EVENTUALLY I FELL PREGNANT AND had to tell Charles, not just about the pregnancy but about my past; I told him everything. I told him that I’d already had two pregnancies. I also told him I used to be a stripper.
I had been thinking that my relationship with Charles would bring me closer to having a ‘normal’ life of love, trust and companionship. A pregnancy was never intended, at least not by me, as it stood in the way of my finding more secure employment, and just having fun with a caring guy. And so I told him that if he didn’t have plans for this baby, I wanted an abortion.
‘Of course, I have plans!’ he exclaimed. ‘I plan to be a daddy!’
And I believed him.
There was something funny about that time at Harry’s Pancakes. All the women – everyone from the manager to my co-workers – were falling pregnant. Someone joked that there was something special in the pancakes! And maybe there was, because a mutual bond developed between all of us, and it made the time I spent at work more comfortable.
And I needed it, because away from work, during that first trimester, things were hell.
I couldn’t find Charles. When I did, he was playing this cool guy all over the clubs. During those first four months, during the very few times we were together at his place, Charles verbally abused me, and would kick me and beat me up when I asked him why he was suddenly behaving this way. But he continued to say he wanted to be a daddy to the baby.
At first my mother was also excited about the baby, because now the community around her could see the fruits of the ‘African way’. She was dancing about having a baby in her family. But then she too became verbally abusive again, and we continued arguing a lot. Even so, I kept coming back to her when Charles gave me problems.
So I was very grumpy during my pregnancy. I was also very worried when I had to have a blood test. I calmed myself by saying at least I had God at my side. At four-and-a-half months pregnant, an HIV check at Somerset Hospital came up negative for me, and I was relieved.
But things with Charles had not improved. He went quiet for several weeks, and after five or six months of pregnancy I gave up and started to ignore him back.
When Charles then beat me up again during my pregnancy, I decided no, this wasn’t going to work. This was the type of abuse I was running away from. I moved away from his place and moved in with my mom.
I just focused on the baby growing inside me and towards the end of the pregnancy I started really enjoying it. I saved my money and provided food for the house, which made my mother happy. I had worked throughout the nine months, which also shocked her, but she was pleased. And I enjoyed having my co-workers help me prepare for the birth.
Charles signed the Home Affairs papers for the baby’s birth certificate and got his ID immediately. I eventually figured it out that he had wanted a baby so he could get South African citizenship.
I was high on weed the day I first felt my contractions. It was around three in the afternoon. But the contractions continued for a long time, and the weed wore off. In the hospital, I pushed and pushed, and enjoyed the morphine, which numbed me.
My son S was born at Cape Town’s Somerset Hospital on Heritage Day – just after midnight on 24 September 2008.
It was a difficult birth, and the hospital was full, so just a few hours after S was born, I had to return to my mom’s house.
When I arrived home, there were these village women waiting to welcome me and the baby. These grannies were sitting in the dining room, drinking umqomboti, sniffing snuff, and as I walked in they started ululating ‘Umzukulwana’.
In Xhosa culture, there are very strict rules about the birth of a baby. A baby must not be seen by strangers until the aunties have welcomed the baby. But while my mother was receiving praise from the community grannies, I was thinking, ‘Hell no, these township grannies ain’t going to touch my baby!’
I was exhausted and I needed to sleep. So I just looked at them, and then I left them and went into the room I was sharing with my mom, to sleep on my mattress on the floor.
My mother had at least tried to make things pleasant by getting the room ready for the baby. The heater was on, and the room was nice and warm. Behind me I heard one granny say, ‘Well, we grew up in the village, and the village is never quiet until after midday. First thing we hear is a chicken, and the rest is all of us walking and talking loud. We are here now, so she must get over it.’
There was something important that happened after S was born, even if I found all the cultural stuff irritating. It was that this was when my mother started calling me ‘ntombi’ (my daughter). The baby had brought her cultural integrity because she was now a grandmother. And gradually, in the eyes of the Khayelitsha community, my mother became less like an ‘auntie’ and more like a mother to me.
It was also, however, the start of many arguments and disputes about culture and religion between us.
