Author Photograph by Igor Polzenhagen
DESPERATELY SEEKING JUDE
Confessions of a Sex-Mad Beauty Queen
By Alison Andrews
For my father: I hope you have found peace.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to many people for their help in getting this book ready for publication. Natanja Greeff for her meticulous attention to detail, excellent editorial advice and help with copy-editing, Kristen Broberg for her suggestions, enthusiasm and encouragement from the first draft and Benjamin Bruyns and David Le Roux for their interest and input. Many thanks must go to the Writers Workshop for their fantastic services and the invaluable help received from Helena Drysdale that went above and beyond my highest expectations.
I am so grateful to my family for tirelessly reading through every draft and willingly giving their honest opinions and advice. Thank you for allowing me to represent you and our shared history in this way. And lastly, thank you to my amazing husband. You saw who I really was. It was your unconditional love that healed me and inspired me to write this book.
“Jailhouse Rock”
I am four years old and fast asleep. I am having a nightmare; something horrible is chasing me. I am running in slow motion. Unable to move forward, the creature is closing in. There is a crash and I wake up. My bedroom light is on. My father is lying on the floor, large thick globs of blood smeared across his chest and the handle of a knife protruding. I open my mouth and scream.
My mother comes running into the room. My father sits up and laughs.
‘It’s just tomato sauce,’ he says.
‘Are you crazy?’ my mother screams. ‘How can you do that to your child!’
‘It was just a joke, Emma.’ My father totters unsteadily out of the room, falling over on his way to the door but catching himself before hitting the ground.
‘Just a fuckin’ joke.’
'Did you hear your child screaming, Daniel? That's not funny.'
'Listen, you CUNT, these are my fucking children and I can joke if I want.'
I hear a crash as glass breaks against the kitchen floor.
'You want some real blood? How'd you like that? Is that what the WHORE wants?'
I hear a cupboard door open and close, the sound of a broom being pushed across the kitchen floor. I hear my father stumble into the living room. A few moments of silence follow. Then the house erupts …
You aint nothin' but a hound dog
Crying all the time
You aint nothin' but a hound dog
Crying all the time
Well you aint never caught a rabbit
And you aint no friend of mine
'Come dance, Darl.'
'GO TO HELL!' my mother screams.
There is another crash as he falls into furniture. I can hear his footsteps echoing down the passage in the seconds before my door swings open.
'Come on, kids! Out of bed - time to dance with the king!
I can see blood seeping from a cut on his hand. He pulls open April's door.
'Come, Fatty, get some exercise, the king is on!’
Number forty-seven said to number three:
You’re the
cutest jailbird I ever did see.
I sure would be delighted with
your company,
Come on and do the jailhouse rock with me.
Let’s
rock, everybody, let’s rock.
'April, pull my finger!' he says, proffering his version of the olive branch. She obligingly pulls his finger. Over the music we hear a tiny fart.
'Ah, didn't have much to offer there … sorry, girls.'
His mood quickly changes.
'Okay, fuck off, go back to bed.' He sits down on the couch, his black eyes staring moodily at the blank TV screen. His dark hair needs a cut; it's falling down over his collar. He has thick sideburns curving down to his chin, just like Elvis.
A blue cloud of smoke hangs over the room. He lights a cigarette. We are unsure what to do. He is unpredictable. Tense and insecure, uncertain what is expected of us, we stand and wait. The three ashtrays dotted around the living room are overflowing. There is a dank, stale smell emanating from him, the smell of liquor and cigarettes and sweat.
'I said FUCK off! Go to bed, NOW!'
As I climb back into bed I hear him opening the kitchen door and stepping outside.
'Yoko, you stupid mutt.'
Yoko is our Alsatian, named in honour of Yoko Ono.
I hear her yelp in pain. Once, twice, three times. He is kicking her again.
'Daniel! Leave Yoko!!!' my mother shouts.
I lie awake in bed; holding my body stiff and concentrating with all my might; maybe if I stay awake and focus really hard, everything will be okay. I can still hear Elvis blaring over the speakers in the living room. Thankfully, that is all there is to hear. Against my will I drift off to sleep.
My nightmares increase.
I was born under the sign of Scorpio in 1976. I was a planned and welcomed child after the initial disappointment that I was not a boy. My sister April had been born three years earlier and, had I been a boy, the dream family would have been achieved.
My parents had met at a party in the Transkei in the late sixties. Since my dad looked a bit like Elvis my mother was smitten. At their wedding party he got embarrassingly drunk and left to go out on the town with his friends. On their honeymoon he spent all day in the hotel bar.
The first four years of my life were lived in relative prosperity; my father was doing very well at a paint company. He drank heavily on weekends and became aggressive and unpredictable; but during the week we were almost a normal family. Things went wrong when he quit his job and bought a restaurant. To finance it, he sold our only asset: our house. However, all he was really buying was goodwill and equipment. The premises themselves were rented.
My mother fell pregnant and yet again they hoped for a boy. Along came twin girls: Lacie and Lindie. We moved into a rented house across the road from the restaurant. It was small, damp and chilly, with threadbare carpets and no cupboards. My parents immediately began working very long hours, especially my mother, who was trying to juggle the demands of a new business with raising four children and running a home.
One night there was a knock at the door. My mother went to open it. Standing there with blonde, green-eyed Lacie on one hip and dark-eyed, dark-haired Lindie on the other was a very angry man.
'Are you the mother of these children?'
'Yes! Where did you find them?'
'Running in the middle of the bloody street! Have you seen how busy that intersection is? They could have been killed! Gave me the fright of my bloody life!'
