Nothing in the Drawer

Nadine had three days to empty her mother’s house in Benoni before the estate agent brought the first buyers through. Within an hour she knew she wasn’t really looking for the title deed.

She told her husband Craig she’d be fine on her own. She told the estate agent, a cheerful girl called Bianca, that the place would be spotless by Friday. She told herself she was going through the drawers one by one because that was the sensible way to do it. Estelle Kruger had been a sensible woman. She had worked thirty-one years at FNB, ironed her tea towels, and labelled every container in her home with the contents and the date. It was only right to go through her things the way she would have.

But by eleven o’clock Nadine had been through the chest of drawers in the passage, the sideboard, and both bedside tables, and she had to admit that what she was looking for was some kind of envelope with her name on it.

You know the story. The difficult mother dies. The daughter clears the house. And there, at the back of a drawer, under the years of stacked paper, is the letter. I know I was hard on you. I never knew how to say it. Or a diary. Or a shoebox of every drawing the daughter ever made, kept in tissue paper, proving that all along, underneath, there was love and care.

Nadine was forty-six. She did not believe in that story. She went through every drawer in the house anyway, hoping for something she knew was not there.

---

What she found was paper. Her mother had kept everything that could be filed. Tax returns back to 1988. The warranty for a Defy stove that had been replaced in 2003. Municipal accounts in rubber bands, one bundle per year. The guarantee for the security cameras.

There were no drawings. There were no school reports. There was one photograph of Nadine, at her wedding, in a small A5 frame from Clicks. It was on top of the wardrobe, facing the wall. Nadine let out a frustrated breath through her nose and shook her head.

“That could mean anything,” she whispered.

In the bedside table on her mother’s side she found a well-used Bible. It was the old Afrikaans one with the soft black cover, the one Estelle had carried to church every Sunday for forty years. Nadine sat on the edge of the bed and held it for a while before she opened it, her mind swarming with memories of the hurtful things her Christian mother had said and done over the years.

Maybe there’s an apology in here, she thought.

She opened the book. Nothing was underlined. There were no notes, no dates, no highlighted verses. There was one bookmark. It was a faded Checkers till slip from 2019, for milk, rooibos and a bag of sugar, and it was in Leviticus.

Nadine laughed out loud, alone in the bedroom, until the laughing turned into something closer to crying. Then she pulled herself together and carried on.

---

Nadine had a mental list of how her mother had treated her over the years. She had never written it down, but she didn’t need to. Most of it was small, the kind of thing you’d feel foolish saying to a therapist.

I have such a disrespectful daughter.

You look fat in that dress.

God’s word says you should honour your parents.

Estelle had been widowed at thirty-five with a four-year-old, a full-time job and a bond. Nadine knew that was something to consider. She had known it for years. But knowing why something happened is not the same as someone saying sorry for it.

And at the top of the list was one thing in particular.

Twelve years ago, Nadine’s son was stillborn at thirty-four weeks. She was in Mulbarton Hospital for three days. Her mother lived forty minutes away and did not come. On the second evening she sent an SMS. Nadine still knew it word for word.

Sorry for your loss.

The obligatory text you’d send a colleague. The way a bank would email you.

Estelle never mentioned the baby again. Not once, not on his birthday, not ever. And Nadine had spent twelve years waiting, without admitting it to anyone, for one sentence that started with the word I.

---

On the second day Nadine’s daughter Mia came along to help.

She was seventeen and on holiday, and she had been bribed with Nando’s and the promise of her grandmother’s old digital keyboard. She was better at it than Nadine expected. She put music on her phone, made tea without being asked, and wrapped the glasses in newspaper for the boxes.

“Not like that,” Nadine said. “Stems first, or they snap.”

Mia rewrapped them.

“And don’t put the heavy ones on top.”

Mia moved the heavy ones.

“And wipe your hands, you’re getting ink and dust on everything.”

Mia put the glass down. “You know you sound exactly like her.”

It landed the way only a true thing from your own child can land. Nadine opened her mouth, closed it, and went back to the linen cupboard.

They worked without talking until early evening. They ate their chicken burgers on the back step, straight out of the box, because the plates were packed, and it was Mia who broke the silence.

“What are you actually looking for? You’ve been through that chest of drawers three times.”

Nadine thought about lying, playing it off as not that big of a deal. She was too tired.

“An apology,” she said.

Mia chewed for a while. “From Grandma? The lady we buried last week?”

“I know how it sounds.”

“No, I get it.” Mia wiped her fingers on her jeans. “I’d settle for an apology from a living one.”

Nadine turned to look at her.

“Grade nine,” Mia said. She was looking at the washing line, not at her mother. “When I failed the year. I showed you my report in the car outside school. You read it and handed it back and said, well, I’m not surprised.” She shrugged, like it was a small thing. Nadine knew that shrug. It was the one she used for her own list. “That’s all. Then you asked if I wanted Nando’s. Same as today.”

Nadine searched for the memory right there on the back step. The car, the report, the words. It wasn’t there. She had no memory of it at all.

And she understood, sitting on her mother’s step with a chicken bone in her hand, that somewhere there was a woman who remembered sorry for your loss word for word, and a woman who had typed it and forgotten it by morning. She had been both of them.

“Mia, I…”

“It’s fine,” Mia said, and went back inside to wrap glasses.

It was not fine. They both knew it.

---

That night Nadine couldn’t sleep. She did what she always did when she couldn’t sleep, which was pray the Lord’s Prayer slowly, the way her mother had taught her beside a bed forty years ago. That was on the other list, the one she didn’t keep.

And forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.

She had said it thousands of times. Tonight she stopped there, because she noticed what the prayer didn’t say. There was nothing about explanations. Nothing about waiting for the letter. Nothing that said once they’ve apologised properly.

And God had not waited for her to understand what she’d done before He forgave it. Most of it, she was beginning to realise, she didn’t even know about. Grade nine. The car. The Nando’s. Forgiven before she ever remembered it.

“Lord,” she said into the dark, “I’m not going to get it from her. I’ve looked everywhere. Help me, Jesus. You’ll have to be enough.”

It was not a beautiful prayer. It was the truest one she had prayed in years.

---

On Friday the house was empty. Bianca was coming at three.

Nadine walked through the rooms one last time. They were smaller without furniture. In the kitchen she pulled out the drawer beside the stove, the one that had held string and elastic bands and spare keys for as long as she could remember. It was empty now, lined with the same flowery contact paper her mother had put down in 1987.

Nadine looked into it for a long time.

“I forgive you, Mom,” she said, out loud, to the empty kitchen. “You don’t have to explain. I’m not going to wait anymore.”

It didn’t feel like much. She said it again anyway, because she had a feeling this was the kind of thing you have to say more than once.

Then she closed the drawer.

---

Mia was waiting in the passenger seat, the keyboard across the back seat behind her. Nadine got in and started the engine, then sat there with her hands on the wheel.

“Grade nine,” she said. “The report. I don’t remember saying it, and that makes it worse. It was a cruel thing to say to you. I was wrong, and I’m sorry you’ve carried it this long.”

She did not add anything after that. No but, no I was stressed, no you know I love you. She had spent twelve years learning exactly what an apology sounds like by never getting one.

Mia looked out of the window for a long time.

“Thank you,” she said at last.

Then she kicked off her takkies and put her feet up on the dashboard.

Every part of Nadine wanted to say feet down. She looked at them. She opened her mouth. Then she closed it, put the car in gear, and let them stay there all the way home.