Sihlangule

They file in silently Tat’uJohn, Tat’uThomas, Tat’uMatewu; brothers to my late father. I listen to them sigh and grunt as they sit on the dining room chairs my mother set out for them in the middle of my late grandmother’s bedroom. I watch their crisp, perfectly ironed, pastel shirts maintain their shape as if they were made out of paper. I smell the cologne from their bodies and leather from their shoes and belts, and I begin to feel slightly overwhelmed.

Our family is always being referred to as the most beautiful family in whatever township we descend upon. At funerals in the village my father was raised in, people get excited when they see the Mzimkhulu family convoy snake its way into the area. “Nango amadoda amahle akwa Mzimkhulu” here come the beautiful men of Mzimkhulu, they beam, all but forgetting their dearly departed. The beauty that they speak of is virility and wealth. Beards, sons, businesses, property, culture, sons, wives, cars, homesteads, sons.

My uncles fill every space they occupy with their thunderous laughter. It isn’t laughter like yours and mine, no, you can hear their achievements in their thunder. You can hear Tat’uJohn’s MBA roll out of him when he throws his head back to roar. He and Tatu’Matewu are always sharing a private joke about something or other and Tatu’Thomas, in a classic high school principal slash youngest brother attempt to be cool, will pretend to reprimand them whilst laughing along. Laughing, they are always laughing…but not today. Today they fill my grandmother’s bedroom with throat clearing and foot shuffling. 

My mother sits on the floor on a rolled out grass mat. She always regresses to her makoti ways in the presence of my father’s family; docile as if she just married into the family the night before. Her headscarf is pulled low so that I can hardly see her eyes, she has a shawl on her shoulders and she hangs her head not making eye contact with anyone. I sit on the edge of my grandmother’s bed, the bed that she died in, watching my uncles fidget with their phones as they prepare to commence the family meeting.

Silence.

Tat’uJohn clears his throat: “Eh…brothers, before we begin, I would like to ask Thomas to open this meeting with a prayer”

More throat clearing and then, “Heavenly father we thank you for this beautiful day and for watching over us as we commuted to the homestead of our father. Though we come here to meet due to regrettable circumstances, Lord, we trust that you will guide and open our hearts and minds so that we might reach a consensus that will ease the spirits of all those present…Make us receptive, Lord.”

He pauses.

“We ask for this in your son’s holy name, amen”

My uncles say it, my mother whispers it, but I do not say amen.

There is an emptiness that follows the prayer that asks to be filled, and the distant humming of the refrigerator in the kitchen simply will not do. As I steady my breathing preparing to ease my voice into the room, the vibration of Tat’uJohn’s voice shatters the silence.

“Uhm, brothers. We are here today because we were summoned by this young lady,” he says every letter in the word lady as if he is reading it off of a nametag as he points to me. Tat’uMatewu is hunched over listening intently whilst Tat’uThomas sits back comfortably in his chair with his arms crossed and his eyes closed, nodding after every word his older brother says.

“This child,”

I am 25 years old.

“Is the first born child of our late brother Jonah. Jonah was the first-born son of our father, Sango. Jonah raised us. He lifted this family’s name from obscurity. No one knew who the Mzimkhulu’s were before Jonah taught us dignity, the power of education, and the strength we have when we stand as a unit. He made people out of us. Jonah built this house for our parents. Our father, Sango, died before he saw this house finished, but he died knowing that when it was completed, the house would roar in the face of the poverty that preceded it. Nolitha,” he says without looking at me “you are too young to know what this family was before your father said ‘enough’. Before he said ‘the buck stops with me. The pain and the struggle, they stop with me!’ He had not even met your mother, you were just a twinkle in his eye but he was already planning for you. He knew that he could not live with the idea that any child of his might be born into poverty and have to worry about their very existence on a daily basis” either passion or anger is building in his voice, I am unclear which, but whichever it is, Tat’uMatewu agrees full heartedly, nodding and rocking like he is in church. Humming and hissing “yesss.”
The church of Jonah, first-born son of Sango, praise his holy name.

“A doctor! A healer! A visionary who worked like a dog, cleaning hospital toilets, then going to nursing school and then educating these three successful men you see sitting in front of you; an educator, a businessman and an engineer.”

My mother plays with the tassels of her shawl rocking to a song that only she can hear.  She serves as ambiance for my uncle’s requiem to my father.

“He put himself through medical school whilst taking care of us and our parents. Do you hear this selflessness? Do you understand these sacrifices?”

My grandmother’s bedroom is becoming stifling. Tat’uJohn has lined the walls with his memory of my father and no air can get in. The dining room chair that he sits on as he conducts his liturgy to his brother; his hero, creaks under the weight of his admiration. My uncle continues to passionately curate my father’s achievements as I attempt to decipher whether this is a eulogy or a historical introduction, but a glint caused by my uncle’s beautiful watch interrupts my attempt.

