Echoes Of The Heart

Episode 36

Ted stood back in his perfectly fitting grey Armani suit outside Aunt tafadzwa’s shop while the woman baptized him in a full body scan, her eyes excitedly dancing about in their sockets.

“How may I help you young man?” She put on her angelic smile reserved only for such moments. She was making mental calculations of her daughter’s wedding theme. The potential groom looked more than ready to wait for her daughter on the other end of the aisle.

“I would like to have a word with you in private ma’am,” Ted said to the under dressed woman. She might have lost weight everywhere else but her stomach still seemed to be having issues against her. Ted had to consciously do everything possible to keep his gaze from looking down at the layers of stretch marks popping out from under her tight blouse.

With her hopes still high, Aunt Tafadzwa smiled and said, “let us go in and talk,” she gestured towards the inside of her shop.
Ted followed her behind.
“Are you here about my daughter Tammy?” She finally blurted out once they were inside, unable to keep the excitement to herself any longer. She had always wanted her daughter to find a good and intelligent looking man like this one instead of those vagabonds she kept hanging out with.
“Your daughter?” Ted asked, “I am afraid I do not know your daughter ma’am.”
Aunt Tafadzwa’s face expanded. “If you are not here about my daughter, then why are you here?” She quizzed him.
“I am here to talk to you about your niece, Sibusiswe,” he informed her nonchalantly.
Aunt tafadzwa stood up in a huff. “Sibu is not here,” she hissed. “She traveled to South Africa. You should leave now, I am a very busy woman.” She went to stand by the door to see him off.

Unfortunately for her, Ted remained seated, a smirk on his face. “I already know where Sibu is,” he told the angry woman. “As a matter of fact, I left her at my house in Cape Town.”

“Then why are you here?” She roared.
“I thought it would be polite for me to talk to the only guardian of the woman I intend to marry…I thought we could get to know each other slowly.”

Aunt Tafadzwa folded her arms and glared at Ted in disbelief. “You want to marry Sibu? Are you kidding me? Why would a fine young man like you want to get married to a divorcee with a child?”

“Is there a law somewhere against that?” Ted asked. “I thought she was your niece, shouldn’t you be a little more supportive?”
“I see what’s going on here?” Aunt Tafadzwa was saying. “So she told you a few lies about me that’s why you came her with such an attitude isn’t it? If you have nothing better to talk to me about, I suggest you leave right now.”

“Something better?” Ted pretended to be mulling over her words. “How about we talk about the supposed accident that killed Sibu’s mother? Does that sound like a better topic?”

Aunt Tafadzwa was a ball of fear. She was stiff from fear. “Why would you want to talk about something like that?” Her voice was shaking terribly.

Ted got up and buried his hands in his pocket, a bemused smile on his face. “I just told you, I am her fiance. I intend to know every little thing about my future wife, especially the things that keep her awake at night.”
“If you don’t leave….”
“Why are you suddenly getting all worked up?” Ted said as he watched the woman break into a sweat. “Sibu told me everything about what you told her…about how her mother died.”
Aunt Tafadzwa froze.

“She told you? Sibu told you?” She didn’t believe him. “There is no way Sibu could have talked to you about something like that.”

“Oh my, but she did,” Ted said with a grin on his face. “She told me about the boyfriend she was with while she supposedly pushed her mother to her death. She told me about how you dragged her to the place of the accident and how you kept her from talking to anyone about it.”

Aunt Tafadzwa could feel the walls around her crumbling. She was shaking from her very roots.

“I think you should sit down,” Ted advised, using his leg to point towards the chair she had been sitting on.

“I need you to leave,” she said for the umpteenth time. “I am not feeling so well.” She was holding her hand to her forehead. “I always get like this whenever talk of my sister is brought up. Why cant you let the poor soul rest in peace?”
Ted wanted to laugh out loud at her audacity and her little performance but instead he said, “I am not leaving this place until I tell you what I came here for. For years Sibu has killed herself over the guilt of what you made her believe was the truth.”