The man set the twins on the ground and stomped off.
'Thank you for bringing them back,' my mother called after him. He didn't turn around.
My mother patted the twins on their heads, sat down on the couch and started to cry. It seemed once she started she couldn't stop. Her breath hitched and gasped, she couldn't seem to get enough air to sustain the violence of her crying.
'Mommy! What's the matter Mommy!' April said.
She didn't reply. She didn't seem to see us at all. April went into the kitchen and came back with some tea. She tried to put it into my mother's hands but she wouldn't take it. April put it down next to her and it sat there growing cold. Five hours later, when my father came back from the restaurant, he found my mother in the same position, the four of us huddled around her as she cried and cried.
'What's the matter with your mother?'
'I don't know, this man brought Lindie and Lacie back and then she just started crying and she won't stop, won't even drink her tea,' April said.
'Emma! Emma! Come on, Darl, what are you doing?' My father seemed as nonplussed as we were. 'Now what the fuck must I do?' he said, almost to himself. 'Okay, go to bed, kids. Off you go. Just leave your mother alone.'
The next day we left for Cape Town to stay with my uncle. My mother barely got out of bed for six weeks. When we returned it began again. April was only seven but she was often left in charge of the rest of us. When she had time to herself she found amusement in building fires. She usually built them outside, but sometimes in the dustbin in the bedroom. The house was chaotic. The twins were alternately screaming and running rampant.
My father invited all his friends for lavish dinners at the restaurant and magnanimously refused payment. His drinking had increased dramatically; running his own business meant he could drink on the job. The crunch came when the landlord issued his eviction notice. My parents' had failed to notify him of their wish to renew the lease within the requisite thirty days, giving him the option of evicting them. That was the end of the business. The remainder of the money from the sale of the house was long gone and we were left with nothing. My mother found a secretarial job, my dad a sales position and we moved to another house to be close to my grandmother so she could look after us. The crushing disappointment of his failed business venture knocked my father's drinking up another few gears.
I started school. I had developed a stutter and found it difficult to make friends. I spent a lot of time in a dream world and developed some obsessive-compulsive twitches. One of these was drawing in the air. I walked around with a dazed look on my face and my finger poised dreamily in the air. April was embarrassed and slapped my hand down.
‘People are going to think you’re retarded, you freak!’ she said.
People are going to think you’re retarded, you freak I wrote in the air.
I watched shows like “Knight Rider” and the “A-Team” and imagined myself as the heroine. Whenever I could memorise a cool line from the show I would try to repeat it at school the next day if I got involved in a game of catchers and someone caught me. I thought maybe they would think I was cool and want to be friends with me. As much as I practiced, I could never get it out right, the stutter always ruined it.
I didn't have a best friend, or anyone who was just my friend. When everyone chose a partner I would always be the one left out. I retreated into my dream world, playing out different fantasies while drawing in the air.
Money was tight; my mother didn’t earn much and my father was on commission only. He drank and missed work, so earned just enough to buy more booze. The repossession of our cars – followed by our furniture - began. I noticed the lack of money, but didn’t feel it was a big deal. I thought it was probably the same with every family. In school one day someone said her mother hadn’t given her lunch money because she was broke.
Everyone giggled, so I said, ‘My mom didn’t have a cent in her purse this morning.’
There was an awkward silence and no one said anything; they glanced at me and looked away. I felt my heart sink into my stomach as I realised this wasn't funny because it was true. I didn’t know how they knew, but they did.
The Baptist Church taught my mother about corporal punishment. Sparing the rod meant spoiling the child. Hidings always followed the same pattern. She hit me and I screamed. She kept hitting until I stopped screaming. She always won but I could hold out for quite a long time. I longed to run away. Sometimes I ran out into the night, determined to keep running, but reality always stopped me before I got very far. Where was I running? There was no home for me but this one.
Just before I turned eight my mother asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I asked for a pack of twelve pencil crayons. Everyone had them. I had always done without but I wanted to do well at school. On my birthday I woke up to find her sitting on the end of the bed. She had a little wrapped present in her hand.
'Happy Birthday, my darling child!'
'Thanks mom.'
'There's some tea and treats for you.'
I turned to the bedside table and saw to my delight that my mother had prepared a little tray. There was tea, biscuits, a bar of chocolate and a slice of cake! This was the breakfast of dreams!
'Here is your present,' she said, handing me the little package.
I ripped off the wrapping and found exactly what I had wanted; twelve pencil crayons.
'You are such a blessing of a child. Is this really all you wanted?’
'Yes! Thanks mom!'
I didn't understand why her eyes looked so big and sad.
'How can you be pregnant again? You're supposed to have that diaphragm thing!' my dad shouted angrily late one night.
'I do, but obviously it didn't work. It must be God's will.'
'God's will my ass! This place is already overrun with fucking children! You still want more?’
When she gave birth to a son my father was suddenly thrilled. Jaime was an accident prone little boy, with a lot of anger packed into his tiny body. He was gorgeous. Golden curls and chubby cheeks, big brown eyes and sturdy little teeth - the better to bite people with if they came too close.
My mother sank into post-natal depression and refused to go back to work. My grandmother helped with her pension and we survived. We often came home from school to find my mother still in bed, reading her bible and crying. The house was a disaster zone. Our clothes didn't get washed and Jaime was covered in bruises from falling down stairs. She woke up at six to get us off to school but we left without breakfast, as she stood in the kitchen, looking ready to kill herself. She looked terrible: her straight dark hair had gone prematurely gray and she hacked it off into a short unflattering style and stopped dyeing it. The expression in her blue eyes was one of defeat and hopelessness.
