She was beautiful. She knew it, and everyone
else knew it. She was born to a family of modest means, and demeanour. Her name
was Tsotleho, and she was terminally ill. As she slept there on that old
mattress,
which had seen better days, coughing and sputtering, while an anxious
hand wiped her sweltering and perspiring forehead, she was being tortured by
thoughts of a life poorly lived, and choices ill-made. Hardly twenty-five years
old and she had reached the terminus of her life.
For as long as she could remember, people
could not keep quiet about how beautiful she was. When she would be playing
games of teams, everyone wanted to be on her team, even though she was not good
in most of those games they used to play. At school she got by, but to her that
was not important, because even if other kids beat her in school, they could
never beat her in looks. Boys could not help looking at and admiring her. At
first this used to annoy her, until she understood the power it gave, to be so
irresistible to boys. It all started after her twelfth birthday…
She was growing breasts and she seemed to be
filling up in the lower torso. She had never known she had curves, but it
seemed that was what everyone was saying to her, and about her. She was not a
yellow bone, by any stretch of the imagination, the expression older people
used was ‘tlhaku ya tekwane’, which meant somewhere between yellow bone and
dark-skinned. Tsotleho grew up in a small, close-knit community, where everyone
knew everyone, and everyone was related to everyone, whether by blood or
marriage or both. She had first, second and third cousins, and those that are
anything from once to several times removed. She remembers many embarrassing
visits to her better-off, “well-meaning” relatives, to ask for things like
sugar, or tea or cooking oil or mealie meal, and sometimes even salt. She
remembers going to their homes, to collect their pity gifts to her family, in
the form of meat they no longer wanted to eat, and clothes their children had
either outgrown or did not want anymore. The funny thing was that, most times
the clothes would also be too small for her, as she was about the same age as this
uncle’s daughter or the same size as that aunt’s daughters, who were eleven
months apart.
She had a cousin, a few years younger than her,
who was constantly teased about her shortcomings. Especially because she was
quite dark, and everyone said she looked like a boy. And as though that was not
bad enough, she had a name typically known to be given to boys. Sometimes Tsotleho
also taunted her cousin, just so she could feel superior to her, because for
some reason, her cousin’s intelligence irritated her, and the fact that she was
ugly was no consolation. For a while she was brave to dish out the teasing, and
see her cousin squirm, and cry, and cower away from this group of friends she
had, as they all jeered and laughed, comparing her to everyone, and finding her
the ugliest in the entire village; even neighbouring villages. The thing about
this feeling of being better, or superior, is that it never lasted; it left her
as soon as the lot of them dispersed to go to their respective homes.
The year of her doing the eighth grade, for
the third time, was the year her little cousin caught up to her in school. This
was the worst thing that could have happened to her. Her social life had
improved though, by that time, because boys and men showed interest in her, and
some men even gave her money, and bought her gifts. So she was now part of the
in-group. This group was made up of mainly intellectual duds, and thus, had
members varying in age, and she was the youngest member during that year. There
was a new boy who had come to enrol at the school that year. It was rumoured
that the boy was rich, and had been attending a white school where he used to
live, and that he spoke immaculate English. The boy was handsome, but slightly
younger than her, and he had a naughty glint in his eye. One time, this boy and
his friends tried to corner her ugly cousin, and get her agreeing to be the
girlfriend to one of them, the handsome boy’s closest friend. Tsotleho could
not tell if this interest was genuine or not. But as it turned out, her cousin
was being an idiot, because clearly those boys were doing her a favour, since
she was just not going to catch any other boy’s eye.
Tsotleho started off not having much interest
in the older men that were showing interest in her, and since these were mainly
men that worked in the mines, they only came home to their families when they
could take time away from work, and most chose to come during December holidays,
while some would come during Easter, or in drips and drabs here and there. She
was just enjoying the attention of older boys from school, and hoping to catch
the interest of one newcomer boy. Sadly for her, she failed her eighth grade
once again, and her little cousin progressed. After the ninth grade, all those
who pass had to go to boarding school, because there were no high schools
nearby. When her little cousin went off to boarding school, she was only then
promoted to the ninth grade. She was now a senior in school, and she was proud
to wear the invisible crown of being the senior of her school, and her school
uniform reached new heights. By this time she was approaching her eighteenth
year.
Being one of the older kids started to take
its toll on her, and she was suddenly nagged by a desire to get away. The year
she turned nineteen, she was promoted to the tenth grade, and that meant going
off to boarding school. This soothed her restless spirit somewhat, and she
wanted a boarding school so far away from home, that there would be no
possibility of anyone she knew bumping into her. Sadly, because she knew that
her options were sparse, where she went, would be dictated to by her family’s
means. During the December holidays, preceding her debut in boarding school,
she met an older man, who was working in a town more than four hundred
kilometres from her home. Since the furthest option for boarding school was
about ninety kilometres away from her village, she opted to go with this man.
This man was not all that good looking, in her eyes, but he was her ticket to a
better life.
When she got to the town by the sea, she felt
shy. She would be all alone in the one room, where this man lived. After living
with him for a few months, she began to realise that this man’s life there was
actually no better than how they lived back home, and yet he worked. Another
thing was that he was not so charming, and always complained about money, and
food, and no matter what she cooked, it was never enough. She was not aware,
but someone was watching all this unravel, waiting for a moment to insert
themselves. Then there was one night the man came home with another woman, and
three men. The men had paid the man to sleep with her, and she was just too
naïve to even read it. This was only the beginning of her nightmare. Every
night, there were men coming, but the same lady was a regular feature. She
would later discover, that this lady was the one that was putting this man in
touch, with all these men. This continued for months, and it escalated to a
point where this man no longer went to work, instead he brought men to their twenty
square metre cubicle. He no longer slept with the merchandise, and he drank
most of the money away, so they were always strapped for cash, and he was
getting desperate, and ended up wanting to bring men during all hours of the
day and night. After three months of doing this Tsotleho fell ill, and
customers were no longer happy, so they stopped coming. Those who had not come
yet, heard about her condition and also stayed away. The man was livid, and
tossed her out in the middle of the night.
