by Tracy Going
But my details fall short of what really happened.
I have not told how I thought I was going to die.
I have not told how I thought I’d never see my son again.
How I did everything to stay alive.
How can I even begin to explain my fear? Words are useless as I sit there in the courtroom with him so close and me reliving my terror. There is no way to begin telling. Besides, no one asks.
Sandra asks me how I felt and I respond that I was afraid; but it was so much more than simple fear – but to tell all of that I would need a direct question: “Did you think you were going to die?”
Then I would say, “Yes.”
Yes, I thought I was going to die.
But otherwise I will never utter those words.
I can’t bring myself to announce to the world how close I have come to dying. I am too afraid to acknowledge it, even to myself.
And I am ashamed, ashamed that it has happened to me and that I was unable to stop it or defend myself. As a child, I had vowed to myself – and over the years I have repeated it silently, the same words, again and again – that It will never happen to me. I will never be beaten up. Never. Ever …
I have broken my own promise.
But I also don’t want him to have those words, to take ownership of them. I don’t want him to know that he defeated me – and so utterly. I don’t want him to know that he’d won. If I breathe those words, with him stretched out in the accused’s box a few quick steps away, he’ll know how terrified I really was that night, and even worse, he’ll know that I’d always be scared.
So I tell the court that I lied because I was afraid.
But it isn’t enough.
The defence wants my complete annihilation. He hacks away at me for many more hours, backwards and forwards, this way and that, repeating himself over and over, relentlessly swinging his verbal axe as though I am a liar, a cheat and a fraud.
“So when you went and made the false statement for insurance purposes, that was your personal decision?” he prods again, pausing briefly as if struggling to reconcile my abhorrent behaviour with his moral outrage. “A back-up plan to possibly put in an insurance claim for the damages is that correct?”
“At that point, yes,” I repeat.
“And you knew at the time you were lying?”
“Yes, I knew I was lying.”
“And you have no objection to taking the oath?”
“I did have an objection – which is why I went the next morning to change my statement.”
“Madam, at the time that you did it, you had no objection?”
“I was afraid.”
“It is a simple yes-or-no answer … You had no objection to taking the oath?” he sighs, as if nothing is more tedious than me being a perjurer.
“I took the oath,” I say.
“Without objection?”
“Without objection.”
Then it is lunch.
There is only one other place to eat aside from the court canteen. It is a tearoom disguised as a restaurant on the other side of Fox Street.
Inside it is dark; the only light filtering through is from windows tinted in once-shiny silver. The tables are crowded together and most are already crammed with lawyers when we arrive, all of them with their heads close together in collegial discussion or otherwise consulting urgently with their clients.
It seems there is much to accomplish in that one hour over lunch.
We take a table furthest from where the accused and his defence team are holding counsel between mouthfuls of bad food.
I turn my back to them as my mother, Sheryl and my friends gather around me.
Our toasted cheese sandwiches arrive. They are limp and greasy, with no garnish to redeem them.
It is impossible to eat.
I sit there collecting my thoughts. I’ve been testifying for three-and-a-half hours already and still have a long afternoon ahead.
We arrive back at court to find Sandra frantically searching for me.
“There’s a problem,” she announces, her glossed lips tight.
They are not words I want to hear.
“What problem?”
“The media want to publish the photographs.”
“What photographs?” I ask, hoping I have misunderstood.
“The photos of you, beaten up.”
“They can’t. I won’t let them.”
I am firm as I stand my ground.
“Sorry, there’s nothing you can do,” she says, stroking my arm gently. “They’ve been entered into the court records as evidence, which means they’re now in the public domain.”
Her words hit me hard as I absorb their punches, their implication.
Thoughts of pictures of my battered face being made public crowd me as I take my seat and continue under oath.
“In your statement, in terms of the Domestic Violence Act, did you mention the two cars that you mentioned in your testimony, as being in the vicinity of the accused and yourself, when there was a change in driver of your vehicle, on your version?” asks the defence as though we hadn’t taken a breath since my closing words before lunch.
I think carefully to make sense of his convoluted question.
What is he actually asking?
I testified earlier about two cars stopping as I was running away down the road, after he’d pulled up the handbrake and the car had swerved to a standstill. The drivers of those cars had shouted through their windows, asking whether I needed help. I have told the court how humiliated I was, stumbling down the middle of the road with my sleeve torn from my jacket, but I’ve also explained that despite my bewilderment and shame and fear, the accused had possession of my car, my car keys and my house keys and that I had felt I had no other option but to get back into my vehicle with him.
Now he is asking me whether I mentioned the two cars in my application for the restraining order. No I hadn’t. It wasn’t a necessary detail.
“I made no mention of the two cars, no.”
“Any reason why not?”
