The blond girl asked where we lived. All this time she kept her distance, stood by seeming bored, never said a word during the entire conversation.  Now she had her little notebook in her hands and was ready to scribble down the address. Her friend waved this off with her beautiful wide smile, joked that she always notes down everything.

5 July 2001 Thursday. 19h00 a knock on the door, and there they were. Two petite girls, runaway's, no older than thirteen years old.. They were a little different than that morning, the friendly one kept falling asleep while eating her food, and the quiet one spoke a whole lot. It was clear they were high, eyes glassy and the pupils very tiny. Rosanne had blisters on her feet, after tending to her open sores, she asked if it was OK if they stayed over, they went to bed and fell asleep almost immediately.

6 July 2001 Friday The next morning, all out of everything, and unable to give them breakfast, I asked if they were expected home, a strange look from the blond girl and a weird silence from the other greeted me.  Well then, if they wanted something to eat they would have to go and buy some, I gave them R22,00. They disappeared for hours after I had given them the money, and eventhough we speculated that they would never be back, they returned around mid-day- with only bread, had something to eat and left. Late that afternoon they returned and went to bed again.

Rouselle held onto the walls when she got up. Taking a closer look at the two girls, tiny black pupils, glassy eyes, not very sure, I asked “What did you take? “Nothing” Rosanne said. Charlie was more honest than Rosanne. I soon learned that they bought ‘a bag’ with my food money and were ‘spiking’ heroin.  My crash course in drugs started.

At home our circumstances rapidly changed.  When reality finally hit, our already very busy little house turned into a war zone. Two teenagers came looking for them, a boy and girl. I have no idea how they knew they were with me. The boy, about sixteen, introduced as  charlene’s brother, he was gay, in an obvious way and seemed high on something himself at the time. He said his sister is a runaway and heroine junkie. He comfortably abbreviated that he was using Heroin himself once but ‘is now clean’.  He was searching for his sister on the streets of Sunnyside and was told by a ‘dealer’ she could be found here. Struggling to absorb all the information and wondering what kind of impact this would have on my life and my own children, I just silently showed him the door to the bedroom.

Soon there was screaming and shouting, they were pushing another. No amount of interference helped, the children just continued to shove and throttle each other while the niece shouted and screamed insults like I haven’t heard in my entire 34 years of existence. Was she on something too? Eventually the fighting party left. After some time only Rosanne returned, she stayed over. She seemed distracted, tired and very nauseous.

Charlie’s mother came around later that evening to find out “what’s the story”. I learned that Charlie had a caring mother. Aggressive at first she seemed to calm down when we spoke for a while.  She had done everything she could to get her 14 year old daughter of drugs. They have been to reformatory school and in rehabilitation centers. Both her children had a heroin problem and that they have run away from home and help time and time again. Often she drove around ‘the block’ searching for her daughter. ‘The block’ is a park in Berea and the pick up point for mainly boys/ young men, drug abusing girls also ‘worked’ from there. 

The distraught mother called Rosanne all kinds of names. She diod not want them to be friends. I learned that the two fourteen year olds had entered into as lesbien relationship, and was convinced they loved each other. “Chase her away if she comes again”, she said, speaking of her own daughter. Doesn’t it make better sense to know where to find her daughter every time, than to drive around frantic not knowing where to start searching?  Why not find her at my place then?  She refused, “That girl is a whore, I don’t want my child to mix with her” she said.

12/07/2001 Rosa gave me a little thank you letter.  She wrote that she doesn’t know why we were helping them and that there are few people like us in this world.  She said she would help with anything she possibly could, in the house or with the babies to do her share.  She was going to see some people and collect some of her possessions.  When she gets back, her note read, she would tell me all about her life as she reckons I had the right to know. Rosanne didn’t return, and although I found her letter a little confusing, as the days went by, I let the nagging thoughts to rest by ignoring my conscience.  She knows where we live, if she needs us, she will look us up. 

Two Saturdays later she turned up, I wasn’t home and once again she left me a note.  She wrote something about having been locked up in a room unable to get to us. She left again to collect some of her belongings in Valhalla and at her Father’s place, according to the note.

The next morning, very early for a Sunday (six o clock)  we heard a commotion at the gate, there was Charlie screaming “Rosie, Rosie, Rosie, Rosie” I went outside and quietly tried to calm her and convince her that Rosa wasn’t with us then, but that she had been the previous day.  She was very high, I asked her where she had been, and she responded by saying in a ditch close to my house, she didn’t want to come in to my house because she didn’t want her mother to find her.  She also couldn’t afford to be too far from my house because she had money on her and she was afraid of being robbed or beaten, while she was high.  Knowing that her mother would kill the both of us if she found her with me, I asked if there is a place I could take her too, she couldn’t hang around in the streets much longer, she was about to pass out from exhaustion.

