Zodwa felt herself flush. The desserts were expensive and Zodwa only needed one. Still, she didn’t feel she could leave without them, so she spent a small fortune on six of them and a handful of multicolored candles before returning to her shack.

The pack of chocolate cupcakes is open now on the table. Zodwa considers the impossibly perfect swirl of icing on top of each little cake and wonders how they manage to get them like that. She selects one from the pack, the most perfect of all of them, and sets it down.

Today would have been her baby’s first birthday. It’s also a year since he disappeared. There hasn’t been a day that Zodwa hasn’t thought about the boy and wondered what really happened to him, if he’s truly dead like everyone believes. He has to be, because what else would Leleti have done with him? Why else hasn’t she found him after a year of searching?

The last conversation she had with her mother churns constantly in her mind, like a whirlpool that’s in constant motion but can’t go anywhere.

Where is he? Where is my son?

He . . . he . . . is gone.

Gone? Gone where, Mama? What did you do with him?

I did it for . . . you. And for him.

What? What did you do?

The candle takes seventeen minutes to burn itself down and Zodwa counts off every one of them, certain that it’s longer than all the time she spent with her baby after his birth. As she sits staring at the flame, she reminds herself that her son’s disappearance is her punishment.

The good Lord knows that you do not even want this child.

This was how her gogo had explained away a few miscarriages that had happened in the village. Zodwa had heard her say that babies could hear things from the womb, that they would leave if they suspected they were not wanted or would be born to parents they didn’t deem worthy. But what about a baby that was too close to birth to miscarry? Could such a child work the same sorcery after its birth to make itself disappear? If so, it’s a bitter indictment of Zodwa.

The irony, of course, is how much she wants the baby now. Zodwa would give anything to reclaim those moments after his birth, so that instead of thinking about Thembeka, she would have been focusing on him; so that instead of wishing him away, she’d have welcomed him. Perhaps if she’d paid attention and wept tears of joy instead of tears of regret, he would have stayed.