The Two Of Us

Chapter 25

THE TWO OF US

CHAPTER 25

SIHLE

"What do you mean I was not my mother's child? They adopted me?"

Her heart is beating fast. She's amazed at how fast and lively it can beat while it's breaking. So, her real parents gave her up for adoption? They gave her up so that, that man she's known as her father for her whole would try forcing himself into her?

MaMbhele shakes her head no. What?

"You were abducted. Busi was desperate to save her marriage...."

"No! My mother would never do something like that, Gogo!" she cuts in.

"I'm sorry Mzuku—"

"You must be mistaken! You're talking to Siphesihle Ngcobo, your granddaughter, Busisiwe and Mdumiseni Ngcobo's one and only dau—" she fails to finish what she's saying and cry.

"My mother was a kind woman, she wouldn't take someone else's baby, Gogo! She would never!" she says crying on her grandmother's shoulder who's running her back, muttering 'I'm sorry' over and over again with tears in her eyes. She warned Busi about this.
Sihle cries until she hiccups. She eventually fall asleep right in her grandmother's arms. This had to be her crying day.

                             ****
She woke up late that her MaMbhele  had to have breakfast without her. She saved her some but she's not eating. She even stole russians and eggs for Emihle's lunch box to make Sihle breakfast because she no longer eat those things, old age health issues.

"You have to eat Siphesihle," her grandmother says softly squeezing her shoulder. She's caring and kind like her mother, Busi but the thought of them having something in common makes her ask herself if this woman too really is what she's displaying. Maybe she's a kidnapper like her daughter.

"I'm not hungry," she says taking the untouched food back to the kitchen.

"What really happened Gogo?"
It's the answers that she wants, not food.

"Sit down," MaMbhele says with a deep sigh. She takes Sihle's hand into her.

"She couldn't have children. She's had a couple of miscarriages. Six years had passed since they got married and your father was running out of patience. She couldn't pass the fourth month of her pregnancy but with you...she did."

Sihle clears her throat, "Not me."

"She was taking hormone supplements and everything was fine," she continues like she didn't hear what Sihle said.
"Only for her to..." she sighs. "She gave birth to a dead baby Sihle. Her baby died a few hours after birth."

That so sad and heart breaking but still doesn't justify the abduction.

"She had to do something to save her marriage so she...she exchanged her dead baby with another woman's baby. Without the woman knowing of course. She had newly wedded and had a loving husband that had brought her in. Busi knew that their baby's dead was not going to do the damage it would in her her marriage."

"Wow!" she covers her mouth with both of her hands, tears flowing down her now pink cheeks. "And you agreed to that?" She's asking because she knows that Busi was here when she gave birth so that her mother would help her with the baby for the first few weeks. She was a new mother after all.

"She was happy to have you," she says.

"Happy? Happy Gogo? While my biological parents were crying thinking that I'm dead?"

"She was happy to finally be a mother. "

She wipe the tears flowing down her cheek with both hands. Wow!