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sparse and inconsistent furniture that looked old and lacked cohesion there were plastic flower arrangements and old, outdated magazines placed on the three coffee tables that sat in the centre of the room with two rows of chairs on either side of them.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.

Current Read: The Thing Around Your Neck

A collection of stories by Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the thing around your neck published in 2009 and highly revered. The book features a collection of 12 stories ranging in topic from love, violence to faith and the human spirit. With this in mind, I hope to fall head over heels with not just the book but, it’s author as well.  

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.