I’m waking up next to my wife this morning. She’s fast asleep and I just watch her sleep and breathe. She’s so beautiful. She’s so strong and yet so soft at the same time. She’s possibly carrying my child and I’m so happy. I have no regrets about marrying Oluremi Warona Mohale. I’d marry her over and over again any time and any day.

Mohale insisted on sleeping here with us. We would have probably had married night sex, but Mohale was here. Where Mohale goes, Tholoana goes. Tholoana is super attached to Mohale and Mohale seems to like it. I like that. They remind me of Ona and me. We did everything together. We went everywhere together. I wonder if my child is a boy or a girl and I wonder if he or she will be just as close to these two. We have two children sleeping between us. Mohale is wrapped around Lulu and half of Tholoana is on top of me.

Tholoana opens his eyes. He looks at me. I look at him.
“Sho boy”, I say to him.
He smiles at me.
I kiss his forehead and chat to him a bit.
He responds, but in his baby language. I don’t understand, but I speak to him anyway. Mohale, the light sleeper, hears us and opens his eyes. He also looks at us.
“Sho boy”, I greet him.
“Hello papa.” He says in a yawning tone.
“Did you sleep okay?” I ask him.
He nods his head then says, “Why did you and mama leave us? Where were you?”
“We were getting married, boy. Sorry.” I say.
“I still could have gone with you.” He says.
“Sorry. We won’t leave you again.” I say.
“Where’s Thabi?” He says. He knows Thabi and he calls her by name?
“I don’t know.” I say. I honestly haven’t seen Thabi since we left the Vaal. She just disappeared. After the wedding, we spent one night at Shaka’s house then came back here to Lulu’s place where Ona has an entire master bedroom alone and we have to sleep in our smaller room with his two boys. I’m actually kicking him out of that room. He must come in here. We have the boys now, so we take the bigger room.
“I don’t like her”, he says.
Hai bo!
“Why?” I ask him.
“I just don’t like her. She’s not a nice person. And I don’t think she likes me and my brother. She made my brother cry the whole time and didn’t help him stop crying. She was supposed to help me get ready for the wedding, but she was just hurting me instead of helping me get dressed. I tried to talk to her, but she was just a meanie.” He says.
What did Thabi do to this child?
“Were you naughty?” I ask him.
He shakes his head and says, “I was only naughty when Auntie Luhle was shouting at me and Banathi and Khabane and we laughed at her because she was funny and she was laughing while she was shouting at us. And she laughs funny.” He is in stitches as he tells me this. I’m even laughing.
“Auntie Luhle laughs like this”, and he imitates the way Luhle laughs and I just die of laughter. This child is something else.
But I’m worried about what he has said about Thabi. Very worried.
“Papa, I saw mommy in my dream. I miss her.” He says.
I sit up on this bed and open my arms to receive him. He makes his way to me and he sits on top of me. Tholoana is just keeping busy on this bed, but I have a good eye on him.
“What did she say to you in the dream?” I ask him.
“Nothing. She was just smiling”, he says.
I hug him.
Dise must just rest in fucken peace. I’ve never seen such an aggressive and problematic spirit that’s worse than what it was when it was alive in our realm of life. You know some people you just look at them and you know they’ll be problematic spirits – so you get a traditional healer to deal with the body before it even goes into the ground. Like Mathabo. Had we just buried that crazy woman, we wouldn’t be sleeping so peacefully in life. But Dise, yho hai! Now she’s even tormenting a child? Isn’t it enough that she’s set people to come after us well after she’s dead?
“You guys are not going to die, neh? Especially mama.” He says.
In other words, fuck us. Only Lulu matters.
“We can’t control these things, my boy. But we will try our best.” I say.
“I thought we could control everything and anything in the world”, he says.
“Everything and anything that is in our power. But not everything is in our power, boy.” I say.
He looks at me – confused.
Can Lulu wake up and help me answer these questions. She’s such a deep sleeper.
“Wake mama up”, I say to avoid him asking me things that will take away his childhood. He doesn’t have to grow up. Not now.