She was fortunate, because it was around the
time when the weather was getting warm, and this particular costal town was
famous for its warm weather. The observer made his move, took her in, and gave
her food and some care. He took her to the clinic the following morning, and it
emerged that she had caught a sexually transmitted disease. She was lucky too,
because it was only gonorrhoea, at least that is what the nurses said, when
they were discussing her. She’d thought she was having a cold or maybe the flu.
She was just too addled to think too much about the kindness of a strange man.
Perhaps because he was easy on the eye, even though he was also much older than
her, as far as she could tell. She waited for the other penny to drop, but this
guy seemed not to have any physical interest in her. Months went by with her
now dependent on this man. A year had gone by since she’d left home, and it was
now the festive season, and people were visiting the town in great numbers.
With this new guy she had more freedom, and because he used to take her for
walks around the town, and would sometimes take her to the beach by taxi, she
began to become more familiar with her surroundings. She was starting to feel
positive about life, and thinking about her home, and the people she had left
behind. She wanted to visit them one day, and she envisioned herself arriving
with two bags of luggage, and lots of groceries. Everyone would admire her
clothes, and how good she looked in them. Her cousin would realise that beauty
was better than brains, because she would show up with a handsome man on her
arm. These day dreams continued well into the New Year, and the more she had
them was the more she fell in love with her rescuer. He, however, still neither
showed nor hinted at wanting anything more from her. It got to a point where
she was so grateful to this man, that she would have done almost anything he
asked. She would not have long to wait. If only she had known how sordid this
man’s mind was, and what dark and disturbing fantasies he nursed in his mind,
while he waited for the opportune moment to spring them on her.
Thinking about it now, while lying on that
matrass, she can still not believe some of the things that that man, had had her
doing. And she did them all, and never once complained. She had heard about
oral penetration, had even performed it for some of her “clients” before. But
this man had wanted what he called, anal penetration, from her. At first she
was just confused, but because she did not want to upset him, she pretended to
know what he was talking about. She was scared of what he was going to do, and
she imagined how painful it would be, but she felt more discomfort than pain
when it happened. She also felt an overwhelming sense of shame, but she did not
leave, only lived with the thoughts that came to her every night, of why this
man was like this. That was only the beginning of the nightmare, but she was so
deep in gratitude, that she kept making excuses for why things were the way
they were. One day he brought another man to take part in their nightly sordid
affair. He called this a threesome. Of course it was easier to just pretend all
of these things were normal, because he was looking after her, he bought her
nice clothes, did her hair every month, and gave her money to spend anyway she
wanted. She just never thought to save the money, and perhaps one day use it to
go home. Mainly because she was ashamed, and thought that she had a filth - which
was commonly referred to as senyama in her part of the world -, and that if she
went home, everyone would see it, and they would know what she had been doing.
She knew her parents were angry with her for the way she left home, and the
fact that she had not gone to school as had been the plan.
She woke up one morning, to find that she had
soiled herself and the bedding. Knowing what a cleanliness freak the man was,
she woke up immediately, and cleaned herself up as well as the linen. When he
woke up he wanted to know why she had laundered bed linen so early, and why
only her own. Not sure how to approach the question, she said that she had
experienced unusual perspiration the night before, and had not wanted to let it
affect the future odour of the linen, which she thought would happen if she
delayed washing it out. She was too embarrassed to come clean about what had
happened, because at the time she had not known that it was actually his fault.
It happened again about two hours after she had woken. She got up from where
she had been sitting, on the couch, and saw there was a stain. Remembering what
she discovered that morning, she bent down for a whiff. and sure enough it
smelled like fresh human waste. She ran to the bathroom, and inspected her
clothing and underwear, and sure enough there was something there. By this time
she could also smell the putrid odour. She panicked. After quickly wiping
herself, and changing her clothes, she sneaked into the lounge area with a wet
cloth to see about wiping what might be an already set-in stain, due to the
time that had elapsed since she had gotten up. Fortunately the couches were
made of leather, and even though they were a bright mustard colour, the stain
could not be easily spotted as it had a similar shade. The second thing to be
relieved about, was the fact that when she wiped, it came out without her
needing to rub hard, and the fact that he did not catch her in the act of
cleaning. She was now wondering why it was that she had not felt the stools
come out, but having never had diarrhoea before, she thought that maybe it
became like that when it was really severe. She decided that she would go to
the clinic, but told the man that she was going for a walk. She was surprised
that he did not ask her about where she intended walking to, like he normally
did whenever she left the house. She was most certainly not prepared for what
she was about to find out.
She got to the clinic and, while waiting to
see the nurses, she had another incident. While trying to get to a bathroom, to
get cleaned up, one of the nurses noticed and followed her. She then asked her
about the stain that was clearly visible on the seat of her pants. Tsotleho
then went on to tell the nurse what had happened. Indeed she had diarrhoea, but
that was the least of her problems. What was the biggest concern, was that she
had lost control of her bowel movement, and when the nurse took her to the
examination room, and had her demonstrate squeezing the sphincter, while the
nurse had inserted a finger into her anus, there was no pressure. As much as
she willed her anal hole to refuse entry of the finger, or squeezed it to
prevent further penetration, there was no success. The nurse’s suspicions were
confirmed, and she shook her head in disgust. They were seeing more and more of
such cases, and the pity was that when they asked the people who ended up like
this, these people either started off by fabricating badly articulated lies
that would not convince even an idiot, or they said they didn’t know. When they
eventually came clean, it always emerged that they, women mostly, were naively
being coerced into agreeing to this act, and it was rumoured that the first
experience produced a kind of feeling that was somewhat intoxicating, and thus
addictive. This nurse, for one, did not buy it, but she felt pity for the
stupidity of some women. Now this young girl, was going to have to wear a
diaper for the rest of her natural life, or until there was a medical
breakthrough that enabled doctors to reverse or fix this kind of damage.
Tsotleho could not stop crying, as the nurse explained to her what she thought
was wrong with her, and how it would have come about. She could not even deny
it when the nurse asked her about participating in such an act, on more than
one occasion. The nurse also suggested that she get tested for the HI virus,
and see a doctor about the treatment of the diarrhoea she had, if the pills the
nurse gave her did not work. The nurse also encouraged her to see the doctor,
in order to find out if there was anything they could do to help her, gave her
some adult diapers, and sent her to the nurse who did HIV tests.