The man enjoys luxury.

His house was once featured on Top Billing where they spoke to the architect and the interior designer; they walked the audience through their decisions as to how they would capture an authentic South African feel in a modern and futuristic frame. Elephant bones as chandeliers and minimum wage domestic workers on Italian marble floors, those kinds of things. His son is in Greece at a water polo tournament as we sit here and hot box ourselves in his praise of my father, and so I suppose he is right. He is right to be moved to such great passions when speaking about his brother because if it were not for his brother he would have none of these things. He would not have been granted the opportunity to become the ostentatious man he is today.

“There is nothing anyone can say today that will change what Jonah was to me and these two men sitting here with me.” He almost shouts, motioning towards his brothers. “No one can come to me and say ‘yes but your brother was this and your brother was that’ No ONE! I know who and what my brother was, and what he stood for and what he fought against. He was a good man, nothing will change that!” he seems to be calming down “Please, Matewu, if I am lying, please jump in and tell me I am lying.” He settles into his seat smiling slightly, Tat’uMatewu gives a slight chuckle.

“No, no, no brother. Everything that you have said here is true. Jonah was a good man. You see, Nolitha, your father, John and I were quite close in age, Thomas here is a pikinini compared to us…”

Tat’uJohn laughs surprisingly loud, whilst Tat’uThomas smiles quietly eyes still closed, arms still crossed sitting back in his chair. He has always been my favourite, although I saw him the least, he is my favourite. Tat’uThomas was always a sad mystery to me. He has the curse of sight. He seems to see and understand everything which is unfortunate because as my grandmother used to say “une ntliziyo encinci uThomas”, he has a small heart. It is always heavy because it is always full. It is always full because he has the curse of sight. Ignorance is a privilege.

For most of my childhood, my uncles would visit every second Sunday with their wives. My father would start a big fire after church and the family braai would commence. They would gather on the patio with whiskeys whilst Mirriam Makeba or Thandi Claasen or King Kong spilled out into the yard. Their laughter would mute the jazz at points as they recounted stories of their childhood, how Tat’uThomas would have to wear their hand-me-downs in school and they would have to put rocks in his blazer pockets to prevent him being swept away on windy days. He would always laugh with them.

Then, one Sunday, Tat’uThomas came in whilst I was pouring myself a glass of juice in the kitchen.

“Nolitha”

“Ta?”

“Are you pregnant?” His face was twisted in what appeared to be physical pain. My eyes fell.

“YOU ARE FIFTEEN YEARS OLD” he whispered so loudly I feared he would go hoarse.

“ixolo-“ is all I can say. I am sorry. He leaves me in the kitchen and joins his brothers on the patio. The laughter stops. He leaves shortly after.

He never came to our house again.

“Your father fought, my child.” Tat’uMatewu smiles, his raspy voice almost playful. “He fought everyday so that we can drive the cars we drive and so that you can even speak with that beautiful English that you speak with today, that English that you used to summon us here. We would have nothing if it were not for him. Thomas here was just starting high school when you were born. So I must correct you slightly there brother” he smiles at Tat’uJohn almost apologetically.

“Of course, of course brother! If we cannot correct each other then we will live in lies” Tat’uJohn chuckles gruffly.

“Yes! That is quite right” Tat’uMatewu hisses with laughter and then promptly continues with his correction, “He doesn’t quite have the same experience of your father that we have because by that time Jonah’s life was in full swing, but he had given us the ability to take care of Thomas.”

Tat’uMatewu: the union man. Always negotiating. Always euphemizing. I have never quite understood him. Him and my mother a very close, which is strange because he and my father were not, despite his loyalty to my father. My father once told me “if you want to understand your uncle Matewu think of this: When he was much younger he organized a rally in support of the liberation movement during a time when the ANC and all associated groups were banned. He organized it perfectly and it was attended very well considering that it was held in a rural area which was not considered a hub of political activity. Anyway, we were all very confused by his sudden interest in politics as we knew him to be disinterested in being on the frontlines of the liberation movement. However, it was John who discovered that he was charging people who used the transport that he had hired, and that he was selling food and beverages at the venue with the help of one of his girlfriends. He made tens of thousands of rands that day. He didn’t even give any of that money to the liberation movement that he was claiming to be in support of”. Charming.


“John and I paid for Thomas’s education because your father made us the type of strong men that were able to do such a thing. Unfortunately when Thomas started his teaching degree, I had started a family and John had gone abroad, but because of the work ethic and the philosophies on life that your father had instilled in all three of us, Thomas knew that only his best would be accepted, nothing less. Look at him now. He is a principal at a high school and his school is doing well. Look at me, I am an engineer and the town councilor, look at your uncle he is a world famous businessman. All bec –“

“Because of my father, yes, I get it” the words escape before I could think them.

“Nolitha” my mother verbalizes her silence, but only just.

“Hey, little girl, we will not be spoken to in that tone!” Tat’uJohn growls.

