SURRENDER
I was in an awful amount of pain, and I couldn’t stop beating myself up. I kept blaming myself for not pausing before writing to Aida, and for not coming up with any alternative solutions. Ellen had been in my life from when she was only an eighteen-month-old baby until one week before her eighth birthday. And Samuel, who didn’t want to go to his mother at all, was three months shy of his fifth birthday when he was taken. The two years and two weeks I’d spent settling Samuel had not been enough to even warrant an investigation.
On top of this, I was now being denied all contact on the basis that they needed time to allow Samuel to adjust to his new environment. My attorney’s parting words of ‘If anything happens to Samuel, we can go back to court.’ didn’t help much. As far as I was concerned, that would be too late. In court, they’d successfully managed to paint me as the aggressor and the presiding judge must have bought it. From what Kathy told me, it takes an experienced therapist a considerable length of time to correctly diagnose an individual with Narcissistic Borderline Personality Disorder. And the less experienced, more idealistic therapists can often find themselves burned out before they discover exactly who and what they’re dealing with. But all of this would have been uncovered if this judge hadn’t denied Samuel’s right to an investigation. I believe this should be every child’s right, under the protection of the law.
Now, I wondered if they hadn’t been right about me all along. I was convinced that if anything happened to Ellen or Samuel, we wouldn’t be going back to court. They’d both be dead, and I’d be going to jail for the rest of my life. I’d decided that all my children would be okay, possibly even better off. Ellen would go to her father, Jeremy to his mother, and I was pretty sure that Aida’s parents would step in to take care of Samuel. What I was trying to determine was if it was my responsibility as a parent to do something before anything happened – to take some form of preventative action. The only thought that seemed to be holding me back was my strange belief that Aida would have wanted me to do exactly that. A kind of suicide by ex-husband. Fuck it, I thought, I have to put a lid on these crazy thoughts.
Fortunately, I had Jeremy and my new business to focus on. Jeremy, despite his age, had settled into his new school and the business was doing well enough to cover the monthly bills. At the same time, I seemed to be receiving an unusual number of invites, and I found myself socializing a lot more than before and feeling a bit guilty about it. I thought I must still mistakenly be on someone’s VIP list from when Aida had employed a PR firm. But until now, I hadn’t received any invitations since I left Aida. So, I was getting invited to the opening of new restaurants, clubs, bars, modelling agencies, swimsuit competitions, and after-parties. I even received an invitation to join a panel of judges for the National Beauty competition, held at several of our well-publicized beaches, which I found rather uncomfortable. With Jeremy being a teenager and all, he seemed to enjoy it. I didn’t understand why I seemed to be popular in the 80s or now. And I don’t believe I’m being falsely humble when I say I’ve always considered myself to be an average guy with no real accomplishments to speak of. My biggest claim to fame would be that I’m a caring person and possibly a good listener. It’s not that I’m ungrateful, but I’ve always felt detached, and I’ve never really been able to live and enjoy life as most people do. I think that I’m more of an introvert who prefers being at home, and I’m definitely happier doing school runs than receiving some form of VIP treatment.
However, having lost Ellen and Samuel and being denied any access at all, it was obviously a lot healthier for me to get out than to sit at home planning and fantasizing about torturing and killing people. Or for that matter, to watch TV – where all too often I’d find myself sobbing almost uncontrollably. Especially as I always seemed to home in on supportive characters. Like the role Bonnie Hunt played as the loving supportive wife to a correction officer, played by Tom Hanks in The Green Mile. A part of me wished I could just move on, and I was longing for a relationship. But while I seemed to be liked, I don’t think I knew how to like and accept myself. So, anyone who showed the slightest interest would be warned off with, ‘You don’t want to go there with me. I’m not relationship material.’ At best, I’d manage three dates and then disappear. The idea of starting a new relationship seemed damn near impossible. As far as I was concerned, I had way too much work that still needed to do be done on myself.
