Angies Story
My name is Angie. I was born in April 1979 in Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa, to rather delinquent / incompetent / rebellious parents.
Mom – my mother, Elaine, was adopted basically at birth into a “good” family (according to society’s financial standards, although the emotional support was not up to standard). She was the apple of her adoptive father’s eye, but he died when she was 21. Her older “brother”, Neil, was also adopted & they had a “sister” who was the couple’s biological daughter. For reasons my “grandmother” cannot fathom; my mom & uncle chose to rebel against everything she stood for. They both got caught up in drugs & alcohol, but my uncle managed to overcome it (perhaps the male will power is stronger?); he married & had 2 kids. My mom continued in the world of drugs & alcohol & eventually met my dad.
Dad – my father, Christopher was one of a kind. I don’t know much about him apart from the fact that he was a delinquent in every sense of the word. He was born into a poor family with many brothers & sisters, although I know nothing about his parents or siblings. Sometime during his High School years he was sent to a Reformatory in Tokai because of his bad behaviour. Upon being released from there he also lived a life of sex, drugs & alcohol and somewhere along the way met my mother.
I have very vague memories of my first 7 years (which are apparently vital in terms of bonding etc.), but do clearly remember witnessing my dad beat my mom, because I was running around naked after having a bath (I must have been around 1½ at the time). My dad died in a motor-bike accident a month after my 2nd birthday with his other girlfriend on the bike with him – she suffered brain damage from the accident.
Almost immediately after my dad’s death my mother started living with another man, Hendrik, who just happened to be my dad’s best friend’s brother. I assume this was the worst time of my mother’s life, because I didn’t live with her for a good couple of years & was sent to live with my dad’s uncle, whom I now only remember as Popeye, and his wife, Gertie. They had 3 kids, Minnie, Sophie & Willie. I have some fond memories of eating peanut butter sandwiches & drink glasses of milk in their kitchen and of their dog, Rex, whom I grew up with & often used to sleep with in his kennel.
When it was time for me to start Primary School, i.e. at the age of 5, I went back to live with my mom & Hendrik in a horrible block of flats, Drummond House, in Brixton. I clearly remember this HOLE we were living in. It was one big room, which my mom divided with curtains into a bedroom & “lounge” & kitchenette. There was one bathroom per FLOOR of flats (I cannot remember how many flats were on each floor) & these bathrooms had this distinctive smell (I can still get that smell now when I think about it) – it was the smell of cigarette smoke, dirty toilets, mould & POVERTY. When the bathroom light was switched on cockroaches would scurry out of the bath, across the floor & up the walls; there was also a black rubber mat at the foot of the bath, which was a good hiding place for the cockroaches. My memories of this phase of my life are also rather vague, apart from occasional memories of many people in our flat drugging and drinking.
Whilst in Grade 2, we moved to Roodepoort – into a proper house, with 2½ bedrooms, lounge, dining room, kitchen & bathroom & a yard! Oh, by the way, my mom was always employed! She started off working for the Welfare (what a dam joke), then proceeded to work for Trust Bank for a number of years and lastly worked for Volkskas, so it was not as if we should have been living a life of poverty; it was just her choices & habits (& unemployed boy-friend, Hendrik) who made us struggle financially. At this stage I changed schools & also met a family, who would later become good family friends; their kids’ names were Quinton & Shantell.
There is something about this house involving Hendrik’s baby brother, Shaun, (who’s mom died when he was just 6 months old leading to him being shifted from brother to sister to brother). Note: Shaun was at least 4 years older than me. He started touching me in places… I somehow knew that it was wrong, but at the same time didn’t know what to make of it. Then one day my mom (in a smoked up oblivian) caught us under a make-shift tent in my bedroom. In all honestly, I cannot remember exactly what my mother discovered, but I do know that it was bad enough for both of us to get a dam good hiding & for him to get sent to yet another sister.
My sister, Monique, arrived around this same time. Oh, & what a joy! Suddenly I was no longer Hendrik’s ‘daughter’ & I was no longer loved by his family. Suddenly I was the victim. Suddenly after living in this world on my own for 7 years, there came this sweet innocent little baby. I got many slaps, punches & shoutings after Monique arrived & can quite frankly say that I hated the little snot-head. There was an incident when I was in Std. 3 where my mom gave me a blue eye (yes, punched me in the face) because Monique had hurt herself with my school bag (I mean, really it was MY bag, you know) & to make things worse one of my friends was there at the time, so I couldn’t even lie to the teachers about anything.
Notes to reader: In all this time my mom lied to her family about living with Hendrik & we had very little visits from ‘family’.
