When I told Nyasha about this prayer she said it was (a) stupid and (b) selfish.
“What about some woman somewhere out there who’s being raped? Would she thank you for turning her thirty minutes of horror into thirty days?”
I remembered that conversation as I lay motionless on that cold floor, and hoped no foolish intern out there was praying that time would stop for them.
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I know in my head that this would be the time to turn to Jesus and ask for peace. Maybe I could find some solace and comfort there. But I’ve never had any sense of direction, and I don’t know which way that is and how to get there.
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I’ve decided to stop all the medication. I’m tired. I’ve actually come to like it, this little trickle of blood coming out of me day after day. It colors the bathwater a pretty pink. Sometimes when a tiny clot comes out, the water goes dark maroon.
The soft part of my belly is warm and tingly. I’m so faint, I have to sit often, to keep from falling over. It’s a kind of pain, a kind of pleasure, a kind of freedom that I like, that Dr. Phakama’s medication tried to steal from me. But it’s mine and it’s nice and I want it.
And the background whispers, they’re okay, too. They keep me company, sing me songs and tell me stories that help to pass the time. Your silence was anyway far too loud.
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I think I see a cockroach, but when I turn my head it’s a scratch in the wall, a candy wrapper on the floor, a chip in the tiles.
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In the mornings I sit on the edge of my bed. I imagine it’s a tall building, or a bridge, a cliff, a roof, the balcony of a skyscraper. I fantasize about what it would be like to fly off and come crashing to the floor.
How does a mind unravel? Axon by axon? Fiber by fiber? And when it’s psychotic, where are You? Are You far from me or are You near?
Do You remember that psychiatric patient in Ward 12 who used to sing on the edge of his bed in the early hours of the morning? He’d sing old hymns, beckoning the day in, as his mind lay in the pills hidden under his pillow. He had a beautiful voice and I often had to step into the doctors’ office just to collect myself before I could do my rounds. On those mornings it didn’t seem so bad to be mad. It seemed the madness was a welcome freedom from the badness of our world. On those mornings I was less afraid of the cracks I’d begun to sense in my own psyche. On those mornings I allowed myself to relax a little about the vulnerability of my mental health.
He didn’t stay very long. His urinary tract infection responded well to antibiotics and he was sent back to Sweet Rivers. The next morning there was another man in his bed, an angry smoker whose larynx had been cut out to stop the cancer creeping out of his lungs and into the rest of his body. A moody, bitter man who seemed bent on coughing up the yellow phlegm from his infected surgical wound in the direction of any staff member who dared approach.
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I had a bad dream. Nyasha was here, in this room, her hands were on my throat.
She was angry, shouting. “You Saffas, look how fat you’ve become, look how thick your necks are now. You’ve become too comfortable. You think the food will never run out. You eat so much you don’t even realize that someday it will finish and you’ll be left eating each other!”
Then the men came and they were laughing, taunting me.
“You like your kwere-kwere pipi, ne? That’s because you’ve never had a real South African man. Today we will make you a real South African woman.”
And then there was blood pouring out of me, between my things, gushing, spraying, splashing everywhere. It covered their legs, then their arms, then their heads, drowning them, drowning me.
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How does one move one’s mind past the thoughts that threaten to destroy everything? There are stains on my legs and they won’t come off. When I bathe I try to scrub them, but they won’t come off. I showed Ma and told her that nothing will ever be the same again.
She said she couldn’t see anything, that there’s nothing on my legs, nothing anywhere. That I look just the same.
She said she knows I haven’t been taking my pills. Said I’ve come so far already, and begged me not to give in.
“Give in to what, Ma?”
“To the madness, Masechaba.”
“What madness, Ma?”
“The madness, Masechaba, the madness that has done all these things to you. The madness that has stolen my child. The madness that has stolen your life. The madness that makes you sit on a bucket, wiping yourself with newspapers, covering the floor and the walls with blood. The madness that is killing you, Masechaba. The madness that will kill me.”
She cried so much, Lord. I felt so bad, so bad that I’d brought her—all of us—so much pain.
“I’m sorry, Ma.”
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Am I sick, Lord? Is my mind sick?
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How did this happen? How did You let this happen?
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Is it because I didn’t vote? Was Nyasha right?
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Sometimes they shout.
“Why must you talk so loud?” I ask them. “Why must you be so noisy? Whisper! I can hear you. Whisper.”
But they don’t listen, and it makes me confused. Are they outside or inside? So I put in my wax earplugs to try to muffle them out.
❖
Ma thinks if we perhaps go to the cemetery and speak to Koko and Malome and Mamogolo and Rangwane and Rakgadi and Ntate and Abuti and Gogo and Ousi and Mani that maybe
