My Scars Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Ever feel like you are drowning? Like every step you take in your life puts you back in the ocean where you perpetually battle for your life. The more you try to scrimmage your demons the more you inadvertently gulp the salty water. Instantaneously your nose burn up, your throat aches and you feel like giving it all up. When you are about to let yourself consume as much volume of water as your body can take and as you are about to close your eyes and give up fighting that’s when you hear the voices calling out to you. They sound so close and suddenly the dream to be free is closer to reality, and it’s hard to simply let go. You have little strength left in you but you want to use the little energy left to fight and to make sure you are rescued. But then suddenly the voices stops calling and you look around and realise that you are nowhere close to the shore. The hope you had suddenly evaporates and you are back to where you started with the salty water going through your mouth and your nose and you want everything to stop at once. But before it ends, you hear the voices again. Your instincts are telling you to hope for the best this time, that you should fight harder, that this time it will be different and you will be saved. The big question is: does it ever end?

It’s a circle. It’s a harrowing excruciating bitter circle, and that circle was my life. I read books, watched documentaries and films about the women who suffered the same fate as me. They all gave me hope, they gave me a reason to go on and they made me feel that I would find light at the end of the tunnel. But that feeling only lasted for two days at its best, sometimes only a day, sometimes a week when I was lucky and then after that it’s back to drowning and fighting. Somehow that became my life. The constant fear, the fighting and the drowning defined me. Even though I didn’t always show my emotions on the outside, deep inside I was constantly fighting a battle.

Some say that our lives where planned way before we were conceived and that somehow God already foreseen the steps we will take before we even consider taking them and that He pre-cognize every event in our lives. Yes I am a believer and having ended up in my family made me believe that God somehow brought them to me but the baggage that came as an aftermath of that arrangement made me think otherwise. How can it be that one minute life can be so great and satisfying and the next minute it can be so cruel and so heart-breaking? I have been happy and sad; I have seen better days but I’ve also seen worse. There have been days where I didn’t want to face the world, days where I wanted to bury myself in my pain and die or just disappear because what brought me pain is also the same thing that saved my life and gave me a good chance at life.

My name is Roxanne Smith. I am 22 years old and a varsity graduate. I studied Accounting in the States at the University of West Georgia. I know it’s far from South Africa but I have my reasons why I studied miles away from home. My parents were not thrilled about me studying abroad but I really wanted to be away from home and from everyone for few years and I honestly enjoyed the break. I wish I could say I scored myself a boyfriend in the States but life is just not a fairytale. It’s different from how they portray it in movies. I mean, I was supposed to go study abroad and have my Romeo sweep me off my feet and come back home with a marriage proposal, at least that’s how I thought it would be but a degree is all I had when I came back home. Not that it was disappointing because a degree is what I went to the States for but then deep inside I was hoping for something more. Healing was one of my goals when I went to the States. I dated one guy… Steven… well we didn’t last long, maybe I should not even call it dating, let me say I attempted to date because I put a stop to it before it got anywhere. My parents kept bugging me about a boyfriend and I told them that my studies where actually a priority and that I still have my whole life ahead of me to get a boyfriend and eventually get married. I couldn’t tell them the real reason behind my lack of a boyfriend.

I am adopted and the parents I was talking about are whites. I don’t really remember the whole story or what happened with my birth parents. All I remember is being at Thusanani children’s home in Soweto. I was too young to know the total number of kids staying there at the time but there were a number of us. There were older boys and girls who went to school and then there were us young kids who went to creche. The home was built like a school with four big sleeping rooms with many beds in each. There was also a big kitchen where they cooked our food and then one hall where we would sit and eat and play most of the times. The yard was big enough for all of us to play. We always had people coming and taking pictures of us and giving us food and clothes. It was always the happiest moment when that happens. Thusanani children’s home was the only home I knew. I remember Aunt Zimasa cooking for us and serving us. She was a friendly woman and always made sure we were well taken care of. She wasn’t alone; she had Aunt Mathapelo, Aunt Rebecca and three more ladies whose names I didn’t know. I was happy staying there, and I felt at home, maybe it was because I had nowhere else to compare it to.

One afternoon I was playing alone outside when I saw my mom and dad for the first time. I was only four years old and I still remember it like it was yesterday. I still remember my mother’s smile and the look of love from my dad’s blue eyes when they first saw me. I was diffident and hardly said a word to them. They on the other side looked really jovial to see me. I was just in shock to see these two strangers who looked so delighted to see me. My mom Catherine was wearing formal black pants and a white blouse tucked in and a high heel. She looked tall and had a friendly face. Her hair was tied up in a pony and I was fascinated when I looked at her pale skin and her blond long her. I didn’t have hair. Most of us had shaved bald heads at the home; I think they knew they wouldn’t be able to maintain our hair. Jackson, my dad was in a black suit and a very shiny shoe, his hair was short and neatly cut. They both looked happy. My mom immediately carried me and asked me for my name, my name was Ritshidze. I shyly whispered my name to her, and she shook her head while smoothly rubbing my head and said: “from now on your name is Roxanne my love… you are Roxanne Smith” I didn’t know what it meant, I didn’t know I would finally have a real home with two loving parents and just like that, Ritshidze was gone and it was hello Roxanne Smith. They told me their names, and that they were my parents. I was appalled; I never had a father or a mother. I had aunts at the home but not a mom and a dad. Even though I was young, I loved the idea of having a mom and a dad.

