As Jane sat for her turn to see the medical doctor to come up – she felt bored and tired. To keep her mind engaged she let her eyes to hover across the magazines, journal and newspapers that were scatted on the round table at the center of the waiting room. Her eyes moved analytically across the wide range of headings. One magazine seemed to catch her attention: “True Love” with a dominating picture of two young lovers posturing to display their love after their colorful wedding. She felt irritated. But as she was navigating her ayes were glued by book that had drowned among these magazines and newspapers: “The Living Bible.”
Some forces from within her seemed to push her to fish it out, but she restrained her self. “Please, can you move,” a young lady in her late teens said with an anxious, weary voice. She turned to steal a glance at her. Jane remembered when she was of her age. Fresh from a national secondary school. “Commanding the attention of the whole world,” she said within herself. She was able to remember the bundle of love letters and poems that used to lift her to cloud nine. Some went by the heading: “The Fire of My Heart”... some of the pieces were melded from genius works of Shakespeare and the arrows of Songs of Solomon.
This memory drizzled like bangs of thunder. She remembered how she gave her heart to one man after another on the promise of “love that will flow like meandering spring across the weary lands never to drying up.” From one arm and heart she was left high and dry.
She was able to peep into that stretching past. When she used to sing in the youth choir in her local church. She was able to relive her heart matching with the legendary hymnals and songs like “Pass Me Not O Gentle Savior.” Once a gain she was able to hear her high pitched-soprano-lapping with the winds blended with her beauty and excellent performance in her studies.
That was almost a decade before she started having issues with the sermons that “were out dated” in regard to nature and realism. “The church started becoming unfriendly,” she recalls. She never expressed herself to any of the church leaders albeit sharing her doubts with her soul mates, who rationalized and interpreted the scriptures according to their understanding and “higher knowledge.” To them adultery and fornication meant being faithful to one “love” at a given time even before marriage.
“This was my long journey from the church,” Jane lamented. By this time she was yet to see the medical doctor. She felt to walk out, as some patients who caught the eye of the the nurse in charge were allowed in without cuing. Their complains were met with a warning to cooperate lest they be thrown out of the facility. She didn't have the money to seek a private hospital services. “The world is rough,” she felt to shout with a anger. But her options as she had come to realize of late were limited.
She remembered how men used to fight over her. “Was it out of love?” “No!” she thought with regret. The first time she conceived she was not able to tell had who impregnated her. This was the last straw that broke the horse's back. She aborted. “This was the year that was a tapestry of the best and the worst in her life,” she thought, as tears started forming in her tired eyes. During her Fourth Form exams she emerged to be the top students in the nation, in 100 top girls category. Her dream to pursue medicine was lingering across the horizon - a waiting admission to university. She felt to be given another chance to rewrite history. That too was history in itself.
She tried to push out these mental files into a dust bin of forgotten forever. The more she tried the more vivid every detail seemed to repackage itself. There was a load of pain hanging heavily in her heart as she tried to remember every beaten path of love and betrayal she had walked through.
“I'm tired and exhausted,” she felt, “but nobody cares,” she wondered. A hawker come along with sodas and snacks, anger and hunger started bubbling from within her. The hawker stood by her as she scavenged her hand bag full of medial reports and receipts and some drugs for some coins. She counted the coins her shaking hand took hold on. “Move on, please! come later,” she told the young man who was growing impatient as she picked a ground nuts of ten bob.
It was her turn to see the medical doctor. As she was opening the door, she heard her mother knocking the door. The morning rays of the sun had cut though the gaps between the window and the frames. To Jane, it was great to hear even the dying carols of birds. It was comforting. To her the birds and flowers meant more than beauty. They seemed to sing and display a passage she had read from The Living Bible.
“Jane! Jane!” her mum called. “Are you awake?” “Why have you been shouting in such an hour.” This is the time she realized that she had been dreaming. “You've been shouting: Help Doctor! Help Doctor!” her mum said. Jane had visited a VCT centre at a public hospital two days earlier but she'd yet to revealed her HIV status to any of her anxious family members and friends in preparation to her civil wedding in two weeks time. She was contemplating how she will secure a HIV negative certificate for the wedding to proceed as arranged.
No comments:
Post a Comment