Narrative Text: Redi

Fleeting voices ran rampant as she walked into the room. A forgettable, dime a dozen body; tall, bony and straight up and down. Yet her story was contained within her eyes, deep and dark and perfectly rounded pupils swimming about in pools of clear white. Slouching profoundly into her other wise regularly plain looking face, these were her calling card, speaking volumes, telling life, her life. I watched her take great gulps of orange juice from a plastic container she had earlier pulled out of her oversized name brand hand bag and it was only after she pulled out a magazine with the words “Rouge” printed in bold red letters across its cover followed by a stylish green jacket that I wondered what else she was carrying around with her. Was her soul bulging out as hard as her bag? Its contents overflowing…

The room was brightly lit and stuffy with sparse and inconsistent furniture that looked old and lacked cohesion there were plastic flower arrangements and old, outdated magazines placed on the three coffee tables that sat in the centre of the room with two rows of chairs on either side of them. A large credenza with a sign reading receptionist above it sat at one end of the room. As Redi stood and stepped toward the plumpy, light skinned woman seated behind the reception desk my attention fell to her outfit. She wore tight black jeans, an oversized white shirt with its sleeves rolled up to her elbows and a very high pair of tangerine coloured stilettos. She walked meekly, gaze focused firmly the ground avoiding the many eyes that were crawling all over her, dissecting and inspecting every little thing. The tongues wagged with each step she took, making in blatant judgement statements about her clothing, her hair, the way she walked, the reason she was at this clinic and everything in between. Yet with a firm determination she ignored this obvious attempt to belittle her. Reaching the receptionist she spoke, feeble and soft. The lady at the reception desk asked with a thunderous and slightly aggravated tone for her to remake her statement only louder and so she spoke again, a little firmer. Tugging at the sides of her shirt, she listened and responded accordingly whilst the prying eyes and pointing ears in the room also watched and listened attentively it was a however difficult for them to hear what she was saying.

Her cellphone rang and she placed with little care the form she had been filling out onto the empty chair beside her and pulled from her jacket, which she now had on, her phone and plonked it in a nonchalant manner onto her ear and spoke. Again her voice was low and restrained, but my overly intrigued ear was now within hearing distance.

“Yes.”

She listened then spoke again.

“I’m at the clinic, what time are you getting here?”

She listened.

“You aren’t…”

The voice on the other side of the phone interrupts her and she listened then spoke again.

“But everyone is here with someone and I’m sitting here all by myself.” There is now a slight aggravation and desperation contained within her voice. “you said you would be here with me.”

She takes a deep breath, listens again and once more she speaks.

“Ok, I’ll see you later then.”

I glance at the form on her chair and on it sits her name, her surname, her ID number and under the question reason for visit reads in carefully written block capital letters the words TERMINATION OF PREGNANCY.

“I love you too.” She says before hanging up the phone.

She glares lifelessly at her form, picks her juice bottle and magazine of the ground and throws them into her bag then tosses that bag over her shoulder and walks nonchalantly out the clinic door.

Narrative Text: The Loft

On a mildly warm autumn morning, the sun shone through the large bare wood panelled windows that wrapped themselves immodestly around two of the four walls that made up his large open plan loft apartment. The white walls wore black and white framed pictures of different sizes which portrayed New York skylines, Johannesburg streets, Spanish matadors, Kenyan Masai and a host of other things I didn’t know much about. A few dramatically abstract canvass paintings sat loud and proud on the floor and leaned nonchalantly against the windows. I threw a glance at the expansive ceilings that had three big medieval light fixtures stuck onto them, drew two deep breaths and decided to get up. I lifted myself off of the bed and the cold grey concrete floor jumped up to meet my feet. Standing up, I walked about the space taking in the furnishings that adorned the place. Sporadic and clean and white with tiny throws of colour in the form of cushions, vases, pashminas tossed casually on the sofa and of cause the paintings on the floor. Just off the entrance lay the kitchen area, all stainless steel appliances, lacquered white cupboards, black painted wooden open shelving which carried on it teal, orange and white mismatched bowls and cups and plates and canisters and other things required for the functionality of a kitchen. Just off the kitchen was the only door inside this big room, I concluded that beyond it lay the bathroom and decided not to go through it.

I stopped for a moment and looked aimlessly around, when I noticed the balcony on the other side of one of the windows. I steadied myself towards it and on my way lost focus when I found a hand written note placed on a small study desk weighed down by a heavy pearl coloured rock which served as a paper weight, “make yourself at home,” it read “I’m just meeting a client, please don’t leave. I’ll bring some coffee back with me. Xoxo.” I sat on the chair beside of desk and took it all in and a smile grew slowly on my face. 

