During COVID-19, I Paid Rent: She Played Games and Said, "If You Want To Move, Then Go"
Lerato did not cry when I zipped my old travel bag and placed it beside the door of our one-bedroom flat in Soweto. She sat on the edge of the bed with her phone in hand, scrolling as if my leaving was another message she could ignore.
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When I told her I could not stay any longer, she raised her eyes for one tired second. Morning light touched the damp wall, my laptop bag leaned against my leg, and the silence felt heavier than all the rent I had struggled to pay.
"If you want to move, then go," she said. Her voice carried no fear, no regret, only the impatience of someone who wanted the argument to end so she could return to her screen.
Outside, Soweto was strangely awake for a lockdown morning. A minibus taxi coughed along the township street, a child cried nearby, and a neighbour's radio played Sunday gospel as if the world was begging for mercy.
I stood there with two shirts, one pair of shoes, my laptop, and a heart older than my body. This was the woman I had comforted when she lost her job in Sandton. The woman I had carried through months when rent, groceries, water, and electricity depended on me alone.
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I had worked nights until my eyes burned red, counted coins for supper, and lied that I was not hungry. Yet when the truth came out, Lerato did not ask me to stay. Then I realised that love can die quietly in a room you are still paying for.
I met Lerato in 2019, six months after a breakup that had left me empty and suspicious of everyone. My previous relationship had ended with arguments, silence, and a kind of shame I carried like a heavy coat.
A mutual friend invited me to a small birthday gathering in Randburg one Saturday evening. I almost stayed home because I had become used to my own company, but loneliness had grown too loud, so I went.
Lerato arrived late with a cake from a bakery near Rosebank. She wore a yellow blouse, laughed easily, and said I looked like someone who planned his sadness.
She worked as a waitress in a small bar in Sandton.
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I survived on transcription, writing, and other online gigs that paid in unpredictable amounts. Neither of us had much money, but we had enough hope to make poverty feel temporary.
By December 2019, our relationship had become serious, and she started visiting my place in Soweto. We cooked together, bought vegetables near Diepkloof, and talked about moving into a better flat when money stopped treating us badly.
Then 2020 arrived, and the lockdown turned ordinary plans into warnings. Restrictions tightened, businesses shut down, and the small bar where Lerato worked in Sandton shut its doors almost overnight.
She came home one evening carrying her work shoes in a paper bag. She sat on the sofa for a long time, staring at the floor, before saying they had promised to call workers back when things improved.
We both knew no one could promise that. From that week, our one-bedroom flat depended on my laptop, my data bundles, and whatever strength remained after midnight.
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Rent still came at the end of every month. Food prices rose, prepaid electricity units ran out faster because we stayed indoors, and water bills did not wait that the world had slowed down.
Lerato began playing online games to pass the time. At first, I understood because losing her job had shaken her confidence. Whenever she asked if we would manage, I smiled and said, "Don't stress, we'll be fine."
For the first months of lockdown, I carried the pressure quietly. I woke up late because I had worked through the night shift, then opened my laptop again before morning tea because every hour without work felt like rent moving closer.
Lerato cooked when she had the energy, cleaned the house, and sometimes rubbed my shoulders when I complained about pain. Still, the games took more of her time, and she often sat by the window with headphones on, laughing with people I did not know.
One evening, I teased her and asked whether that game would finally take us out of Soweto.
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She laughed, threw a pillow at me, and said at least it stopped her from thinking too much.
I accepted that answer because everyone needed an escape during lockdown. The problem was that rent did not disappear. By June 2020, my online transcription money could no longer carry two adults without leaving fresh worry behind.
One evening after supper, I showed Lerato a few simple online gigs on her phone. I introduced her to website testing, app reviews, online surveys, and basic customer support tasks. All these she could try without leaving the house.
"I know it is not what you used to do," I told her gently. "But even a little will help us breathe." She looked embarrassed at first, as though my suggestion had exposed her helplessness. Then she nodded and said she would try, and I felt ashamed for feeling relieved so quickly.
A few days later, she told me she had found something.
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"It is just website testing," she said, waving her phone as if the matter was too simple to discuss.
The money started coming in almost immediately. It was not a fortune, but it changed the mood in the house because we could buy mealie meal without counting every rand and pay for electricity before the prepaid units finished.
Then small signs began disturbing me. Whenever I entered the lounge, Lerato would turn her phone screen down, and if I asked what she was doing, she would say, "It's nothing, just work."
She began taking her phone to the bathroom and staying there for long stretches. Sometimes the water would run for a few minutes, then stop, and after that, I would hear a whisper too soft to understand.
At night, when I typed in the bedroom, she sat in the lounge with headphones on. Her face glowed blue from the screen, and she smiled in a private way that made me feel like I had entered someone else's house.
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I asked her once whether website testing now required late-night calls. She removed one earphone, frowned, and asked why I was monitoring her when I was the one who had told her to find work.
Still, the distance grew. During the day, she cooked vegetable soup, laughed about our landlord's early rent reminders, and asked about my transcription clients. At night, she became guarded, secretive, and impatient with ordinary questions.
In August, I found her on the balcony after midnight, whispering into her phone while the street had gone quiet around us. When I called her name, she jumped as if I had caught her stealing, then rushed past me and said it was just a client.
That moment changed the air between us. I wanted to believe Lerato, but belief had started feeling like another job I had to perform every day, and I was already exhausted from work, debt, and fear.
The truth came out on a rainy Thursday night in September 2020.
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I remember the month clearly because our landlord had called that afternoon about the rent arrears, and I had promised to send the remaining amount by Saturday.
