I don’t forgive you. I do not forgive you. I want pain and dark and nothing for you. I want to take what you have spat on to me and I want it delivered back to you ten and ten and ten times over. I want to crawl back up inside you, covered in barbs, ripping you open from your womanhood to your gullet and expose all of the things that fester under your skin. I don’t forgive you. I want you abandoned and frightened. I want a rag, rancid with time and dirt, to smother your deceitful mouth and blind your lying eyes. I want to push you under loud, heavy water and watch as you inhale and choke. I want death for you to be in life. I want tears for my tears, scars for my scars, and I want loss for my loss, because I do not forgive you.
As I read my letter to the group, it was as if something was pouring out of me. Like I was being emptied of something, something essential, that needed to keep a part of me alive. Something that all of us need in order to survive. It also felt like I was being poured out of myself, all the fragments and molecules and the essence that made me me were steadily seeping out, very purposefully, through my feet and into the floor. And when the pouring stopped there was silence. It wasn’t that I was numb, because I still had the sensation of pain, but it was pain I’d never experienced before. My eyes hurt and everything was too bright. It was the kind of pain in which you open your mouth to scream but then nothing comes out and the silence is worse than any sound you could ever have imagined. In that awful silence I was bereft. All that I’d tried to bury with external solutions had manifested into one dreadful, horrific realisation, and everything was immediately clear. It wasn’t about my father leaving, my brother’s suicide, my abusive relationships with men, my fear of failure or my rampant eating disorder – not in that moment. In that room, right then, I saw it for what it was. The thing I’d been running from so hard, the truth I’d been swerving to avoid for an age: that the one person who was supposed to have wanted me above all else didn’t want me. And the only conclusion I could reach was that it must have been my fault. There was something about me that made it impossible to love – so much so that my own mother couldn’t stand the thought of claiming me as her child. That was my rock bottom. What I’d believed forever was suddenly compromised. In a thunderclap I was irreversibly changed.
Besides the pain, I also felt exhausted. I had regressed to being seven weeks old. In a state of absolute vulnerability, I was Karoline again. I would swear that at that point I knew exactly how that tiny child had felt as she was abandoned by her mother. I believe it, she, I, had known it was wrong; it was discordant with nature, against the most sacred thing on earth, the severing of the bond between mother and child. I had carried that sorrow with me since that day and it would have clung forever simply because we didn’t know how to exist without one another. I am convinced the mother feels it too – something tragic and toxic, sad and shaming that can only be discarded once it is acknowledged honestly and accepted truthfully.
I sat taking it all in. Time moved dreadfully slowly, as if wanting me to consider everything, experience each minuscule shard pricking at me. Worse, I was aware of the others in the room and was utterly overwhelmed with shame. The disgrace of being reviled by one’s own mother, that was too much. There was nothing left to wrap around myself; everyone would – could – now see right into me, they would see what she had seen and I would be left again. Not only was I ashamed, I also felt desperately foolish. I’d been clinging onto the opposite of the truth and now the truth was out.
And then it was time for lunch. Just like that and without regard for what had happened in that room that past sixty minutes, the clock abruptly told us it was time to move on. Routine. Get up. Go to the dining room. Eat. Engage. And so I did; at least my body got up from the chair and followed the others out. But my mind had already left. It was gone, I had disappeared. And it would take a while before I was able to find my way back.
CHAPTER 21
Rock bottom
* * *
Rain is pip, pip, pipping against the plastic window of the outdoor blind. It is transparent, kind of. I watch drops landing and then clumsily dripping to create incomplete, glistening diamond trails down the vinyl. I am waiting for him.
It is two days since I spoke to Alex on the phone for the first time. I am still in rehab at Ubuntu learning how to unfuck myself and, after much pleading with my therapists, I have been allowed out to meet him at Rick’s, a café-cum-diner in Cape Town.
