My Flat, Cresta

Saturday, April 03, 2004

Service: N/A
Food: N/A
Ambience: *
Babe Count: N/A

It's technically Sunday, seeing as it's around 2 in the morning. But for me, it remains Saturday until I've gone to sleep and woken up the next day.

I've just finished brushing my teeth, and my cellphone does its message announce thing. Immediately, my heart leaps. Something's wrong! I hope nothing's happened to Jacqui!!!

I fumble with the button. It's a message from Lance, my brother. He's in Port Alfred, and it's 2am, and something must be badly wrong.

He says:

Hi. Please call me URGENTLY. Mommy was raped today (Saturday). No, this is NOT an April Fool's joke. Lance.

Oh man. What can I tell you? Helplessness. Rage. Despair. Futility. Pain. Loss.

I phone Lance. "Mommy spoke to me on Monday," I say. "She said there'd been an intruder."

Lance says, "I spoke to Willie. He's helping her. They're at the copshop now. She reckons it's the same guy."

My mom lives in a hut on the top of a hill in Port St John's in what used to be the Transkei. There's no electricity there, and she has to charge her cellphone on the car battery.

When I spoke to her on Monday, it was in response to a "Call Me" message from her. She wanted me to know that the dream she'd had on Saturday night (which she'd told me about on Sunday night while I was sitting at the Mugg & Bean in Cresta) wasn't a warning to me, but rather to her.

In the dream, she said there was great danger to me. She said there were people, and they were attacking me, and she was very scared. She said that I must be very careful, and she just wanted to warn me.

So on Monday, when I spoke to her, it was hectic to hear that later on Sunday night, in the driving Transkei rain, a man had attempted to enter her hut, and only the fact that she has huge dogs kept the guy from getting to her. She said he appeared to be drunk, and that it happened about 11 o'clock that night. She told me she was safe, and that I mustn't worry.

So fuck. I should've worried.

Lance says, "If it's that guy, he'd better hope I don't find him. He'd better hope." I'm thinking the same thing. I've seen Lance punch a closed door off it's hinges. And I'm hoping that he DOES find this guy. I'm a liberal type of dude, and I don't believe in the death penalty. But you know what? Someone rapes my mother, I'll kill him myself. Jesus.

So I send Jacqui an sms. Aside from my therapist, she's the only person I need to be with right now. But her phone's off. She'll probably call me early in the morning to find out what's happened. Oh man. Oh man.

And I send my mom an sms, saying that I'm lighting a candle for her, and that I'm sending light and love. She's 57 years old. And she's not in good physical shape. Lance reckons that her cancer of the uterus has returned, and that she hasn't got long to live. And now some dude's raped her. Ah man. This is too much.

I'll let you know what's happening.

Right now I'm trembling too much to type anymore.