Exit!

by Grizelda Grootboom

  EXIT!

  First published by BlackBird Books,

  an imprint of Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd, in 2016

  10 Orange Street

  Sunnyside

  Auckland Park 2092

  South Africa

  +2711 628 3200

  www.jacana.co.za

  © Grizelda Grootboom, 2016

  All rights reserved.

  Names have been changed to protect the identities of the people involved.

  ISBN 978-1-928337-20-1

  Cover design by Shawn Paikin

  Also available as an e-book:

  d-PDF 978-1-928337-21-8

  ePUB 978-1-928337-22-5

  mobi file 978-1-928337-23-2

  See a complete list of BlackBird Books titles at www.jacana.co.za

  EXIT!

  A true story

  Grizelda Grootboom

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part 1

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Part 2

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Part 3

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Author’s note

  I wish to thank my mentor, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, a woman who has been a leader in the struggle for gender equality and human dignity for over 40 years. She has walked this journey of writing this book with me with humbleness and respect. I appreciate the time she has given to listen to me. I wish to thank her for starting Embrace Dignity, an NGO for women like us to be healed and recover our self-identity.

  Prologue

  I AM GRIZELDA GROOTBOOM.

  I have survived a life of human trafficking.

  I had a happy home until it was taken away from me; until my world fell apart.

  After eighteen years of being trapped in the world of drugs and prostitution, I found an exit.

  Now I am transforming: facing my traumas and feeling the pain after a life of physical abuse and emotional dryness; a life that lacked connection with anything meaningful, other than my drugs, my men. Prostitution.

  I’m discovering wholesomeness. I’m proud of my growth, and I’m enjoying getting to know myself, taking care of myself. I can now call myself pretty.

  I have a little son, S, I have promised him that I will try to make sure that he grows up in a healthy environment with love, proper caring and a sense of purpose.

  This is my story.

  PART 1

  One

  MY LIFE HAS SEEN CYCLES of abandonment and abuse, sexual exploitation and domestic violence. But my story begins long before I was born, because my mother was caught up in a similar cycle when she was a girl. We have together reflected on our respective experiences. But she doesn’t know my whole story. Nor do I know hers.

  These days I live with my mother and my son in Khayelitsha Site C, outside Cape Town. That’s another cycle: it’s the place where I was raped at age nine, where my disconnect with life started.

  When I talk with my mother now, she doesn’t give too much detail about her life. We never really did talk about our family with each other. In fact, through the years of my childhood, we hardly had a relationship at all. Recently, once I had made my break from prostitution in Johannesburg and returned to a new life in Cape Town, I made a most notable discovery: that my mother, too, needs connection and healing.

  She also wants to understand her past and what went wrong.

  Hers is also a story of transformation, but not like mine.

  She still prides herself on surviving without any education at all, leaving school in grade 1 and learning to support herself by buying and selling alcohol. It is no surprise that this attitude has replicated itself in my own survival strategies.

  My mother was born in the early sixties in the coastal Eastern Cape, where she came to adopt Afrikaans as her language and Xhosa as her culture. She grew up as coloured because her mother was coloured, and she never knew her Xhosa father, who died when she was very young. She changed her Xhosa name as a way of changing her status during apartheid: the Cape was a ‘Coloured Labour Preference’ area, and being classified as coloured meant she could travel freely to Cape Town.

  As a young teenager she travelled on her own to Cape Town. She tells me, ‘I came to Cape Town and went to the docks, where I could find some work with the foreign sailors’ clubs there. That’s where I met your father, who lived with his grandparents in Woodstock. He also had his girlfriend, Joyce, there.’

  My mother fell in love, but she never married my dad. As a result of that affair I was born on 7 December 1980, when my mother was nineteen years old.

  When I was a baby, I was handed over to my dad, and I had a happy childhood.

  I fondly remember growing up with my dad and his grandparents, Ouma Florie and Oupa David, who owned their vibrant Woodstock home on Roger Street. Their big green house with white trim was home to lots of friendly people: it bustled with the many foreign sailors and dock workers my great-grandparents took in as renters, and who came to the house to enjoy Ouma Florie’s delicious food.

  I loved the wooden stoep at the entrance – I would sit with my neighbours and watch life go by. Or I would walk the long inside passage with its grey vinyl tiles to the huge kitchen, with its constant aromas from pots filled with meat stews and curries. Attached to the dining-room wall was a fold-out bed – this was where my dad slept. I usually slept with my great-grandparents on the floor in their room.

  In the dining room, a musical carousel acted as a movable room divider; on it a golden lady doll holding an umbrella revolved to the music. I used to love listening to this chime and watching the lady dance stiffly in an eternal circle. And I loved being with my dad, who would walk with me hand-in-hand singing his special song for me:

  ‘I will be so lucky,

  Lucky, lucky, lucky

  I will be so lucky lips.’