I spent the evening working on a difficult audio file from a clinic interview. The speakers mumbled, the audio kept cutting, and every sentence forced me to rewind until my patience felt scraped raw.
Lerato sat beside me for a while, tapping her phone. I thought she was playing a game or checking one of her website tasks, but her face kept changing from serious to soft, then to a smile she quickly hid.
Around midnight, she said she was going to shower and left her phone on the sofa. I did not plan to touch it. I was tired, suspicious, and afraid of what suspicion would make me become. As I reached for my notebook, the screen lit up. A message preview appeared, and the words froze the room around me: "Thanks for the call, babe. When are you coming online again?"
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Before I could breathe properly, another message appeared. "Send me a voice note before you sleep." What I found broke the story I had been telling myself. There were dozens of chats, voice notes, and payment notifications, and none of them looked like website testing.
Lerato had been spending hours talking to strangers online, keeping them company, building emotional connections, and sometimes pretending to be someone else entirely for money. Some chats were harmless, but others carried a closeness that made my hands shake.
Payment screenshots sat between the messages like receipts for a second life. Suddenly, every locked bathroom door, hidden smile, midnight whisper, and turned-down phone made sense in the worst possible way.
When the shower stopped, and Lerato returned wrapped in a towel, she saw her phone in my hand and froze. She did not ask what I meant when I asked, "What is this now?" She sat down slowly and looked away.
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"It's work," she said, and the words sounded rehearsed, as if she had prepared them for the day I finally found out.
"Website testing?" I asked. My voice sounded calm, but my chest hurt so badly that I had to hold the edge of the sofa. She did not answer, and her silence confessed more than any sentence could. When I asked why she had lied for months, she said she had done what she needed to do.
"You built relationships with strangers in our flat," I said. "You did it while I was killing myself to keep this place going." She sighed as if my pain had interrupted her business. "It's just online. Why are you making it such a big thing?"
That sentence wounded me deeply, but the next one cut even harder. Lerato looked at me with tired eyes and said, "You should be grateful I'm bringing in money." In that moment, I understood the real betrayal.
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It was not only the chats or the secret payments, but the way she believed my hurt was a small price for her contribution.
We argued until almost three in the morning. I asked why Lerato had not trusted me with the truth. She said I would have judged her before listening.
I asked why she used pet names and took secret calls in the bathroom. She said the people paying her wanted attention, and she knew how to keep them interested because loneliness had become a market during lockdown.
I slept on the sofa, though sleep barely came. Rain tapped the window, my unfinished transcription file waited on the table, and I kept thinking about every night I had encouraged her.
Morning came grey and cold. Lerato made tea, sat on the edge of the bed, and scrolled through her phone as if our fight had been a load-shedding outage, uncomfortable but temporary.
I watched her from the doorway and finally saw the truth without excuses.
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I had been protecting her feelings while she protected her secrets.
So I packed my clothes. I folded two shirts, one pair of trousers, my documents, and my laptop charger because I still needed to work wherever I ended up. "I am leaving," I said. Lerato stared at me for a few seconds, then looked back at her phone and said, "If you want to leave, then leave."
I expected those words to break me, but they freed me in a strange, quiet way. Something inside me stopped begging for space in a life where secrecy had already replaced me. I called Thabo in Alexandra and asked whether I could stay with him for a while. He did not ask for details, and he only told me to come because we would manage somehow.
Walking out during lockdown terrified me. Taxis were limited, everyone wore masks, roadblocks made movement tense, and I carried hand sanitiser in my pocket like it could protect me from more than germs.
Peace returned slowly.
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I no longer listened for whispers behind a bathroom door, and I no longer watched someone turn a phone screen down whenever I entered a flat I helped pay for. Weeks later, Lerato called. Some online clients had vanished, one had refused to pay her, another had threatened to leak private chats, and the landlord had started demanding rent again.
I did not insult her or celebrate her struggle. Karma did not feel dramatic, because it simply felt like choices returning to the person who made them. I wished her well, but I did not go back. That boundary did not punish her; it protected me, and for the first time in months, I chose my peace without apologising for it.
For a long time, I thought love meant carrying more than my share and calling it loyalty. I believed a good partner should absorb pressure quietly, especially during a crisis like the lockdown, when many people lost jobs, homes, and confidence.
Lerato's biggest mistake was not only the online work.
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People did many unusual things during lockdown to survive, and fear pushed families into choices they might never have considered in ordinary times.
Her mistake was building a hidden life, then asking me to be grateful for money that came through secrecy. My mistake was accepting confusion as the cost of love because I did not want to look insecure or cruel.
Trust does not require blindness. A person can support a struggling partner without surrendering their own peace, and a person can be kind without pretending that disrespect does not hurt. Leaving did not mean I hated Lerato. It meant I finally listened to the part of me that had been whispering for months that something inside that house no longer felt safe.
Mine broke in a one-bedroom flat in Soweto, beside a glowing phone and a woman who told me to leave. So I went, not because leaving was easy, but because staying would have made me disappear inside my own life.
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The lesson I carried from that season is simple. Love should never demand that you lose yourself to keep someone else comfortable. If a person helps you but destroys the trust that made the relationship feel safe, what exactly are you still trying to save?
This story is inspired by the real experiences of our readers. We believe that every story carries a lesson that can bring light to others. To protect everyone's privacy, our editors may change names, locations, and certain details while keeping the heart of the story true. Images are for illustration only. If you'd like to share your own experience, please contact us via email.
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Source: TUKO.co.ke