She felt numb. Even as the nurse explained to
her the procedure for testing, and the counselling, her focus was not on
anything that was being said to her. She was berating herself for having been
so stupid. She knew about loss of motor skills because, back in her village
lived an old lady who was suffering a similar kind of problem, but hers was the
result of nothing foul she had done, or allowed to be done to her. While the
nurse was asking her about her sexual activities, and she disclosed as openly
as she could what she had been involved in, it seemed she needed yet another
procedure to be done, which they called a pap smear. This one needed to be done
by a specialist, and they were going to write her a referral letter. But she
would need money or medical aid, to have it done. She pushed all this
information to the back of her mind, and even when the nurse drew the blood,
she did not feel anything. It seemed the numbness was physical as well, not
just mental. She had just attained her twenty-first year of life, but now she
was going to live like a baby forever. She did not imagine her rescuer would be
okay with living with someone who had such problems, and she was sure that no
one else would want her now. She was not sure where to go, once she was done at
the clinic. She did not have enough money to go home with, and the only way for
her to get money, was to wait for the time when her rescuer gives her money to
go do her hair, or get some new clothes. By her own calculations, that would be
in about a week or so, and that meant hiding her affliction from him. To ensure
that there would be no request from him, for her to participate in his sordid
act for the week, she planned to tell him about her diarrhoea, and that she was
taking treatment for it, which should last a week or so. Her mind was made up,
she was going home, and she would face whatever consequences that came with
that decision. If her family shunned her, then she would have to come up with a
new plan then.
She had to wait for the test results, and
while she waited, she was supposed to speak with a counsellor, who told her how
HIV was not a death sentence, and how many people lived long, healthy and
normal lives with HIV, as long as they took their treatment. He also told her
that when she got the results, she needed to wait for the window period to pass,
and come back to do another test then, to be sure of the results, especially if
the first result was negative. He asked her about her family, and seemed to
want to establish whether she had a support structure or not. She was cagey on
questions surrounding her family, and where her home was. The counsellor knew
he could not compel her to answer questions she did not want to give answers to,
so he released her to wait for the results. The wait seemed like the longest
waiting she had ever done, and she was worried about what her rescuer would say
when she got back. She hoped that her excuse of going to the clinic to get
treatment for diarrhoea, will quiet any other questions he might have about her
whereabouts, and why she took so long to get back. When the nurse finally
called her back in, she had been about to walk out. After all, she had already
gotten the treatment for the diarrhoea, and was not really interested in this
HIV test thing. She knew also, that she was nervous about finding out, because
as much as she did not understand the disease, she knew it would mean the end
was near for her. She would not even know where or when she got it, if she got
it from all those men she slept with for money, or from her rescuer and his
friends. She was growing up really fast now, having to deal with all these hard
decisions, and situations. She wished she had not been so greedy, or hasty, in
living a better life. She thought about her little cousin, who was probably not
so little anymore. It would seem that beauty had not worked for her, but
instead had worked against her. Had she been smarter, perhaps things might have
happened differently, but she knew she had been blinded by her need to end her
poverty. She remembered once hearing her grandmother say that, people were
jealous of beautiful things, and if they could not own them, they set out to
destroy them. Sometimes they would mar them, just so they could be less
beautiful, so they would feel less ugly around them. At the time, she had
thought her grandmother was babbling, and could not possibly know what she was
talking about, since she was not beautiful at all, in Tsotleho’s opinion. She
was thinking how true those words sounded now.
The nurse delivered the news of her test
results without much emotion. It was all very clinical, and factual, about what
the disease was, what it meant for her to have a positive test outcome. How
there was a six week window period, and how she needed to come back again after
those six weeks, to confirm the status by having another test. Sometimes it
happened that the first test was positive, and the subsequent one would be
negative, in which case they would have to do deeper investigation, to confirm
the negative result after a positive one, as that was not that common an
occurrence, but nonetheless was the reality of the disease. The nurse sounded
doubtful of a different result with the second test, and even as Tsotleho
drowned out all this information, her mind was already playing a movie of how
her life was now going to be. She was wondering if it was possible for someone
who did not know, to tell when you had the virus. She was not sure if she could
hide it from her rescuer, and even as she thought that, the nurse was saying
that she needed to encourage any and all bed partners she had had, to come and get
tested. If only this nurse knew what she was talking about! Tsotleho was
certainly not going to be the one to tell all those people about it. They would
have to discover it for themselves. She did not want to add beatings to her
list of problems because, as sure as the sun rose in the east and set in the
west, those people would blame her, and make sure she knew that is was her
disease.
She arrived home to find him gone, so she had
time to come up with all sorts of answers to the questions he might ask. She
wondered again, if he would be able to see that she had it. She hoped that he
would not want to do anything with her, when he came back from wherever he had
gone, because he would discover the diaper she was wearing, and she would have
to explain something she, herself, did not understand. There was a thought that
kept coming to her, but she kept pushing it away. Each time it would come back,
it would be stronger and harder to push away. She went to bed that night still
waiting for him to come back, and woke up the following morning to find that he
was still not there. That thought came to her again, and she just let herself
think about it. It might be the best solution for her, since she depended on
this man for money. Even as she came back to the idea of asking for money to do
hair, she was thinking how that might not be such a good idea, because she was
not even sure if the money he normally gave her would be enough for her to travel
home with. And she could not risk coming back after she leaves, because she
would have to come back with a freshly done hairdo, and he might want to get
intimate, since she would have told him she was doing it for him. She decided
to go to the salon and ask them what their most expensive service was, and they
said putting on Brazilian hair extensions. But the price they quoted was so
high that she would never have the nerve to ask for it. She asked them what
hairstyle they could do, that would cost between four and five hundred, and
they told her the style. She decided that that would be the one she tells him
she wants to do. She then went to the taxi rank, asked about the cost of going
to her home town, found that if she could have the five hundred, she would be
able to get home, and have some money left over to get one or two things, as a
peace offering to her parents when she got home. He did not come home for
nearly two weeks, and the waiting - coupled with not knowing when he would show
up -, were just enough to set her on edge. She spent her days eating and
sleeping, and worrying about his return when she was awake. She had nightmares
about how her reception would go, when she got home, and about what would
happen when her rescuer came back from wherever he had gone. When she would
wake up, and realise that it had all been a dream, she would supplicate God
that he should come back having forgotten about the fact that, when he left,
she had not been around. The diapers were running low as there was only twenty
of them in the pack she was given. This was now an urgent source of worry, as
even though the diarrhoea had stopped, the problem of messing herself had not completely
gone away. After she had finished the treatment, her stools had taken some days
to form, and they had not been soft, so she had gotten false hope, because she would
have to put in some effort, so there was a warning before things went awry. But
soon she was back to her regular soft stools, and the problem was clearly not
going away, like she had begun to believe.