My grandmother had severe arthritis and undertook gold treatment in desperation. There was a fifty-fifty chance of success. If it didn’t work it could be fatal. It caused gangrene in her leg. As she lay in her hospital bed, her leg gradually blackening, the pain became excruciating. When she died from the infection I was devastated. I burst into such loud sobs at her funeral that my mother pleaded with me to keep it down. I felt overwhelmed with grief.
Shortly afterwards my mother came to my school during break time to speak to one of April’s teachers. She found me sitting next to the field all alone.
‘Where are all your friends?’ she said.
‘I don’t have any friends,’ I said.
'Why not?' she asked in surprise.
'I don't know.'
There was a girl I admired named Ashley. She was the teacher's favourite and always beautifully turned out with lovely hair and neat clothes; everything I wanted to be. She had short blonde hair, with beautiful feathered bangs that she flicked out of her eyes with a toss of her head.
I convinced my mother to cut my hair so I could look just like her. I had thick, curly, rebellious dark hair. A short hairstyle was not the best idea since I had never heard of gel. I rode my bicycle to school the next morning and when I arrived everyone laughed at me.
'Er…. was it a little…windy coming to school?' my teacher said and laughed.
The class couldn't wait to join in with her. I looked nothing like Ashley and my looks, such as they were, were ruined.
For my tenth birthday, a girl in our class gave me a pet rabbit. The cage door was faulty, and we had a cat - bye-bye, baby. I mistakenly admitted to this. What followed was two weeks of torture. The girl who gave me the rabbit got everyone onto her side. They hit me with their rulers and threw erasers and pens at me, calling me the evil rabbit killer.
After about two weeks I broke down - weeping and weeping on my desk, hiding my head in my folded arms as my body shook and heaved. After that the satisfied mob moved on.
“What You Gonna Tell Your Mother?”
When I was ten we moved into the city.
My mother found a part-time job as a receptionist at a holiday resort. The money was tiny but working seemed to help her state of mind. Her male boss paid her some complimentary attention and she started taking care of her appearance and was bright and chirpy on her way to work.
At a new school and desperate for friends I met Jade, a plump blonde with a malicious streak the size of the Nile. It was 1986 and Madonna’s album “True Blue” was big news. We put blue lipstick on and tied our hair in high ponytails and danced around the room singing “Papa Don’t Preach”. We stole cigarettes out of her mother’s handbag and watched ourselves in the mirror as we smoked. We felt incredibly sophisticated.
I had developed breasts already and there was a range of exciting emotions flooding through me. Far from being horrified at my breasts like some girls, I was delighted. They were getting me some attention. I thrust them out and loved my new bra. One night alone in my bedroom I opened the curtains and danced naked feeling a strange excitement that someone could be admiring me.
My father suddenly seemed to take an interest in me. We had no relationship and he ignored us unless he was drunk and wanted to swear at us. Most of the time he didn’t seem to see us at all. Now I noticed him looking at me. I was happy. I had this little nightie I had been wearing for years, worn out and far too small. It was see-through and barely covered my bum. When I wore this he seemed to be admiring me, so I strutted around feeling fabulous - look how my dad notices me.
One night I woke up with him sitting at the edge of my bed. He was drunk; the smell of spirits was powerful. He started to tell me how unhappy he was; no one understood him. I felt so privileged. He was speaking to me like an adult. He stroked my arm as he spoke. I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach and a fearful foreboding but it was mixed with excitement - he was treating me like I was really mature. Bit by bit the circles of his hand moved inward until he was stroking my breast. My breath stopped, my heart stopped. I knew this was wrong. I didn’t know why he was doing it. I lay there, paralysed, until he lifted up my nightie and reached under it.
‘No, stop!’ I shouted.
He clamped a hand over my mouth.
He sat there a while. The seconds dragged. My body was tensed and ready for flight.
'Now listen, you don't tell your mother about this, you hear?'
'I won't.'
'If you tell your mother, then there's going to be all kinds of trouble, so you better not tell anyone else either, okay?'
'Okay.'
I felt numb.
After he left my brain seemed to shut down and I don’t remember any more. The moment I opened my eyes in the morning, I began sobbing hysterically and ran to April’s bedroom, throwing myself into her arms. I managed to gasp out through my sobs:
‘Dad….fiddled….with…. me…you… can’t…. tell… mom… please promise.’
April promised not to tell. When I calmed down I downplayed it; I was terrified she would tell my mom and then she would get a divorce and I would be to blame. I was also horrified at the thought of anyone else knowing. When April got to school she told her English teacher. He said she must tell my mother. My mother confronted my father, who denied it.
She came to me a few days later and said, ‘I just want you to know that I know what happened, and you don’t need to worry about it anymore because it will never happen again.’
'Okay,' I said, not looking up. I heard the door close as she left the room. Was that all she was going to say about it? Was she angry with me? Was she angry with him?
I was relieved that it had blown over so quickly and clearly there wouldn’t be a divorce, but I had strong feelings that I couldn’t discuss since the matter was now over and done with. I felt ashamed and dirty; I thought I had seduced my own father by parading in front of him. Of course I had enjoyed the attention from a father who was so distant from me, but I believed I had brought this on my own head. The sense of shame and filth upon me was overwhelming.
Everything went back to how it was, my father acting the same, except now, when he was drunk, he would call me a slut and a whore or a ‘titillating little bitch,’ reinforcing my feeling that I was to blame.