“I made no mention of him pulling me out of my car or pulling up the handbrake either; I’m afraid there were too many events to condense into a few lines.”
“Did anyone compel you to condense your version to a few lines?” he taunts.
“No, I filled up the piece of paper.”
I had stood for hours in a queue at the Family Court to seek an interdict against him, stood among women who, in desperation, were turning to the court as a last resort for protection. I had summarised and filled the page with a description of the events that took place in my home. I had not included all the details of the journey home. I didn’t think they were necessary – just as I didn’t think what happened through the night, being choked and strangled, was needed for the insurance company.
The defence is now suggesting that these two statements are contradictory and cannot possibly be true. He moves swiftly on to the accused’s version.
“He denies having assaulted you in any way or verbally abusing you for the alleged nine and a half hours that you claim.”
“He is lying.”
“He says that you are lying in your testimony and this is evidenced by the fact that you previously lied when you made your statement, which you refer to as being for insurance purposes.”
“I am sorry, what are you asking me?”
“He says that you are lying. You keep saying that he is lying. He says you are lying and this was evidenced by the fact you made a false statement albeit, as you say, for insurance purposes.’”
“I am sorry … I’m not quite with you.”
The defence then takes my story and makes it theirs.
Every allegation I have made takes on their version.
If I have told how he was screaming at me, they invert it and claim that I was the one screaming at him.
It goes on endlessly.
Later, the defence vehemently denies that the accused had a drug prob
lem – instead, he suggests that I had one, that I had a Prozac and Valium dependency.
They are shameful allegations. They are reckless and false, with no regard for their destructive impact.
And no one stops them.
I sit alone.
Twenty
I’m on the floor, the mottled pink Marley tiles cold to the touch beneath me. My hands clasp the toilet bowl while I vomit, my stomach churning as I spew my tension.
My mother and Sheryl wait in the passage outside the prosecutor’s bathroom.
My forehead is clammy as I rest my head on the black toilet seat, allowing the waves of nausea to shudder through me. My knees are drawn in close, my heels hard against the filthy floor. I curl myself up smaller, hold the veined, porcelain toilet bowl tighter as the prospect of the hours ahead rage through my mind.
Today is the second day I’m under oath, defending myself and fending off a carefully calculated narrative. Yesterday I heard how I lunged at him with a serrated knife, one that had apparently been lying on my server at the front door. I tried to hold myself together, stay composed, as I fielded the endless allegations. I struggled to neutralise my expression, to hold my face vacant, as horrendous images were conjured up in the courtroom, but it was difficult to keep the horror from my eyes. I had tried to pretend that the defence advocate was talking about someone else, not me.
Because he wasn’t talking about me.
I had never been in a frenzy, as purported. I had never tried to stab him. There had never been a knife. I had never aimed a sliver of glass at his naked foot. His feet were not without shoes.
It was all untrue.
When I had heard time and again how he defended himself, how his elbow had accidently struck my eye and the back of my head hit the wall, I wanted to howl my pain. I wanted to leap from my seat, to rush at the defence, to glower deep into his small, swollen eyes, and wail my anguish.
How can you do this?
Do you have no shame?
Where is your compassion?
But I couldn’t. Not simply because I would never do such a thing. I had had to sit there and look calm and show the very least emotion lest I added another stroke to the abhorrent picture they were painting of me as a liar, a cheat, a fraud, a woman who is neurotic, obsessive and mentally ill, with a prescription drug dependency. A bad mother.
Theirs is a plot I had anticipated, but it had exploded beyond rigorous scrutiny. A further violation.
I felt as though I was being brutalised all over again in that courtroom; my attacker – the defence advocate, under the instruction of the attorney.
I don’t consider for a minute that he believes his client is being honest or that his story is true. But it doesn’t seem to matter, factual guilt or innocence is irrelevant, it is simply a costly game of winning: a tactical, vigorous play of catch, circle, strike, and then mercilessly pick the carcass clean, victoriously.
I am his carrion.
And he is going to pluck my bones bare.
Minutes pass. I finally scrape myself off the floor, flush the toilet and wipe my mouth. I am both sweaty and cold as I move to the basin. I lean against the wooden table with its skinny legs. Someone has covered it with a crocheted doily tablecloth. There is a wilting flower in a small ceramic vase placed to the side. Alongside it is a pink, quilted tissue box.
I pull tissues out and dab at the damp on my face. I smooth the smudged mascara from under my eyes. Check myself in the mirror. I am drained and pale; the only hint of colour is my outfit. I am wearing buttercup yellow from top to toe.
God forbid, who wears yellow?
But it is my armour of courage.
My mother and Sheryl stay close to me as we make our way down the passage.
