Читать книгу Zephany - Joanne Jowell - Страница 6

There is no shortage of mystery surrounding the name Zephany Nurse and I’m intrigued to find that a similar air pervades Miché Solomon … not because we don’t know what happened to her, but because we do.

Miché has a tepid calm about her that belies both her age and her circumstance. I wasn’t expecting someone so young, who has been through so much, to talk with Miché’s gentle ease, to consider her situation with the cool objectivity of a much older, much wiser person with much more distance from the story. It’s not that Miché talks about her life experiences with detachment, but rather that she seems to have weighed, measured and consumed them in neatly digestible form. Whenever we meet, I catch myself tossing that old saying around in my head, you know the one about life giving you lemons and making lemonade? Well, it seems Miché is cooking up some gourmet beverage here – extracting just the right amount of juice from the fruit, careful not to let the bitterness of the rind spoil the flavour and composting the remaining skin in a bid to make good use of the dregs.

Frankly, I’m surprised that she seems so … together. I think I was expecting to find a young woman in pieces – as many pieces as her shattered identity, like the Russian matryoshka nesting dolls, with each variation concealed beneath its bigger lookalike. When you twist apart the Zephany Nurse doll, you’ll find the smaller Miché Solomon doll inside; and when you twist apart the Miché Solomon doll, you’ll find … what, exactly? Or who? And will you be able to pry that one open any further?

As composed as Miché appears to be when we meet at the mall, I’m aware that her identity is still protected by law and I don’t want any threat of premature exposure to limit her willingness to share her story with me. So I insist that we relocate our meetings to a quieter space, away from the nosiness inevitably induced in passers-by who watch (and try not to stare at) an interview being recorded out in public.

We meet in Muizenberg, the site of Miché’s childhood beach days with her father and still familiar ground since she lives not far away.

Although part of greater Cape Town and home to about 36 000 people, Muizenberg still feels like the type of seaside village you’d only have occasion to visit on weekends or for a summer holiday. There is a welcome sense of anonymity which I hope will facilitate Miché being comfortable with me and with her process of self-revelation.

We settle down to talk against a backdrop of sea and surf. I notice that Miché speaks a little more loudly and clearly than she did at the mall. It could be a function of her growing confidence in sharing her story with a relative stranger; or it could be because we’re in a quieter environment with no one but the screeching seagulls for competition. Whatever the reason, I become acutely aware of an interesting paradox in her speech. Her voice often has a high-pitched, almost babyish quality which contrasts sharply with the maturity of her insights. When Miché speaks to her father on the phone, she addresses him directly in the third person, as in, ‘What time will Daddy be able to come fetch me? Are you sure that will suit Daddy?’ She does so out of respect for her father, and I am once again struck by the juxtaposition of girlish voice and the adult I see before me.

Zephany to Miché. Girl to woman. Minor to major. I am fascinated by the enigma and am beginning to understand identity as a fluid continuum rather than a solid state. I suspect this is something that Miché has long since realised.

MICHÉ:

Growing up, I found my mom more strict than my dad.

She was always a caring person but you knew not to mess with my mommy. My daddy I had wrapped around my finger, and my mom wore the pants in the family. She always had everything under control and that’s much of where I learned how to deal with things in the house, finances and so on. Even up to today, my daddy still won’t be able to help himself in finances and running the house. She was always in charge of the home and the family, always brought them together, always helped her sisters with marriage issues, children issues …

I know she had some hard times, like the miscarriage I told you about. My daddy told me that she had also had previous miscarriages. It was always a concern if it should happen to me one day. I would even question her: ‘You had difficulties having children, could it happen to me?’ I remember she still told me that I probably would have difficulties having children because these things could be genetic …

My parents have a good relationship, but I think it took the most strain that time when my daddy was drinking. He would go out with his friends and my mom obviously didn’t go with because she had to take care of me and my brother. My dad never drank around us, he’d always go out and drink, but I do remember her being angry at times, like, ‘If I catch you ever coming late in the house and drunk –’ But my daddy wasn’t a party person. Anyone will tell you that he’s very shy and quiet, an introvert. Nobody knows his story, not even me. I still don’t really know how he feels about everything that has happened.