I made the fatal error of confiding it to Jade. I couldn’t talk about it at home and I wanted to tell someone. She immediately used it as a weapon. I had woefully misjudged her, though I had recognised her tendencies to be cruel. She played nasty pranks on her old and frail grandfather, stealing his money and moving his things around until he cried with frustration. It made her laugh.
At eleven I had started to grow into my looks. I was tall and thin, she was short and chubby. I had long curly dark hair while hers was short, straight and blonde and she wished it were curly. She permed it regularly but her hair was so straight it fell out in a couple of weeks. Big hair was wildly in fashion. She was jealous.
If she saw me talking to a boy she thought was cute, she would say something like: ‘Oh, what were you talking to Peter about? Were you telling him how your father molested you?’
‘Of course not! My father never molested me!’ Too late, I backtracked and told her I had made it up. Already withdrawn, I withdrew even further.
Due to a sense of shame and feeling like the dirty little slut my father so often called me, I went days without washing. The last thing anyone would notice in my crazy household was one little girl’s lack of hygiene.
One day at school, a girl a couple of years younger sat next to me.
‘I don’t mean to be ugly but you stink,’ she said loudly.
I was hurt and embarrassed and burst into tears. When I got home that day I had a bath. I was a lot more careful after that.
My friendship with Jade limped on, held together by jealousy and competition. I was eleven - it was 1987 and things had definitely moved up a notch in terms of the kinds of parties we wanted to have; birthday parties moved from innocent sleepovers to discos with slow dancing and fumbling. Kissing with tongues was known as chaffing, and none of us had done it yet. At one party we decided to make it happen with 'spin the bottle'. The rules were that if the bottle stopped, facing the same person three times, you went off into the cupboard to chaff. A fourteen-year-old boy arrived - blonde and confident - and we all fell in love. I spun the bottle, and three times it faced him, so I was first into the cupboard with him. We bashed teeth, gums and tongues together and it felt funny. I came out the cupboard very proud of myself, the first of the group to have chaffed. Chaffing became a regular thing for me after that. I was keen to do it with anyone who was keen to do it with me. A friend of my mother's had seven sons. Their family was even poorer than we were. One of the sons was a couple of years older and I soon spent all my free time hanging out with him, lying on his bed for hours, chaffing.
When April was twelve my mother said she was ‘going wild’. She sneaked out at night to hang around outside a nearby hotel, smoking cigarettes and trying to act older. She got up to no good with teenage boys and was willing to do whatever it took to be rebellious and cool. Due to April’s going wild in such an obvious manner I could do pretty much anything and escape notice. I was the good child, the one who stayed out of the way and didn’t cause any trouble. My mother didn’t have the time to look any deeper.
At sixteen, April met Jack, twenty-six. She fell wildly in love and started a secret relationship. She climbed out the bathroom window at midnight each night and walked the six blocks to his house, spent the night and came home again before six in the morning.
She was forever crying and making dramatic speeches about her love for him. I was enthralled by this grand passion. One night she came into the room and sat down next to me.
‘I’m going to see Jack tonight,’ she whispered.
‘Oh.’
‘Do you want to come with?’
‘Yes!’ I was so excited I couldn’t stand still. I made the usual motions at bedtime and when midnight came, we were off.
It was pretty scary walking along the dark silent streets with only the odd car, slowing down as it passed. April grabbed my arm and walked faster.
We arrived at Jack’s house to find that he was out. April settled herself down to wait. I met a flatmate, Henry, and a friend, Paul. Paul put some music on. INXS started singing “Need You Tonight”. I felt extremely adult.
‘So, what are you girls doing out this late? Actually, how did you get here?’ Paul asked.
‘We walked,’ April said and giggled. ‘I don’t see what the big deal is. Nothing’s ever happened to me and I’ve been walking around at night for ages.’
She didn’t say anything about us sneaking out the window. She probably wanted to maintain the illusion of adulthood.
‘So, what are you doing here? You don’t live here, do you?’ April asked Paul.
‘I’m just visiting from Port Elizabeth, staying a couple of days - business.’
‘Oh, okay…so what do you think of the place?’
‘It’s cool. There’s not much to do here though, is there?’
April burst into laughter at this, as if he had made the cleverest joke she had ever heard.
They carried on chatting. I noticed that April laughed a lot, tossed her hair around, and seemed to lock eyes with him frequently and then smile and toss her hair again. She was obviously flirting. She had become extremely thin; so thin that teachers were asking questions. No one would be able to call her Fatty now. I was watching the conversation, laughing when April laughed, but feeling a bit awkward. I noticed Henry looking at me and deliberately didn’t look his way; I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.
‘So, how old are you?’
It took a second or two for me to realise that he was speaking to me.
‘Oh, I’m thirteen,’ I said.
Henry smirked. I wished I’d said fifteen. He’d caught me off guard.
‘Well, how old are you?’ I asked cheekily, attempting to regain my equilibrium.
‘Twenty-Six.’
‘Oh.’
I wasn’t sure what to say next.
‘Have you got a boyfriend?’
‘Yes,’ I lied. ‘He’s seventeen.’
‘Really, so you must be quite experienced then.’
‘I suppose.’
I suddenly noticed that April was chaffing Paul. This was mighty fast, especially since she was supposed to be dying for love of Jack.
Henry had noticed too, the smirk widened.
‘Come listen to music in my room.’ He stood up and headed down the passage, expecting me to follow.
The moment I stepped into his bedroom, he pushed the door shut, grabbed me and mashed his face into mine, sticking his tongue into my mouth.
He put a hand under my top and started to stroke me over my bra. I felt extremely daring.
