Mandla starts crying as he looks between Ruth and Zodwa, and what Zodwa recalls then in that fractured moment, as her frightened son is being held by the screaming white woman, are the words from the book she was reading to Mandla just minutes before.

He did not know what his mother looked like. He did not see her.

Ruth starts walking away but calls over her shoulder, “I’m too pissed off to deal with you right now. We’ll talk about this later.”

Something in Zodwa snaps. “No, we’ll talk about this now.”

“What?” Ruth spins around.

Zodwa stands firm, trying to stop her quivering legs from buckling under her.

“What did you say?”

“I said we’ll talk about this now. You’re the one who has no right,” Zodwa says. “You have no right to speak to me like that.”

Ruth gapes at her.

“You could have died last night driving home as drunk as you were. And then you could have died again in the dam. You could have drowned but I saved you. I almost drowned saving you.” Zodwa’s voice is pitched dangerously low. If she raises it, she may raise her fist along with it. “I bathed you, warmed you up, put you in your pajamas, and carried you to bed, and then I brought Mandla here because you were too drunk to even stand, never mind take care of him.”

“Who do you think you are?” Ruth asks, staring at Zodwa as though she’s never seen her before.

“Who do I think I am?” Zodwa repeats, feeling the world spin. I’m his mother, Zodwa wants to roar. I’m his mother, that’s who I am.

“Yes, who the bloody hell do you think you are talking to me like that?”

“I’m someone who cares for that little boy,” Zodwa says. “I’m someone who believes he deserves better than a drunkard for a mother. And I’m someone who will report you to social services if you ever, ever get into a state like that again when you’re supposed to be looking after him. Do you understand me?”

Ruth flushes and Zodwa prepares for an onslaught. Instead, Ruth puts Mandla down and then turns to vomit in the dust.

•   •   •

Zodwa spends a sleepless night replaying everything that happened. Of course, you can’t speak to a white person that way and get away with it. It doesn’t matter that it’s the new South Africa; whites still hold all the power, which Ruth will prove just as soon as she fires Zodwa. And what then? Once she’s not only out of a job but banished from seeing Mandla, what will she do then?