Period Pain

by Matlwa, Kopano

  Heaven only knows where she downloaded this one from. Or perhaps she got it from a visiting lecturer as a student and has used it unimaginatively ever since. Where in the world is this technique helpful? Maybe somewhere in Europe women go alone to big, empty parks and sit behind trees with closed eyes to relax.

  I wish I could look inside and see if anything’s broken. If my memory serves me right, the vagina is lined with squamous mucosa like the inside of the mouth, so it should have healed up pretty fast. But maybe it hasn’t. Maybe it’s severely damaged, rotting, like those necrotic cervixes after botched abortions.

  ‘I was raped.’

  Dr Phakama wants me to say it. She says it will help. She says by putting it in the past tense I can overcome it.

  But when it’s your own life and you’re living it, there is never so clear a distinction. I’m still being raped even now, even when I’m not. I can’t say when one stopped and the other began. I am being rape.

  How viscous our blood must be. It carries so much in it. Stories swirling round and round our veins, up into our hearts at least a zillion times a day. Stories of men going into cities, men in men, men in women, women in men, children in women, men in children. Strangers living in each other’s arteries, sharing intimacies, sharing pain, sharing anger, sharing hatred, sharing resentment, sharing loss.

  Who are these terrorists that have invaded my blood, taken over my body?

  Ma came home triumphant this afternoon. She went to the flat to make sure the electricity was off, and it looked like Nyasha had moved out.

  ‘At least one good thing has come out of this mess. Finally that Zimbabwean girl is out of your life.’

  When I asked Ma why Nyasha hadn’t come to see me, she said Nyasha was probably still angry that I stabbed her for burning the mincemeat, but that who knows what is what with these foreigners? When I asked what she meant, what mincemeat, she said I shouldn’t worry, I should just rest and ‘forget that girl’.

  I stabbed her? Did I stab Nyasha, Lord?

  ‘Major depression with psychotic features. It happens, Masechaba, particularly with your family history. You were especially vulnerable. You are unwell, but you’ll get better. Nobody can blame you for the things a sick mind does, and you shouldn’t blame yourself. I’m sure your friend understands, and from what your mother tells me, it wasn’t really a stab, more like a small cut, and it wasn’t very deep. These things happen to the best of us. Stay on your medication and you’ll get better.’

  Dr Phakama thinks she’s some kind of prophet. What does she know about my family history? How dare she use Tshiamo against me? This has nothing to do with him. I’m nothing like Tshiamo.

  She then had the nerve to say that there’s a blog for women like me, for women who’ve been gang raped. ‘Correctively raped’ as she called it, a rape to correct what their society deems abhorrent behaviour. She says in our society many people don’t like foreigners, and the men who raped me might have seen my behaviour as threatening societal norms, and felt it their duty to correct me. She said this has been seen in the gay and lesbian community, but she hadn’t seen it reported in the context of xenophobic violence. She said it would help to try to understand where the men were coming from. It would help my healing. She’d been thinking she and I might write a scientific paper about it together, if I was up to it. Of course she would be the first author, as it was her idea. But I would be acknowledged.

  I wanted to tell her to go fuck herself. But I said nothing. I just resolved never to set foot in her offices again.

  How do they expect you not to lose your mind? They pull you open again and again, ram themselves into you again and again. Leave you with disease, warts, worms, pimples, pain, blood, rot coming out of your body. Your body! Why? Because of the gold mines, they tell you, because of the Dutch, because someone at some point stole from them, because they never had fathers, because of Zimbabwe and Shaka and the government, because of xenophobia, unemployment, apartheid, colonialism, because of history, because of the serpent, because of Adam and Eve. Because of anything and everything. Because they can.

  Just because.

  This is the problem of knowing, of knowing but not knowing, of knowing too much but not enough to fully understand. Webs and webs of lies. History is a con man; history writers change stories to suit the times (their times!) and memory is weak and unreliable. And truth? Any man’s guess. And what of woman? The first fool.