He does a very good job at waking up Lulu. She’s not happy, but she slowly wakes up.
“Why will you guys not let me sleep?” She says in her waking up voice.
“Papa said we must wake you up.” Mohale snitches.
“Really?! Is this how a husband treats his wife now?” She says.
I laugh.
She rolls out of bed and stretches. This lingerie piece that she’s wearing is making me hard as she stretches like this.
She hugs Mohale and picks Tholoana up saying good morning to them. Then she comes around the bed and she kisses me. I want to do so much more than just kiss her.

Our day just simply starts. She baths the boys first and gets them ready for the day. I decide to make the bed while she does this. When they come back dressed up and ready to frustrate us, I take the boys downstairs. My mom and Ona are up. Morena is already in his office outside and Uncle Shaka is there with him.
Now my wife and I shower together. We chat a bit as we shower, then we head back into the bedroom. I can’t help myself. I feast on her body. Turns out that she was craving me too so we both feasted on each other.

Now we are getting dressed.
“I think I’m going to go to The Sip & Read today” she says.
She really hasn’t been there in a while.
“When are we going to see the doctor about –
“We can go to a GP today to confirm then take it from there?” She says.
“Okay.” I say.
“I’ll call and make an appointment. Then we can go there first before I go to the store. Plus, tomorrow is the launch of the series that’s based on my book. Teboho said she will host us at her house – in their cinema and we can all watch it there. But tonight, we are attending the pre-launch. Honestly, nna I’m so tired. I really don’t even feel like going.”
“But it’s your work, baby. Even if you show up for five minutes and pictures, it’s better than nothing.” I tell her.
“Will you be back on time to accompany me?” She asks me.
I nod my head. Of course I’m going to support my wife.
“I invited Thabi as well. Ona will be there, Teboho and Maboko will be there, Tlali and Zithulele will also be there. Thabi said she wouldn’t be able to make it because she’s traveling. So Ona said I should invite Luhle. I invited Luhle as his plus one and she accepted.”
I laugh because I cannot get over Mohale imitating her laugh.
“And then?” She asks me.
“Mohale imitated the way that Luhle laughs this morning”, I say.
She also laughs.
“But he also said something that’s concerning me a bit.” I say.
She looks at me with interest.
“He said he doesn’t like Thabi and he thinks that Thabi doesn’t like him”, I say. I’m not interested in what happened. I’m just concerned about how he felt.
“Why?” She seems as disturbed as I was this morning.
“He explained a story, but I’m worried.” I say.
“You know, babe, Luhle also told me that she picked up a vibe from Thabi. She says she was just so cold and she even left before the wedding started because Mohale had upset her.” She tells me.
“What the fuck?” What am I hearing?
“When she arrived even at my home in the Vaal, she behaved as if she didn’t want to be there… I thought I was being sensitive because I was so nervous, but Tebza was telling me that Thando told her to fuck off. I didn’t pay much attention to this story because it has been a bit busy. But maybe I should just take her out and talk to her”, she says.
“That girl is fucken rude.” I tell her. I actually don’t like her. Who the hell does she think she is?
“Let me talk to her before you write her off, babe. Maybe there’s more to this than what meets the eye.”
“She’s fucken rude. That’s her problem. And we are not going to beg her here. There’s a responsibility that she needs to own up to if she’s going to be in this family. If it’s going to be too much for her, she must go back and raise the children she didn’t birth but raises through policies and a fucken system”.
She walks up to me and throws her arms around me.
“I don’t like it when you are angry”, she says. And she’s smiling at me with that smile of hers that makes me so weak.
I smile at her.
“Let me talk to her. We will get to the bottom of whatever is going on. We all deserve a fair chance before we are written off. Besides, she’s here to stay. She’s Ona’s chosen wife. We might as well get used to having her around.” She says.
“Not if I tell my parents and Ona about all of this.” I say. No one would let Ona marry that.
“Just give me two days. Please.” She says.
She kisses me before I can even respond. I’m already running my hands up her dress.
She laughs and starts moving away from me.
“Please?” I beg her.
She just laughs and leaves the bedroom.
Eish.