“You think we are making these things up?” Tat’uMatewu seems perplexed.

“No, Tata, I know what my father did. I know that everything you are saying is true –“
“And yet you continue to discredit his memory! You never once speak of the good he did, you only want to dwell on his mistakes” Tat’uJohn is shaking. “That man would have put his life on the line for you, and I believe he did in many ways, yet you speak ill of him, your father?!” he bellows and the echo of his voice rings through the room, circles my body and pulls up the hairs on the back of my neck.

“Enough.”

“Come again?” Tat’uJohn yelps three octaves higher than I have ever heard him speak.

“Wait brother, let this child speak. She is the one who called us here today let her say her say” Tat’uThomas says, his eyes now opened but squinted thoughtfully.

I inhale and hold the breathe in my lungs in an attempt to extinguish the fire that I feel in my chest. Imbheko. Imbheko. Imbheko.

“Would I be your brother’s daughter if I did not know when to say enough? If I didn’t preoccupy myself with thoughts of how my son, who is just ten years old, might have to worry about his very existence? Your brother was an honourable man. He worked hard, he broke ground, and he paved a way for all three of you…and me…and in many ways, my mother. He showed uMa’khulu no Ta’mkhulu a life that they didn’t even know they deserved. He made people in this community realize their potential and what a black man from nowhere can do. He opened people’s eyes, he opened people’s minds; and, he raped me! For years he raped me. Mama was there while he raped me; you were all there while he raped me. For years! And no one said anything because he was your doctor, your healer, your visionary and my rapist.”

I wanted to stop, for my mother’s sake and for my own…but my pain would not let me.

“15 years old! I was 15 years old when I fell pregnant with Sihlangule. In grade 9 in a white school where you expected me to thrive by their standards while you aided and abetted my rapist. My father sent me to a fancy, white, private school; you are right. Then he put a baby inside me and I had to go to that school and be accused of being corrupt and dirty, of not having morals and giving my body away to anyone who will have it when it was my father, your brother, who did that to me. And you stood back and you allowed it. You are so quick to rush to his defense even in his death. So quick to dismiss the pain that I fight through on a daily basis because in your eyes he did more good than bad. Because he is your hero, he can’t be my villain? Because he saved you, he can’t have killed me?” Every time I have to take a breath I have to chase it. Something is choking me; guilt, shame, pain, sadness, rage, something. Something hot and tight. Something unforgiving. Truth.

“I know what you have been telling my son Tat’uJohn. I know you have told him that I do not know who his father is. You want him to think that I was young and got too big for my boots and acted irresponsibly. You want him to see me through your eyes.”

Tat’uJohn stands up from his chair “I don’t have to stand for this” and begins towards the door.

“John, please sit down bhuti, we are talking here. If you walk out without having listened to any voice but your own today, you can’t expect us to call you an elder tomorrow.” Tat’uThomas States matter-of-factly. Tat’uJohn stops but does not sit…instead he towers.

“Nolitha” Tat’uMatewu raises his hands as if I am pointing a gun at him “you are angry my child. Angry people cannot be trusted to tell the truth –“

“Tat-“

“Whoa, whoa, whoa” he says as if pumping the breaks of a car “look at your mother.”

I won’t.

“Listen to the violence that you have brought into my mother’s house. When you curse your father you are cursing me. You are cursing John. You are cursing Thomas. You are cursing your mother. You are cursing your grandparents. You are cursing us my child. And for what? We don’t know this thing that you are talking about and I am sure, where he lies, Jonah does not know this thing that you are talking about.”

My mother’s pained sobs are making me uncomfortable because she doesn’t get to cry as far as I am concerned. The air is thick and I need to breath…I need to leave. So I stand up as quietly and respectfully as I can.

Fine.

“Tat’uThomas, Tat’uJohn, Tat’uMatewu, I will never tell you that your brother was not a visionary, and, with respect, you cannot tell me that my father was not a rapist. Nor can you tell me what to tell my son about his father. Sihlangule will know that his grandfather did great things and changed many lives, he will also know that his father raped me and he will know that they were one person. The only way for my son to be born free of the sins of his father is for him to know them, and for him to know them is for him to know himself.”

I hope one day they hear me…but I don’t need them to.












Glossary:
Tat’u- Male elder “father”
Makoti – New bride
Pikinini – Little one
Ixolo - Sorry
uMa’khulu – Grandmother
Ta’mkhulu – Grandfather
Buthi – Brother
Imbheko - Respect
Nolitha – She who has light
Sihlangule ¬– Redeem us

Sir. Rapesalot

I am so tired of being afraid. I have been tired of being afraid for longer than I have known how afraid I am. Afraid of being raped. Afraid of being murdered. Afraid of being raped and murdered. Afraid of being raped and almost murdered but surviving and having to recount the horror so that I might lend a voice to women who have experienced something similar but are also too afraid. It is exhausting. I am exhausted. I am enough of a coward to admit to my yearning for blissful ignorance, but I know that ignorance will never be mine to have, not because I personally know a handful of women who have been raped...but because I personally know so many more men who have raped.

