Evening Primrose: a heart-wrenching novel for our times

by Kopano Matlwa

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

A powerful and timely novel from 'South Africa's Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie' ( Bookseller) . 'Heart-wrenching' Grazia . With urgency and tenderness Evening Primrose explores issues of race, gender and the medical profession through the eyes of a junior doctor. When Masechaba finally achieves her childhood dream of becoming a doctor, her ambition is tested as she faces the stark reality of South Africa's public healthcare system. As she leaves her deeply religious mother and makes friends with the politically-minded Nyasha, Masechaba's eyes are opened to the rising xenophobic tension that carries echoes of apartheid. Battling her inner demons, she must decide if she should take a stand to help her best friend, even it comes at a high personal cost. 'The best kind of political novel, its turns of emotion are virtuosic. Matlwa's voice is one we need.' Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Harmless Like You ' Slices straight to the heart, deft and clean' Laura Jane Williams, author of Becoming 'A daring and uniquely South African story' Marie Claire, South Africa on Coconut

Release date: July 27, 2017

Publisher: Sceptre

Print pages: 160

Sample

 

People say that in heaven we’ll be happy all the time. We won’t cry, we won’t feel any pain, we won’t be afraid, we’ll never worry. Things will be perfect. I once mentioned at Bible Study Group that I found this difficult to imagine. I found the whole idea of it exhausting, like a party that never ends. I’d begun to worry that I wouldn’t cope in heaven, that I wouldn’t fit in with all the giddy people. But Father Joshua’s wife said I should imagine the last time I felt extremely happy and filled with joy. Heaven would be like that moment, just frozen forever.

I tried to think back to graduation, a happy day for me. Bits of the Declaration of Geneva of the World Medical Association came back to me.

 

I solemnly pledge myself to consecrate my life to the service of humanity . . . The health of my patient will be my first consideration . . .

 

I’d been practising those words daily in the weeks leading up to the ceremony, and as we stood there in our gowns saying them in chorus, they fell like notes of high music emanating from my lips.

I remembered waiting for them to call out my name so I could go up to the stage to receive my certificate. There were many of us in the hall, and I was sitting next to people in my class I didn’t know very well, the ones sat next to only during registration, exams and any other event that required alphabetical ordering. The speeches were long and I couldn’t see Ma, so my mind slipped to the fantasies I’d been having for weeks, fantasies about all the things I would do as soon as I graduated.

I pictured myself applying for a clothing account and the lady behind the counter saying ‘Title, please?’ as she typed my details into the system. ‘Doctor,’ I’d say. Then I’d open a movie card, and again they’d ask ‘Miss or Mrs?’ and I’d say ‘Neither, it’s Doctor.’ Then again at the bank, and when booking a flight, and when visiting the dentist. Again and again and again. I’d say it slowly, say it loudly, drag it out, repeat it if I thought they might not have heard the first time. I remember laughing to myself as I sat there between L-ab and L-ij. I couldn’t get used to the idea. In just a few minutes I would be a doctor!

A rumour had started that car companies would be waiting at the back of the hall after our graduation ceremony, and brokers waiting to give us mortgages without deposits, as our titles were surety enough. Someone else said there would be financial advisors, too, handing out platinum credit cards with our names already printed on them. I knew all this was nonsense. But I kept turning my head, just in case.

 

When I first started to bleed, I thought Ma would kill me. I was a naughty child, putting my fingers where I shouldn’t, feeling parts of my body I had no business touching. So when, at the Rand Easter Show, I saw a stain on my Tinker Bell knickers, I didn’t cry like most little girls would. No, I knew immediately that it was my punishment from God, and hid the evidence. I hid it for days. I collected wads of toilet paper and wrapped them round and round my Woolies full briefs. It was scratchy and uncomfortable, but nothing compared to the discomfort I knew would come with confessing to Ma that I had sinned and was bleeding as a result. That would surely be the end of me. So when I stood on the tips of my tallest toes and pulled the garage door closed on our way to church one Sunday morning, revealing beneath my Scottish Highland-style dress a dark secret that had, until then, remained hidden between my thighs, and Ma asked as I got back into the car what those spots on my glitter tights were, I knew for sure that this was the beginning of my end.

And in some ways it was, because as if in eager response to Ma’s question, a floodgate opened within me and blood poured out between my thighs, down my legs and even onto my Jelly Baby shoes. It continued this way for weeks, easing up for a few days at a time, only to start again with even more intensity, charging past the clots in its way.

I later learnt at Sunday School that jugs of serum periodically pouring from one’s vagina was no divine punishment at all, but a physiologically necessary and healthy part of a woman’s life that should not only be welcomed, but celebrated.

Nonetheless, I prayed relentlessly that the God who had parted the Red Sea and dried it right up for the people He loved might consider blessing me with a season of dry panties.



I remember telling Ma that I wanted it taken out, cut away from me and incinerated in the large chamber at the hospital behind the hill.

She said I was mad.

‘It is mad!’ I screamed.

‘It’s not mad, Masechaba, it is just unwell.’

‘Well, I’m unwell because of it, Ma.’

Ma said I was speaking nonsense, that these were the things women were to endure, and that if it was removed from me I would one day regret being unable to bring life into the world.

Life?

What did I care for bringing life into the world when I couldn’t have a life of my own? When I lived hostage to a beast in my pelvis that could split its head at any moment of its choosing, and angrily spill its contents onto the floor at any second of its liking without provocation?

What life did I have? Did Ma not care about that?

No, she did not.



I became a loner. Not because I wanted to be alone, but because it was easier for everyone that way. Tshiamo, my brother, was my only friend. The stains didn’t seem to bother him as much as they bothered others. Like when Papa bought him a car and he offered to take me for a spin. I was so excited to see Tshiamo excited, I forgot to run into the house and change my tampon and add a second layer to my pad. It was only when we got onto the highway, us foolish at 4:30pm to enter the highway, that I saw the traffic and thought, crap. I tried not to think about it, even when I felt the stickiness between my thighs and knew that the tampon was engorged and the pad saturated and the only way out was through my jeans and onto Tshiamo’s new car seat. I tried hard to focus on the Tracy Chapman Tshiamo was singing along to. When we eventually got home, he pretended not to notice, but I knew he had, because I saw him through my bedroom window later with a bucket of soapy water and a sponge in his hand.



At school I always sat at the back of the class, making sure there was never anybody behind me, so that if I messed up my school dress, at least I wouldn’t be the last to know.

I was clever and inquisitive at school, and I had no interest in hanging out with the troublemakers who marked out the last row of desks as their own. But I knew that if I was to maintain a seat for myself far from the suspicious eyes of the cruelest girls, I had to be as bad-ass as the best of them.



You learn some tricks as you go. Dark clothing, ski pants under my school tunic, a cheap, thick, no-name brand pad under the Always Infinity to absorb the inevitable overflow. I was never without a tampon in my bra, so that if I had to dash to the bathroom in a crowd, I didn’t have to bend over and scrabble through my school bag first. Ballet? Forget it. Synchronised swimming? Are you crazy? Gymnastics? Not even if I was paid. Netball? Risky. Running? Sometimes.

No parties. No sleepovers. Ma wanted none of the humiliation that would come with a phone call from another parent to advise that her daughter had bled through the sheets and onto the mattress. She pretended it didn’t bother her, but I knew she was just as embarrassed and p. . .