He moved to the bed and pulled me down on top of him, which gave me a shock. What was I supposed to do? This was out of my league. I rolled over on to my side so I was lying next to him.
‘What’s wrong?’ he said.
‘Nothing.’
He started to lift up my top. I made feeble attempts to stop him.
‘Hey, come on, I’m not going to bite.’
He pulled my top over my head exposing my white cotton bra. He unhooked it and pushed it off my shoulders. Now I was really in bad girl territory, but April was out there doing goodness knows what.
For a thirteen-year old the speed at which a fully-grown man moves things along is mind-boggling. I thought things had gone quite far enough but he was pushing for more. I did NOT want to take off my panties and it seemed he wasn’t too interested; he just took my hand and shoved it into his pants.
The fright of my life would be an understatement. An adult penis was in my hand. Like I was supposed to know what to do with it! I wanted to take my hand back and leave, but yet how could I? What if he made a big fuss? I was totally intimidated by both the man and the situation. Much less embarrassing surely just to do what he wanted. We called it blind in school. It was just too blind for words.
I gave it a squeeze. Henry groaned, that sounded promising. I squeezed again. He put his hand over mine and moved it up and down.
‘Put it in your mouth.’
I laughed, sure he must be joking.
‘I’m not joking, put it in your mouth.’
I didn’t move.
‘I thought you said you were experienced…are you telling me you’ve never done that before? Come on, try it, it’ll feel good. You’re so sexy…’
I kneeled over the upright penis. There was a vague smell of something unpleasant coming off it. I put it in my mouth.
I wasn’t prepared for the gagging.
Every movement of his hips thrust his penis deeper into my mouth and hit the back of my throat, making me gag. I was sure I wasn’t supposed to be doing this, but I couldn’t help it.
‘Suck harder,’ he demanded.
I had heard that if you weren’t careful you could accidentally bite it off, so I tucked my lips over my dangerous teeth. Sucking harder was difficult under the circumstances. He kept thrusting, and it felt like the sides of my mouth would split in protest. I felt tears pricking my eyes. No, I mustn’t cry. He would think I was such a dork.
In spite of the lack of suck action he managed to come. I felt hot liquid spurt into my throat, and gagged so hard I was sure I would vomit. Through sheer will I managed to hold it back. I was conscious of only one thing now. Just get through it. There was a salty taste in my mouth that revolted me. My mouth kept flooding with saliva and I kept forcing it back.
Without a word Henry got up to go to the bathroom. I put my bra and top back on and went to the lounge to look for April. I was praying that she would be there and we could go home. She was nowhere to be seen. Henry came into the lounge. He seemed awkward now, as if he didn’t know what to do with me.
‘Do you want to watch some TV?’ he said.
‘OK.’
He put it on. The bile kept rising in my throat. I wished he would leave.
‘I have to go to work in a few hours, so I better get some sleep.’
‘Sure.’
‘Ok, well…goodnight.’
‘Goodnight, sleep well.’
April emerged about forty-five minutes later.
‘We better go.’
On the walk home, she wanted to know what had happened with Henry.
'It was disgusting, he made me give him a blow job!'
'Oh, that's funny, so you didn't enjoy it?'
'Do you?' I asked in amazement.
'I love the power of it. You have so much power over men if you know how to use it.' In the moonlight her large green eyes glinted and sparkled mischievously. 'Anyway, welcome to adulthood, babe,' she laughed, 'and don't feel bad about it, I was doing the same thing in the next room.'
I felt instantly better. Less dirty. She’d done it too. Suddenly I felt I could recreate the memory; make it something different. We were like friends, like equals, talking about the night’s exploits. I had butterflies in my tummy and a nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach. Thankfully the taste in my mouth had gone, so I didn’t have to fight to stop myself throwing up.
‘But I thought you loved Jack?’ I said.
‘I love him so much every bone in my body aches for him,’ she said, as dramatically fervent as I’d come to expect.
‘But then how come you can be with Paul?’
‘We have an open relationship, babe. You wouldn’t understand,’ she said with a toss of her light brown curls.
When we got home, we crawled back in through the bathroom window. I checked my watch. It was 5:00. I went to bed with the words ‘I gave someone a blow job tonight’ going round and round in my head. I felt sick and a bit dirty; yet, after my chat with April, kind of proud. But glad it was over, like I had made it through some rite of passage I hadn’t known about before.
I think I was around 4 years old in the pictures above.
I was a very fat baby.
All these pictures were taken while we were still living in relative prosperity, before our house was sold to finance the restaurant. The picture on the bottom right is me with my older sister and our beloved Alsation, Yoko
The Garden Gnome
Though my mother had hit April and me, she had started to question corporal punishment. The twins and Jaime were seldom hit. She thought it took too much out of her and didn’t really help the situation. I firmly agreed.
For April and I it was a bit late, we’d had our bottoms pummeled many a time. Also this new way of thinking didn’t seem to apply to us. We still got hidings.
She had a terrible memory that played in our favour. If she said we were grounded, a day later it was forgotten. She also didn’t delegate household chores. None of us had any chores at all. We did as we pleased. When she got home she found a house in disarray. She made supper while hungry children haggled for attention and my father drunkenly wandered the passages abusing everyone he could.
One evening she came home from work to find us playing la-di-di-la-di-da with coffee cups. Some of the handles of the cups had broken off while we were playing. The cups were all chipped and old anyway. She picked up five of the cups and threw them to the floor. Glass went flying. Bursting into tears, she proceeded to clean up the mess.