It was the start of spring and Ellen’s birthday. After she was taken, I never got to see her again. But I was allowed to drop off a gift for her. So, I’d usually take a few days to find her a special fairy to add to her collection and some extra age-appropriate fashion accessories that a few helpful sales assistants would recommend. I’d always been pretty good at arranging birthday parties and finding the right presents. With no other way of letting Ellen know that I loved her, I more than doubled my effort to find and wrap the right presents for her. Of course, I’d never hear from her. So, I never knew if she’d been given my gifts or if she knew they were from me. Only this year, while it drove me crazy, I’d decided to honour Aida’s request for time to settle Samuel. Yes, I could have gone back to court to try and force my legal right to access. However, I’d lost faith in the legal system, which in my opinion had odiously let Samuel and me down.
I was thinking that I hadn’t seen Ellen in what felt like forever as I gazed out the kitchen window wondering if the new lawn we’d recently laid would survive. We’d rented the worse house in the best area and pretty much cleaned it up. It had the advantage of having a separate granny-flat, which I’d converted into office space so there was always someone only two meters away should any of my children need me. The garden must have been quite spectacular in its day. A long time ago someone had planted an array of fruit trees that were producing avocados, plums, figs, and lemons. However, they were probably the very reason why we couldn’t get the lawn to grow. Jeremy hadn’t seen Ellen since he returned, but sadly I knew that neither of us would get to see her, let alone get to wish her a happy birthday. I was still thinking about Ellen, when Jeremy walked in carrying his cat – who of course, Samuel had named.
‘Can we talk?’ he asked.
‘Sure.’ I replied. ‘I’m about to make breakfast. What would you like to have?’
‘I can’t eat,’ he answered, as he sat down at our old oak farm table. ‘And I can’t sleep either,’ he continued.
‘Okay, what’s going on?’ I asked as I watched Figaro slink off his lap to go outside and play.
‘I’ve always been honest with you dad’ he started, then asked, ‘How much do you know about speed?’ I understood the question to be rhetorical. ‘Some of us from school, have been using a light bulb and I’ve been doing too much.’ Of course I knew about amphetamines, I’m a regular member of Narcotics Anonymous. But I hadn’t heard about this light bulb method of using. ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘I’m the one who can’t stop and I’m always the one wanting us to get more.’
I watched his hyperactive right leg bouncing uncontrollably – something I’d witnessed many times before at meetings – and wondered how the hell I missed this.
Then my mind flashed back to one of the few lectures I could still remember from my time in rehab. The statistics for high-school students don’t look great and their chances of recovery are pretty dismal. Ninety per cent of teenagers will experiment while still at school: of that, roughly twenty-two per cent will become addicted, and tragically less than five per cent of addicts ever find recovery. The figures quoted were based solely on the record of patients admitted for treatment. Then, I’d assumed that the statistics were merely intended to scare us. But now, I was truly afraid for Jeremy.
We’d previously had several discussions about the dangers of drugs. However, now wasn’t the time for one of those. What I needed to confirm was whether he wanted to stop or not. With that out of the way, we discussed the two options that I knew worked. If he wanted, he could do what I did and go to rehab for twenty-one days, or there was the ninety meetings in ninety days Narcotics Anonymous option that I’d be more than happy to walk with him. I was in no way offering to sponsor him because I didn’t believe it would be in his best interest. But rather that I’d either go with him or get him to two or more meetings a day. He wasn’t ready to commit to either option but did agree to start attending meetings with a friend who lived nearby and who’d been one of his closest friends ever since they’d attended primary school together.
I prioritize my children’s needs just like most normal parents do. However, all too often I wear it like a badge of honour. So, perhaps I should have paid more attention to the Special and Different sign that I was asked to wear during my stint in rehab. Because three days after Jeremy came to me for help, at 11 am on Friday the 13th of September 2002, I walked into a bar, ordered a double whisky with ice together with a shooter, and I didn’t stop until 7 am the next morning. On my way home, I had an accident with a traffic officer who was on his way to work. His police motorcycle was badly damaged by the accident, but fortunately he sustained only minor injuries. However, if I’d been at that intersection another second or two earlier, I could quite easily have been responsible for the death of a traffic officer.
THE DUCK POND
I made my way past the crowd of last-minute smokers gathered on the pavement to a hall at the back of a church in Woodstock, less than a block away from where I’d grown up. I found space on an old creaky church bench, put my face in my hands, and waited for the meeting to start. Fortunately, it hadn’t taken me more than a few days to find my way back to the rooms. I could have been sitting in jail, instead of a meeting of Narcotics Anonymous. I’d been incredibly lucky not to have killed that officer. But my stupidity had effectively eliminated any possibility I might have had of protecting Samuel. I was consumed by an emotion that I couldn’t identify. It could have been an overwhelming sense of shame or powerlessness – or both. I wasn’t sure. But other than to introduce myself as an addict in the introductory round, I didn’t open my mouth. I kept my face in my hands and did my best to listen.
