WHERE DO I CRY?

I cry in the shower so my kids don't hear me. That's what I do now. I turn the water on hot, even though the geyser in this Johannesburg flat takes ten minutes, and I sit on the cold tiles and let it run over my face. That's my only room to cry. It's 6:12am. I know because the clock on the microwave is green. I am awake. He didn't sleep home last night. Noah, one year old, is on my chest, still sucking even in sleep. Ella, my three-year-old, is curled on the mattress next to me, her small socks off, mouth open. Both sleeping. Quiet house in Berea, Johannesburg — second floor, rain on the window. You can hear taxis hooting from down there even at 6am. The door opens. Daniel Jacobs, my husband. 29. Sales shirt, collar open, clean and ironed like he slept in a hotel. He smells wrong. Not like cigarettes. Not like beer. Expensive vanilla perfume. Soft, rich, luxurious. The kind working women wear — the ones with neat wigs and office heels, the ones above me. Not a rank perfume. A classy one. On his neck. On his shirt. He looks at me and doesn't say sorry. He drops his keys on the table. Loud. Ella flinches in sleep. "Where were you?" I ask. My voice is small. I am holding Noah tighter. "Don't start that nonsense, Amanda," he says. "I was working." Working doesn't smell like expensive vanilla. I sit up. "You said you'd be home at eight. The kids waited." He laughs, but it's not a laugh. "You think this house is about Ella? You are always complaining. Always complaining like a typical wife." I feel that hot thing in my throat. I want to say like any wife would ask where her husband slept. "You didn't even call," I say. He steps closer, his shoes clean and polished, smelling like hotel floor. "Look at you," he says, looking down at me on the mattress, milk stain on my old T-shirt, hair not combed. "You are nothing. You are no longer beautiful. That's why I don't want to come home. Look at yourself." Noah starts to cry because my hands are shaking. You are no longer beautiful. He has said it before. But today it hits different because those girls he sponsors smell like expensive perfume and they have money to be beautiful, and he doesn't give me money to be beautiful. My clinic cards for Ella and Noah are in a blue Checkers packet under the bed because I have no handbag. The Pep mirror on the wall has a crack from when he threw the remote. I haven't bought lotion in two months. I have R300 in my Capitec and R80 in coins under the couch that I saved from bread. How am I supposed to compete with expensive vanilla? Ella wakes up now because Noah is crying. She sits up, hair sticking. She looks at Daniel, then at me. She freezes. My three-year-old freezes like a small soldier when her father shouts in the sitting room. She learned that. That is trauma, even at three. She calls Noah "Messiah" because she can't say his name right. Daniel looks at her and says, "Go back to sleep." I cover Ella with the blanket. I don't shout back. I learned not to shout back last year when he pushed me against the fridge. If I shout, he hits. If I cry loud, he hits. So I cry in the shower. But this morning I don't cry. I look at the crack in the mirror and I don't see Amanda Cele, the girl from Durban who worked admin and had friends. I see Amanda Jacobs, wife of Daniel Jacobs, 26, with two kids and a blue Checkers packet. And I think, I have to make a choice. Not to fight for divorce here in this flat. If I say divorce here, he will hit again. He will take the R300. I have to run. will take one bag, clinic cards, R300 and cash in my card, and I will take the bus to Cape Town. To my only sister, Sarah Cele, 31, in Salt River. I haven't spoken to her in two years because Daniel said "your family is toxic" and cut me from them. I will go there. I don't know where mothers go to cry when they have no room, but I know it's not here. Daniel takes off his shirt and throws it on the floor near my feet. Expensive vanilla again. I pick up Noah. I go to the small kitchen and put a plate over his leftover pap to keep it warm, like my mother used to do. Ella comes behind me and silently holds my leg, her small hands tight.