There was still a hint of shyness in his eyes. Children grow fast there these days, thought Natasha. During their youthful days, a girl his age wouldn’t have started thinking of anything along gender bias, much less a boy.
She showed him how to adjust the two faucets on the wall to come up with a moderate temperature for the water. He listened attentively, fascinated by the trick.
He stayed there far longer than she was expecting, but he eventually came out.
This time, Natasha had also changed her attire, from the thin night garment to a long, black gown that nearly swept the floor. It was the twin one to the one she was wearing yesterday.
‘Now, there is something you can eat in the fridge if you feel like. And the stove…’
He followed her into the kitchen. ‘This you should know, don’t you?’ She said to him as she turned it on and off, demonstrating.
‘No, I didn’t, but now I know,’ he said with a glint of cheerfulness in his eyes.
‘It depends what you want to prepare, I think most of the things you will find here.’
‘Ok, madam.’
‘And then, shall we say good-bye? I will be back soon.’ She jingled the keys in her purse as she walked out. She was a bit elevated. It was always nice to have somebody at home.
Somebody had told her that they didn’t admit people at Mpilo, because the wards were always full - should be Sue or one of the ladies at RIM, who was joking over the issue. Natasha felt confident with this piece of information as she drove to the hospital.
The man who attended to her was middle-aged, with a bit of white hair on top
‘Now, what’s your problem, madam?’
‘I’m having a cough that’s ever persisting. Sometimes, it drives me to vomiting and sometimes I do vomit.’
‘When did it start?’
‘About two months ago.’
‘Two months?’
‘No, I’ve been receiving treatment. I was admitted even, but it’s ever persistent.’ She hoped she was explaining as well that admitting her couldn’t help anything.
‘Can I see the cards?’
She dug into her purse and came up with the card he was referring to. Thank God, she had come with it. He read it immediately.
‘You’re pregnant as well.’
‘Yes, I’m.’
‘Let’s hope you will have me a girl,’ he chuckled.
‘You should be very rich then.’
‘Mm.’
‘Don’t blame me, these days everything says money.’
‘You’re perfectly right, Mother-in-law.’
He wrote something on the card in a speedy, spidery handwriting.
‘You go to room 15 ok? They will do you a blood test. We want to be certain why the usual drugs are failing on you.’
‘Thank you, Son-in-law,’ she said, leaving and clicking the door shut behind her.
Room 15 wasn’t difficult to find, just as she had been directed.
There were quite a number of people who were also waiting to be served so she had to wait in yet another long queue.
‘Your problem?’ the nurse enquired rather too fast when she entered.
‘I’ve been directed here.’
She snatched the card from her hand and read it rapidly.
‘Sit here,’ she commanded, pointing to a lone chair in the corner of the room.
She tore a needle from a certain make of plastic and assembled it on a syringe. She lowered it to her hand, targeting the vein and sucking at her blood.
Natasha stiffened against the pain, suppressing a cry that threatened to escape her lips. But the pain immediately ceased when the nurse withdrew the needle.
‘Some elderly people cry in here,’ the nurse uttered, amused on seeing her face twisted with pain.
‘But you should help to ease the pain, shouldn’t you?’
‘Like?’
Natasha remained quiet. The nurse said, ‘This is the only help we can give you,’ rubbing her arm with cotton.
‘Well can you check your results next week, Wednesday?’
‘Thank you.’
She drove back home cursing the way they did things at their hospitals. Ten minutes counselling. How much was that gonna change somebody who would be told that she was on the death list and was HIV positive?
She ascended the stairs to her apartment taking a big sigh at every step. Fatigue built up in her thighs as she did so. She jingled the keys as she stepped up the last step and cursed herself. There was no need. There was somebody at home.
No, there were a lot of people at home.
Sipeyiye was also there, slumped into the sofa. He was buried behind the newspaper. Her heart missed a bit. Her timing was perfect, although she hadn’t left room for the possibility that he could get home before she did. She just hoped she hadn’t told Manata too much when she left.
‘Where have you been?’ he demanded, flipping over to the next page.
‘Just out. I wasn’t aware you would be back so soon. Looks like my boy is afraid of competition.’
He chuckled.
‘That doesn’t answer my question.’ He reared his upper torso and sat cross-legged on the sofa.
‘We have a visitor here. Did you see him?’ She planked into the sofa. ‘Manata,’ she called out.
‘Madam,’ the boy’s voice shrilled across the room. He came around, half-trotting.
