The Christmas tree would stand tall in the corner of the living room and Boney M would always be playing somewhere. At church, preparations for the big pageant would begin and Dad would drive my sisters and I there three times a week for the rehearsals. Anne and myself would be angels, and Nomsa the narrator- she was always the best reader.

Then, there would be Christmas candies, movies on television, and shopping for new outfits for the Christmas Mass. Mum would let us stay up late to see the fireworks, and the smell of baked treats filled the house early Christmas morning as a light shower of rain fell outside. Now, Christmas is often hot. We would sit outside, in the middle of a neighbourhood-wide power cut, on a mat under the mango tree listening to the neighbours behind us re-enact their screaming battles.

Suppertime came quickly, and we were all at the dinner table: Dad, Mum, Anne, Aunty Joyce and me. Nomsa was still at college; she only ever visited on weekends these days.

As usual, Dad and Aunty Joyce were soon in roars of laughter; she always seemed to bring out the laughs in my parents. She was telling us a story of how a pastor tried to exorcise a man who overpowered him and stripped him naked. “This is why I tell Peter,” she said, between bouts of laughter, “if you don’t have the anointing, don’t try these things!”

“Indeed!” Dad roared as he poured more pure juice into her glass; he’d come home with it from work, like he’d been doing every day since she arrived.

Anne and I were quiet. Anne occasionally looking over her shoulder, catching a glimpse of the telenovela that was playing on the muted television in the living room.

“This chicken is delicious,” Aunty Joyce announced. “Who prepared it?”

“The maid,” Mum replied. “She left it in the oven before she left.”

“Now when will these girls start helping?” She looked at me with her disarming smile, before turning her gaze on to Anne. “You know, they need to start preparing to be good wives and mothers.”