After Kris’s revelation, it was decided that the only option in the circumstances was to have me, Karoline, adopted – and because of the laws in South Africa at the time, the adoption would have to take place ‘overseas’, in England. Had they given me up in South Africa, questions would have been asked, charges possibly filed and both Kris and Jackson could have been sent to prison. My future, as I have often been reminded, would likely have been to end up in a ‘coloured’ children’s home. Numerous times I have been told that I should be grateful for having avoided such a fate. Kris once wrote, ‘You would not be living the life you have now.’
Once it was decided that I was to be adopted, a reason, of course, had to be given for why I so urgently needed to be taken overseas. Like many babies, I was born with slight jaundice and it was this jaundice that would be efficacious in ensuring my departure from South Africa went unquestioned. Together with a paediatrician at Sandton Clinic, who knew the real reason for my having to disappear, and being someone they felt they could trust, Kris and Ken concocted a story that I was suffering a rare kidney disease, symptomised by jaundice, that required a level of medical expertise and treatment only available at London’s Great Ormond Street children’s hospital. A referral letter was written, tears were shed by Ken’s parents, who remained dumb to the truth, and on 18 September, Kris, Ken and baby Karoline arrived in the UK.
They did, as they had said they would, take me to Great Ormond Street, but to see the medical social worker, not the doctors. They explained the situation to the social worker and she put them in touch with the British Agencies For Adoption and Fostering, which immediately contacted the Independent Adoption Service (IAS). The IAS told Kris about a couple who wanted to adopt a baby girl of mixed-race parentage.
In the short time between that first appointment at the offices of the IAS and the day I was given up, Kris and Ken stayed with friends and in hotels, and also visited her parents in her hometown in the North. They confided in her parents the true nature of their visit to England, but not to her sister Karla, who was sixteen at the time. For those few days, the pair lived something of a double life, continuing their façade with Ken’s concerned parents who stayed in regular contact from Johannesburg. The story of my final days with Kris and Ken is detailed in a letter from the social worker, written just over a year after I was given up:
Kris continued to give you every care although as time went by she knew that the day when she must part with you was coming nearer and she felt under increasing stress dreading the moment of parting. When [they] finally bought you to this office, Kris was extremely upset and distressed to part with you and I know that this was a tragic moment in her life.
Kris was apparently watching from a car parked outside when Angela and Malcolm came for me. She watched as two complete strangers walked in through the door and instantly, unconditionally and proudly fell in love with her baby. According to paper work from the agency, Kris was ‘incredibly distressed’ when the time came for us to part. Strangely (or maybe not), I find this information comforting. The thought that she dumped me and disappeared without shedding so much as a tear is unthinkable.
On 10 October, just ten days after handing me over, Ken and Kris left England to return to their lives in South Africa. But of course, they were to return without ‘their’ baby.
The final part of their plan had been devised even prior to leaving for England. They would do what to most people is the unthinkable, the unconscionable, the unspeakable. They would ‘kill Karoline’. They would say I had died.
Once back in South Africa, Kris and Ken tried, ultimately unsuccessfully, to put the past behind them and save their marriage. Ken maintains that by the time they arrived back from England, Jackson had ‘disappeared’. Kris would later tell me that she never again spoke to him after she returned to South Africa. Some inconsistencies in a letter she sent me years later led me to have my doubts about the truth and I once tried to imagine what conversation could have taken place between Kris and Jackson when she arrived back.
There is purple everywhere. Flecks of mauve, violet and amethyst dust settle on everything, like confetti, but there is nothing to celebrate. A stray lilac petal lands at her feet like a silent, fallen bell.
‘Jacarandas,’ she says to no one in particular as she crosses the courtyard, past two thatched rondavels. As she walks, she twists the ring on the fourth finger of her left hand. It is too big now and turns easily on her soft, white skin.
Down behind the kitchen, past the bins, and the rats, he lies in his room. Four solid brick walls. His uniform, a chef’s jacket, hangs idly on a broom propped against the door. The jacket is spotless, almost too white.
She calls out for him.
‘Jackie?’ Then, ‘Jackson?’
He rises cautiously, but respectfully to his feet and stands in the doorway.
‘Ma’am.’ She flinches at the formality. ‘You have come back.’
She nods and stutters weakly, ‘The baby … The baby, she—’
He interrupts.
‘They told me. I am so sorry for your loss, ma’am – and your husband’s too. It is not God’s plan for the mother and father to outlive the children.’
‘Jackie…’ She starts to move towards him, but his eyes tell her he is no longer Jackie.
To this day it remains unclear as to whether my biological parents’ union was propelled by love or lust, rebellion or revenge, boredom or loneliness, fear or fun, or perhaps a combination of all of these. I still do not know. So much remains hidden, left unsaid, buried and locked away by those who do know but, for reasons known only to them (I assume guilt and shame), they chose not to divulge. When I think about my story, it often feels like a play. A tragedy, of course. Akin to Macbeth, the one whose name shall never be spoken. There is a script, but none of the players is true to it. Instead they ad lib, casting aside what is written to show their own character in their best light. Lines are discarded, scenes deleted, characters so altered from the original that by the end the true story is lost. Whatever the real circumstances of how I came to be born into a system of segregation, hate and oppression, the ramifications would, like a ten-tonne weight tossed into a pond, ripple outwards for times and times and times to come.