Evening Primrose

by Kopano Matlwa

  I tried to make conversation with her on the nights we were on call together. She was polite enough, but always busy. Busy saving lives while us interns fumbled along. Then one morning as I drove to work, I noticed her driving in front of me, and it occurred to me that this might be my only chance. I drove alongside her, in front of her, and then finally let her pass me again. At the hospital there was never time to talk. There was no excuse for long conversations that might end up in a friendship, no environment conducive enough to finding out more about this beautiful woman with piercing brown eyes. So as the traffic light changed from green to yellow and then to red, I pushed hard on the accelerator and drove into her.

  Tshiamo would be horrified.

  “The lengths you’ll go to, Masechaba!”

  But nobody got hurt. I knew she wouldn’t get hurt. I would never hurt her. Not like Tshiamo, who paid no mind to how he might hurt us.

  He knew better than to leave a note, that foolish boy. Because I wouldn’t have read it, anyway. I would have torn it to shreds and set it alight. He’s full of nonsense, Tshiamo. We’re all going through shit. Who the hell does he think he is?

  ❖

  Nyasha doesn’t say much about Zimbabwe. I don’t ask too many questions, in case I offend her or expose my ignorance. All I know is that her mother is a nurse in Bristol. I don’t know if there’s a father, and I’ve never heard her speak of siblings, although she did mention she has a cousin specializing as an ENT surgeon in the US.

  I feel bad about how our country treats them. We should know better, what with apartheid and all. Nyasha is quite fair skinned, and actually looks South African, so you wouldn’t even know she was foreign until you speak to her.

  Sometimes she upsets me, though. She speaks like an authority on what we South Africans should and should not do, as if she has some sort of expertise. Just the other day she came home upset about a white patient she’d just admitted, who asked if there was a girl who could help him carry his bags to the ward. Nyasha was outraged by his use of the word “girl” and went off on a tirade about how arrogant white South Africans are. I responded that she needed to be the bigger person in those kinds of situations. She was the doctor, and he was a patient in pain who didn’t know what he meant.

  She called me an idiot. That’s why we South Africans will continue to live under the illusion of freedom, she said, unaware of how we remain captive to white supremacy.

  I told her she needed to surrender all her anger to You. I said I’d never had a racist experience at work and that the people there are actually quite nice, if you bother to get to know them. Everyone is nice, once you get to know them.

  She gave me one of her looks.

  I’m not going to let her get to me. She’s always looking for drama where there isn’t any. Sometimes I want to tell her to go back to her own country and fix her own problems and stop meddling in ours. But I’d never say that. It’s not a nice thing to say. I was blessed to be born in South Africa. It’s not her fault that she wasn’t. Those who have should give to those who don’t have.

  ❖

  We seem to fight a lot these days, Nyasha and I. Maybe it’s me. I’m so tired all the time, tired and irritable. I can’t remember the last time we had a good weekend. Was it as far back as when we brought home all the leftover champagne from the departmental Christmas party? We stayed up watching movies, laughing, then stuffed our faces with cheese samosas, piri-piri potato wedges, and prince prawns. I’m surprised we didn’t vomit. We were so happy. We couldn’t believe we’d both managed to avoid being on call that weekend, the entire weekend! Nyasha said it felt like the sleepover she’d never had. When she moved to South Africa as a teenager, her mother forbade her from sleeping at other girls’ houses in case she got molested. She didn’t trust anybody in this crazy country. I laughed, and called her xenophobic. She laughed, too, and said that South Africans thought they owned xenophobia. It was a happy day. A happy weekend.

  I’d never been allowed a sleepover either, so it meant a lot to me, too, although I didn’t say it. At home there were always large maroon towels on my bed. Hard towels, not soft, new ones, because that would just be a waste. Hard, dark towels that could keep a secret.

