It made me angry when she said things like that, because she knew just as well as I did that those old wives’ tales were nonsense. No amount of cheese could explain my dysfunctional uterine bleeding and the accompanying dizziness, fainting spells, and galloping heartbeat that didn’t have much to gallop about. She knew that if it was as simple as letting the so-called “dirt” flow out freely, I’d be walking around with no pad or paper, not even a tanga or high-cuts, just bare for all the world to see, if that was what it would take to stop the madness that came from within.
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I was always light-headed, always fainting, my heart always racing in my chest at high speed. In and out of the hospital I went, transfusion after transfusion, pill after pill, patch after patch, injection after injection.
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Eventually the bleeding eased up, in fact almost stopped altogether, bar a little bit of spotting on the occasional month. I can’t remember how or the specific day. It may have been the endometrial ablation that finally did it. I was too young to understand, but I remember Ma telling Aunty Petunia that the doctors had said that short of a hysterectomy, the only thing that might work was to burn the lining of the womb.
“Let them burn it, Ma!” I remember crying.
She had shouted at me to be quiet. But I think after I fainted into Rakgadi Tebogo’s pool at Dineo’s traditional wedding, Ma stopped caring about the life I’d never be able to bring into the world and started worrying more about the life she’d brought into it.
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But I didn’t trust, and continued to carry around pads, tampons, toilet paper, wipes, and black panties wherever I went. When clutch purses were in vogue, I watched enviously as pretty girls walked around the mall with a couple of notes and a lip gloss in the glittering pouches in their hands. But I knew better than to let my guard down. The beast was only sleeping, and could wake at any moment.
So on job-shadow day, when I saw (through the narrow space between the oversized surgical cap, mask, and goggles they insisted I wear) a neurosurgeon climb onto the operating table and let his colleague release the pinched nerve from his back that had been troubling him all morning, I knew immediately that it was a message from God, and that it was in this very manner that I would get the abhorrent organ cut out of me and destroyed, once and for all.
When Ma asked me later that evening how the day had gone, I told her it had been nothing short of marvelous, and that I was 120 percent sure that a medical doctor was what I wanted to be. She smiled when she heard me say that. It was a good profession, she said, and she had no doubt I’d make a great physician who would one day help a lot of people.
I hadn’t thought about the people until she mentioned them. At that moment I decided it was unwise to tell her that I only wanted to become a doctor so I could make a friend at medical school who’d be willing to do the hysterectomy that all the doctors we’d seen so far had refused to perform.
But that was all a very long time ago, and by the time the title was mine, these childish musings were all but forgotten.
Why O Lord do you reject me and hide your face from me? From my youth I have been afflicted and close to death; I have suffered your terrors and am in despair. Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me. All day long they surround me like a flood; they have completely engulfed me. You have taken my companions and loved ones from me; the darkness is my closest friend.
Psalm 88:14–18
Father Joshua wasted no time after my graduation. Within weeks of my receiving my medical practitioner’s license from the Health Professionals Council of South Africa, he asked me to speak to the youth about careers. He said young people needed to be encouraged. Our people didn’t value education anymore, he lamented, and maybe if they saw someone like me doing well, they might be inspired.
I told him I’d love to. But I was lying, of course. I hated public speaking, and I really didn’t have much to say. As far as I was concerned, if you’re clever, you become a doctor. Government contracts finish, and sometimes they don’t pay, and sometimes you get arrested. But if you study, it stays with you for life.
Tshiamo painted pain, but it made him think too many deep thoughts, so he hanged himself on a tree. Papa got government contracts, but they reshuffled the cabinet and brought in people he didn’t know. There were irregularities that required a sacrificial lamb, so he was in the newspapers and is now with Gogo, in her back room, drinking the days that remain away. As for me, Ma found an admin job in government. She worked at the Department of Health so she could get me a bursary, which made it easy. There were not a million things I could choose from, anyhow. Seriti University was close to home, and Botshelo Hospital always needed intern doctors.
But I couldn’t say no to Father Joshua. I couldn’t come across as too self-important to spend some time with the youth. So I wrote the stories I knew they wanted to hear, and emailed them to Tshiamo for his comments.
Of course I didn’t expect a response. I’m not crazy. Nor was I ever in denial. But people mourn differently, and I was entitled to mourn whichever way I saw fit. The people at Gmail didn’t seem to mind. They kept on delivering my emails to Tshiamo just like they’d always done. Not like