  I called Tshiamo’s phone today, to tell him what Dr Phakama had said. That we’re a family of mad people, him, me, Papa, Ma, all of us. That I was correctively raped. That I should sit in a park behind a tree with my eyes closed to help me get better.

  ‘Hello, this is Tshiamo Lebea. I can’t take your call right now. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.’

  Tshiamo has always been a liar. After almost two years, I don’t know why MTN hasn’t disabled his voicemail.

  ‘As soon as possible.’ How many times has he said that to me? ‘As soon as possible.’ I’ve left message after message on his phone and ‘as soon as possible’ has never come. It will never come.

  Ma called Dr Phakama and told her she caught me trying to call ‘my dead brother’s phone’. She’s upset that I don’t want to see Dr Phakama anymore, and said that if I continue being difficult she’ll have me forcibly admitted to Sweet Rivers. When I said nothing, she started crying. She said she won’t lose another child to insanity. That the problem with me is I think I know everything and refuse to listen to anyone.

  What do you say to that, really? If you try defend yourself you only prove the very point she is trying to make.

  Maybe she’s right. Maybe I do think I know everything.

  It’s the explaining that gets to me. Dr Phakama always wants an explanation; everything I say needs to be explained. Why this? Why that? Why must I always have to explain? Why can’t people appreciate that some things can’t be explained? Like why bells have been ringing all week, not even at the same time, not even for the same length of time, just ringing, from churches far out somewhere, or maybe from within my mind. Why does vinegar have such a strong smell but only a subtle taste, so that even when I pour on more and more so my fish and chips float on my plate I have to drink it with a teaspoon to taste it?

  I’m not mad. I’m just tired.

  According to Dr Phakama, my genes have been running from mental illness my whole life. Maybe it’s finally caught up with me.

  Poor Ma: first Tshiamo, now me. Tshiamo was an idiot. He didn’t have a good enough reason. What was he so tormented about, anyway? Why couldn’t he just suck it up and make it work like the rest of us? Maybe if he’d been here none of this would have happened.

  I’m glad Tshiamo is dead. This rape thing would have killed him. His heart was always too small. It only had space for his own problems, nobody else’s. And besides, I wouldn’t want Tshiamo feeling sorry for me. I don’t want anyone feeling sorry for me.

  Lord, there’s so much pain in my heart. If only You would hold it for me, even for just a little while, so my weary soul might rest and my tired body recover.

  Is it because I worked on Sundays and didn’t keep the Sabbath holy? Broke one of Your ten commandments? I had no choice. The call roster was drawn, the calls had to be done. Who was I not to work on a Sunday when everyone else does? Jesus’ disciples picked wheat on the Sabbath, and He defended them. Why didn’t He defend me? Is it because I’m not good enough? You say You love us all the same, but You don’t, You love others differently. You love others more. Why didn’t You defend me, Jesus?

  I looked in the mirror this morning. I stood before it with my towel at my feet to see what has been done to me. My body looks the same. I still have that weird malformed nail on my left baby toe, like a crumbly stone you can’t put nail polish on. My eyes look the same. I think there might be bags under them, but those might have been there before. I have no scabs, no bruises. The stains I used to see seem to have disapp
eared. A bit of cramping, but maybe it’s premenstrual pain. Otherwise I look exactly the same. If I didn’t tell, no one would know.

  At least if I had become some sort of hero, some sort of martyr, at least if I was on the news and interviewed, at least if I wrote a book and people cried when they read it, at least if the United Nations had made me an ambassador or the Nobel Committee gave me a prize … But there’s been nothing like that. The world did not notice. It just kept on spinning. People kept on getting into their cars in the morning and going to work. People kept on shopping, eating, laughing, loving, playing and drinking wine. While my flesh was being split into two, then four, then eight, people were getting married, getting promoted, winning awards.

  Ma came back from church with fresh ideas. She said we mustn’t underestimate evil. The devil doesn’t sleep. He’s just as active today as he was during apartheid. She says he’s just learnt to disguise himself better. He puts on masks so we can’t identify him as easily as we used to. Even people who come across as friends may be using the devil’s charms to take away what God has gifted us. So we mustn’t underestimate how our success can make others jealous. Even people who we think love us, even friends, even our very closest friends. They can trick us, put curses on our lives and steal our joy.