  ❖

  On call, last night, the paramedics brought in this white lady at about 1:30 a.m. She was at home with her boyfriend when four men broke into their flat, raped her, shot her in the head, and ransacked the house. I didn’t get the full story because the specialist doctor on call was panicked and sent us all running around. I was told to take femoral blood and get it to the blood bank. When I came back the surgical team was preparing her to operate. She was fully conscious and speaking despite the shot to her head, which was weird. On my way to the blood bank I heard one of the paramedics telling a nurse that the police had found blood splattered across her living room walls and her boyfriend had died at the scene, but she hadn’t been told yet.

  When I went back to bed after taking the emergency blood to the operating room, I pictured those walls.

  I told Nyasha the story this morning when I got home. The white interns were saying in the morning meeting that this was the reason they were taking the UK PLAB and US MLE exams and getting out of the country.

  “Let them go,” is what she had to say. “Our people are just rag dolls for them to perfect their clinical skills for the white people they’ll be serving in the private sector. Let them go.”

  You know mos Nyasha, Lord.

  ❖

  Do you ever get that feeling that this is me and that is them? That I am me, and you are you, and that we are separate? That I am here, and you are there? That this is my life and that is yours? That these are my thoughts and you have your own, and they are apart from mine?

  ❖

  I asked Nyasha if being a doctor ever felt scary for her. Did she sometimes feel like she couldn’t breathe? Like there was a large invisible boulder on her chest?

  I shouldn’t have bothered, because instead of the empathy I was hoping for, I got a scolding instead.

  “Stop talking nonsense, Chaba! Your problem is you spend too much time with those white interns. They’re getting into your head. Can’t breathe? Why can’t you breathe? Do you have TB? Are your airways clogged with pneumocystis pneumonia? No? Then why can’t you breathe?”

  ❖

  Tomorrow I’m going to wake up early and get to the hospital on time. I’m going to be in the lab first thing in the morning and make sure I have all the patients’ results before the ward round. I’m going to check their temperatures myself if the nurses haven’t done them yet. I’m going to stop others discharging them before they’re well enough to go home. I’m going to ask them how they feel, instead of making it up.

  It probably won’t change anything. I’ll probably be back in this same empty place by lunchtime. No, by half past eight. But I’m going to try, anyway. I’m going to wake up early and make a list of all the things I need to do for the day. I’m going to read around every patient’s condition so I can be of some help to them. Maybe I’ll find something clever in those scientific journals. Maybe I’ll find a way to save some of them. I’m going to be different. I’m going to stay on longer in the afternoons and I’m going to offer to help the other doctors with their work when I’m done with mine. And I’m going to remember to pray.

  ❖

  Great news, Lord. I found out from Nyasha that there are rumors that the nurses are going on strike. That means no elective surgeries, because there’ll be no nurses to assist. Which means Thursday afternoons are free. This has to be a miracle! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

  My God, my God, why have You abandoned me? I have cried desperately for help, but still it does not come. During the day I call to You, my God, but You do not answer; I call at night, but get no rest. But You are enthroned as the Holy One, the One whom Israel praises. Our ancestors put their trust in You; they trusted You and You saved them. They called to You and escaped from danger; they trusted You
and were not disappointed.

  But I am no longer a human being; I am a worm, despised and scorned by everyone! All who see me jeer at me; they stick out their tongues and shake their heads. “You relied on the Lord,” they say. “Why doesn’t He save you? If the Lord likes you, why doesn’t He help you?”

  Psalm 22:1–8

  I certified two patients dead this morning. I felt nothing. I tried forcing myself to pause, to stop, to acknowledge. But nothing came. I even tried doing the sign of the cross, but nothing stirred within me.

  Maybe I’m just PMS-ing.

  ❖

  Next month I start my Obstetrics & Gynecology rotation with a call. I feel nothing but dread for the hours I will be spending sucking dead babies out of little girls’ vaginas. I hate the Obstetrics & Gynecology staff. I hate the environment, I hate the smells. The nurses there are mean and cruel, especially to the foreign patients. They call them dirt. They shout at them for coming in the middle of the night without antenatal books. They ask them why they fill up our wards. They look at the scabs on their legs, smack their lips, and remark, “You see this one? You can tell she jumped the border only just yesterday.”