He
came back in a good mood but complained of exhaustion. Because she had stopped waiting
for him with a surprise meal, like she had done the first five nights after she
had discovered that he had not come home, she had not cooked anything to endear
herself to him with. He arrived in the late afternoon, and she was able to see
him before he got to the door, and raced to the entrance to meet him, and help
him with the bag he was carrying. She guided him to the stained sofa, having
forgotten about the stain. He allowed her to lead him there, settle him onto
the sofa, take off his shoes, and rub his feet. He seemed to appreciate the
attention she gave him, and she asked him what he would like to eat, but he
said he was too tired and would prefer having something light, later in the
evening. She decided to take the plunge and ask for the money. She told him how
she had recently seen someone who had done a hairstyle that she had liked for a
while now, and had wanted to do it but did not know how much it cost. She had
then asked the lady who had done it how much it cost, and wondered if he would
let her have it. She was smart, to make him believe that it would be he who
would let her have the hairstyle, and not how it actually was. He said yes,
took it out of his wallet, and handed over the money. She was so surprised by
the ease with which it had happened, that she thought at first, that she must have
imagined it. When she did not reach for it, he thought that she was just
preoccupied with what she was doing, so he put it next to him on the sofa. She
had to steel herself from reaching out and snatching it, even though she had
fear that he might come out of his trance, realise what he had done, and take
it back. He fell asleep soon after, and she used that moment to take the money,
make him his light meal, and leave it for him to find. She went to pack what
she could and keep it ready.
There was no time to lose. She left the
following morning. Knowing that he had been tired, and would probably sleep in,
she left a note saying she had decided to go early to the salon, so that if he
woke up early he would not go looking for her. Unfortunately the taxis did not
leave early, and so she had four hours to kill. Those four hours, until the
eleventh hour of the morning, were spent in a frantic paranoia, with her always
looking around, and having a fright when she saw someone - resembling him in
stature or profile -, walking in the direction of the taxi rank. Twice, she
found herself feigning to go find a toilet, just so that she would avoid being
found by someone she had been convinced was him, while approaching the rank
from a distance. People only started showing up to fill the taxi at the
eleventh hour, evidence that they knew the travel times, and had she known them
too, she would have timed her departure better. The taxi left at a quarter to
eleven, after the last person arrived and took the remaining vacant seat. She
was still tense, and only started to relax when the taxi had been en route for
over half an hour, and she estimated that it had travelled a distance far
enough that he would not discover her, or what she was up to.
Now that she was relieved about not being
found out, the apprehension about how she would be received at home took
residence in her mind. No matter how she tried to shake the feeling of foreboding
or the disquieting fear, they just seemed to mount with every hour that passed.
She arrived in her hometown to news of some of her friends, and classmates,
having gotten married, and about two having died, and it being rumoured that
they had died of AIDS. This was not what Tsotleho needed to hear, when she was
already dealing with so much. Even as she spoke to the gossiper, whom she’d come
across at the nearby town, where she was catching a taxi to the village, she
was wondering if this very person could not tell that she was wearing a diaper,
or that she had HIV. That she was going to spread it to everyone at home, and
her parents would find out about her before she even got off the taxi. She
decided to find out when this lady planned to catch the taxi back to the
village, and fortunately she was planning on the last one. There were
apparently three of them, with the first one leaving at twelve noon, and the
one after it leaving at three in the afternoon. The last one left at six in the
evening. She had missed the first taxi, which had left long before she arrived,
but she was relieved to discover that she was in time to catch the second one.
This meant she would be dealing with her family sooner than she might have
liked, and she had hoped to arrive late, because when she had left, there had
only been one taxi, and it used to collect the second load much later that six in
the evening most times, due to issues the driver often encountered with the
taxi, on the trip to drop off the first load, as well as the trip back for the
second one. People who travelled from far, always arrived even as late as nine
o’clock in the evening, and that would have suited her perfectly, since it
would mean she arrives, goes straight to bed, and psyches herself up for the
confrontation the following day. And that might be late in the afternoon, as
her parents worked the fields during the day, and did chores for the other
villagers in exchange for money or food items. It was her hope that the second
taxi would have problems on the way, and hopefully arrive after sunset. She was
not so lucky. The second one happened to be brand new, and was driven by a
young guy who was speeding all the way while they were driving on the tarmac
road. The trip home was much shorter than she remembered it. There was not much
that had changed with the villages she passed, but where the changes were, they
were noticeable. For one, the home that belonged to her cousin’s family, which
was visible from where the taxi stops, looked different. There was a bricked
house that was still in the process of being built, and from where she was, it
was a big house. To make space for the house they had gotten rid of the biggest
mud hut they used to have. People seemed to still be working on the house, even
though it was after four in the afternoon, but she guessed that they most
probably worked till sunset. It was a lot
quieter, and she could make out some young girls coming from the water well,
carrying big buckets of water on their heads and walking in a circle, because
they seemed more interested in what they were discussing that getting home in
time to do whatever other chores that awaited them. She walked slowly towards
home, crossing her fingers not to meet anyone that remembered her, because as
much as she was afraid of nosey people, she was more afraid of what waited for
her at home.