Following Christian methods, I took S to be circumcised after seven days. This shocked my mother and her community grannies.
‘You never taught me culture,’ I said to my mom. ‘You were never in my life to teach me that. How can you tell me at my age now that I must respect your culture?’ I explained that I was committed to Christianity, and that that was my background, not this Xhosa culture she was always trying to rub in.
I also knew that most of what my mother had learnt about Xhosa culture came from her late husband, Richard. So I continued, ‘I’m not going to respect your husband who I hardly even knew!’
My mother would then launch into a long story telling me all that her husband did for her and her family. Bitterly, I remembered that, as a nine-year-old, I was not considered her child but her brother’s child. I had never been included in this family she now spoke of with such respect.
But the cultural pressures continued.
After S had had his immunisations, I came home one day and noticed a smell about him. Then I noticed the red wool tied around his waist, which in Xhosa culture is supposed to drive away the evil forces. I was furious! My mother said she had called a neighbour to make S ‘ukukhupha umoya’.
I cut off the wool and shoved it in the bin.
‘If you don’t believe this culture, your son will be confused,’ she yelled at me.
I just replied, ‘No!’
After S was circumcised, I took him home and faced a smug mom, who said, ‘You see, you think you know everything. It’s going to bite you, just you wait!’
It was very difficult to deal with all this. I was struggling to feed the baby as well – I was told my breasts were too large to nurse him as I would suffocate him, so I had to bottle feed him with special milk, which cost R120 a week. My mother and I had arguments over that too.
I had tried to get together with Charles to ask for his support and explore how we could live together as a family. Instead of discussing it, he’d shouted at me. He stayed around in Khayelitsha long enough to see the baby born, but then he left.
After S was born, I returned to work at Harry’s Pancakes. I was trying to be a good mother for the first time, trying to care for the baby while working, trying to save money responsibly. I needed my mom’s assistance. But things weren’t easy between us and I felt there was a lot of pressure.
I paid her R500 every month to look after S while I went out to work, and I still had to pay for his expensive milk. Sometimes I wondered if she really deserved to carry the title of ‘grandmother’, and not ‘babysitter’, as if we shared a contract rather than blood.
And I was exhausted from it all. At night in our one room where my mom, S and I slept on the floor, S would wake up and cry. If I continued sleeping, my mother would yell at me.
But even with all this going on in those first few months, I just loved this baby. I would spend ages just looking at him; bathing him was always a time filled with precious bonding moments.
When Z was born, I had only seen him for a few seconds – I’d just had a flashing image of his big eyes and curly hair. With S it was the same image, but I could now stare at him for hours, drinking in the sight of him. I loved his tiny baby hands, and I appreciated him every single day.
I had always carried this feeling of loss for Z. This new baby brought love into my heart for the first time; I knew I had to be my best for him, because he had trusted me with his life – now there was this tiny baby, and it was him I had to learn to care for. It was a responsibility that removed me from my own self-interest, because my whole life I had been concerned about my own survival and protection.
S made me feel that I have survived, even though I wasn’t yet ready to be the person I knew I needed to be for him. I made promises in my heart for him: ‘Please, S, give me time. I promise you things will change.’
I would say this to him every day.
My mother still had her business of selling beer to support everyone in the house – my two step brothers plus now S. She was drinking a lot and selling wine. We had so many arguments about money, which made me very tired.
Then Harry’s Pancakes closed down and I lost my job. Mom’s noise in my ears got louder and louder.
‘You’ve got to support yourself. And what about me? And S?’ she would repeat.
During our arguments, my ears, heart and body would be shaking. I think my little baby felt and heard my anxiety and my increasing anger.
Weed helped me shut out her noise, so I smoked more and more, but it was clear that I couldn’t live with my mother any more. And I knew I had to make money so that I could afford a separate home for my son and myself. I would not allow him to grow up with the abusive parent that I had had.
I just wished I could be alone with S in a quiet place.
I was twenty-eight years old. S was two months old. His father was gone. And through all the noise I had this spiritual feeling that was growing. I wanted things to be right.