I remember quite clearly the day I had to explain to a friend that he was a rapist. I was fairly young when I discovered he was a rapist, about 15. I used to hang out with a lot of older boys from my neighbourhood because I had bought into the idea that girls were terrible company. You know, bitchy and constantly talking about boys. Anyway, one day I was hanging out with these boys who were pushy and constantly talking about girls when one of them started telling a quintessential sex story. Being a virgin at the time I considered this research, so I began to listen intently. He was a lot older than me, in his early 20's and quite good looking so I knew the story was going to be amazing. He told us of how he had gone to a tavern the previous weekend where he found a girl we all knew to be openly lesbian. He said they started drinking heavily but at some point he stopped drinking and continued buying her drinks. She passed out. He carried her to his mother’s house where he had sex with her until his body started to ache, he said. She woke up in the early hours of the next morning. He said that she grabbed her clothes and ran out of the house naked. I asked why he would have sex with a lesbian. He said it was so that she could make an informed decision about her sexuality. I had so many questions, but it was hard to concentrate with the amount of loud and obnoxious laughter that was swirling around with our cigarette smoke. So I left.

"You didn’t have sex with her, you raped her" I kept rehearsing in my head. I avoided the subject for days and then weeks. I saw the girl that he raped often, and every time I did I felt the urge to fall at her feet and apologise because I knew. I knew and I was too afraid to say anything. I was afraid and he hadn't even touched me. He hadn't touched me but I did not go unscathed. I will ask that you note how I avoided the subject but not him. I continued to hang out with the boys. They spoke about girls, often. He did not share as many stories as the others because he liked to keep his "private life private", but every so often he would share a story, and every time he did it was harrowing. More than the egomaniacal tone of his stories, I was haunted by his ignorant excitement. He had no idea how completely terrifying he was. He was "sharing" himself he would often say. As if he was making the ultimate sacrifice. As if he was some sort of Holy Communion and by having him, women were blessed.

I was sent to boarding school when I was 16 because my aunt was afraid of the calibre of my friends. Before I left I said to him my rehearsed words...but slightly amended "you didn’t have sex with them, you raped them." I walked him through why he was a rapist from the safety of my aunt’s backyard while he stood on the other side of the fence (he was not allowed on my aunt’s property because...well everyone knew what he was). He explained to me that I had grown up in white suburbia and could thus never understand the dynamics of township living. I defensively rebutted by telling him I understood the township just fine and also understood that he was a rapist. "If I am such a rapist why have I not raped you?" I did not know the answer "maybe it’s still coming." maybe he was right.

 A rapist tells me that my rape is still coming and I believe him, long gone are the days of "it will never happen to me". I sat and smoked in rape culture so aggressive it rhythmically birthed immediate victims. With my fear induced silence I helped it along its destructive path. It is a travesty that I had to explain to Sir Rapesalot the brutality of his actions, but more disturbing...more heart-breaking is the reality that many of the young women that he raped are not clear on the fact that they were raped. Because they were drunk right? Because everyone knows how he gets sometimes...because women should be more careful around him. Because everyone knows. Everybody knows.

This story is not unique. There are so many just like him. So many mothers telling their daughters not to go near "that" house. So many precautionary measures that nurse the monsters. So much fear induced exhaustion. So many attempts at starving the ravenous beasts that prey on young women rather than slaying them. So the fear persists and the beasts live comfortably. I am so afraid that nothing will change. I am afraid that he might be right, that my turn is coming.

No Boys in Sight

Smoke break. Finally, a smoke break. After several hours of editing in a small borrowed office, I left the cold, bare space and rushed down one flight of stairs and then another. It was a Sunday afternoon and though the sun danced outside, the thick walls of the old building I was trying to escape seemed designed to keep the sun out. The amount of discomfort I was feeling came after four hours of artificial cold descending oppressively on my back whilst I edited and re-edited and edited some more. I, myself, have never been a fan of discomfort, so when I eventually got outside and the sun welcomed me like an old lover, I matched its passion. I stretched my arms as if to embrace it. My tight and distorted body began to melt. I lit the cigarette I had been jonesing for and took a long drag. My eyes were closed and my face tilted to the sky as I waited for the full effects of the warm sun to adorn my otherwise wintery demeanour. It was happening. The warm rays fell on my face like glitter and –

“Anna?” Shit. “Uhm, what are you doing?” the raspy voice sounded familiar. I opened my eyes and looked beside me to confirm. Yep.

“Hi Pinky” head down. “What’s up?”

“Not much, can I have a smoke?”

