Mercedes Sayagues I pour a triple Scotch for Marcelina and one for me. We sit by the fireplace at her home on a cold winter evening. We are waiting for a phone call. My friend’s legs and arms have been failing for the past two weeks. She staggers, trembles and falls. We are waiting for her doctor to call with the results of a battery of tests and scans. He will know if the problem is neurological or muscular, some weird disease or a brain tumour. Marcelina’s lover and sister arrive. They have rosy cheeks from the cold and a forced joviality. I think they know more than we know but I pretend I don’t know they know. I pour more whisky. The phone rings. For 20 minutes the doctor talks while Marcelina listens attentively, asks a few questions. Early on she drops a few words to let us know: brain tumours. Several. Metastasis. Radiotherapy is needed.
Her lover, Annabel, goes to the kitchen for more ice. I know she is crying. Marcelina puts down the phone and looks at us calmly. ”I will need a walking stick,” says Marcelina. I suggest one of those that conceal a bayonet inside. It could be useful against thieves. Better, I will bring a carved Nyami-Nyami ceremonial stick from Zimbabwe. ”My hair will fall off, but I will not wear a wig; hats it will be,” says Marcelina. An afterthought: ”I wonder if pubic hair also falls off?” ”Well, I’m losing mine already,” says her older sister, Maria, who is 58. ”First I noticed white hairs. Now it is getting thinner and thinner, like a young girl’s.”
I’m surprised. I didn’t know this happened. Yes, says Maria. A lot of her friends grieve about pubic hair loss. Once I did an assignment for Colors, Benetton’s magazine, on body shopping, things you can buy for the body. Its cover featured a pubic hair wig, popular among trendy Japanese women who long for a hairy, Western-looking pussy. While we go for Brazilian bikini waxes to get rid of unsightly pubic hair. The wig is glued on like fake eyelashes. We laugh and laugh. Marcelina is a partner in a successful firm that imports dialysis machines for kidney patients. ”You should import these wigs, a niche market exists – ageing women, cancer patients and Japanese tourists,” I say. We laugh some more. Then we fall silent. ”An angel has passed,” says Marcelina. Indeed. The angel of death has touched us with her silver wings. Her lover gets busy on the phone, finding out the best radiotherapy clinic, finding a friend who will help jump the queue. The sister looks up a book on Bach flowers. I remain with Marcelina. I learned this in Africa – to be quiet, to sit with the grieving.
Three years ago my five-year-old daughter fell from a galloping horse. She was blind for two hours from the concussion. I took her to a trauma centre in Harare. Its quality was doubtful so I brought her home. As long as she didn’t sink from sleep into a coma, my instinct told me she should be all right. While I checked child-care books and called physicians and friends across the world, our Shona nanny, Christine Chinake, sat by her. Christine would not budge. Eventually I quieted down. We both sat by the child until, at 6am, my daughter suddenly sat up in bed and asked: ”What happened to me?” She was OK. In the pitifully bare hospitals of Angola and Mozambique I have seen mothers sit day and night by their sick children. They seem to nurse the children to health through will power, just by being there. I learned the lesson. I learned to sit quietly. ”I am sorry I will give them so much trouble,” says Marcelina softly, pointing to her lover and her sister in the kitchen. ”I wish I could go in another way. Like a car accident.” ”Nonsense,” I say. ”We all have to die of something and it is always inconvenient, for us or for the others. Every moment with you will be precious.”
Maria and I leave. Annabel sees us to the door. We hug her. As she locks, I remember a phrase from Antoine de Saint-Exup’ry: ”Each home closes itself over its love.” I imagine how they will hold each other and cry. Theirs has been a strong love, yet young: six years together. Until death do us part. I drive Maria home. Yes, they knew. The doctor says it will be fairly quick. Radiotherapy may avert the most painful effects.
”I nursed my parents through illness and death, but I never imagined my younger sister would die before me,” she says. ”I am left with no historic reference. I am a grandmother, yet I feel like a little girl alone in the dark.” In the week before starting radiotherapy, Marcelina orders a sample of pubic hair wigs from Japan.