You move out of the family home and leave your children behind. The counselor says the constant conflict causes more damage than parents in separate households. You still see them every weekday. Down the mountain in the morning, to the family home, and then off to school with the two of them. In the afternoon, after school, up the mountain to your loft, till their father comes to fetch them.

​

Shame makes one shrink. You choose the furthest parking spot at school. Slinking down the veranda, praying that no one will recognise you. You do everything possible to remain complete as a mother. You won’t be anything less than the best for your children. It is easier to be better, away from the house of constant bickering. But your little girls suffer. Their dad suffers. You suffer. The suffering is your fault.

​

You stand in front of a firing squad. After you’d handed over yourself, guilty as charged. The charge sheet is concise. Adultery. Abandonment. Your letter of defence is more elaborate, but you burnt it, because ashes are lighter than paper, and you are too tired to pick up an A4 sheet of paper. Let alone recite it in defence. Thus, dust unto dust are the trespasses of the father, and dust unto dust will be your lot.

​

The ashes of the fire of your defence elegantly whirl upward in the afternoon air against the mountain slope. A line of yard geese honks past the flaming paper, upset by the disturbance of their usual routine. The afternoon light is bitchy, and soon blotches of ash cannot be distinguished from the air. The expanse is the colour of a bra that had been through the wash sevenhundredandfiftyeight times. It used to be white but had given up on that pure colour. The farmyard around your rented loft smells of a boiler room and goose feathers.

​

On Friday afternoon you stand in front of the execution squad. Your face is uncovered. However, every member of the squad is blindfolded. The sight of you disgusts them and they came to an arrangement to blindly go ahead with your execution. You recognise your executioners by their shoes. If the shoe fits, wear it. You recognise them: the girls’ teachers, mothers of classmates (but not the kind parental guidance chairperson), former colleagues at the high school (but not the drama teacher), members of the congregation (but not the minister or young deacon), your father, a few townsfolks -the pharmacists all wear identical Green Cross shoes-, several rich farmers’ wives and a contingent of Tablers, with whom you had to take part in the annual Round Table Show, (but not the attractive tall man and his artistic wife). The father’s family is not there, they don’t care for violence.

​

The single shot is a miserable attempt. You are wounded, not dead. You plead for the final shot. The firing squad’s mutual cackling drowns your whining. Their blindfolds stop them from noticing you were merely wounded. Your executioners walk to the rugby field while untying their blindfolds. Braai fires already lick the early evening and there’s a jolly beer tent. You remain lying there until oompah music sounds fill the air. Then you slither to your car and flee to the city.

​

It's Saturday night. The parquet floor of the old hotel in the city feels smooth against your cheek. Early winter’s dust tickles your nose. You might sneeze against the gleaming floor. Do they still shine these wooden floors with those old-fashioned rotating polishers? You want to jump out the window before midnight. To finish off yesterday’s unsuccessful execution. It must happen before Sunday, for the filthy story of your judgment will be the scoop in the Sunday paper. To read that in ink will be worse than giving up the ghost.

You’d better jump before the clock strikes twelve, possibly changing you into a pumpkin. Else the hotel chef may decide to make a pumpkin pie out of you. Your room is on the top floor, the sixth. You unscrew the brass hinge; the window grudgingly pushes open. Down there is a bed of hydrangeas, they ought to at least be able to flower in December after the pruning back that your body will give them.

It's not that cold. You smell bog and chips. In front of the hotel, cars blitz by non-stop, tonight the city throws a party. Pee-pho, pee-pho, an ambulance on a distant off-ramp.

Six stories are not high enough. You’ll end up black and blue in that flowerbed, with a fractured femur. Or a crushed hip. Legless among dark shrubs. Bone splinters sound deceivingly beautiful. But it won’t do. You pull away from the wooden floor. You caress your car keys like an amulet against your sternum. You slip past the napping hotel security guard in his glass box. Luckily your car starts right away. You keep the lights dimmed until the automatic gate slides close behind the vehicle. The streets still vroom, and your car does the rumba through the night carnival. 

At the second petrol station where you try, you lift a fresh newspaper from the stand. It weighs a ton and smells of scorn.

​

The security guard sits up quite alarmed when you park. His cap sits at a comically skew angle. Your amulet is now folded away inside the newspaper. Six stories up the fire escape. Too scared there may be people in the lift. The newspaper’s ink gives off over your entire body. THIS IS WHAT A BAD MOTHER LOOKS LIKE.

Sunlight and birdsong from the hotel garden awake you. Sunday morning. You are wounded, not dead.

In the city is a hotel.

There are six hallways in the hotel.

In the sixth hallway is a room.

There is a floor in the room.

In the middle is a newspaper.

There is a mother in the newspaper.

The mother in the newspaper is done.