The truth was that as much as I loved my mother, I’d found her love to be stifling. It was weighted with so much expectation that it sometimes felt as though a vise had been clamped around my throat. I was her everything, her reason for living. I know people said that all the time like it was a good thing, as if they were bestowing a blessing, when in fact what they were saying was, You are my air. Without you, I can’t breathe.

No child should have to carry the burden of being their parent’s oxygen.

“I love you, Ma.”

She nodded and kissed me quickly before stifling a sob and wrapping her arms around herself. I waved to Ruth, who was staring at Ma like she wanted to touch her, but also like she knew her comfort wasn’t wanted. It was a hungry look. It was the way Ma looked at me.

When I got to the car and grasped the handle, I turned back for one last look. Ma’s face was scrunched in misery, but it was the kind of martyred misery that makes a person feel perversely good. Like they’re suffering for a worthy cause.

I blew her a kiss, thinking I’d see her again soon. The plan was that she’d come to the convent to visit me, but of course that never happened. I didn’t know then that it was the last time I’d ever see her and so I suffered no guilt that leaving made me feel like I could finally breathe. Like I’d become my own oxygen.

Father Thomas and I had never been alone together, and I’d found it disorienting that our thighs were almost touching in the confines of the car. I was used to his being dressed in his vestments and standing in front of a congregation in the church. That day, though he wore his clerical collar, he was wearing trousers like any other man, and there wasn’t a stained-glass window or altar boy in sight.

Forty minutes into the journey, just as I was beginning to relax, Father Thomas turned to me and asked, “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what, Father?”

“That grinding sound.”

I listened carefully, not wanting to get it wrong, but I didn’t hear anything.

“Something is definitely wrong,” Father Thomas said just before he signaled to turn into the parking lot of what looked like a cheap motel. It was the kind of place Ma would never have allowed us to stop at.

I straightened up, alarmed. We weren’t even out of Randfontein yet. I didn’t want to have to turn around and go back to the farm less than an hour after we’d left. “Are you sure?”

He sounded annoyed. “Of course I’m sure. Unless you think you have more experience with automotive problems than I do?”