I listened to someone share that she needed to use to forget about the consequences of her using. She realized that she had to go within or go without, but didn’t know how, until her sponsor encouraged her to finish Step Four – to write a searching and fearless moral inventory of herself.
I hadn’t seen Samuel or heard from Aida in six months. But as I switched my phone on while leaving the meeting, I received a call from Aida. She’d called to ask if I could meet her the next day at 11 am at the duck pond at Sonstraal Dam (Sun Ray Dam). It’s a stunning area on the northern outskirts of Cape Town, with splendid views out across the vineyards to the foothills of the Hottentots Holland Mountains. They’d retained all the dams that were originally used for agriculture and converted them into beautifully landscaped recreational areas. Neighbourhood homes and their gardens are all immaculately maintained, and the area boasts a few excellent schools. It should be a wonderful suburb for any children, including Ellen and Samuel, to grow up in but that hadn’t been Macy or her children’s experience of the neighbourhood.
When I was still contemplating murder, I’d searched for any reason to hate the area. Possibly to keep me away from the area, but more likely to justify my imagined reaction should anything happen to Samuel or Ellen. My head was going around in circles, combining everything I knew about the area and Namibia, where Martin was from, with my mother and my father’s story. It was a predominantly Afrikaans residential area, where the Dutch Reform Church first opened its doors in 1826. Most of the ruling members of parliament during the apartheid era were regular churchgoers and members of this particular denomination. The church was well known for its support of apartheid ideology. They used the scriptures to promote the God of Genesis as the Great Divider who’d intentionally created separate races – with whites being superior to blacks.
My father was born into an ultra-conservative Afrikaans community. In South Africa, you won’t find a more Afrikaans name than the one I have. But that didn’t matter because my father fought in the 2nd World War on the side of the Allied Forces. Whereas others from his community were imprisoned for being Nazi sympathizers.
Martin was born and raised in Namibia, which before its independence used to be known as South West Africa. The first Imperial Commissioner of German South-West Africa was Heinrich Goering, the father of Field Marshal Herman Goering, one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party. Shark Island in Namibia is considered by some historians to be the site of the world’s first death camp where the indigenous Herero and Nama peoples were exploited in the name of medical science and exterminated. Long before Hitler was born, Kaiser’s Germany used concentration camps in Africa to advance their theories of racial Lebensraum – the very same twisted policy at the heart of Hitler’s white supremacy ideology.
I knew that I wasn’t thinking rationally. For all I knew, Martin or his family may well have rejected these repugnant ideologies, or even taken up arms against them just like my father had. But I couldn’t stop myself from thinking that this elitist Afrikaans neighbourhood, enabled by the remnants of an apartheid justice system, had stolen and endangered my child. I also knew that I could have avoided the accident I’d caused and the predicament I now found myself in. If only I’d kept looking for my part, as my NA program suggested, and what I could have done differently. But it had been far easier for me to entertain murderous thoughts, to write off an entire neighbourhood as being racists, and to have Martin pegged as a child-abusing Nazi. Ultimately, I nearly ended up killing an innocent bystander – a law enforcement officer on his way to work.
I was in a lot of shit and didn’t know what Aida might have heard or what this meeting might be about. But it hadn’t been all bad. After the finals of the beach competition that I’d been asked to judge, Jeremy and I had headed to the Klein Karoo’s Hex Valley and the therapeutic village of McGregor. It was founded in the 1900s when plots were auctioned off in anticipation of a connecting road which was never built. However, its isolation helped preserve the 19th-century architecture, the thatch-roofed cottages, vines, apricot and olive groves, and its peaceful atmosphere. We checked into Temenos, which unbeknown to me, was better known as a spiritual retreat. As a retreat, Temenos offers healthy cuisine, sunrise walks over the mountain to the neighbouring village of Greyton, guided meditations, yoga, and creative writing seminars. All centred around a magnificent silent garden.
