Alex and I make the journey to Ken’s home together. For the entire drive I am fidgety and nervous. Anxious. When we arrive at his swish pad in the city centre Ken is roasting a chicken. I am given a tour and while I make all the right noises of appreciation and interest, I am aware of a compulsion to pick up the chef’s cleaver lying seductively on the kitchen counter and plunge it straight through his solar plexus. We sit down to eat. I can see he is uncomfortable; he knows I’m not here for small talk. ‘You look like her,’ he tells me, slicing me a slither of perfectly cooked chicken. I can feel the anger rising up from my gut and even though I have no appetite, I stab a piece with my fork anyway and shove it in my mouth in order to gag myself. I chew for what feels like an eternity and then swallow.
‘So, who’s idea was it to say I’d died?’ I ask diving straight in. There is no time for beating around the bush. Debra has already – frequently – told me that Ken is a scoundrel and that I shouldn’t believe a word he says, but I need to at least ask. I’m disappointed, but not surprised when he tells me he can’t really remember. He thinks it had already been conjured up by the time Kris came to tell him the truth about Karoline. I’m dubious, but nod anyway.
For the next hour, we talk. Me asking questions, Ken clearly wishing he were anywhere but here, doing this. There are fleeting moments when I feel sorry for him, when I consider that really this isn’t his fuck-up to have to explain, but the pity is short-lived when I look across the table at Alex and remember that so much of his pain could have been prevented too. It’s also because Alex is here, witness to all of this, that I end up censoring myself, avoiding some of the questions to which I need answers. Answers about Kris. And so I hold back because, whatever I think of her, I tell myself, she’s still his mother.
Later, as we say our goodbyes, with me no more enlightened to the past as I had been when I walked in, Alex gently lays a reassuring hand on my shoulder. I nearly sob at the tenderness of it.
Several months later I am temporarily back in the UK when Alex calls me to tell me he is getting married. I already know he is engaged and I have been excitedly waiting for confirmation of the details of the wedding. The phone call is it. He is getting married in two days’ time. He doesn’t say it outright but, with the wedding taking place in just forty-eight hours, it is clear I am not invited. Kris, of course, will be there, flying in from the US where she now lives; Ken too. From eight thousand miles away, I can tell this is not a call Alex has been looking forward to and I do my best to reassure him that I understand the difficult position he is in. Kris will not tolerate my being there. After an uncomfortable five minutes, he signs off with his usual ‘Ciao Ciao’ and the line goes dead. I pull the duvet over my head and fall apart. I am a sister … but with conditions.
Once back in South Africa, the wedding is never mentioned but I am already anxious about the future. Although it is some time before my nephew and later my niece are born, I begin to wonder who I will be to any children Alex has. How will I be explained? Which branch will I be allowed to occupy on the family tree? I think about Kris and whether she will be able to put aside her own feelings for the sake of Alex, his children, and for all of us caught up in this mess, or whether her inability to make peace with the past will hold us all hostage. Most of all, I worry that I will be forced to become a secret again.
For the longest time I am, perhaps naïvely, convinced that the colour of my skin doesn’t matter to Alex. I have been in South Africa long enough to see that there is still a long way to go in achieving anything close to the promised Rainbow Nation, but I am his sister. However, while it doesn’t take long for me to see how vastly different Alex’s politics and views are to my own, despite being initially shocked by some of his beliefs (he tells me one day at lunch that he believes things were better under apartheid) and by his lack of black or ‘coloured’ friends, I still never imagine it will make me think less of him.
I am proved wrong one day when after I have been back living in South Africa for a couple of years, something happens that smacks me, sharp and violent. It is a couple of weeks before Christmas and the evening before I am due to fly to England to spend the holidays with Mum. I have been invited to a braai at Brett’s place. As always, I am on my best, most acceptable behaviour. I have left Sara-Jayne at home.
