I see the doctor approach. To my utter horror he isn’t wearing a white coat but a black one. I struggle to get up and run, but I am unable to move.
He has a pair of scissors in his hands. From the blades I see red blood dripping. When he speaks his voice sounds hollow and reverberating as in a horror movie: “Her fingers are bad...bad...bad, they have to be cut off...off...off”
Cold sweat streams down my face and body. When he bends over me, I suddenly see that his head is an empty skull with white teeth chattering when he laughs: “Ha-ha-ha!”
I try to call for help, but no sound comes from my throat.
I awake from my own screams.
The ceiling light is switched on and blinds me for a few seconds. But I know who it is, it is my mother. She picks me up in her arms. So lean and thin have I grown that I weigh almost nothing.
While she holds me, she consoles me: “Come now, come now, keep it up! Soon it will be morning and then I will take you to a good doctor in the city. We will find a good doctor one day!”
Her face looks happy, she is beaming.
I try to get out of her arms, start screaming again: “No! I am okay, I don’t need to go to a doctor!”
Instantly her face changes, with the light above her, her face becomes like the skull of the doctor in my nightmare. I struggle harder, frantically clawing at her arms and face. At last she throws me back onto the bed- I know how fanatical she is about her good looks. She hits me through the face. It burns like fire.
“She screams: “You are an ungrateful and delinquent child! She has lost all control.
Then the usual tirade follows: “You don’t know how I worry about you! You don’t know
how sick you are! Why do you refuse to admit it? Why then are you so lean and emaciated, if you are just another healthy child?”
I gather all my strength and courage:
“Mother, you know that it isn’t true. You know that I am weak and emaciated from the diets on which you are constantly putting me.”
I have gained some courage now, continue: “ What do you want? That I should die?”
For a moment I cringe, sure that she will hit me again, but she just snaps back at me:
“Have you gone mad? You awful, ungrateful brat! For the last eight years I have worried
myself sick about you, constantly fearing that you might die!”
Now she reverts to the strategy against which she knows that I am totally defenseless, she starts crying: “What will happen to me if you are to die? I have nothing else. I have given you everything!”
I pull the blanket up to my chin, says soothingly: “Mama, it is nothing, really. I just had a bad dream. Please go to bed again, I am fine.”
I can’t fall asleep again. I am worried and alarmed and think: “I am sixteen and can’t allow this to go on much longer. I don’t want to die. I am not really sick, but if my mother goes on like this, and she is becoming worse, then she is going to kill me.”
What worries me most is that I have become used to the diets which she constantly puts me on. It makes me feel elated, as if I am floating on air and don’t want to eat at all.
It all started after my eighth birthday.
In the middle of my eighth year my mother and father divorced. I was shocked because they always looked happy together and I have never heard them fight.
My mother kept on telling me that he would be back; that it was just a temporary thing. But he did not and after six months her attitude towards him turned into one of hatred and she started telling me how badly he had treated her the last ten years.
Soon he even stopped visiting me and taking me out for a day.
Then it started. One morning at breakfast mother suddenly looked alarmed and said: “You look very pale today. Are you not feeling well?”
I was surprised because I felt fine, so I said: “No mama, I am actually feeling on top of the world today!”
A strange thing happened then. I did not realize that it would become very common soon. Mother became very irritated and said: “Do you think I am stupid? I am a good mother, how would I not see when my only daughter is not feeling well?”
She forced me to stay at home and send me back to bed. Although I was quite happy at school and doing exceptionally well in my school-work I was still just a kid and didn’t mind staying at home that much. I loved reading and thought that I would be able to read all day.
Mother kept me at home and made an appointment for me with our doctor. I became even more surprised and asked her if she thought that it was really necessary for me to go to the doctor. Her face turned a deep red and she snapped at me: “Don’t try to be smart with me! Go wait for me in the car!”
My mother took quite a long time to ready herself for the visit to the doctor. She is a very attractive woman and was always very particular about her appearance.
At the doctor it was she who told him how bad I was feeling. It was clear to me that the doctor was ill at ease as he could find nothing wrong with me. Perhaps because of mother’s persistence, he said reluctantly at last that it might be caused by my tonsils and that it should perhaps be taken out, but only if really necessary.
Mother became more and more interested in all the afflictions and illnesses of the human body. She read columns by doctors in several popular magazines and even bought such books on the subject as she was able to get her hands on.
More and more often she would tell me that I was not looking okay, keeping me unnecessarily out of school. I loved school and had several good friends there, so that I started to resist being kept out of school for nothing.
Her beautiful green eyes would flame at my protestations and she would scream at me:
“ Why don’t you love sports like a healthy child? Why do you mostly stay indoors reading or watching TV ? No, there has to be something wrong with your health and I will keep on until I find a good doctor that will find out what it is!”