“Yeah, of course,” I quickly reached into my blazer pocket and handed her my box of cigarettes and lighter. I looked up to the sky apologetically; we had company, so our make out session had to end. Pinky and I sat on a bench nearby.  The University was relatively quiet on Sundays and given that Pinky and I weren’t exactly friends, I dreaded the uninterrupted small talk that was sure to follow.

“Were you at Jono’s party last night?” she really didn’t know me at all.

“No…I don’t really get out much.”

“Oh eeemmm geeee Anna, what a night  - “ and so it began. Pinky was a party girl; the type that floated from one loud party to the next looking for drama to match her eye shadow and happiness to match the smile that was permanently painted on her face. She was nothing like me. I hadn’t used the bottom half of my face for anything positive in a long time. I admired her for trying though. We were both in our first year at University; however that was where our similarities ended.

Her smiling, pink, glossy lips flashed glimpses of shiny white teeth as she exaggerated the word ‘awesome’ whilst describing this party I had missed. But…her eyes were defiantly sad. Her stupid story about the party was punctuated with half laughs and the sound of her hoarse voice dragging over vowels in words she thought needed emphasis like  ‘sooo fuuuuucking waaaasted’. Meanwhile her eyes darkened her face. It was sinister. The more I looked at her, the more I saw it.

“Are you ok?” My question snapped her ‘awesome party’ story in half.

“What do you mean?” she looked frozen in her story, as if she was waiting for me to say what I needed to say so that she could continue.

“Pinky” careful now Anna, “I don’t know you as well as some of your other friends, but…” I tried to replace all sarcasm with tact “your face…” I didn’t mean to chuckle like I did. “Look, something is obviously wrong. You don’t have to tell me what it is, but you also don’t have to….you know….pretend. I mean I totally understand if you want to just sit here or if you want to go back to res or whatever. You don’t have to entertain me because I gave you a cigarette.”

“What is wrong with my face?” she was offended. She put a lot of effort into her face. Her sculpted eyebrows, layered eye shadow, extended lashes, nude lip-gloss; all to achieve that ‘straight-out-of-bed-no-effort-at-all’ look.

“There is nothing wrong with your face…it’s actually just your eyes”

“What is wrong with my eyes?” her smile was slipping. I searched for the word.

“They’re so…” she waited “sad.” The smile fell off her face like a piece of lead.

“Oh my God” she sighed. She suddenly looked as hung-over as she had been saying she was. I felt bad.

“I’m sorry”

“No” her voice shook “it’s okay” she looked at me. I looked at her. I watched her try to put the smile back up. She failed. Her eyes won. “I am in so much shit Anna.”

The only thing I hate more than Mondays is being up before 8:00am, and the only things I hate more than early mornings are hospitals. Yet there I sat; in a hospital on a Monday at the ass crack of dawn. I sat alone in a never ending, grey passage. Every movement I made echoed down the passage as if it were being digested by some cold lifeless serpent. I could taste the chemicals they used to clean the floors and every time a nurse or cleaning staff would come pushing through the double swing doors at the top of the passage, a burst of cool air would come speeding past like a Japanese bullet train. I stood up and started reading the symptoms of tuberculosis off of one of the walls.

 The plan was simple: go somewhere no one would know us, go to a public hospital to avoid medical expenses and a paper trail, get the deed done, return to Grahamstown and never speak about it again.  So we beat the sun to Bhisho, she filled in some paper work using a fake name and ID number (we figured the backlog in public sectors was such that we would probably be thirty years old by the time they figured out that no such person existed) and then she was taken into another room whilst I found out via an aging poster that I may have TB and/or diabetes.

 I heard the swing doors burst open and through them came a dainty old nurse. She was either very fit and in her seventies or exhausted and in her sixties, either way the support stockings she wore suggested that she had probably developed varicose veins from being on her feet for many years. She was an ‘old school’ nurse. She took quick short strides whilst holding a clipboard closely against her chest. The wig she wore was in a tight bob and was very obvious…neat, perfectly sculpted and obvious. The few nurses I had seen earlier wore navy pants, but she wore a crisp white starched uniform. It looked as if it were made of paper; so immaculately put together. My observation of the small, old parcel was disrupted by a group of about ten girls bursting through the doors behind her. They half-jogged trying to keep up with the stern little woman. They all looked nervous, their eyes were wide and their shoulders high, yet, there was a hint of relief on some of their faces. Amongst them was Pinky. As I tried to meet her eyes, the nurse directed them into a room on the opposite side of the corridor before they reached me. She stood back as they filed in and then looked over at me.

“And you?” she glared over her narrow glasses.

“Oh, uhm…I am actually with them” I pointed to the direction that the girls went.

“So you are also here for T.O.P?” how could a falsetto voice sound so heavy? Perhaps the Xhosa inflections?

“I…I don’t know what a T.O.P is –“

“Termination of pregnancy” she had been speaking to me for five seconds and had already lost all patience with me.

“Oh, yes…but not mine…” she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. She was annoyed. I was scared “Okay, let me start again: my friend is here for a –“

“T.O.P” why was she flaunting that stupid acronym?

