In the weeks following the news from South Africa, our world went pear shaped. I felt, mostly, unable to venture outside during the week. I spent a lot of time on my own and in my head and the time I did spend with my husband was fraught beyond imagining. He is a self appointed barometer of my moods and feels obliged to try to head me off at the pass when I start to exhibit signs of mania. The unfortunate corollary, in me, is that I feel trapped and unable to behave and express myself as I feel necessary. Instead of helping to dampen my responses, by tethering me, I feel panicked, and try ever harder to assert my right to freedom of expression. It was telling that he said in conversation that he felt the need to, 'Corral everything.' That, is exactly how I feel, like an animal, desperately trying to communicate and exist, but hemmed in by circumstance and an inability to survive on my own, within the bounds of convention. My sister in law’s death provoked a litany of emotional and psychological responses, that are still reverberating.
Our story is complex, as everyone’s is. South Africa, with its many black folk remains a trigger for my hyper vigilance. Every time I return, with high hopes that I am healed and restored, within minutes of arriving, everything starts to take on that raw, jangling, sharp edged dimension. It starts off as I emerge from the cocoon of the plane that has delivered me safely back home. As soon as I have left the body of the plane, I am assailed by exuberant, loud black men and women, doing their jobs. Of course I rationalise that I am perfectly safe but that is my conscious mind. Below the surface, the damage to my psyche kicks in. The lights immediately become brighter, the tannoy louder and everything, more taxing than before. Flying around Europe is a doddle, my suitcase is always where I expect it to be and if it is not, no panic ensues. But when my luggage goes missing in Johannesburg, a little more unravelling occurs, when I have to deal with the officious clerk taking the details and dimensions of my oh, so, unmemorable black suitcase. Then I have to contend with the pissed off passport checking bureaucrat, who manages, with simple body language, to communicate very effectively that I have kept her waiting. She does this by keeping me waiting, even though I am the last in the queue, and refusing to call out, as stated, ‘Wait in line until you are called.’
Her look, eventually, seems to indicate that I should advance forward. Still, this is open to question as she looks disdainfully down at me from the lofty height of her cubicle. I feel sure, already, that I will be detained. I am not sure what for, but I sense power at play and I am most certainly in victim mode, authority beginning to loom, my trusted ally in flight or fight. I have long learned to stand still, in the face of such authority, but being rooted to the spot is just one, small, non step. My bladder will be working overtime, getting ready to empty itself for my eventual sprint for the exit, if ever I am allowed to advance beyond the passport desk. My discomfort is now compounded; bright lights, canned sound, urgent bladder and present fear of someone who is itching to make my life more miserable than it already feels.
My rational mind is now beginning, rapidly, to lurch into the irrational. Quickly thoughts turn to hours of questioning, humiliation, possible detention, unpalatable food, physical abuse and an indeterminate period of my life being spent in some room, somewhere, losing the will and energy to get out.
It does not help when my son, who has come to collect me, points out that I am the last person to have come through the ‘Something to declare,’ exit because I have, indeed, spent the last 20 minutes paying for the meagre Golden Virginia rations I have brought with me, for my roll-up smoking husband, who is in Cape Town. I have managed, just, to pay the duty but am now reduced to a mother who is totally reliant on her impecunious son.
Conversations on the way to the car about my son’s hope that I have not had my photograph taken with anyone at the airport further fuel my rapidly flagging spirit. ‘What do you mean?’ I question.
‘Oh, some guy asks to take a photograph with you then texts it to his friend and you are then identified on your journey,’ and so it goes on. I have heard about the innumerable muggings and hijackings that take place within metres of the airport building and before we have made it to the car, I am already beginning to space out. By the time I am nervously waiting in the passenger seat for my son to saunter back to the car (apologies, but that is how it appears to me), seemingly unaware of the sundry men waiting to make off in his car, with his mother, I am beginning to feel the rest of me pooling, somewhere round my ankles, everything slowly disintegrating into a useless heap. It does not, ever, help to bolster my flagging view of myself, nor anyone else’s, who determine that I have not changed a bit! In fact, I have, but the circumstances reduce me rapidly to a quivering, monosyllabic wreck, conscious of her inability to deliver herself up to external expectation.
And so the vicious cycle begins until, all I want to do is go home. Home, in this case, would be the UK although I never, ever, feel quite myself, anywhere. No matter where I am, I am off centre. The last time I was in South Africa, my husband was trying to make a life for us in Cape Town. I joined him on colt like legs and spent days sweltering in a bed sit in Hout Bay, terrified of every sound and sight. I couldn’t even drown myself in literature because my concentration span was up to, ‘The cat sat on the mat,’ if.
Even daytime television was taxing! I tried and succeeded in finding myself a shop girl job in a shopping centre in Hout Bay but failed, miserably, on day three. It was a small, bath boutique, not taps and things, but every conceivable accessory a person might want or need in their bathroom or shower. From bath salts and scrubs, to fluffy towels, room fresheners, loofahs bespoke toilet seats and yes, knock-off perfumes in large, glass, decanters. It was achievable, doable, even, until, on day three, in walked a customer and headed straight for the knock-off perfume section and that’s when the trouble began.
The man in question was black. He was very friendly, polite, well dressed, essentially non- threatening but it was enough to tip me over the edge. I was already, it has to be said, precariously balanced. I was keenly aware of being in a shop, on my own, with money, even though I kept a beady eye on the security guard and made sure that he didn’t short change me on his circuit. But I started to shake, shake so much that I could barely work the till and from there on, everything began to close in on me. My inability to do the smallest of jobs, my uncertain future because now, even R100 a day (about £10) was pushing the boundaries of my ability to earn and off I went, spiralling, rapidly, into inertia and some form of catatonia. My husband had to hand in my resignation for me, I was unable to face my employer, and a wavering line began to form underneath yet another failed endeavour; yet another failure, on my part, to hold up even the tiniest part of a set of scales already heavily weighted on his side.
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