He changed when I had meningitis and he had a personal conversation with the Lord. There are reasons why he had to stop drinking and reasons why he had to change – probably to prepare him for what is happening now …

I know that my mommy had a difficult past. As a teenager, I did ask her about her own life, and she told me bits and pieces, but the way I learned the most was from her court statement1 that I found when I was scratching around in her drawers trying to clear out space after she was gone. I found it in an envelope which had my name on it …

I knew she was married once before, and that she was abused by her first husband. But I didn’t know the extent of it – that he raped her and would even shock her with wires in her sleep.

My mom had six siblings, and I read in that statement that when she was about twelve years old she had to take them and walk late at night through Manenberg because there was no food in the house. Her mother – my grandma – had left them to go with another man.

My mom fell pregnant when she was sixteen and had a baby girl. But the baby died when she was six weeks old. Yolanda was her name. My mom came home that day and the family told her the baby was dead; she held her until the ambulance arrived.

After that, she had a second boyfriend – I remember we saw him in the mall once, before this whole thing came out. My mom told me she had a miscarriage with his baby but that my brother was in her life already by then. My mom left this man because he was apparently nasty with my brother. You know how she found that out? Because my brother prayed and mentioned his name while he was praying. He was about six years old, and he mentioned in his prayer something about this guy hiding his sweets away. She discovered that he was being emotionally abusive to my brother and she left him.

As for her first husband, well luckily she didn’t have a child with him because it was such a bad relationship.

I didn’t know all this detail. I only knew small things, mainly from arguments that I overheard between my mom and her mother. For a time, my grandmother lived with us and the two of them would argue all the time. Even if they were arguing over small things, issues from the past would come up and I’d hear my mom literally shout at my grandmother, ‘You know what you did wrong!’ All I knew was that my grandmother did leave them for another man and another man and another man.

I questioned my mom: ‘Why do you always argue with her? She’s your mommy! You wouldn’t like if I had to argue with you all the time.’ And she’d say, ‘There are things from the past, things that she did …’

I was left to wonder. I never really knew the details. I only knew about the first husband and that she narrowly escaped that marriage with her life. He eventually landed in prison – for robbery. My aunty even told me that my mom visited him in prison but was warned by someone in the prison that her husband had a blade between his fingers and was planning to kill her. She told the warders and left the prison. Then she filed for divorce.

After these relationships and heartaches, she finally met my dad – a completely different kind of man. My parents were friends for quite a while before they started dating. They dated other people in front of each other, they never really thought that they would end up together.

My daddy was in another relationship back then and he has a daughter. There were rumours that that’s not his child but my daddy believes she is and he will support her in many ways, even though they don’t have a relationship the way me and him do.

Then Lavona came to him saying she’s pregnant with me. He obviously told his family who told him to do what’s right – you can’t have two kids out of wedlock. They got married when I was two years old because he had to go finish his studies and then go work after that. Once he found a job, they could afford to pay for the wedding and the house we were living in.

From there, it seemed like a normal life, until The Truth came out that it was far from normal. But I still feel sad for my mommy about the difficult life she obviously had in her past. I actually cried after reading that court statement I found. If you speak to her and you live with her, you’ll never sense that she’s hiding so much trauma. Maybe you’ll pick up that she can be very defensive and precise – things must be just so.

But one thing I do know is that we never lacked anything. Her main thing, and what she’d tell me over and over, is that she always wanted to give us better than what she had.

* * *

This seems as good a time as any to introduce Michael Solomon – the apparently unwitting ‘steal dad’ who plays first order batsman in Team Miché.

Daddy Michael is a far more elusive character than his daughter. Though he seems to be on 24-hour call for Miché, it takes a good few attempts before I am able to pin him down for an interview. Miché acts as go-between, setting and cancelling our attempted meetings as his working hours and church commitments throw regular hurdles. While she insists that Michael is keen to meet with me (for her sake), Miché is dubious about just how much Michael will be prepared to share due to his famed introversion. I insist that any perspective is a useful one when it comes to unpacking Miché’s story. At this stage, I don’t foresee access to ‘steal mom’ Lavona, so I reckon Michael is the next best thing. Besides, if we dare to compare who suffered the greatest hoodwinking in the case of Zephany Nurse, surely Michael would vie for the top spot.

