There are so many questions that I long to ask my mother, but I do not know where to begin. This is not because she is as unapproachable as my father, rather because, regardless of our friendship, I cannot bring myself to ask about things that might shift our relationship towards something which I might not have anticipated, and I am also not ready to answer certain questions that she too might be curious about.

 

​There is an elusive curiosity that has always characterised our relationship, one which becomes more tangible with the maturity of it and I am afraid of what shifting that will bring. What will I do with the reality of her unhappiness? How will it sit between us? What will it shift? How much space does it require here? I want to ask, ask about how it sat between Ausi and herself? I wonder, did she inherit it from her mother too? How do I ask about the whispers of regret and exhaustion that I’ve heard at the creases of her desires, and how similar they sound to those which she says my grandmothers kept under their tongues too. Does she know this, that they sound the same? Can she not hear her own whispers?

 

Every time someone exclaims how much of a particular thing in me reminds them of Mma, I am always reminded that I carry her name and I continue to imagine who this woman whose name I bear -though have only ever heard about, and seen in the bag carrying or history- really was. However, sometimes, this is rather scary because I wonder if I inherited more than the texture of her hair and the tone of her voice and if really “Weitsie nakwe o gola ne kere o tlo tshwana le Mma. Mma gape ne a ti didimaletse, wena nou, ai… O tletse ka leshata la basadi!” I wonder what I have inherited from these women and what my muscles have refused to remember. And I begin to fear if I have kept anything from them that has made them stay in all that trauma. I wonder what these things are that have made all the women in my family stay and I wonder if I have them too, lying dormant in the texture of my approach to love, waiting for the day its violence shows up. I wonder if I will stay, despite the certainty that I won’t because does one ever anticipate that they will?

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 I want to ask my mother about how much I remind her of Mma. If she thinks that Papa is really certain that I nolonger carry his mother’s calm in my voice. I want to be sure of this. And if she hesitates to confirm, I will tell her that the reason I’ve had an elusive proximity to romance is because here, between us, in our bones, we have a history of violence, and staying, in trauma and shame and fear and unknowing and staying and hurting and betrayal, of love and duty and suffering and exhaustion and unhappiness and regret and still staying and I am afraid to find out, when the violence shows up, if I have inherited any of these things. And I think that it will, show up, I am almost certain of this because this is our story and no one anticipates to stay so then I just stand in the living room, careful to not make myself too comfortable in people’s bodies because when they no longer are safe enough for me to stay, I want to always be able to find my way out.

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 But I won’t, tell her this, ka’one ka tshaba. So instead, I’ll ask if she wants a cup of coffee and if she could help me make something to go with it and maybe then, when I’m struggling to knead the dough, I’ll ask her about these difficulties of loving. Whether six cups of sugar is too much to pour into love and how much I should reserve for myself. If sweet things really do spoil quicker and if so, how do I stop the rot because I like them sweet so how much salt should I add to disinfect the wounds and how high must I set the oven for the biscuits and if I happen to burn them, where should I hide the body?

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Maybe I will ask this. Next of next week when we make pudding again, I will try and ask. Or maybe I’ll listen to her tell me about how there’s something in her ledombolo that doesn’t quite taste the same as that of Ausi, and how she wishes that she was still here for her to ask about the consistency of it, and why she told her to stay in the stickiness and then continue to tell me how much she would give to see her again and I look at her and wonder; Really, how much hurt does this woman carry? How much pain could our bodies possibly hold before they collapse? I will do this; I will wonder and maybe think about asking. Maybe next week the kitchen will become a holding space for these conversations. Maybe she will mistakenly spill hundreds and thousands of her tiny desires that we would mistakenly make joy from them all. Maybe we can feed each other courage, not the kind it takes to stay, but the kind it takes to cultivate happiness. To nourish our bones.

 

​I wonder if she remembers how long it should be left to rise in the sun. If she remembers where to get the yeast. If she doesn’t, we might have to dig up graves and pull these recipes from Ausi le Mma’s bones. But what if there is nothing there to find but hollowness in them? What if they too didn’t know how long love should be left to rise in the heat, and friction, and static. What if all that their bones remember is how to knead kghotlhello. What if the only things that their hair still holds in its fibre is the all that pain that festered during their lives. Who then will teach us how to make delicacies because we are tired of these generational staples. They have too much struggle in their skin.

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​I want a delicacy.

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Hundreds and thousands and millions of them and if they spoil, as sweet things do, I will make more and feed them to my mother, pack them into dishes and take them to my grandmothers’ graves and when we eat so much more than our bellies can hold, maybe then we will begin to recalibrate the fibres of our muscles so that they can hold and remember joy.

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