blue clothes to tell me and my daughter that my husband was dead. He was involved in a car accident. My daughter phoned the other family members to tell them that my husband is no more and then went to lie on her bed with a cloth for a very long time, as though she were dead too.
The next few days, many people I’d never seen before in our town came by with lots of samp, boxes of biscuits and bunches of “umtana” and “Nkosi” that grow wild in the Eastern Cape. They exchanged a few words with my daughter in the dark room then left again, shaking their heads as they went out into the street.
I longed for my husband and couldn’t understand why he’d gone away so suddenly and so frighteningly. When he was alive, I would wait at the blue gate for him to come home every evening
When he saw me, he would wave to me and then I’d go to him. He’d kiss me on the cheek and hold my hand.
“Inno, where are you?” He always called out, just as we entered the house.
“Ngiyeza,” she’d answer, usually from somewhere in the kitchen. We always went to the pantry. First, he’d pour us each a glass of ginger beer. The ginger beer was kept in a big orange bucket that was always ready for us in the cool dimness of the pantry. Sometimes, there were sweet red apples in the milk bucket for us to eat.
The next few months, life continued. My daughter started waking up from death and went back to finish school. She started teaching me how to read and write. I am so happy that my daughter is back from the dead.