‘What is wrong with you children! You just take, take, take! Everything is always SUCH A MESS! You’ve been home all bloody afternoon and I come home to this PIGSTY! Why do I have to live like this?’
We were flabbergasted and watched her tirade in shocked silence. I felt awful. I resolved to do much more to help her.
A former Catholic and now member of the Baptist Church, my mother’s strong Christian beliefs were a large part of the reason that she wouldn’t leave my father. The many preachers she went to see frequently reinforced these beliefs. I sat on a cold hard church pew for two hours after a service had finished, while my mother wept and wept like her heart would break, crying out her misery to a minister. On the trip home she wept even harder.
'What did he say, Mommy?'
'Submit! He told me to submit!' she sobbed. 'I must submit to a DRUNK! And keep on submitting! That is what God wants!'
She was also terrified at how our life would be.
'How can it be worse than living with him?' April said one night, as we discussed it for the umpteenth time.
'I know, love, but I've thought about it from every angle. The only place we could afford to move to would be Buffalo Flats, and you know that area is the worst. It's not safe at all, there's likely more dronkies hanging about there during the day than anywhere else. The best we'd manage is a grotty two bedroom. I have to be at work all day, so your drunk father could harass you kids while I'm not at home.'
I had visions of huddling together in a cramped flat while my father broke in to kill us all.
'Your father might be out of work often, but at least when he does work it makes the difference. We still manage to live in a good area and you kids go to good schools. We just wouldn't manage that without him.'
'I don't think it's worth it, Mom!' said April. 'I hate him so much! One day I'm going to kill him - crush his skull with a frying pan or cut his throat with a bread knife - nice and slow. Or maybe electrocution would be good for him; throw a toaster into the bath while he's in there!'
'Shhh, no April! Don't say things like that. It's not his fault. It's a disease. Just pray for him and keep forgiving him.'
One night my father drove off, leaving a suicide note. My mother showed it to us.
'He's just dronk verdriet and looking for attention,' she said.
'Is his life insurance paid up?' said April.
My father was currently employed.
'As far as I know. No reason why it wouldn't be.'
'Well, then I hope he does it.'
'That's bad, April. Surely he won't,' I giggled.
'Well, if he does, we'll be sitting pretty. No Buffalo flats for us. We can buy this house, fix it up, buy a new car!'
We spent the night in guilty excitement spending the insurance money.
When we heard his car drive up the next morning, we were quite disappointed.
My father was never interested in becoming “born again”. We were sure this was the whole problem; if he could become “born again,” then God would heal his alcoholism.
One day the school phoned and said that April had been seen leaving on a number of occasions with an older man. My mother followed her and surprised her in flagrante with Jack. She reacted violently, dragging a naked April out the house, screaming that she was a useless slut.
We had a back brush in the bathroom. It was plastic and purple, thick and strong. When I got home from school the purple brush was in pieces and April was crying in her room, bruises all over her body. My mother was on the point of another nervous breakdown. My father had lost another job, and was binge drinking.
It is remarkable that my father managed to get himself decent jobs; his employment record must have been terrible. He was frequently fired because of drinking. Yet, when he turned on the charm, it was powerful. He always found someone to give him a chance.
During a binge he sat in his room all day with the curtains drawn and stared at the wall. By evening his aggression had been stirred enough to rouse him to the porch, to abuse the neighbours, or into the rest of the house to abuse his wife and children. He also enjoyed standing in the garden in his little shorts, hair disheveled, and eyes bloodshot. He would stand still except for a slight drunken sway. You would almost think he was frozen in place, but then he would remember to take a deep drag of his cigarette. Someone came to visit one evening and asked us if we knew about the garden gnome.
Money was tight. The frequent loss of employment, together with the money spent on drinking, made life difficult. There was often nothing to eat. We would get home from school in the afternoons and frequently find a grocery cupboard with nothing in it. Sometimes there would be some flour and sugar and we could bake something: flour and water mixed together and fried, or sugar melted until it formed a crisp brittle. But when even that had run out, we hoped that someone from the church might have come round with some groceries, or my mother might have sold something in the under R50 column of the newspaper and managed to get some supplies. She was always looking around for something to sell. People from the church often gave us their old clothes too, and those that were totally unsuitable we could take into the street and sell to the maids working nearby for a couple of bucks to get some food. Lindie devised a genius plan and went around to neighbours pretending to be raising money for a school event. Jaime took a pack of six eggs in a time of plenty, worth a couple of Rand in total, and when the food ran out he went and sold them off one at a time to the neighbours.
'Do you want to buy an egg? The money’s for charity.'
'Sure, how much is it?'
'Ten Rand.'
He sold all six. Other times we just ate the same thing for weeks at a time, which wasn't bad at all; we saw the humour in it. Sitting at school one day April turned to me.
'So, what do you think we'll have for dinner today? Do you think it'll be cabbage and potatoes, or maybe potatoes and cabbage?'
We burst into peals of laughter, as we had eaten nothing but cabbage and potatoes for two weeks. Samp and beans was another staple that we lasted on for weeks at a time. Our car was rusting to pieces. The boot had rusted so badly that it no longer closed and bounced along jauntily as we drove. A sticker on the boot lid proclaimed, “When the going gets tough the tough get going” and was a particularly unwise choice of mine. There were holes in the floor, so you had to watch where you put your feet. The window winders no longer worked and the windows had fallen into the doors. When it rained we would tug on the windows to get them as high as they would go but the rain still poured in. It frequently broke down, especially in the rain, and many a day would see all of us behind the car, pushing with all our might, drenched.