I was only four when they took me in and I became their daughter ever since. My dad called me Pebble few weeks after I joined the family because he said my head looked like a smooth Pebble because it was bald. Naturally my dad was full of jokes and calling me Pebble was his way of making me loosen up. Even after I had grown up and didn’t find the name attractive anymore, my dad still called me Pebble. It was no secret how much I loathed being called Pebble when I reached my teenage years but my dad just didn’t care. Not once did I feel unloved by my parents or like I was not their biological child; they treated me like their own and whoever tried to bring up the race issue was dealt with accordingly.

My childhood was pretty much a happy one. I was really loved and cherished as a child. I wasn’t alone though, I had a brother. Yes, I had one little crazy brother named Joshua, but we called him Josh. I loved him and I shared a very strong bond with him. Like me, Josh was also black and was also adopted. I once asked my parents why they only adopted black kids and their response to that was that when they wanted kids, they didn’t want black kids, white kids, coloured kids or Indian kids… they said they just wanted kids and my brother and I are kids. Josh was four years younger than me. They brought him home when I was seven years old and he was three. I was happy to have someone at home.

I remember one afternoon when they left me with Aunt Rose who was our helper and told me they were coming back with my baby brother and that I would love him because he was as sweet as me. I was restless the whole afternoon because I couldn’t wait to meet my brother. Later in the afternoon I heard their car pulling up at the drive way and I ran outside to find my mom holding a boy in her arms. He was a sweet little boy, and I stood from a distance and smiled. I could feel the excitement building up but I was shy. My mom asked me to come closer and meet my brother. Dad walked to me and took my hand and walked back to my mom and Josh. They introduced us to each other and just like that we became siblings. I loved Josh, I had always loved Josh. Josh and I were given a perfect childhood. We were loved, and we enjoyed the perks that came with having two loving parents.

Apart from my little perfect princess life, there was also my old ugly looking Uncle Thomas, but we called him Uncle Tom. Uncle Tom was my dad’s older brother, and he was in his early 50s. I don’t even know if the word hate can explain what I felt for this man. If only I had enough strength, then I would have strangled him to death with a smile on my face. This is the man that made me suck his filthy private part at age 10. He molested me and touched my whole body just when I was 10, after that entire psychotic act he raped me. He stole my innocence, and he didn’t give me a choice on how I can lose my virginity because he forced it out of me. I couldn’t tell my mom or my dad. Well, I wanted to tell them but Thomas threatened me and told me that if I ever said anything then they will take me back to the ‘home’ and take another little girl who would be obedient because I wasn’t. For years I had to put up with him doing nasty things to me.

When I passed Grade 7, I asked my parents to take me to a boarding school because I couldn’t deal with Uncle Tom who used to visit us almost every day and could spend all his nights in my room whenever he spends the night in the house. I can’t even explain how it made me feel. It reduced me into a meaningless object that meant nothing. There was a point in my life where I couldn’t even tolerate having my dad alone in the room with me because I was afraid. My dad loved me and he never tried anything with me but I was always afraid. He’d notice at times and asked what was wrong but I couldn’t tell him the truth so I would always lie and said I was sick or I had a stomach bug or something else.

After high school I studied abroad so I would be away from my uncle, I couldn’t handle sleeping with him anymore. It made me feel cheap and unwanted and like I meant absolutely nothing. Being away from him gave me self-love and some self-worth but seeing him again was always torture; I would tremble and go back to that 10 years old little girl again. I didn’t see him during my three years of studying while I was abroad. I made it a point that whenever I was home if he came to visit then I would sleep at a hotel and lie to my parents saying I was going to a friend’s place. It wasn’t easy to lie because I didn’t have friends and I brought no one home. I had classmates I blended with in primary and high school but our friendship was only at school and when I left we lost touch. I guess I was not cut out to have a social life.

With the experience I had with my uncle. I had difficulty dating and actually keeping a boyfriend or sleeping with one. I hadn’t slept with anyone else other than the filthy monster that’s my uncle. Just thinking about it brings tears to my eyes and the never-ending throbbing pain in my chest. When I was growing up, I didn't understand how a grown man can do something like that to a child. No matter how much my parents loved me, Thomas had been a reminder that I didn’t belong and that I had to sleep with him to stay a Smith. I learned the truth as I grow up, my parents could never have taken me back to the ‘home’ because I was their little girl and they loved me. But I always had lingering questions like how do I tell them that my precious uncle had been raping me since I was 10? How do I tell that to my parents and make sure they believe me? What if they don’t believe me? What if they think I am lying? Those are the questions that stopped me from talking.