03:02 … 03:02 … 03:02 … time after time.
Do they sleep, Lord? Do they dream of parties and balloons and picnics with smiling faces? Or are they tormented, like me? Do they have to fight off whispers, images, shadows that hide in the recesses of their minds?
It’s probably not healthy to be up this late.
Time moves slowly. Tshiamo’s old watch calls from my dressing table drawer.
‘Chronos, kairos, chronos, kairos …’
I wore it until the strap withered, and then carried it in my pocket until the face fell and cracked. So now it sits in my drawer raising its voice from time to time.
They said at Sunday school that You’re outside of time, so I’d pray sometimes on those calls at the hospital, when my feet were swollen, my eyes red and dry, my hands scratchy from repeated washes with alcohol-based soap, that You’d stretch the 30 minutes I had to rest my head before the ward round to 30 days. That, if it was at all possible, You’d grant me the small indulgence of stretching time for just a moment so I could recover.
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 30 minutes of horror into 30 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.
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.
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 colours the bath water 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.
I think I see a cockroach, but when I turn my head it’s a scratch in the wall, a sweet wrapper on the floor, a chip in the tiles.
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 fantasise about what it would be like to fly off and come crashing to the floor.
How does a mind unravel? Axon by axon? Fibre by fibre? 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.
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 realise 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.
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 bath 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 being 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.’
Am I sick, Lord? Is my mind sick?
How did this happen? How did You let this happen?
Is it because I didn’t vote? Was Nyasha right?
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 ear plugs 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 they can help me. That maybe from where they are in heaven they can intercede, negotiate, speak to You, plead with You on my behalf. She says she doesn’t know how to help me, but that they will.
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 24-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 Francois, who didn’t even know how to pronounce my name properly.
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 recognise 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 Francois 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 counselling 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 onto anything too tightly, not our successes, our health, our beauty, our intelligence, not even the people we love. Not a thing, only God. I thought the bishop a crazy man. Not even the people we love?
When Papa used to live with us, he would often say, ‘Why do you talk so much? You’re over-confident for a young lady. Be humble, be quiet, rest a little.’
When I was on call, telling patients why xenophobia was wrong, Sister Agnes would say, ‘Mara, doctor, wena le dilo tše tša gago, tlogela man! O tlo ipakela mathata.’
But I didn’t listen. I never listened to anyone, not even the bishop. Always too full of excitement. I held on too tightly. If I’d only just relaxed and let them penetrate, maybe they wouldn’t have hit me, maybe it wouldn’t have taken so long.
Father Joshua came to visit again today. He put oil on my forehead and sprinkled holy water in my bedroom. I told him what had happened, everything, from beginning to end, sparing him nothing. I wanted him to hear every gory detail, to see if his faith could stomach it. He prayed for me, prayed for the men who raped me, asked that You forgive them, ‘for they do not know what they do’.
I didn’t say Amen at the end of that prayer. I don’t want You to forgive them. They knew exactly what they were doing. If I die and land up in heaven, I don’t want to have to see them there, I don’t want to have to mingle with them. That’s not the kind of heaven I want to be in.
Maybe if they’d been drunk, I’d feel a little better about it all. But they weren’t. There wasn’t a drop of alcohol on their tongues. I know because those tongues were in my mouth, their saliva down my throat. They were sober, their minds clear as day. They knew exactly what they were doing, and they did it with such passion. They hated me so much. It was in their eyes, in their breath. I felt it on their skin. They were angry with me. They said I was a disappointment, that instead of helping my own people, I was running around with kwere-kweres, the very kwere-kweres that were ruining our country, stealing our jobs, using up our grants. Their children were starving because of these people and I was making that worse. Spoilt, foolish children like me needed to be taught a lesson, so others would see that the community didn’t hesitate to discipline traitors. They said I was lucky they didn’t necklace me, like they did to the likes of me during apartheid.
I wish they had. I wish they had just killed me.
I remember walking into the Emergency Department afterwards, and whispering, ‘Sister.’
None of them responded. Not one of them lifted their heads to notice that my shirt was torn, my mouth split, my eyes blackened and my pants soiled and bloodied. I tried again. ‘Sister.’
But without looking up, Sister Palesa simply pointed at my box and said it was full of patients and that I needed to work faster.
I couldn’t remember the words to the hymns, the ones that used to lift my spirits as Nyasha and I drove to work, that got me through the long night calls and helped me when God felt far and distant. The hymns Nyasha said were lame, that made her embarrassed to be associated with me. The ones Ma called white people’s music.
I tried to sing them as I walked to the toilets to wash my face, as I used wet toilet paper to wipe the dirt off my pants, as I took the pile of patient files out of my box, as blood trickled down the side of my leg. I tried to force the words out of my mouth, but all that escaped was a silent cry.
‘Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder… Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder … Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder … Oh Lord my God …’
I wanted to sing God’s praises, shout them, despite the circumstances, but my tongue refused.
‘Oh Lord my God … Oh Lord my God … Oh Lord my God …’
When I recounted all of this to Dr Phakama, she said I must have been in the first stage of bereavement. After rape one suffers a loss of the former self, she said, and it’s normal and important to mourn. She explained that there are five stages of bereavement: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, and that my desire to sing praise to my God after I’d just been raped was a textbook example of extreme denial.
Denial.
Denial.
Denial.
A strange word. The refusal to admit the truth.
Who’s truth?
It didn’t matter how clever, how caref
ul, how disciplined I was. I was disciplined! So I had a drink on occasion, so I got really drunk at the Christmas party, but that’s all. I’ve never smoked a joint in my life, never done any drugs, never had sex with Francois when I could have, when I wanted to. I got into medical school. I studied all the time. I worked hard. I prayed. Heaven knows I prayed. I exercised, used hand sanitiser, even kept antiseptic Wet Wipes in my bag. I was careful, I did everything right. But my floor collapsed and I fell, then the sky fell in, then the whole universe fell in, crushing me, the sky, the floor … and I still don’t even know why.
I think of the nurse in The English Patient. Perhaps if I’d cared for my patients the way she cared for hers? But she also slipped into his bed. So is it possible to love them and leave them there? Is it possible to love them without them leaving stains on one’s heart? Does a heart have room for all of their pain (and one’s own), for their broken bones (and one’s shattered soul), for their discomfort (and one’s own shame)?
I’m haunted by the faces of the patients I neglected, rushed through, walked past, ignored. Those faces remind me every day that I only got what I deserved.
The sessions with Dr Phakama are a waste of time. She wants me to do relaxation exercises. She makes me sit with my eyes closed while she reads from a printed sheet that tells me to picture myself walking alone in a park. ‘Find a quiet space where there are no people,’ she reads, ‘where you can be alone, where no one can see you and you can see no others. Find a tree, a tall towering tree, sit down, close your eyes and rest your head against it.’
Is she crazy? What is relaxing about the idea of being alone in a big, empty park behind some tree?
When I said this to her, she said I should use my imagination.
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