Borderline

My recently published book, “Ostraca: Re-membering Sophie/Re-membeing Me” was inspired (in part) by the Susanna Kaysen book “Girl, Interrupted.” Below, is an excerpt from my book. The TikTok promo will be out tomorrow. The promo’s musical loop is from the Brandy song “Borderline” and depicts the singer in a mental hospital in Johannesburg. Given the fact that South Africa is a central location in Sophie’s story, I chose this soundtrack for the forthcoming TikTok promo.

The second edition cover of Susanna Kaysen’s “Girl, Interrupted”

This excerpt from Ostraca is from the chapter “Kaleidoscope.”

June 13, 2006

Johannesburg

O.R. Tambo International Airport

I will revisit the beginning.

(Shall I?)

I will tell it in a new way. In so doing, I will see it through a different lens, the kaleidoscope lens. I board the plane in Johannesburg after a long afternoon back at the condominium where I once lived, the condominium where I suffered.

Drinking.

I had been doing so in one of those airport lounges. What had I been drinking? I cannot remember. Let us assume it was something simple, as life, during that time, was complex. I was drinking wine. White wine, something which would not run contrary to the African heat, something which would not make me feel sick: nothing Italian. As I polished off the small carafe, a man in the lounge, not a white African, looked periodically at me.

On the plane, groggy and dry-mouthed, I remember. I have a memory of Mathéo, a fleck of a memory of him. Mathéo. He was walking the grounds of the psychiatric hospital. I watched him from my window. He had been walking the sidewalks around the green manicured lawn with Dr. Haldane. He looked up in surprise, he put his hand up in a gentle half-salute as if to reassure me. And then he smiled.