“I did not make her believe anything, I told her the truth!” she yelled. “She is just an ungrateful selfish wench out to make me seem like a bad person just because I made her pay for what she did to my sister.”
“And what exactly did she do?” Ted asked. “Give up this act because I already know the truth. I came all the way here to find out the truth and I did. There is nothing you can say that will ever convince anyone that Sibu had anything to do with her mother’s death.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” was what Aut Tafadzwa said with her mouth but her body was shaking so badly she had to seat down.

Ted was looking down at her with a frown on his face. “You should be ashamed of yourself for using your fourteen year old niece like that,” he rebuked her. “Don’t you have no soul? How can you be so wicked towards your own sister’s daughter? You killed your sister due to your own selfishness and pinned the death on her only daughter. Are you even human?”
“I never meant to kill her!” Aunt Tafadzwa yelled. “It was that brat…I wanted to get rid of that brat but Miriam was so foolish she jumped in and sacrificed herself.” She cried. “My sister was beautiful and smart. A lot of men wanted to marry her but she kept turning them down because of that stupid girl. I just wanted her to get married to a rich man so that the family can get out of poverty.

“I was a single mother with two children that were starving and yet my own sister could not sacrifice herself to marry a man willing to take care of all of us because she needed to set a good example for her precious daughter. The man was not even that old, a twenty-seven years age different isn’t such a big deal when a man has so much money as Mr Ngulube did. I had to do something about it! It was the only way for us all to survive.”

Ted couldn’t believe what he was hearing. After all these years, there was no sign of remorse from Sibu’s aunt.

He was baffled. “And you thought pushing her daughter in front of a car was the right thing to do to force her to marry some rich old man just so you and your children can live in comfort? Don’t you see anything wrong with that kind of reasoning?”

Aunt Tafadzwa was growling under her breath. “I knew what I was doing was wrong but what could a mother do? I had to look out for my own children’s interests. That b—–d child of hers wasn’t even supposed to be born. I tried so many times to get Miriam to abort but she just wouldn’t listen. At least my children were born in marriage even though their father turned out to be a useless man. That father of Sibu was a nobody back then. He is busy prancing around like a rich man these days after ruining my sister’s life. He will die not knowing he had a daughter. That’s what he deserves for ruining my sisters life.”

“Sibu’s father is alive?” Ted asked in disbelief.

Aunt Tafadzwa froze when she realized her blunder. She had been so wrapped up in her hate that she let that information slip.
“No…you heard wrong, that’s not what I said.” She stammered. “Since we don’t know where he is, I was just talking hypothetically.”

“Sibu thinks that her father is dead!” Ted shouted.

“That’s what she tells people because she doesn’t want to admit that he didn’t want her. She knows very well that he is alive somewhere.”

“You just said that he will die not knowing he had a daughter because that’s what he deserves for ruining your sister’s life…yes, I remember everything,” Ted said upon seeing the shocked expression on her face. “It’s a weakness of mine…others think its a gift but I tend to remember everything I hear and see. You made Sibu believe that her father had rejected her when he has no idea she even exists?”
“It was the only way to keep her from searching for him. She had to keep working to feed my family. It was her fault after all that the sister who was supposed to be taking care of me died trying to save her. Well, she saved her and so she had to take my sister’s place. I had to make her useful. I couldn’t afford to have her running around the country searching for a useless man.”

“And when you discovered he was doing fine now, why didn’t you tell Sibu or him? I don’t doubt Sibu could have left you to suffer while she lived in luxury with her father?”

The woman scoffed. “That might might have risen from the flames but he is not all that. Martin’s family had way more money than anyone else.”

“So you forced her to get married to Martin for money?” That was a revelation Ted had not been expecting to hear.

Aunt Tafadzwa had a triumphant smirk on her face. “Umhu,” she said. “You thought your future wife was some innocent woman being abused, right? But she married Martin out of greed, I never forced her. In exchange for a few certain monetary benefits, she agreed to Marry Martin and when she was done with him, she dumped him like a hot potato.”

