Grit and Guile - By Mandy Rose Naidoo

Written By: Mandy Rose Naidoo

Category: Short Story

Competition: Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

Mandy Rose Naidoo presents her short story, "Grit and Guile," as part of the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. This compelling narrative delves into the complex themes of family, resilience, and the harrowing experiences of domestic violence. Through the eyes of a young protagonist, Naidoo explores the lasting impact of trauma and the strength required to overcome it. Her work stands as a testament to the enduring human spirit, making it a significant contribution to the competition's showcase of diverse voices.

About the Work

"Grit and Guile" is a moving portrayal of a family's struggle with loss and domestic abuse. Naidoo crafts a vivid narrative filled with emotional depth and raw honesty, capturing the turmoil and eventual empowerment of her characters. The story's rich imagery and heartfelt dialogue highlight the silent battles many face, urging readers to confront uncomfortable truths and inspiring hope for change and healing.

Grit and Guile

Original Submission by Mandy Rose Naidoo

GRIT AND GUILE

Chapter 1: The Price of Comfort.

Growing up, without my dad was damn hard. He died when my sister was eight months old and I was two. I hate the C word. Pancreatic cancer, fourth stage they said. Our father died within three months. Dad was the breadwinner and mum, the happy homemaker. After dad died, people came and went for just over a month and then the visits stopped. No-one bothered about assisting us financially. We were poor but clean. Our daily needs were met, even if it was the simple potato curry with roti. Desserts were a luxury we didn’t know. On Sundays, mum made goolgoolas (Indian pancakes), that satisfied our sweet tooth. It was tough. The government grant came three months later after dad passed. Then it happened.

Mum was really very pretty. Her dark straight hair fell like silk sheets around her rich olive skin and her bright hazel eyes always held warmth to her effortless beauty. Unbeknown to her, the glances she attracted were heavy with quiet admiration but mostly sharp with unmistakable lust, with or without dad at her side. After dad’s demise, several men tried to date my mum, the alluring widow, but mum grieved dad. I was five when he entered our lives. Jace Rhyder. She was completely taken in by his charisma. He was rough around the edges but undeniable attractive. Unpolished and raw with a masculine appeal that even mum couldn’t resist. Dad was classically handsome; you know the boy-next-door handsome. Jace was different. He charmed the socks out of all of us. He became her boyfriend, much to the chagrin of all our family and friends. He earned well and spoilt us rotten. We went to merry-go-rounds, restaurants and never had goolgoolas again. Decadent ice-cream and chocolate cakes were now the new sweet treats. We feasted on burgers and boerewors rolls. It was the best six weeks of our lives. He promised marriage. We were ecstatic, especially mum. The next day, Jace moved in with us.

The following weekend, he had his friends over. Rani, my mum was the friendly, hospitable kind and went out of her way that morning to cook, clean and bake. Biriyani, roast chicken, curries, savoury rice and roast leg of lamb. Christmas came early that beautiful October morning. The kitchen had become a battlefield of spices. Jace wanted a braai but mum loved to cook and probably wanted to show off her Indian culinary skills. The thick welcoming aroma of mum’s savoury dishes and roast meat drifted out to our front porch to greet our guests. It was a wonderful afternoon of card playing, eating, drinking and good old merriment. Jace’s friends, complimented her on her cooking and the women exchanged recipes. Greg his friend, went further. He complimented her on her cooking and her beauty. After that compliment, I could sense tension albeit the boisterous celebration. Jace was not happy. Mum looked nervous. That was when it started. In that sharp, single moment, the façade shattered, exposing the cold, calculated monster inside. The following days, weeks, months and years, he tortured her for simple things. He kept her caught in a continuous vicious cycle of warmth and cruelty. Then, piece by piece, the mask he wore slipped until nothing was left but the raw truth. It was psychological warfare.

My sister and I watched our mother live in a perpetual state of apology. Jace was the Great Pretender. He wormed his way into our lives. He was a big, burly bully whose voice could bruise before he even raised a hand. My sister hated the violence, but more than that, she hated our mother’s silence. She resented the way mum covered her bruises and her black and blue eyes. She hated the fact that mum made excuses for him. He never married my mother. He just wanted to own her.

“I will never let a man reduce me to nothing,” my sister vowed to me one night, her voice fiercely quiet in the dark room we shared.

“I will never stay silent like her.” Priya kept her promise. When she started dating, she looked for the exact opposite of the terror we grew up with.