  They scrunch up their noses when they examine them. They laugh at their names. They speak to them in Sesotho, isiXhosa, isiZulu, even though they know they can’t understand.

  And then there’s me, standing there, smiling sheepishly. “Don’t worry, they’re just joking,” I try to reassure them when I’m alone with them in the examination room. I can see in their eyes that they know I’m lying. So I say nothing more.

  I’m afraid of the Obstetrics & Gynecology nurses. If I reprimand them I’ll create hell for myself in that department for the duration of my rotation. And possibly beyond. So instead of telling them that what they’re doing is wrong, and possibly illegal, I do nothing.

  I’m a coward. If this were apartheid, I’d be one of those quiet white people who just stood by and watched it happen.

  ❖

  I tell Ma about the kidney dish that still has Slegs Blankes engraved into it, that the nurses keep for foreign patients. I tell her how appalling it is that we’ve become the very thing we fought so long and hard to destroy. Ma says she doesn’t blame the nurses. She’s watched their movies, and foreigners can hide their magic in anything.

  ❖

  What is it inside of us that makes us so evil? And how do we become better? Why are we capable of so much harm and badness? How do we change? And stay changed?

  ❖

  Nyasha says her group of new intern doctors all have weaves. Twelve girls as black as night, with mops of plastic on their heads. She is annoyed.

  “Stupid girls. Book smart, but stupid. They can tell you the nerve that innervates the stapedius muscle, but they can’t see the foolishness in walking around with heaps of self-hatred on their heads.”

  She wants me to get involved.

  “Why don’t you tell them, Chaba? These are your sisters, your South African sisters. Maybe if you speak to them, you can put some sense into their heads.”

  I say nothing, so she continues. “We know we hate ourselves as black people. That we know. But now we’re exposing ourselves to white people, too. Now we are exposing this dark stain of self-hatred on our race. We’re giving them evidence that we are indeed a foolish, self-loathing people. A thing to be pitied. How much do those weaves cost? These girls have only been working a few months and already they’re enriching the industries that strive to oppress us instead of building our communities.”

  Her tirade continues, and she seems not bothered by my obvious disinterest.

  “Now I must keep these dreadlocks, even though they wear my head down, even though I’ve grown tired of them, because one of us, some of us, must have pride. We can’t all walk around like mad people. If aliens were to come from Mars, what would they make of us, Chaba?”

  Nyasha wants to fight, fight, fight. She hates white people and blames them for everything. Maybe she’s right, maybe they are to blame. But it is what it is. What’s happened has happened. We can’t go back, and we certainly can’t change who we are to try to avenge the past. She says we black South Africans are too nice, too accommodating, too soft. “Weak” and “pathetic” are the words she uses to describe us.

  “We need to stop bending over backward, breaking our backs to make them feel comfortable, welcome, safe. Put a white man in charge and he’ll only serve his own interests.”

  Maybe, Nyasha, maybe that’s true, but maybe it isn’t. And maybe, Nyasha, we need to remember that this world is fallen. There are wars we will never win, and maybe the end game is not to triumph over fleeting kingdoms in this life, but to conquer the battle for eternity.

  Of course she scoffs when I say things like that.

  “Why does your god make it so hard for us to love him, Chaba? Why play these games? Create this world, bring us here, only to watch us suffer? Why does he hide? Is he a coward? Why doesn’t he come out here and see the mess he’s made, come see how his creation is doing?”

  I’m no good at arguing. I get too overwhelmed and my mind goes blank, so I say nothing.

  ❖

  Ma insists that my friendship with Nyasha will only result in pain. She insists that foreigners are crafty, and that Nyasha is only being my friend to steal all my knowledge and overtake me. This is what foreigners like to do, she says. They come to our country to take from us all the things we fought for.

