Help at Hand
While living in the Eastern Cape, I had been a noisy child but I became quieter and quieter, and my teacher began to notice my misery. The principal called me into her office to ask what was wrong. I told her about the beatings at home and she said she would write to my mother. 'Please bring me her address,' she asked.
There was no way I could ask my grandmother for the address outright, but I knew she had a stash of letters from my mother hidden in my mother's kist. One day, I opened it and quickly took out the letters and copied down the address. The principal wrote to my mother and that was that. My mother decided I should come to her in Cape Town.
It wasn't easy, because my grandmother wouldn't let me go. My mother had to ask my teacher to go and speak to her. But eventually off I went, back to my mother on the train. I was deeply relieved to be with her again. But the years of unhappiness and self-doubt had eaten away at me so that even in Cape Town, I was not well.
I went to Groote Schuur Hospital to the psychiatric department, where I was given little white pills. I suppose that even at that stage, I was being treated for depression.
By Jo-Anne Smetherham