Junior's Mum Is Not so Junior

She sits outside her door chatting with her neighbour who is trying to light a charcoal stove. Her six-year-old son comes from behind and wraps his tiny hands around her neck before resting his head on her back. She asks, in a near whisper, if he is hungry and when he says he is, she tells him there's bread on the kitchen counter but he tells him the bread is no more. "Tonya ate all of it."

"She did? I think your sister has minyoo. Where does it all go?"

He laughs before shouting Tonya's name. Tonya, a ten-year old girl with a tall, slender frame, shows up, holding a cup of tea. "Why are you shouting my name?" she asks, sipping her tea.

"Mum says you must have ringworms."

Tonya gently kicks him in the butt in mock anger. She then leans against the door frame and stares at Junior's mum who is now complaining that Jack, the charcoal dealer, had conned her. What kind of charcoal was this that was taking forever to light? Tonya squeezes herself through the tiny space between her mum and the door frame and offers to help Mama Junior with lighting the jiko. Mama Junior thanks her, saying she is a kind girl, and Tonya smiles as she carries the jiko to the small yard next to the unfinished buildings where she proceeds to blow into a metal tube directed at the faintly glowing embers until her cheeks ache. But she enjoys seeing the glow change from a dull colour to a bright red, tending to yellow even. Barely ten minutes later, as she returns the lit jiko to Mama Junior, she beams with a smile when the latter promises to share the chapati she is going to make with her.

"That was her plan all along," Mama Tonya chuckles. "She knew you do not light a jiko if you are not planning to make chapati."

"Give Tonya some peace," Mama Junior says. She takes the jiko inside and with no one to talk to, Tonya's mum goes inside her own house. Tonya and Elvis are now huddled on the couch, watching a show on TV. She glances at them as she walks into her bedroom but looks away as soon as they attempt to make eye contact as if there is something she does not want them to see. In her room, she locks the door behind her and goes through the messages from Frank, her husband. In the last one he had promised to leave her with 'better' injuries if he came back and found her still 'idling' in his house with her useless children.

Before he went missing, two days ago, he had grabbed her by the neck, pinned her against the wall and landed blow after blow all over her head simply because she had asked him when he intended to be responsible for his family. He hated it when she questioned his drinking habits. He hated it when she questioned him for his infidelity. According to him, a woman wasn't supposed to challenge her husband no matter what. With time, she had become accustomed to his beatings. Her body had become numb to the constant thumping and kicking. She had resorted to lying to doctors about the cause of her injuries and even though Mama Junior constantly advised her to leave him, she did not consider it an option, since she was no longer welcome in her father's house after defying him to marry Frank.

She puts her phone on the bedside table and lies on her back, trying to ignore the incessant knocking on the door from Tonya. She lets her mind roam over the details of her plan.

Later in the evening, Mama Junior comes bearing some chapati and a pot of soup. It is Tonya who meets her at the door and when Mama Junior tells her she has brought enough for all of them, Tonya thanks her profusely. As she turns to leave, she asks, "Where is your mum? Is she sleeping already?" Tonya says she went out in the yard to catch the evening breeze. Mama Junior then makes her way to the yard but she does not see her friend. She looks around, and she is just about to go back inside when she hears a commotion from one of the unfinished buildings. Scared, she runs back but just as she is about to dive into her house, a thought strikes her. She slowly makes her way back into the yard and then approaches the unfinished building only to encounter familiar figure of Tonya's mum dangling from the wooden beam, her feet almost touching the ground. She sinks to her knees and lets out a heart-wrenching scream.

The scream alerts all the neighbours, including Tonya's dad, who now sits bolt upright in Mama Junior's bed where he has been hiding for two days, wondering whether he was dreaming, or the screaming voice really resembled Mama Junior's.