The house you live in has no full-length mirror, and this is by design. You have learnt to hurry past department store windows and to look down at your phone or shoes when in elevators with those insistent mirrored walls. You have made it a point never to be caught in front when in a group, posing for a picture, and you certainly do not take full-body pictures yourself. It’s a little career, this commitment to avoiding the sight of your body, something you picked up in your early twenties when you started noticing your frame against those of your peers.
Before this, it had never bothered you that your body looked the way it does, your wide hips, thick thighs that jiggle when you walk and an ample behind that turns heads everywhere you go. It never used to bother you much because all the women to whom you belong look just like you. You grew up with them, they praised how much you looked like them, made room for you with every comment, every look of pride, every hand-me-down. After your grandmother Mma Nkisang’s funeral, you were given three of her tailor-made vintage dresses,
“These are going to fit you perfectly, Montle,” your mother had said, holding up one dress by the hip area, stretching it, “See how wide it is.”
Even from the grave, the great matriarch of the family could still clothe you.
In your first year of university, you noticed how gazes from boys and girls alike lingered, not on your face but everywhere else on your body. All day, eyes rotated, found you and rolled up and down your body. They stayed, as if caught by a spell, they followed your every move and registered on the face of their owners, something not quite admiration, more like wonder, desire mixed with envy. And then the eyes started growing mouths, and the mouths fixed themselves to whistle, to sigh, to smile and to pout.
They remembered they could speak and so they did, a comment here about your skirt, how it rides up your thighs and your hands’ all-day devotion to the task of pulling it down. One mouth says it must feel good to hold on to your hips during the act, and all the other mouths open to laugh. Yet another mouth says to other mouths, not to judge the size of your breasts because once a baby comes, they will grow to the size of your behind, and once again, there is laughter. The laughter haunts you; it is endless—a bottomless pit you fall into gracelessly. You learn to walk fast in the opposite direction when you hear even the faintest of sniggles, believe it is following you when you are alone on long stretches of walks, and hide from it when it approaches you, all of it a nightmare until you decide to do something about it.
*
“I think something is following me,” you say to Pastor Grace, while sitting on her lush velvet maroon couch, which, you guess, she chose to feel like royalty. Pastors like that sort of thing. You want her to pray for you, to put her hand on your forehead and pull out from whatever depth the voices that have started laughing in your head, that follow you around to the ablutions, to the lecture halls, to your dormitory.
“Something or someone?” Pastor Grace asks you. Her voice is two octaves lower than yours and smooth, like warm honey. It is all it takes to break the well of your tears and reduce you to a puddle on the floor. For a long time, you were afraid to mention this to anyone, the fact that you feel like something is following you, afraid they would say of you, as your people like to put it, it is Spring time and the trees are starting to bloom, or another piglet has escaped, or whatever other euphemism for craziness they would come up with.
Pastor Grace gets olive oil from a cabinet behind you and commands you to kneel down. When she pours it onto her hand, it becomes anointing oil, and she places it on your forehead to open up an exit for the ‘monitoring spirits’. “They follow your every move and report back to your village people master”, she says.
You say nothing in response, because you cannot tell if what will come out is your voice or the monitoring spirits’.
“Out! Out!” She commands, “Out in the name of Jesus! Get out of her!” She keeps going until you are a mess of snot and tears convulsing on the floor; her voice, a hoarse vessel that carries you to hope. After this, you will no longer be concerned with people’s eyes, you hope, and no longer be haunted by distant laughter or whispering voices. You are transported into a quiet reverie that defies all the commotion in the room, but soon enough, you’re startled back to consciousness by the incessant commands from Pastor Grace.
She keeps at it until you start wondering when it will stop. You want it to stop because you know there are no demons following you, no witches’ coven pensive back home waiting for intelligence about your boring days at the university, no, not really. You just wanted to talk to someone who would not make a big deal out of your fears, but now the whole ordeal is a comfort that has extended beyond its serviceability.
Because you would like to go now, you stop crying and lie prostrate on the ground, your limbs must lie limp because only then will the work be considered done, and indeed, Pastor Grace sees this and pronounces you free. You get up and dust yourself off, clean up your face and take out your last P100 and put it in the offering basket conveniently placed at the centre of the dining table, in clear view.
*
When you get back to your dorm, you are careful with your newfound freedom. You know there are no monitoring spirits interested in you, but you sure would like to keep whatever feeling of redemption you have.
“Did you visit someone off campus today?” Loapi asks you while draining a container of noodles into another.
“No, I went to church”, you lie, but not really.
“Anthony came looking for you.”
“Why?” The word tumbles out of your mouth before you can catch it.