My phone rings and when I answer I am inexplicably surprised at the South African accent. He is also surprised that I have one … well, kind of. ‘Howzit!’ I say. The conversation is strange, but not strained. We are friendly. I, perhaps, am over friendly. I feel as if I am happy, happier than I am able to fully process, and I listen to every syllable, imagining how his mouth is moving to form the words he is saying to me, his sister. His inflections are typical Capetonian. Drawling, but also clipped, he says ‘lekker’ a lot. My own voice sounds strange in my head. ‘Ja, ja,’ I say. I have been in South Africa long enough that some of the jargon has rubbed off on me, but I am aware of forcing my speech to sound more familiar to him. I need to be acceptable in order to be accepted.
It is eight months since I first arrived in South Africa to ‘take a break’ from me. My therapists tell me I am getting better, but still have a long way to go. The New Life debacle had done a real number on me and after arriving in Cape Town I plunge deeper and deeper into depression. There are times when all I can do is open my eyes in the morning. I refuse to eat and every mealtime I am monitored by a member of staff. I am forced to sit at the table in the dining hall until I have eaten every scrap of food on the plate and although I know I can’t start to heal without relinquishing control, the fear that prevents me from letting go is all consuming.
I no longer want to get better; I just want to get out. I start to believe that the only way I will find peace is to deliver myself to my own end. I lose all hope of redemption and cannot face the truth about who I really am seeping up from my veins and indelibly tattooing itself onto my thin, black skin.
I start to imagine what people would say about me when I was dead. How they would shrug as my coffin passed through the curtains and into the furnace. They would nod solemnly while staring at the Order of Service and a photograph – one I would have never approved – of me smiling, fat and miserable. No one would say, ‘She loved to sing to Aretha in her pyjamas,’ because no one would know.
One night I am caught sneaking into the kitchen to find a knife to fix myself and am told I need to leave Ubtuntu. Apparently, I have become too much for the rehab centre to handle. I am a danger to myself and the fact that I am now self-harming again makes me unsafe to be around the other patients. I am to go to a clinic a few kilometres away. When I arrive I am checked into the psychiatric ward and my bags searched for contraband. They take my compact mirror and the cord of my dressing gown and I am given a sleeping pill, put to bed and told that a shrink will be round to see me in the morning to talk about medication. I shrug. I already have my own ways of medicating, I think to myself, remembering the small razor blade I have cleverly concealed in my hair. Soon it will act as a numbing agent for the heart-thumping, stomach-dropping, codeine-craving bullshit that consumes me and the release will come and bring with it peace and comfort and cold, kind pain. That night I write in my journal:
It is nice here. Clean and comfortable, and reminds me of the hotels we used to stay in when we went on holiday with Granny to Sandbanks or the Isle of Wight.
The nurses are angels. Kind, gentle energies moving around like soft clouds. Clouds with smiling faces. They are not angry, irritated or disappointed in me. In their own way, they are trained to love me. They are not offended by my pain. My despair does not mean I’ve broken a rule or become an inconvenience. They want to me to break here so that they can rebuild me. They will comfort me, these angels, these mothers of my country.
And every word is true, sincere.
I spend ten weeks in the psychiatric ward before
I am allowed to return to rehab to finish my programme. It is the lowest period of my life. Every day feels like I am falling further and further into my own inescapable hell. I begin to look at everyone, every thing around me as if from behind a pane of impenetrable glass. As I sink deeper into myself it feels as though the rest of the world is shining in ascendance. I become convinced that the God I don’t believe in has it in for me and is rejoicing in my suffering. I can’t escape the feeling that everything that is wrong with the world comes from a place, dark and desperate, inside my own damned soul.
After they find and ceremoniously dispose of my blade, I start to scour the clinic for sharp objects. Discarded paperclips, shards of broken crockery, anything that once driven hard, fast and deep into my flesh will allow me even a minute’s reprieve from my conscious. I become like a tortured artist, and my arms a canvas onto which I etch my pain.
