“Ï’m all about the vleis… No treadmill”.

.

“Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” – Some bitch who never tasted dunked wings.

Like my bestie says  “Ï’m all about the vleis… No treadmill”. 

…..

Thin. It’s everywhere. It always has been. And apparently, like with everything on the fucking planet, 80’s kids will know.

In most of my memories, pre-coitus and essentially pre-conception, I, like many other women, was obsessed about what size Levi would comfortably choke me, as I cut off my circulation all through Cavendish.

Indigo. Bootleg. 32.

Even though there are blogs, vlogs and offensive spoof songs all promoting the voluptuous woman, the 90’s image of the societal perfect woman, and the mental damage thereof, has been done, making generations of women feel guilty for even thinking about bread, and men wanting bread-stick figures dangling from their arms.

This is the reality.

In my primary school’s rendition of “The lion, the witch and the wardrobe”, all the pretty, dainty girls were cast as reindeers for the white witch…  and I was cast as a peasant (You know, the ones that go into battle at the end.)

Being bigger has always made being feminine much trickier. Whether I am towering over my date in heels, or having sex doggystyle, actually feeling less like a poodle, and more like a St. Bernard, nothing has made me feel fatter than looking into a changing room mirror, after carrying two children.

In my family however, being big is not in our genetic coding. After a day of self-loathing and ironic comfort eating, I accompanied my father to my grandmother, who told me a story that made me want to die… (by chocolate).

I asked about my cousin who lives there. After two kids (Yes out of wedlock. Yes, that IS genetic), this bitch hasn’t gained a kilo, and to be honest, looks even thinner than the days I envied her for being a gymnast.

The conversation, almost verbatim: (My grandmother is Afrikaans- please see my attempts at a rough translation in italics)

Ma: “Wiet jy,  Eslin is so siek. Sy was heel week innie bed, le hier stok styf”.

(Eslin (my cousin) is very ill. She was off from work for the entire week. She was on bedrest. Her entire body is stiff). 

Shana: “Shame ma, what happened?”

Ma: “Nee hulle was innie kaap toe waai die wind haar onner die kar in.”

(She was in Town, and the wind blew her underneath the car).

Shana: “Sorry? Do you mean a car knocked her in town?”

Ma: “Nee ek se mos vir jou die wind het vir haar gestoot. Amper oor die een kar”.

(No, I am telling you that the wind was so strong that it threw her into the one car and she landed under the other one.)

Now, here is why I am upset by this:

1. Are you telling me that this skinny bitch was thrown under the car by the wind? Never in my life has a South-Easter changed my course of direction.

What did she tell the DR?

2. This bitch is so thin that she went outside and was literally airborne for a few seconds, and now gets to take a week off from work.

Fuck this. I am never eating again. I also want superpowers.

Yesterday I went back to Legit, and tried on some more high-waisted clothing, and finally understood society’s reference to the “Muffin top”. With a pants up to my second rib, I was no longer carrying a bun in the oven…. I WAS the bun in the oven. Expanding and Expanding and Expanding.

The inner dialogue is constant self-deprecation:

” Don’t be so hard on yourself, you had two babies”……..

………..”Yes… But not for breakfast”

I felt so awkward meandering through the crop tops that I entered into another equally awkward, way more embarrassing conversation. Some thin white girl who probably stepped out of Forrester Creations was frolicking around the extra-smalls with her overly make-up’d mother.

You know’ the type, smells like musk and Avro-Schlain, wearing shiny pants and wedges. My father calls them “Biltong wat polony wil wies”.…

” Urgh mom, I hate these popular vintage clothes, everyone has one..

Me: “Does that make you an ANTI-RETRO-VIRAL?”

(Silence…)

Lack of nutrition makes you stupid.

…

But as much as I want to say that I will commit to no more carbs, or less salt, or some ridiculous mantra that makes me feel better about myself when I walk through Mr. Price (“You will be thin tomorrow…. You will be thin tomorrow), I will probably just end up rationalising, and growing my hair.

I’ll just have to keep taking selfies from angles above my head.

Here is my new mantra:

“…That salad won’t make you pretty, bitch…'” Repeat three times. Cry in fetal position. Re-eat ( 3 times)…

I have no PHD…

This jeans doesn’t even wanna fit me…

I am just Shana.

I am just fertile.