  My dad also had full pink lips, like me, and the Marvin Gaye-type hairstyle so popular in those days. I remember his brown eyes, and his false front teeth, one of which had a gold star on it. His narrow, moustached face lit up when he laughed.

  Ginger, our fat cat, was usually curled up on the squeaky cane rocking chair with its stuffed green cushions that Ouma Florie had made. But sometimes Ginger and I would sneak under my dad’s fold-out bed and spend the night listening to him having sex with his different girlfriends.

  Joyce was my dad’s long-time girlfriend. She was devoted to my dad, although he did things behind her back. When my dad wasn’t around, Joyce usually was, and she spent a lot of time with me. She and Ouma Florie were like mothers to me – the only mothers I had ever known. An auntie lived with us too, but she wasn’t interested in hanging out with me.

  I didn’t really know my mother in these early years. The first time I met her, I felt like she was just a relative, it did not feel like she was my mother. I have a vague memory of her visiting us in Woodstock, but she already had two other children by then. I remember sitting eating with them in the passage. And then they left. We had had no connection. And no one
in Woodstock ever took the time to tell me much about her.

  My dad didn’t have a steady job, but would come and go from the house. Sometimes, he would disappear for several days. When he left the house without me, I enjoyed the smell of his deodorant, which lingered day and night.

  I always knew when my dad was awake and at home because of the noise he made in the backyard toilet. I could hear his newspaper rustling – my dad used newspaper to wipe his bum. I would wait for him to emerge from the toilet, though sometimes this took hours. I knew he was done when I no longer heard the rustle of the paper.

  Once he’d seen me, I’d ask, ‘What are we going to do today?’

  He’d normally mumble something, put on his Levi’s jeans and Dr. Martens, and take me for a walk. We always enjoyed our time together.

  Because Ouma Florie’s house entertained lots of people, and because she enjoyed cooking for them, her wooden stove was always loaded with boiling pots for the workers after their hard day’s work. When Ouma Florie was in the kitchen, I knew the house would be packed with people feasting. There was an amazing feeling of peace when she was in the kitchen, even though the rest of the house was so noisy and joyful.

  Every day when I arrived home from school, I would run down the long passage, skipping all the way to the kitchen at the back to greet Ouma Florie and hug her apron-clad waist. There was often a particular smell in the air – crayfish. Ouma would scare me by swinging live writhing crayfish in my face before putting them into boiling water. My screams usually caused laughter to break out among the onlookers in the kitchen.

  My mother would send Ouma Florie some of the money she had earned, sometimes a whole box of coins. Then Oupa David would take it to his ‘bank’. I spent a lot of time with Oupa.

  Oupa David liked to bet on horses, so together we’d walk down to a betting house where old men, dressed in their suits with ruffled ties, would hustle and bet, and point their fingers in the air when they won. Oupa was dark-skinned, with a clean-shaven head. His strong, thick hands held mine gently but firmly during our walks to the betting house.

  I was always excited when Oupa won a bet, because I knew I would be getting a toffee apple or an ice cream. And he didn’t seem to mind my hands sticky with the toffee apple, ice cream and Viennas he would buy me. Grasping my hand every second, he would drink out of a brown-paper bag, make jokes and stumble back home, and I felt happy and safe when I was with him. I would come home sometimes still pulling toffee from my front teeth.

  When he didn’t have his brown-paper bag, Oupa stayed in his room and didn’t socialise much. Sometimes, when he drank his tea, he would show me that he didn’t have any teeth in his mouth.

  But when my dad’s brother, Donald, came to the betting house with Oupa and me, he spoilt everything. I was very talkative, and Donald would smirk at me and say, ‘He’s only buying you that so your teeth get sticky and you shut up’ or ‘Don’t you disturb David when he’s trying to bet on the horses.’

  Donald was so annoying. Before school in the mornings, Donald would give me bitter orange jam with chilli on my bread, which I hated. But being taken to school with him was even more of a disaster.

  Donald was a drag queen. Dressed in ladies’ overalls like they used to wear in District Six, with the three hair rollers on top of his head tied with a scarf, he would walk me to Chapel Street Primary School, a few blocks away. His pink high heels with fur on top would click-click-click along the street.

  As we rounded the corner of Roger and Chapel streets, all the kids would be waiting and laughing, shouting out: ‘Oh, Grizelda! Uncle Moffie is back!’ As he walked me into my classroom, he’d make the vulgar retort, ‘Ek sal vir you ma sê.’ My school days were like that: the kids were cruel to both of us, but it was me who ended up crying from all the drama.

  I soon learnt that Saturdays were good days to get back at him.

  On Friday nights Donald wore dresses because he went to drag parties. And when he returned home early on Saturday mornings, he’d knock at the locked front door. I was the only one who would notice, peaking at him through the letter opening. Left outside, he would eventually pass out on our stoep.

