“Well, I don’t know,” Zeraiah spat, tilting his chin at me. “Ask him.”
“Huh?” Zaeem frowned. He looked between us. “Okay… what hap—”
“Nothing happened,” I cut in, my voice sharp. The pressure crushed me, dragging my thoughts back to the toilet, back to her, back to Sophie. I felt a sense of unease about what had happened earlier, which I initially doubted, but now, due to Zeraiah’s words, everything—
I shook my head. “Get some rest, Mas,” I muttered, turning away. “I need to lie down—”
Zaeem wasn’t done. He pressed on, his voice quiet but heavy, and his words aimed like darts. “You know? They always want to ask about you.” I froze. My steps halted.
“The first year after you left,” he continued, “Tshabina used to come. She was too scared to bring you up, but I knew she wanted to. She wanted to know how you and Zeraiah were doing.” The words sank like stones, and silence gripped the room.
Sighing, Zaeem pressed on. “Her position was hard, Zi. She wanted to be selfish and ask, but she held back. Because she knew this wasn’t easy for us either. You hurt, Zeraiah hurts, but so do they.”
Sweat prickling cold across my skin, and the rope had transformed into a thorned vine, winding itself around me, climbing up to my chest. My thoughts spun, and my body trembled.Noise hammered from every direction, pulling me here and there until the world bled into grey.
She was the one to blame. Sophie.
I clenched my fists, turning back towards him with burning eyes. “Okay, if you’re going to start lecturing me, you’d better stop right now.”
“I know, deep down, you understand that what happened to Mum wasn’t—”
“You weren’t there!” I exploded, the bitterness erupting from a place buried too long. My finger jabbed at him, shaking with rage. “You were always busy! With work, or tailing after your girlfriend—”
“You know I—”
“Oh, I know.” My voice trembled as it slipped past my tightly set jaw. “You took over. You covered for Zeraiah and me.” My throat tightened. “But still, Mas, you weren’t there in her final moments.So don’t you dare tell me how I should feel about it!” The room vibrated with the weight of my scream, my eyes burning as they bored into him.
The darkness pressed in again, poisoning me with those deadly memories. My heart pressed hard enough to shatter my ribs, and the pounding noise enveloped me like a blanket, not meant to offer warmth, but to crush me until I fell apart.
I covered my ears. All of this felt like it would eat me whole until nothing was left of me.
The blame lay with them.
Fisting my hair, I paced and trembled. My voice cracked as I spat the words at Zaeem. “We were fine before, and then she came, everything ruined because of her—”
“Dad too!” Zaeem roared back, stepping towards me. “Dad’s to blame as well!” His gaze locked onto mine, his body shaking. “It wasn’t even her fault, Zi!” He looked for my eyes, searching for me. “And all of that is in the past.”
He turned, his eyes sweeping to Zeraiah and me. “We need to move on. All of us. No matter what, he’s still our father. And she, and Tsabinu, they’re still ourfamily—”
“You think I don’t know that?!” I shot back, my fists trembling at my sides. “But if she’d never moved here, Mum would still be alive! Sophie—that whore—”Fucking Sophie.
“Zioh Hadyan—”
“Do you even know what she looked like?” I cut him off. My voice breaking, my eyes hot with unshed tears. “My mum.” The word cracked out of me like a broken whisper, filled with grief. As I repeated it, my lips trembled, and the sound gutted me.“M-Mum.”
My eyes were so hot, but I never cried. Neither Zaeem nor Zeraiah had ever seen me cry. We never let our tears fall between us. Even after everything that happened, even when we buried our mother. We never cried in front of each other.
My throat burned as I looked at Zaeem, my voice fraying. “You don’t know, Mas, because you’re like a ghost to her.” I shook my head, and Zaeem looked at me with pain flickering underneath. He was rooted in place. “You didn’t see her face that night. And you think after Zeraiah, and I looked into Mum’s face for the last time, we could ever look at the world the same way again?”
Beside me, Zeraiah stiffened. His chest rose, and his eyes reddened. The memory clawed back, sharp as glass. Mum’s face that night. Ten years hadn’t dulled it; the sight of her that night still flashed behind my eyelids whenever I closed my eyes.
Zaeem was in pain, but he didn’t know what it felt like to see hell directly in front of your face. It made the thing that held me disappear, so I was adrift, just like Zeraiah.
Everything that happened left a mark on him, so he spent his time trying to forget and vent all that destruction by sinking further into the darkness. But nothing freed him. Nothing freed me either. And now, Zaeem stood there, daring to say wemove on?
I let out a bitter laugh. “It’s good you didn’t inherit this mess because you always left her just like your old man did, you arsehole!”
Zaeem’s eyes widened, rage flashing as he snapped back. “You only hate Tshabina because you’re sick, Zi! That’s why I told the two of you to see a psychiatrist—”
