You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
THE SECOND GIRL<br />
My mother used to tell me, “I chose to have you because I wanted something to love and<br />
something that would love me unconditionally in return.” I was a product of her search for<br />
belonging. She never felt like she belonged anywhere. She didn’t belong to her mother, didn’t<br />
belong to her father, didn’t belong with her siblings. She grew up with nothing and wanted<br />
something to call her own.<br />
My grandparents’ marriage was an unhappy one. They met and married in Sophiatown,<br />
but one year later the army came in and drove them out. The government seized their home<br />
and bulldozed the whole area to build a fancy, new white suburb, Triomf. Triumph. Along<br />
with tens of thousands of other black people, my grandparents were forcibly relocated to<br />
Soweto, to a neighborhood called the Meadowlands. They divorced not long after that, and my<br />
grandmother moved to Orlando with my mom, my aunt, and my uncle.<br />
My mom was the problem child, a tomboy, stubborn, defiant. My gran had no idea how<br />
to raise her. Whatever love they had was lost in the constant fighting that went on between<br />
them. But my mom adored her father, the charming, charismatic Temperance. She went<br />
gallivanting with him on his manic misadventures. She’d tag along when he’d go drinking in<br />
the shebeens. All she wanted in life was to please him and be with him. She was always being<br />
swatted away by his girlfriends, who didn’t like having a reminder of his first marriage<br />
hanging around, but that only made her want to be with him all the more.<br />
When my mother was nine years old, she told my gran that she didn’t want to live with<br />
her anymore. She wanted to live with her father. “If that’s what you want,” Gran said, “then<br />
go.” Temperance came to pick my mom up, and she happily bounded up into his car, ready to<br />
go and be with the man she loved. But instead of taking her to live with him in the<br />
Meadowlands, without even telling her why, he packed her off and sent her to live with his<br />
sister in the Xhosa homeland, Transkei—he didn’t want her, either. My mom was the middle<br />
child. Her sister was the eldest and firstborn. Her brother was the only son, bearer of the<br />
family name. They both stayed in Soweto, were both raised and cared for by their parents. But<br />
my mom was unwanted. She was the second girl. The only place she would have less value<br />
would be China.<br />
My mother didn’t see her family again for twelve years. She lived in a hut with fourteen<br />
cousins—fourteen children from fourteen different mothers and fathers. All the husbands
Change language