Alex and his wife Carina are also there, along with some other people I have met before and some new faces I have yet to meet. Alex is doing the introductions when he turns to a friend sitting next to me at the table.
‘Have you met Sara before?’ he asks, his eyes rolling a little from his fifth Stella.
‘Yes. We met at the house after the christening,’ answers the friend.
‘You probably thought she was the maid!’ quips Alex.
I listen, keep listening. Hear it again.
‘You probably thought she was the maid!’ The maid?
After a second of crowded silence I laugh. To save him. To save him, I betray myself, my skin, my father.
I smile for a little longer and then, finally, push back my chair and stand. I must leave, I say. To finish packing for my trip. Alex walks me to my car, I hand over the Christmas presents I have bought for his kids and, as I click my seatbelt into its holster, watch him walk away. After the car door closes and his footsteps drift into the past, I feel the sorrow come. I start the engine and drive, taking a left at the end of the road where I should take a right. Wipers instead of indicators. I blink to get rid of the tears, but more come and I can feel them heavy on my eyelashes. I can only let them fall. I’ve taken another wrong turn.
At home I sit in my car in the driveway, the engine still running. Tonight my own brother has debased and disgraced me with a sudden and shocking brutality I have until now pretended did not and could not exist. For the first time, the thought strikes me that perhaps at the root of his discomfort, his inability to fully accept me, his refusal to discuss the past, is the idea of Kris, his mother, having lain with my father? Is he secretly disgusted by the thought she could have done such a thing? Allowed herself to be taken by ‘one of them’? I have been kidding myself, thinking it didn’t matter.
A few months later, we are at Brett’s wedding, an event scrawled on my calendar that I have been dreading for months. My anxiety around whether I would even be invited has now been usurped by who I am supposed to be when I get there. I do my best to be no one. When the ceremony is over, I purposefully disappear, to chainsmoke and avoid any potential awkwardness when the time comes for the family photos. I am too unsure of my place and do not want to watch as ‘the family’ assembles for a tableau of feigned solidarity. Most of all, I do not want anyone to feel uncomfortable.
I’m dragging on my fourth cigarette in as many minutes when I hear my name being called.
‘Where have you been? We’re waiting for you for the photos.’ My sort-of cousin is running towards me, flustered. She’s been tasked with corralling the guests for the wedding pictures.
‘Come now!’ she says breathlessly, and seconds later I’m standing next to Ken and the rest of ‘the family’ being told to say ‘Cheese!’ Click, click, click and I’m digitally immortalised into something that feels like belonging. Later, when during his groom’s speech Brett thanks ‘my siblings, Alex, Georgia and Sara-Jayne’, I am unable to hold back my tears.
Later that night we are on the dance floor, Alex and I. We have forced ourselves to get to this point. Where I have always felt we are not close enough, now we are too close. Every time he takes my hand I want to shake it free and clench my fist or fold my arms into myself. Discomfort has led to my shoes having been abandoned and in my bare feet my eyes are just about level with the collar of his pale dress shirt. When we come together in an awkward pantomime waltz, all I see is white.
Today, what I felt after first meeting Alex, that sense of the precarious, of teetering dangerously close to the edge of rejection has begun to fade. Where once there was the overwhelming sense of having something to lose simply by bein
g myself, I have come to the point of knowing that the only way I can save myself is to be authentic. I admit, it scares me.
I must accept that perhaps I tried too hard in the beginning. That I had been so desperate to connect with my brother, this stranger, I had failed to see that the very thing I thought connected us was actually that which drove a Kris-shaped wedge between us. It has taken me a long time to understand that he, too, had perhaps felt, feared, the same things I did. Rejection, loss and abandonment.
Although I still carry with me an ever-so-faint trace of hope that one day we will be able to talk about all that has happened, I see that, for him, the past must remain in the past and for now all I can do is force my hopes to the place of the unspoken.