Before dinner, Billy introduced us to the Silent Garden. It is a garden filled with hidden sanctuaries: a statue of Mother Mary that faces the dawn surrounded by miniature red and pink roses; a rockery with a picture of a Jewish youth holding the sacred Torah; and a square walled Islamic enclosure facing Mecca, where one can reflect on the poems of Rumi and Hafiz. We passed a shrine to Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of beauty and abundance, then a shrine to Ganesha, the divine aspect of God – which according to Billie, represents intelligence, wisdom, and the removal of obstacles. There was also the garden’s chapel that could accommodate a small wedding of forty. The Little Way chapel has a prayer, written by The Little Sisters of Jesus, buried in its foundations – they are an order of nuns who choose to live among the poorest marginalized communities.
‘The Well, one of our several meditation spaces,’ Billy continued, ‘is inspired by the temenos of the Acropolis in ancient Athens, which was a place apart to gently nurture oneself. That’s what we’d like our little Temenos in McGregor to be.’ Recognizing that Jeremy and I were clueless, he ended our tour with, ‘Don’t miss our Buddha who made his journey here riding on the back of our truck facing the traffic.’
After our garden tour, we took a walk and joined some locals and weekend visitors all crammed into a country pub to watch the national rugby team’s match. Inside was impossible, but we found some space on the wrap-around balcony. ‘Got us some drinks,’ a rather sensual Sharon said, as a way of introducing herself. Sharon must have been in her early thirties and had bought three Springbok shooters that were named after our team. A layered shot of a green crème de menthe and golden Amarula, symbolizing our colours, topped off with a layer of fresh cream. She was from Cape Town and was busy restoring one of the historic cottages for weekends away from home. I declined the shots, saying we’d only put our heads in to see what all the hype was about, and we wouldn’t be staying. I didn’t feel it necessary to tell her that we didn’t drink and even more so, to attempt to explain why I don’t follow rugby. Sharon knocked back all three Springbok shots. ‘See, it didn’t take long,’ she said with a wink and the cutest half-smile, then disappeared back inside. We ordered two cokes and while neither Jeremy nor I were supporters and we really couldn’t see the TV, we joined in with the calls to, ‘Go, Go, Go’ or ‘tackle him, jou bliksem!’ (you scoundrel).
We were about to leave when I felt Sharon pressed against me from behind. I hadn’t seen her coming, but I certainly felt her breasts brushing against me as she repositioned herself to whisper in my ear, ‘I want to fuck you – both of you – right now at my place.’ I could have been a bit gentler. She was a bit tipsy and couldn’t have known that Jeremy was my son. ‘We’re out of here.’ I said as I removed her hands from my waist. I didn’t think that Jeremy had heard her, but I apologized just in case. We left, but I should have left the moment she first came over to introduce herself. As we got into bed Jeremy asked, ‘Are we still going to the hot springs tomorrow?’
I was a late starter. As a teenager, I’d been an active member of the 1970s Youth for Christ movement. So, I only lost my virginity after I’d already completed my military service. Meredith was the first girl I had sex with, and I married her because of it. I was only twenty-one and far too insecure to be married. My first marriage ended as a direct result of one of those I-want-to-fuck-you moments. And for the rest of my life, I wondered whether or not Meredith had been the right partner for me. In therapy with Kathy, I’d been discussing these one-off sexual encounters that I always seemed to attract. They weren’t one-night stands. I’d meet a complete stranger that I was instantly aroused by, and I can only assume that she felt the same. I’m not a player and quite frankly I wouldn’t want to be. Truth be told, I’ve never known how to approach any woman, and whenever I’ve tried I have usually failed quite dismally. I struggle with the whole concept of sex – except for during the odd, heated encounters which essentially represented a rare opportunity for me to engage. So, often I’d hit my fuck-it-I-don’t-care button, which meant having sex in a lot of strange places. Anywhere other than a bedroom. At work, in clubs, restaurants and pubs. In parking lots, in cars or on the hoods of cars, and in elevators. On the beach in front of a restaurant, where abandoned I had the friends I’d been having dinner with. And once, up against the wall, in the busy entrance to an underground club. To be clear, I don’t go out all that often. At best, I’m talking about once or twice a month and then not every month. As a parent, I wasn’t particularly proud of my behaviour. But at least it kept things away from my home and away from my children.