She gestured him to the sofa. He perched into it, now extremely jerky. Now looking at Sipeyiye, then looking at her, and then turning back to Sipeyiye. He always appeared to be insecure of everything.
‘This is the boy I was talking about,’ she said to Sipeyiye, who turned the upper part of his body to him.
‘I’ve seen him.’
Natasha felt something. Just something she couldn’t put a finger on. Well, just something. She looked at Sipeyiye, then at Manata, then Sipeyiye again. It hurt the most when she couldn’t solve the puzzle.
She said something, but it died in the air because Sipeyiye was saying something to Manata as well that was more important. That there was a striking resemblance between them was something else. Sipeyiye was saying something about how he expected to see the work done at the right time, efficiently and diligently.
Chapter 41
It was Thursday when Natasha went to Mpilo hospital.
‘You will check your results next week, Wednesday.’
Now, the days count down.
FRIDAY
She left for work in the morning. Unlike yesterday, she wasn’t coughing, but she felt hot.
She didn’t tell Sipeyiye anything. She wanted was to convince him she was getting better. She had lunch with him in town. The high temperatures persisted even at night, despite the fact that she had cold baths three times that day.
SATURDAY.
She went for work again but dismissed at noon, because it was a half working day. Unlike the day before, she wasn’t sweating that furiously, although it was the hell of a hot day. The cough was much stronger though. All the same, she went for RIM Marital Arts with Sipeyiye. She herself didn’t exercise, but only watched the men swimming in the pool.
SUNDAY
She spent the whole of the morning sleeping, munching chocolate, consuming a paperback and listening to Manata singing around the house as he gratefully carried out his daily chores. Both her temperature and coughing were mild.
Sipeyiye went for the doctor though, without her and brought in more prescriptions. Her mind wondered into the future. Wednesday! What the hell was this blood test? She closed her mind to the endless possibilities. No, not her…
MONDAY
The most boring of all the days. She attended a meeting in the afternoon, always with generous amounts of coffee and biscuits that had an overall effect of unappetizing her. Anyway, she left early.
‘Natasha, we should go back to the doctor now,’ insisted Sipeyiye that evening. ‘You feel so fragile when I hold you.’ She told him to go there hi
mself if he wasn’t tired of doctors. The hospital again? No. She lay awake the whole night listening to her own clotted breath.
TUESDAY
She went to work as usually. Her body was racked with sobs the whole day, and she began to fear for the baby. There was a lingering anticipation; for she had the purest of the fears she had ever known. She took a day off work, for the next day.
WEDNESDAY
There she was in a long queue. They were all there: the young and the old, the poor and the rich, the whites and the blacks. And her turn to enter approached.
Then shit!
‘I’m sorry, Sipeyiye,’ she explained a moment later. But I’m HIV positive.’
And then another chapter of her life began.
Later on, she would recall that day as vividly as if it had happened the previous day. All the days of her life had led her here. The words sank into her like pure venom. She wanted to ask and say again, but why again? She had heard, loud and clear.
‘You’re HIV positive.’
She heaved a sigh and looked heavenward, tucking the legs under the chair. Just then her head started throbbing badly. She bowed her head and pressed her fingers to the eyes.
Before, the sky had been her limit. Now, her world was broken. Her dreams were shattered, all her hopes were gone. She now had no place in the world. She wanted to cry out, ‘Lord, Lord why have you forsaken me?’ But does he exist in moments like these.
She slumped back in the chair again and crossed her legs. She palmed her head. Her breath came out in rasps.
‘When you’re doing that, you’re already over-reacting to it,’ she heard the doctor say again, so distant from her that his voice wasn’t anything but echoes. ‘I will be glad if you take my last advice.’
She looked at him. He said to the nurse, ‘Can you give her some pain killers?’ The nurse clanked away in the adjoining room. As before, Natasha felt as if she was disconnected to it all.
She returned with a tumbler and two pills on a rack. Natasha palmed them, threw them in the mouth and took a gulp of water without even sitting up.
‘Now, Natasha, HIV is a physical inability. It isn’t the end of life.’ The doctor again.
How nice of him to say so, Natasha reflected, but judging from how rapidly be was transmitting the words, he has never been HIV positive himself. There has to be a way of expressing this, Natasha thought, her mind running through a million verses in the Bible, trying to find consolation in the risen Christ. The doctor hadn’t said this to one person in his life, or two, but quite plenty. And it broke her heart to think she was probably the tenth person of the day. Only here, perhaps he had used the name Natasha.