…

I’ve just come back from the GP with Lulu and the doctor confirmed that she is indeed pregnant. I’m extremely excited that I’m going to have a child with her. I already am a father to Mohale and Tholoana, so this doesn’t feel as if I’ll be doing this for the first time. I’m happy. I really am. But she’s extremely nervous. She says she’s scared that something could happen and she will lose the baby. She lives on Google and Google is just fucking with her mind. I told her that we need to maintain a positive energy and if she can’t stay off Google, I’ll personally confiscate her cellphone.

We drove back to the shop with her and the boys. They go back to school next week, so until then, they want to be next to Lulu all the time. I left the car with them and Ona picked me up. We sipped beer and read the menu of what to eat. We ordered a takeaway and left. We have sipped and read. Thanks.

Ona and I are now driving to meet up with morena, Uncle Shaka and the other church members.
“Lulu is pregnant. We found out today at the doctor’s.” I say.
Ona fist-pumps me and says, “Congratulations! Now we will have three kids driving us crazy.”
We both laugh.
“She’s a bit nervous because of this condition of hers, you know. But the doctor said she can have a healthy pregnancy with this PCOS thing.” I say.
“Is she convinced?” He asks me.
“Not really. And that gynae of hers is a man. She seems to trust him and I think he could help in securing her mind. I’m just not happy that another man handles her private area like that.”
Ona laughs at me.
“Its not about you, monna. Right now, she needs to get in the right frame of mind to prepare for this. Her body is already going to go through A LOT to prepare a human being to be born. She needs her mind to be focused on the right things. You just need to support her and make this as comfortable as possible for her”, he says.
“I know. It just makes my blood boil.”
He laughs.
“When last did you speak to Thabi?” I ask him.
“Ey, I don’t understand Thabi, monna. I don’t understand her at all. She’s so fucken weird, man. And she just has this energy that I cannot explain.” He says.
Good. We are on the same page.
“Mohale told me this morning that he doesn’t think that Thabi likes him”, I tell him.
I see his face change. He even starts driving faster. He’s angry.
“Lulu says she will take her out and see if she can’t talk to her and try to understand her. But I’m not fucking with her. She’s rude. She was rude to Luhle then left our wedding. She apparently pissed off Tebza and Thando in the Vaal and Thando had to tell her to fuck off.” I tell him.
“She lets this surgeon thing get to her head and I’m going to deal with her. She’s very arrogant for someone who doesn’t even have a womb. What else is she bringing to the throne besides children? She can’t even have any. So what? She’s bringing her degree and her stinking attitude towards my children? I’m going to deal with that girl”, Ona says. He’s angry now.
“Don’t deal with her. We don’t have to deal with everyone. Just cut her loose. She’s not even worth it.” I say.
He is silent.