Anthony is a guy from your English class with whom you have been hanging out since the semester started. The last time you were together, he asked if he could spend more time with you and something coiled inside of you, away from him. He is not short; it’s only that you are a tall girl yourself, and besides, physical attributes have never bothered you when it comes to relationships.
Despite this fact about you, you have just never been able to feel the proverbial ‘spark’ with him. He is more reserved than you are and speaks with a heavy accent, testament to his North-Eastern origin. His fashion choices of neon-coloured graphic T-shirts and skinny jeans just rub you the wrong way. He also never just straight-up says something; he always must lead with uncertainty,
“I was thinking maybe, if you don’t mind, we could walk to the gate together for some hot dogs. I could buy you one if you’d like.” That is what he said to you the first day you started hanging out with him. You liked how he did not sound entitled to your time, not even looking you in the eye, let alone your body, the way other boys did—coming in hot, their eyes all over you, their asking you out not even a request, more like a command, let’s go someplace from here.
Anthony is nothing like Poelo, though, who only ever calls you to his room after 8pm, when the corridors and even the parking lots are so deserted they resemble an apocalyptic scene. He looks like discipline, commitment and occasional indulgence, with the body of someone who went to the gym for years, then fell off for one. You like that about him, being in his soft but defined muscular arms, listening to his 90s R&B playlists and eating food his sister occasionally brings him from home. He might be a douchebag who does not know how to take care of a lady, judging by how he does not mind sending you to walk the five blocks back to your dorm by yourself, two hours or so after your meeting him, but he stimulates your mind, that and other things, for however brief a time you get to spend with him.
You tell yourself it is because he is still figuring out himself that he has not asked you to be officially his. You say this even when you notice him kick familiar sandals under his bed right before you lie on it together, even when you hear him extinguish the fire of another stood-up girl on his phone, even when Loapi pulls out her phone to show you her new boyfriend and behold, it is the same guy you keep stealing time to go be with.
On the digital photograph, all his harsh features are softened by his coy smile, pulling his lips to the side to reveal just a glint of his teeth. He looks like the kind of boy who would break many hearts, but somehow you think you will be the exception. He will never be your boyfriend, you know that, you have made peace with that. You only want to be the warm place he crawls to when night comes, or is it the other way around?
You don’t get to spend much time with Anthony, strait-laced Anthony, who has no accommodation in school and would never let you stay over at his house, never come to your room even when Loapi is not there because, that’s just opening the door for temptation. You said yes when he asked you out because he looked like he would grow up into the kind of man your mother would expect you to end up with—respectful, on the straight-and-narrow and maybe hard-working.
*
Occasionally, when no one is looking, you steal glances to look at the other girls in your class, to see what makes them one body and you other. They all look similar, as if cut from the same mould. Against them, your body features look exaggerated, opposite, and grotesque. Your face has always been smooth, and though you have overheard some boys saying it leaves a lot to be desired, you couldn’t be bothered. You don’t feel ugly, just gawked upon, like a spectacle.
When your mother calls to ask how school is, you just say fine because the truth is your GPA can attest to that, even in your third year. When she reminds you to take care of your body, it is because the last two times you visited home, your frame had grown smaller, your medical card told on you of the three times you had been rushed to the clinic, having fainted during class. Low blood, it said, and you were relieved to have a reason for your body failing you.
“You have lost so much weight, Montle. Have you been sick?”
“If by sick you mean with beauty, then yes, mama,” you jokingly respond. Trying to puncture the question so it is flatter, lighter.
“Montle, I am serious, are you ok?”
“I have been well, mama, nothing iron supplements and a good breakfast cannot fix,” you say this, suggesting you have everything under control, even though you know you still do not eat as your body requires.
When you are back at school, your mother calls occasionally to ask if you are taking care of your body, she is being careful around you by not outright mentioning food, deciding to go with care instead, the word’s round edges sliding softly into the conversation as opposed to are you eating, with its sharp edges, catching on other words, making the conversation all jagged and uneven. You tell her yes, you are taking care, and you are not lying. You have been reading books on self-care, eating at least one whole meal a day sometimes and taking walks in the evenings when it is cooler and everyone is rushing to catch the last lesson or kombi.
In your report about care, you don’t tell your mother about the visit to the Psychology lecturer, the dim light in his corner office, or the explanation that you would fail otherwise. You don’t mention his comment about how your body could cruise you through all his modules if you ever needed it, the promise you made to yourself that it would only be that once. You remember this all in a flash, and your body jerks itself tense so sharply you let out an animalistic grunt.
“Are you ok, Montle?”