‘You can do worse than this if you allow your physical weakness to contaminate your mind.’
An even longer silence followed.
‘And don’t even admit to yourself that you’re weak. You can still live well up to your life’s limit if you eat the right type of food and do the right exercises,’ he asserted as he paused. He was expecting Natasha to say something.
She didn’t.
He continued, ‘We’ll give you ARVs so that your health does not get complicated, especially when you’re expecting a baby like this.’
The baby!
The words rang into her like an alarm. She heaved herself up and sat up tight.
‘What will I do with the baby?
‘You still have a choice.’ He straightened the card before him. ‘The baby, Natasha, you either have to keep him or have abortion. The chances are 70% though that he will be HIV positive. And of course, the worst that can happen is for you to…’ He paused. ‘For you to die and the baby to be live.’
This time Natasha heaved notably. This was too much to comprehend in a short space of time.
‘I will think about it. Let me reach you in a week.’ With that she rose, paused and said her thanks to the doctor.
She walked out
Outside the man who was about to enter had started grumbling. He said she was staying longer than she should. Natasha said nothing, only thought, wait and see. You think they play child games in there?
The queue snaked right to the back of the passage and eventually out. It was lengthening with every moment. She considered how lucky she was to have come earlier. As she walked along it, she wondered has many of them could afford a balanced diet and the right exercise.
The sun had gone up, far higher than she had expected. She wasn’t worried about suns this time. In either case, Sipeyiye would know that she had come here for the HIV test result. She was simply going to tell him.
Chapter 42
As the sun shines today
So shall my soul
Help me to shine like it
Forget the past wrongs
With a bright smile
On my face
Let me work harder
And be a better person than yesterday
Fight the world’s wrongs with a smile
This way
Even when the sun
Will not shine as bright tomorrow
I shall grow younger by the day
My cheeks, as full
As those of babies
Happier than puppies
Chanting good poetry like birds on high
Expectant
Carefree
Welcoming
So help me today
As I walk another journey
Towards you
Chapter 43
‘My God, Natasha, you frighten the daylights out of me,’ Sipeyiye exclaimed as he held the door open for her. ‘It can’t be. Are you sure you’re ok?’
Natasha said nothing, only brushed past him silently.
He closed the door, clamping her hand on her shoulder. ‘Natasha, now be a good girl. Won’t you tell me what this is???
?
Natasha knew that the whole event had added colour to her face, but she had resisted crying while she was driving. His comforting antics brought the memories back and sure she irresistibly began to sob.
‘I’ll tell you,’ she said, throwing the handbag on the couch and turning around to face him.
He stood, hands stuck inside his pockets. Natasha considered how handsome he was, only he was HIV positive. But then what is being HIV positive? Seemed like the moment she slipped out of bed, he wasn’t, and suddenly he was.
‘Well, I think you should forgive me for doing something behind your back. I had an HIV test. But please, I did it all good faith. I didn’t think anything bad would come out of it.’
‘Can you stop crying, Natasha?’ he begged. It was clear he hadn’t realized the gravity of the situation. As surely as the sun would rise he would be crying louder than she could ever by the time she was finished.
All the same, she brushed the tears with the back of her hand and continued,
‘Well I went to take my results today. I’m HIV positive.’
‘My God!’ he said as he shot across the room and slammed himself in the couch. ‘That can’t be true, Natasha. The doctor is lying. You can’t be HIV positive.’
A surge of anger seized Natasha instantly. She couldn’t help noticing, and even feeling, that he had said ‘you’ not ‘we’. And Sipeyiye became a coward to her straightaway. His wasn’t the shoulder she was going to lean on.
‘Well, doctors don’t usually make mistakes’.
She sat on the couch opposite his. She noticed an air of desperation between them. For the first time. There had been disasters in her life, but she had been able to make counter plans. In the end, she has been victorious.
But this…
Just to sit and watch like this. So, all that planning was nothing. How could it be any other way when she and Sipeyiye were weaving death? What to do now was the problem. There seemed to be nothing that they could do. What could they do, really, when everybody said scientists in America, in Britain, in China and all over the world are battling with it. The solution wasn’t going to come from Sipeyiye or her for that matter.
‘I never trust the doctors. I’ll believe when I see them carry a second test.’ Sipeyiye sat there, very much unconvinced.
Doctors sometimes made mistakes, yes. That Natasha knew. She also knew they don’t often make any mistakes. In her case, her on and off illness couldn’t be explained by anything else.