Regret

I gave birth two months after my final High school exams. Lusapho refused to acknowldge our child. He Left me under the cloud to go to Jo'burg when I told him I'd not abort our child. My daggers glinted for his blood.
I heard he worked at a five star hotel. News reached me also that he had morals of an alley cat in the golden city. So I can’t say I was really he came back, seven years later, wasted, mere skin and bone of hacking coughs.
“You look like a zombie,” my, our, seven year old son said with detached brutal honesty only children are capable of when I introduced them. He did look a frightful colour of a corpse. I thought it was time I told my mother who the father of her grandson was. I had kept it secret from her all those years though I’m sure she had her suspicions. The day I told her I had gone to visit Lusapho. He was walking me back home after my visit, his charm at its peak.
“What we regret most are not mistakes but missed opportunities,” he said with sad visage, tapping the side of his nose as he always did when he was nervous.
“Whatever do you mean?” I asked upset mindedly.
“In another world, at another time, I’d have found a job in this town, married you. Then we would have become a proper family with our son.” Said he in bromidic overtones, revealing his perfect piano keys like teeth.
“But that wouldn’t have been you. We’re born the persons we become by our choices.” This sounded harsher than I had intended.
“And usually end up prisoners of our characters.” He wryly added.
My mother must have been watching us through her bedroom window because when I came inside the house she commented about the resemblance Lusapho had to my son, ‘especially when he laughs.’
“That’s because he’s the father.” My unguarded reaction told her everything. I was too tired of keeping secrets. She handed Lusapho a glass of juice with affable contempt that disembarrassed her grudge. I suppose she was glad her cynical suspicions were finally confirmed.
The following evening Lusapho sent me a poem he had written, a plaguey poor thing really, with phoney ring of self-dramatisation; but I appreciated the effort more than the results. He knew I loved literature. He constantly joked about how my love of books makes me neglect other people.
His face, my son’s face, twisted with sadness as he left for his home. The sun was no more visible behind the mountains of our youth but shone the red glow of its setting with a firmament of dying things. The careless grace of things, I thought.
Life keeps rushing to the horizon.
There’s a seed of failure in all things human, freedom even to misspend. Death, being the ultimate of all human failures. “Let us live always mindful of this moment love,” said he after the moment of eloquent silence passed between us.
Within weeks he became febrile. One night he started having serious sezuires, I had to phone the ambulance. As a doctor I knew the end was near. I took him to my arms as we waited. The caged animal in his chest beat franticly. His eyes though were full of puzzled gentleness.
The ambulance never came. Such things you expect when you stay in black townships of South Africa. It took me back to the night our son was born. I gave birth on the couch after waiting in vain for it. Luckily, my mother, a nurse, knew what to do. Ambulance drivers are stiff scared to enter the township, especially during weekends at night. I didn’t really mind with Lusapho, because, as a doctor, I knew there wasn’t much the hospital could do for him, his CD4+ lymphocyte had fallen too low to respond to antibiotics and ARV cocktails.
He didn’t show signs of fear of death. He just looked at me with resigned self-surrendering love. I injected the intravenous injections I had brought for him, which were obviously not working for him since he was plagued with polymorphous lesions, and variety of clinical cutaneous manifestations. There was Candidiasis all over his mouth and tongue. His infected lungs had spread the infection to the brain. His kidneys were bloated, having collapsed four days before. The opportunistic diseases, like TB and pneumonia were at critical stage. I realise he wouldn’t make it.
That night he fluctuated between sleep and vague awakenings in my arms, often loosing his consciousness, sinking into supine confusion. I sat with him, trying to engage in conversations to keep his consciousness. One time I went to the kitchen to fetch him a glass of water and, coming back, found him capering around the bedroom, cavorting and ranting, pop-eyed. He was dancing a twirling, shaking his head like a dervish dog that had just been splashed with water. I don’t think he could recognise who I was by then.
He died five hours later, in my arms, of meningitis complications. The AIDS virus had almost completely destroyed his immune system. The last thing he did as he gasped for his last breath was to grab, in fondling manner, my breast. Can you imagine that, with his last breath? Then a stone cold silence slowly settled in the pedestal pose of his face, wrapping it in handsome corsage.
The night was darker than the ace of spades.
Sunrise got pink in the east, bringing soul-sickening waves of violet dawn. My nerves fed on my exhaustion. People came out like ants to the organised misery of their daily grind. The rising noise, the bleak honky-tonk of hootering mini-buses, the wafting hazy mist, all sucked my spirit.
The neon light blinked under the misty hug, with the coming day pregnant with unpleasant suggestions. The surprising part was that people were just going about their business as if nothing had happened.
What use is prying fingers on wounds. If I tell you Lusapho’s death turned me on, would you be surprised with the persistence of sexual hunger, even in the dark face of death. Or would you be disgusted? I don’t have to justify myself under the hostile stare of pusillanimous deaf piano tuners. I ware my hat in the house when I want. If we must use the psychiatrists as our crutches, the terrible goings are memories of a baffled life seeking an outlet.
I met the day with blend of insouciance and despair, an aura of defeat and to-hell-with-it-all. Things started creaking on my hinges. Life just started to weigh me down, down.
I’ve never really known the courageous freedom of seeking out things I feel in my heart. Lusapho had that. He was always leaving me behind in dark desperation, with cuts that shed no blood. Not this time.