I am just a hoe… with babies.

“All I wanna say is that….They don’t really care about us”, Micheal Jackson_ Child Rape Activist, the most activist child rapist.

“As the scripture says, ‘and He said unto Felicia… Bye’”- The internet.

I can only imagine that the rain hit the separate entrance in Hanover Park with malice. Banging the roof in a relentless bass.

A dampen on his drug mission, Christopher Williams grew frustrated. She wasn’t the woman his childhood fantasy idolized. She looked like his mother.

Zoey watched TV on a bean bag in the next room. Her feet tucked into the side. Her juice tasted funny.

“Jy fok weer met daai goed. “

“Met wie praat jy jou naai?”

“Jy’t gese jys klaar met daai lyn…  Os het twee kinnes”

“Jou ma se poes. Wie se lighties is die? Huh? …”

Edwina woke up behind the door.

The silence was uncanny. The choock of the lighter in between.

She hadn’t fully re-entered her mind when Christopher handed Zoey to her.

“Vat jou kind.”

She dressed the child for bed. Zoey had a habit of fooling around when it was time to get into her pajamas. Her arms stiffened. Edwina was careful as she slipped the Hello Kitty knock-offs over Zoey’s head.

She looked at her blue eyes.

Edwina hadn’t cried in five years.

“Jy gat nerensie, hoor jy Edwina? Hoor jy?”

The neighbours were watching 7nde laan extra loud tonight.

“Maak skoon hier”

He handed her the broom.

Edwina swept, wildly. She was desperate to get into bed with her baby.

The blood dripped from her hands. She looked at Zoey on the mattress.

Zoey’s eyes were shut.

Edwina crawled in, Christopher followed her. He was already undressed. He fucked her like every night. His face didn’t leave her neck. She thanked God that Zoey didn’t wake up.

In the daylight, Christopher’s comedown shook him into reality. He looked at the reddened broom.

His thoughts, a crimson cliché.

“What happened ?” The nurse asked Edwina. The sister had never seen injuries this severe.

Edwina was deadpan.

Her face hurt.

Her vagina hurt.

“Waars jou man, mevrou?”

“Hy’t vir os gedrop suster.”

The nurse called the doctor. Her powers were limited.

The doctor grimaced. What’s the time nurse?

7nde laan’s outro resonated from the wards.

“I am going to have to declare her now. But, judging by the rigamortus, this child has been dead for 24 hours”.

*

I visited Zoey’s grave the day after her funeral. She finally had her white picket fence.

*

 “Can I tell you something?”

I am to tolerate his polite conversation, as per court order.

“I was changing Rose ne, and I mos wys you last time your koekies look the same.

“Uhm. Okay”.

“Now I was changing her nappy and I saw her bum. Looks like yours, identical! I soma get a houte.”

Ladies and gentleman I present to you, joint custody.

Apparently that’s when one parent smokes copious amounts of marijuana.

Our conversations are never pleasant. A fact I attribute to his chronic stupidity.

Between several attempts to kiss me, sans Colgate, I get through most of our encounters unscathed.

But my scathing seeped from my mouth’s corners as he sexualized my two year old, even in jest.

“Do you have time to take me for a poes?”

He laughed.

“I will tell the social worker”.

“Ya, and I will tell her that I can’t afford R800 every two weeks. Watch me give you half”.

The prospect of losing a whopping R400 almost blindsided me. How else would I pay for Rose’s lightly salted popcorn? Lord knows she needs snacks to watch her daddy act like a poes.

This naai deserved an Oscar, but would probably have punned it for a gram-my.

My future bankruptcy hung in the balance. (haha)

I stared at Bill Gates as he swung the maintenance carrot, presumably in front of the donkies he was paying me.

I was Gated whenever I expected him to pay the Bills.

This naai didn’t carrot all. 

My Wynberg courtroom flashback was missing a harp.

“….. He’s an abuser. He hit me and hurt me and now I must give my daughter to him, unsupervised?”

“Listen Sharna.. Is it Sharna or Shana?…. Your relationship has nothing to do with how he is as a father.”

“But he used to moer me.”

“Please, I know this setting looks informal, but I can hold you in contempt hey. What I say goes.”