What will they look like in my wedding dress, these etchings in my skin, these scars? That’s always my first thought when, having emerged from the beautiful red coma, the taste of iron on my gums and the sensual heavy pain in my limbs, I roll awake. I make a fist so that the skin on my bloody forearm becomes taut. I open and close my hand over and over to feel the pain again and again. It makes the wound tighter. The skin splits again and my pain runs red. I clench and release, clench and release until I have exhausted every drop of relief from my veins. It’s like the sensation you get when you’ve already climaxed, but you squeeze and squeeze, desperate to coax out one last blissful shiver. It’s like that, only deeper. Sometimes I even lick the raw, open wound, my forked tongue twitching at the sharp taste of iron, and then afterwards I lie, post-orgasmic, numb, but sated.
I look at my arms with a sense of satisfaction. People will say it’s a shame, I think to myself. Shame on me. They will say I have destroyed the aesthetic. But worse, there will be anger that I have had the gall to wear on my sleeve the secrets of my dirty soul.
I fantasise about a place just before that final breath. A place from which one could, by a miracle, return if enough people are watching. I realise that that’s all I want. I just want someone to see me. The longer I remain invisible, the further away I drift. It isn’t actually death I long for, it’s life without the constant sense of being dead. Each time I throw back the pills, starve my body, slice at my pulsing veins, what I am really saying is: ‘I’m dying to live.’
After more than two months at the clinic I am ready to return to Ubuntu. I don’t want to go, but they say I must. I have come to love the safety of this cuckoo’s nest and the floating nurse angels who have not allowed me to fall apart at every seam. Who, knowing my darkest spaces, have helped me start to save myself and to be reborn. They have breathed clean, crystal air into the shadows where I have merely existed, taking sips of toxic air. They have rescued me from my refuge, dark and dreadful. They have held me, as though I am from their own wombs. They have clutched me to their breasts and soothed me.
At Rick’s Café, I wait, shivering in the red light of the large neon sign above the restaurant’s awning. It’s been a while since I’ve been ‘out’ on my own. In rehab one’s comings and goings are few and far between and almost always accompanied by an eagle-eyed chaperone. Despite the cold, I have chosen to sit at a table on the patio, much to the confusion of the waiter. He seems reluctant to switch on the heater and asks me twice if I want to move inside. After a few minutes, he comes to the table again to ask me if I am ready to order. ‘No thanks,’ I say. ‘I’m waiting for my brother.’ ‘My brother.’ My brother.
As my demons still require, I am dressed in black. Shrouded in darkness, head to boot. I am slave and master to my physical self and will myself smaller as my hips skim the cold, metal arms of the chair. I have not had a drink for eight months and when the waiter wanders past with a tray of cocktails for the adjacent table I have to sit on my hands to stop me from snatching the tray from him and tossing them down my throat.
I keep checking the time on my phone. We’d agreed to 7:30pm. He’ll be here in five, three, in two minutes. The little blond boy with the big brown eyes. One more blink and he is there. Blond, eyes smiling, a familiar forehead and nose. I immediately begin to explore his face for further signs of myself, my unborn children and the source of my shame.
CHAPTER 22
Brother, who art thou?
* * *
Meeting my brother reminds me of what it feels like to play for the winning team. It comes with a sense of accomplishment and also honour. When he sits down opposite me, it feels as though the years of knockdowns, wipe-outs, and defeats have finally led to victory. It has all been worth it, I think. Although I have never thought of it in that way, the second I meet him I know he, in fact, is first prize.
After our initial meeting, Alex and I begin to see each other fairly regularly. Getting together for dinners and coffee, to which I am usually late. It always takes longer than I’m expecting to make sure I am wearing the best version of myself, the version I think will make him the most comfortable and least likely to reject me. It’s bad enough we had to meet while I was still in rehab, but once out, back in the real world, and doing my best to live life on life’s terms, I am determined that he won’t see a trace of the crazy.
I am soon introduced to other members of Alex’s family, some of his friends, and his seemingly angelic fiancé, Carina. With each new introduction I am fit to burst with the novelty of this apparent acceptance, or whatever it is I’m feeling that isn’t rejection.
