PAIN

The bile rose in my throat, almost choking me. Outside, the sun glared angrily, so that the small clinic was strewn with shades and bright spots. My stomach churned, the contents of my breakfast threatening to return. I took a deep breath and put my head between my legs, hoping it would not. My mother had gone through so much trouble to get me to eat it, insisting the Malaria medicine would nit work if I did not eat. The sweet woman, God bless her, really had no idea what was going on. A cool hand touched my forehead, soothing.

“Marita!”

A nurse shouted my name, inviting me to the lab. I received the small white bottle, and soon brought it back with the dark yellow liquid. It occurred to me that I was dehydrated, and I should listen to my mother and drink more. The wait was arduous, even though I knew what the test results would say.  My body was confirming my fears: the nausea that would not abate, the constant exhaustion, and that sense of foreboding I had had for weeks. Yet, a part of me remained hopeful, that the results from the first test had been wrong, that this was all a huge mistake and I was not supposed to be here, that I was not just another teenage pregnancy statistic. It was a cruel irony, after all the education I had received from home and school about “sex education”

The results came back sooner than I expected and my worst fears were confirmed, my eyes blurring with tears over the page as I read the familiar medical jargon in a doctor’s careless scrawl. HCG: Positive. It had always been negative in the past. I remembered my laugh whenever the doctors would ask about that. I remembered my mother’s confidence whenever I would take that test, slightly tinged with irritation that they had even considered that her sweet child would be pregnant. My head swam, and this time I could not hold back my breakfast, barely making it to the nearby bathroom before I let it out.

I was stronger when I returned. As it had been for the past 2 weeks or so, vomiting had made me feel better. I came back to the waiting room, and sat, making peace with my newly confirmed fears. I trained my eyes on a large green fly on the windowsill, too lazy to move even when the nurses who passed by tried to wave it away. They chatted happily as they went about their work, while the fly and I just sat there, unmoving. Hope stayed next to me, her silence both welcome and comforting.

I heard my name again, followed the nurse through the ply wood-lined corridors to another room. I was numb with apprehension, and sick to my stomach with fear. A few minutes later, I was lying on a high rickety bed with an old white bed sheet that was frayed at the edges. I closed my eyes and tried to think about school, about the exams I had missed and how hard I would study for them. Instead, his face came to mind, contorted with pleasure.

The nurse started to work, never bothering to warn me about how cold the metal was. I gripped the sides of the bed, tried to push away the guilt of ending what could have been a human life. The cold metal was pushed inside me, and the pain began, shooting from my center to every part of my body, so that I could not even cry. My raised legs started to cramp, and I realized I was crying because now I had a headache. Time seemed to stand still as she continued to work efficiently, saying mundane things that sounded like they were meant to be soothing. She pushed the metal again, and the suction resumed, the pain making me feel silly for complaining about menstrual cramps.

The pain was between my spread legs, in my lower abdomen, and even in my chest from the reality of what was happening. Suddenly, I was back in the dark classroom where this had started. I could hear the fabric of my flimsy blouse tearing, the harsh sound of my choked gasps as he mauled my bra-covered breasts. I could smell his cologne like he was here. Oppressive. Like his body against mine, like his lips against my neck as I said his name again and again, begging him to stop. I knew he heard the desperation in my voice not from arousal but fear. Yet he held me tighter, put his hands around my neck and dared me to scream. The strength of his grip made me realise that his slim form was deceptive, and there was little I could do.

 “Don’t scream. You know you’ve wanted this since we met.”

I gasped and choked on my tears, my voice suddenly useless when I needed it to save me.

“Almost done,” the nurse said

“No one will hear you anyway.”

“Please,” I heard a soft whimper, in my memory and in my present.

“Almost done dear.”

“You girls these days claim you like it rough.”

“Okay. I’m going to do this one more time, and then we can go.”

Through the haze of my tears, I saw the white syringe, filled with dark red blood. The nurse started over, pushed the metal in again. I steeled myself but once again, the pain knocked the breath out of my lungs. It felt like my insides were being ripped out, sucked into the large white syringe. His face came to mind again. For the first time, I wondered about forgiveness. How it really worked. If it really worked towards anything. If I had to "let go". For the first time, I had trouble thinking of myself as "forgiving". Suddenly, my penchant for "letting go" didn't seem like an asset. I closed my eyes and the pain washed over me like rain.