Sometimes There Is a Void

by Zakes Mda

  She has no choice but to let me take Zenzi for her figure skating lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She is at school at those times and cannot do it herself. Those who see me with her at the Bird Arena begin to doubt at least some aspects of the narrative. But they never ask me because they want to pretend that they don’t want to get involved in other people’s business.

  Adele makes a new rule one day when I come to fetch the children. She is sitting on the stairs that lead up to the bedrooms and is holding a broomstick. She says the kids are not going anywhere with me because I didn’t give her adequate notice. From now on she wants one month’s notice. I can hear Zenzi crying upstairs. She has been looking forward to spending the weekend with her daddy. But obviously her mother wants to cut me off totally from my children. Her narrative to the sympathisers of Athens must be seen to be true at all costs.

  At least I will see Zenzi twice a week when I take her for ice skating. If I am lucky, I’ll see Zukile standing outside and I’ll wave to him. Zenzi is rehearsing for an ice show. She is one of the kids in Charlie Brown. I know she will do well, although she is a bit nervous about it since it is a bigger role than last year’s when she was a fairy in Neverland.

  I consult a local attorney, Claire Buzz Ball, for advice on how I can get reasonable access to my children. That’s all I want. Not custody, but to spend every other weekend with them. But Buzz tells me that since the divorce proceedings are in a different jurisdiction, namely South Africa, the family court in Athens, Ohio, cannot decide on custody and visitations in the matter. He advises me to withdraw the case from South Africa and initiate a new one in Athens. Only then can the court in Athens address questions of custody. His advice makes sense. After all, the case in South Africa has stalled. Adele’s lawyer, Raymond Tucker, died in a car accident and his office had transferred her file to a new firm of lawyers. I instruct my attorneys in Johannesburg to withdraw the case immediately, and they do so.

  Buzz is a sharp lawyer. He used to be a politician and a member of the State House of Representatives for the Republican Party, so he knows his way around the system. He files a Complaint for Divorce and Temporary Orders for Visitation Rights in the Court of Common Pleas Domestic Relations Division, Athens County. Again, you can see that even at this point all I want are my visitation rights and nothing more. Adele does receive these documents through certified mail and signs for them. Later she is to claim that she never received them.

  On Thursday I go to the Ridges to fetch Zenzi for the final dress rehearsal. The show is on Saturday and I know she is looking forward to it. She was very excited when I took her for her costume fitting two days before. I knock at the door but there is no response. It is strange because the red Nissan is parked outside and the curtains are not closed. I wait for a while. And then I drive to the Bird Arena where the show will be held, hoping that perhaps Zenzi’s mom took her there. She is not there. I go back to the Ridges and wait outside. It gets dark but still there is no sign of Zenzi, Zuki or Adele. I drive back to my apartment. I call Adele’s place repeatedly, hoping that she is back with the kids from wherever she had taken them. No one answers and I leave voice messages. The voice messages become frantic as the night progresses. Early in the morning I return to the Ridges and still no one is there. By this time I am a nervous wreck. What could have happened to my children?

  That morning, April 8, 2005, I file a missing persons report with the police at the university. An officer accompanies me to the house. Since this is a university house he has the keys. Inside we find that things are in a mess in the living room and the kitchen. It does not look as though anyone lives here. Upstairs in the bedrooms everything is topsy-turvy. But their clothes and suitcases are not there. I go to the bedside telephone and replay the messages. I hear my pained voice: It’s ten o’clock now and I’m getting worried. Zenzi and Zukile, please call me as soon as you come back. Sometimes it is just a sigh and: Oh, my God! If you wondered who atheists call to when they are in trouble you now know. One of my many messages: It’s eleven-thirty and I’ve been calling every thirty minutes to find out where my children are. But there are messages from other people too. There is a message from the principal of East Elementary School where the kids are students: Zakes, this is Denny Boger at the school. Please call me this morning. I don’t know why he called me on Adele’s number. Maybe he doesn’t have my number. There are three such calls from the principal, one even asking me to call him at home. But the message that renders my bowels loose is from a woman I don’t know: Adele, this is Nadia. I got your call. Please call me before you go back to South Africa.

  Adele has abducted my children to South Africa! She obviously got my application to the court for reasonable visitation, and instead of having the kids visit me every other weekend, which is all I want, she’d rather steal away with them so that I have zero access!

  The first thing I do after seeing my kids’ principal, who confirms to me that Adele has withdrawn the children from school and has returned to South Africa, is to engage the services of a private detective called Phillip Smith in Johannesburg. Buzz also files a Magistrate’s Temporary Order granting me custody of the children.

