Choice Assorted

Chapter 15: Stew and Silence

For three days, Dodo surrendered to the flu. Her body, usually driven by deadlines and the gentle demands of two teenagers, finally gave up. She lay curled under the blankets, sweat dampening her hairline, the world blurring at the edges. The flat was quieter than usual. No scent of toasted sandwiches. No quick footsteps rushing to school transport. Just the steady rhythm of rain on glass and the occasional cough that echoed in her chest.

On the morning of the second day, Ma Gloria arrived. No dramatic knocking. No fanfare. Just the turn of a key Dodo had long stopped changing, and the sound of plastic bags crinkling as she came in with groceries and eucalyptus ointment.

“I came to help,” she said, not asking for permission.

Dodo didn’t protest. She didn’t have the energy to.

Ma Gloria got to work. She cooked soft food—chicken broth, pap, stew with potatoes that fell apart on the fork. She wiped down counters, scrubbed the bathroom tiles, and ironed school uniforms without making a fuss. She warmed up to the role with the quiet efficiency of a woman who had done this all her life—just not here, not like this.

Each morning, she stood with Henry and Portia at the gate, waiting for the white Toyota Quantum. She asked them questions in isiZulu, threw in the occasional joke, and gave Henry pocket tissues and lip balm like he was still five. Henry, ever the eager talker, took to her like sugar to tea. He made her laugh with his impressions of his school principal and offered to make her tea in the afternoons. Rooibos with milk and too much sugar. She didn't complain. She drank it slowly, watching him chatter, something soft cracking open in her chest.

Portia was more cautious. Her face a mirror of her mother’s, her affection earned, not given. But Ma Gloria didn’t push. She offered her stew and compliments, and when Portia decided to visit Ma Solomon one evening after homework, she kissed her on the cheek and said, “Tell her I said hello.”

That night, the house was unusually still. Henry had fallen asleep on the couch with his socks halfway off and an open science book beside him. Ma Gloria placed a blanket over him before stepping into Dodo’s room with a container of leftover stew and the faint scent of Zam-Buk still clinging to her hands.

She sat on the edge of the bed.

“I read your piece,” she said, eyes unreadable but not hard. “The one about the woman who doesn’t know how to say yes.”

Dodo managed a small smile. “That’s me.”

“I didn’t know you were hurting that much.”

“I didn’t know either. Until I wrote it.”

A long silence settled between them. Not uncomfortable. Just full. Like the spaces in a church before a hymn begins.

“You’re raising good kids,” Ma Gloria finally said. “Maybe not the way I would’ve done it. But they’re turning out well.”

“Thanks, Ma.”

Ma Gloria looked down at her hands, fingers stiff from age and use. “I come from a generation that programmed women to love men. Love them no matter what. Even when they left. Even when they stayed and bruised you. No one ever told us to love ourselves first. That part got lost somewhere.”

Dodo swallowed, her throat thick.

“I judged you,” Ma Gloria said. “For a long time. Because you didn’t do what I thought you would. I had a picture in my head of your life. When you didn’t meet it, I got disappointed. But that was mine. Not yours.”

Her voice softened.

“I see now that you are a good woman. A good mother. You’re just... doing it your own way.”

Dodo’s eyes welled. She blinked hard. “Maybe I don’t need a man,” she whispered, echoing something she had long feared admitting.

“Maybe you don’t,” Ma Gloria said. “Maybe you just need peace.”

They sat there, the leftover stew cooling between them. A silence blooming in the room again—this time not full of pain or regret, but something gentler. Understanding, perhaps. Or the early buds of forgiveness.

Outside, the rain had stopped. The night was quiet.

Inside, something had shifted.