Kathy defined my experience as wound buddy attraction. A powerful, overwhelming, often incomprehensible form of attraction, founded on shared childhood traumas. Finally, I could make sense of why I’d attracted more than my fair share of women many of whom were obviously out of my league, and quite frequently some who were in committed lesbian relationships – which confused the hell out of them and their partners. But I finally had an answer. One that I’d been testing and learning to use, including at the finals of the beach competition the night before we arrived in the village of McGregor.
It was almost 9:30. Thankfully, I was driving against the morning traffic, which was practically sitting at a standstill. I would be at the duck pond with about fifteen minutes to spare. The little branded delivery van only had seating for three. While not ideal, there was ample space in the back to load in as many friends as Jeremy or any of my children might want to include. Rather than trying to think about why I’d been asked to meet Aida and if she had heard about my accident, my thoughts returned to my recent road trip with Jeremy.
My new radar wasn’t always as finely tuned as I would have preferred it to be. With Sharon, I was still learning that when it came to mutual attractions, or what some might call chemistry, it was probably a good time for me to leave. But on other occasions I could learn more, or at least test the accuracy of wound buddies. For example, I hadn’t detected a thing on New Years’ Eve when Marie followed me to my car. If I’d known that Marie was attracted to me, I probably wouldn’t have invited the table to join me on January 2 in Langebaan. But I didn’t know until she followed me to the parking lot. I’d gone to retrieve the hoodie I’d brought in case the weather changed and I didn’t notice that Marie had chosen to follow me. But while I’d been blissfully unaware, her girlfriend certainly wasn’t. So, she got up to follow Marie. Fortunately, we were able to talk and the little that I knew about wound buddies seemed to help. I thought I’d successfully managed to diffuse the situation until they showed up two days later to watch the finals of the contest that I’d been asked to judge. In Langebaan over dinner, I discovered they’d talked it over. Marie had never been attracted to a man before and they’d agreed to let her get it out of her system. Having Jeremy with me allowed me to buy some time, but I did agree to consider their rather awkward proposal, though we never acted on it.
For the first two days of my road trip with Jeremy, I hadn’t gotten myself into trouble. I was feeling pretty good about my progress, until the third night at the hot springs. After Jeremy went to bed, I’d stayed up a bit to chat and ended up in another woman’s bungalow. I fell asleep, which I never do. I can only assume that having sex after the amount of time that Jeremy and I had spent in springs had knocked me out. But in the middle of the night, Jeremy woke up and was pretty upset when he couldn’t find me. He was fifteen years old at the time, so it shouldn’t have been a problem. Except he still struggled with abandonment issues, and he was in early recovery. We weren’t at home or in familiar surroundings, so I should have been more careful.
I arrived at the duck pond ten minutes early, parked and found a bench. A trendy couple, wearing the season’s latest sportswear, were power walking around the dam’s compacted gravel path. Looking at the surrounding manicured homes, I thought I recognized the home of two attorneys whom Valeria and I had once had dinner with. Our married hosts had tried to out-drink each other until the patio table they were dancing on collapsed under their combined weight. The new business was doing okay, but I’d sold the townhouse at the wrong time and housing prices were starting to rise. For a brief moment, I regretted leaving Aida and losing the home we had together.
Yellow-billed ducks were bobbing for food and others waddled around, occasionally stopping to preen their feathers. Two skittish Cape White-Eye birds, with their yellow throats and white framed eyes, scurried out of the way of the oncoming power-walkers. I was starting to appreciate these gentle creatures who seemed so happy. All it takes to keep a duck thrilled with life is lots of water – the muddier the better – some cabbage leaves, and a few earthworms. Aida was more than half an hour late and I was wondering if she was going to show up when she arrived with Samuel in tow. She handed Samuel back to me and said simply, ‘He’ll be better off staying with you,’ then added one instruction, ‘but I want him to remain with his new playgroup till the end of the year.’ We didn’t say anything to each other as we watched Aida turn to leave. Then I lifted Samuel, dressed in a plain white t-shirt and faded red shorts, into my arms. He only had an empty Dinosaur lunchbox with him, but I honestly didn’t care. I tried desperately to hold back my tears as we drove home in silence while I reflected on one of AA’s better-known promises –‘We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.’
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