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DENISE

Aches and pains are part of our lives, and we have learned to live with them because we know they will go away, we take a pill and continue with our activities. Except for stomachache. Stomachache stops us in our tracks, old or young, we become uncomfortable, weak, needy and deeply unhappy.

Stomachache is regularly caused by bad food or excess, but mostly by fear, tension, worry and stress. I come from a family with very fragile stomachs and most of our problems will eventually find a home in our insides. I remember staying out of school many times, being cared for by my mother, but my longest stomachache was from 1976 to 1985.

During the first few years of a child’s life, he is not really aware of his physical appearance or condition. He may look at his parents and see that they are attractive, he presumes that he is too, and that is the end of it. But then his hormones, his body, his voice and his thoughts start to change, and that is when awkwardness arrives.

It was during my last year in primary school that I discovered my face was different from those of other boys. It was soft, like food that contained gelatine. It was wide and pale like a bread roll, with full, pouting lips like somebody who got stuck to a trumpet. I became shy and tried to be invisible. I started speaking in a soft, husky voice. This had the wrong effect and made me more noticeable than most people on earth.

But there is one thing on earth that an uncomfortable teen­ager fears more than anything else: curly hair. With the exception of one Whitney Houston music video and one iconic picture of The Doors, nobody in this world wants to have naturally curly hair. Millions have been spent on the beauty of straight hair. Curly hair is a once-off experience, acceptable only at wed­dings or New Year’s Eve celebrations. But by the time I reached high school, few teenagers had to worry about this, because most of the world’s curly hair was on my head. Those were not soft curls that could be moved by the wind or other elements of nature, it was a merciless, dense growth that made me look like I was found at the bottom of the sea, the boy who turned into a coral.

And so it was that I arrived for my first day in high school with my bread roll, trumpet, husky voice and coral. To make things even worse, our teacher was a tall woman with no lips, it looked like she was speaking through a large buttonhole.

Sit down, she said.

We did not have chairs or tables, but desks with seats that had to be put down before you could sit. The girl next to me was called Denise, but nobody ever knew that because she was a large girl and she did not put her seat down first, but sat on it as it went down. Then she got stuck.

The teacher looked at her and asked what her name was.

Just then her seat went down and the landing made her voice jump, so she said her name was Deni-ise.

Deni-ise was not my friend, but she was the only one talking to me at school. She would share her food with me or ask me if I was tired. She would help me up the stairs or walk behind me so other children would not step on me and she would make me laugh by getting on her seat before it went down. We never knew during which part of the lesson she would land, we always hoped it was while she was answering a question. We loved it when she said the capital of India was Mahahatmaha Gahandi.

Deni-ise was not kind to me because of my bread roll, trumpet, husky voice or coral, the real reason I will now reveal.

In those days not all illnesses or conditions had names yet. Depression had just been named, but nobody suffered from it, it was too embarrassing. Dementia was mentioned at con­ferences but not in real life, people were just forgetting things.

My grandmother had a sister called Una who forgot every­thing. She did remember that she loved knitting because she saw the wool in the mornings. In 1972 she started knit­ting a sandbag to stop the draft coming from under her bed­room door, but then she forgot what is was for, so she added a collar and sleeves, then she heard my cousin had a baby, so she added legs, then she heard on the radio it was snowing in Suther­land, so she added feet, but then she forgot about the snow and could only see the feet because the rest of the knitting was lying behind her chair, so she just continued until she had knitted the longest two tubes in history. Finally she heard I was going to high school, so she decided to give the thing to me. It was so big, it arrived in a crate the day before school started. We unrolled it in the back yard.

You have to put it on, said my mother, We’ll have to send her a photograph. Of you arriving at school.

I could never do anything to hurt Aunt Una. The next day I put the thing on. It took me an hour and the feet were so long I had to fold them and let them come out the back of my shoes. I looked like a doll that was melting from the bottom. So I arrived at school with my bread roll, trumpet, husky voice, coral and two metres of woollen tubing trailing behind me. Children called me the sock and teachers looked away. Deni-ise gave me sand­wiches because she thought I was paralysed from the feet down.

Ten years after school I went back to my home town for a funeral. I was successful and looking great and climbing the stairs to the church with confidence. Then I heard a scream and turned around. At the bottom of the stairs Deni-ise fell to her knees.

It is a miracle! she screamed, You’ve been healed! I never stop­ped believing!

I could not hurt her or her beliefs.

Yes, I said, It’s a miracle.

(from the Factory stage production, 2013)