They seemed not to recognise her, and she
could barely recognise her own mother. She looked so frail, and so dark! She
was bonier than Tsotleho remembered her. Tsotleho was not aware that she,
herself, had also undergone a big change since they last saw her, and just
expected that they would know that it was her. She would find out later that
her father’s eyesight had weakened, that he worked less and less, putting more
pressure on her mother to go out for work. She found them sitting in the small
hut; her mother was working on some wicker basket, while her father was
removing corn from cobs. She greeted them hesitantly, and they still did not
register any recognition as far as she could make out, from the way they
responded. They seemed neither happy nor shocked to have this visitor in their
home. She came into the hut, and sat down next to her mother. She whispered to
her that she had come home to see them. The only reaction she could draw from
that, was the sighting of a lone tear running down her mother’s face from her
left eye. She tried to make herself useful, by offering to help them with what
they were doing, but neither of them seemed ready to speak to her. Tears were
running down her face too now, she did not know how to deal with this. She had
expected shouting, maybe even lashing and having to plead her case, but they we
just so closed up that she was not even sure what would happen, when it came
time to sleep. Were they expecting her to leave and not spend the night? Had
they suffered some kind of trauma that rendered them unable to remember her?
Even to this day her parents never asked or
reprimanded her about what she did. They acted as though she had never left.
She felt weighed down by her guilt, and was afraid to confront them about their
placid welcome. She made herself useful, and was the one going out to get work,
and bringing either money or crops or whatever else she got paid with. She
delved so deep into that life, such that she never really had any time to think
about her reasons for coming back. In the evenings she would be so tired, that,
she would fall asleep soon after getting under the covers. The reminder, which
never left her, was the situation of her bowels, which she earnestly tried to
hide from her parents and everyone, by employing some tactics to ensure that
she anticipated the movement prior to her body actually alerting her to it,
which would often be too late as she would have soiled herself somewhat by
then. This also meant that she was not dealing with her status of the virus,
and not really understanding that there are precautions she must take to
prevent infecting others. Especially when you are not taking any treatment. So she
may have inadvertently infected some of the people who hired her, from time to
time, where they would come into contact with her and might exchange bodily
fluids through fresh and bleeding wounds. She would cook and prepare food for
some people, and on many occasions she would cut herself accidentally, and
without even thinking twice, use the dish cloth to wipe the blood and wash it
after. Then she would not even cover the cut, if she felt it was not so deep
that things she would be handling would go in and irritate or cause further
infection. She may have infected some other people as well through her
negligence. One such occasion might have been at a party that had been hosted
by a well-endowed family, where she had been roped in to help with the preparations,
and this included cooking. Some of her infected blood came into contact with an
open wound, when this one lady she was chopping vegetables with, cut herself
and Tsotleho helped stop the bleeding, while she still had a relatively new
cut, which had begun to bleed quite earnestly, due to its being constantly in
water as she washed things, and this blood made its way into the fresh wound of
this other woman, as Tsotleho squeezed her finger to reduce the intensity of
the bleeding from the cut; which was quite deep. They were both oblivious to
this exchange of liquids and thus did not try to stop it. She may have also
infected one of those boys she used to go to school with, who had propositioned
her once upon a time, and she had turned him down because she felt he was below
her standards. This boy, now a man who was going nowhere fast, had gone to
initiation school and come back, but was struggling to meet women who were
interested in being his wife, thought he saw an opportunity because, to him,
Tsotleho was just like him. Remembering how she had turned him down, he just surveilled
and bided his time, until he was sure that he would get her alone. He then
proceeded to rape her repeatedly, that one evening he had succeeded in getting
her alone. She remembered now the look on his face when she told him that she
had the virus. At first, he had had a blank look, as though what she was saying
to him had had no meaning. He proceeded to rape her, yet again, and suddenly he
stopped, got off her and bolted, almost like a light bulb had suddenly gone on
in his head. She had smiled a sad but victorious smile then, when she thought
about what he might be doing to himself, to try and get the AIDS off. She had
already heard stories of what people were doing to get themselves cured or
uninfected. She had not paid these stories any mind, and had preferred not to
actively listen when they were being discussed, because they would have her
thinking about the virus and how she was going to die from it soon. She did not
know where he ended up, if he was still alive or not.
She discovered that her little cousin had passed
matric, and participated in something they called a learnership. This was a
government initiative to help empower black people in the country, targeted at
those from disadvantaged backgrounds, who still could not afford schooling even
after the abolition of apartheid. Her cousin was living in a city far more
glamorous, and bigger than the town she had been living in the past three and
half years. She was doing an internship with an international company, and had
done some improvements to the home her family owned in the village. She wanted
to find out more about her little cousin, but she had not really been close
with their family, now felt shy to go visit them. She also felt ashamed at the
way she had thought and treated her cousin, and knew that she would not be able
to convince people that she was now a different person, who wanted to hear more
about the success of her cousin, as it gave her a sense of hope, and some level
of bittersweet joy. She was very jealous of the things she had heard about her
cousin, and felt that maybe she could live her dream of being well off, through
this cousin, whom she had done nothing to inspire while they were growing up.
She had been too caught up in looks, and the fact that her cousin was dark
skinned and considered the ugliest girl in the family, and even the whole village
perhaps. She was fortunate because she had not fallen pregnant despite all her
reckless living.
Planting season approached, and preparations
were underway to start planting the big and small fields owned by the families
in the village. Her family also owned a big planting field of one and a quarter
acres, which was located offsite. They also had small field adjoined to the family
plot, which her mother used to plant vegetables and a small patch of maize, so
they could enjoy roasting maize during harvest time like all other families,
without having to go begging for some or doing chores to receive it as pay. Of
course the planting of that maize was a tedious and manual chore through and
through, because her family did not own any cattle, and it was costly to use
other people’s oxen or hiring the tractor to plough the field. To plant your
one acre field you needed at least four oxen and a yoke while for the smaller
field at home two oxen would do, a hand operated plough, a hand operated
planter, commercial manure with some cow dung that had been exposed to moisture
from the rain and frosts or dew plus the heat from the cattle sleeping on it
for months, the pressure from being trampled by hooves, the crop, strong men or
women, as well as a boy or girl to lead the oxen. These were all things they
did not have, so they planted using spades to till the soil, sowing the crop by
hand, while those with means used planters which did the job faster. They then
use a hoe to weed, and this was also one of those all-day-in-the-sun kinds of
jobs, that were carried out over weeks, to help protect the crop and ensure its
growth. The laborious hoeing was also done on the big fields, and to finish just
one field took days with two women working on it for hours each day, and since
there were a lot of fields, and not enough women to go around, only fields that
were bigger than one acre were hoed by more than two people. She, of course,
had to do the ploughing at home and in the big fields belonging to those well
off families, who also rented her family’s big planting field for a measly pay
in harvested crop.
