Umbilicus: An autobiographical novel

SHADOW SHOW

ADOPTED CHILD BECOMES PREGNANT schoolgirl. Argh, you're such a bloody cliché!

Lying on your bed, listening to a mixtape from Barney "The Skin" Simon's Shadow Show, you cannot help wonder if this is what your mother, your real mother, went through when she found out she was pregnant with you. The terror, the regret, the shame. The humiliation you've brought not only upon yourself, but your entire family as well. Could this be history repeating itself?

You've always been told you were conceived within the so-called 'sanctity' of marriage, but by the time you were born, their divorce was finalised. Hmmm, just like David Berkowitz, "The Son of Sam." That's a rather abrupt end to a legal union, wouldn't you say? A matter of months. Why the rush? You're old enough now to understand just because a man and a woman call each other husband and wife, doesn't mean they actually love one another, or their relationship isn't dysfunctional. You've thought about all this stuff before, but now, pressing on your own bloated belly, it's a lot closer to home.

Why did their marriage fail? Did he have an affair? Did she have an affair? Did she have a one-night-stand? Was she raped? Did she even know who the father was? Did she tell him she was carrying his child? How did he react? Did he tell her he wanted nothing to do with her or the baby? Was he abusive towards her during the pregnancy?

Were they comfortably off, or destitute dregs of society living in a homeless shelter like The Ark at the ass end of Point Road, amongst the sailors and the whores? Was she financially unable or psychologically unfit to take care of you? Were you forcibly removed from her, or did she willingly surrender you?

Did she drink or take drugs during the pregnancy? Could any of that have had an effect on you? What kind of genes are you carrying anyway? Could this be an explanation for your violent, uncontrollable rages? The sinister thoughts you carry deep inside? Could there actually be something latently wrong with you?

Did she form a bond with you during the pregnancy? Talk to you, give you a name? Or did she see you as an inconvenience, an unwelcome parasite, an alien she couldn't wait to expel from her womb? What happened after you were born? Did she see you and hold you and feed you? Or were you taken from her straight away?

If she had kept you, where would you have grown up? Would you have lived here in Natal, or perhaps the Cape, the Free State, or the Transvaal? Oh God, imagine that — could you really have been a Vaalie? What would your home life have been like? Would you have been raised English or Afrikaans? Would your family have been happy-clappies, or Methodist, or Dutch Reformed, or nothing at all?

Did she at some point, any point, regret her decision to relinquish you? Was she made aware of the sixty days in which she could change her mind about consent to the adoption of her child? Did she ever think about you after that? Does she still think about you? Does she want to meet you? Most importantly, is she even still alive? Will you get a chance to meet her one day, and have the opportunity to ask her all these questions face to face? Or will it be too late? Will she have been killed in a car crash, or died from cancer, or like Angela's mom, committed suicide?

Your mind is reeling with all these unanswered questions when the matter in hand flashes into focus. What the hell are you going to do about this baby?

As soon as they find out at school you're pregnant, you'll be expelled. And without a Matric, your future is screwed.

She has made it clear you are no longer welcome in her house. And if she kicks you out, you have nowhere to go, no means of supporting yourself, or this child.

You can't give it away. After all the emotional and psychological trauma you've personally been put through, it is something you wouldn't wish upon your worst enemy.

And you can't terminate. Abortion is illegal. Even if you could find some backstreet butcher, you don't have any money to pay for it.

The only thing you do know, without a shadow of a doubt, is you cannot continue with this pregnancy. And the best, no, the only way out of this mess, is to end your life. Take the baby with you. Kill two birds with one stone. Luckily you're not afraid of dying, having decided from all the library books you've read that the Buddhist cycle of life is what makes most sense. The biggest problem is figuring out where to get your hands on that proverbial 'stone.'

There aren't any ceiling beams in the house, so you can't hang yourself.

There's no gun in the house, so you can't shoot yourself.

You could swallow some Rattex or pool acid Dad keeps in the garage, but you're not sure how quickly they work, and you don't fancy a long, agonising end.

You hate pain and the sight of blood so you can't cut your wrists.

Although you have access to plenty of hard tack in Dad's liquor cabinet, there isn't anything stronger than Panado to mix it with, so you can't overdose. Oh, the irony of growing up in a doctor's house with no actual medicine cabinet! You bet she has something to do with it.

The only thing you do have free and ready access to is the pedestrian bridge over the M13 highway nearby. The one by Woodcutter's restaurant you have to cross on your walk to and from school every day. You could just jump off it in front of a truck or a bus. Splat! Like a cartoon character. Perhaps a bit messy for the person who has to clean up, but it's not like this cruel, awful world has left you much choice.

What will your suicide note say?

To the mother who abandoned me and put me in this position in the first place, let this be on your conscience.

To the mother who could never have children of her own and for whom I was always going to be second choice, let this be on your conscience.

I know I am unwanted.

I know I am a burden.

The world will be a much better place without me in it.

I wish I had never been born.

I am saving my own child the same fate.