Her eyes

They were interrupted by Amahle who was screaming hysterically. “Tadie, Tadie” she said pulling Mandy’s skirt with wet eyes. Mandy picked her up and tried consoling her niece.

“She will come see you soon, ok precious. Let’s go get a lollipop for Amahle.”

The little girl nodded her head, wiping her tears. “Yes lollipop.”

Mandy laughed as she walked into the house, it was very easy to please her niece.

“S’bu are you ok?”

“S’bu..... S’bu!” Menzi was now shouting waving his hand in front of his eyes.

“What?” S’bu answered absentminded

“I’ve been talking alone for 20 minutes now, what’s going on with you?” Menzi and S’bu had been very close for as long as they could remember. They spent a lot of time together and knew everything about each other. They were similar in so many ways, they got into mischief together and even had similar life goals. Their Fathers were brothers and very close. Like most African homes , family, relatives and tradition was valued the most. The two brothers prided themselves of their family unity and made it a point to pass that to their children. S’bu and Menzi’s Mothers were pregnant around the same time and the two were born two weeks apart. Growing up they spent alternative months in each other’s home. This led to their parents to prepare rooms for them in each home. Since they were the same age and spent most of their time together, most people thought they were twins and those who knew they were from different parents did not know which home belonged to which one of them.

Menzi’s phone rang, his Mother wanted him to get some groceries for her at the shops. He left S’bu still standing on the driveway still absentminded.

S’bu thought of something and walked to the security room. His home had the best security system with infrared cameras and motion detectors. He looked at the driveway clips over and over again, transferred it to his phone. On the stairs to his room he met her sister and suddenly remembered something and stopped.

“What is Gebbie and Gibberish?” he asked her.

Mandy cracked with laughter, she could just ignore him but he irritated her earlier when he came to the study.

“It’s you and Menzi” she said laughing again.

“What? why did she call us that and why does she not want us?” S’bu asked with a worried face. He was sure that he had never crossed paths with Thandi before, then why did she speak in such a manner about them?

“It’s a long story, I will tell you one day if you impress me and stop disturbing my study group” Mandy suggested.

S’bu walked to him room defeated and looked at the driveway video clips. He looked at the girl on his phone. She was tall, slim with neatly combed pitch black afro hair, small beautiful eyes that seemed to be looking into his soul. She was wearing a short pleated white traditional wrapper skirt with black porker dots, black vest without a bra so he could see the impression made by her nipples through the vest. Traditionally it was acceptable for girls especially virgins to wear like this. Girls could wear the most revealing traditional attire with the shortest skirts and their breast exposed as long as their were virgins and they would be even celebrated because they were regarded as pure. Interestingly this did not apply to western clothes, a lot of judgement would be passed on the same girl when wearing a revealing outfit if it was not traditional. Next he looked at the clip with Amahle hysterical and smiled. If my daughter is so used to you that she even cries when you leave then you must be spending a lot of time here, he thought and his smile grew wider and became a laugh. He suddenly thought of something, got up and walked to his parent floor which was the whole third floor of his home. This floor only had his parent’s massive bedroom and his fathers private study. Being the first born male child and the heir in the family he had his father’s passwords so he could go into his father’s study anytime he wanted while the rest of his siblings could use the study on the second floor. He put in the password to the study, got in and went straight to the cupboard that had background checks of the JJL employees. There was also a file on Mandy inside which he took out. When Mandy became unruly at her previous school his father’s suspected that the friends she had were intentionally misleading her and asked someone to do background check on them. Finding out that this was true and more complicated than he originally thought he did not resist the school expelled Mandy but was secretly relieved and quietly found her a government school with less rich kids . To be careful he still investigated the new friends at the current school and that’s why S’bu was in the study today. This was a big file as his sister was a socialite at her previous school so a lot of friends had to be investigated. He scanned through the documents and found what he was looking for.

Thandi Dlamini born at Hope hospital on the 25 March 2004 at 19:00 Apgars 9/10 and 10/10. Parents: Mother teacher, father deceased.

This was an extensive file with hospital birth records, parents and grandparents details, school reports. S’bu read all of them attentively but what caught his eye was four certificates which he looked at for a long time. He had seen these at a distance being waved proudly by a group of girls coming back from the king’s palace. The recent one was received in September that year which was two months ago.

Leaving his father’s study he went back to his room and looked at the photo in his phone fo r a long time. He just could not stop looking at her eyes.