Written In The Stars. Mokopi Shale

glad to be performing this little daughterly ritual and to get back a semblance of normality after the past two days.

      “What is normal anyway, my girl?” MmaMotsumi asked.

      Startled but resigned about her mom reading her mind, Masedi answered, “Well, I don’t know. Getting up, going to work, seeing my friends, making my jewellery . . .”

      Masedi placed her mother’s cup of tea in front of her and took a seat opposite her so they could look at each other.

      “Heartbreak, darkness, loneliness?” her mom asked, looking deep into her soul.

      Masedi had no response to that as she sat drinking her tea. Her mother hiccupped, burped and then made a deep humming noise in her throat. Masedi knew those were the signs of the spirit moving through her.

      “To answer your question – it’s up to you, my girl. Whether he’s right for you or not, whether he’s the one or not, whether this is real love or not, it’s all up to you. That’s what people have forgotten, that you create what you most want or fear.”

      “Eish, Mama . . .” Masedi felt tears well up and tried to swallow them as fear of being hurt filled her. She didn’t know whether she could go through that pain again.

      “All the ingredients are there – the attraction, the emotional, spiritual and physical compatibility,” MmaMotsumi said. “But you have to choose to make it right for you.”

      Masedi nodded, not sure if this was what she wanted to hear, or whether she had hoped her mother would warn her off.

      “Show me your feet,” her mom said.

      Masedi slipped off her flops and placed her feet in her mother’s lap. MmaMotsumi started to massage them, feeling for knots.

      “You see these?” she asked while rubbing her fingers across the calluses on the bottom of Masedi’s feet. “This is all the anger and hurt that you carry. It’s the heartbreak that you harbour and use as a shield not to let love into your heart. These are the scars of your heartbreak. You have to let that boy go. He did his job, he fulfilled his role in your life, and then he left. He is no longer yours to keep and yearn after. Let him go, so that you can find true love.”

      “I just don’t want to be stupid,” Masedi blurted out to her mother.

      “There’s a song that says love makes fools of all of us,” MmaMotsumi answered.

      Masedi looked off into the distance, thinking deeply. “But what about the lessons that we learn? Are we to discard them?”

      “That’s just fear talking. No one has ever died of a broken heart, my girl. You didn’t die before, did you? And you won’t again – if it happens. But you will be richer for having allowed love into your life and a man into it, to share it with you, akere?”

      Masedi nodded pensively.

      They sat in silence for a long time and then Masedi changed the subject. “So what’s news in this part of the world?”

      Her mother launched into village gossip mode, telling her about what had been happening since the last kgotla, where a decree was made that villagers had to take care of their cattle, otherwise they would be fined, and how Rre Meleke refused point-blank to obey.

      Masedi enjoyed this chance to escape the fluttering mixture of fear and excitement in her heart at the prospect of possibly meeting up with Pelo Sebata again.