Somehow we almost got caught up with the Welfare (remember the joke about my mother having worked for the Welfare?), which is when my gran stepped in & started sending us OK Bazaars grocery vouchers every month. We also moved into another house (still in Roodepoort), which was much bigger & just better overall. It was around this time that my mom also tried to grow up a little; her drugging was down to the occasional dagga joint & she only drank one ENTIRE bottle of whatever (from Richleigh to Cape to Rio to Klipdrift) every Saturday. She also had this little ritual of making vetkoek & mince on a Saturday.
Now, Hendrik had a sister named, Kriek, who I took as my favourite aunt – I loved her to bits. When she married & had 2 step-daughters for me to play with I started spending a lot of time in their home. On one particular night I slept over to look after the girls, as her & her husband were going out & I fell asleep watching TV in the lounge. I woke up because I felt a sharp pain, but fell asleep again; only to feel another sharp pain, so I woke up properly. When I opened my eyes, her husband, Steve, was lying on the floor next to me, my brooks were down & so were his underpants. Not knowing what to do; I just got up quietly & went to sleep in my bed (because I had my own bed in their house) – he followed me & came to lay behind me, holding me. So, I got into bed with one of his daughters, and then he left me alone.
I didn’t tell a soul what had happened to me, but just didn’t visit Kriek anymore & made every excuse under the sun when she wanted me to come over. Eventually a few months later there was an altercation between him & my mom & I blurted out, “And he’ll get into big trouble if the police know what he did to me”. It was the first time in my life that I heard my mother saying that she wished my father was alive. You see, he was a force to be reckoned with – rather large & in charge & she knew that he would have been able to hurt Steve for hurting me, but my father was not around to fight my battle, so it was off to the Children’s Hospital for me. I now understand that a full gynaecological examination was carried out on my little 10-year old body, including me having to put up with some in-turn / student doctor peering over the doctor’s shoulder to also see what she’s seeing! My mom didn’t take it any further because she didn’t want me to have to go to court, but did get a Court Interdict against Steve, banning him from our property & from coming within metres of any one of us.
I think that after that incident with Steve I had a particular body odour or invisible sticker that said “molest me”, because Shaun still tried or did whatever when he visited, there was an incident when I was walking in Checkers where this man (Jewish or Muslim judging from his little hat) walked up behind me, fondled my little sprouting breasts & handed me a R2 note when he walked away and another time when I was walking home after buying a few things for my mother; a man stopped me to ask for directions, when I approached the car to direct him – he wasn’t wearing any pants & was masturbating.
So, I begin to think “ok, if I’m fat they won’t like me & won’t do these things to me” & start eating! I was even caught shop-lifting (chocolates) from a local cafe… My weight & size soon became my mother’s target point when shouting at me & belittling me. I was called anything from Fatso to Abby (you know Jimmy Abbot the wrestler/boxer?) & was even put on a diet of Provita’s & cottage cheese when I was in Std. 5.
Most of my Std. 4 to Std. 6 years were spent away from home. I would sleep out every weekend & go away to friends during the holidays. Some Fridays I wouldn’t even wait for my mom to get home from work to ask for permission to sleep out, I’d phone her at work & be gone by the time she got home.
When I started Std. 6 Monique also started Grade 1 & she became my child. I would have to do her hair for school & I would have to help her with her homework before my mom got back from work. Both of us also had to be bathed by the time my mom got home. My other responsibilities were to bring the washing off the line & to run around paying my mom’s bills and buying groceries.
In May 1992 (my Std. 6 year) my mom was shot dead by Steve (yip, the same man who molested me). To cut a long story short, he had beaten his wife, Kriek, up & she had run away to us. When she refused to come out & my mom refused him access to his wife (in our house), he broke the door down & shot both of them. Kriek lost the use of her arm and my mother lost her life. I ran out of the house as Steve ran in, because I was so frightened of him, but Monique, who was 6 at the time, witnessed it all. I recall her telling us how he pointed the gun at her after shooting my mother & the gun going ‘click click’, he then proceeded to tell her that if she told anyone what she had seen he would kill her. After the police did all their checks on the gun, they were able to determine that the next bullet in the gun had dislodged / lodged (whatever!), but it was jammed & couldn’t come out.
The day of my mother’s funeral it was agreed that I would move to Hammardale, KZN, to live with my mother’s brother & his family and that Monique would stay in the then Transvaal with my mother’s sister & her family, as Monique’s father was in Roodepoort. The PROMISE was that we’d see each other every school holiday. My mom died in May that year, the next time I saw Monique was during the December holidays…
Upon arriving on my uncle’s farm in May 1992 I was miserable. Firstly, he had LITERALLY given me an hour to pack up my LIFE (me being 13 at the time) & get a move on because the plane was waiting. But, secondly, the farm life was not for me & my bedroom, which was the end of the passage with a curtain up to give me some privacy was horrible! I hadn’t been there for very long when I was informed by my uncle that I would be given a year to settle down, failing which I would be sent to the Children’s Home.