Her cousin came to visit for the festive
holidays, and stayed for two weeks. During that time, Tsotleho got to visit
with her and ask about the things she had heard, and also got more information
about what life was like in the big city. She wished she could ask her cousin
to take her with. But from the sound of it, she had just got permanently hired
some two months prior, and life was costly that side. To save on rental, she
was sharing a two bedroom flat with someone, and that was a challenge in itself,
without adding someone who would be nothing but a parasite. Not that her cousin
used those exact words, to explain the situation. It was in just the way she had
complained about a time when this roommate had been visited by their sister,
who had stayed for an entire month, and the utility bill was so high and this
girl still expected her cousin to share in the bill equally, and when her
cousin suggested that the roommate should pay two thirds, because she had her
sister there. They got into a fight, and life was uncomfortable for months
after that. This was while she still earned an allowance, as she was then still
an intern. Her cousin’s job required her to have her own transport, and so she
had to stay in her current living arrangements, since she would have car
repayments added to her list of expenses soon, but she first needed to get
licensed to drive a car. Tsotleho listened to all this in awe, and envy. Once
again realising how beauty had not worked for her as well as brains had worked
for her cousin. Her cousin’s kindness towards her, and the fact that she seemed
not to hold the past against her, was like thorns piercing her all over. It
would have been better, if her cousin had been self-aggrandising or
self-righteous or accusatory, because then she would not seem even more undeserving
of the cruelty she had levelled at her, all those years ago. As much as she
realised that her cousin was a lot more educated than anyone she knew, she
still feared disclosing the fact that she had the virus, to her. So she asked,
in what she thought was a casual and detached tone, about her cousin’s love
life. Her cousin mentioned that men showed great interest in her, but she was
focussing on growing her career. That with the whole AIDS epidemic thing, she
was also not going to be naïve about things, and accept the attention from men.
Largely because, she found this attention they gave her, suspicious. Her cousin
did not believe the compliments men gave her, or when they said she was
beautiful. She felt that they were lying through their smiling teeth. Tsotleho
no longer thought her cousin was ugly or naive, she actually saw the beauty she
realised had always been there, but they had just been too focussed on her
darkness of tone, that they never even gave her credit for the beautiful
assembly of her facial features. She looked like some of those models Tsotleho
had seen on magazines, and her lean figure was now something to be envied. From
the pictures on her cellphone, one where it showed her dressed for work and one
where she had gone to an evening function, showed such a glamorous and
beautiful woman, who was suited by anything she wore, because even the one
where she wore some casual torn jeans, she looked like she had been posing for
a photo shoot. She realised how much damage they had all caused in her, because
her cousin accepted none of the compliments Tsotleho gave her, instead she brushed
them off as kindness and not the truth. Tears were suddenly in Tsotleho’s eyes,
and regret was eating away at her. She wanted to get away, but could not pull
herself away, so she pretended that something had gotten into her eye. The lump
in her throat was much harder to overcome. There was something that irritated
her during all those evenings she spent with her cousin, and that was what her
cousin had called social media. It showed that her cousin was popular, because
her friends from the city would be texting her throughout, and she would be
texting back and laughing at some things which she did not share with Tsotleho.
Her excuse would be that Tsotleho would not get it, unless she had been there
at the time those things which her friends talked about happened, or it would
be something about work. Tsotleho felt that sometimes her cousin was being
haughty.
With her cousin gone, it was back to the
monotonous life of work and sleep. She was losing weight and she was not aware
of it, even though she found it odd that some of her clothes felt loose, but
had not really given herself time to reflect on why that was. School started, so
once again there was more work, but not enough time in a day to do it in. She
received a gift from her cousin in the post, and it was a cellphone. There was
a letter enclosed, and in there her cousin was telling her that she had set it
up for her, and demonstrated to her what pattern to use to use to open the
keypad. It was called a touchscreen phone, and she had setup an email account for
her and created a facebook account as well. She said that, this way they would
be able to keep in touch, in much the same way as she had been able to keep in
touch with her friends, while she was with them during Christmas and New Year.
This got her excited, but she was also overwhelmed, as her cousin spoke about a
lot of things she could not understand. Her cousin promised to come for a visit
during the Easter holidays, for a week, and she would show her how to work with
applications on the phone. Easter time is harvest time and Tsotleho knew that
her cousin’s motivation was the image of roasted maize, and that year Easter
was coming early in March. Tsotleho decided to wait for her cousin before she
used the phone. She wrote back to express her gratitude, for such a gesture,
from someone who was not obliged to do anything for her. It was like daggers to
her heart, but she could not bring herself to refuse it, so she accepted it with
as much grace as she could muster. There was a post script that puzzled her,
which said that she looked good, like she was a sportsperson. Between carrying
water on her head; pushing twenty litre plastic bottles of water on a
wheelbarrow; collecting firewood; washing people’s clothes and heavy blankets;
grinding maize; cooking with heavy, black, three-foot pots; washing these pots;
walking distances to do heavy grocery shopping for things that were not even
for her to enjoy; all this for a measly sum or a bag of mealies or whatever
demeaning form of payment these people thought up. Then there was all that work
done during the planting season that involved all that spade tilling, hand
sowing and hoeing weeds the whole day in those big fields for days! It was all
hard labour. Now harvesting season had arrived, and she remembered from her
childhood days the work that was involved during that time of the year. Having
been at school for the better part of that time, she had not fully appreciated
just how much work until now. Soon the crop would be ready to be gathered, and
put into burlap sacks, and loaded onto sleighs pulled by yoked oxen or, for the
more wealthy villagers, a tractor would be used.