…

“Gents”, pope says as Khotso and I arrive.
We acknowledge him then greet Legoa and uncle Shaka.
“We are moving into a home. A children’s home. Seven of the homes that Dr Sebata owns. We’ve managed to get around the high-end security there and we’ve targeted the perfect time to move in – when the house managers are asleep. Legoa did a very good job at studying the timetable of the place.” Pope says.
Khotso and I look at each other.
“We have an order for five hundred children. They have to cross the boarder first thing tomorrow morning. We’ve organised with the roads and the boarders. We are breaking into all seven of the homes in all seven provinces. So when we leave here, we head to our respective provinces and we do a clean job. The only attention I want to see on this tomorrow morning is the news reporting that they don’t know how those children left. Knowing journalists, they’ll make up their own minds about this being an inside job and whoever takes the fall for it will fall. If I see or hear of anyone making a spectacle of this shit, that’s the person who will take the fall for all this and eat the legal charge. Understood?” Bishop says.
We all nod our heads.
“Ona, where is Thabi?” Morena asks me.
“She’s in the UK. She’s travelling for work. She is due to come back next week. She will probably come back sooner after she hears about this. But, she views security footage on her iPad all the time. It’s on the whole time. How will we get past it?” I enquire.
“Legoa’s wife has helped us with that. She has broken into the security system and managed to download footage from a random night. Most of the nights are the same really. So when we tell her that we are ready to move in, she will play that footage for Thabi to view.” Bishop explains.
Khotso and I fist-pump Legoa. His wife is doing well.
“Ona, Khotso and Legoa you stay here with us during the operation. You will take the truck through the boarder. The drop off is Limpopo. Another bishop will meet you there, take the truck off you and see these kids to China. He will give you six travelling bags. That’s our money. You know what to do, right?”
We nod our heads. Then bishop continues and says, “then when you are done, you make your way to our runway. You’ll come back with the private jet so you can be on time for the screening shit.”
“Screening shit?” Morena enquires.
“Of Lulu‘s show. We are all invited.” Uncle Shaka.
“Lulu has a show?” Morena.
We are all laughing now.
“Yes and we are all seeing it tomorrow.” Uncle Shaka.
“I don’t even watch TV”, Morena.
“You’ll start tomorrow because you must support”.
We are all in stitches.

The men have left to their respective provinces. Now pope, bishop, legoa, Khotso and I are eating lunch at The Sip & Read. They sell snack food here, not actual food. So, Fifi bought us chips, ribs and chicken then we decided to come and drink beer here. I was hoping to see my boys because Khotso dropped them off with Lulu here. But my mom told us that Lulu, Tebza and Luhle have taken the boys on a play date. Now it’s just my mom and Fifi joining us. Fifi’s day is over because it’s after school and you know, after school is after school.
My mom has taken a liking to her since the wedding. She was so welcoming and so warm. She basically ran shit and anyone who told us what we didn’t want to hear, she became a teacher and barked like one.
I think my mom loves how she just stepped up. She sees that Fifi is good for Shaka. We’ve heard them fight twice about Ntuthuko and Nompumelelo because Fifi organised for them to at least get small VW cars to get to work.
She’s the soft hand that Shaka needs when it comes to the kids because he is quite tough on them and you can clearly see the favouritism because he’s an absolute marshmallow when it comes to Luhle.

“Khotso, does your wife know that you will not be coming home tonight?” My mom enquires.
“I phoned her and told her. She said its fine. But she was sad because she was hoping that Ona, Zithulele and I would attend the launch today with her.”
We all look at Khotso and feel like shit.
“We can’t postpone the job”, Morena says.
“We need to find a way to make it up to her”, Zithulele says.
“Qwabe, your wife has made you soft!” Uncle Shaka says and we all laugh.
“It’s the right thing to do, Mashimane. Nawe you must think of something. You guys knew about this launch for months. Why didn’t you plan your work around it?” Fifi says and we all giggle because Uncle Shaka is suddenly disciplined.
“It was urgent, baby.” He says.
“It’s fine, we will go with her and Teboho, Letlali and Luhle. I haven’t partied in a very long time. So I’m definitely excited.” My mom says and morena is not impressed.
“You are going partying now?” He asks my mom.
“Yep. And I’m going to wear a hot little black dress with one hell of a stiletto.” My mom.
Morena immediately picks up his phone. We are all laughing at this reaction.
“Ja! Change of plans. Execute now. Not tonight. Make sure you burn a horse’s tail at the doors so everyone can sleep.” He hangs up.
Fifi is a bit –
“The three of you – go man the truck now. I want you back here tonight for this launch. My wife and I are going to be grandparents and look after Mohale and Tholoana while watching a movie.” Morena says to us.
We are actually all in stitches!
Wow!