  Every week it was the same.

  So on Friday afternoons, I would find a flying cockroach, catch it and put it in a bottle. On Saturday mornings, while he was still asleep on the stoep, I would take the roach out of the bottle and shove it in his weave. Later, Ouma Florie would throw something at him, startling him out of his drunken sleep. That’s when Donald would jump up with his high-pitched cry, ‘Oooh, I’ve got a cockroach in my hair!’ He’d run down the road in his drag-queen dress, waking up the sleeping community of Roger Street.

  Of course my dad would be asleep in the dining room with Joyce. So I would watch from the window and laugh and laugh.

  One time I woke up early on a Saturday morning and, peeking through the letter opening of the front door, I saw Donald slouched and snoring in the cane chair, wearing a white wedding dress! I ran back to Ouma, woke her up and told her. We thought he’d got married!

  She took an ash tray made from a rubber tyre, opened the front door and threw it straight at Donald’s head. Startled, and letting out a loud whimper, he jumped up and ran out of the house and down the street, his white wedding dress fluffing around him, crying, ‘Oh, oh. Help! Ouma’s throwing things at me!’

  This caused a huge stir the neighbourhood – everyone was watching and laughing. But I think I laughed the loudest of all!

  Sundays meant a lot to me. Ouma would give me nice oats for breakfast, then dress me up for church in my white dress with white clicky shoes.

  Although she would walk me to church, she never attended herself – she loved cooking and would be wanting to go home to prepare our huge Sunday lunch. Everyone knew that by 11am, the aromas from your kitchen needed to have reached the street – that was how we always knew what our neighbours would be eating.

  I really loved those days.

  When I returned home, I would change out of my white dress, happy to see Ouma’s perfect lunch waiting for me: grilled potatoes, chicken with yellow rice, and squash. Silma, my Muslim friend from next door, and I would sit on the stoep swopping our dishes when our parents weren’t watching. I loved her chicken biryani and she loved my Ouma’s squash with its pool of melted Rama.

  I’d eat with my own metal spoon, which had flowers elegantly etched on it. After our lunch on the stoep, Silma and I would eat a dessert of canned mixed fruit with green jelly and custard in our little bowls.

  We’d watch the people walking by, the kids skipping rope in the street, the guys doing their break dancing. And we’d chat and laugh about Donald. In those days Donald was hanging out with this guy called MJ (after Michael Jackson) – a guy who always wore a black leather jacket and white shirt, and who thought he was going to meet the real Michael Jackson some day. Donald, dressed in his ladies’ overalls, would stand close to MJ, twisting his curly hair in his fingers. Silma and I laughed so much at them, mimicking them and wondering what made Donald want to play with MJ’s hair.

  Oh, the streets were alive, and it was a fun community. On those relaxing Sundays, everyone went about their own friendly business, talking with neighbours all day. And I was a kid like any other, and my home was a happy one. Outside, in Roger Street, people listened to radio songs, drank and danced wildly in the streets, and this often went on through the night, though nobody complained of any noise. I remember my auntie singing songs from the radio, sometimes Judy Boucher, which was very popular then. She had a beautiful voice, and she was funny when she’d had a bit to drink.

  This was my home; I felt safe and happy.

  Two

  I WAS EIGHT YEARS OLD when things began to fall apart.

  It started when our beloved cat, Ginger, who I cared for so much, became pregnant. Ginger was my closest friend, a cat who purred (or rather snored) me to sleep each night.

  When I came home from school one afternoon, I found out that Donald
had put Ginger in a black plastic bag and thrown her away in the Woodstock garden, never to be seen again. After that, I went back to the gardens many times hoping to find her – at first I looked all over, but after a few times I would just sit on a bench hoping to see her again.

  If I’d been irritated by Donald before, I hated him after that. I never really spoke to him again, except when I had to.

  Just after that Donald told Joyce about my dad’s other sexual exploits. I remember the way she took this news: she was hysterical. She ran outside to the backyard toilet and tried to commit suicide by taking a handful of tablets.

  I remember standing next to her, staring at the pills in her hand. I told her how sad I was about Ginger, and I said that I wanted to take a pill as well.

  Joyce didn’t take the pills that day, and I sat with her as she calmed down. But she left Roger Street after that, and I never saw her again.

  And oh, I was traumatised about Ginger. I cried for days on end. Donald had killed my dear cat, and I didn’t understand why.

  So that’s how my sadness began.

  One day, shortly thereafter, Oupa David left the house wearing a light-tan suit, and never came home.

  No one told me what had happened. I kept asking where Oupa David was, and nobody told me.

  On the day of his funeral, I was told to come with, and I still had no idea what was happening or why. I hid in Oupa’s bedroom, among his clothes, and I didn’t come out. I really thought he would come back. Eventually, Donald said they should leave without me. And they did. It was only years later that I found out that a car accident had ended his life.