  ‘Ma,’ I say, because I know where this is going. ‘Nyasha has nothing to do with what happened.’

  ‘I’m just saying, Masechaba, be careful in the future with these foreigners. I know you have a big heart and you feel sorry for them, but they’re not people like us. You think you know them, but how can you ever really know them unless you live in their countries and see how they do their things? We fought for the things we have. Three hundred years, Masechaba, we fought those colonisers. And as if that wasn’t enough, we had to spend another fifty years fighting Afrikaners. And now these people want to come and steal the fruits of our struggle? Do you think that girl liked seeing how easy things were for you? She has to write extra exams and spend more years working in the government sector while you progress. Of course that made her angry. Maybe she was so angry that she sent those men to do what they did to you.’

  Ma needs a reason. I don’t blame her. I need one too. Something to make sense of the senselessness, something to hang the pain on.

  ‘Okay Ma. I’ll stop speaking to Nyasha. I won’t be her friend anymore.’

  It wasn’t a complete lie. I hadn’t heard from Nyasha since the mincemeat incident, and I suspected that our friendship had died with the alleged stabbing. I probably should have called to apologise, but I was sick and I was dealing with my own shit. Ma said she didn’t think she was badly hurt. And anyway, I was the one who was fucking raped, so if anybody needed moral support it was me.

  When I got back to our flat that night, the ‘night of the rape’ as Dr Phakama would insist I say, Nyasha said I shouldn’t tell people what had happened. She said it would just give white people more ammunition, so they can scoff at us and say, ‘You see, we told you your people are animals.’ She said the police would handle it, and I shouldn’t let the white doctors suck me into their self-pity. She said our country was still growing and adjusting, and that these things would settle with time. She said she was sorry for what happened to me, but that I should rise above it and be like the forefathers of the nation, who denied themselves for a greater cause.

  I remember being furious. Why couldn’t Nyasha let go of her anger even for just a minute, when I, her friend, her sister, so badly needed her to put it aside and just hold me? Her hands were always so full of good arguments, unsettled debts and old grudges that there was no room for anything else.

  As usual I said nothing. I loved her and didn’t want to let her down, or the cause, the country, the forefathers. And maybe I had just made it all up. Maybe I wasn’t raped and was simply making excuses for the bad thing I was.

  I was tired, and cooking after an overnight shift is never a good idea. But the lady at the pharmacy had said eating would help ease the ARV-associated nausea. I’d written my prescription myself, the same script I’d written for so many women so many times that I could write it in my sleep. I needed to get on with the cooking now, but Nyasha kept on talking and talking and talking, explaining why the hatred between us South Africans and the rest of the continent was because of them, the white people. They had turned us against each other, and even at times like this we shouldn’t let them win. As she talked and talked and the nausea grew and grew, I started to worry I might have mixed up my doses or even left something out. And still she kept talking. I heard her and then I didn’t, and then my head started to hurt. Stop, I wanted to tell her. Stop, just fucking stop! I could smell my mincemeat smouldering on the stove, burning. It was making me want to vomit but I couldn’t get near it because there Nyasha was, in my way, talking and talking. If I did stab her, it was a mistake. I just wanted her to stop.

  You always think you’ll feel it coming, but you don’t. Maybe it’s because people like claiming they’d known, had an ominous dream the day before, or felt a chill. I don’t believe any of that. I think the day a bolt of lightning strikes you on your head is the day you’re preoccupied with a piece of skin on your fingernail, a little piece hanging off your nail bed, a tiny juicy piece you just can’t quite get a grip on with your teeth.

  So you look back, you try to see if there were any signs, nudges. Maybe there were, or maybe you’re just making them up as you go along, searching in places you know you never even walked past, lifting up couches, looking under rocks. It’s a pointless exercise. Some things are completely out of our hands.

