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.