  The private detective locates Adele in Johannesburg. She and the children are squatting with the tenants in our house in Weltevredenpark. She has enrolled the children at Panorama Primary School in the same suburb, which used to be Zukile’s school when we still lived in South Africa. My private eye secures some emails, which I can quote here because they are part of open court proceedings. The correspondence is between Adele and officials of Ohio University, the pastor of her Athens Community Church, and Ann Leeman, who I learn is the woman who assisted her to flee with the children, and drove them to the airport. There is even an email from a colleague of mine in the English Department, Linda Rice. All these people knew of her plans to abduct the children to South Africa. For instance, Adele wrote to Linda Rice: Arrived safely in South Africa and trying to get kids into school. Shall email you once I am settled. Thank you for everything. And Linda Rice responded: Very good. I was wondering but not wanting to ask around as I knew things might be tenuous. But well; I’m praying for you and your family and God’s will in your life! That it be made known clearly and that you have inner peace and feel grounded with support and friendship. Pastor Jeff of her church promises to pray for her in her difficult times. Whatever we can do for you, we are here to serve, he writes. Many of the Athens people encourage her to keep her strength in Jesus. Even her PhD supervisor assures her that she will be in his thoughts and prayers throughout her ordeal. Ms Leeman, on the other hand, is reporting to her on my activities in my attempts to get the children back. She tells her when I have been to the police, to court or to the children’s school. She writes jointly with someone called Stacy Lee in one of the emails: I need to tell you Zane (that’s me) went to the school on the Friday after you left and said that you were not legally allowed to take the children and that the sheriff has a warrant out for your arrest. I think he was just talking because I haven’t seen anything in the paper and Mr Boger has not been contacted by the police asking questions. I still don’t understand how this woman becomes privy to the discussion I have with the principal of my children’s school. You may make your own deductions.

  There is all this flurry of activity around me and my children and I was ignorant of it all. All these people have become players in the drama of my life and I didn’t even know it. I understand their concerns. I would do the same too if I were in their position; I would help an abused woman in whatever way I can so that she escapes the abuser. They are trying to rescue a poor African woman whose life has been made hell by her husband and whose only way out is to escape with her children back to her home country. She has sold her narrative very effectively.

  The most revealing of the emails is from her attorney in Johannesburg, Nicholls Cambanis. He writes: There is also the question of your residential status in the U.S. Your instructions were that the divorce sho
uld be delayed as long as possible, so you could have rights in the U.S. as his wife for as long as possible. Presumably this is still applicable.

  Now, finally, I get it. That is why our divorce has dragged on for almost four years to date. She and her lawyers are playing delaying games so that she obtains permanent resident status as my dependant when I change my immigration status. And, of course, each delaying tactic takes more paperwork, which means mounting legal fees.

  I get a bill from the university for Adele’s general fee and I decide that this time I am not going to pay it. She will have to settle it herself now that she has abducted my children.

  I am supposed to perform at the Calabash Literary Festival in Jamaica and then after that at the Northrop Frye Literary Festival in Moncton, New Brunswick, on the east coast of Canada. I write to poet Kwame Dawes, who is one of organisers of the Calabash and a participant at the Northrop Frye, to convey my apologies. I ask John Kachuba, who is now an adjunct since completing his degree, to take over my classes. Because now I know that Adele has spies everywhere, including the English Department, I don’t tell anyone except the head, Joe McLaughlin, that I am going to South Africa to get my children back.

  But before that I must get her stuff out of the university house and hand the key back to the housing authorities. I ask my brother Sonwabo to come down from Columbus to help me pack in boxes the clothes and household effects and children’s toys that are strewn on the floor in every room, and take them for storage. It takes us the whole day to clean up the house. After all that, I drive the abandoned Nissan to my place.

  I take the next available flight to Johannesburg where I instruct an attorney, Reon Marais, to make an urgent application for the return of my children. Because in South Africa only the High Court – rather than the magistrate’s court – can hear divorce and custody cases, Reon briefs an advocate who quickly draws up the papers. On April 26, 2005, the Honourable Judge Jajbhay of the High Court of South Africa issues an order giving me temporary custody of the children and orders Adele to hand them over to me together with their passports and visas. He also orders the Sheriff of the Court and the South African Police to physically take possession of the children and hand them over to me. He further issues a Rule Nisi calling upon Adele to show cause in court two days later why this order shouldn’t be confirmed with costs.

  It turns out that the Sheriffs of the Court are the Visagie brothers – Jeremy and Andre. I go with them to my house in Weltevredenpark in the evening when we surmise Adele and the children will be home. The Visagies press the buzzer at the gate but no one opens. They jump over the gate and rush to the house. They burst into the house through the kitchen door. They are in there for a few minutes, and then they come out with the kids and their passports. I am standing outside the gate of my own house all that time. They hand the children to me over the gate which is still locked. I am very much impressed with the efficiency of the Visagie brothers and I like their last name. I decide that one day I am going to have characters in a novel who are called the Visagie Brothers. But mine will be outlaws instead of enforcers of the law. Indeed, a few years later I write a novel titled Black Diamond with the Visagie Brothers, Stevo and Shortie, as the lovable thugs – well, lovable to me even if some readers may not think so.

  I am using Gugu’s car and I drive the children to the Holiday Inn in Braamfontein where I have booked for a few days. I don’t want Adele to know where I am with the kids. Who knows what she is capable of? In Johannesburg thugs are two a dime and any unscrupulous person can hire them to do any dirty work for him or her. The kids are shaken by all this drama, as can be expected of a thirteen-year-old boy and nine-year-old girl. I am so sorry that we have to put them through all this crap. All their clothes were left in Weltevredenpark so I take them to the Cresta Mall to buy them a few items of extra clothing.