We eventually secure a Sunday afternoon interview slot in Muizenberg and I’m glad that the day is a sun-kissed Cape special, warm and lazy enough to loosen the tightest of lips.

Michael looks different to the last time I saw him when he was chaperoning Miché’s daughter around the shopping mall. Granted, our encounter was no more than a few moments long, but it still takes me a second to recognise him and, this time, I’m really looking.

Michael has a warm, open face with a generous smile and his gentle, soft-spoken manner makes him pleasant company. But I’m unsettled by another sense that I detect in the room. At times it feels almost like deference, as if he is privy to a subtle power imbalance of which I’m unaware. At other times, it’s plain guardedness, as if we are benign competitors. I worry that I’m over-compensating with a cheerful buddy-buddyness to get him on side. I don’t want him to read me as false, or ingratiating. I just want him to feel comfortable enough to talk openly. But I realise, too late, that I’m making the same mistake as the mother who so badly wants her recalcitrant teenage son to confide in her – feigning commonality. Fact is, Michael and I have very little in the way of shared experience, at least at face value. And, while he may always have been the quiet type, Michael’s experience of the Zephany Nurse story – of discovering that his beloved daughter may well be beloved, but is not his daughter – has placed a chasm of difference between him and virtually any other. As much as Miché was deceived for seventeen years, so too was Michael.

To get Michael to warm to me, to open up as much as he may to anyone, I must reach for that single, undeniable experience we share, regardless of background and circumstance: the challenging joy of parenting.

MICHAEL:

I was born in Retreat, Cape Town and grew up in Steenberg. So my whole life has been spent around these parts. I have a big family – I have eight siblings, and I’m the youngest. I had a happy childhood, and everything was there for me, I didn’t struggle. There are 24 years between myself and my oldest brother, so when I was growing up, most of the siblings were out of the house already.

I went to Steenberg High School but I didn’t finish Matric. I had to help work. I went in as an apprentice electrician, and I’m still in the trade.

In my free time, I liked to come to the beach and swim – I still do. And sport, I like sport. I played soccer a lot back then, but now I think I’ll leave it for the younger ones.

My father was very religious and as a family we belonged to the Full Gospel Church in Wittebome. We all grew up in there. I’m not there now but my older brothers still are.

For a time, I wasn’t much part of the church, but I saw how things didn’t go well in my life. Then I made a change. I joined with JCI – Jesus Celebration International – and I can see that the church has really strengthened me in many areas. It became very important to me. Before, I wasn’t bold or brave enough to do things. But now it’s different. And this case with Miché … That was a difficult situation and I could have given up but, thanks to the church, I’ll stick through whatever comes.

That’s how I raised my family – it’s how I’m still trying to raise my family – to be a good father to them, a spiritual father, teach them the proper ways.

I met Lavona in my late twenties. She is four years older than me. And we were just friends for at least four years before we got together. In my early twenties, I had a girlfriend and I had a daughter with her. We tried to make it work for a long time. My father actually wanted me to get married because we are Christian, and he told me that if you mess up you must fix it. So I was going to marry her but it just didn’t work. I still don’t know what went wrong. She did say that I played too much soccer and came home late in the evenings. Now I sit back and think it could have been; I was more into the sport and not enough time at home with her.

I met Lavona some time after breaking up with that girlfriend. I went with a mutual friend, Phillip, to Lavona’s mother’s place and I met her, her sisters and brothers. I liked them from that first time and I knew I’d come visit again. We’d play soccer and go back to Lavona’s house afterwards, chatting and listening to music. They were good friends to have: always happy, cheery, talkative. Lavona especially. I would sit there and she would do all the talking while I did all the listening. I’m a good listener.

After some time, I would go alone to Lavona’s house. Maybe that’s the time when I was getting feelings for her. One day just suddenly we kissed and I thought, Uh oh, what happened now? She had always tried to fix me up with girls. If we went out all together, she’d say, ‘Hey, there’s a nice girl for you,’ and I’d go and chat to that girl. Everyone was surprised when the two of us came together because she was always trying to get me a date.