CHAPTER 23
Home
* * *
Eventually, on 7 December 2013, I move back to South Africa permanently. It is Georgia who meets me at the airport, waiting for me as I once again drag the heavy pink suitcase, crammed full of my life, through the Arrivals lounge. I see the sign she is holding before I see her. Huge and painted in the vivid colours of the South African flag. It reads, ‘Welcome home, Sisi Sara.’ Water, it seems, is often thicker than blood.
The previous evening, packing up my house in England, I am filled with relief that I will finally be returning home for good. I have spent the last seven years to-ing and fro-ing between London and Cape Town, but the time has come to put down roots. I know I will never again feel at home in England and I also know where I need to be, where I feel my most authentic self. I’m busy wrapping and boxing up plates and glasses, occasionally stopping to smooth out the crumpled newspaper and idly read year-old headlines when my phone beeps. It is a message from a friend. It simply reads:
‘Sad news about Mandela, but somehow appropriate timing.’
I run to the television, which has been on mute for the last two hours while I’ve been entertaining myself, singing show tunes and sellotaping my life into cardboard boxes.
I read the red banner at the bottom of the screen. The BBC breaks the news to me.
‘Nelson Mandela has died.’
I slip down onto the wooden floorboards in front of the screen, and for the next four hours watch silently as the world begins to mourn. For the past six months, the news bulletins I have been reading out across the airwaves every hour at work have been filled with the latest updates on Mandela’s ailing health, and the confirmation of his death, coinciding with my decision to return home, seems almost preordained.
I return, the day after Mandela’s passing, to a South Africa in mourning, but also in celebration. Celebration of his life. Images of the former president are everywhere. In newspapers, on fast-food packaging, even projected onto Table Mountain. There is a feeling in the air that I have never felt in South Africa before. I think it might be unity. I am not naïve enough to believe it will last forever, but for now I embrace it.
Nearly a week after I arrive back, Georgia and I make the journey to Green Point Stadium where a memorial concert is being held in honour of Madiba. People descend in their thousands to pay tribute. My white sister and I join hands and join them. We are watching the stage from our seats, in anticipation of Johnny Clegg regaling us with ‘Asimbonanga’ and waving our national flags, when an impromptu toyi-toyi begins stamping its way around the stadium. It is an energy and sound unlike any other I have ever heard. The drumming of proud, determined feet on South African soil. I am mesmerised.
We are on our feet for the duration of the concert. Songs are interspersed with cries of ‘Viva South Africa! Viva!’ and ‘Viva Madiba! Viva!’ A group of elderly Xhosa women next to us leads the crowd in a chorus of struggle songs. Their voices are powerful and euphonious, and while I am initially ashamed that I do not know the words, when I feel one of the women link her arm through mine, and says ‘Sing sthandwa sami!’ I realise that, for now, it does not matter. I know the meaning. I am the meaning.
By the time the sun has set and the stadium has fallen dark, we have danced and praised, sung and celebrated. It is the first time I have felt truly South African. When the orchestra strikes up the opening chords of the national anthem, and the entire stadium stands, I have found my voice and I sing ‘Nkosi sikelel’ iAfrika!’ I look to the gogo who had earlier taken my arm and I put my hand in hers. My people, I think to myself. My people.
CHAPTER 24
A fitting end
* * *
‘Miss King?’
I look up at the clock on the wall and wonder how much longer I’ll have to wait. It has been a little over a week since the concert and in that time it has struck me that there is something I must do.
‘Karoline King?’
My eyes flash to the clock again. I’ve only paid for an hour’s parking and I don’t have any more change.
‘Miss Karoline King?’
Someone is standing above me, holding a clipboard, oozing impatience and trying to look official.
‘Karoline King,’ the person says again. It is now a statement of fact, not a question. I look down at the birth certificate in my hands and see the name.
It takes a full in-breath for me to realise that that’s me. I’m Karoline King.
‘Y-yes,’ I stutter. ‘Sorry.’ I’m apologising for failing to recognise myself.
