Jothan

Running was my refuge, and my favorite place to run was out in this field behind my host parents’ house. Running gave me a chance to clear my mind and focus on nothing but my breathing, body, and the simplicities of what would keep me moving. There was another layer to it, though, that added meaning to me. It reminded me of home. Running reminds me of being with my brothers and sisters and with the other young people in my village. We ran in the streets to welcome our parents home from work, to chase vehicles out of town, to race each other and play. In South Africa, running was loud, playful, and energetic.

But one day, I ran away.

My father had been ill with a sudden cancer—well, sudden to us. According to the tests, it had been in his body, secretly spreading. We only noticed it when he started acting strange in his speech. One day, he asked me, “Jothan, are you going to pick up your aunt?” and I asked him who he was talking about. “Your Aunt Lucy! She’s been waiting for you at the store for hours!” I had to explain to him that Aunt Lucy, his younger sister, had been dead for five years now. I was shocked and confused when he started this behavior. We took him to the doctor and discovered that he had a cancer that was attacking his liver, lungs, and now brain. He died very suddenly, only months after my high school graduation.

When they pronounced him dead and smoothed close his eyelids, I felt my chest heave with pain, anger, frustration. It was the same rhythm of breathing I had when I had been running for a long time. Something inside me told me to go away. So I did. I ran out of the hospital room, through the halls, onto the street, and all the way back to my family’s house. And I didn’t stop there. I ran down the village road, ignoring the calls and stares of my neighbors as they saw me rush past with tears rolling down my face. I ran to the outskirts of the neighboring village and tripped, finally stopping. I fell facedown in the dirt. It stuck to my sweaty skin and to the tears on my face. I pulled my arms and legs in and lay in the street, crying and panting for air.

The ability to just get away meant a lot to me. Just before my father died, he told me he hoped for me to study abroad. He had the strong opinion that education was complete with travel. My two older brothers had both studied abroad—one in Egypt, one in China. He asked me where I wanted to go, and I answered, “America.”

When I came here in my junior year of college, after my family and I had saved up almost every penny we had to get me here, there weren’t as many good places to run. America was supposed to be the land of opportunity, but it failed me in this very important area. People ran in place on treadmills, which I found both amazing and disgusting. I sometimes ran around the track, but this also felt wrong. I ran on campus, and I liked it all right, but it wasn’t the same either. My host parents lived in the countryside, and they had a meadow that was great for running. It had an eight hundred meter circle mowed into its grass. It had just a bit of variety in its inclines and pathways to make things interesting, and it was almost always completely silent. It was perfect for getting away. I ran almost every day, and I went out if something was ever wrong.

One day, my oldest brother called me on the phone. He preferred to use the phone and would take advantage of an international calling card to call me if he had advice or was concerned about me. That day, when he talked, it was different. His voice was shaking. “Mom died in her sleep last night, Jothan.” I was speechless. “We don’t know what happened. Her heart just … stopped.” I told him I would come home as soon as I could, but he said, “No, it was too expensive to get you to America. We couldn’t afford to get you here and back. I’m stuck in Cairo too. Extended family is coming in to help the others.”

I felt that pounding in my chest again and started running. “Jothan?!” my host father called after me when he heard me slam the door. I ran to the meadow but didn’t like the idea of running in circles. I started cutting through the grass toward the tree line and found a path on the opposite side of the meadow. I ran through it, not caring where it led. I heard my host father call from far behind as he chased after me. I jumped over fallen trees and brush and continued to run as the ground sloped into a valley. I ran along the creek and listened to the movement of the stream echo the tears on my face. My mind rushed back to the day I ran after my father’s death, and I kept thinking to myself, “Not again, not again, not again.” If I ran away, I thought, it would go away. Both of them would come back, and my family would be back to the way it was. My foot slipped on the edge of the creek, and I fell into the shallow water. My body hit the rocky slabs, and I cried out in pain. My host father found me later, a bloody mess sitting by the edge of the creek.

I could no longer run. I could no longer escape the truth of death and sadness. I stopped running in the circles of the meadow and instead faced my fears of fate directly. I went home to care for my younger brothers and sisters after I finished my degree, and I simply watched them as they ran. I took my life and theirs into my hands and became the parents they had lost.

Meditation through prayer and worship is a daily practice for me. As a work-from-home mom, it is sometimes difficult to find quiet moments to focus on myself and my place in the created world, but I do try to make an effort of that for at least fifteen minutes a day, even if it means I pray to myself while my daughter is playing. Reading and writing are also a part of my daily self-care; they allow me to think over issues and express my thoughts about them in new ways. If it were not for these things—especially now, through the storms of COVID—my post-partum depression would surely get the best of me. Thank God for these outlets.

Taffeta Chime received a BA in English and Creative Writing (2011) and an MA in English and Foreign Language/Linguistics (2015) both from Middle Tennessee State University. She especially enjoys writing fiction and poetry, with two self-published novels (Stoodie, 2007, and The Last, 2011) and several short stories and poems published across a myriad of literary journals (including The Laurel Review, Sanctuary, and the Time and Tradition anthology). She also works on plays and non-fiction and is currently producing a video/audio linguistics podcast called Taffy the Logolept. She lives in Tennessee with her husband Shane, one-year-old daughter Beili, and two cats.

More on Taffeta Chime’s work can be found on our Links page.