After matriculating from a top private Jewish school in Joburg, Nikki Munitz finds herself in the clutches of heroin addiction.
She's sent to Noupoort, a rehab centre in the remote Northern Cape, run by a pastor who brandishes a tattoo of Satan.
In this hellhole, she meets Jake, the handsome son of a wealthy Afrikaans family. Lured by the illusion of her ‘happy-ever-after’, she marries him -but the façade of her new family soon crumbles.
Money is in short supply, so Nikki gets a job at a law firm and starts syphoning cash from trust accounts.
By the time her R2,5 million fraud is discovered, she has been clean and sober for five years.
A gruelling court battle follows, and she is found guilty on 37 counts of fraud.
In this edited extract from the book, Fraud: How Prison Set Me Free (published Melinda Ferguson Books, an imprint of NB Publishers) authors Nikki and Elka Cohen reflect on how Nikki's postnatal doldrums led to her starting a life of crime, as a fraudster:
As a young mother of 25 who’s probably got the emotional maturity of a teenager, I’m totally deluded about what will be required of me once I take Jordan, my newborn, home.
Only much later, after many dark events, will I become aware of how my deep-flowing toxic bloodline has ruined me, leading me to a litany of terrible decisions in my life.
It will take a lot of heartache before I see how my unbridled craving for love has propelled me to abandon myself – first throwing me into the arms of addiction, then being sucked into the whirlpool of an abusive marriage.
Through all the lies I tell myself, I conjure up the crazy notion that a family of my own will be the answer to my prayers. I convince myself things will change when the baby arrives. But, once Jordan is in the townhouse in her little crib, everything gets worse.
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I keep hoping that my fundamentalist Christian husband will eventually look up and notice that he now has a beautiful, squirming, crying and totally needy baby daughter.
He doesn’t.
All too soon, the cruel reality sets in. Jake shows no interest in Jordan, other than being fiercely adamant that she be raised in a godly way.
“For the Lord warns if we do not teach our children faith, repentance, prayer and obedience, the sins of the child will befall unto the parent.”
While I’m trying to feed her, nurse her, change her and burp her, his only contributions are tired clichés on what he considers to be good parenting.
“We will set firm boundaries in the name of our Father,” he insists. “She will not be allowed to watch TV or be influenced by glossy fashion magazines. She will not be permitted to wear inappropriate clothing, to swear or to use God’s name in vain. She will attend church services and Sundayschool.”
He rattles on.
Jordan has only just learnt to latch and already she has a list of insane rules to abide by. It dawns on me that bringing her home has only exacerbated Jake’s paranoid fears of the evils of the modern world, fuelling his need to control.
The happy picket-fence family I hoped for never comes to fruition. As husband and wife, we are not bonded in anyway by the new baby. Instead, the razor-sharp squeals of our colic-ridden daughter pierce the rooms of our claustrophobic townhouse.
When she’s yelling, my righteous husband kicks me out of bed and growls: “Get up. Go. The baby’s crying.”
There’s no way I can delude myself any longer.
The reality hits that I’m solely responsible for Jordan and that I have no clue what to do when it comes to mothering her.
Those first few weeks at home all but destroy me. It feels like Jordan is a small parasite slowly sucking the life force out of me. I’m sleep-deprived and nauseated by the smell of sour baby puke and acrid poo.
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I haven’t showered or washed my hair for days.
I’m a stained, sticky mess of the milk she hungers for but cannot comfortably digest.
Yet she clings to me, relentlessly latching, cramping and crying in two-to-four-hour cycles. I cry a lot too.
Day and night blur. They have no boundaries.
They weave together in one long godawful struggle as I fumble, swaddle, hold, rock, pace and soothe her.
I feel guilt-ridden by the failure of my lousy attempts at motherhood.
Sometimes I cry even more than she does.
Through the nursery window, I watch the glorious summer months fade.
Outside, toddlers left in the care of their nannies ride their tricycles around our gated complex estate, while neighbours drive off to work and return hours later.
I’m trapped in the pretence of motherhood, imprisoned by my new role.
Jake does nothing to help.
We fight constantly.
I long to escape, to use, to get high, to get numb and loaded. I hold on to my shaky sobriety with every inch of my being.
On rare occasions, old friends and family pop round to meet the new baby and bring pretty pink gifts. While I’m terrified they will see just how fucked up my marriage and I really are, at least it’s a break from the tedium.
I use all my strength to smile and nod and pretend that everything’s okay.
I’m amazed at how Jake steps up when there’s an audience.
Suddenly he can tear himself away from his Christian books to join the visitors.
He turns on the charm and plays the part of the doting father and husband. With an audience present, his daughter makes a wonderful prop for the perfect dad he pretends to be.
Like a hypnotist, Jake has them all entranced. The visitors lap up his act.
I’m grateful that they can’t see what’s really going on here.
In fact, sometimes, even I am taken in by his act – it offers a false glimpse of the happy family I so badly want.
So, I roll with it, if only just for the few hours when we’ve got company, although at times I do feel embarrassed when he initiates some or other self-indulgent topic of conversation, rambling on about God or one of his countless biblical delusions.
After a few weeks, I switch from breastmilk to formula and, like a tiny, helpless larva, my infant’s soft, floppy body wiggles and winces and curls up to sleep.
Thank f**k. Just like the character in our favourite book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, she now eats and grows and eats and grows.
In my state of brokenness, I try to be patient and slowly learn how to love her.
But in the background, an untamed beast lurks inside me.
I don’t realise it at the time, but I’m deeply depressed. The postnatal doldrums mix with the gnawing knowledge that by marrying Jake, I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life.
I have to get out of this townhouse.
It feels like I am dying.
I tell myself that if I just become part of the real world again, everything will be okay.
So, I cut my maternity leave short, hire a nanny and return to my job at Schwellnus Incorporated.