She asked if Rosa said where she was going, on mentioning Valhalla her face lit up and she said she’ll take me to her.  We drove around for what felt like hours, unable to give me the physical address outright, she had to point me there, every stop and turn.  She fell asleep from robot to robot and would be momentarily disorientated every time I woke her to show me the road.  Finally she pointed me to a Hotel in the city.  I followed her up to the room on the first floor, the door was opened an inch when the girl knocked and replied on the groggy question coming from inside, she was let in but I was left outside.  I stood around uncertain for a while, not a curious person at all, I left.

On my way home – my mind on playback all the time, I had to remind myself -  This was non of my business!  So, there happens to be two fourteen year old girls on drugs, living in a seedy city hotel with the reputation of a brothel and strippers joined.  There’s a tall man in a messy apartment, of which I only met part of, and he wasn’t friendly at all, he seems to accommodate both of them. I remebered she wrote something about being locked up in a room, and decided to turn back.

My very first knock was answered. The woman’s front teeth were missing, her hair, though not well cared for seemed to be a natural blond.  She is not Rosa’s mother she said, she has a daughter of her own about the same age.  The children are using drugs and they (she and her husband) have a hard time with them.  They only want the best for the kids she said. I asked to see Rosa, but she said the girl didn’t want to see me.  Thinking this to be strange as there was no reason for her to pull this attitude, I insisted to see the girl and let her tell me that herself.  The woman disappeared upstairs, eventually Rosa came down, quiet and withdrawn.  A little shaky from relief to see hat she was fine and the weirdness of the situation facing me I went of my top somewhat.  I told her that I was looking all over for her, I was worried about her, I’m willing to help, but she can’t keep lying to me, I hate that.  I felt used and warned her that she will probably not have another chance to cry wolf.  She only nodded her head, didn't say a word, and I left.

Again my mind took the blue train. Perhaps she was intimidated by these people, why was she being so hostile towards me?  Was she really there by choice?  Perhaps we should call in the police to investigate, maybe it’s nothing – maybe there is something. All certainly didn’t look right. It was time to find out. Sharing my thoughts and fears with my husband, we together reported the case at Central Police Station with day staff but had to wait one hour to be assisted by night staff.  We followed the Police car to the hotel and on arrival at the corridor, the tall man with oily shoulder length hair and no teeth told us in a very unfriendly manner to leave the children alone.  The policeman said he just wanted to speak to the kids. Aggressive he refused to open his hotel room saying that the children had gone back to where they came from and weren’t there anymore.

The Hotel Manager was called in and confirmed that the children and the blond, two-missing-teeth lady had left just a little earlier in a brown Mercedes, with family members we were told.  Sympathetically the policemen reminded us that if the child did not want to come with us we could not force her, we had no documentation to say that she was in our care. He suggested we go to the children’s court the following day and find all we need to know on these children and then return with the necessary documentation in order to be able to help them as it was becoming more and more clear that something wasn’t right.  Why was the kids moved if nothing was going on, why in such a hurry, they were still there a couple of hours earlier.

At the court house I was told Rosanne had a younger sister, she was taken care of by people other than those who cared for Rosanne.  The children were extremely difficult cases and were  exempted from the childcare act, they also had a case of theft against them.  The probation officer remembered me, remebered the accusations of runnung a brothel, yet she seemed helpful anyway. She told me the children, Rosanne and her sister, Jinna were runaways from a children home and various places of safety. She refered me to their welfare worker.

The welfare worker assigned to the children’s case, let’s call him *Willington, were not so willing to work and see to the welfare of these girls at all, he seemed to think the children were ‘unruly trouble makers’, he told me that: “they lie a lot, they intimidate others and are masters at manipulating people”.  On my request if we could take them into our home, he referred me back to court.  To stop the senseless running around I took the note Rosa wrote me as proof that their might be reason for my concern.

In the weeks that followed Charlie’s brother and niece often dropped in, to come and inquire if Charlie was there, once the brother came on his own, without a knock or a word he made his way to the bathroom, vomited and left with some insulting words….. strange! Sometimes Charlie  wasn’t at my place when they came looking for her, some times she was, if she was, she’d always be hiding from her mother, under the bed, behind the couch, in the cupboard.  Eventually she’d come out, knowing that her mother knew she was there some where.  She also knew that when she sees her Mom face to face, she would scream, shout, talk nicely, play the guilt trip, beg, promise, threaten, get tears in her eyes, throw her hands in the air, and eventually leave.  And Charlie would follow her quietly, always tearful.

Charlie did not see fifteen, she died of a heroine overdose.