By then we had been to a handful of doctors and more and more she would become enraged if a doctor could not find anything wrong with me. Even if I could detect from their reactions that they thought that the problem might be in her mind.
She would become livid with rage at that!
I think the problem worsened because I became increasingly afraid of her. I just didn’t trust her any more. I was more and more often subjected to distasteful and even painful scrutinies by doctors and even a specialist. Once a tiny camera was pushed down my throat, x-rays taken, blood drawn from my arm, it went on and on.
When mother ran out of doctors to take me to, because she had become notorious in our city and even in the neighbouring one, she started putting me on diets.
On my twelfth birthday I looked at myself in the mirror and was shocked by my bony and hollow face. Then I started fearing that she would kill me.
At times it became a little better and we had good times together. Weeks and months and once it lasted for nearly a year. I could then eat what I want, my grades at school went to the top again and I could visit my friends as often as I liked.
Yet mother didn’t stop reading medical books, even the few available in the public library.
She would sit in front of the telly reading and falling asleep more and more often.
Then I started noticing the warning signs which I had come to fear. She would become, restless, ill at ease. It was as if she were an addict and I aptly named these signs “withdrawal symptoms.”
Then it would start all over again. She would say: “Your colour is awful Are you feeling well? There has to be something wrong!”
Once I tried to talk to a teacher whom we all looked up to. I struggled not to put my mother in a bad light, but I had to tell her everything.
To my surprise the teacher became ill at ease and then asked if I knew what anorexia and bulimia were.
I burst into tears and couldn’t speak. She started to comfort me, saying that she knew that my mother was divorced and that my mother seemed a bit overprotective, but that I should try to understand it. She advised me to eat good, nutritious food.
I would never try again, of that I was absolutely sure!
If – according to mother- I had to go to the doctor and seldom twice to the same one- mother acted as if she was going to the opera or theatre.
She would buy a new dress and would take hours to get ready, even asking my advice as to which dress suited her best.
Today, the day after my disturbing nightmare, happens to be my sixteenth birthday and for the first time ever I pretend to be ill. It isn’t difficult to convince mother that I am ill, because of what happened during the night. She is elated.
Instantly she said that she is taking me to the doctor, but I told her to please wait till the next day so that I can regain my strength by staying in bed, and promise her that I will definitely go tomorrow. She isn’t pleased at first but at last I am able to convince her that I will go to the doctor, if she could find an appointment for the next day. Which she immediately does.
It has to stop.
Towards the evening I get up and see the disappointment in her eyes: “Are you feeling better? I have already made an appointment for tomorrow, you know.”
I say: “No Mama, I am not okay, I will have to see a doctor tomorrow, but my body aches from lying in bed all day.”
She seems elated again, says: “That’s okay, but you have to tell the doctor about it, you hear?”
She has acquired the habit of drinking a glass of whiskey, and gradually more than one, lately. If I am around she usually asks me to fix her the drink. Mother loves to be spoiled and cared for.
I get up and say: “I am going to get myself a diet Coke and fix you a drink, okay?”
She accepts the offer and looks so radiant and happy that I have to harden myself against it.
I know full well what will happen tomorrow. She will be the belle of the ball, she will play the leading role during my farcical visit to the doctor. That is all that matters to her, to be in the center of attention.
I know that she will kill me. In the end, she’s going to kill me and at my funeral she’ll cry and greedily suck up the attention!
No, I have decided, I want to live my own life. away from her.
Mother drinks a sleeping pill every night before going to bed. Her insomnia has grown worse over the last couple of years so that time after time she has convinced a doctor to prescribe stronger pills. So strong that they have started warning her against an overdose.
Before going to her bedroom, I go into the kitchen and put on the rubber gloves which mother wears whenever she washes the dishes.
In her bedroom I pop three of the pills out of the foil they’re wrapped in. I put the foil together with the pill box in the pocket of my night gown
In the kitchen I grind the pills into a fine powder and mix it with the whisky.
Then an idea strikes me. I pop out another two and lace a second drink with it.
Before I take the glasses in I wipe them as thoroughly as I can.
Mother is so engrossed in the TV story in which two lovers are now all over each other that she can’t take her eyes from it
Before I slip the gloves off to put them in the pocket, I drop the loose foil and the box next to the recliner on which she is sitting.
She takes the first drink and gulps it greedily down. She doesn’t take her eyes off the screen. I hold my breath. She says nothing.
I stoop and kiss her on the cheek.
She says drowsily but clearly very happy: “See you in the morning. Sleep well.”
In South Africa today security plays a vital part in any business or private home. This book and the volumes to follow, will guide you step by step through the essential precautionary measures to be taken in protecting your family and valuables. From employing security guards, evacuation of your site and security measures to burglar bars and alarms in your private home.
a Book compiled by me from experience gained after 10 years in the security industry as Industrial relations officer with Nosa qualifications, 1st Aid, fire protection and also S.O.B. grade A.
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