She says maybe these things happened because I didn’t tell the ancestors I had graduated. I didn’t tell them I was now working, didn’t tell them where I worked and that it wasn’t safe, that I’d be doing twenty-four-hour calls, so I’d have to work at night. Ma thinks it’s all down to a miscommunication between me and the ancestral realm, and if I’d only spoken, all this could have been avoided.
It makes me angry. Are they dumb, these ancestors of mine? Are they stupid, dense, dull? Don’t they see from their heavenly heights what happens here? Why must they be told about everything, forewarned, given beat-by-beat updates? Why must the obvious be explained to these gods?
Ma says I shouldn’t speak like this. She says my problem is that I’ve always been disdainful and listened to no one, that my rash mouth will bring me bad luck.
I laughed when she said that.
What kind of luck does she think I have?
❖
I’m sorry.
Maybe this is all my own doing. I should have voted. I shouldn’t have let that white boy play with my vagina. I should never have started that petition. I should have gone to the cemetery. I shouldn’t have stopped my medication. I shouldn’t have written all this blasphemous crap in this journal. I should have been less excited. In life one should never be too excited. That’s when bad things happen. I was too happy, running around with that petition. I wasn’t focused. Instead I was daydreaming about François, who didn’t even know how to pronounce my name properly.
Sister Agnes had warned me. “Doctor, why do you wear such nice clothes to a call? We don’t dress like that for overnight calls.”
Sister Palesa had warned me. “Doctor, the community is not happy with this petition thing. You’re getting too carried away.”
But I wouldn’t listen. I needed to look nice at work because people had started to recognize me from the anti-xenophobia press coverage. I should have listened. I should have been calmer, quieter, more thoughtful, more focused. I was too, too excited. That’s why those men raped me.
❖
I see their faces from time to time. The one with the striped T-shirt, his belly protruding beneath it. I instinctively force my eyes shut, hope the tears will wash the images out of my mind.
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am God.
Be still and know that I am God.
I whisper the words into the night. They fall from my lips, but escape my heart.
❖
There is no vocabulary for the pain I feel. How do I construct a sentence that explains that they made me into a shell of myself? Not “like” a shell of myself, but an actual shell of myself? How do I explain that what they stole from me is more than just my “womanhood” or any of that condescending stuff people like to talk about, but a thing that once lost can never be found because it is unnamed? How do I explain that the languages at my disposal can’t communicate the turmoil I have inside? That it’s more than my “dignity” they stole, it’s more than a “violation” they subjected me to? That it would have been better to die than to be spooned out and left that way?
❖
We saw Dr. Phakama again today. I saw her writing in her notes that I’m “preoccupied with internal stimuli.” She thought I couldn’t see, forgetting that I, too, am medically trained. She explained that severe depression can result in psychosis, that it is important I stay on the medication.
I wanted to tell her she was wrong, that my mind began to come apart a long time ago, long before any of this happened, long before François encouraged me to try the smelly cheese at the Christmas party, long before I pretended to enjoy the rot so he could think I was sophisticated. Long before I began to pay in blood.
But she wouldn’t let me get a word in.
She told me about the importance of getting out of bed, of picking up the things I used to enjoy, of reclaiming my old life.
“Your mother says you used to write beautiful poems. How about you pick that up again? Maybe you can write about what has happened, write about this difficult time. Maybe that will be of help to you. You might just find this difficult time is a blessing in disguise.”
A blessing in disguise? What an extravagantly sophisticated disguise! What a spectacularly deceptive disguise!
Ma says we need to give Dr. Phakama a chance; that it was only the second session and that these counseling things take time. She says Dr. Phakama wasn’t trying to be dismissive, just trying to be nice. I mustn’t get so angry, or be so quick to write people off. I need to want to get better. People want to help me, but I need to want to be helped.
❖
Ma is right.
A good Christian wouldn’t mourn this loss the way I am doing. It’s only flesh, after all. It was only a penis, a couple of penises, entering a cavity that man decided to call a vagina. It’s only muscles, blood vessels, nerves, mucus. It doesn’t think, it doesn’t remember, it doesn’t even really feel, not in any enlightened way. It just responds to thrusts and vibrations. My heart still beats, air still fills my lungs, my limbs move fine. So why do I feel so hollow? Why does my blood run cold? Why does acid rise into my throat while my bowels fall to the floor?
❖
When the bishop came to visit our church, he preached that we shouldn’t hold on to anything too tightly, not our successes, our health, our beauty, our intelligence, not even the people we love. Not a thing, only
