Why You Were Taken (2 page)

Today was the worst and most shocking day of my life.

After fainting yesterday in the photocopy room at work I went to the doctor down the road, at the corner clinic. All the girls here go to him, although I don’t know why! He is downright creepy! I won’t be going back there again. Told him about the nausea, dizziness etc. Can’t keep any food down. Thought I had a tummy bug. Felt like he could see my secret through my skin. He asked me if I was sexually active as he looked at my naked ring finger. SRP. Self-Righteous Prick. And hypocrite. Everyone knows he’s been having it off with Susan Beyers since her diagnosis. He’s way too young to be such a SRP. Maybe even too young to be a doctor?! He can eat my shorts. Argh, I hate them. Doctors, I mean. They give me the creeps!

So yes, I know you’ve guessed already. I had too, although I was in serious denial. The nurse phones me today (at work!) and tells me the test was POSITIVE. Not positive, as in, Good News, but positive as in PREGNANT.

I AM PREGNANT (!!!)

I was (am) completely shocked. I’m practically a virgin! Plus P and I have always been so careful. I’m on the pill AND we use condoms. Well, we use condoms most of the time. There was that time at the beach after the concert when we didn’t have one. And that once in my Citi Golf when I had that vicious bruise on my left knee from the hand-brake and had to wear stockings to work in the middle of summer. Oh, God. Oh God.

A miracle/tragedy. A tragic miracle. Shoot, was all I could say into the phone. Shoot. Shoot. I wanted to say a lot worse!

They wanted me to go in immediately to get prenatal care: vitamins I think. She said something about ultrasounds and folic acid. Acid is right. My life is over!  I said I wasn’t going back to that clinic and then she tried to refer me to an obstetrician but I just, like, put down the phone. There is NO WAY I can have this baby. P will think I’m trying to trap him. Get him to leave his wife.

P aside, what on earth am I going to do with a baby?!! I’m 24, still kind of new in town, and trying to make a good impression at work and in the neighbourhood. This was supposed to be my new beginning, my Big Break. How am I going to explain being single and knocked up?! 

And, more importantly, what about taking care of the little anklebiter? Screaming sprog and dirty nappies?  No way, I’m supposed to be a career girl! It’s the 80s for God’s sake! I left home so that I could make a life for myself, not tie myself down. Not be a gin-swilling housewife. I’ve dreamt for years of perms and power-suits and matching pumps, and having my own computer. And a telephone that I can dial with the back of my pencil so that I don’t ruin my new manicure. Why am I so damned fertile?! It’s a curse!

I don’t know what to do. Very stressed and there’s no one I can tell. Except Becky back home but then she’ll think she was right: that the Big City would change me. Oh my God, can you imagine what she’d think of me now? I could never tell her! The girls around the office are great but I’m not close enough to anyone yet. Besides, they all obviously know P and it would be too dangerous. This will make me sound like a hypocrite but I really don’t want to hurt P’s wife. That would be terrible. I’m a terrible person. This is probably a punishment. As they say, Karma’s a bitch.

Also, my family would be totally horrified. I can just imagine the look on Dad’s face. He lives in this whacky reality where the 60s didn’t happen and we’re all still pre-sexual-revolution conservatives. I guess I was, too, until six months ago.

F*CK! He’ll disown me in an instant. And Mom. I’ll be an orphan.

F*CK F*CK F*CK!!

It feels like the world is tumbling down around me.

I feel like jumping off a bridge! I may as well! Then at least I could rest. My mind could rest. Who would miss me, anyway?

I feel so sick. Anxiety, guilt, morning sickness: all turning my stomach into a washing machine. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I don’t know what to do.

I think I’m going to throw up again.

God help me. I don’t deserve it, but please help me anyway!

RAINBOW VOM

2

Johannesburg, September 2021

Kirsten, late for the appointment that she’s been dreading for weeks, taps her sneakers on the scuffed concrete of the communal taxi stop on Oxford road, near her apartment in Illovo.