Her Caucasian superiority was her only motivator. A lovely curtain between herself, and the reality she couldn’t face that after 7 years of relentless studying with daddy’s money, she was stuck here, in the halls of the hot-notte sifting through their domestic violence/ child support files.

Domestic violence: When the people who work in your home fight each other.

…

“Hi, I am here to reopen the case of assault I made in November.”

Sergeant Useless had seen this blockbuster before.  Though showed no desire to block the buster from re-enacting this cult classic.

“Hi ma’am. For wutt did you report to us from?”.

Confused silence.

This constable may actually have misunderstood herself. They really are a bunch of SAPS.

“I would like to make a case of …. Well, I am not actually sure.. let me explain from the beginning… 

In-huil.

“I was here last year because I wanted to take out an interdict. My ex BF came to my house to fetch his daughter but was drunk. It was the third time in a row he had fetched her drunk….

[unimpressed, she nods…..]

……”Anyway.. he got out and grabbed her. His mom was with. so were two of his friends. They took my daughter to the car and got in. He then came back and smacked me in front of my whole family. ..

[“So he took her to thee caaar?”]

Breathe.

….”Yes. He took her to the car. THEN HE HIT ME. Repeatedly. My father was there. He had just had a kidney transplant. He was helpless because he couldn’t move and he stepped in front of me. He threatened my sick father with a knife,…

Breathe.

…”Can I continue? Thanks. Okay, uhm so he threatened my dad and threw a brick at my mom. It caught her hand. She had to get stitches….. My son saw everything. He is still scared of him. 

He drove away with my daughter. I went the police and got her back.

HE THEN MADE A CASE AGAINST ME FOR HITTING HIM BACK, WITH INTENT. 

But, here is where it gets unbelievable officer…”

Confessionus interuptus:

“eh, what is his name? You say it wuss your dorrter? Is not his son?”

Intermission:

Now, before I continue this verbatim account of my painful existence, may I apologise for the blatant tardiness of the last few weeks.

Between preventing my daughter’s virginity being broken by a close relative, to dealing with my son’s ‘family’ and incessant questions about his FARTHER (Yes, intentional to signify distance…)  I was scared with the prospect of possible cancer, I got a weave put in because I have started to hate my appearance, and I may have had a mental breakdown, in a desperate need to assert myself as a woman in a family that sees me as a pregnant 21-year-old, perpetually.

I sat down several times in an attempt to write a blog ‘gou-gou’ and just keep the many inboxers happy. But you deserve the same amount of passion and truth that got you coming back here in the first place.. So I decided I would wait, to offer sincerity…

That is in fact, my jam…

Back to scheduled programming.

“….. So officer, what is weird is that no one came.  Not one officer. Until this year February… 

Apparently, the officer who was handling my case died in a car crash with his whole family on his way to the Eastern Cape for Christmas….”

She looked at me, and smiled. The first human reaction I received since I got there (In November 20msp14)

“Yes, he did die”.

“Okay. Now that we have established that I murdered your friend with my bettluckyd, my point is that by the time someone was assigned as his replacement, he had already taken me to court for custody, and I dropped the case. 

I would like to open it again.

My ex said something disgusting………”

Silence…

Orkay, but you mustn’t tell me this, lady. You must go to the office at the back. I don’t do interdicts. 

************************************************************

Sidney-Jonah’s teacher smiled awkwardly as she relayed the story of the day to me.

I make her very naar with my los-poes ways. She always looks at me from under the protection of her doekie. (That’s an amalgamation of Dry-Koekie) 

All she sees is sex and tattoos.

She isn’t wrong, just jealous.

“Salaam Teacher, how was Sidney today?”

“You know [giggle], I wanted to tell you… [giggle] the boyth thpoke about their daddieth, tho he athked me.. Teacher teacher where’sth my daddy?”..

My Joe Barber joke climbed up my esophagus.

Another nomination for an Oscar [Peterthen]

Yes teacher… I saw his dad’s mom on the bus the other day, she met Sidney for the first time in five years….

[To be continued…]

I don’t have a PHD

Nobody even knows a Felicia in real life.

Definition of ‘Bye Felicia’:

When someone says that they’re leaving and you could really give two shits less that they are. Their name then becomes “felicia”, a random bitch that nobody is sad to see go. They’re real name becomes irrelevant because nobody cares what it really is.

I am just Shana

I am just fertile.

I am just a Hoe… With Babies