Randy was handsome, soft-spoken, and remarkably respectful. He spoke with an easy intelligence that made one feel safe just listening to him. He loved my sister Priya, intentionally and wholeheartedly. For three months, they shared a whirlwind romance. He showered her with care, though he gently avoided coming to our house. “I want our time together to be just about us,” he would say softly, kissing her forehead. “Away from the chaos.” He looked at me with mischief in his eyes. He was so honest and smart that she handed him her complete, unshakeable trust. He would be our guardian angel. Permission for their first evening date was almost impossible. Mum wouldn’t allow it but she consented only after much coercion, her initial hesitation melting under Randy’s words. Thankfully, Jake was working the evening shift and even if he wasn’t working, he didn’t care about Priya and I. He initially used us to get to mum.

Priya was out of her mind, for this first real date, changing her outfits a hundred times. With the venue being a strict surprise, it only added to the difficulty of choosing her outfit. Checking with mum and with me. What did I know about stuff like this?

Priya related her story to me few days later. It started as a quiet evening walk, the stars punctured the night sky dusting the black canvas with silver. A sliver of a moon hung serenely, wrapping the secluded park in perfect stillness. Priya looked at me. “Dev, it was the most romantic night ever. The colourful lights around the trees at the entrance was magical”. We walked, talked, stealing kisses between conversations, not realizing we had wandered into the denser part of the park. Wrapped in Randy’s comforting embrace, I wasn’t afraid of the dark or anything else for that matter.”

But when they sat on a secluded bench, the shift was sudden, like a sudden drop in temperature. His hands became heavy, pressing into her.

“Not tonight,” she said, trying to keep her voice light as she gently pushed his hands away. “You know how I feel. I’m saving myself for the marriage bed. We talked about this.”

His grip tightened, bruising her wrist. The warmth in his eyes completely vanished.

“Don't play games with me,” he whispered, his voice dangerously low. “After three months? You owe me this.”

“No,” she said, her voice trembling but firm. “I said no.”

In an instant, the handsome facade shattered. The gentleman vanished, and a vicious stranger took his place. “You think you’re better than me?” he snarled. Before she could even scream, his fist struck her jaw, knocking her to the ground. He didn't just take what wasn't his; he beat her first, using his strength to punish her defiance before committing the ultimate violation.

He left her broken and bleeding in the grass under the cold, dark sky. By the time the sun came up, he had completely vanished—his phone disconnected, his promises erased.

Chapter 2: The Weight of the Aftermath

When the front door clicked open at dawn, it wasn't the heavy, metallic thud of my mother’s boyfriend. It was a weak, dragging sound.

I was already awake, sitting at the kitchen table in the dark, a habit I had formed from years of playing the silent sentry in our house. I expected to see Jake stumbling in reeking of beer. Mum had waited up for Priya, but fell asleep on the couch. Instead, the silhouette that collapsed against the doorframe belonged to my sister.

The morning light was just beginning to peep through the kitchen window, casting a gold tint over her face. Her lip was split, a dark line of dried blood cutting down her chin. One eye was already swollen shut, purpling under the skin, and her clothes were stained with the damp, black dirt of the local park. But it wasn't just the physical damage that broke something inside me; it was her eyes. The fierce, defiant fire that she had carried like armor for years had been completely extinguished.

My mother emerged from the lounge, her footsteps hurried. When she saw my sister, she didn't scream. She didn't cry out. She let out a low, ragged moan—a sound torn from the deepest part of a woman who recognized the exact shape of this trauma.

When she finally stumbled back through our front door, bruised and weeping, she looked directly at our mother. The anger she had carried for years evaporated, replaced by a devastating, shared understanding. She had finally learned the cruelest truth of all: monsters don't always roar. Sometimes, they whisper exactly what you want to hear

For years, my sister had judged our mother. She had thrown sharp glances across the dinner table, muttered words about weakness, and swore she would never let a man reduce her to nothing. Now, as my mother dropped to her knees on the linoleum floor and pulled my sister into her arms, the judgment vanished. My sister buried her face into Mum’s shoulder, her body shaking with violent, silent sobs.

I stood there, a young man of seventeen, trapped in my own skin, paralyzed by a toxic mixture of rage and profound helplessness. As a brother and a son, everything inside me screamed to hunt him down. I wanted to find the handsome stranger who had worn a mask of respect for three months just to tear my sister's life apart in the dark. I wanted to make him feel the terror he had inflicted.

But as I looked at the two of them holding each other on the floor, the reality settled in. The man was gone. His phone line was dead. He was a ghost who had vanished into the city, leaving behind a wreckage that couldn't be fixed with fists. I realized then that my anger, if left unchecked, would just be another wave of violence in a house that had already drowned in it.

The days that followed were a blur of sterile hospital corridors and cold police stations. I walked beside my sister as her shadow, watching her forced to recount the worst night of her life to indifferent officials behind scratched plastic glass.

"Are you sure you didn't encourage him?" one officer asked, not even looking up from his paperwork. "Three months is a long time to date without... expectations."

I slammed my hand onto the desk, my knuckles turning white. "She said no! What part of 'no' requires an investigation into her expectations?"