“Ee mma, I am ok. I just choked on water,” you lie, you don’t tell her how looking at yourself in the mirror haunts you with images of him, his heaviness, his caressing every inch of you, his supposed praise of your body while at it. If you have never looked at your full body before, you refuse to even think about it now. Not that it does not deserve your care, but that you feel you have no right to behold or think of your beauty in its fullness. You think you betrayed it, gave it away to be used, so what could be saved? A couple thousand Pulas worth of an exam re-sit? Your humiliation at having to repeat the module with younger students? What exactly had you saved?
*
You never forget a time when your beauty lured you away as a little girl. You and your older cousins, Pitso, Thero and Seetsele had been sent to collect water by the river, and you set out to learn its other ways. You had been taught to collect water by the bend where the trees grew thickest and never to go further, even if the water looked clearer elsewhere.
On this particular day, the sun was burning cruelly on your skin, and your throats were parched from talking, laughing and singing all the way to the river. When you reached the bend, your cousins mentioned that a swim would be nice and in they all went. You, on the other hand, decided to just lean over and drink to quench your thirst. In bending down, you were met by the wavy reflection of your body. Your limbs and face longer, your tummy hanging out of the no longer fitting shirt you had on. When you smiled, your face turned radiant against the glistening water, a sight you could behold forever.
You had seen yourself many times in mirrors, but this reflection told you there was something in the water, something to be followed, and so you walked a little further down the bank until it was elevated, the water lower than before, your reflection on it sure but far. You did not mean to jump in, but to come closer to the image of yourself that seemed vivid and still. You jumped into the river and was met by the sudden immediacy of liquid rock, resisting first the weight of your body, and then pulling you under. Realising the gravity of your action, you tried with much effort to swim against the current, but the water made your arms a flailing joke. You choked on water, took some in through your nose, and before you could give up, your cousins’ familiar hands came to your rescue.
“Montle, why? Do you want to get us in trouble?” Seetsele started as soon as they got you back on land.
“And why did you go so far from us only to get in the water?” Pitso chimed in, his high-pitched voice doing the heavy lifting to make him sound more exasperated than he looked. Thero also threw in a few angry words to join the chorus chiding you, not giving you a chance to speak.
You could not tell them this, but you knew it was the reflection that drew you away from their safety into the unknown quiet of the water. It would be a while before you returned home because there was no way you were walking back drenched like that, someone would see you, and in true it takes a village fashion, word would get home before you did, and what you would find awaiting you would be Mma Nkisang’s firm hand with an even firmer stick for your bodies.
You think to yourself how love has always reached out to save you from yourself. Your little cousins saving you from your vanity, then making sure to deliver you dry and safe back home. Today, it is your mother’s voice, despite the danger you cannot tell her you have been in, it is always her voice reaching out to bring you back to her safely.
*
When you graduate, you cannot be gladder that the graduation gown is baggy, but still you wear a maxi dress underneath. At your new job, you let them call you ‘mother’ for years because your dress code is ground-skimming dresses or skirts with baggy blouses. You refuse the affections of any man whose first instinct is to compliment your body, however well-meaning, because to you it means what drew them to you is what has drawn everyone else before. Monthly, your paycheque goes untouched, being that you cannot bring yourself to accept that you have worked hard to be where you are, because one time, all those many years ago, something was taken from you, and whatever you do, it never seems to come close to being enough to buy it back.
*
For December, your colleagues suggest you do a gift exchange, and you agree because, why not? You pick Halisi to be your partner for the exchange, the one junior who reminds you of yourself when you were still full of hope and wet behind the years. Unlike you, she dresses to accentuate her features that look just like yours. She is all bright eyes, wide smiles and easy laughter. You do not envy her; instead, you want to take her under your wing, to protect her, and warn her of the eyes you see leering, following her every move. You trust the gift-exchange will bring you closer to her.
Come gift exchange day, you get Halisi a holiday getaway gift card of an amount that sends even the CEO gasping. She, in turn, gifts you a big cushiony something that looks soft around the edges. You are called last to open your gift, and your face wilts a little when you realise it is a full-body mirror. You turn to look at Halisi, and she flashes you that reckless abandon smile of hers. Something cracks inside of you. Light streams in.
Phodiso Modirwa is a Motswana writer and poet with works appearing in adda Magazine, Guernica Magazine, Brittle Paper, Lolwe, The Shallow Tales Review and in other literary magazines. She is Fellow of the International Writing Program (IWP). Her chapbook, Speaking in Code is published by Akashic Books as part of the New Generation African Poets Box Set: Tisa. Crossing Roads is her debut poetry collection.
Cover photo credit: Aibek Skakov