I was immediately ushered through to a ward. Blue curtains were pulled together around me and the next hour became a blur of paperwork and purposeful process. Between the district surgeon, Dr McKenzie, and the nurses, there were many carefully tending hands as they lifted, probed and touched.
“Where does it hurt?” asked Dr McKenzie gently.
“My eye,” I said, trying to hold my sobs in.
“Yes, but where else?” she asked, running her hands over me, assessing the damage.
“Don’t worry about the rest,” I said, pulling my shirt back in place. “It’s just my eye.”
I was sent for X-rays to check for fractures. There was nothing broken, nothing structural at least.
Dr McKenzie completed the police forms and documented the injuries to my head. According to her report, I had a large supra-orbital haematoma with some right lateral orbital bruising. There was bruising of my anterior neck, left jaw and posterior neck, as well as an injury to my scalp over the occipital lobe. It was all medical jargon, but she noted it word for word.
I left the hospital sedated and a little quieter.
It was dark by the time my mother and John led me into the brightly lit police station.
We were not the only ones there to report a crime.
It was an average Saturday night in a suburban neighbourhood, with regular weekend complaints. A house burglary, a smash-and-grab incident, a broken car window, other petty crime. It was only me who’d been beaten up.
It was busy and there was nowhere to sit. All the seats in the charge office were occupied so we were directed out into the passage, past the peeling, one-way mirror into the overflow area. My mother was still holding me tight as we shuffled through and settled ourselves into the chairs, tufts of hardened yellow foam escaping through the cracks in the blue, faux leather. We waited our turn to make a report.
It was only as I was sitting still in the passage, the medication beginning to numb the pain, that I realised I was shivering, that I was cold. I looked down at the clothes I’d pulled on that morning. Bright green linen shorts, a white T-shirt and shiny takkies. New clothes. I had bought them a few days before. It was a bold outfit, perhaps even a little defiant, suggesting the promise of fresh beginnings. But as I sat there under the harsh fluorescent lighting, my new clothes looked the way I felt. Dirtied, bloodied and rumpled.
I held myself warm, crossing one arm over my chest, my other hand still clutching the wet dishcloth, pressing it flat to my bulging forehead, pushing past the pulsing heat of my swollen eye. It was a pointless gesture. But I tried anyway. I hugged myself close and leaned back against the wall, my head hard against the rough plaster. Walls that had been rubbed smooth from years of other resting heads.
I closed my eyes.
It was all too much.
I didn’t want to see what I looked like or where I was. I didn’t want to acknowledge the decay, the cracked faux-marble flooring and the grubby electric cables hanging exposed and tired along the grimy walls.
I was stiff from the cold and the pain when his words crashed through, raining down on me.
“Get those motherfuckers out of my sight!” he bawled, his words reverberating down the passage.
It was him. In the charge office.
“Don’t let them be near me,” he shouted.
I sat upright. I could make out the scuffling and jostling and, although I knew I’d be safe, I backed up into the wall, trying to make myself disappear. I watched as police officers rushed toward him and held him in place. With some force, they managed to form a human cage, a barrier between him and us, out in the passage.
“God forgive me, but he’s awful,” my mother groaned. “What a dreadful man.”
The police officers were having none of it. They restrained him and funnelled him through to the process room somewhere at the back of the station where he was charged with assault and the intent to do grievous bodily harm.
But that was not before I noticed that he had changed.
He was no longer wearing khaki shorts and a T-shirt. Instead he was well turned out: neatly pressed chinos and a fresh white shirt, a navy-blue blazer. Except for his shoes. He was still wearing the same brown suede. He had arrived at the police station cloaked in tailored respectability and was presenting himself as elegant, refined and sophisticated.
I slumped back into my seat, numbed and disbelieving.
Surely not.
It was soon after that we were ushered forward for me to tell my story. I was propping myself up against the tired counter when the policeman who was to take my statement leaned toward me.
His brows came together as he frowned.
He peered closer.
Then his eyes opened in delight and at the top of his voice, loud and clear, his words resonated across the room: “Hau, it is YOU!” Leaned a little closer. “It is you. Tracy Going!”
“Yes, it’s me,” I mumbled.
But he never heard my response as he turned and hollered to his colleague in the adjoining cubicle. His colleague wasted no time and soon the two were standing before me, arms crossed, mouths open wide. They were gaping at me as though I was some wondrous apparition, like it was not possible that I could be there, before them, in real life. They were looking at me as though my forehead was not bulging blue, that my eye wasn’t swollen shut, that my hair wasn’t hanging limp from the wet dishcloth. They were marvelling.
“You are my role model,” the charge officer grinned, shaking his head in disbelief.
“Thank you—” I said.
“Tjo, I know that voice,” he chuckled. “I listen to you every morning on Radio Metro. You and Bob. Hau batung, you two … You are my favourite.”
“Thank you—” I said again.
I couldn’t help myself and I smiled.
He was very kind and very generous.
Once the excitement had settled down and everyone around us knew exactly who I was, only then could I proceed with my statement. And it was a long, laborious process. I spoke slowly and clearly. I simplified where I could. I repeated myself when necessary. I spelled out words when needed.
And when we were finally done, I was exhausted. Drained.
All I wanted to do was sleep, and as soon as I was back in the comfort of John’s car I folded myself into the leather and surrendered myself to the remainder of the night. I was too scared to be alone, in too much pain, couldn’t face the destruction in my home, so I went back with my mother and John.
As the streetlights broke through the darkness, we made our way down Jan Smuts Avenue and headed out to Brits. I let the soft classical notes of John’s music wash over me, and soon the strobes between the lampposts lessened and finally ceased.
“We’re not letting this go,” I heard my mother’s soft murmurs. “She can’t allow anyone to do this to her and get away with it.”
Her voice was faint and although her words emerged distorted, fading in and out of my understanding as the plop of tyre fused with the tar, I knew she was right. But I couldn’t bring myself to think about my immediate future. Not now. So, instead, I allowed the blackness to swallow me up until I no longer saw the stars pricking the sky outside like trillions of sharp needles.
I closed my eyes and tried to still my thoughts.
I needed a warm, soaking bath to soothe my aching body but when we arrived it was more than I could