“You did.” My mom’s voice was even softer this time. “From the age of eight until around eighteen you were in and out of hospitals. First with the damage from the accident, then all the rehab you had to do for your back, and then with the leukemia. You went into remission for a while, but then it came back.”
“And we started treatment all over again,” I filled in the blanks and my mom nodded. “Birthdays, and Christmas and . . . I never went to school again. I did homeschooling. Even after the cancer was gone.” I was remembering more and more by the second now. The white, sterile loneliness that the four walls of the hospital provided me with. Day after day, year after year.
“I had a lot of complications from the treatment,” I said, almost whispering that to myself. “The hospital became my prison.” I looked up at Noah, and he gave me a sympathetic smile. The smile was warm and I wished I could reach out and grab it and put it in my pocket. Keep it close.
“But I was cured,” I said, finally looking at my parents.
“Yes. You were very lucky. We were very lucky.”
“I might not be able to have kids one day though,” I said thoughtfully.
“No,” my mother said sounding solemn. “The chemo, all the radiation . . . you might not be able to.” I heard her swallow from across the room. As if swallowing down a ball of pain that was too big for her throat. “But you are alive,” she whispered.
“A lot of my friends aren’t alive. Many of them died.” I had an image of getting close to people, only for them to die and leave me.Push or pull?
“Yes, they did. But you survived. You were lucky,” he reiterated.
I nodded, but I didn’t feel lucky. “You two were always so scared. When I was at home, you disinfected everything. I was never allowed to go outside and play with other children, because of that time I caught flu and landed up in the hospital with double pneumonia. The doctor said it was ‘touch and go.’ ”Touch and go.The words echoed in my head. I’d heard them a lot as a child. More times than a child should.
“Your immune system was so compromised,” my mom said.
“I used to . . .” I turned and looked at the window behind me. I got up, walked over to it, pulled the curtain aside and felt the tears flood my throat as I looked at the park. “I used to sit here and watch the other kids playing, but I couldn’t play with them. One germ, just one little germ could kill me.” I stared at the playground and could almost hear the excited screams and laughter as they went around and around on the merry-go-round, making themselves dizzy.
“We had to take such precautions.” My mom’s voice quivered now.
“You overcooked all the food. You were always so scared of me getting sick from it. From anything. You would make people who came to visit wear masks and wash their hands. We even moved to Durban because the air quality was better here than in Joburg. And sometimes, you and Dad weren’t allowed to hug me.”
My mom nodded and inhaled sharply. “Yes. Sometimes you had to be isolated in the hospital, to prevent infections. And when you were home, we did everything to keep you as safe as possible. We didn’t want to lose you.”
I turned away from the window, back to everyone in the room. All eyes were fixed on me. “I was so scared too. I was scared of dying and catching an illness and getting sick and going to hospital and . . .I’m still so scared.Of everything.” A tear escaped my eye. Hospital was not my only prison. I’d gone from one prison into another one. A self-imposed prison. I’d locked myself away in that clean, disinfected apartment eating the same foods day after day, wearing a watch that repelled mosquitos because I was scared of malaria, removing body hair because I was scared of mites and other disease-carrying insects, scared of driving, of crossing the road, scared of people and their germs, just scared. Terrified.
I walked back to the couch and sat down. I put my head in my hands then shook it from side to side. “The last time I felt truly free and happy was in that field.” I felt a hand come out and grab mine. I looked up to see whose it was. It was my mother’s.
“Before the accident, we couldn’t get you out of the garden in the evening to come in for supper. Always playing, climbing trees, planting flowers—I was sure you were going to become a florist. You loved being outside.”
“And then, one day, I never was.” The painful realization of this loss hit me hard.
“We made some mistakes,” my mom suddenly said. “We wrapped you up and kept you away from life because we were scared, but I’m afraid the way we handled it made you so afraid of life and living. If we could go back and do it all again, we would do things differently. We would be more balanced.” My mother started crying now, not like before. Not small tears. My father reached out and squeezed her hand. His lip was trembling, as if he too was fighting back the waterworks.
I felt Noah tense up next to me, and then he spoke for the first time since this conversation had begun. “You did what any parent would. To keep their child safe,” he said firmly. “You did what you thought was right.” I gazed over at him. He looked almost as broken as my parents did. I didn’t feel broken, though. I felt detached. Like I was sitting outside of myself and this conversation.
“Why do I have so much money?” I asked, changing the subject.
“The man who was driving lost control because the road was cracked and damaged. We both sued city roads for their negligence, and the road accident fund paid out a lot of money, to you and him. He’s in a wheelchair now. He’s a quadriplegic.”
“Oh God,” I gasped.
“We used a lot for your medical bills, and the rest you wanted to put into a retirement fund. So we did.”
“That’s very sensible,” I said, in a mocking way.
“We always thought you should spend some of that money. Quit that job you hate so much and go and do things with it. Get out of your apartment and travel the world. Live life. Live your dream . . . but you never wanted to. You wanted to keep it safe for ‘one day.’ ”
“One day.” I remembered that phrase so well now. And then I remembered something else. “We had a fight about that.”
My mom and dad exchanged glances again. “Yes, two years ago. And we’ve hardly seen or heard from you since then.”
“You were trying to push me to do something with the money. A cruise! That’s right. I remember. You showed me all these pamphlets. You kept saying that I needed to go out and experience the world and explore. I said no.”
