1993, Cape Town, South Africa

By Sophia Heller

I arrive in Cape Town, South Africa, three days after Stanford student Amy Biehl was murdered in Guguletu township, right outside the city.

I don’t know about this until after I arrive, even though it had made news headlines around the world. My whole world is centered on my backpack, which contains my most prized possession: 105 sleeping pills, carefully wrapped in a towel.

I have been carrying them with me since Madrid, the first stop on my first solo trip abroad. There, I had felt extremely fortunate to discover that, according to the how-to-die bible Final Exit, Spain is one of the best places to get prescription-strength sleeping pills over the counter. I spent my afternoons in Madrid visiting different pharmacies and practicing the only Spanish phrase I had bothered to learn: “May I please have your strongest sleeping pill?”

I was waiting for my money to run out before taking them and had decided to fly to South Africa to join a friend I had met a few months earlier. This is how I travel: I follow other travelers who have better plans than me. So far, I’ve been away from home for seven months and have visited eight countries.

Shortly after I arrive in Cape Town, I find a job as a waitress at a restaurant, Mr. Pickwick’s Deli, run by an Englishman named Graham and his South African wife, Vanda.

One night after work, Vanda and I go out for drinks. In the same breath, she tells me how she and Graham are divorcing and that she’s tried to kill herself three separate times, using aspirin, drugs and a dull blade. But this time it was going to be different.

“I’m going through more pain than I ever have before, but I’m not going to hurt myself again,” she says. “I know I deserve more.” I don’t tell Vanda about my 105 sleeping pills buried at the bottom of my backpack, partly because I’m self-conscious about my rather mild method and partly because I don’t intend to fail.

Vanda moves back home to Johannesburg, and in her absence, Graham and I become friends. We walk his four terriers on the beach, drink red wine, and exchange stories of past romances, though he mostly talks while I listen. I don’t tell him about my sleeping pills either, nor about my plans for them.

For me, this is a separate issue, an unavoidable necessity. I am only 24 years old, but 24 years of nonstop loathing, neglect, and depression is inhumane, and I think that I finally have the courage and the resources to end my suffering.

One morning, I walk into work and find Graham leaning against the kitchen wall, sobbing hysterically. I’ve never seen a man cry so hard, and I feel my own breath freeze in my chest.

In between sobs, he keeps repeating, “She did it again. She did it again.”

It’s Vanda. A few days earlier, she had left a message that she was going on a trip, but instead, she drove her car to a park and stopped in a deserted area. She opened a 3-gallon gas can and eventually drifted off to sleep. But she didn’t bring enough gas to kill herself because she only wanted to scare Graham one more time.

When she woke up after about an hour, she had forgotten what she’d done and lit a cigarette. In a matter of seconds, her black, frizzy hair was extinguished and stuck to the roof of the car. Third-degree burns formed on her exposed thighs, arms, face, and midriff. Another couple drove by and saw Vanda’s burning car. They pulled her unconscious body out and waited for the ambulance.

Graham suffers a minor nervous breakdown and spends a few days in the hospital. He tells me, “The hardest thing is getting out of bed in the morning. I don’t want to face the day.”

My heart goes out to him. I certainly know what that feels like, though for me, it’s the nights that are the worst. A whole day of living with myself, and by the end, I can barely tolerate it.

A few weeks later, I fly to Johannesburg to spend the Christmas holiday with Graham and his family. We’ll see Vanda, who survived the fire. Now she really does want to die, but there’s nothing she can do. On New Year’s Eve, we pick her up and take her to a restaurant and club in Pretoria.

“Hi.” That’s the only thing she says to me.

“Hi,” I say. I wonder if she remembers our conversation when she swore she would never hurt herself again. Graham helps her into a seat at our table.

It’s hard for Vanda to turn her head and look at anyone because the burns cover so much of her upper body and neck. She’s lost the tip of her nose and part of one ear, but her hair is starting to grow back. Her doctors are still trying to save her hands. Amazingly, she still smokes. She gazes into Graham’s eyes, motionless, save for her hands, which slowly keep her cigarettes moving in and out of her mouth.

We’re sitting in the dark because too much light hurts Vanda. And she also doesn’t want people to see her. Graham and Vanda cry and laugh in each other’s arms, while I just sit there, sipping my vodka and cranberry juice, watching my friend who I’ve grown to care about so much and trying to hold back my own tears.

The night finally ends at 5 a.m., when we drive Vanda home, and in the gray, early-morning light, I muster up the courage to ask her, “Does it hurt?”

Before we return to Cape Town, Graham and I decide to drive through Kruger National Park. On the way to our rented cabin, a herd of elephants surrounds our car. They come slowly out of the bush, imperceptible at first. Then one by one, the elephants walk out into the open as they cross the street. A baby elephant walks in front of us, fiercely protected by its mother. We sit motionless in the car, not knowing whether to turn our motor off or keep it running.

At our cabin, I empty my backpack. My 105 sleeping pills are resting in a plastic bag, which I’d added to my toolkit when I’d read in Final Exit that it was always good to add a plastic bag to your method of suicide, in case the drugs don’t completely work.

Later that afternoon, Graham and I continue our drive through the park. We move slowly, going no more than 5 miles an hour. We stare out the window, craning our necks to look for signs of wildlife.

In the midst of a freak rainstorm that lasts for 20 minutes, we see vultures sitting on the carcass of a giraffe. Several other cars line up to stare at this sight, the vultures motionless along the giraffe’s lifeless body. We don’t know if the vultures are waiting for the rain to stop or for the tourists to leave before they continue their feast.

We continue our drive in silence. I never tell Graham that in his struggle to hold his life together, he ended up saving mine. I never tell him that through him and Vanda, I will never be able to take my own life.

Part of me thinks that I’d be too ashamed if Graham ever found out that I killed myself. Of course, I’d be dead and couldn’t actually feel the shame, but it’s unthinkable to hurt him the way that Vanda has.

I never tell him this because I don’t know how. No one in my family ever talked like this, and I figure that I’ve made progress if I can at least think like this.

At night, we roast a chicken outside our cabin and sit under the moonlight, swiping mosquitoes away in the humidity. The only sounds are hyenas and jackals, and in the darkness, we have no way of knowing how close or far away they really are.

I remember thinking that I will miss this when I go.

Sophia Heller is alive and well in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has a Ph.D. in mythological studies and is the author of The Absence of Myth.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Saturday, July 21st, 2007 | Email This Post

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