My mother considered April’s sexual activity the ultimate betrayal of the fragile hold she had on her own sanity. She told me years later that she was in such a stressed emotional state she devised a plan of family suicide.
She planned to cut our throats in our sleep and then kill herself, but leave April with my father. She felt this to be a fitting punishment for them both; they deserved each other. In her mind the picture of this family suicide was very neat, painless and clean. Cutting our throats would be so straightforward. We would just drift peacefully up to heaven.
Thankfully, she changed her mind before she had to face the messy actuality of death.
Raise Your Hands
When friends came to stay at my house I would tell them that my father drank and that we should stay out of his way. People who appealed to me as friends usually had difficult home situations too, so it didn’t bother them.
Occasionally my father and I had a blowout. I had lost all respect for him, so was haughty and arrogant if he spoke to me, or just mumbled rude things under my breath. When he was drunk and aggressive this was not a good idea.
One night my mother and April went out. My mother was worried about leaving us alone because it was a Saturday night and my dad had been hitting it hard all day. However, she had to go and left me in charge.
Later in the evening I walked past while he ranted and raved.
'Stupid asshole,' I muttered under my breath.
'I'll fucking kill you, you little bitch,' he screamed and lunged after me. I immediately thought it expedient to run as fast as an Olympic sprinter down the passage to lock myself into the bathroom. I just made it in time as he started trying to beat the door down.
'OPEN THIS DOOR THIS MINUTE! I'm going to FUCKING KILL YOU!'
My heart was pounding as I realized I was in real danger. I climbed out the bathroom window and ran down the street. Once outside, I didn’t know what to do next.
I heard a car driving up and jumped into some bushes and watched my father drive up the road. So he knew I had gone. I had to make a quick decision. I ran down into a complex of townhouses, chose one at random and knocked. A little old lady answered the door.
'Yes?'
'I'm sorry to bother you but can I just use your phone?'
'Sure you can. What's the matter? Is everything all right at home?'
'Well, my mother went out, and I think maybe my father is sick or something; I just want to speak to my mother. I don't have her number though. Do you have a phone book?'
I was stalling for time. I had no idea how to get hold of my mother. I looked vaguely through the phonebook, while I thought of what to do. The only thing that came to me was to go back and hide until my mother got home. I certainly couldn't tell this lady anything - what would she think?
'Oh, I can't find the number. Actually, I'm sure my father is feeling better now. Don't worry at all, please. I'll just go home and I'm sure my mother will be back soon.'
'Are you sure? Are you sure you'll be okay? You can come back if there's any problem.'
'I'm sure it'll be fine. I'm sorry to have disturbed you. I'm just being silly.'
I sneaked back in as quietly as I could. The twins and Jaime greeted me with eyes as big as tractor tyres.
'What's going on Alison? Are you okay?' Lacie asked.
'Shhh, you better hide right now! Dad is coming!' Jaime said, his big brown eyes wide and his face pale with fear.
They hid me under the bed and came by to let me know any new developments. Soon three little heads popped under the bed looking at me with great trepidation.
‘The police are here! What you gonna do?’ Lindie's voice shook and she started pulling her face into strange shapes and grimaces. She had started pulling faces a few months before and now did it as compulsively as I once drew in the air. It was purely a reaction to stress. She seemed to have no control over it.
I climbed out and went into the lounge where two policemen were talking to my father. He was so drunk he couldn’t stand upright; he was falling all over himself and speaking incoherently.
'Don't worry to look for me. I'm here. I'm fine,' I said.
'Young lady, our time is extremely valuable and you have wasted it tonight. We have much more important things to take care of than some silly little girl who wants to give her parents a fright. Now I expect you to apologize to us, and to your father for this bad behavior.'
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Didn’t they see my father? Didn’t they understand how someone might need to run away from that?
'I'm sorry I wasted your time, and I'm sorry I ran away from the house.'
My father was trying his full charm mode. This was significantly harder to pull off drunk and dressed in only a pair of boxer shorts.
'Thank you…officers, I…really….'preciate….' he said, smiling, shaking their hands enthusiastically while his eyes struggled to focus.
As they left, he sat himself down proudly, crossing his skinny arms over his plentiful mid-section. He looked malnourished; skin and bone everywhere except for the protruding stomach, not surprising since he survived on primarily a liquid diet, with a steak thrown in here and there. When he had a few bucks he would buy himself a piece of steak that no one else was allowed to touch and fry it up late at night, eating it by itself, no other food groups required.
'You'd better watch out for your dad, Alison, I'll get the police' he muttered.
He suddenly seemed to forget I was there and sat in the chair, staring at the wall with bloodshot eyes.
I had known for a few years of a group of singers and performers named Exalt! - fifteen singers who traveled to churches in the area, giving performances of songs and plays. They were magnificent. Their songs were sung beautifully and with many different harmonies. I really wanted to join but was told that I would have to wait until I was in high school.
As soon as I reached high school, I went to the auditions. There was a long queue of teenagers waiting outside the church hall. Everyone looked nervous. There were only a few places available and there must have been 50 to 60 kids waiting in line. When it was my turn I went into the hall on legs that trembled and shook. It was tough. They tested voice, range and the ability to harmonise to a melody in a variety of ways. However, I was good at all that stuff, so got in without a problem. I was the youngest in the group so didn’t fit in with the others, but I didn't mind. I was used to being a bit of an outcast, and they were a bunch of goody two shoes anyway.
