Episode 1 - The Girl who Wanted To Be Loved

Beyonce Dlamini had one dream.

Not fame. Not money. Not a big house with a swimming pool and a gate with an intercom.

Just a family.

A real one. The kind with noise and laughter and somebody who saved the last piece of chicken for you because they knew it was your favourite. The kind where somebody noticed when you were quiet. Where somebody's arms were always open.

That was all she wanted.

It was not a complicated dream.

But for Beyonce it felt like asking for the moon.

She grew up in Thandeka Children's Home in Soweto.

Green walls that were once cheerful and had long since faded to the colour of giving up. Bunk beds with thin mattresses. A dining hall that smelled of overcooked pap and floor polish. House mothers who were kind enough but had thirty other children pulling at their sleeves.

Nobody's favourite. Nobody's first choice.

Just Beyonce. Quiet. Watchful. Waiting.

She aged out at eighteen with a small bag, a worn Bible, and one thing they said came from her mother —

A pendant on a thin silver chain.

No photograph. No letter. No name.

Just the pendant, cold and smooth against her chest, shaped like a small oval with faint engravings she could never quite make out.

She held it every night like a question she was afraid to ask out loud.

*Who were you, Mama? Did you love me? Did you even want me?*

The pendant never answered.

But she wore it every single day.

Because it was the only piece of herself that had ever come from somewhere.

She was not a girl who stayed in her sadness.

That was the thing about Beyonce that nobody who looked at her quiet exterior ever expected — underneath all that stillness was a stubbornness that could outlast a Joburg winter.

She worked two part time jobs through high school. Saved every rand. Applied for every bursary she could find. Typed her college applications on the library computer because she had no laptop, no printer, no one to proofread her motivation letter.

She proofread it herself. Four times.

She got in.

College was the first place Beyonce Dlamini ever felt like she was building something. Like the foundation of that family she had always dreamed about was finally being laid, one brick at a time.

She studied Business Management.

Lived in a small commune off campus with three other girls.

Ate noodles four nights a week without complaint.

Wore the same three pairs of shoes in rotation and stuffed the left one with a piece of cardboard where the sole was separating.

She did not mind any of it.

Because she was going somewhere.

She met Daniel in the library on a Tuesday afternoon in her second year.

She was in her usual corner. Highlighter in hand. One cup of coffee she was rationing like it was the last one on earth. Head down, notes spread across the table, completely inside her own world.

He appeared like a interruption she hadn't asked for.

Tall. Easy smile. The kind of face that knew exactly what it was doing to people and had long made peace with that power. He pulled out the chair across from her without asking and sat down like he had always been there.

She looked up.

He slid a fresh cup of coffee across the table toward her.

"You've been staring at that empty cup for twenty minutes," he said. "It's not going to refill itself."

She blinked.

He smiled.

And just like that Beyonce Dlamini — who had kept every wall standing for twenty years — felt the first crack.

Daniel Mokoena was everything she had never had.

Warm. Attentive. Present. He texted good morning before she woke up. He remembered that she didn't like onions in her food. He held her hand when they walked and introduced her to his friends and made her feel — for the first time in her entire life — like she was somebody's person.

Somebody's.

She fell completely and without reservation.

Two years she gave him. Two years of shared dreams and whispered plans. They talked about the future like it was already decided — an apartment together after graduation, a dog maybe, a life that was warm and permanent and real.

Beyonce let herself believe.

She opened every door she had spent twenty years locking.

She loved him with everything she had — which was considerable, because everything she had was everything she had ever saved from a life that had given her very little.

She thought he knew that.

She thought it meant something to him.

She found out on a Wednesday.

Not from Daniel.

The call came from a number she didn't recognise at 7pm while she was cooking rice in the small commune kitchen. She almost didn't answer.

She wishes now that she hadn't.

The voice on the other end was calm. Almost gentle. Like the woman had rehearsed it.

"Hi. I think we need to talk. My name is Lerato. I've been with Daniel for three years. I think you should know that."

Beyonce stood very still.

The rice boiled over.

She didn't move to take it off the stove.

*"He told me about you,"* Lerato continued. *"He said you were just a friend. But I found your messages. I think we have both been lied to. I thought you deserved to know."*

The line went quiet.

Beyonce opened her mouth.

Nothing came out.

She ended the call. Turned off the stove. Walked to her room. Sat on the edge of her bed.

And stared at the wall.

She sat there for three hours.

She did not cry. She had learned a long time ago that crying required someone to witness it to feel worthwhile. And there was nobody here.

There was never anybody here.

She packed his things that same night. A box outside the door. Changed her number. Deleted every photograph.

And rebuilt the walls.

Higher this time.

Thicker.

With no doors at all.

She graduated six months later with no one in the audience holding a sign with her name.

She got a job at Sunshine Mall, Johannesburg. Cosmetics counter. Section three, near the escalators. Nine to five. Blue uniform. Name badge that said BEYONCE — How can I help you today?

She smiled at strangers all day long.

Went home to a one room flat in Brixton.

Warmed up food for one.

Held the pendant while she watched television.

It was a small life.

Quiet and contained and completely, perfectly safe.

She told herself she was fine.

Most days she almost believed it.

She was twenty six years old when the dreams started.

The first one came on a Thursday night without warning.

She woke up at 2am gasping, hand pressed hard against her chest, the pendant burning warm against her skin like it had been sitting in sunlight.

She had seen a man.

Military uniform pressed to perfection. Medals catching cold light. Jaw set like carved stone and eyes that were ice on the surface and something unbearably lonely underneath.

And children.

Two of them. Small. Far too thin. Faces like they had forgotten what safety felt like. And arms — those small arms — stretched toward her across the dark.

Mom.

Mom, you're back.

Beyonce sat up in the dark of her Brixton flat with her heart slamming against her ribs.

She pressed her hand over the pendant.

Just a dream, she told herself.

Just a dream.

But it came back the next night.

And the night after.

And every night after that.

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