Zephany. Joanne Jowell
just could not stay. There were other children there but you could see that they were orphans or abandoned kids, troubled children. There were a few people sitting around in that room, Leanna Goosen was sitting on the floor. Everyone seemed so fascinated with me.
I said, ‘I’d like to see a picture of this stolen baby.’
They produced a huge, thick file – I think it was Colonel Barkhuizen’s file, the detective on the case. I looked at an old photo and I said, ‘Oh please, this baby seriously does not look like me.’
Leanna Goosen said that this newborn picture might be different from others that I’d seen of myself as a baby because I would still have been swollen from birth and whatever. And then she said again: ‘Look, this could just be an eventful day. Perhaps the test won’t be positive.’ She didn’t sound convinced, though. I thought there was simply no chance it would be positive. My belief in my parents remained firm: they would never do something like this.
The best part about the Safe House was Marshionette Jonkerman – one of the social workers who met me there. She was different from the others who had been with me in the day. Leanna Goosen and I never really got along, even up to today. But Marshionette was warm, not so distant. I felt I could trust her.
I was completely exhausted from all of this, so I said I need to go lay down. They told me to switch my phone off. I couldn’t believe it. I was like, ‘You can’t tell me to switch my phone off, that’s like my life support right now!’ But they insisted. So I said, again, ‘I need my phone. If anything happens, I need my phone.’ But they were firm. ‘Okay fine, I’ll switch my phone off.’ Anything to have some quiet moments to process this crazy day.
I asked again: ‘When am I going home? Or if I can’t go home, you can take me to a friend’s house. She lives far away from me, so it’s not close to my home.’
‘No, you need to stay here tonight.’
‘But I can’t stay here! Abandoned kids stay here! You can’t just take me from my stable house – I’m not a broken child. Choices can be made – I’m turning eighteen soon and then I’ll be able to decide for myself!’
‘There is no other place for you to stay. We can’t send you to people you know because, if your mother’s responsible, she’ll know where you might be.’
‘You’re speculating! There’s no proof that she took me!’
‘Right now, the police are by your mom at your house. They are bringing your daddy here, to see you.’
Actually, it was Marshionette who had been at my home and then came to the Safe House for me. I talked with her and felt comfortable with her. She told me that she has three sons, no daughters, and she could see that I just couldn’t stay at this Safe House. We discussed that maybe I could go stay by her instead. Then they called me to another room because my daddy had arrived.
When I walked in there, my daddy was like, ‘What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be at school?’
‘Daddy, no! I thought you knew that I would be here.’
‘What is happening?’ he asked, and you could see the bloodshot in his eyes. When he stresses, his blood pressure goes up and you could see it right there, like, What is going on here?!
He sat next to me and the detective – Barkhuizen – sat down opposite me. He spoke to my daddy in Afrikaans: ‘Meneer, as jy probeer weghardloop …’ If you try and run away … Stuff like that. ‘You can’t lie, I will catch you …’
My daddy was like, ‘But I’m not lying about anything! Miché is my child and I didn’t steal her, nobody stole her. I was there the day she came from hospital, I was at home and I saw her!’
Afterwards, I told Barkhuizen straight: ‘Don’t speak to my father like that if there is no evidence, you are just speculating.’
He half laughed and said, ‘You’re getting into a big fish now. You might not understand.’
‘I might not understand everything but you didn’t prove to me that I am the child that they stole. You took me for a DNA test just a few hours ago and now you’re trying to make threats.’
The social workers told me to calm down. They said I didn’t have to speak to him about it. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t appreciate the way you’re speaking to my father. If you can say 100 per cent that I am that child, if the test has proved it, then you have all the right to speak to him that way; but don’t call me into a room and interrogate him in front of me because that’s going to do damage to me.’
My daddy also wanted to calm me: ‘No, it’s fine, baby, it’s fine – they must do their job,’ but I felt very angry. He didn’t even realise that I couldn’t come home. He asked if he could take me home with him and Barkhuizen said, ‘No, you can’t because you or your wife might flight with her.’
So my daddy repeated: ‘But I really didn’t steal this child; I have nothing to do with whatever is going on here – Miché is my daughter.’ He was very confused, and I think sad at the same time, not really knowing what’s going on or that anyone – let alone his wife – could lie to him in that way. Mostly he just couldn’t make sense of anything. I was confused as well but I was trying to stay firm because nobody’s going to walk over me and just do investigations however they please.
Marshionette helped out. She said, ‘Miché can come live by me while this whole thing is happening and we’ll see from there. She doesn’t look like she fits in here and she needs a home, at least some stability right now, to process what is happening.’
‘You can’t go with her,’ my dad protested. ‘She’s a stranger.’
‘No, it’s fine, Daddy. I’ll stay with Marshionette. I want to.’ I was going with my gut feeling that it was best to go with her.
‘No, you can’t sleep out! And we need to have each other close by for whatever this investigation brings.’
‘Don’t worry, Daddy. They can just do their job. The results are supposed to come tomorrow. If it’s negative, I’ll just come straight home. They won’t let me come with you now anyway.’
Let me tell you, if the results had been negative, I wouldn’t have just gone straight home and left it. I think the way the state handled the whole situation was poor.
* * *
I am once again struck by the crouching tigress in Miché, this adult-like assertiveness which was already in play in the early hours of D-Day: that she thought to resist a DNA test, or queried a consensual loophole, when her own heart and mind would barely have known up from down; that she sprang to defend her father’s honour from the perceived ‘threats’ by esteemed senior detective Colonel Barkhuizen when she was very much the cub in the den; that she sought an ally in Marshionette Jonkerman and detected a reprieve in her home … All these instinctive acts of self-preservation seem beyond the ambit of a beloved, sheltered, if not downright indulged seventeen-year-old princess. Miché most certainly has mettle.
I’m intrigued to hear other accounts of D-Day, and whether those versions ratify Miché’s and recognise the guts and spunk of this instant woman. I’d imagine that this is one of those formative days in the life of any character associated with this story, a flashbulb memory type of day which will have its characters recalling, in excruciating detail, exactly where they were when it happened and how it unfolded. For the Solomons, this was the day their whole world capsized. For the investigative team, this was the day a seventeen-year-long case was cracked. For the Nurse family, this was the answer to a million prayers. No one will easily forget it.
My most accessible contact is Miché’s father, Michael. A man of few words, Michael Solomon is characteristically sparing in his description of D-Day. If anything, it’s the non-verbal cues which tell his story: the frequent shaking of his already heavy head, the furrowing of his already troubled brow, the slight quiver in a voice already thin with worry. Perhaps it’s the blatant inability to find the