Around August of 1993, I was called to ‘chat to’ my uncle, his wife & a lady. The meeting was to inform me that because I was influencing my cousin to take drugs; I was being sent to the Children’s Home & I then found out that the lady, Marlene, was a Social Worker. Needless to say; I was never asked about this drug accusation, I was never given an opportunity to admit or deny, but had to just accept that I was now being sent away… AGAIN. For the record though, I never influenced my cousin to take drugs, we did experiment TOGETHER with Tippex Thinners, but it was a once-off thing & something both of us agreed on trying. Anyway!!
So, I arrived at Pietermaritzburg Children’s Homes in August 1993. The Home was a huge building, with some offices, a foyer, a dining area & 5 dormitories. ‘Alley Cats’ was the dormitory for teenage girls… Life in the Children’s Home wasn’t half-bad; it took some time adjusting to the life there, but it was good & I met many good people. It was also the first time that I was exposed to living with ‘coloured’ people & also a few ‘black’ and ‘Indian’ people. The childcare workers were all great & treated us well; there were even Social Workers on site for those of us who needed additional counseling etc. I did go through a suicidal patch though; around my Std. 8 year I first slit my wrists (& still have the scars to show for it), but I just bled all over my room & the door had to be broken down to get to me because I had locked myself in and then I took an overdose of tranquilizers! The OD was about the worst; I took the tablets on a Thursday & woke up in hospital on Saturday afternoon! I wouldn’t have died though (according to the doctors); I would have just slept for a good few weeks had they not pumped my stomach in time.
In my Matric year I eventually fell in love with a guy, Julian, who had been my best guy friend for about 2 years at the time. One night, we got caught up in FEELINGS & I ended up sleeping with him & from there onwards I thought that I was in love with him. It was our secret & it was good. The relationship went on for most of my Matric year, then he left the Home, because he had finished his studies, so I hardly saw him. In my 1st year of Tech I had the odd boy-friend here & there, nothing serious & then in my 2nd year I somehow crossed paths with Julian again & actually ended up dropping out of Tech, because I kept bunking lectures to visit him.
Because I had started working at Pick ‘n Pay as a Cashier in the same year, I eventually left the Home & moved in with a friend’s parents. From there Jo-anne & I moved into a little granny cottage, which just so happened to be down the road from Julian’s house! We sort of rekindled old flames, but he was never mine, then one day when I got home Jo-anne was packing up to move out & I was stranded, because there was no way I would be able to afford the rent on my cashier’s salary. When who should come to my rescue? None other than sweet Julian; he arranged for me to live with one of his cousins & when this arrangement didn’t work out, because her mom could see right through Julian & didn’t like the way he was treating me (& I didn’t want to hear the SENSE she was speaking about him) I moved in with him & his mom.
Here I lived in a little 2-bedroom corporation house, which had a shower & toilet outside, no hot water & was just generally run down. I remember that at one stage there was no electricity; we would have to cook & boil water on a Prima stove (a little stove that uses paraffin for fuel) & use candles. When I got a decent job (with my current employer) in April 1999 I moved into my own little flat with Julian & there my misery with him began!
He was unemployed, he drank, he partied, he disrespected me, verbally abused me, cheated on me, lied to me, stole from me & finally beat me. The first time I actually blamed myself ‘because I had provoked him’, but walked away with a black eye, which caused half of my face to be blue/green & me not to be able to see out of one eye & barely out of the other – this was from one punch to my cheek. After that there were a few instances where he’d pull my hair, slap me, kick me etc. Then I started hitting back, because I had chosen to stay.
He eventually got a job (which I helped him get by faxing his CV all over) & we decided to move away from that area & his friends to try again. Nothing changed! He then just started disappearing for weekends at a time, because he was going to his friends. And the fighting continued. One incident that I can now laugh about is the time when I gave him a blue eye… when his friends asked him about it; he told them that he had gotten hurt while playing soccer!
In a nutshell, my life (a grand total of 4 years) was miserable with Julian. But I still fell pregnant from him. My pregnancy was hell as well. He was never around & I was always stressing about his whereabouts or making a total fool of myself by trying to hunt him down (I think the bartenders in every bar in town eventually knew me & who I was looking for). I even stooped as low as to threaten / terrorize a few girls whom I had heard he had flings going on with. I think I did most of the crying in my life during my pregnancy, but I still stayed. We did, however, move back to the area he came from (i.e. back to his life & friends) – I think I did that thinking that he would at least then come home every night? Little did I know it’d be an even bigger mistake.