The taxis are supposed to collect passengers every fifteen minutes but the drivers don’t pay much attention to the official timetable. Most of them are passive aggressive which, Kirsten thinks, is better than just plain aggressive, which they were in the old days.

Taxi bosses, South Africa’s own mafia, used to gun down their rivals: blood in the streets: as if our history didn’t have enough of that already. It was a long time ago, but she had seen the photos in varsity, in some photojourno module, and the images had never left her.

There were a lot of pictures that stayed with her. She didn’t know if it was part of her synaesthesia or if she just had a more visual memory than most. Regardless, it came in handy with her job as a photographer, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

The exception, of course, was her early childhood, of which she could remember very little. It was before you could download and back up your memories. Her parents would tell her what she was like when she was a child, describe her first word, her first steps, the outings they had gone on, but Kirsten’s early memory remained an odourless, flavourless blank.

One year, for their anniversary, Marmalade James had given her the first book she had ever read cover-to-cover. It was a hardbound, beautifully illustrated, vintage edition of a Grimm’s’ fairy tale: ‘Hansel and Gretel’. The pages were foxed, the cover bumped. When she held it in her hands she could feel that the book contained more than one story.

She had been so touched by the gesture: James knew that she didn’t know many nursery rhymes or fairy tales because of the gap in her memory. It was as if he was trying to give her a small part of those early years back. She treasured it. Read it carefully, was appalled by it, fell in love with it, couldn’t bear to read it again, had it framed and put up on her wall. Still dreams of toaster waffle tiles.

Just as a minibus rolls up, her watch beeps with a reminder. She is supposed to be there already. She double-clicks the message and it dials through to the reception machine at the clinic, giving them her location and in doing so letting them know she is running late. People are more flexible now that personal cars are practically extinct and almost everyone relies on public transport. At least that’s what Kirsten hopes, seeing as she is terminally late. The irony of her period being precisely on time every month is never lost on her.

She lets a few passengers push in front of the queue so that she is last to board and gets a seat in the front row. She hates sitting at the back. All the smells: the perfume and aftershave and shampoo and worn pleather shoes and hair-wax and
atchar
and chewing gum. All the sounds: the tinny
kwaito,
jazz and retro-
marabi
on the radio; the different languages and dialects; the shades of skin; the mad hooting.

The close fabric of different textures and colours: it made her feel giddy, sometimes ill. Overwhelming: like having to see, smell, touch and taste all the colours of the rainbow, in 3D, at the same time. At its worst it would mix together and become a thick, soupy, smelly, bubbling, multi-coloured mess.

      She would normally close her eyes, picture herself in a clean white room, and try to cut herself off from her senses, but fellow passengers never liked that. They either took offence or moved a little away from her, afraid, perhaps rightly so, that she would hurl on them. Rainbow Vom, she thinks, and smiles, although the idea doesn’t make the trip any easier.

With her LocketCam she takes a quick snap of the miniature disco-ball hanging off the taxi’s rear-view mirror, which swings as they stop to pick up passengers and let others alight. The taxi driver makes a dangerous stop at a dogleg to offer a woman a ride. Probably because she is pretty, Kirsten thinks, till the door opens and she sees the woman’s bulging stomach.

  Christ,
she thinks.
As if this morning isn’t difficult enough.

The other passengers all snap to and make the appropriate noises. Not gasps, not quite, but something similar. They shift up in their seats, making space for her, dusting invisible crumbs off the cheap cracked upholstery seat.

The pregnant woman smiles shyly, thanks them in vernacular. The people either side of her beam as she sits, and steal shy glances at her bump. The woman smiles, puts her hand on her belly. A special kind of smug, the way only pregnant women can be. Kirsten stares out of the hair-oil smeared window.

The Infertility Crisis has hit the lower socio-economic groups the hardest, with 9 out of 10 couples battling to conceive. As the salaries climb, though, the infertility – bizarrely – decreases, with top-earners having the reversed fortune.

