Back at home I have a guest who is waiting in the Room-of-my-Birth. It is Lulu, one of our neighbours. “Andile, I need your help,” she says as soon as I come in. After a long pause, she begins, “You know that I am taking care of this child of my sister,” catching me by surprise and bringing back to me flashes of what happened to the child's mother.

Zamo, Lulu's sister and the child's mother, had been stabbed and butchered, in a way that none could have imagined, by her boyfriend, Jola. She had given birth, just a few months previously, to a beautiful fair complexioned baby boy. And Jola, a smooth talker and the one who held in his heart things we will never know, would occasionally come to see the baby, their love child. They would be standing on the veranda in the dark of the night, holding their wrapped baby, inspecting him under the light of a dim lamp, a couple possessed with love, unperturbed by any possible onlooker in the dark.

Who would have known what was in Jola's heart? He surprised everybody when he did what he did to Zamo. Worse, we learnt that after killing her he then pushed the blade into his own heart, not once, not twice, but to a point that ensured his own death. The two families of the love pair, who were locked in difficult negotiations over the pregnancy and the resultant birth, had to undo whatever ill feelings they had for each other. The whole tragedy resigned them into pain and uncertainty. A child had been conceived and delivered. A father had ended its parenthood.

Lulu is not mincing her words: “Andile, I need to know how to bring this child up. I have come to you because you have no parents too. You have come this far. You must advise me what to do with this child.”

I sit in front of this woman who is demanding and who is impatient. Thoughts run through my head. Well, one thing is clear; Lulu has considered this and has expectations. Definitely, this matter may have burdened her, and in her mind this one evening has to resolve it. So, I have to make an effort to help.