  Sometimes I forget. I get lost in the baseline of a song or the smell of lemongrass. At those times I’m just like everyone else. Then my mind asks, ‘Why are you so happy? Isn’t there something you’re forgetting?’ And then I search and search and search, and I remember, oh yes, I was raped.

  I guess to some degree there’s a sense of relief. I used to wonder what that thing would be for me – you know, that mountain, that valley, that shadow, that dark night of the soul. That bad thing that’s waiting round the corner of everyone’s life, the one that catches you off guard, collapses your world, shifts the ground beneath your feet. Ma used to say, ‘Don’t be so negative. You mustn’t think like that. Nothing is going to happen to you. Trust in God. You’re just paranoid. Stop being silly. Are you premenstrual again?’

  After Tshiamo’s death I stopped worrying as much. I’d had my lot of suffering, I’d drunk my cup of pain, eaten my bitter share of heartache. I thought God would move on to others, at least for a little while.

  But You have a reputation. So I decided that if suffering was to come my way again, I wouldn’t allow it to be the end of me. If it was leukaemia, I would write a best-selling memoir. If it was HIV, I’d become an activist. If I met my true love and he died on our wedding day, I’d take my 21 days of unused sick leave, cry my heart out in bed for three weeks, then get up and get back to it. Isn’t that how one should approach it? Logically, rationally, sensibly. Because even if I try to convince You, negotiate, there are no guarantees. There’s no dose-related response; X number of prayers does not equate to Y result. Nope, not with You, none of that with You. After Tshiamo, I didn’t think I’d be defeated by loss again. I didn’t think I could hurt any more than I had. And I survived it, so surely there was nothing more You could hurl at me that I couldn’t handle? But as I lay there on that floor, in that dark corridor, blood slowly pooling around my pants, all I could think about was potassium, 7.46% in the 10ml vial, 20% in the 20ml vial and too little in the premixed solution to cause a fatal arrhythmia.

  If anything, it’s taught me humility. I think I had a big head. I thought I was special, immune, exceptional. That these sorts of things wouldn’t happen to me. But I’m not. I’m just another South African rape statistic. There’s nothing extraordinary about my story, it happens everywhere, every day. It doesn’t matter that I’m highly educated, a doctor, that I started a petition that made the newspap
ers.

  I have a vagina. That’s all that matters.

  Some people say there were times in history when women ruled the world. The same kind of people who claim that there was a time when black people ruled the world. Fanciful nonsense. Even just physiologically, it’s improbable that women ever lorded over men. Physical strength has always counted for more. The weight of a man on your chest, multiple men, one after another, empties your lungs. Even if your mind is sharper, with them on top no oxygen can reach your brain. It’s impossible. Just try picture a country ruled by the women I know. Ma, Nyasha, me. Ma rising and falling with the shadows, Nyasha cussing and swearing at history, and me: a bloody mess. It would be a joke.

  We went back to the police station this morning. They showed me the initial statement that was taken, and explained that they were still busy with the case. I wanted to tell them they’d written it all wrong. That the men didn’t say, ‘Where are you friends now?’ But that they said ‘Where are your kwere-kwere friends now?’ I wanted to point out that it was my mouth they forced open, not my eyes, and that one first put his penis in my mouth and I had to suck it because I was scared. They left out that it felt like something was tearing inside. I’d told them that the second or third penis in my vagina grated like a fork against a brick, but they didn’t write that down. The statement the officer had taken and reinterpreted was written on a page torn from an exercise book. Why did he use blue ink instead of black? At medical school I was taught that legal documents needed to be in black ink.

  I should have corrected them. And I should have told them I thought one of the men was the same man who used to stand at the security box issuing keys for the doctors’ rooms, and the other might be the voice on the switchboard, the voice that always sounded like it could see me from the other end of the line, that seemed to want to say more but didn’t as it transferred me from Emergency Department to Theatre, to Outpatients. But the police station smelt of urine and the officer of drink, and I didn’t want to upset Ma. So I said nothing.