From that kiss, then the two of us were together.

I used to look after my daughter on weekends, and she’d stay with me at Lavona’s too. It was nice, because there was a good relationship between my child’s mother and Lavona. Even Miché grew up knowing my first daughter. I remember they used to fight in the car while driving. They both wanted to sit in front and Miché would cry. My first daughter would always say, ‘I’m the eldest, I must sit in front,’ but Miché didn’t want to give her a chance. I’d make them both sit in the back then! But they were nice, happy, and together quite a lot.

Suddenly something just went wrong – I still don’t know what. Maybe it was something between the two women, that they had an argument that I didn’t know about, but suddenly I couldn’t see my first daughter anymore. She was about ten or twelve years old, and she stopped coming on weekends. I didn’t have any disagreements with her mother, but she cut off the contact. I haven’t had direct contact with her now for five years …

When Lavona fell pregnant, we weren’t yet married or even living together. I was living with my brother and she was living at home in Sea Winds, not far from each other. She was a seamstress – if she wasn’t working on contract for a company, then she’d do her own work. She was always making clothes, especially tracksuits.

I was surprised when Lavona told me she was pregnant because she always said she had difficulty getting pregnant. I knew she had had previous miscarriages – not with me, but she told me about them.

We had already talked about getting married. Like any couple who’s always together, we talked about buying a home together. Lavona used to tell me that it’s not wise to be unmarried and buy a house together because if something goes wrong then there’s going to be chaos. I thought we should get married first too. But in the meantime, she fell pregnant.

We were all excited for her. And worried. Even though she was healthy and fit, everyone kept saying she must take it easy and handle herself with care because we knew she struggled to carry a baby to full term.

Lavona is one of those women who really looked pregnant. You know how some women’s faces get swollen, their noses swell, their bellies grow quickly. That happened with Lavona too, from early on. She was so obviously pregnant. That’s why it’s hard for me to believe anything different …

Like I said, we weren’t living together so I just used to visit her. I’d go around on Monday nights, and sometimes after soccer practice, and then on the weekend. I didn’t see her every day, but we’d chat over the phone, or when we hadn’t seen each other for a little while she’d say, ‘Kom, lat ek jou sien nou ’n bietjie, ek het nou lank nie vir jou gesien nie’ and I’d come onto the one side of the road and she’d come to the other and we’d wave. That’s how close we were to each other.

One day, it was a Thursday, I came from work to Lavona’s house and found a lot of people sitting outside, waiting around. ‘Oooh,’ they told me, ‘there’s a surprise for you inside.’ People were already congratulating me, ‘Geluk! Geluk!’ and ushering me in. So I came into the house and the baby was inside there. I knew that the baby would be coming some time soon, but I didn’t know that day, and it was so exciting to get home and find this little baby girl.

I asked Lavona, ‘Hoe was dit?’ and she said, ‘Nee, dis orrait, it wasn’t so bad.’ I went to go fetch my mother and I can still see that picture of her holding the baby. My father had passed away already by then.

Lavona explained that she went into the hospital in the morning, delivered the baby, and they sent her home that evening. I told her, ‘You are mos strong, hey! At least everything went well.’

You must remember that these were the days before cell phones. We still wrote letters to each other and friends would run around and bring me letters Lavona had sent. Love letters, I guess you could call them. I’d read them and then phone her from my house to hers. Things were different then. So when I came home one day to find my child had been born and everything was fine, I was just very happy. We called her ‘Miché’ – from ‘Michael’. We already had a Michelle and a Michaela in the family, so we settled on Miché.

I didn’t like to hold Miché at first because she looked too small and fragile to handle, even though she was a nice size baby. In fact, I think she was quite heavy by baby standards, but I was too nervous with such a small thing.

Now that the baby was here, I came to Lavona more frequently. Every night, I’d go around to help her with the baby, bring her the things she needed like nappies and lappies. I often fell asleep there and stayed the whole night anyway, so I decided to rather move into her house and help her with Miché. I was working quite a lot at that time, also as a driver taking the guys to the work sites. I worked quite long hours and Lavona said she would take care of all the documentation and birth registration things for the baby. She didn’t want me to have to take time off work, so she took care of everything during the day.