“Yeah, and I am here to show moral support”

“So you are going to sit here in the passage all day?” All day! She saw the surprise on my face “because I can’t tell you how long this will take, maybe your friend goes first, maybe she goes last –“

“Is there another option? I mean –“

“You can go inside” I hesitated and then she looked at me impatiently again so I quickly went into the room where the girls were. It appeared to be a sort of common room. They sat scattered in the cushioned chairs; I spotted Pinky and went to sit beside her. The chairs were old and the brown cushions were coming apart, but the girls looked oddly comfortable in them. I looked around at the girls for the first time and realised that I was probably the least attractive person in the room. The room was sprinkled with hair weaves and acrylic nails. The incessant tick tick tick of texting was interrupted only by the ping of incoming messages. Girls my age disagree on a lot of things but there’s a general consensus when it comes to what is ‘pretty’ and the good news is; it can be bought. Nurse Dainty came in. All texting ceased.  She stood before us and said nothing for about ten seconds.  Her eyes bounced from one face to the other. She was counting. Her eyes reached my face and froze.

“Oh, you said you are not aborting today neh?” she must not have known how to use T.O.P as a verb.

“No mama” I didn’t know what to call her and I didn’t want to piss her off.

“This young lady is here to give support to her friend. Is it ok if she stays or would you prefer if she goes outside to wait.” there was an inconclusive mumble. “If you want her to leave you must speak up because if you don’t I will let her stay” there was silence “fine lady, you can stay”.  I gave a sigh of relief. Nurse Dainty proceeded to introduce herself; she went through what sounded like a check list of things to say to young women before they had abortions. Her tone was monotonous to a point of becoming slightly robotic. Her tight face hardly moved as she droned on. I wondered who she was.

How did she get stuck with this job? As she spoke she looked smaller and smaller. Something about her demeanour seemed…uncomfortable. Why? She was a black, professional, Xhosa woman. She had probably fought white people and black men all her life to get to where she was. I suddenly felt sad. She probably had fought white people and black men all her life to get to…this. I imagined her as a little black girl with a dream…this was probably her dream. “Who will marry your?” they must have asked her. “Who will look after your children?” But she did it anyway. We probably had a lot in common with her. We were a group of black girls from the Eastern Cape with dreams…she should be our role model…right?

Yet the distance between us and her could not have been greater.

A sudden passion rose in her voice.

“I am not going to tell you what you are doing is wrong. You know it is wrong. You have come here to kill a baby. Who knows what these children could have become. Doctors, scientists, teachers, lawyers…” She didn’t say nurses “but by the end of the day they will be going to be incinerated.” the heads of the girls dropped in a domino like wave. “Now a child must die, because when you have your legs open, you can’t think with your brain. When a man is on top of you; you become stupid. Is this what you use your bodies for nowadays? Is this what the freedom and equality for women was all about? So you could come here and kill babies?” a chill of shame blew over them. “Where are those men now?” there was a dramatic silence. In it I realised that I was as ashamed and guilty as any of the other girls. “How many of your parents know you are here” no one so much as shifted in their seat “yes, it’s because you know that this is wrong. It’s not nice what is going to happen here.” A look of disgust grew on her face “You young people think you are so much better than the women in villages whose husbands beat them. Always saying that these rural men don’t have respect for their women, where was the respect when you were too scared to ask for a condom from these men of yours? Let me tell you something, if I see one person cry, you can get out. I am not interested in your feelings meanwhile you are asking me to kill a child. I must now waste my time and state facilities cleaning up your mistakes?” She realised that her voice was raised “You won’t cry here meanwhile you didn’t cry when these respectful men of yours refused to use condoms…you might as well get hit in the face mos.” she turned on her heels and walked briskly out. The only person administering beatings was Nurse Dainty and I was glad it was over.

“Oh my God” Pinky whispered, I could hear her voice trembling. I awkwardly rubbed her back. I didn’t want Nurse Dainty to kick us out. She looked like she was a woman of her word. I looked up on the walls in search of a clock; 08:15am. Just then a TV in the top left hand corner of the room switched on. Siyayinqoba, Beat it, a television show about HIV/Aids, came on with the volume turned all the way up. It was an episode about a teenage girl who had unprotected sex, fell pregnant, got HIV and was riddled with remorse and shame. The episode was about twenty minutes long and everyone watched in an anxious silence. When it finally ended, I gave a sigh of relief and waited for Nurse Dainty to burst in and get the show on the road. The TV show started again. And then again. And then again. Three hours later, Nurse Dainty burst in as if she had been waiting for us.

“Come!” she pushed the door open and waited as we all leaped out of our filthy seats and darted towards the door, when we reached the passage she directed us to a smaller room directly across the passage.

“Lady!” I knew she was talking to me “you are going to have to stay here in the passage again. You can go in once everything is over and then you and your friend can go home.”