‘Please go to counter eleven, Miss King.’
I do as I’m told. I make my way over to one of the not-at-all private kiosks on the chaotic first floor of the Home Affairs department in Cape Town’s Barrack Street. It’s an awful place. Streams of people queuing to be identified. People here to get permission to be themselves.
I take a seat opposite a large Afrikaner woman with a blotchy face and patches of eczema on her swollen hands. She coughs without covering her mouth and asks for my forms. I hand over the pile of papers I’ve been clutching for the last fifty-six minutes, including the South African birth certificate on which the name Karoline Mary King is printed in slightly faded ink.
Without looking at them, she starts tapping away on the keyboard in front of her, every now and again looking up at the monitor flashing green binary.
‘First name?’ she sighs.
‘It’s Karoline,’ I say. ‘With a K.’
‘Spell it for me.’
‘K-A …’ I stop. I need to think about it. I’ve never had to spell it out before. It doesn’t come naturally.
I try again. ‘K-A-R …’ Fuck.
‘It’s just Caroline, but with a K,’ I tell her.
‘ID number?’ Shit. I’ve been reciting it all morning in preparation for this moment but now I can’t even recall the first number, let alone all thirteen digits. For thirty-three years I’ve never had to use it. Never been asked for it. I feel like I’m committing a fraud.
I fake a cough, hoping it will buy me a few seconds to will the numbers into my mouth, but nothing comes and I have to read it off the palm of my hand where I’ve scrawled it in blue ink just in case.
She pulls one of the papers I’ve been clutching towards her and begins typing.
‘You need a replacement ID book?’ she asks.
‘Uh, no, just an ID book. No replacement.’
‘So you’ve lost your ID book?’
‘No, I need one.’
‘Another one?’ For fuck’s sake.
‘No! I need an ID book. I’ve never had one.’
She looks at me.
‘But you are South African?’
‘I am South African.’ I confirm. And I mean it.
A few days later I get a message telling me my identity document is ready to be collected. I make the trip back to Home Affairs in town and practically run up the steps to the collections desk. I am handed an envelope. Inside, covered in a protective plastic jacket is my ID book. I open it to the back page and see myself staring out. It’s a bad picture and I don’t look like myself. Next to it is a name. Karoline Mary King. And for a while that’s who I’ll be.
It’s as Karoline that I open my first South
African bank account, get my first speeding fine and buy my first tickets to see Freshlyground in concert. I also cast my first vote as a South African. Each new event feels like a victory in what has always felt like a battle against my rightful and longed-for status as a South African. For a while, I feel like I need to take a back seat and allow Karoline to be who, in another life and another time, she may have been meant to be.
Shakespeare might not have thought so when he wrote the classic line, ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet’, but names are important. They help form our identity. We cannot trade one for another with no regard for what once existed, and pretend that replacing the new with the old creates something original, pure, untainted. It wasn’t until I applied for my South African ID and had to find my original birth certificate that I had ever really thought about how and why my adoptive parents had changed both mine and my brother’s names when we came to live with them. I called my mum and asked her. She told me they’d thought people would struggle with the unusual spelling of Karoline. Was that really the reason, something as simple as the configuration of letters? Perhaps. I pondered over whether it really mattered. After all, I was only a few weeks old when I was given up. Would I even have recognised and responded to that name? But Adam? He was eighteen months old when my parents adopted him. He would have been responding to ‘Aaron’ for at least a year by then. And the reason he was given a new name? My parents felt that the one Margaret had given him carried with it the potential for mickey-taking and playground persecution. To me it seems more likely, albeit indelicate to suggest, that my parents had in fact changed our names for different reasons entirely. I think it entirely possible that they had wanted to disregard what had come before, whitewash the dirt of the past and start anew. To imprint their particular mark of ownership on us for their own peace of mind. A tangible stamp that we were really theirs.
Killing Karoline Page 19