The defence team is already knotted together as I step into the courtroom; the defence advocate – new to the bar, yet to represent alleged drug traffickers and mobsters, and corruption-accused politicians – is waiting, and alongside him is the attorney with his black jacket sagging sloppily from his shoulders, his thin black tie dangling like a serpent around his neck. He stands tall, with his raven-black hair tied at the nape of his neck. It is hanging thick and greasy down his back. I want to rub the slick from my hands as his black eyes dart over me.
Together they are priming themselves, getting ready to prove their adversarial worth.
Neither of them greets me.
The accused is loitering beside them, hands in pockets.
Sandra looks up from her papers as I move closer.
“How are you feeling?” she asks.
“Not good.”
“Don’t worry, everything is going to be okay,” she says.
She is smiling warmly but her now-familiar words already offer little comfort.
“The accused tells me, based on the tempestuous relationship the two of you had … you were obsessed with your job and your public image. Do you have any comment?”
“Well, I take my career seriously,” I say guardedly. “Obsessed is a bit extreme.”
I wonder what my career has to do with him beating me up but it soon becomes evident. It seems my moods fluctuate in accordance with the amount of work I have, and apparently if I don’t have work I am snappy, irrational and on edge.
I have been on the stand for over an hour already.
The morning session had started late after the defence advocate requested a delay so that he could attend a scheduled meeting at the Attorney-General’s office. It seems he is an important man. He’s also had the impertinence to suggest, without any consultation, that it might suit me too as it means I could wrap up my radio show without having to rush out before the end to get to court on time. Perhaps he wants us all to think that not only is he in the big league and busy, but he is considerate too.
Now he stands, flushed with prominence, after I’m sworn in again. He runs his hands through his thinning blond hair, his puffy eyes looking forward, his nose planing into his pointed profile when he throws his first barb.
“Miss Going, yesterday we dealt with the issue of credibility and you told this court that you wouldn’t exaggerate your testimony. Do you remember that?”
Of course I remember that.
“Do you still stand by that?”
I am confident that I haven’t exaggerated my testimony and respond accordingly.
But the suggestion is already dangling ominously in the air.
I am acutely aware of the enthralled stares of the journalists seated on the hard wooden benches along the back of the courtroom.
Their pens are poised. They are ready to start scribbling.
I’d read their stories in the daily newspapers delivered casually to the studio this morning. I’d turned them open quickly, flicking through the pages, tossing them aside like they might catch fire, in my search for yesterday’s torment.
I will buy none of their papers this weekend.
I will only see the articles years later, when Sheryl hands over my legal files. They are all there. My battered face, my fractured words, his despicable allegations printed in black and white, saved for posterity, in the Saturday Star, Die Beeld, The Citizen, the Sunday Times and who knows where else.
The journalists are waiting for their story to unfold.
Once the defence advocate is certain of rapt attention, he boldly places on record that my testimony was motivated by a desire to take money from the accused.
My testimony is motivated by a desire to take money from the accused.
I am going through this ordeal for money?
This, coming on behalf of a man who’d beaten me up then rushed back inside as my neighbour and his son were dragging me out, pulling me through the wooden shards of my exterior door, to steal money I had lying around in an envelope. I had turned to see him enter my home. It was then that he had stolen it.
I want to be sick again.
How dare they?
It seems that if the defence team can’t silence me, then they will make sure that I
am not heard.
And if that isn’t enough I am now being indicted for having a poor self-image.
“Can I put it to you bluntly …? Your moods are determined by your self-esteem, which in turn is determined by how busy you were in your work …” I never heard the remainder of his words.
Bluntly?
“You can put it to me bluntly,” I snap. “And I will tell you that I was extremely busy during that time and if my moods depended on how busy I was and my self-esteem, then I had very good self-esteem at that stage.”
He pauses for as long as I speak, and then continues tonelessly.
“And he says that this is also evidenced from your testimony … when you said that he took a shard of glass … which is denied … that he wanted to ruin your career by damaging your face …”
I remember how I’d broken free and run when I felt the razor edge of the glass on my face, his spit on my cheek.
I remember how I wouldn’t let him cut my face.
“He took a shard of glass and he was trying to cut my face,” I say. My words are clipped and clear. “He said to me, ‘You need your fucking face, don’t you?’ It was very deliberate.”
“That is denied,” he scoffs. “He says it is indicative of the way you believe that everything went together with your work … the self-esteem … your face … your image … Everything was this public personality, the image that you had.”
“What are you asking me?” I ask slowly and deliberately.
“I’m explaining to you what the accused’s instructions are.”
“I don’t understand … Must I comment on what the accused believes?”
“Yes. I’ve invited you to comment,” he says, as though it is obvious to all. “The accused says, not believes …” he continues, “that you perceived this whole fight and all these incidents to be related to your work … and that you saw everything in relation to your work. You are obsessed with this public image that you have!”
I breathe in deep, lift my chin, and only then do I answer.