I was very glad to be a dad again. I had dreamed of being a father to my own children since I’d grown up surrounded by siblings and their kids. I really love being around children.

We lived together in Lavona’s family home for two years, until my second eldest brother told me, ‘Mike, you’re living in sin! You can’t live like this anymore. If Daddy was here he would have told you to get married.’ Those words actually hit me and I proposed to Lavona out of the blue, in the room at her mother’s place. And she was like, ‘Huh?’

We got married and we still lived on there for a little longer, until we got the place where we’re living now, in Hillview. We started fresh there, with our new baby and Lavona’s nephew Gerald. I accepted him as her son and our responsibility. A family of four. I knew I needed to take more responsibility in life now. I can’t be careless and just think about myself; I must think of them first. I had to have a permanent job and take care of them. That was my aim. It still is. To take care of them.

We were happy. There was food every day, we had the things that we needed. Lavona also worked, she was always working. Like in January month, she’d get orders for school uniforms and then orders for soccer gear. Sometimes she worked right through the night. Lavona was always loving and caring and taking care of us. She loved making or buying things for the baby.

I was always happier to stay with the baby. At that time we used to go out to the dances, but I would always tell the others, ‘You can go, I’ll stay with Miché and I’ll look after her.’ My life started changing when she came and I didn’t want to go out as much. Maybe I’m boring, but I would rather choose to stay with her. I liked to keep Miché close to me. I don’t know if it was always like that, or if it’s just because of what has happened, but I’m always worried about her.

I remember when she was at primary school, she fell getting out of the bus that she was travelling to school with. She was crying and very upset that day and I was very upset that evening when they told me because I didn’t like her to get hurt. I told her mother she must then take her in herself, wait until she is inside safely, and then leave. Because that’s one thing: I don’t want my child to have pain or sadness. People told me it’s normal, children fall and scrape skin and whatever. But I did not want her to get hurt – that’s just the way I felt.

When I came home from work in the evenings, Miché was always waiting by the window. The car would pull up and she would always come running to hug me, even before she could speak properly. That’s her way.

As a teenager, she was also happy at home. She didn’t go out much, she was mostly indoors. She was a good student, her academics was fine, no problem there. She was always happy to go to school. I can’t remember her going to detention and things like that, no, she was not a naughty child.

I didn’t know about a boyfriend until one day there was this guy sitting there on the couch at the house. Lavona said, ‘It’s a friend of Miché’s’ and I saw Miché look at me, like What is Daddy going to say now?! I looked back at her and then went into my room. My wife came to say, ‘No, it’s a friend from school.’

I told Miché later on, ‘You can have friends, but you know you must first finish with your school career. Don’t be distracted by boys. Finish your schooling and know what you want in life.’

There was another guy who came to visit her, but he would stand outside and I’d go call her. She’d tell me, ‘Daddy, go and tell him I’m not here.’

‘Oh, so now I must tell him the message but it’s your friend!”

I’d go out to him and tell him she wasn’t around. I could see he was disappointed, but she said I must tell him, so I told him – that’s it.

In the end, the boy on the couch became Sofia’s dad, but that was only later, after D-Day …

Generally, I think we had a very happy, normal home. Me and Lavona both worked hard to support our family and we all took care of each other. The church was an important part of the whole family’s life too. Although I worried a lot about Miché, at least we were all together and safe – not like the Nurse family whose baby was stolen. I was aware of the Zephany Nurse case and I felt so sad about it. I grew up close to their family – the place that I played soccer is close to their place. I always used to come there and greet and talk. Some of their family even worked together with us: we were the electricians on the construction sites and they were the builders.

I never had even the smallest idea that Miché was not my child. She looked so much like my family. I even remember one time I took Miché with me to a funeral. My brother’s daughter was there too and Miché was standing next to her. I remember thinking that they looked almost like sisters, both light of complexion with light colour eyes.

At least I knew where my children were. I felt so sorry for the Nurses. Once, I went to get the materials for lighting at a shop in Diep River where Morné and his father were working. When I saw Morné I thought to myself, Oh shame, it’s his daughter they are looking for … That’s what came to mind every time I saw him.