Free Cherry Marbles by Shukie Nkosana

pressure on you to do so. I can’t face your parents either, at least not before they know about my predicament, though anyone here at the oil plant can see I’m pregnant. I know you’re busy with the Sasol Wax merger but you still have to perform the initiation rituals and the lobola talks are way overdue. Please speak to Ikozi. He’s the only one who can get me out of this mess and the only solution to your problems. And please pick up your phone when I call; it’s annoying when you ignore me. You promised you’d be there for me always, remember?
    Langa’s heart started to thump even more loudly as the laptop suddenly shut down. She sat rooted to the spot, believing she’d been found out until she decided with relief that the battery must have run out. Closing Regile’s laptop, she put it aside and switched on her own. She tried to concentrate on the list she’d received but all she could think of was the message she’d just read.

Chapter 9
    9
    â€œHave you finished the cornflakes already?” Langa called to Nandi as she manically opened and closed all the cupboards the next morning. Her sister walked into the kitchen barefoot and yawning, then reached for the canister on the counter that boldly bore the label of the cornflakes. Nandi placed it in front of Langa with emphasis before walking away.
    Langa rolled her eyes and poured too much cornflakes in a bowl before adding raisins and cold milk. She was still stewing over the information she had stumbled upon the night before as she ground her breakfast loudly with her mouth open. Regile, who always pranced around as if he was the embodiment of a traditional Ndebele man, was involved with a woman he wasn’t married to and would soon give birth to his child! Too revolted to continue eating, Langa put the bowl aside and dragged her feet to her bedroom to say her morning prayer and get ready for work.
    She drove to Rosebank to meet someone at the company that was designing and printing the exhibition banners and catalogues. Afterwards, she spent the day following up on a number of cosmetic suppliers who had shown interest in exhibiting their products but hadn’t contacted the registration department.
    Langa eventually got to her office just as everyone was leaving for the day and sat down gratefully for the first time. She was still mulling over that email of Regile’s. Despite the fact that she’d had no right to go through his laptop, she was upset and felt a sense of loss she couldn’t bear. But why? She was engaged to Richard and she loved him, despite his penchant for leaving smelly strands of used dental floss in her washbasin. Why should she care about what Regile did with his life? Did God understand all these conflicting feelings?
    She resolved she would work harder at her relationship with Richard and then they would finally set a wedding date. Langa drove home, singing along to the heartbreaking sound of Adele turned up so loudly that she could still hear the tear-jerking guitar chords as she let herself into her apartment. Nandi wasn’t in and her home was dark and still.
    A light breeze flowed in through a window Nandi had left open and gave the apartment a pacific quality that Langa enhanced by lighting vanilla-scented candles and playing her favourite Diana Krall album. She went to her room and changed into an oversize T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms. She put a frozen pizza into the oven before reaching for the bottle of wine she’d been saving at the back of her cupboard for a “special” occasion, the same bottle she had wrongly accused Nandi of opening.
    As she poured herself a glass of wine, Langa thought about her relationship with her sister. She wondered if she was perhaps too harsh on Nandi and needed to accept her for who she was, as Regile had said. She took her glass over to the couch and curled herself up there, not bothering to switch on the TV. For the first time in