R2,500 was your proposal
1161 Words
*Chapter 1: R2,500 Was Your Proposal*
I didn’t answer Mandla the first time he called.
Or the second.
Or the third.
After R2,500 and _I don’t need you anymore_, a man doesn’t get to hear my voice just because he’s sad.
But he kept calling. For three nights straight. At 9:17 PM every time. Like his grief ran on a schedule.
On the fourth night, I answered.
I said nothing. I let the silence be heavy. Let him carry it.
“Nonhlanhla.” His voice was raw. Like he’d been crying for hours. “Please. Just listen.”
I sat on my aunt’s couch. The one with plastic covers. The one I wasn’t allowed to sit on unless guests came. But my aunt was at church, and the house was mine for two hours.
“I’m listening,” I said. My voice was flat. Empty.
He broke.
“I messed up, Nhlanhla. I messed up so bad.” He sobbed into the phone. “I should have married you. You deserved it. Not her. Never her.”
For a second, the old Nonhlanhla wanted to rise. The girl who cleaned his house and believed his _one day_. The girl who thought love meant waiting.
That girl was dead. She died the day he paid her R2,500.
“I’m grown,” I told him. The words were ice. “I can take care of myself.”
That was true. It had to be.
In the year since I walked out, I’d learned how to survive. My aunt made me pay rent with piece jobs. Washing Mrs. Dlamini’s curtains. Braiding hair on Saturdays. Selling airtime at the taxi rank. I counted every rand. I ate two slices of bread when I wanted four. I stopped being “too much.”
I became small enough to fit in rooms I wasn’t welcome in.
“I know you can,” Mandla said. “You always could. I was just stupid. I was scared you were better than me.”
I almost laughed. _Scared I was better?_ He paraded me in private and hid me in public. He called me his helper to his friends and his future to me at night.
“You said you didn’t need me,” I reminded him.
“I lied.”
We both sat in that. The lie. The year. The R2,500 still sitting in my savings account, untouched. I couldn’t spend it. Spending it felt like agreeing to the price he put on me.
“Why are you calling me, Mandla?” I asked. “You have a wife. Go cry to Amelia.”
That’s when he said it. The words that changed everything.
“Amelia’s pregnant.”
The air left my lungs.
Pregnant. With his child. The man who swore he wasn’t ready for kids. The man who told me we should wait until he was “stable.”
I waited for the pain. For the jealousy. For the old wound to rip open.
It didn’t come.
All I felt was nothing. A blank, quiet nothing.
“Congratulations,” I said. And I meant it. Because I was finally free.
Then he whispered, “She can’t be.”
“What?”
“Nhlanhla, she can’t be pregnant. Not by me.”
My hand tightened on the phone. The plastic couch cover stuck to my thigh.
“I’m infertile,” he said. The words rushed out like he’d been holding them underwater. “I found out two years ago. Before you. Before everything. The doctor said there’s zero chance. Zero.”
Two years ago.
Before me.
He knew. The entire time we were together, the entire time he was kissing my cousin in my house, he knew he couldn’t give any woman a child.
He knew, and he still threw me away for Amelia.
He knew, and he let me think _I_ was the problem. That I was too much, too needy, too ready for a future he couldn’t deliver.
“Why are you telling me this?” My voice shook. Not with sadness. With rage.
“Because you’re the only one I told,” he cried. “I never told my family. I never told Amelia. I was ashamed. I thought if I married someone pretty, someone who made me look good, maybe it wouldn’t matter. Maybe God would heal me.”
He married Amelia for her face. He kept me for my heart.
And now God hadn’t healed him. God had given him karma.
“She says it’s mine,” he went on. “She’s due in six months. My parents are throwing a baby shower. Her family is so proud. And I’m dying, Nhlanhla. Every day I wake up next to her and I feel like I’m being punished for how I treated you.”
Punished.
The word hung between us.
I thought of his R2,500. Of the apples on the floor. Of the bread I left behind. Of the year I spent being small.
“I’m not your punishment, Mandla,” I said softly. “I’m your consequence.”
He sobbed harder.
I should have hung up. I should have blocked him and gone back to counting slices of bread.
But I didn’t.
Because for the first time in three years, Mandla Solomons needed something from me. And I had all the power.
“What do you want from me?” I asked.
“I want…” He choked. “I want a chance to make it right. I want you to tell me what to do. Do I tell her? Do I leave? Do I raise another man’s child and die inside?”
I closed my eyes. I saw him that day. Lipstick on his mouth. Money in my palm. _I don’t need you anymore._
I opened my eyes. I was no longer that girl.
“You want my advice?” I said.
“Yes. Please. Anything.”
I leaned back against the plastic couch and smiled for the first time in a year. A real, cold smile.
“Too late,” I said. “R2,500 was your proposal. You said you didn’t need me. So don’t need me now.”
And I hung up.
I sat there in the quiet. My heart wasn’t racing. My hands weren’t shaking.
I felt light.
The chain was cracking.
I didn’t know it yet, but in three days I would walk into a tavern to buy my aunt cold drink.
And the boy who taught me how to ride a bike when I was eight would walk back into my life.
He would look at me like I was the only woman in Pretoria.
He would call me _My Love_.
And Mandla would find out.
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*Thank you for reading Broken Chain!*
Marcus walks in next. If you need to see that forehead kiss, please *#vote#* and I’ll post Chapter 2 on Wednesday ❤️
What team are you on? #TeamMarcus or #TeamKarma? Tell me 👇
Fortunate
- Writer