“Are you going to do it in that room?” I couldn’t hide my shock.

“No, no, no. We will do it in that room” she pointed halfway down the passage. I nodded and sat down in the chair I had sat in before. She left. I waited.

The time was 3:30pm. Have you ever been so hungry that your hunger morphed into rage? I was at that point. A toxic combination of hunger and cold had turned me into a hard, menacing figure, hunched over in an uncomfortable chair…still waiting. Just when I decided I was going to get up to go and find a vending machine, Pinky came out of the small room wearing a hospital gown and began down the passage to the room where Nurse Dainty waited. I sprang to my feet and walked with her.

“You the last one?” I asked quietly.

“Yeah, do you know where the others went?” I didn’t. All of them had gone down that passage and I hadn’t bothered to check whether they came out and if they did what direction they went in.

“You nervous?” I asked stupidly. She was walking slowly with her legs clenched together. Her face looked haggard and she had a sweat moustache. This was not the Pinky I knew.

“Are you okay? Why are you walking like that?” she kept scrunching her face up as if she were in pain.

“She put these pills in, and now I am having cramps.”

“Put them in where?” I just needed confirmation. Pinky pointed down. I looked down and noticed blood streaming down her legs. She wasn’t wearing any shoes. The blood was fast approaching her ankles.

“Shit where are your shoes Pinky?” we were still at least ten paces away from the room where Nurse Dainty waited.

“I put them in my bag”

“Should I go get them?”

“No its ok.”

“But –“

“Don’t worry about it Anna. Just wait for me here ok?” we were at the door. “Stay here ok? I want to know that you are right outside ok?” I nodded. She went inside. I stood there staring at the door. Every now and again my eyes would dart to the room where her bag was (I had heard terrible things about hospital staff). After about three minutes of silence, it began. Pinky’s muffled sobs began. She fluctuated between sobbing and screaming with such intensity I could almost hear her biting her lips together. I heard Nurse Dainty’s stern voice threatening to stop all together and then what sounded like kitchen utensils being thrown into a sink. In those moments Pinky’s sobs would subside into a cross between panting and moaning. The kitchen utensils would be picked up again and the hoarse, muffled sobs and screams began again. Nurse Dainty began with the threats again and so another loop played itself out. Again and again.

“Whose blood is this?” a sobering voice pierced through the whirlwind. I looked over to my right and there stood a large cleaning lady. “Is it yours? Are you bleeding?” I looked on the floor and saw the smears of blood leading into the room in from of me.

“No. I am not hurt” she pushed her mop over the blood and left a chemical sting in her wake. As I choked on the smell of bleach, I remembered hearing on a TV show that even if you removed the appearance of blood, the enzymes remained, and if you exposed the blood stain to the right elements it would be as if it had never been removed. Just then, I noticed the hush. There was no more screaming. The door slowly opened and I saw Pinky’s mascara stained face appear. The black trails of mascara went across the bridge of her nose down to her right ear. She looked clammy and weak. She suddenly looked like a girl of about 12 or 13 who had put on their mothers make up and clothes and got hurt playing. The hospital gown was drenched in blood and it clung to her thighs. I took my trench coat off and threw it over her shoulders.

“Where are we going?” I asked as if I intended on carrying her there…I almost wanted to.

She pointed to a room ten paces down the passage. We finally got to it and when I opened the door I was hit by a cold breeze that carried on it the strong smell of disinfectant and blood. All ten of the girls were tightly packed in the little room. There were only five beds and two girls lay on each except for one where only one girl lay. The groaning and sobbing made it sound like a burn unit. Pinky climbed on to the bed with a vacancy with great difficulty. As soon as she managed to lie on her stomach she began to sob. I stood awkwardly at the door fighting the nausea I felt at the smell that hung so heavily in the air.

“I am going to go and get the bags in the other room” I finally said. One of the girls who had gone first shouted from across the room “Could you please take money out of my wallet and buy me pads? Mine is the purple back pack” suddenly all the girls began to ask for the same. The hospital didn’t provide pads. I don’t know why I was surprised; Nurse Dainty had already expressed how much of an imposition these abortions were on her and the South African department of health. These girls had come all this way to ask them to kill babies, so how dare they ask them to provide sanitary towels as well. I went to buy the pads.

