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She Is My Mother

4:00 am every morning she is up, she leaves the house at 5:00 am to open up shop at 6:00 am, when everyone else wakes up or when they leave the house. She has to make sure she is there early for those who too are early, she needs to make sure all her products are on display for the morning crowd.

I wake at 6:00 am like the rest of the working class; I get ready for school, prepare my books and make porridge. I make my way out of the two-room tin house I share with my mother and two of my sisters. They too get ready the same time,  my sister and I  walk to the bus stop and make our way to Bryanston to school, while the other makes her way to Lonehill. Alex seems like a faraway reality from our school lives. We might not have much at home but no one knows it here, I have a new blazer and shoes, my old ones were getting smaller, I gave them to my sister. They were still in good condition, we have to make sure they are, we don’t know when we will afford to buy them again.
Mother saved up for these new school clothes, she saves up a lot. She gets back home at 20:00 and it’s dark, I worry about her, but she says she is ok, she says she will rest when her last child can take care of herself. She never complains, she never cry’s, I wash her feet and make her food if there is anything to cook. She says that education is more valuable them food, she says that education will ensure that we have food for the rest of our lives.
I help my sisters with homework before I do my own, mother cannot help me with my homework, she cannot read or write, so I have to ensure I listen attentively in class and ask if there is something I don’t understand. Mother never comes to school meetings or parent evening, she says she cannot understand the teachers, they speak English to fast.

My sister has a school tour coming up, they are going Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape, she has to pay a lot of money for the tour and have pocket money. That means mother has to take on more work, she goes to Midrand and sits with the unemployed women looking for cleaning jobs. Mother is lucky, she always gets picked, for the last four months, we have not seen much of her. I told her I wanted to get a job to help her, she said, “did I ask you for help, have I complained to you that I can’t, did you ask to be born?” I answered no, “You focus on your books and let me focus on feeding you”.
I sometimes wish my father was alive to help my mother with the burden of providing for us. My father was an abusive man; he loved drinking and seemed to be more interested in the alcohol than us. He would beat our mother in front of us and try to beat us as well, but my mother would have none of it, she would stand in front of us when he would come for us. We were young and did not understand, but we knew it was wrong. One day our father decided to drive out drunk, he said he was going Soweto to see his friend, but he was too drunk, he collided with a car that was carrying a family, a baby and the parents, he died in the crash killing the parents or the baby. The baby lived, but its parents killed by a drunk driver, my father. I don’t know where the baby is; I hope it is fine and well taken off.

My mother woke up a 4:00 am as usual to get ready to sell her products for the early risers, today she headed out with her bag of products, and two men stopped her and took her bag and ran away with it, no one helped her. The bus drove by,  my mother was sitting on a bench with her head down, my sister pointed at her and said as the bus passed “there is mama”. I did not know what had happened, after school, we got back home, mother was not there. 20:00 the door opened, “mama”, a sigh of relief came over me, “where have you been, we saw you this morning, by the bench, what were you doing there”. She smiles and says, “Nothing, I just needed to catch my breath”. I took her shoes to wash her feet, they seemed swollen, I asked her why her feet were in that state, she again just smile and said “it was a hectic day”.

I have always worked hard at school, I knew I wanted to be a CA (SA), my matric results came and I had seven distinctions, my mother was so happy and for the first time, I saw her cry. She said, “I am proud of you, I wish I had money for you to study further”. Mother was not aware that I had applied for bursaries and I had gotten one that paid for everything.
The day I graduated from university and the day I got my results for the second board exam when I realised I passed and was now a qualified Charted Accountant. My sister was doing her last year in university, receiving her honors in BCom marketing.

 My mother woke up as usual at 4:00 am to sell her products to the early risers, she came back home at 20:00 am to a house full of strangers, all my high school classmates and my sisters schoolmates, they never knew where we came from and what our mother did for living, no one new that it was from a woman who sold fruit and sweets on the street, who woke up at 4:00 am and came back at 20:00 pm in the evening, who paid the same amount of school fees, as doctors and lawyers.


Today was the last day my mother woke up a 4:00 to catch the early risers. She still smiles and looks at us and her new house in Bryanston, near the school she broke her back to pay off, my younger sister is finishing her matric. Today my mother woke up at 4:00 am to look outside her window at unfamiliar surroundings, she called me and said, I love the house, but can you move me closer to my people, can you move in a house in Alex just as big and beautiful as this one. 

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