At the shelter, I was given a cubicle the size of a small bathroom for me and my kids. I didn’t mind one bit – it was another step towards total freedom. The people, just about all volunteers, were friendly, supportive, and most helpful. I voraciously gathered a ton of information about support groups in the area and government assistance for women in my situation, all of which I planned to use.
At night, I kept my kids close and slept soundly, to my surprise.
I awoke each morning with a smile – the albatross from around my weary neck had flown, and freedom tasted better than anything I had ever tasted in my life.
That Monday morning, I dropped off Warren at his school in St Ives, which was paid for till the end of the year, and with Sasha in a stroller, I set about finding an apartment.
It was exhausting, but by 2 p.m. that afternoon, I had found one with the security I needed. It was expensive – way more than I expected. With the rental bond and the first month’s rent, I was down five grand – a massive hole in my cash reserves. But security was something I just had to have because of Tom’s threats, so I had no choice but to accept it. The building had swipe card entry to everything, and floor restriction too, which made me feel really safe.
I moved in forty-eight hours later, and the first night, we slept on the floor. But that was okay. Soon I would have all that I needed.
“It’s like we’re camping, honey,” I said to Warren.
“What’s that?” he asked.
I ruffled his hair and made a mental note to take Warren camping. Tom refused to camp. Everything had to be five-star with him.
My apartment was tiny – one bedroom, a kitchenette, a tiny lounge/dining area, and a narrow balcony. But it was secure, centrally situated, and…did I mention that I was free?
I was so heady with excitement that I couldn’t stop smiling.
“What about Daddy, Mom?” Warren asked.
“Warren, this is now our home, honeybee. You will visit Daddy sometimes, but you will live here with me.”
“But, he’s never going to visit us here, right?” Warren asked, a look in his eyes that could be described as wary or hopeful.
“Nope.”
“You promise, Mom?”
I hugged him to me. “I promise, my darling.”
My laptop, iPad, and iPhone came in handy. After cancelling my email account and creating a new one (in case Tom had my password for my old email account), I found a website which supported abused women and made contact with them. After interrogating me to ensure I wasn’t just some abusive husband’s snitch, a lovely kind lady by the name of Fatima paid me a visit.
She gave me names of other women in the area who were in the same situation, who could support me and, I guess, become my friend. You know, same hole-filled boat…
She also sent some students over to help move my stuff from the storage unit into my apartment.
My apartment started to look, as Warren put it, heaps cool. We assembled beds, packed away kitchen utensils, and although I was dropping with exhaustion, I was humming.
As expected, Tom cancelled all my credit cards the afternoon that I left him. I was expecting that, and that’s where my plan B came in – my items in my storage unit, the ten grand I carried around in my bra, and the five grand that my secret credit card would allow me to withdraw to pay for the apartment.
Tom also cancelled my phone contract. I was expecting that too, and already had my old iPhone in my storage unit with all my contacts backed up. So far, I was ahead of him, and that gave me confidence to believe I could outsmart Tom and make it on my own.
As for Centrelink, or government benefits, imagine my shock and horror to learn that I was being denied.
“Your husband has annotated an annual income of greater than two hundred thousand dollars, Mrs. Botha. And according to him, you have received more than half of that.”
“I haven’t,” I protested, but my pleas fell on deaf ears. I was denied benefits. Tom didn’t have to declare anything, but he chose to in order to punish me.
I was floored. I was counting on Centrelink benefits to survive. How would I manage without it?
My smile disappeared and my confidence plummeted. Who the hell did I think I was taking on an astute businessman like Tom?
But, I summoned my strengths and decided I would engage the services of a legal aid attorney and fight Centrelink. I would not give up just because they said no.
Then, I was denied the services of a legal aid attorney. Apparently, my husband’s income was too high to qualify for free legal help. A double whammy that left me hyperventilating.
What had I done? I’m embarrassed to say, I actually panicked and thought about returning to Tom. What good was freedom when you were going to starve to death? When you and two little kids were going to starve?
But Fatima, seeing my distress, rushed to my rescue and quickly wrangled me the services of a legal aid lawyer, Gina King, to assist me with Centrelink. Together we would have to prove that I had not received that kind of money. Though it would take months, maybe even a year, I had something called hope after that.
In the meantime, my frugal existence continued.
For a while after that, I was scared and suffered bouts of self-doubt. But my inner strength and the desire to protect my babies was so strong that it overrode all my fears and propelled me along. Soon my spirits lifted again and my smile returned.
To increase my support, I made contact with other abused women in the vicinity referred to me by Fatima. To my surprise and delight, one of them lived in the same building as me.
Soong Richardson was a sassy mail-order bride from Thailand who decided to flee her abusive fifty-nine-year-old Australian husband with her five-year-old son, Charlie.
She’d been in the country for six years, and her English was fairly good. Around twenty-five, pretty, and streetwise, Soong was not embarrassed to tell everyone that she had been raised in a brothel in Thailand and put to work at the tender age of four.
I learned that she was subjected to horrific abuse in the hands of her employers, and her tales made me cry – like the time she got pregnant from a client, was taken for an abortion, and within twenty-four hours, was put to work again. Because she was still bleeding from the abortion and weak from the blood loss, her employers cut her a break – she was to give only oral sex to customers.
When a fifty-something Australian man asked her to be his wife and promised her a wonderful life in a land called Australia if she agreed, she thought she’d hit the jackpot and readily accepted.
Turns out he was a sexual deviant who wanted her to wear a leather mask, chains, and gags, and wanted to stuff things into every orifice of hers. At the same time. All the time.
She explained that even though she had been a prostitute, after she had a baby, she no longer wanted to do all those things, and she had seriously believed that she had put her past behind her.