Rehearsals took place every Sunday and we would go away for weekends to sing in other regions. We would travel in the church mini bus and then have to stay with members of the congregation and act like perfect Christians. My primary motivation was performance and music. I didn’t worry too much about moving people to the extent that they decided to give their lives to Jesus Christ. Privately I considered the other singers self-righteous and found the piety a bit much, but then it went with the territory.
We had the most awful uniforms: pleated tent style dresses in pale purples and pinks worn with white shoes. I immediately tried to jazz it up as much as possible. In an early photograph of the group I stand out decidedly. Amongst all the neat smiling faces I'm pouting at the camera with eyes half closed, my hair big and loose and tousled, a white belt with silver chains slung low on my hips and white ankle boots. It wasn't long before the musical director took me aside.
'Alison, we just need to discuss your uniform. Your hair and accessories I think are just a little………wild for what we have in mind. We'd like you to keep your hair tied back neatly in future and maybe if you could just leave the belt…'
At every performance, aside from the singing and acting, someone in the group gave their testimony. This involved telling the assembled congregation how debased and evil they were before giving their lives to God - the juicier the story, the better.
I successfully managed to avoid testifying, though I remained in Exalt! for three years. The holy aspect seemed so contrived, as our director stood at the back of the church gesticulating frantically to get us to raise our hands. I had thought this was a spontaneous thing. Not so! Raising your hands was to let everyone know how holy you were.
We went to the SABC television studios one day to record a broadcast for TV. I was very excited as I was singing a solo, as well as the alto voice in a trio, as well as singing all the group songs, so I was going to Stand Out. For this momentous occasion I just couldn’t do something so boring as tie back my wild hair, so I compromised. Banana clips were very popular and if I put it in loosely it kind of formed a nice mid-way between tied up and loose. I wasn't disobeying the musical director after all - it was tied up. The fact that my curls went everywhere and it looked pretty wild and loose wasn't the point.
A girl had been chosen to testify on the big day. She began her testimony between two group songs. The rest of us stood there attempting to look serious, yet compassionate and empathetic, while she told her tale of woe. She was a very loud, large girl who loved to be the centre of attention. She proceeded to tell the nation how her father had molested her once and she had turned to food for comfort, but then had found God and was working through her issues. As we all stood facing her under the hot studio lights, the cameras zooming in for close-ups of our faces, I tried to keep my expression neutral. But I was shocked. How could she talk about something like that? On TV too! What if her Dad had just made a mistake once? Maybe it wasn't his fault. Was it right that he get shamed on national TV? Was that Christian? Everyone went to her afterwards and hugged her as she cried. I thought it was unfair. Where was her loyalty to her family?
Easy Come Easy Go
April had a friend called Jeff. He had strange ideas about religion that my mother found interesting. He said a man named Garrick had changed his life. He prayed to be covered with the Blood of the Lamb and to be allowed to stand in the gap. We weren’t sure what this was about. Although my mother was interested, she was a bit suspicious about a “new” way of interpreting the Bible and praying.
One night April went to a movie. A bit later the phone rang. April was in hospital. A car had run a red light and there had been an accident at the intersection. April had been in the back seat without a seat belt. The car spun and everyone was thrown out, except April, who was lodged between the two front seats. When they got her out they thought she was dead. Her eyes were open and blood was pouring out her nose, eyes and ears. She had massive concussion, a broken jaw and broken bones in her face. Her face swelled up like a watermelon and, when we got to the hospital, she was unrecognisable. She stayed in hospital for a week while her jaw and teeth were rewired.
During this time, Jeff visited and made a bit more of an impression on her. She took a long time to heal, and the bruising and swelling were so extensive that it was months before she began to look like herself again.
Jeff was a lifeguard on a nearby Beach. When my school holidays began I caught a lift down to the beach with him every day. There was a lifeguard working with him, a twenty-something stunner! His name was Parry. The lifeguards had a caravan in which to take breaks, keep their stuff and eat their meals. At 8am there was not much happening on the beach and most of the lifeguards were struggling with hangovers, none more so than the gorgeous Parry.
The first time I saw him I was sitting on one of the bunk beds chatting to Jeff. He stepped into the caravan wearing nothing but his little lifeguard standard issue red costume, and sunglasses. He had a spectacular body, broad shoulders, slim hips and a delicious six-pack. He rubbed his head and groaned.
‘Ohhh god, my head hurts. Last night was seriously rough!’
‘Hey Parry, how’s it going, bro,’ Jeff said, shaking Parry’s hand.
‘Jeff, cool, you’re back, how are you? Who else is working with us this year?’ Parry said.
A big smile revealing perfect white teeth shone out of a suntanned face. I was mesmerised.
‘I think Adam’s back but I’m not sure who else,’ Jeff replied.
‘By the way, Parry, this is Alison. Alison, meet Parry, the biggest male slut in town,’ Jeff said, while Parry came over to me with a naughty smile to illustrate the point and shook my hand while I giggled.
‘I had the most hectic night last night, bro … I got home at five this morning … a bottle of brandy … it was crazy, fucking crazy dude! I don’t know how I’m going to get through today.’ While he spoke he kept smiling at me, looking like he would get through just fine.
He found me alone in the caravan a couple of days later. Within minutes I was pinned under him on the lower bunk bed, while he dry humped manically. Afterwards I pranced around, looking as beautiful as I could manage to try and get his attention. I had a tiny black g-string bikini and tanned really fast, so I was looking hot.
The next day we went for a walk. He seemed distracted. He pulled me into a secluded spot and once again jumped on top of me. I was wearing a sexy mini dress over my bikini. Without any attempt to take it off, he kissed me furiously, sticking his tongue roughly into my mouth and down my throat, his hips grinding into me.