Janita Lawrence - Why You Were Taken

I feel so sick. Anxiety, guilt, morning sickness: all turning my stomach into a washing machine. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I don’t know what to do.

I think I’m going to throw up again.

God help me. I don’t deserve it, but please help me anyway!

Johannesburg, September 2021

Kirsten, late for the appointment that she’s been dreading for weeks, taps her sneakers on the scuffed concrete of the communal taxi stop on Oxford road, near her apartment in Illovo.

The taxis are supposed to collect passengers every fifteen minutes but the drivers don’t pay much attention to the official timetable. Most of them are passive aggressive which, Kirsten thinks, is better than just plain aggressive, which they were in the old days.

Taxi bosses, South Africa’s own mafia, used to gun down their rivals: blood in the streets: as if our history didn’t have enough of that already. It was a long time ago, but she had seen the photos in varsity, in some photojourno module, and the images had never left her.

There were a lot of pictures that stayed with her. She didn’t know if it was part of her synaesthesia or if she just had a more visual memory than most. Regardless, it came in handy with her job as a photographer, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

The exception, of course, was her early childhood, of which she could remember very little. It was before you could download and back up your memories. Her parents would tell her what she was like when she was a child, describe her first word, her first steps, the outings they had gone on, but Kirsten’s early memory remained an odourless, flavourless blank.

One year, for their anniversary, Marmalade James had given her the first book she had ever read cover-to-cover. It was a hardbound, beautifully illustrated, vintage edition of a Grimm’s’ fairy tale: ‘Hansel and Gretel’. The pages were foxed, the cover bumped. When she held it in her hands she could feel that the book contained more than one story.

She had been so touched by the gesture: James knew that she didn’t know many nursery rhymes or fairy tales because of the gap in her memory. It was as if he was trying to give her a small part of those early years back. She treasured it. Read it carefully, was appalled by it, fell in love with it, couldn’t bear to read it again, had it framed and put up on her wall. Still dreams of toaster waffle tiles.

Just as a minibus rolls up, her watch beeps with a reminder. She is supposed to be there already. She double-clicks the message and it dials through to the reception machine at the clinic, giving them her location and in doing so letting them know she is running late. People are more flexible now that personal cars are practically extinct and almost everyone relies on public transport. At least that’s what Kirsten hopes, seeing as she is terminally late. The irony of her period being precisely on time every month is never lost on her.

She lets a few passengers push in front of the queue so that she is last to board and gets a seat in the front row. She hates sitting at the back. All the smells: the perfume and aftershave and shampoo and worn pleather shoes and hair-wax and atchar and chewing gum. All the sounds: the tinny kwaito, jazz and retro- marabi on the radio; the different languages and dialects; the shades of skin; the mad hooting.

The close fabric of different textures and colours: it made her feel giddy, sometimes ill. Overwhelming: like having to see, smell, touch and taste all the colours of the rainbow, in 3D, at the same time. At its worst it would mix together and become a thick, soupy, smelly, bubbling, multi-coloured mess.

She would normally close her eyes, picture herself in a clean white room, and try to cut herself off from her senses, but fellow passengers never liked that. They either took offence or moved a little away from her, afraid, perhaps rightly so, that she would hurl on them. Rainbow Vom, she thinks, and smiles, although the idea doesn’t make the trip any easier.

With her LocketCam she takes a quick snap of the miniature disco-ball hanging off the taxi’s rear-view mirror, which swings as they stop to pick up passengers and let others alight. The taxi driver makes a dangerous stop at a dogleg to offer a woman a ride. Probably because she is pretty, Kirsten thinks, till the door opens and she sees the woman’s bulging stomach.

Christ, she thinks. As if this morning isn’t difficult enough.

The other passengers all snap to and make the appropriate noises. Not gasps, not quite, but something similar. They shift up in their seats, making space for her, dusting invisible crumbs off the cheap cracked upholstery seat.

The pregnant woman smiles shyly, thanks them in vernacular. The people either side of her beam as she sits, and steal shy glances at her bump. The woman smiles, puts her hand on her belly. A special kind of smug, the way only pregnant women can be. Kirsten stares out of the hair-oil smeared window.

The Infertility Crisis has hit the lower socio-economic groups the hardest, with 9 out of 10 couples battling to conceive. As the salaries climb, though, the infertility – bizarrely – decreases, with top-earners having the reversed fortune.

Declining fertility rates are a problem the world over but nowhere is it as dire as in South Africa. No one knows the definitive reasons behind the crisis. Millions had been spent testing the various hypotheses: cell phone tower radiation, Tile and/or Patch use, hormones used in farming and agriculture, high stress levels, bad diets, GMO, people waiting too long to start their families. While there was some correlation, they still couldn’t figure out why South Africa was so badly affected compared to other countries.

The only thing that they could confirm was what everyone already knew: the population was declining rapidly; and those fortunate few who did manage to conceive were treated like queens.

When she gets to near where she’s going, Kirsten lets the driver know by shoving a hundred rand at him. They’re supposed to use government tokens to pay for community taxis but drivers always appreciate cash. Old School style. She doesn’t do this for the sake of the driver, but more as a small act of rebellion against the incumbent ruling party, the New ANC – known, regrettably, as the Nancies – because the idea of a nanny state makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

She jumps off onto the pavement, glad to put distance between herself and the bun in the oven. Digital street posters call her name and tell her to wait, they have a message for her.

‘Kirsten,’ a recorded voice says in an American accent, ‘have you done something for yourself today?’

Bilchen knows her favourite ice-cream flavour – rose petal – and showers her with 3D rose petals and a blast of cool air. A travel agency tells her that it’s been 206 days since her last holiday – doesn’t she need another one? Bolivia? Mozambique? The Cape Republic? The soundtrack is vaguely island-style and she can smell rum and coconut. Has she considered a travelbattical? Workcation?

Tuk-tuks zoom past her, hooting as they go. The sky darkens. Kirsten shields her eyes and looks up to see a drone-swarm fly overhead. She doesn’t like them, doesn’t like the shadow they cast. Hates the fact that they have cameras. They make her feel like she is living in someone’s bleak futuristic imaginings. Already she feels as if she is being watched, always has. She shakes her brain, tries to focus on the task ahead. The time had come.

Carpe diem, and all of that.

For as long as she could remember, she had always hated doctors. And hospitals, but doesn’t everyone? She abhors it when someone says they hate hospitals. That’s like saying you hate stepping in dog shit, or wetting your pants in public. Obvious. Or in local slang, obvi-ass: the stating of which usually just shows how little you know.