  I’ve given up trying to reason with Ma. When I go home on weekends she makes me take off my clothes at the door; she doesn’t want me coming into the house with Nyasha’s charms and black magic. It’s her way of getting back at me for leaving her and moving in with Nyasha.

  If only they knew how similar they were, how much they have in common. They both want me to hate white people, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to hate foreigners, either. I don’t want to hate anybody. It’s tiring. I’m already so tired from work. It’s much more than I can deal with at the moment.

  But they constantly remind me that I must. They retell old stories of deceit, of conniving, of looting, and then share new ones. I don’t want to disappoint them, make them worry that I’m unfocused, that I’ve dropped the ball. So I often just nod in agreement and hope they’ll stop. But this ball is too heavy to carry. It hurts my arms, and with it in my hands I cannot do anything else.

  ❖

  So I don’t tell Nyasha what I did with François at the Christmas party. And when he walks past me in the doctors’ parking lot and smiles, she’s immediately annoyed and goes off on one of her tirades.

  “White men think they can just smile at a black woman and she’ll oblige. They think we should be flattered that they even see us. No, not just flattered, honored. It makes me sick. Even the morbidly obese ones, who could never summon the courage to approach one of their own, think we’ll just drop our panties at the sight of their skin.”

  I pretend not to hear, mumble that I have pre-op bloods to take before the morning ward round, and rush off.

  ❖

  Nyasha is a lone wolf at work. I never see her in the doctors’ canteen. She always eats on the run. She’s polite with the staff, but she doesn’t care much for small talk. I don’t even bother asking her to have lunch with me. I know there’ll be an excuse. I recently learned that there are other friends, a writing group that meets weekly, where she goes to share her poetry with others. I learned about the group—and the other friends—not because she’s ever cared to tell me, but from the Post-its on her wall, the makeup on a Wednesday morning, and the reminder on the fridge. I don’t care that she’s never invited me along. I wouldn’t want to go, anyway. Who still meets to recite poetry anyway? That’s so ’90s. Maybe it’s a Zimbabwean thing. Who knows?

  ❖

  There’s nothing worse than having a good dream disrupted. You can’t get back into it. I dreamed François and I were on a quad bike, me nestled cozily into his crotch as he directed us through hills of mud. I was in a
bikini, a white bikini, unconcerned that blood might come spilling between my legs and ruin everything. But the phone rang twice, then three times, then nonstop, so I picked it up. I knew as soon as I heard Ma’s voice on the other end, rambling about Aunty Petunia not inviting her to Seipati’s magadi, that I should never have answered, and that sleep and my dream were irretrievably gone and I’d have to listen to Ma for at least another ten minutes before I could make up an excuse to get off the phone.

  ❖

  I hate mornings because that’s where all the sadness waits. From the ringing of my alarm clock to the fighting with my hair to being late anyway, despite how hard I try to prepare in advance. My car is a casket that daily carries me to my death. I ask myself over and over if I shouldn’t just leave, start over, go back to the beginning, but then the voices in my head begin to get loud.

  “What will you do if you quit?”

  “You’re no good at anything else.”

  “Do you want to waste six years of your life?”

  I try to tell them I’m not good at this anyway, that I’d rather waste six years of my life than the lives I can’t help. But they don’t want to listen.

  ❖

  Sometimes I see things out of the corner of my eye. The red washing basket on the floor is a squatting man in a red hoodie, trying hard not to be seen. Sometimes a fork rises from the pile on the dish rack. When I flick my head around to catch it, it lies motionless, cold and lifeless. I ignore these cracks in my psyche the way a smoker ignores the occasional speck of blood in his sputum. I dare not ask the obvious. Am I going mad?

  If my mind were to fall apart, what would become of me? Would I be just another has-been lying numb and drugged in the female psychiatric ward watching medical students poke around in my file?