Exit!

by Grizelda Grootboom

  ‘I hope you don’t smoke again.’

  ‘Why aren’t you wearing that nice dress we gave you?’

  ‘How are you feeling now …?’

  Too many questions. And so my responses were cocky. I hadn’t realised that getting a plate of food meant giving out details of my whole life.

  I did sit down with a psychologist to tell my story, and I trusted her because she was a member of the church. But I felt no consolation in her attempts to move me forward – I continued to carry with me the trauma of my forced abortion. We only had two sessions. I don’t know why. Perhaps I was not ready to confront my traumas and the stigma attached to me, a homeless and decrepit young woman grovelling around on the streets of Joburg.

  The church had developed a form that stated where the people using the soup kitchen came from. The purpose was to collect money to send us home at Christmas. I didn’t accept this gesture, because the problem was this: if they give you a ticket ‘home’, and you’re indigent and family-less, where do you go when you get there?

  The Methodists really tried to help, but nothing was working.

  I had lost trust in people. Period. I couldn’t do this friendly thing with them. All I wanted was to be left alone.

  Eventually I was told by the shelter that I was strong now, and that perhaps I should leave and look for my own place.

  Because she had visited me in hospital, and because she was the only friend I could think of, I decided to look for Margaret to see if I could stay with her for a few days. I found her place in Hillbrow, but she wasn’t there. Her friend said I could stay for two nights. The place was so familiar, with the street life, the drugs, but I never did find Margaret.

  I continued sometimes to look for my other old Joburg friends. At the end of every day’s wandering I would go back to the Hillbrow girls to see how they were doing. Some of them had pimps, and wanted a ‘trust-thing’ with me. I hung around their flat, cleaning it for them, but I didn’t want to go back to my old way of life, to their way of life.

  And I couldn’t stay long with them because they often brought clients home. They told me that if I wasn’t doing the night work, it wouldn’t look right for me to stay there. So it was always back to sleeping in parks.

  Other than that, I didn’t have much to distract me. My baby Z was more on my mind than ever before, even though I had never known him.

  And at the back of my mind, I was thinking about how the Methodists might be able to provide an answer for my weary soul’s searching for a better life. It just hadn’t been the right time. I intended to return because, despite my issues, at the church I had felt for the first time that I had met my spiritual self.

  Nineteen

  MY MOTHER WAS ALSO ON my mind.

  Slowly I had realised that I needed to get out of this situation I had found myself in, and stop blaming people for what had happened to me. The bruises from the beatings and waking up in the hospital, all the time wandering from one street or shelter to another, with no support – all these things made me want to change.

  I decided to return to my mother in Cape Town, to see if I could make my way, to start some sort of ‘new life’ away from the immediate past. I was now nearly twenty-eight, and I hadn’t been back to Cape Town since the age of eighteen; ten years before.

  But to get to Cape Town, I needed money.

  I started sliding back into my old habits. I knew outlets in central Johannesburg which pushed drugs around the country, so I took up one offer and flew to Cape Town for a drop.

  There, I reunited with my mother. She was still in the same house in Khayelitsha, where she lived with my two half-brothers. Richard had died by then. But in that house it felt like I was nine years old again. From the very beginning, my mother and I fought a lot: it was the same scene over and over again. She was just interested in the money, and she encouraged me to go back to prostitution to make money to support us both.

  My way was becoming unclear again – I became confused about my purpose and my spirit. I had been trying to ease my way back into a society I had never really been part of.

  But with the pressure and the fighting and the pain and the fear, my drug habit raised its ugly head again.

  Taking drugs means paying for drugs, and as soon as the drugs were in my system, I fell back on my profession of stripping and prostitution.

  One night, while visiting the strip clubs in Cape Town, looking for clients, I was invited into a network run by a leading ANC politician, Mr M. He helped organise ‘lounges’ for VIPs in and out of Cape Town, with us girls carrying out strip shows and serving clients.

  It was there that I met and befriended Lindiwe. A skinny, very proud Xhosa woman with short hair which she sometimes wore in a weave or braids, Lindiwe looked like a model. Her dangling earrings and fashionable African designer clothes highlighted her smooth brown skin. I was happy for her that she wanted to make it on TV. She was younger than I was, about twenty-one, and we plied around Cape Town’s strip joints together.

  Lindiwe had never visited Joburg and she had dreams of going there. She had heard about this Methodist church all the TV celebrities attended, and she wanted to go there. She didn’t know that it was the same Methodist church that had helped rehabilitate me after the painful Port Elizabeth abortion, and that I intended to return to them.

  So we both had spiritual goals. And while we were waiting to fulfil them, Lindiwe and I moved about Mr M’s VIP lounges. Mr M particularly liked me and we spent one night in bed, but he was so drunk that we never had sex. When he woke up, he assumed we had, and remarked, ‘Oh, you know what? I don’t think we used a condom.’ He gave me R500 and told me to buy a morning-after tablet. I was thinking all along how I needed the money for my mom, just to keep her quiet.

  But I blackmailed Mr M for several months after that.

