After a few days of the same routine, visits from family and friends, mother and sons are declared healthy enough to leave. The boys, christened Nyasha and Tinotenda, are now able to breathe on their own. Tanya is smiling, looking down at Nyasha as she breastfeeds him. They both look like their father, the same perfectly shaped lips, the big Bantu nose and a forehead that seems to carry all the knowledge. She constantly finds herself sending thank you prayers to God every time she sees them, they are her perfect miracle.

She seems to only pray for them these days, their health and future. She also constantly prays that she knows how to love and raise them, that she does not openly choose them over Kupa and Tadiwa.

Tanya has been toying with the idea of not going back to work. The thought had alarmed her at first. At the centre of her self worth has always been her career. She took great pride in what she has achieved in her career. It has taken a lot for her to be a Project Director in the NGO she works for. Her career meant a lot to her, even more, on some days, than her to title as wife.

Since the birth of the twins though, her priorities had changed , suddenly. She felt a fierce sense of maternal pride and protectiveness over her babies. She did not see how she could trust anyone to bring them up while she worked all day. Her job, in comparison, seemed of no significance. Motherhood was how true fulfillment felt.

This situation at first presented a very complex case of cognitive dissonance for Tanya. This is a woman who has always advocated for the independence of women through financial freedom. Her gospel was, never rely on a man for your upkeep. How would she look, doing the very same thing she had so actively spoken against with the group of young women she led at church? The second point of concern was that she always thought housewives were not ambitious. She always had thought women that chose to stay at home didn’t have anything worthwhile to live for, now she was planning to be one. And she now understood how being a mother was so much a fulfillment.

So Tanya holds off telling her husband of what she wants to do, resign. He comes and picks them up from the hospital later that afternoon. They get home to her waiting mother. Traditionally, Tanya should have gone to stay with her mother until her babies were some weeks old. It’s not a surprise how this would have been a problematic arrangement; Tanya can only imagine the scandals her mother would think to unravel in the audience of visiting friends and family. Eventually, after a long struggle, it had been agreed that Tanya’s mother would stay at their house for a week or 2 before going back to her ailing husband. Of course, the new grandma had not been happy, lamenting the lack of respect her son in law had for tradition.

‘Er er, welcome’, Tanya’s mother rushes to the car as they pull in. She reaches for one of the twins, nuzzling and cooing at him, although he is asleep. She looks over at Dylan who is now holding the other twin as Tanya gets off the car.

‘Ah ah!’ She says with much alarm, ‘that’s not how to hold a new born. You will break his neck!’ She almost puts the baby she is holding on top of the car roof , just so she can snatch twin 2 from his father.

Dylan , who is pretty convinced he knows how to hold babies, is offended but chooses to smile and pretend to adjust the baby in his arms.

‘Zvakatooma shuwa, yet people think they don’t need help from me . Tsk tsk.’ Mbuya Kupakwashe mumbles to herself as she makes for the house. Tanya and Dylan exchange a knowing look before bursting in laughter. They both know it is going to be a bumpy stay with the older lady.

She shouts at ‘that girl’ as she gets in. She still pretends to constantly forget Rudo’s name. Tanya suspects this gives her a false sense of power. While she calls for that girl to bring her water to bathe her grand kids, Tanya takes the moment to take a shower herself, to cleanse herself of the hospital smell of medicine and it’s heavy aura of approaching death. Dylan goes back to work, Kupakwashe is out for extra lessons while Tadiwa is sleeping. Tanya cannot get over that she is a mother, she looks at her naked body in the bathroom, marveling at the miracle of childbirth.