Crabs

He said he didn't get the letter I sent him that summer, trying to break it off. It must have gone to his uncle of the same name ( the imaginary one, that is, son of the grandmother who unexpectedly came to visit when we had made arrangements to go out to my parents' home to meet). When he came back to town after the summer away, he brought two girlfriends, one attending University and one attending Teachers' College. He also brought crabs. That was the low point for me. In December, I went for a walk in the snow to the ski jump on a Sunday. I wasn't going to walk back. I wondered how long it would take to freeze to death. I could see no hope for a future for myself. However, I was carrying a child and death for me meant death for the child which I had no right to decide. So I walked back because there's always another day to die if it becomes too hard to live.

He had suggested abortion, or adoption. A friend who had an inconvenient pregnancy died in October at the hands of her husband, a pre-med student who successfully completed the abortion but botched the anaesthetic. That ended his career and her life. Would the child have had red hair like him? Did it not also have a right to live?

I always thought I would be incapable of murder. By the time I saw the last of him, I knew better, but it was not an innocent child I would have cheerfully murdered - slowly! It's important to learn to know oneself, and avoid situations that invite one to be what one does not wish to become. And so I learned what love is not.

I liked German music. For Christmas he gave me a record set of Mahler's Weltschmerz. I had been thinking more along the lines of German folk and dance music but the Weltschmerz was really appropriate, even if unintended on his part, since he knew no German. Can't stand Mahler since then.

And the crabs were all part of it. It was before bikini shaves and Brazilians. You got a special shampoo and shaved, twice, ten days apart. He claimed he picked them up off bedsheets in a hotel. Perhaps. Sometimes you don't want more details. Shame was a concept that was foreign to him as was honesty. Trust me, he said, so I added that phrase to my list of red flags for trouble and learned that trust comes from what you do, not what you say.

It was a long winter. I wrote things like "I walked with death and an unborn child" and "Death angel, stop looking over my shoulder" as I struggled to survive and give a chance to the new life that had been entrusted to my care. I gained five pounds and bought a size ten skirt at the Saan store. Friends and family looked the other way and I had no money for medical care. My heart, literally and figuratively, was permanently scarred as stress, unbeknownst to me, brought a recurrence of rheumatic fever that long winter.