I discover that shortly after his divorce from Kris, when Alex was around two, Ken had remarried a woman named Debra and they had gone on to have two children together. A son, Brett, and daughter, Georgia. Alex’s other half-siblings, five and eight years younger than him. By the time I meet Alex, Ken and Debra are in the middle of an acrimonious divorce.
I fall in love with Brett and Georgia instantly and when they call me their stepsister (which, in fact, I am not) I feel like the cat that got the cream. Debra and I also start to spend time together, although I am not always sure of her motives for wanting me so close. After all, it had been Ken’s forced revelations to her about baby Karoline that had provided the final nail in the coffin of what she tells me had already become an unhappy marriage and led to her demand for a divorce. Debra’s anger is ill concealed. Anger, not only about having been lied to, but Ken’s apparent embellishments around the story of my death. How he’d been forced to bury baby Karoline on his own after Kris had refused to attend the ‘funeral’. Sometimes I find being around Debra difficult. We are both angry, for different reasons and at first I find myself almost paralyzed by a misbelief that I must shoulder the weight of Debra’s pain AND feel responsible for the divorce. It takes a lot of time and even more therapy to disentangle myself from feelings of guilt by association.
Generally, though, and for a while, life is fantastic. After nearly a year, I have finally left rehab and am determined that all will be only good from here on out. I am clean and sober, eating three meals a day and committed to staying well. I’m renting a room in a wonderful part of town and have a close group of friends whom I’ve met through the support meetings I attend every day. I am floating on a pink cloud of recovery and am slowly morphing into someone I could grow to like.
I’m also enjoying being a sister. Brett is funny and rebellious and takes me for my first Nando’s meal and introduces me to Facebook. When he gets a tattoo over his heart that reads ‘Family first’, he tells me, ‘That includes you too, sis.’ I adore Georgia, who shares my love of books and wry observations on life, and whose social circle is encouragingly less pale than that of the brothers. We bond instantly and there is no one who can tell me she is not my sister. I delight in the gentle ribbing between my new siblings and find every opportunity to introduce them as such. But for a long time, I struggle to be my authentic self with Alex. I become exhausted trying to show him only the good, passable version of myself. I am terrified he will see whatever it is inside me that makes p
eople leave. For a time it works, for a time it is tolerable. But the fallacy of it all makes it feel like we are in a movie, cast in roles for which neither of us know our lines. The script says we are brother and sister, but we haven’t had a dress rehearsal. Nevertheless, I do my best to put on an Oscar-winning performance.
One day, several months after our initial meeting, Alex tells me that Ken has invited us to dinner. It will not be the first time Ken and I have met, but this time it will just be the three of us. Our very first meeting took place some weeks before at Brett’s birthday party at a nightclub in town. It had been brief and consisted of no more than a polite ‘Hello’ and ‘How are you?’. I had thought I would feel more than I did, but went home after the party thinking the meeting had been rather anticlimactic.
Over the years, my feelings about Ken and his role in Karoline’s death had remained steadfast. That he was as culpable in the whole situation as Kris. Because he was accomplice to the lie and the perpetuation of the dreadful secret, I never saw him simply as the cuckolded boyfriend. He too was accountable for so much.
The prospect of meeting him properly reignites a scene I’ve been playing in my head since it became clear how adverse he and Kris had been to my getting in touch Alex. I had replayed it over and over in my head and it left me unsettled, uncertain, with a sense of the unresolved.
I imagine a scenario in which, by some awful fortune, Alex is diagnosed with a terrible illness. There is hope, say the doctors, but only if a blood or bone match can be found. Kris and Ken are asked if they can think of anyone who may be a match. Anyone. They look at each other, then back to the doctor and, in unison, they say, ‘No.’ They sacrifice their own son to protect themselves. I still struggle to reconcile the idea that they would never have told the truth, not even if Alex’s life depended on it.
Killing Karoline Page 18