“You are sick,” Ted was looking her disgustingly. “You are kidding yourself if you think I am going to believe the crap coming out of your mouth.”
“Ask her yourself. Since she tells you everything, I don’t doubt she will tell you the truth.”

“I didn’t come here to listen to you badmouth my woman,” Ted snapped. “Before I tell you why I came here, I need you to tell me where to find Sibu’s father.”

“And why would I do such a foolish thing? How am I possibly to benefit from giving away such vital information?”
“Because at some point in that twisted mind of your, you are going to have to face the fact that you are an evil person that needs to repent. Sibu did not ask to be born. She was just a kid that was unfortunate enough to have you as an aunt. Just because your children were not born out of wedlock does not make them better than those that weren’t. What gives you the right to decide something like that?”

“I am not guilty of anything because I did everything in my power to ensure that my children were well taken care of. that’s what a mother does.”

“You bring shame to every woman out there who’s a mother. You took that same right from your own sister when you decided it was okay to throw her only daughter in front of a moving car. You should pray that nothing like that ever happens to your own children. Whether you don’t tell me or not, I will find out where Sibu’s father is and I will let him decide what happens to you.”

“Are you going to tell Sibu about what we talked about?” She called out to him from behind.
Ted stopped and with his back still to her he said, “Of course I will. She deserves to know the truth. It’s been a long time coming.”
Aunt Tafadzwa’s face was riddled with fear for the first time that day. She might have managed to manipulate her niece all those years but it was only because she had allowed her out of guilty, but now that the truth was out in the open, she shuddered at the thought of what she might do to her and her children to exert her revenge.
Sibu was the kind of person to do exactly that.
When Ted returned to Cape Town, he sat Sibu down and told her everything he had discovered back home. He had never before seen a woman break down in tears and cry as much as Sibu did that day.

To watch the woman he had come to consider as one of the strongest women break down and crumble right in front of him, Ted failed to hold back his own tears. He would have paid any price to transfer her pain to himself. That’s how much he loved her.
While Jacob was sleeping alone in Ted’s room, Ted held Sibu in his arms until she finally cried herself to sleep. Not wanting to leave her side, he stayed with her all through the night until Jacob came to join them in the early hours of the morning. Ted motioned for him to stay quite, moved to the side and called the little man to sleep between him and his mother.

“Is mum not feeling well?” Jacob whispered in Ted’s ear.
“Yes, but she will feel better when she wakes up in the morning so don’t disturb her. Let’s all sleep quietly.
“Are you going to sleep here with us?” Jacob asked.

“You don’t want me to?” he asked the five year old.

“I want you to sleep here,” Jacob whispered back. “You are the only one who can chase away the monsters when they attack mum in her sleep. I don’t want you to go.”

Ted smiled and ruffled his hand through Jake’s hair. “That’s my boy,” he said.
Six months later, little Jacob was to open the door to his father while his mother and Ted were cuddled up on the sofa watching TV.
“Mum, dad is here!” Jacob announced excitedly to the room.

At first Martin could not see anyone is sight since the two of them were hidden by the back of the huge sofa they were sleeping on until they both looked up when the announcement was made.

“What the hell?” Martin said upon seeing the two of them appearing cozy from behind the sofa. “Are the two of you….” his face was turning green from furry but before he could burst out, Sibu got up from the sofa and ran towards her son who was laboring with the bundles of toys his father had brought for him.

“How about we move these to your play room my love so you can play with them while your father and I talk?” She picked up most of them and carried them to the playroom with an excited Jacob closely following her behind, oblivious to the storm brewing between the two men engaged in a face off behind them.

“I see you haven’t forgotten where my house is,” Ted greeted his old friend. “It would have been nice if you had called first instead of popping up unannounced. You could have saved yourself a lot of embarrassment.”

Martin walked over to where Ted was now standing.