…

Khotso is the one who is driving instead of legoa. His legs are not strong and fast enough for the mission. Legoa and I will do the jumping and the ducking of bullets. We’ve already left Tholoana Kingdom and we have five hundred kids in transit.
We were nice enough to buy them food and drinks.

It is 9pm when we arrive in Limpopo. We are going to be late for this launch anyway. Morena didn’t really solve anything here. He just kept my mom from being a club girl for the night.
We receive our seven bags and we use our machine to count the money.
Then, we finally start walking away.
“Guys, I see cops”, legoa says.
“Khotso how fast can you run?” I ask Khotso.
A car stops in front of us. It’s Shaka.
“Quickly. Hurry up.” He says. We quickly get into the car and he speeds off.
We speed off for a good hour before anyone thinks to ask any questions.

We get to some place, still in South Africa, and we leave the car here and are told to jump into the V300 next to us. There is another V300 in front of it.
“The wives are in the one in front of us. Get inside.” He says.
We get inside.
Maboko is in here as well. Pissed!
We are now driving to somewhere. I’m not sure where. What the hell is going on?
“Regodise put the cops on us. They went to the launch event. Fuck! This woman!” Shaka says.
Regodise really wanted us to go down.
“She gave them everything, Ona. Our accounts. How our accounts work. All transactions that have been made. They’ve been waiting for this one that we just did with the kids and the plan was to catch us in the act. They’ve repossessed our cars and houses. The only house that still stands is Oluremi’s house. They can’t prove that the house and the shop were paid for with any of this money. They even left her Tiguan alone.” Morena explains.
We really are in shit.
“Rethabile is with us. They took away her license to operate, closed down the hospital and closed down the homes. They believe she was helping us clean the money and with all the kids disappearing, it made her look worse. They were about to take her into custody when we picked her up from the airport. She was coming back because of the kids going missing.” Shaka explains.

We are all extremely upset. Extremely!

We sit in silence for some time.
Khotso’s phone rings. It’s Lulu.
“Baby”, he answers his phone.
She says something.
“Really?”
She says something.
“Okay.”
He hangs up.
We all look at him.
“Lulu has a place that we can go to for laying low.” Khotso says.
“The place in Nigeria?” Maboko says. This is the first time that he is opening his mouth.
“There’s another one in Lesotho. Her father gave her land when she matriculated and she has been building on it. The plan was for her to retire there.” Khotso says.
“Tell her to give the driver directions. We will go there.” Morena says.
He’s very angry. If he could, he’d kill me for bringing this problem into our family. Fuck man!

…

I’m still confused about how my life has changed so drastically in the last twenty-four hours. I’m not even sure if I’m angry or hurt or just numb. I’m crying, but I’m not sure why I’m even crying anymore. My whole life – everything I’ve ever worked hard for in my life – it has all gone up in flames within the last twenty-four hours. I have been linked with everything that you can think of that the Mohales have done and I’m even being implicated in some of the activities. Someone broke into my homes and stole all my children. I don’t even know where to start looking for them because even I am now being accused of being involved in shipping them to God-knows-where.
I’m all over the news and everything that I’ve worked hard for is gone. I’ve been black-balled every flippen where. And for what? For what exactly? To be Ona’s wife?