With the steady rise of the sun the balcony beckoned for my presence and I ran out onto it. Opening the wide glass doors that made up part of the windows, the noise of people and cars going about their business in the street below was a harsh invasion of the silence on the inside. Although I was some way away from the ground level, on the eighth floor to be exact, I heard people’s laughter and small bits of their conversations. There was a distant sound made by sort of heavy machinery, taxi’s hooting, loud kwaito music coming from the building that stood in front of me and on it, three men on scaffolding were putting black and grey stripes onto that building and although it would ordinarily have not been possible, the heavy wind that blew encouraged my nostrils to take in the paint fumes. These combined with the smell of the sun presented a unique sensation to my senses.

Having adequately absorbed the balcony and all it had to offer I walked back into the flat and for the first time since my arrival I saw his personal pictures in wooden frames placed in a cluster on a small coffee table just of the door that took me out onto the veranda. These were pictures of himself with others, himself with two young girls, a dog, a woman with the two young girls, the woman on her own, two other women, a man with an older lady and a few others. My mind got to thinking about who these people could be, I gave them names and provided them each with a role they played in his life then resolved to pay it no further mind. I was getting bored and mind restless so I walked back to the bed and lay back down when all of a sudden I heard a key turn in the door, I got up and stared impatiently to see who it would be. The key was yanked out the key hole and the door knob turned slowly and then the door flung open and there he was in all his awkward, sophisticated self. He smiled and I smiled back.     

Narrative Writing - Mildred Makhona and I

Mine had a hard edge to it, rough and threadbare almost completely in ruins. It sat without care on the verge of utter devastation, held together only by my existence. My existence was a frailty all on its own; it was made up of empty hellos, pleasant conversations and sad goodbyes. Nothing worth remembering, nothing worth talking about and in all honesty it wasn’t anything at all.

I was born in the Free State on May 1986 to one Mildred Makhona, an alcoholic narcissist who would sooner sell her soul for a pretty outfit and a night out on the town with some random man than worry about the food in her children’s guts and the clothes on their backs. I recall very vividly when I was six years old, my mother seated on our family’s pink and brown floral sofa inside our inconsistently furnished two room apartment, smoking ferociously one cigarette after another, throwing back the cheap liquor all the while yelling insults at my sister and I and demanding we get on with preparing supper when she knew all too well that there was nothing to eat. My younger brother crawling around on a old wooden floor picking dusty bits of odds that were once mine or my sister’s favourite toys off of it. Amid all the terror of being a young child living within an unstable home there were good moments. When she was sober, mother would clean us up and take us to the park or the zoo or out to eat, but those moments where greatly sporadic. We would plead and beg with her to take us out alas to our great dismay when she picked up a bottle we knew to expect nothing pleasant. Romy who was three years old at the time, cried so hard on one particular day asking her to give him as well as my sister and I a little bit of money so we could go out and get some ice cream from the truck parked right outside out apartment block flooded by other neighbourhood kids who all walked away with cool ice lollies and creamy cream on sticks. She not only declined but cursed brutally and went off on a tangent telling us we were ungrateful.

 

Many years later an old looking Mildred sat on the verge of eternal destruction sat weathered and frail. I, a young adult newly affirmed, told her, I said “You were never around.”

The blank stare she shot me preceded her words, “Your farther left me after Romy’s birth, he left us. Who was I in between single handedly mothering three kids with no money in my pockets or joy in my heart?” she said with tears in her eyes and great solitude in her voice. “I tried to love you, but you saw fault in all my efforts. I tried to raise you and yes I know it wasn’t perfect, but you kids didn’t make it any easier.

I asked her about the drinking and the revolving door of men, explaining that these elements stole our mother and she said, “In the arms of those very frequent male callers you bashed so vehemently I found a little momentary sense of fulfilment. I’m not excusing some of the things that I did wrong, but I had to be a mother and a father and an individual person in my own right.” She declared a boundless devotion, relayed a tale drenched in sacrifice, claiming it was on her back that she managed to feed us. “A woman with no skills or education, three children and no man has no way of another chance in this world. Yes I drank, but you try prostituting and tell me how it feels.”

This response left me feeling deflated because once again the focus was on her she told me she had done all she could have and she provided her best. A terrible statement I thought, when her “best” saw her children raising themselves. She went on to paint a picture far removed from my reality, telling of picnics and personal conversations, carefree moments of dancing and singing in the kitchen, visits to theme parks and long whimsical walks.

“I can count all these things you speak so proudly about on one hand!” I screamed thinking in the confines of my sweetest dreams life with my mother was pleasurable thing.