Declining fertility rates are a problem the world over but nowhere is it as dire as in South Africa. No one knows the definitive reasons behind the crisis. Millions had been spent testing the various hypotheses: cell phone tower radiation, Tile and/or Patch use, hormones used in farming and agriculture, high stress levels, bad diets, GMO, people waiting too long to start their families. While there was some correlation, they still couldn’t figure out why South Africa was so badly affected compared to other countries.

The only thing that they could confirm was what everyone already knew: the population was declining rapidly; and those fortunate few who did manage to conceive were treated like queens.

When she gets to near where she’s going, Kirsten lets the driver know by shoving a hundred rand at him. They’re supposed to use government tokens to pay for community taxis but drivers always appreciate cash. Old School style. She doesn’t do this for the sake of the driver, but more as a small act of rebellion against the incumbent ruling party, the New ANC – known, regrettably, as the Nancies – because the idea of a nanny state makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

She jumps off onto the pavement, glad to put distance between herself and the bun in the oven. Digital street posters call her name and tell her to wait, they have a message for her.

  ‘Kirsten,’ a recorded voice says in an American accent, ‘have you done something for yourself today?’

Bilchen knows her favourite ice-cream flavour – rose petal – and showers her with 3D rose petals and a blast of cool air. A travel agency tells her that it’s been 206 days since her last holiday – doesn’t she need another one? Bolivia? Mozambique? The Cape Republic? The soundtrack is vaguely island-style and she can smell rum and coconut. Has she considered a travelbattical? Workcation?

Tuk-tuks zoom past her, hooting as they go. The sky darkens. Kirsten shields her eyes and looks up to see a drone-swarm fly overhead. She doesn’t like them, doesn’t like the shadow they cast. Hates the fact that they have cameras. They make her feel like she is living in someone’s bleak futuristic imaginings. Already she feels as if she is being watched, always has. She shakes her brain, tries to focus on the task ahead. The time had come.

 
Carpe diem,
and all of that.

For as long as she could remember, she had always hated doctors. And hospitals, but doesn’t everyone? She abhors it when someone says they hate hospitals. That’s like saying you hate stepping in dog shit, or wetting your pants in public. Obvious. Or in local slang,
obvi-ass:
the stating of which usually just shows how little you know.

  Yuck,
she thinks,
I’m just grouchy. Nervous.

She notices that her underarms are damp and slows her pace. Thinks about the ice-cream, the Piña Colada.

Besides, how can she say she hates doctors when she’s practically married to one? Just one example of how conflicted (read: crap) her personality is. Anyway, Marmalade is different. He’s a paediatric cardiologist and goes around fixing kids’ hearts, like some kind of golden-haired scalpel-bearing angel. And it’s not like he has ever been
her
doctor. Never going to happen (No, not even then).

      inVitro looms before her. It’s bigger than she expected. The pictures on the website made it look less intimidating. The architecture is beautiful, inspired by Petri: the disc-shaped building is built out of attenuated glass (Crystal Whisper), strangely transparent and reflective at the same time: as if the architect meant for it to look invisible.

She slows down, wipes her clammy hands on her jeans, wonders if she really wants to go ahead with this. All the electronic poster-projectors near her apartment have been advertising this place; it seems to be the best of the hundreds of fertility clinics around. The spambots hack your online social status, and as soon as they see you are in a relationship they bombard you with wedding messages. As if anyone gets married anymore. After a while they give up on you getting married and start with the fertility and baby
spiel.
A bit like parents.

Or, Kirsten sniffs, how parents used to be. Her pain is still jagged.

      There are two heavily armed guards at the entrance. They look more like American militants than security: top of the range automatic rifles, Kevlarskin, tortoise-shell-shaped helmets that make them sweat. They don’t take their eyes off the pedestrians walking past. Seeing-eye cameras swivel in Kirsten’s direction and blink at her. A bit further in, a lesser-armed female guard scans Kirsten for anything suspicious, then points out where to go.