We arrived at this mansion kind of house this morning at 8am. We drove through the night. It was just drama. Shaka and Refiloe are fighting because Refiloe brought Ntuthuko and Nompumelelo onto this runaway trip.
Refiloe says she was not going to leave the kids to die. Her words to him were, “Shaka, do you have any idea what it feels like to lose a child? You don’t recover from that. And if you think for one minute that I’m going to sit by and watch the man that I love go through that kind of pain, you are sorely mistaken! Your kids hate me. It’s fine. I’d rather live with that than live with seeing you go through the worst pain of your life and living to regret it because you could have done something about it.”
The fat brat is not speaking to her siblings because her drama is as fat as her body, then Ona is just always there to comfort her and encourage her to be spoiled.
Oluremi wants answers from Khotso about what’s going on and he’s trying to be romantic and sweet talk her into believing that this is not serious. Drama.
Teboho and Maboko are angry because they’ve got nothing to do with all of this and they don’t understand why they are now on the run with their two very small children.
Kea and Mohato are just watching all of us go through this shit.
The kids want to go play. We just got here and they already can’t sit still and just listen to adults.
I seem to be the only person who is mourning what used to be my life.

The minute Ona and I got assigned a bedroom, I went in there, sat in there and have not come out ever since. All the rooms are big and accommodative. Lulu is sharing with Khotso and Ona’s two brats. Letlali is sharing with Zithulele and their two brats. Teboho and Maboko are sleeping with their two brats. Mohato is in a room with Kea. Fifi is in a room with her old man, Shaka. The fat one is supposed to sleep with the sister, but they have issues so I don’t know how they are sleeping. Ntuthuko is sleeping in what was supposed to be a study. Perfect.

“Please sleep. Please.” Ona says to me.
“How am I supposed to sleep? How? My entire life is over. I went from being the best surgeon on this planet who actually built a legacy off helping people. And now I’m a criminal on the run and I’m being accused of shit I’ve never even heard of before. What the fuck man!” I reply.
“Rethabile, it’s too early for you to be swearing and losing your mind like this. Either sleep or go watch TV or something so I can sleep.” He says.
“O ntlwayela masepa wena. You telling me to go watch TV? Where? In this fucken place that doesn’t even have electricity?! My life is over. I don’t even know what happened. I get picked up from an airport and the next thing I know, I’m all over the news for shit i don’t even know and my kids are missing. Did your family take my kids, Ona?! WHERE ARE MY KIDS?! I WANT MY CHILDREN BACK AND YOUR THUG FAMILY IS GOING TO GIVE THEM BACK TO ME!”
“HAI WENA! DON’T COME HERE AND ANNOY ME ABOUT YOUR KIDS THAT YOU PICKED UP ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD! DO YOU HEAR ME ANNOYING YOU ABOUT HOW YOU CAN’T EVEN MOTHER MY CHILDREN?”
“YOU MEAN THOSE TWO BRATS BASATSEBENG BATHO BA BAHOLO?! WHY DIDN’T YOU STEAL THEM INSTEAD AND GIVE THEM TO WHOEVER YOU GIVE STOLEN KIDS TO?!”
I feel a slap slam across my face and I fall flat to the ground, hitting the cupboard first. I instantly feel dizzy. I feel a bit of blood coming down my head.
He stands over me, looks at me and says, “DO YOU WANT TO DIE?”
“WHAT?! ARE YOU GOING TO KILL ME THE SAME WAY YOU KILLED YOUR WIFE?!”
Now he’s kicking me and he is hearing none of my screams. This guy really is going to kill me.

I’m saved by someone barging into the bedroom and pushing him away from me. I see his mother kneel down next to me and try to help me stand up. I’m in pain everywhere. I cough and blood comes out of my mouth. Ona is pulled out of the bedroom by his brother, Maboko and Zithulele.
Morena is in here, looking at me.. carefully observing me.
When I’m finally on my feet, I see Luhle and Fifi staring at me as well.
“Please give me space”, I ask them.
They look at me.
“I’m the doctor here. Surely if there’s anyone that can help me, it’s me. I just need space. Please.”
They are all shocked.
What?! Am I rude again?!
Fokof man!

I spend about two hours cleaning myself up. My entire body hurts and I’m quite swollen. When I’m satisfied with how clean I am, I slip into the blankets and just fall asleep.
I practically cry myself to sleep. What husband is this that has been chosen for me?