Subscribe to our Newsletter

I still remember the way Tapiwa cried the day I left. He was three years old, barely more than a baby. He clung to my skirt, his tiny fingers digging into the fabric as if his grip alone could hold me there. His voice, shrill and desperate, cut through the early morning air.

“Mama! Mama usandisiye!”

I should have picked him up. Should have held him a little longer. Should have kissed his forehead and promised I would return before he ever had the chance to forget me. Instead, I pried his hands off me, one by one, and turned away.

The bus to Johannesburg was already hissing, ready to leave. Ma stood behind me, her face set in that hard, knowing way of hers. She didn’t tell me to stay. She only held Tapiwa back as he fought to run after me, his sobs loud enough to chase me all the way down the road. I didn’t look back. I told myself I would return soon. But soon is a dangerous lie.

South Africa was not what I had imagined. In my dreams, I had pictured wide roads and big houses, a place where a woman could work hard and send money home without struggle. A place where I would be safe. But Johannesburg swallowed me whole. The city did not care for women like me—undocumented, desperate, with nothing but a plastic bag of clothes and a promise to send money home. I slept on a cold floor in a room filled with other women, all of us packed together like chickens in a coop.

I found work as a maid in Roodepoort. The madam barely looked at me when she spoke, her words clipped and impatient. “Make sure you wash the floors properly. And don’t touch anything you shouldn’t.”

I scrubbed those floors until my fingers cracked. Every month, I sent what little I could to Ma for Tapiwa. And every month, I whispered the same promise to myself. Next year. I will go home next year. But the next year came and went. And I did not return. The first time Ma called me, Tapiwa was five.

“He asks about you,” she said.

I closed my eyes. “What do you tell him?”

“That you are coming back.”

I pressed the phone harder against my ear. “Tell him I love him, Ma.”

She sighed. “That is not what he wants to hear.”

I wanted to tell her I was trying. That I was saving. That I had almost enough. But we both knew that wasn’t true.

Time is a strange thing. At first, I counted the months. Then the years. Then I stopped counting altogether. Tapiwa was eight when he stopped asking about me. By the time he turned ten, he had a new name for me—Mai Vemari. The Mother of Money.

I sent money, yes. But I was not there when he lost his first tooth. I was not there when he learned to ride a bicycle. I was not there when he cried himself to sleep after being beaten by bullies. I was a voice on the phone, a name on an envelope, a woman he once called Mama.

When I finally returned home, fifteen years had passed. Fifteen years. I stepped off the bus in the early morning, my heart hammering so loudly I could barely hear the sounds of Mbare waking up around me. Nothing had changed. And yet, everything had.

I walked through the familiar dust roads, past houses where women were already sweeping their yards, past vendors setting up their stalls, past faces that should have known me but did not. Then I saw him. Tapiwa. Standing by the gate. Seventeen years old now. Broad-shouldered, tall, his face sharp with the edges of manhood.

He looked at me the way you look at a stranger on the street—polite, uninterested, distant.

I dropped my bag. “Tapiwa…”

He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Didn’t smile.

My hands trembled as I reached for him. “Mwanangu—”

He stepped back. Just one step. Small, but final.

I felt something crack inside me.

His eyes held no anger. No resentment.

Only indifference. And somehow, that hurt more than anything. Because it meant I had already lost him. Not today. Not when I left. But in the silence of all the years in between.

That night, I lay on my old bed and listened to the sounds of home. The creak of the wooden door. The laughter of children playing outside. The distant hum of a radio playing old Sungura songs. Ma sat in the chair across from me, peeling sweet potatoes. She did not look up as she spoke.

“You took too long, mwana.”

I stared at the ceiling. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”

She let out a small, tired laugh. “For who?”

I had no answer.

Tapiwa left early the next morning. Did not tell me where he was going. Did not say goodbye. I watched him from the window, my chest tight.

Ma walked in, shaking her head. “He is not yours anymore.”

Tears burned behind my eyes. “I’m his mother.”

“You were,” she said softly. “But mothers are not made by money, mwana. They are made by presence.”

I turned away, pressing my fist against my mouth. I had come back expecting to find my son. But I was fifteen years too late.

That night, I packed my bags. I told myself I would stay. That I would try. That maybe, if I was patient, if I waited long enough, Tapiwa would find his way back to me. But deep down, I knew the truth. Some things, once lost, can never be reclaimed.

The next morning, I walked to the bus stop. As the bus pulled away, I did not cry. I had done all my crying in the years I had spent away. I had left once before, promising to return. This time, I left knowing I would not.