“Honey,” she said in broken English, “he give me Fifty Shades of Grey and he say, ‘Soong you must read this book and do me like that.’
I laughed out loud.
“I say, ‘I know more than that book, so fuck you.’ Then I leave him.”
Like me, Soong was taking control of her life once again. With the help of Centrelink, she was currently studying to become a remedial massage therapist.
I may have laughed at her story, at bits of it, but my situation was not that much different from hers. I too was a mail-order bride (except that my English was perfect). I understand that now.
Tom had left South Africa for Australia years ago, returned to South Africa in search of a bride, found me, then wooed me into marrying him at the tender age of nineteen and fresh out of high school. He enticed me into moving to Australia, promising that together, we would pave the way for my family to immigrate to Australia, using his business.
Until I met him, I had never traveled and was pretty green about…everything. So I believed him.
But like all abusers, I understand now that he just wanted to isolate me from everyone, leaving me without support, alone, defenseless, and totally reliant on him.
He succeeded at everything. But that was Tom; he finished what he started. Always.
As for Fifty Shades of Grey, mine was slightly different – Pamela and Tommy Lee, remember? As I said, just slightly different from Soong.
Even though Soong constantly called me “Honey,” and out of habit talked to me like she was talking to a past client, I really liked her warmth and caring nature. She was rough, a fighter, a real loudmouth – but her heart was in the right place.
I think she pitied me, because she became very protective towards me. I was really grateful for her friendship and for her big-sister attitude.
We soon became firm friends and…a huge bonus – our boys loved playing together. I watched her son and she watched mine.
Often she would show up at my apartment after my kids had gone to bed, clutching her text books and with tears in her eyes. She didn’t understand so many aspects of her studies because of the language barrier, and it frustrated her to tears.
I readily helped her understand, and at times, even did her assignments for her, then explained it to her like I was talking to Warren.
At times like that, I was really grateful that I was fluent in English.
In fact, I had so many things to be grateful for that I kept a Gratitude Journal and counted my blessings on a daily basis, something my mother had taught me to do.
Especially when I became anxious, which was often. Two children under the age of four, one a baby, no family or close friends to support you – I challenge any woman in my position not to be bludgeoned by bouts of anxiousness and self-doubt.
With regards to my financial situation – a quick calculation revealed that I could only be home with Sasha for about four months if I was frugal. Really frugal.
I tried not to think about leaving Sasha with a nanny. She was so little, and she really needed me so much.
In the meantime, even though we didn’t have money, we would have fun. I made sure of that.
We played music every day. Tom only allowed us to listen to classical music, and he literally banned all modern music from our house. Now I rebelled like a teenager, and we played absolutely no classical music. Pop, country, R&B, rap, boom-boom music, heavy metal, head-banging rubbish, as Tom called it – we played it all. All our music had words and drums.
I would put on the music and dance with Warren while Sasha cooed in her baby cradle.
We were excited, we were happy, and life was good.
Even though we had meager meals and I wasted nothing, even though we had only the bare necessities in our apartment, even though we never had take-out, and even though there was no money for new toys, or even money for McDonald’s, we were laughing.
I splurged on an online accounting course. I figured that accounting was something I could manage from home. My Ebay business cruised along, but since a lot of my stuff was designer, sales were slow. I didn’t mind. I worked hard with the intention of making it.
The amounts I was offered for my jewelry by pawn shops were ridiculous, so I decided to sell them online. There too, sales were slow.
When Sasha was six months old, I secured a work-from-home position from a local print shop. Even though Laura, the owner, had wanted someone to work from her shop, I convinced her that I could be just as efficient working from home, and that if she didn’t like it, she didn’t have to pay me. She too had a six-month-old baby, so I guess she understood, because she agreed.
When she saw how and what I had done in a week, she was thrilled and kept me on. In fact, she even paid me to watch her child some days, which added to my income.
To cope, I woke up at 5 a.m. and worked till 7:30 a.m., uninterrupted. Then I’d work when Sasha napped, and late at night when the kids were asleep.
I was excited about the steady income and scouted around for more jobs, even though I had little time left in the day for more work. But little Sasha was such a lovely baby, that at times, I swear she understood my workload, my struggles, and she did her share by being good.
Soon I landed an accounting job at a local swim school for three hours a day, two days a week. And…they allowed me to bring my baby to work! Roses.
After a while, they too were happy with what I had produced, and didn’t even mind that I did most of the work from home.
With all the work I was doing to earn money, my housework suffered and I was pretty unkempt, but I didn’t care – I had no pressure from anyone to be anything other than myself and to do my thing. Freedom.
One morning, I caught a glimpse of the woman in the mirror. I stopped and took a closer look. The girl that stared back at me was someone I had forgotten – my pre-Tom self. My hair had grown really long. Tom always wanted me to wear it in a bob, just below my ears, and the color had to be deep mahogany, remember? Now it was the lightest brown with not a hint of red in it, and it was tousled and unstructured. It was, dare I say – sexy.
My clothing had also changed. I wore mainly jeans and casual tops these days. Tom wanted me dressed to impress all day, from the time I woke up, to the time I went to bed. He wanted, no, make that insisted, that I wear coordinates, pumps, and full make-up. He abhorred sneakers.
But now I was wearing only moisturizer, lip gloss, sneakers, not an ounce of green concealer, a pair of jeans with a casual sweater, and guess what – my clothes weren’t coordinated!
I took a step toward the mirror and smiled at the woman in it. “You pretty li’l thing, you. Look at you – you’ve lost weight, your eyes are shining, and you’re just the picture of happiness.”
I then kissed the mirror and laughed out loud. For the first time that I could remember, I heard myself laugh and…I liked my laugh. In fact, I liked myself. For the first time.