  Two days later we appear in court. Adele is there with her sister ’Mapolao and her attorney, Sanjay Dava Jivan. I am there with my attorney Reon Marais, and the advocate he has instructed to argue the matter before the judge. Adele’s lawyer argues that the court in Athens, Ohio, has no jurisdiction over the children because they are South Africans and have returned permanently with their mother to live in their home country, and this was done with the knowledge and consent of the plaintiff – meaning me. But my evidence – including the divorce and custody documents from the Ohio court, the letter from East Elementary School, the report from the police in Athens – contradicts her story. This is where the emails that I told you about came into play. In one of them – and my attorneys got them through an arrangement called ‘discovery’ where each side in the dispute must submit all the documents pertaining to the case to the opposing side – she tells the university authorities that she is suspending her studies because she has an assignment outside the US.

  The court assigns a social worker to interview the children. They tell her that much as they love their mother dearly, they want to go back to the USA with their father. Zenzi mentions how miserable she is at her new school. Zukile is the silent one. He says nothing about his new school but expresses his eagerness to return to America.

  The judge issues an order confirming my interim custody of the children, pending the outcome of any custody dispute between Adele and me, whether in the United States or in South Africa. The children are ecstatic at this order, and we return to the hotel.

  I buy new air tickets for them and while we are waiting for the departure date we move to another hotel. I don’t want us to stay at any one hotel for too long. I prefer those hotels that are on the outskirts of the city where no nosy journalist will spot me and start asking me questions about this or that book or what I think of the latest corruption scandal that has been exposed by the newspapers. Gugu and Thandi accompany us on our odyssey from one hotel to the next and from one arcade to the next amusement park to keep the children entertained.

  I ask the kids, ‘Guys, why didn’t you tell me you were going to South Africa with Mommy?’

  ‘She took us from school without any warning,’ says Zukile, ‘and Mrs Leeman drove us straight to the airport.’

  Zenzi says her mommy told them that Ntate Thesele, her father, was ill and they had to leave for South Africa without telling me because I would stop them, and if Ntate Thesele dies without their being there it would be their fault. It is best not to say anything about this. I don’t even ask them if they found Ntate Thesele ill or not. I’d rather not involve the children in our skulduggery.

  The night before our departure I get a phone call from Reon.

  ‘I hear that the order giving you interim custody has been rescinded by the judge,’ he says.

  ‘On what grounds?’ I ask.

  ‘Your wife’s lawyers convinced him that they will be instituting divorce proceedings in South Africa and the judge has given them three days to do so.’

  ‘I have not been served with any such order, so I’m leaving tomorrow as planned,’ I tell him.

  I know that lawyers are experts at dragging things out indefinitely as they have deliberately done in my South African case with Adele. I have already seen how Adele instructed her lawyers to delay matters for months on end – for almost four years. I will prevail in the end, but it will be after months and after numerous court processes. In the meantime what happens to my job at the university? And how do I pay the legal costs? That is exactly what they want and I am not going to give them the pleasure.

  The next day I board South African Airways with Zenzi and Zuki on a flight back to the United States. It is only when I am in the plane that I am able to breathe a sigh of relief. This is just an adventure to the kids.

  We finally get back to Athens and to my apartment in Pomeroy Road. The next day I take the kids back to school. Their friends and teachers are happy to see them. Thanks to the magic of ‘discovery’, I know now that the next day the pastor writes to Adele: I hear the children are back in the area. I know that this has been and continues to be very difficu
lt for you. Know you are loved and missed. And Ann Leeman writes: Sam and Maria burst into the door today after school saying that Zenzi and Zukile were at school! Are you in Athens? What happened? Please call me so we can see each other. Let me know if you need help with taking care of the kids or anything.

  Unfortunately, their friend is not here. She is in Johannesburg, South Africa, mapping out her next strategy.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THERE IS THIS ARTICLE in Time magazine on ‘how the world eats’. It features what are supposed to be average families from five regions of the world, each family posing behind a stack of groceries. We are told that the authors travelled the world to learn what families in different countries eat in a week. Asia is represented by the Ukita family from Japan, composed of mother, father and two daughters. The caption reads: Though wife Sayo usually prepares traditional dishes that favor fish and vegetables, her daughters often eat at fast-food restaurants. The family’s food expenditure for the week is $317.25. This includes grains and other starch; meat, fish and eggs; fruits, vegetables and nuts; condiments; snacks and desserts; prepared foods and beverages. Europe is represented by the Melander family of Germany, composed of the parents, a son and a daughter. Their weekly expenditure on the same categories of food as the Japanese family comes to $500.07. The caption tells us that the wife buys anything that’s fresh and good for the family. Latin America is represented by the Casaleses of Mexico. The parents have three kids and their weekly food expenditure is $189.09 for the aforementioned categories of groceries. The caption tells us that: A weakness for pricey soft drinks distorts their tight food budget. The Revises proudly represent North America. They are an African American family of mother, father and two sons from the United States. Their weekly expenditure on the same categories of food is $341.98. The caption tells us: The North Carolina family fights the effects of abundance with exercise.