The officer looked at me with tired, unbothered eyes. "Calm down, young man. We are just doing our job."

They didn't find him. To them, she was just another case file in a mountain of dockets that would never see a courtroom. That was the moment something shifted permanently inside me. I realized the system wasn't broken; it was indifferent. And as a young man, I could no longer sit on the sidelines, pretending that gender-based violence was only a women's issue to solve.

Chapter 3: Turning Pain into Purpose

It started with a single, handwritten poster.

I couldn't fix my sister’s pain, and I couldn't undo the years my mother spent hiding her bruises. But I refused to let their silence become permanent. I decided to use my voice—not to speak for them, but to force other men to look at what we were allowing to happen in our communities.

I went to the local municipality library hall. It was a faded brick building in the centre of our low cost housing schemes, a place where people usually went to read newspapers, search the internet or apply for jobs. I asked the head librarian, a stern but kind woman named Mrs.Singh, if I could set up a small desk in the corner of the main foyer.

"A help desk for what, young man?" she asked, peering over her spectacles.

"For GBV," I said, my voice steady despite the flutter in my chest. "A place where women can find resources without shame, and where men can come to learn how to stop this. I want to call it The Community of Accountability."

She looked at me for a long time, searching my face. Then, she nodded slowly. "The table near the window is yours. But you provide your own flyers."

I spent my own small savings printing basic pamphlets with emergency helpline numbers, legal aid contacts, and counseling services. The municipal library charged a small fee for printing. The first week, I sat at that desk alone. Men walked past me, chuckling or shaking their heads. Some whispered that I was doing "women's work" or that I was stick my nose into private family matters.

"Why are you airing dirty laundry?" an older man asked me one afternoon, leaning over my desk. "What happens between a man and his woman stays behind closed doors."

"That 'dirty laundry' is killing our sisters, Uncle," I replied, looking him dead in the eye. "And if we don't open the doors, we are helping them dig the graves."

Slowly, the tide began to turn. A young man my age stopped by, asking how he could help his cousin who was trapped in an abusive marriage. A father came to ask how to talk to his teenage son about consent. The desk became a beacon, a quiet space where the suffocating silence of our community began to crack.

Chapter 4: For our Sisters

The desk was a start, but I wanted the whole town to wake up. Not just our suburb. I wanted to drag the conversation out of the shadows and into the bright, unforgiving light of the streets.

I organized a community walk: “FOR OUR SISTERS.”

I didn't want a loud rally with megaphones and political slogans. I wanted a heavy, deliberate silence that mirrored the silence victims are forced into every single day. I spent weeks visiting local schools, churches, and football clubs, challenging men specifically to join.

"If you see yourself as a protector," I told the local rugby team during their practice, "then stand up when it matters. Walking with us doesn't mean you are weak; it means you are strong enough to carry the truth."

On the morning of the walk, the sky was clear and crisp. I stood at the starting line outside the library hall, holding a large banner that read: Men Against GBV.

I looked back, my heart pounding. At first, there were only five of us. But as the clock struck nine, people began to pour into the street. My mother was there, holding my sister’s hand. My sister’s face was still healing, but for the first time in weeks, she was holding her head high.

Behind them stood over five hundred people—and more than half of them were men.

We walked through the heart of the community, down the main roads, and past the very park where my sister’s life had been altered. No one spoke. The only sound was the rhythmic, collective thud of hundreds of shoes hitting the tarmac. It was a powerful, crushing noise—the exact opposite of the fearful footsteps we used to listen for in our childhood hallway.

We ended back at the library hall. I stepped onto the concrete steps, looking out at the crowd. My voice shook, but I didn't let it break.

"For a long time, I thought being a man meant being strong enough to take a hit or powerful enough to control a room," I said, looking out at the rows of faces. "But I was wrong. True strength is the courage to stand up to the bullies, to dismantle the masks that monsters wear, and to ensure that no woman ever has to swallow her own teeth in silence again. This is our fight now."

That night after our community walk for our sisters, with the protection order in her hand, my mother asked her boyfriend to leave.

Potato curry, roti’s and goolgoolas tasted like heaven after fifteen years of hell.

Mandy Rose Naidoo

About the Competition

The Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 by Hashtag Kalakar is a prestigious event celebrating the art of written expression. It invites participants from around the world to share their unique voices through poetry, short stories, and creative writing. This competition is a platform for both emerging and established writers to showcase their talents and engage with a global audience, fostering a vibrant literary community.

We extend our heartfelt thanks to Mandy Rose Naidoo for sharing "Grit and Guile" with us as part of the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. Her story poignantly addresses themes of pain and empowerment, leaving a lasting impact on readers. We are grateful for her contribution and look forward to seeing more of her powerful narratives in the future.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.