 I don’t remember the walk to the shops. I don’t even know how the Pakistani shop owner reacted when I approached the till with ten boxes of pads. All I remember was thinking about how I had gotten in that situation. I had agreed to come with Pinky because I thought she was brave. She made an error in judgment, she owned up to it, she made a decision and she followed through. I remember seeing her wrestle with the notion but eventually stand her ground. I admired her strength. I then thought of Nurse Dainty’s words, which questioned these notions I had. “Where are your men?” She was mocking us. She was mocking our belief that we had it better than the generations before us…had it better than her. She was mocking our belief that we had any control over how men saw our bodies and how they treated them. She was mocking any hint of feminism that may have driven us to consider abortion as a viable option. She wasn’t disgusted. She was amused. She was amused by all flavours of feminism that we may have presented; Mild, hot or spicy. The girl who decided she would sleep with whomever she wanted because she was no less of a person than any boy now lay in a pool of her own menstrual blood with no boys in sight. The girl who put her boyfriend on a pedestal and maintained that he was sophisticated and respectful of her now lay with a uterus scraped raw, no boys in sight. Administering anaesthesia would have made it all too easy. Dainty wanted them to feel their choice. She wanted to remind them that ‘rights’ and ‘freedoms’ didn’t change the facts: being a woman is hard and it hurts and it’s lonely and there is nothing that rules or the English language or rights can do to change that. She found an extreme manifestation of their fears and put it on a loop. Up and down the passages she paraded them, bare foot and pregnant, the bloody tears of their mangled foetuses clenched between their naked thighs. Muffling their cries with her threats she threw her power from one side of the tiny room to the other whilst they lay on their back with their legs apart. Manipulating their desperation and vulnerability she dangled their dignity in front of them. It was rape. It was abuse. It was betrayal… and yet…no boys in sight.

The ride home was silent. Pinky lay in the back seat like a corpse while I obsessed over Dainty. Three hours later, we were on our stomping ground. We pulled up in front of Pinky’s res, she asked me not to walk her in as it would attract unwanted attention. She walked to the entrance trying to ‘act natural’ and I went home. We never spoke about it again.  

boy...girl...person

It is 2012. Futuristic movies of earlier times predicted that, by now, aliens from outer space would have landed on earth and would be living in harmony with humans. Robots and humans would fall in love and have half flesh half titanium babies and the biggest problem we would be facing would be the end of the world. How disappointing that human beings are arguably as rigid and conservative as they were in the past.  We are in fact a bunch of racist homophobes with no immediate plans to change.  Biracial children often have to explain their light skin and ‘black’ hair and anyone who so much as dabbles in same sex relationships must promptly justify their actions to avoid being dubbed as confused. We are nowhere near ready for robot love.

I often marvel at the chasm that lies between our ‘liberal minded’ society and the staunch conservative manner in which we react to homosexuality and everything affiliated thereto.   I went to an all-girl high school where a cocktail of hormones, thirst for attention and curiosity led to what was often called an “outbreak” of lesbian activity. Outbreak…like a disease.  The ‘disease’ spread through the school and caused great concern resulting in interventions and sometimes punishment. I always assumed that this was a reaction to the age of the parties involved; parents and teachers were concerned about the young women and their need to label themselves. The single most hilarious aspect of these interventions was that none of the ‘lesbians’ had actually labelled themselves but were rather categorized by the adults. You either were or you weren’t. Fast forward to this same group of individuals almost ten years later and nothing has changed. You either are or you are not. There is no in between, bisexuality is simply a transitional phase, sexuality itself is a valve; you are either on one side or the other.

 Ladies and gentlemen I present to you the chasm. We are supposedly a society that looks beyond the physical. Race, gender and ugly are not factors which we consider when engaging with other human beings. In this society, it is what is on the inside that counts…is that not what Barney the dinosaur taught us? If so, then why is it that a woman has to explain her feelings for another woman? Why is it that a man must be able to pin point when and where he began having feelings for another man? And once one has engaged in this same sex relationship, why must they be damned to committing to members of the same sex for all eternity?

Is it even possible for a person who appreciates and loves life and human connections to guarantee that they will never engage in a same sex relationship because they are ‘not that way inclined’? People obsess over the sexuality of free thinkers such as Lord Byron and Shakespeare, because they are said to have been ‘dabblers’ however I do not find it surprising at all. How do we justify an individual being free and audacious in their thinking and then rigid in their emotions?

If one claims to see beyond the physical, then they should never be cross examined about who they choose to be with and in turn can never say ‘never’.  In the words of Chris Rock “No normal decent person is one thing.” And we are all a bunch of hypocritical douche bags for expecting that.

We are in the business of breeding hope. When someone opens up your heart and mind, they open up your life. They do away with the 24hour segments and bless you with a succession of possibilities. Tomorrow stops being an excuse but is instead heavily pregnant with promise and beauty...ready to birth your dreams. We are in the business of breeding the kind of hope that stubbornly stains self doubt. That, even in the depths of depression, hovers relentlessly...patiently waiting for you to rise from you self flagellating slumber. It is there, and you know it is there, and to know it is to believe it. So wake up. Wear your hope on top of your fear, let it shield you from the cold world. It is hard to feel sorry for someone who is frozen motionless by the coldness of the world and the chill of their fear when THEY failed to arm themselves with hope.

Naked

"I wore nothing but my vulnerability when I gave myself to you. When you touched me, you healed it. Now I wear my you-scented-heart"

Mos Def - Travellin' Man (Video and Lyrics)