  I convinced him I was pregnant with his child and wanted to keep the baby. In my whole life, I’d never had a bank account until I met him. But he felt sorry for me and paid me a monthly allowance directly into a bank account he set up for me.

  He also tried to convince me to have an abortion, thinking his reputation would be at stake. When I refused, Mr M told me, ‘Please, I need you to show me your pregnancy results every month.’

  I found another pregnant woman friend, and told her: ‘Take your urine to the lab and get a copy of the test. I’ll pay you R100 a month.’

  On the original urine test results each month, I Tipp-Exed out her name and stuck my own typed name onto it, then faxed the photocopy off to Mr M, who was based in Joburg.

  Seven months into the fake pregnancy, I was still receiving funds from him, as he had promised.

  ‘Now I need to buy baby clothes, shoes and bedding,’ I explained to him.

  And he sent me more money.

  After the ‘birth’, Mr M asked to see photos of the baby.

  ‘But I have twins!’ I said, thinking that I could get double the money.

  The problem arose when I couldn’t find any mother with recent twins to photograph. Nor did my proxy pregnant friend have twins. He had been sending me about R1 800 a month, but I now asked for between R7 000 and R8 000 for baby clothes and my own care.

  He kept asking to see the ‘babies’. I started avoiding his calls and acting funny. I told him he must come to Cape Town to meet my mother, who demanded that he pay lobola for me.

  That’s when he went quiet. When he stopped his pursuit, I started calling him, even sending him threatening SMSes. He knew that if he didn’t pay up, I could bring his case to the media, or to his family.

  I received another allotment of money.

  It was not the right thing to do, but his money helped me avoid more prostitution.

  PART 3

  Twenty

  AFTER MY FAKE PREGNANCY, I had money and I decided to try to live clean again – I was still taking drugs, but I had no sex with anyone for about a year.

  Instead, I worked as a waitress at Harry’s Pancakes at the V
&A Waterfront. My friend Lindiwe also found work there, and we did some stripping on and off, while working at Harry’s Pancakes in the day. Eventually Lindiwe left for Joburg to follow her dreams.

  After work, my fellow girl co-workers and I used to go out to town for some fun. I wasn’t interested in picking up any guy or hustling because of my strict no-sex diet. But one evening, we girls decided to see what we could ‘catch’. The clubs on Long Street did not have entrance fees, so you just went in, showed yourself and met whoever you met.

  That’s when I met Charles from DRC. This tall, handsome black guy with bright eyes, pronounced lips and broad shoulders seemed so different from other men I had known. He came over to me with his good English and started chatting, telling me he worked as a barman at another bar.

  ‘I don’t chat with guys unless they buy me a drink,’ I told him, flippantly.

  He left.

  I sat at the bar and watched my friends dancing. About half an hour later, Charles reappeared with a drink in his hand.

  We chatted. He kept buying drinks, but I didn’t want to drink much since I was smoking weed. We ended up dancing and having a lot of fun. That night we went to his place in town, where he slept on a mattress on the floor.

  I hadn’t had sex for a whole year, but sex was fun with him. Charles could act manly and arrogant, but he was also sweet.

  We saw more of each other.

  Within three months, we had developed a liking for each other. I wasn’t interested in a serious relationship, but it was nice having a boyfriend, like my friends did, and having sex for fun. We never discussed love or our feelings towards each other, even though I eventually left Khayelitsha and moved in with him at his place.

  At first I was careful to always use a condom.

  But gradually, we went off it.

  Twenty-one

  EVENTUALLY I FELL PREGNANT AND had to tell Charles, not just about the pregnancy but about my past; I told him everything. I told him that I’d already had two pregnancies. I also told him I used to be a stripper.

  I had been thinking that my relationship with Charles would bring me closer to having a ‘normal’ life of love, trust and companionship. A pregnancy was never intended, at least not by me, as it stood in the way of my finding more secure employment, and just having fun with a caring guy. And so I told him that if he didn’t have plans for this baby, I wanted an abortion.

  ‘Of course, I have plans!’ he exclaimed. ‘I plan to be a daddy!’

  And I believed him.

  There was something funny about that time at Harry’s Pancakes. All the women – everyone from the manager to my co-workers – were falling pregnant. Someone joked that there was something special in the pancakes! And maybe there was, because a mutual bond developed between all of us, and it made the time I spent at work more comfortable.

  And I needed it, because away from work, during that first trimester, things were hell.

  I couldn’t find Charles. When I did, he was playing this cool guy all over the clubs. During those first four months, during the very few times we were together at his place, Charles verbally abused me, and would kick me and beat me up when I asked him why he was suddenly behaving this way. But he continued to say he wanted to be a daddy to the baby.

  At first my mother was also excited about the baby, because now the community around her could see the fruits of the ‘African way’. She was dancing about having a baby in her family. But then she too became verbally abusive again, and we continued arguing a lot. Even so, I kept coming back to her when Charles gave me problems.

  So I was very grumpy during my pregnancy. I was also very worried when I had to have a blood test. I calmed myself by saying at least I had God at my side. At four-and-a-half months pregnant, an HIV check at Somerset Hospital came up negative for me, and I was relieved.

