* * *
I scream when I wake up. A security guard runs towards me.
“What’s the problem?”
“Could you please untie me? I want to go to the toilet.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Number two.”
He just stands there. I wet my robe, and leave a salty smell.
* * *
“Ahhhhhh!!!” I yell when I wake up. The same security guard comes to me again.
“What’s the matter?”
“I need to use the toilet.”
He just keeps quiet. I wet myself again.
Moments later, I wake to them untying me. I try not to get too excited. My mother is standing beside me. “He is going to be fine now . . .” the matron says, injecting something into my arm. Drops of water dribble off the tip of the needle. I do not feel anything.
I move my left arm around. The straitjacket has left a sweaty, swollen mark. I walk around the floor to make sense of everything. When I see the doctor who attended to me the previous night, I ask him, “How’s my case looking?”
“You spent all your money on drugs and you lost your job. That’s what precipitated this condition. If you take drugs again, you will end up on the streets,” he says.
I smile and nod. It is chilly in here. I do not have anything on my feet. I walk back to my bed.
“Your nails are too long,” my mother says. “Do you mind if I cut them?”
“No, you can.”
My mother clips my toenails as I lie on my side.
“Mr Zolo, please follow me,” a security guard interrupts.
The security guard takes me past a white security door to the psychiatric ward. One patient has his arms stretched out, spinning around.
“You are going to meet people worse than you. Please try not to panic,” my mother whispers. She is prohibited from going beyond this point. The patient is directed to his cell by a male nurse. There is a TV playing and the patients sit around it.
I sit alone on a plastic chair. The psychiatrist is attending to a man, probably in his thirties.
“We are going to have to take you to Valkenberg,” the psychiatrist says. The man breaks into tears, rubs his eyes, looking down. “We are doing this to help you.”
The psychiatrist is wearing a cream sleeveless jersey and brown chinos. He is affable when he interviews me. I answer all his questions satisfactorily. I notice when he tries to trick me.
“You are from East London, right?”
“No, I’m from King William’s Town,” I tell him.
“What’s the one thing you want to do more than anything else?”
“I want to write.”
“Oh, a writer . . . an artist . . .” he mutters. “Is there anything else you haven’t told me?”
“Like what?”
“Have you taken drugs?”
“Yes.” I was afraid of saying I had taken drugs.
“Like tik?”
“No, I only took cocaine and weed.”
“OK, it seems like you are fine. We are going to discharge you. You don’t need any medication.”
He pauses and looks at me intently.
“You must write, whether you get published or not,” he advises me.
I nod.
My mother hugs me when I tell her I have been discharged.
My Bible is in a clear plastic bag, like a piece of evidence. I get it from one of the nurses.
“You really looked like you were going to die last night,” one nurse says.
* * *
I sit on the bed, having taken a shower and got dressed. Nhlakanipho calls me on my mother’s phone.
“Tongai took your wallet and your cellphone for safekeeping,” he says. “How are you feeling now?”
“I’m much better,” I reply.
“I can tell you’re fine now,” Nhlakanipho says.
“It was a spiritual battle,” I say.
“We’ll talk later,” he says, ending the call.
Heavy rain shoots down in the bitter wind. The cold creeps into the wooden shelter for the security guards where my mother and I wait for Tongai to bring the apartment keys. He gets out of a colleague’s car and runs up to us. He has a blue cap on his head.
He smiles and presses his right hand against his left when he greets my mother.
Tongai runs back to the car. He and his colleague are off on some work trip. My mother and I walk down the hill from Groote Schuur. At the bus stop on Main Road, we wait for a taxi. It is mid-morning. Nurses trickle up the road to the hospital. Behind us is Texie’s fish and chips shop. I hold up my index finger, seeing a cream-coloured taxi approaching. The vehicle halts and the gaartjie drags the door open for us. The only available seats are at the back. I sit closest to the window to the right.
Things are hazy to me. I’m just grateful to have made it out of the hospital. My nerves have calmed. I whisper to my mother how much money she has to pay. The taxi drives down the wet road. I am looking out the window.
* * *
As the taxi approaches the first group of flats in Kenilworth, I ask the driver to stop. My mother and I walk the rest of the way to my apartment building. The woman from the body corporate hovers in the yard as I open the gate. She is wearing a long black gown.
“I do not trust her,” I say to my mother.
“She seems like she could be one of these gypsies,” Mother responds.
We place our bags in my bedroom. Things have never been open between my mother and me. She was only eighteen when she had me, during her first year at varsity. And so she left me with my grandmother. When she started working in Joburg, I used to visit her. For a while, she was living with my father in Joburg. We’ve always had a distant relationship. Even when Mother started staying with us, in my high school years, we never warmed to each other. But she supported me throughout university, paying for my fees and sending me pocket money.
In the afternoon, I decide to cook. I defrost some boerewors from the freezer. Mother sits in the lounge while I chop onions. I make rice and mixed vegetables to accompany the meat.
Mother says grace once the food is ready. We eat in the lounge. There’s a copy of Chimurenga, with Brenda Fassie on the cover, lying on the coffee table.
“My father predicted that Brenda would be a star,” Mother says, after looking through the magazine.
“What happened to your father? How did he die?” I ask.
“My father . . . he died from a heart attack.”
I have never been able to ask what happened to my grandfather. We have a picture of him in our living room at home. He died a couple of years before I was born.
“I was under intense attack when I fell