In September of 2002 our daughter, Jada, was born. He was at least at the hospital with me during birth, but in the days that I stayed in hospital, because I had had a caesar, he drank out the last of my money & had parties in ‘my’ house. On the Friday that I came home, he went out for the night & I didn’t see him again until Saturday mid-morning – & I only saw him then because I phoned the cops for him, because he had gone off with MY CAR & was unlicensed & was drunk! Without going into too much detail, he had left me with a 3 day old baby in a dirty house with no food & went off drinking & partying. I STAYED.
In December that year I found out that he had been seeing a woman, who lived 4 doors away from us for a good couple of months already, which led me to doing some maths & realizing that before we moved she was the reason why he would stay away for weekends at a time & once we moved I had given them easier access to each other. But because she was a friend of mine, I hit her. I gave her a good hiding, which her mother saved her from, & then I packed Julian’s stuff up & shipped him off to his mother.
That, I am proud to say, was the turning point in our relationship & my life. I DID NOT LOOK BACK . He became me ex, my baby’s daddy & nothing more. Oh, he did try to come back into my life & even tried to convince me that it was in Jada’s best interests that her parent’s be together, but even that couldn’t get me to go back to living that life of misery! In my opinion a child (or children) is better off with two happy parents who are away from each other, than parents who feel obligated to be together & are miserable & constantly fighting.
With all said & done, though, I can’t say that I regret the time spent with Julian. What I do regret is my WEAK nature, the fact that I ALLOWED him to treat me the way he did & STAYED and the fact that I lowered myself to a STREET level by fighting for and about him. The good that COMES out of my relationship with him is that I’m that much wiser when it comes to men & their tricks & also it’s that much easier for me to walk away when it’s time to walk away.
Since Julian I’ve had 3 steady boy-friends. The first, Dayne, got his “ex” girlfriend pregnant & thought we’d work through it & stay together – I very calmly told him to continue his life with his baby momma (whom he is no longer with anyway & has now got another child from another woman). My second, Keenan, was a male whore of note; initially I was VERY aware of his reputation, but was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt & attempt a relationship with him. All went well for just over 6 months & then he THOUGHT that I was seeing an old fling & he started messing around as well. The first story that I heard about him & another woman made me walk away instantly! I will admit that I did mess around with him occasionally even after we broke up, but I knew exactly where I stood with him & never got my heart involved. The third is Tyrone, whom I have been on & off with for over 3 years now (even though it’s been more off than on) – my relationship with Tyrone requires an entire story to tell & for the reader to understand, but in a nutshell he is still TECHNICALLY a part of my life even today.
An interesting CHARACTERISTIC of the 3 guys that I had after Julian (& any of the other guys that I had flings with) is that they were ALL younger than me; Dayne 6 years, Keenan 5 years & Tyrone 9 years. I’ve tried on many occasions to ANALYZE why this is the case & the only conclusion I can reach is that in the past men my age & older had hurt me, used me or just made me look foolish, so I (mostly sub-consciously) made a point of dating younger guys, because with them you are somehow always in charge & USUALLY call the shots – that’s the way I see it. Also, in a case like mine when a man you were in love with has crushed your self esteem, having a younger guy interested in you somehow boosts that self esteem.
Today, at the age of 30, I am beginning to see my life through ROSE TINTED GLASSES. I’ve raised myself above my childhood and my past experiences & I’ve gathered lessons from my history, but I am determined to make something GOOD of my life. I’ve come to realize that one’s life is really what you make of it & is not dependent on what life has thrown your way or on the way your parents have raised you or treated you. Yes, naturally having a “good” up-bringing SHOULD mean that you have a firmer foundation & possibly don’t take AS long to “make it”, but as we all know many kids who come out of “good” families do mess up their lives, so even then, it comes back to my statement that YOUR LIFE IS WHAT YOU MAKE OF IT, because no matter where you come from; it’s your choices, your actions, your attitude that will determine whether you make it or fail it. I have even learnt to look at my mother & look beyond her faults & focus on her strong points, i.e. being hard working, neat, & learn from them. I believe that generally we need to CHOOSE to focus on the positive, so that we can move forward; negative experiences should be used as learning curves.
My rose tinted glasses will hopefully become a permanent fixture, as I grow & mature in all aspects of my life & begin to really move forward in terms of building a life & home for myself & my children.
