Zephany. Joanne Jowell
was the last period of the day, accounting class, and a friend said to me, ‘Yo! I just saw your sister now.’
I laughed and told her, ‘What are you talking about? You know I don’t have a sister, I have a brother.’
‘I know,’ she said, ‘but there’s a girl here that looks just like you. You must see her!’
After that, people kept telling me that there’s this girl who has joined the school in Grade 8 who looks just like me.
Not long after that day, I was walking in the passage and I felt someone pulling on my bag. I turned around and this girl says to me: ‘Are you Miché?’
‘Yes, I am, who are you?’
‘I’m Cassidy Nurse.’
‘Are you the girl that everyone says looks like me?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘But nobody looks like me. I look like me!’
‘You don’t have to be so cheeky!’
‘I’m not cheeky, I just want to know who is this Cassidy girl and why did you call me?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I just wanted to see how you look.’
I didn’t show it or say it, but to myself, I knew I felt something inside – a weird sensation in my chest. I reasoned it was because she did look so much like me – just like I used to look when I was fourteen and in Grade 8. She was a young me! I felt a tingling inside, but I just left it, not knowing that she could be my actual sister.
Cassidy later told me that her English teacher, and others in the school, also asked her: ‘Do you have a sister in Matric?’ And she was like, ‘No, I don’t have an older sister; I’m the eldest.’
She was just starting high school and I was finishing – one year later and I would have been out of there!
Some days later, Sofia’s dad came to fetch me after school (by then he had finished Matric and was out of school). Cassidy was walking with me. As we approached the cars, she looked towards where her daddy, Morné, was waiting for her. He was sitting in his car and he called me. I waved and went over, and he asked, ‘How long have you been here at the school?’ I told him I’d been here since Grade 8 and I’m now in Matric. He just smiled and looked. I said bye and went to get my lift.
About a week afterwards, we were on the field, training for inter-house sports – I used to run for the school. Cassidy was also on the field and my friends asked me: ‘Are you sure you’re not adopted or something?’ And I was like, ‘How can I be adopted? That’s just silly.’
For some reason, I felt sorry for Cassidy. She was always greeting me and hanging around us. I thought, Shame, this girl; maybe she’s looking for a big sister or something. She’d be sitting over there with her friends at interval time, and I’d be sitting here with my friends and she’d ask to come sit by me. We connected very easily. She wasn’t like a normal Grade 8 child; something attracted me to her, instantly. That sensation I got the first time I saw her became this feeling of needing to protect her. If I thought her hair didn’t look right, I’d fix it for her. I always kept a brush in my bag and, when we went to the bathroom, I was like, ‘Can I brush your hair for you?’ It was weird, this feeling of wanting to take care of her.
We started hanging out and chilling together at school. We had lots of conversations about normal things, and difficult things too. She opened up to me about her parents’ divorce. Once she asked me, ‘Why do you look so much like me?’ So I said, ‘I don’t know why. People have twins but they’re not blood-related; they just look like each other.’ The students would ask us, ‘Are you two sisters?’ And I would joke and say, ‘Maybe in another life.’
I asked Cassidy if she had an older sister, because I could see she enjoyed the attention, almost like she’s craving an older sister to speak about these things with. She told me this story about how her older sister was kidnapped from the hospital at birth; that some woman said she knew where the child was and would tell them if they’d pay her R50 000, which was the reward money for anyone who knew information. Apparently that lady was a family friend of theirs, and she was actually sent to prison. She is out of prison now, but they never found her sister.
In my mind I thought, This girl is talking nonsense to me here. I feel sorry for her! She has no life if she has to make up stories like this.
She said to me, ‘You look like my mommy,’ so I was like, ‘Let me see a picture of your mother.’ She showed me a picture but I didn’t feel anything. I said, ‘No, I don’t look like your mommy,’ feeling even more sorry for her and her stories.
I told my parents about her. ‘There’s this girl at school, Cassidy Nurse, and she looks so similar to me. She says her sister was kidnapped when she was about two or three days old.’
My daddy said, ‘I know about that story and I know him.’
‘Who?’
‘I know the father, Morné Nurse, we used to do work together. Do you remember the shop we used to go to for electrical supplies?’ I remembered that shop. ‘We know his family from back in the day …’
So my father knew Cassidy’s family, and they knew my father’s sister because she lived in the same road as them. We used to go there every year Christmas; I don’t know how they did not see me in that road.
My mommy’s response was to invite Cassidy to our house: ‘Shame she doesn’t have a sister and she’s talking to you. Bring her over.’
I thought, Okay, cool, I’ll ask her if she’ll come around. Something happened that day and she couldn’t come over, but we took a picture together which I showed my dad so he could see how alike we looked.
So the Friday, I remember it was a Friday, it was sports day. After school, a whole lot of us friends all walked to McDonald’s because it’s just down the road from school. Cassidy didn’t have any money with her so I said, ‘Come with us. It’s fine, I’ll buy you lunch. Phone your daddy and tell him he can fetch you at McDonald’s.’
Morné came to McDonald’s with the work bakkie that he was driving. He came to where I was sitting and he was talking on the phone. I didn’t know it then, but he was actually speaking to the social worker, Leanna Goosen.
While on the phone, he asked me, ‘Hey, where do you live?’
So I told him.
He asked, ‘When were you born?’ and I thought, Okay, this is strange but just go with it because maybe he just wants to know.
I told him ‘30th of April 1997.’
He was still talking on the phone all this time, and he asked, ‘Do you have a picture of your mother and your father?’
Now he must have had some disagreement with the social worker – maybe she thought he was making it too obvious or something – but he suddenly just switched the phone off and offered to buy us something to eat.
‘I just ate now,’ I told him, ‘and so did Cassidy.’
He offered to then buy us something to drink, and I said fine.
My friends were sitting outside and they asked: ‘What’s happening? Is this guy a bouncer or something? What’s his vibe? What’s going on?’
I said, ‘I don’t know, he offered to buy us food and we just had.’
I went to the bathroom and while I was in there I think he had a conversation with Cassidy because when I came back, they were talking. He was looking at me weirdly, and he kept smiling. I thought, Is this man flirting with me or something?!
He asked to see a picture of my mother and my father. So I showed him a picture from when we went on a hike in Cape Point. He looked at the photo and commented, ‘But you don’t look like him.’
So I said, ‘I don’t look