Every second Saturday, six women and a biscuit tin. That was the stokvel. Ma brought me along small, to sit under the table among the church shoes and listen to the money being counted — the soft violence of coins, the crisp argument of notes. Each woman put in what she had. At year's end they shared it out for December: school uniforms, a goat, a stove that worked.
MaDlamini kept the tin. She had a laugh that arrived before her jokes and a way of licking her thumb to count that made the notes seem holier. She trusted no bank and every neighbour. When my mother was short, MaDlamini covered her and said nothing, only wrote a small figure in a school exercise book that no one else was allowed to read.
She died in March, between contributions. The tin came to our house because no one could think where else it should go.
The next second Saturday the women came anyway. They sat around our table, five now, and they counted. When it was done, Ma took an empty envelope and set aside a sixth portion, the same as always, and wrote a name on it in her careful hand.
For who? I asked.
For MaDlamini, she said, as if I had asked something foolish. You think a person stops needing because they are gone? Her grandchildren still grow. December still comes.
So it went, year after year. A share for a woman who could no longer spend it, carried in December to a house of children who never knew where the school shoes came from. The women grew old and slow. The coins still made their soft violence.
I keep the tin now. I am the one who licks my thumb to count, though no one taught me and everyone did. On the second Saturday I set aside a portion with no name, because they are all gone now, all six, and December, God help me, still comes.