Too close to the Main Road

A couple of weeks back, I got a little too intimate with the Main Road. It was home-time, bus-time, taxi-time, walking to the PicknPay after work time, and I waited at the traffic lights for the little green man to invite me over. He glowed and smiled and the wheels moving suburbward came to a stop. I stepped off the pavement and into the street, across one lane, across two lanes and THUNK; across no lanes. A man who saw me said that I flew, I've always wanted to fly. But I don't remember the flying, don't remember my knee expanding and swelling and moving apart, don't remember the sound or feel of my bones breaking. I do remember losing a shoe.

As I lay on my beloved Main Road and looked at the clouds, I heard voices beating out over the intersection in rapid bursts. I breathed deeply. Sometime later, I realised my shoulder couldn't move.

There were paramedics--they wore green--there were boards and straps and my head was forced still. There was the ceiling of the ambulance and my brother sitting, maybe crouching next to me. I don't know, couldn't see him, just felt his hand in mine.

At Groote Schuur, Mister Christians in the bed next to me was swearing and grunting and giving the nurses a hard time. I could smell him through the curtain separating us.
"Why are there only men here?" I asked the sister in my morphine-filled stillness. It was me in the trauma unit, with five others, all men.
"Oh, they get in fights and they drink." She left her explanation at that.
And they do stupid things, I thought to myself.

Standing next to my hospital bed, my mom phoned my mas from the Wellness Centre and Seniors' Club.
"We shook," Ma'Monica messaged me, when the news reached her family.
"Listen here girl," Tabs said in an email, "you must know this if you're not feeling well we don't feel well so you better get better fast. Inam sends his love"
Their visceral responses echoed my pain. Their families cared, like my family cared. It made me think about the calls for outrage bouncing off every corner of the South African media over the last little while; outrage at rape, outrage at murder, outrage at violence, outrage at the breaking bones of our sometimes shared social fabric.

But what do we mean by outrage? If we were to shake everytime someone got hurt, we would spend our days shaking, not feeling well. I'm not saying be silent, I'm not saying do nothing. I'm not encouraging a culture of ambivalent "at least's" where oh you were mugged but at least you weren't stabbed, and oh he was shot but at least he's not dead, and oh she was raped but at least it wasn't the dad. What I'm saying is that we need to find a balance. We cannot shake all day, that is no kind of life, but nor can we ignore the everyday pains that, unwatched, mutate into a violent pandemic. Between self-preservation and dislocation we need to find a way to care. And caring is something you can do all day, while drinking several cups of rooibos tea with your left hand. Ag, who knows, maybe we should all take to the streets.

And as for the man who sped down my Main Road, who jumped a red light, who smacked me to the tarmac, and who drove away, uncaring: may the soul of my favourite pair of skinny jeans haunt you till the end of your days.