“Beautiful Lies.”
6 May 2008.
For the past couple of months I was feeling very anxious and nervous. Why? Well because I was anxious to bring Tatenda into a world where I have nothing to give her.
And as I looked at the calendar and that due date drew near I asked myself “What will I give her?”
I guess it does not help that to date her father has not gotten anything. I have done what every girl is trained to do. I have hinted. I was walking in Lime ridge Mall once and I saw the most glorious little pink dress, I didn’t even know if I was having a girl, but when Max came home that night, I raved on and on about this pretty pink dress. Of course we had to wait for the ultra sound to confirm the sex. And when they said, “it’s a girl!” I was thrilled beyond, belief.
I begged, “Let’s go and buy that dress.”
“Later.” Was Max’s response. That was always Max’s response to every request I made. Here we are, three months to go and still no pink dress and nothing at all from Max.
So, naturally my anxiety turned into anger. I admit that in the last five weeks or so, all I have had in me is anger. Anger of course, gave way to betrayal as Max went cold turkey on me. No calls, no visits, nothing. This was because he had lied to me right to my face. I caught him in his lie and you would think he would be ashamed, instead – nothing.
Right now though, all I feel is fear. I am really scared. Since last week I have not had a good night’s sleep and I am very tired and worn out, but most of all, I am petrified. You see, last week my midwife Shirin told me that Tatenda was breech. I wasn’t too surprised since she was breech three weeks before. But, according to Shirin, she is supposed to start turning. So, Tatenda, you have four weeks to turn your butt or else…..
I guess if in four weeks she is still not turned, then the knife is for me. I have never had any surgery and whilst I know that hundreds of c- sections are performed every day, I am still scared. I guess it does not help that I have no one to share this with. I am alone. I will be cut up and if something happens to me then who will take care of my babies?
I am pretty sure nothing will happen. I will go in and come out like a champ, I don’t know. You know, this is why I have made bad choices in men, because I am afraid – afraid of this very feeling that I am having right now. I was so scared to be alone that I believed some of the silliest lies just so that I could be with someone. And yet, here I am going through a very difficult time. Where is the man who asked me to have his baby? Life stinks. But, I guess I have to remember that “the world owes me no favours” right?
My father hates, and not just plain hates, but hates with a vengeance people who lie. Here is a man who was born in 1944, went to University in Sweden in the sixties. This is when the word racism didn’t exist simply because it was normal to ill treat black people. So, as you can imagine what kind of a milestone that was for him to be studying medicine at the University of Lund among all these white people. There were only a handful of “them” black people, and I will call them the “brainy bunch”. I mean, lets face it. You had to be pretty smart for them to spend their money to teach you medicine, right?
The point is, as brainy as my dad is, he hates liars because he says that when someone makes up their mind that they are going to lie to you, they have under estimated your intelligence. Simply put, they think that you are an idiot.
My dad also feels that when a man lies to a woman it’s a sign of disrespect. I mean, you must think very little of the person if you don’t feel you need to tell them the truth. So, you can imagine what a slap in the face it was for me when here is the man I love sitting less than a meter away from me, lying point blank to my face. To make matters worse, it was not just one line of a lie.
It was a carefully constructed, thought out story that he had set off to tell me. And while he was busy going on and on about this crazy woman at the shelter that he had to see, I was just sitting there saying to myself “what the fuck!” over and over in my head. Initially I just felt like, “you bastard!” But, after I sat down and tried to justify his lies to myself like I often do – I felt like someone had taken a knife and stabbed me in the heart.
As you may well know, the thing with lying is that it starts with just one lie and then after that you build it up. You start weaving a basket with this thread that started as just one lie. So, I was sitting there and adding all the pieces and I just wanted to die. Not die because Max had lied to me, no. I wanted to die because I had believed his lies. It should have been ok because after all, if I had soaked up his bullshit for this long I must be an idiot at some level right?
What devastated me was that I had ruined two people’s lives in the process. I look at Samuel now and my heart bleeds. As if his autism was not enough for him, I had to add to his problems. Now he will have to go into a foster home just so that I can give birth.
And Tatenda, my unborn, kicking daughter. I should’ve known better. I grew up without a father and now I will subject her to the same? I feel so horrible about it. I really should have made a world for my kids to enjoy – instead I am broke and and bringing another child into this kind of world – all because I chose to believe in a “beautiful lie.”
