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.