  But things with Charles had not improved. He went quiet for several weeks, and after five or six months of pregnancy I gave up and started to ignore him back.

  When Charles then beat me up again during my pregnancy, I decided no, this wasn’t going to work. This was the type of abuse I was running away from. I moved away from his place and moved in with my mom.

  I just focused on the baby growing inside me and towards the end of the pregnancy I started really enjoying it. I saved my money and provided food for the house, which made my mother happy. I had worked throughout the nine months, which also shocked her, but she was pleased. And I enjoyed having my co-workers help me prepare for the birth.

  Charles signed the Home Affairs papers for the baby’s birth certificate and got his ID immediately. I eventually figured it out that he had wanted a baby so he could get South African citizenship.

  I was high on weed the day I first felt my contractions. It was around three in the afternoon. But the contractions continued for a long time, and the weed wore off. In the hospital, I pushed and pushed, and enjoyed the morphine, which numbed me.

  My son S was born at Cape Town’s Somerset Hospital on Heritage Day – just after midnight on 24 September 2008.

  It was a difficult birth, and the hospital was full, so just a few hours after S was born, I had to return to my mom’s house.

  When I arrived home, there were these village women waiting to welcome me and the baby. These grannies were sitting in the dining room, drinking umqomboti, sniffing snuff, and as I walked in they started ululating ‘Umzukulwana’.

  In Xhosa culture, there are very strict rules about the birth of a baby. A baby must not be seen by strangers until the aunties have welcomed the baby. But while my mother was receiving praise from the community grannies, I was thinking, ‘Hell no, these township grannies ain’t going to touch my baby!’

  I was exhausted and I needed to sleep. So I just looked at them, and then I left them and went into the room I was sharing with my mom, to sleep on my mattress on the floor.

  My mother had at least tried to make things pleasant by getting the room ready for the baby. The heater was on, and the room was nice and warm. Behind me I heard one granny say, ‘Well, we grew up in the village, and the village is never quiet until after midday. First thing we hear is a chicken, and the rest is all of us walking and talking loud. We are here now, so she must get over it.’

  There was something important that happened after S was born, even if I found all the cultural stuff irritating. It was that this was when my mother started calling me ‘ntombi’ (my daughter). The baby had brought her cultural integrity because she was now a grandmother. And gradually, in the eyes of the Khayelitsha community, my mother became less like an ‘auntie’ and more like a mother to me.

  It was also, however, the start of many arguments and disputes about culture and religion between us.

  Following Christian methods, I took S to be circumcised after seven days. This shocked my mother and her community grannies.

  ‘You never taught me culture,’ I said to my mom. ‘You were never in my life to teach me that. How can you tell me at my age now that I must respect your culture?’ I explained that I was committed to Christianity, and that that was my background, not this Xhosa culture she was always trying to rub in.

  I also knew that most of what my mother had learnt about Xhosa culture came from her late husband, Richard. So I continued, ‘I’m not going to respect your husband who I hardly even knew!’

  My mother would then launch into a long story telling me all that her husband did for her and her family. Bitterly, I remembered that, as a nine-year-old, I was not considered her child but her brother’s child. I had never been included in this family she now spoke of with such respect.

  But the cultural pressures continued.

  After S had had his immunisations, I came home one day and noticed a smell about him. Then I noticed the red wool tied around his waist, which in Xhosa culture is supposed to drive away the evil forces. I was furious! My mother said she had called a neighbour to make S ‘ukukhupha umoya’.

  I cut off the wool and shoved it in th
e bin.

  ‘If you don’t believe this culture, your son will be confused,’ she yelled at me.

  I just replied, ‘No!’

  After S was circumcised, I took him home and faced a smug mom, who said, ‘You see, you think you know everything. It’s going to bite you, just you wait!’

  It was very difficult to deal with all this. I was struggling to feed the baby as well – I was told my breasts were too large to nurse him as I would suffocate him, so I had to bottle feed him with special milk, which cost R120 a week. My mother and I had arguments over that too.

  I had tried to get together with Charles to ask for his support and explore how we could live together as a family. Instead of discussing it, he’d shouted at me. He stayed around in Khayelitsha long enough to see the baby born, but then he left.

  After S was born, I returned to work at Harry’s Pancakes. I was trying to be a good mother for the first time, trying to care for the baby while working, trying to save money responsibly. I needed my mom’s assistance. But things weren’t easy between us and I felt there was a lot of pressure.

  I paid her R500 every month to look after S while I went out to work, and I still had to pay for his expensive milk. Sometimes I wondered if she really deserved to carry the title of ‘grandmother’, and not ‘babysitter’, as if we shared a contract rather than blood.

  And I was exhausted from it all. At night in our one room where my mom, S and I slept on the floor, S would wake up and cry. If I continued sleeping, my mother would yell at me.

  But even with all this going on in those first few months, I just loved this baby. I would spend ages just looking at him; bathing him was always a time filled with precious bonding moments.

  When Z was born, I had only seen him for a few seconds – I’d just had a flashing image of his big eyes and curly hair. With S it was the same image, but I could now stare at him for hours, drinking in the sight of him. I loved his tiny baby hands, and I appreciated him every single day.