Of all the fights I have had in the past with Aza, this was the most bitter and painful one.
I could not take it any longer.
I knew I had to leave her before I did anything stupid and used my anger as an excuse.
One hot Friday in April, a few months ago while cleaning up our bedroom, I discovered a title deed hidden on the bottom of a drawer. It was inside an envelope, carefully attached to the bedside drawer so that you could not see it unless you removed the whole drawer.
I became aware of this by mistake.
While trying to use a feather duster, I pulled open the drawer until it unhooked itself and fell to the ground. The A4 brown envelope fell to the floor and caught my eyes as I tried to put the drawer back.
Aza was not home yet. Anyway, she always came back late from work on Fridays.
Curiously, I opened the envelope and found two startling revelations.
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The title deed and the fake lodger’s contract from Davidson Properties were both folded together inside the envelope.
She inherited it from her dad when he passed away thirteen years ago. That was way before we met.
Aza and I have been together for the past eight years.
We had been trying to have a baby, but suffered miscarriages twice. That’s how close we were.
Now, her failure to disclose this important information about her ownership of the house was not my only worry.
What made me angry was the fact that I had been paying the rent for the same house for the past eight years.
She had even forged a lodging contract between us and the so-called non-existent Davidson Properties.
All along I’d been thinking that we were paying the rent to a genuine owner of our three-bedroom house in Linden.
That was what devastated me the most.
I was overwhelmed with resentment.
Did I sacrifice my own family for this, I asked myself as I felt the tears of anger that weighed heavily within now pressing against my eye sockets.
I remembered when my mother died two years ago in my home village of Moletji.
I could not even afford to bury her. I had to choose between contributing towards her funeral or risk being chucked out of the house by the fictitious Davidson Properties.
As a result, I had since become a black sheep in my family.
I had even failed to contribute to my mother’s tombstone. Before she died, when she was sick because of her diabetes, I could not afford to drive to my village to see my mother during critical moments.
But when Aza’s mother was sick, we drove all the way to Heidelberg every weekend to see her.
At some point I was forced to take a loan from the bank to pay our rent. I’m still struggling to repay the bank even today.
My eyes darted around the room, as if searching for anything that might be out of place.
I began to spray and wipe down the rest of the bedroom surfaces and wardrobe handles. Inside I was burning with helpless rage and fury.
The anger was stronger in me than my physical pain. As if to make sense of the title deed again, I put it on top of the bed. I then knelt beside the bed with my elbows on the mattress.
My face was very close to the title deed as I read it again and again. My upper lip became hostile when I saw her name, ‘Azania Nene’, in bold letters.
I was shaken and puzzled. I stood up, sat down, walked around the room, blew my nose and wiped my face.
I felt numb.
In my predicament, useless thoughts crowded my head. Maybe I should burn down the house before I leave?
I had a malicious thought of leaving the gas stove on. But what would I achieve by that except going to jail? I couldn’t even go home to Moletji and talk to my two sisters and tell them what I had discovered.
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They had both warned me a long time ago that Joburg City was only for work and not to find a wife.
Neither of my sisters considered Aza as their makoti. Besides, I’d not been home since my mother’s burial.
I could not even afford to send money home because of the seven thousand rand rent I was paying every month.
My family held Aza responsible for my no-show in all our family commitments.
They thought that all of my money went to her and her family, which I’m afraid was partly true.
One of my sisters, Puleng, even concluded that the reason we didn’t even have a child together was because she was living an expensive life.
This hurt me a lot and caused more of a rift between my family and me.
The truth was, I loved Aza. Another fact was that I was living a high comfortable life with a demanding girlfriend, now fiancée.
She did her hair and nails every weekend.
I was living beyond my means and was certainly earning lower than her. She also drove an expensive car – a Volkswagen Touareg. I voluntarily sponsored all those exotic desires and her craving of money.
This is an edited extract from The City is Mine by Niq Mhlongo (published by Kwela Books). The recommended retail price is R300. Available at all good bookstores and on takealot.com from 10 May 2024.
