Zephany. Joanne Jowell
and my brother. That’s still how I learn. People call me cheeky or rude because I’m very straightforward. But my parents raised me to speak my mind, and they were always to the point with me, always straightforward, when I needed it.
My parents are everyone’s parents. They’ve always been the ones to help my cousins with food, clothes and school things – even up to this day. When I was sixteen and didn’t want to go out with my cousins anymore, my parents would still take my cousins out. Other family members call them ‘Mama’ and ‘Papa’. They’re everybody’s mom and everybody’s dad. Even in prison, people call my mother ‘Mommy’ when they come to greet her. It’s good to know that she has that motherly instinct, even in there …
I went to Steenberg Primary School and then, when we moved to Gladiola, I went to Zwaanswyk High – a school in Tokai with a very good reputation. My mom always wanted me to go to an excellent school, she never wanted me to go to school in the area.
Zwaanswyk was a 25-minute drive from my house, so it wasn’t too far. My aunty used to drive me to school and then pick me up, but once I started dating Sofia’s dad, he used to lift me because he came with a car to school, which was very nice.
I liked school and was happy. I always had lots of friends, until … you know … everything happened. After that, I didn’t know who I could trust because my friends were talking about me to the journalists. They must have, because the journalists found out things that only my friends knew. But until that time, my friends were a big part of my life.
I was an excellent student in primary school, I used to be in the top ten. In high school, I wasn’t up there though; it’s when I started having fun, going out late, getting a boyfriend and things like that. I did fine in my studies, but not excellent. I think I was a normal teenager – I liked to party occasionally! But I’d never sleep out of the house because that was the rule.
Sofia’s dad was my first boyfriend. I started seeing him casually when I was fifteen, in Grade 9, and he was in Matric. By the time I was in Grade 11, he had matriculated and was out of school, and we were serious.
You know what it’s like – you’re seventeen, you want to experience things and have fun. But my mom always warned me about him. She would say: ‘He’s too talkative – that’s not a good thing. And a good-looking man is everyone’s man.’
I laughed and said, ‘So must I pick an ugly one?’
‘No, but he’s too talkative and you know what talkative does – to anyone and everyone.’
‘Mommy, you’re being silly – I’m not going to get married to this guy.’
I think we had a normal household and I was a normal teenager. I mean, I was always verbal, and I could be rude. My mommy never over-reacted, but she would always tell me straight if she thought I was being cheeky.
I was definitely very moody in my teens. I often didn’t feel like talking. Every night my daddy would ask, ‘How was school?’ and I’d be like, ‘You keep asking me how was school. Can’t you see I don’t feel like talking?’ He got used to it, though. He even explained to other people: ‘Everyone in the family is used to Miché sometimes just being quiet; sometimes she’s just in her own world.’
My mommy didn’t just accept that behaviour. If I told her I didn’t feel like talking and just leave me alone please, then she’d say, ‘What happened? Is it that guy again? That guy who talks so much?’
‘No, you don’t know him, he’s not like that.’ I always defended him.
Maybe because of the boyfriend, I did start to lose focus in Grade 11. My teachers asked me if I had a boyfriend and I was like, ‘No, why?’
‘Because you look distracted – like you will just pass.’
I liked the softer subjects, like Life Orientation and English, not maths and science. I was very fascinated with life issues, cultures and religion. I used to love drawing and art … I still do; sometimes I lay in Sofia’s room, draw pictures and decorate.
My plan for my life was to go and study social work or psychology. It still is. I always wanted to know how the human mind works, what causes certain reactions, why people do certain things. Like Lavona – there are things that triggered her to do what she did – was it a mental issue? Did a wire come loose? I’m fascinated with those things, now more than ever.
For myself, I mostly know where my issues come from. Of course there is the main issue I have with trusting people, but that’s more recent and obviously because of everything that has happened. But I have some older fears too. Like dogs, and driving …
I have a driver’s licence but I’m too afraid to drive very far. I’ve been in a few scary situations on the road and there are all these shootings and things. I may drive to Pick n Pay for shopping but I won’t drive to Worcester for the prison, or even to Muizenberg for the beach. I always get a lift – with my dad, or my brother, or a cousin.
And dogs, well I’m scared because I was bitten. We actually had five dogs growing up. We only have one now, a Boerboel, but she’s getting old and we need a new dog. But when I was young and we were living in Sea Winds, me and my three other cousins were teasing this black and white dog that belonged to a man we called Pa Martin. My cousins were scared, but not Miché. No, Miché was very bok and brave … until the dog chomped my leg. I remember I was crying and Pa Martin still picked me up and took me home. My mom took me to the doctor and everything. Since that day I have a fear for dogs. I don’t fear my own dog but if I see other dogs, I would literally squeeze you or hide behind you. I fear dogs with my life.
My daughter Sofia is not scared of anything. I know that my aunty and them warn their grandkids about all sorts of scary things but I don’t allow them to do that to her because they’ll ruin her bravery with fear and I don’t want her to grow up afraid. Sofia will walk alone in the dark house not afraid of anything; I will also. My cousins are scared of the dark – they won’t even fetch a phone charger down the passage if the light isn’t on. Not me. That’s something that doesn’t scare me. I’m simply not afraid of the dark.
Chapter 2
There is no shortage of mystery surrounding the name Zephany Nurse and I’m intrigued to find that a similar air pervades Miché Solomon … not because we don’t know what happened to her, but because we do.
Miché has a tepid calm about her that belies both her age and her circumstance. I wasn’t expecting someone so young, who has been through so much, to talk with Miché’s gentle ease, to consider her situation with the cool objectivity of a much older, much wiser person with much more distance from the story. It’s not that Miché talks about her life experiences with detachment, but rather that she seems to have weighed, measured and consumed them in neatly digestible form. Whenever we meet, I catch myself tossing that old saying around in my head, you know the one about life giving you lemons and making lemonade? Well, it seems Miché is cooking up some gourmet beverage here – extracting just the right amount of juice from the fruit, careful not to let the bitterness of the rind spoil the flavour and composting the remaining skin in a bid to make good use of the dregs.
Frankly, I’m surprised that she seems so … together. I think I was expecting to find a young woman in pieces – as many pieces as her shattered identity, like the Russian matryoshka nesting dolls, with each variation concealed beneath its bigger lookalike. When you twist apart the Zephany Nurse doll, you’ll find the smaller Miché Solomon doll inside; and when you twist apart the Miché Solomon doll, you’ll find … what, exactly? Or who? And will you be able to pry that one open any further?
As composed as Miché appears to be when we meet at the mall, I’m aware that her identity is still protected by law and I don’t want any threat of premature exposure to limit her willingness to share her story with me. So I insist that we relocate our meetings to a quieter space, away from the nosiness inevitably induced in passers-by who watch (and try not to stare at) an interview being recorded out in public.
We meet in Muizenberg,