Her cousin came as promised, and once again
her evenings were something to look forward to. She showed Tsotleho how to use
the phone, and all that social media stuff, like the different chatting
applications. Her cousin knew so much, and Tshotleho felt great shame that
someone younger than her knew more than she did. They talked about her work and
upcoming assignment overseas, in some country Tsotleho remembered studying
about in school, England, while roasting maize on hot coals made from firewood
she’d gathered. She wished she did not feel so hopeless about her life, or her
absent future. Once again she toyed with the idea of telling her cousin about
her status. She would not tell her how she got it. She had not spoken to anyone
about the rape incident, and since her cousin would be going so far away from
home, she would take the secret with her. And two years was long enough for her
to come back having forgotten all about it. This work assignment was the reason
she had come to visit her family so soon after her last visit, because she knew
she would not see them for two years after that. What Tsotleho did not know was
that her cousin would get two trips per year to come home. So she planned to
tell her cousin her woes, on her last evening home. She did not know how to
broach the subject, so she just blurted out that someone had raped her, and
that she guessed that she had HIV. And like that, she had laid the blame for
her having the virus on this rapist. Her cousin was speechless, and they just
sat there in the silence that was broken by the crackling of the fire. They
inadvertently burned the maize they were roasting, because each got lost in
deep thought that took them great distances from where they were physically. Tsotleho’s
thoughts took on a morbid direction, while her cousin’s took on an insidious
one. Her cousin never believing she could hate men more, found herself hating
them with a new and even more potent hatred, and she could not even mask it
from Tsotleho. She did not know what to make of the reaction her young cousin
seemed to exhibit, and she was not sure whether to stay or leave. She got up to
go, and it seemed that her cousin got up at the same time and hugged her. She
had only seen people hug on television, when she used to watch it at her
rescuer’s house. She had not thought of him since the day she left, and if felt
strange to think about him then. The hug was long and tight, when it was over
she felt better, with a feeling that she wished it had not ended. She had never
known that someone younger could make someone older feel so safe, and she had
felt safe and hopeful. What her cousin said just before she left, was
surprising to her, and she was not sure if it was a good idea for her to write
about what happened, as suggested. She told Tsotleho that she would send her a
diary that had a lock, so she could then write in that diary, and lock it so
that no one would read it, and that made Tsotleho feel better about it.
She felt a slight depression overcome her
after this departure, because she knew that she might never see her little
cousin again. It was back to her unexciting life, and the work that never got
better, either through remuneration or in the way she could do it. Some man had
come back from the mine, and she had been called to come through every
afternoon to cook him lunch and dish it, and to clean the room where he was
being nursed back to health. This man was thin, and he coughed a lot. It would
later emerge that he had contracted an illness of the lungs, due to exposure at
the mine where he had been working for more than fifteen years. He, unfortunately
did not survive more than a few months, after returning home. His family were
left destitute, not that they were that much better off while he was still
alive and working, but they had certainly been better that her family. It was
just such a pity that this man had worked so hard, for so long, and had not
even one bovine to show for it. He never modernized his home, but instead chose
to shack up with some woman there, where he had been working. Now that woman
had brought two kids to his funeral, and had dumped them with this man’s family
in the village, and the poor wife, whom he had given four children to, was now
struck having to feed six children. This was, sadly, not an uncommon occurrence,
as these men who worked away from home always lived double lives, and it would
seem they were not really making good choices. Because these women never wanted
to come with them to the village, when they retired from working in the mines,
or if they got sick and had to stop working, like this man did. They would send
off the children they had had with these men, to their rural wives.
Her twenty third birthday brought with it,
the start of her battle with her health. She had gone to town, to once again do
grocery shopping for other people. She got rained on from the time she walked
to the taxi stop that morning, to when she was walking to the different shops
to get the different items for these elderly villagers. The groceries got
heavier and heavier; as fast as she had been doing the shopping, she got delayed
where queues were long, or there were issues with tills jamming. And this one
time, she was behind the slowest person on the planet to ever get through the pay
point. She ended up missing the second taxi home, and had to wait in the rain
for the last one. As she sat there, soaking and still getting rained on, she
was feeling cold to the bone. Her nose started running and she began to sneeze.
She was blowing her nose with the very long-sleeved t-shirt she was wearing,
because she could not risk taking tissues out of plastic bags, and exposing
them to the wetness. It was a miserable rainy winter day, and she felt as
miserable as the day itself. She had no hope of ever having a better life than
what she was living, and it was getting harder with each year that passed. It
was during these low moments in her life that the dark thought would impose
itself into her thoughts, and had become even more appealing during recent
times. She cried, sitting there waiting for a taxi that would come hours after
she had gotten to the rank. She had tried to seek shelter on the side of a van
that had been parked there when she arrived. But an hour later the owner came
and drove it away, and she was forced to carry those heavy grocery bags and
look for another place to crawl and curl up in, while she waited. No one took
pity on her, and this just made her even sadder. She started crying again, and
the tears just kept rolling, unseen by onlookers because of the rain. The only
tell-tale signs that she was crying were the sniffles, which people just
mistook for her struggling with a runny nose. She cried for hours, tears
intermingling with mucus, and all these ended up on that sleeve of her slim
fitting t-shirt. What a day to celebrate a birthday, she was now convinced that
God hated her.
She
contracted pneumonia, which was not diagnosed early, because when she started
coughing and having chest pains, she thought she was having a severe cold. The
eve of that day she got soaked, had found her still waiting for the taxi, which
only arrived to collect them just before seven o’clock. By the time she got
home, she was shivering so hard that she had to clench her teeth the entire
time while she boiled water and took a hot bath, in an effort to thaw herself
and restore some body heat. She made hot tea, which she had with some bread she
had brought from town. After she had eaten, she went straight to bed, and
decided she would wash the dishes the following morning. She awoke in the
middle of the night feeling feverish, and her bedding was moist from sweating.
