At the maternity clinic
I am in the queue at the clinic again, doing the right thing and getting my check-up. Everything with the pregnancy is going well, according to the nursing sisters, despite me being so young.
It’s an ordeal for me, though. The hostility and judgement, the looks from the older, proper new moms and pregnant women in the queues, make me feel like a fake. I resent my big tummy and the kicking thing inside. This was not supposed to happen to me!
The nurses have organised that, after the birth, my baby will go at once to the special home for newborns that are to be given up for adoption.
But still I have to sit through their lectures: “Tsk tsk! Now please, my dear, be responsible and do not get into this unfortunate situation again. Either abstain or use contraception – preferably condoms in this age of AIDS. You are lucky you are not HIV-positive, and your baby is safe. Think of the risk you ran? And let’s hope you won’t regret giving up the baby. But, you do have a window period where you can change your mind. Really … I don’t know … you girls today!”
“Yes,” I say sullenly. I want to scream at them that that is exactly what I was trying to do – be responsible. That I had wanted my so-called boyfriend to be tested, wanted to use a condom. But I was raped!
I’m so tired from carrying this pregnancy around that I have no energy to fight back. Thankfully it is the long holiday and at least I am spared from trying to keep up at school. I can’t wait for this nightmare to be over.
As I lumber through the waiting room to go out and buy some vetkoek – I’m starving as usual – I notice an unusual young woman standing there. She looks out of place, just like me. But it’s not that she seems too young to be there. She looks over twenty, and pregnant, but she is not like the other mothers in the queue. They are chatting and complaining about the heat and laughing. They tenderly cuddle their new babies, or clasp their arms protectively around their big tummies. It’s quite a relaxed social scene.
She stands apart, serious. She’s wearing an old-fashioned, calf length, gathered brown dress that hides her tummy. She has a doek and plain, flat shoes. It’s like she is not from town.
She is looking up and down the queue, at all the happy moms and moms-to-be, one by one. Up and down, up and down.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, her eyes fall on me and catch mine looking at her. She glances away quickly, but the expression in her eyes gives me a little chill, a shudder. So, so intense. Angry, even. Strange. I wonder why?
Oh well, I think. Maybe she also doesn’t want to be pregnant. But she’s older; she can’t be as angry as I am at my situation.
***
Tell us: Do young girls who get pregnant deserve to be lectured by the nurses at the maternity clinic?