She thought that maybe it was because of the hot bath, so she took off what she
was wearing, and wrapped herself in a big towel, which was worn and threaded,
and went back to sleep on the same bedding, because she did not feel that it
needed changing, not that she had anything to change it with. She struggled to
fall asleep, as she was feeling hot, so she ended up reducing the layers of
blankets she had been sleeping with. First from three to two, and then from two
to one. She woke up the following morning with a sore body, and she felt
lethargic. She dragged herself around to get ready, but she just did not feel
like going out to work. The atmosphere felt damp from the previous day’s wet
weather, and she needed to deliver the groceries she had gotten. She forced
herself to at least do that, and collect her wages. She came straight home as
soon as she was done. Her body seemed to ache all over, and everything - including
breathing - felt like such a chore. Later that day she started coughing, and
thankfully she was home so she decided to take a nap, and see how she would
feel when she woke up. She decided to ready the bed so that she won’t have to
do it again when she went to sleep that evening, just to avoid the torture of
doing anything laborious. She took one of her mother’s treasured blankets, and
placed in on the inside, then turned the blankets around so that the one that
was on top the night before, was now on the inside. The coughs were infrequent
at that time, having only just started. She ended up sleeping the entire night,
but sometime in the wee hours she started coughing for long periods, and these
coughs were wrenching her body. Her mother heard her, woke up to check on her, and
found that she was coughing while she slept. The following morning, her mother
decided to take her to the clinic. She woke up at dawn and prepared a bath for
her, then woke her up, and made her breakfast while she bathed. While she was
moisturising and dressing, her mother took her own bath, and by the time she'd finished eating, her mother was starting with her own breakfast. They left for
the clinic soon after. This was the first motherly thing her mother had done
since she came back, and she cried tears of joy and sadness all at the same
time.
The clinic was far and they walked briskly to
get there early. She found it hard to keep up with her mother, something which
had been the reverse since she was six years old. At six she could not only
keep up but walk faster than her mother. Today she felt weak, waiflike even.
Her mother had to hold her by the hand, just to keep her from falling too far
behind, and had to pull her most of the way. Her mother had not held her hand
while they walked since she was five years old, when she had embarked on a
mission to improve her walking speed to surpass that of her mother's, a task
which took a little over a year to accomplish. She remembered the last time she
had gone to the clinic, and the reason she had had to go there. When they
finally got to the clinic, and were waiting for it to open, she felt as if her
knees were aflame, and she sagged down onto a bench meant for elderly people,
to sit on while they waited. The nurses thought that she had flu, which they
based on the little information she provided, and gave her some cocktail, which
she was supposed to take over a period of two weeks to get better. Had she been
more descriptive and comprehensive, they might have reached a different
conclusion, but they were also a lazy bunch, which never liked to overexert
themselves. The walk home was a lot more relaxed, but she did not suffer any
less from it. Her mother took care of her the entire two weeks she was supposed
to take the treatment, and she showed signs of improvement only in the second
week of that regime. By the time the regime was completed she was feeling more
positive that she was on her way to full recovery. Two days after the fact she
was feeling weak again, and this time she was having intense headaches, and a
feeling like something was constricting her chest. When she went back to the
clinic, they forwarded her to the hospital immediately. She remembers now the
words from the doctor at the hospital, some four months after she had been
admitted there, when he was trying to convince her parents to take her home, while
she still lived. Ironically the rest of her life was now counted in months. The
hospital had meagre facilities, being a government hospital, and they had
initially not thought to test her for the virus when she got admitted, because
the diagnosis had been pneumonia, and it was only when she did not show any
signs of improvement, despite being on a the strongest regimen they had, that
they thought to look for other things that might be making her sick. The doctor
had said that the pneumonia was severe, due to her lowered immune system as a
result of the virus having progressed to full blown AIDS, during the time she
was being treated. Since she now had full blown AIDS, all they could do was
manage her pain until the time that she passed on. He also added that he could
see that the family was struggling, so it would be best if they did not have to
incur the expense of coming to the hospital to see her until that time came, so
he was suggesting that they take her home and he would give them medication to
help her cope. Being people of no education, they just accepted what the doctor
said without question. He gave them two large sacks of a powder which he
instructed that they were to feed to her twice a day, to improve her strength.
Messing on herself was now being blamed on the gravity of her known illness,
and the fact that her AIDS was only making things worse. She did not have to
explain the loose bowel problem to anyone.
And
now she is in the throes of excruciating pain which leaves her wanting nothing
more than to just die, and be free of the suffering. She has been a very
difficult patient, refusing any and all efforts from her mother to feed her.
She has an unquenchable thirst and liquids are all that she accepts eating. She
feels that it is not right to eat, only to soil herself afterwards, for her
mother to clean her. Urinating is the only waste removal she still has control
of, and eating also makes her vomit. Her father would often hover, when he
thought she was asleep, and stare at her for long periods, and if she moved, he
would scurry away like a mouse. Lying here, waiting for death to come, she is
overwhelmed by sadness at the thought of never seeing her little cousin again.
Wherever she is, she knows nothing about this, and will probably only find out
some years after. If only she knew that her death came shortly before her
cousin was due to arrive for her first visit, she might have crossed over with
a serene expression. Instead, it is with a tear-stained and contorted face that
her last breath is expended.
Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, GoodreadsEmail me on reubexg@gmail.com to order the books you see all over this blog
Her Heart R210.00
His Joy R160.00
Their Hope R185.00
Our Triumph R220.00
The Dry Tears of a Bleeding Child R200.00
His Joy R160.00
Their Hope R185.00
Our Triumph R220.00
The Dry Tears of a Bleeding Child R200.00
Chulumanco R140.00 available in English, Sesotho, isiXhosa and French
The Comedian with a Lisp R180.00
Chain Reaction R170.00
Visit my website to check out my ebooks also Shop - Books by Tumelo Moleleki
If you are outside South Africa, visit my good reads profile, select the title you want and click the Amazon or Online store button for all the options
Thank you for reading!
Your comments are welcome.
If you are outside South Africa, visit my good reads profile, select the title you want and click the Amazon or Online store button for all the options
Thank you for reading!
Your comments are welcome.
