(Continued from) 

 

His constant chaos and calamity also became the ‘normal’ of her life, as nothing went smooth where he was concerned, and nearly all his choices turned into disasters.  So, all she could do not to sink in his insanity, was to keep on looking forward in hope of a better day. 

Without her consciously realizing it, Peter had imprisoned her in his darkness without her understanding why, and what he was doing to her.  She kept on examine herself for serious flaws that she could repair to make him happy.  However, no amount of soul-searching and giving of herself could change anything.

As a result, the deep gut feeling of imminent destruction simply would not leave her alone.  Peter came home physically after work, but the Peter she loved was gone.  Deep loneliness and incessant sorrow began to take hold of her; empowered by a plummeting sense of hopelessness.  She knew something was dreadfully wrong but she could not tell what.  He refused to discuss serious matters with her. 

She was losing Peter, but refused to let go of him.  She honestly, sincerely, and truly loved him.  All she ever wanted was to be happy with him and to make him happy so they could live in peace.  However, she was yoked to an openly, but mostly a very underhanded, destructive man, and so, that dream constantly eluded her. 

 

One night, after returning from a pleasant outing with their friends Boeta and Denise; for no reason at all, Peter went into a furious fit.  He violently grabbed her without saying a word, turned her over onto his knees, and slapped her buttocks with such brutal force that every blow resulted in bleeding, black and blue handprints on her tender body.  She tried to fight him in vain; he was too strong for her.  She screamed in pain and humiliation, but there was no one to hear or help. 

He refused to explain why he assaulted her so badly; again hiding behind the excuse that he was drunk.  He never apologized either.  As usual, she forgave him just to be able to go forward.  She never saw how cleverly he executed the attack.  He could have hit her in her face that night, which he often did in later years; one time striking her on her right eye so that she saw double for more than six months, but at that stage, he assaulted her in ways no one else was supposed to see.  She told Boeta and Denise, but they chose to remain neutral.  She was too ashamed to tell anyone else. 

Anna did not know it then but later she understood, God warned in Malachi 2:14-16 that where there is adultery in a home, violence is sure to follow. While Anna always remained faithful, her entire life with Peter was built on treachery. 

 

In the meantime, she also endured Charles and Zeena’s illogic, bad behavior.  Yet, no matter how they misbehaved, she was never unfriendly without good reason or excluded them from a birthday, Christmas, New Year, or any other family gathering.  Anna and Peter never even celebrated their wedding anniversary without them.  Anna’s door was always open, day and night.  During the coming years, she tolerated their unacceptable behavior without the thought of chasing them away.  To her own detriment, as she would later discover, she also incorporated them in her parents’ huge, cheerful family gatherings with the result that they knew and befriended all her family, as well as her and Peter’s friends.  To a great degree, she continued to share her life with them unreservedly. 

They virtually knew nearly everything about Anna. 

What she did not realize, was that Zeena and Charles Manson were malignantly worming themselves into every crevice of her life.  Just as with Peter, no one knew what his parents were really all about.  Anna’s family and friends, and supposedly all Peter’s family and friends too, liked them and strangely, as they hardly ever saw them sober, still thought they were the most perfect parents and in-laws anyone could have.  How Charles and Zeena got around their shameful lifestyle, heavy abuse of alcohol, fighting, swearing, and the constant abuse of God’s Name; turning Anna’s character, life, and home into credentials for themselves, Anna could not figure out to this day. 

What she did understand, however, is that it had to do with their incessant boasting about how ‘good’ they were to them.  For instance, once, they bought Peter a watch for his birthday, and the news of how “incredibly expensive” the watch was, reached him long before they gave him his present.  It was a grand watch but never kept time for more than a hour or two before stopping and simply refusing to go again.  It was as if the watch refused to play their hypocritical game.  Several times, Charles took it back to the store to repair, until Peter chucked it into a drawer without looking at it again.

 

Very unwisely, Anna never put any boundaries on her life, home, and marriage.  She didn’t know anything about boundaries.  She was all about sincerity and openness.  She had absolutely nothing to hide, except the shame that Peter and his parents brought upon her life.  The natural boundaries she unknowingly tried to set for them were merely to keep some of her sanity, but these were simply challenges for them to violate to all extremes. 

Still, as if under a spell, she kept on giving of herself and her life to them; believing love and patience would eventually touch their hearts of stone and change them all.  Under dire circumstances, she protested and withstood their abuse as far as possible.  However, to get a pretence of peace again, she always relented to let them have their way with her.  Nevertheless, she was cheeky sometimes and too straightforward to their liking.  Yet, in all the ongoing, well-planned, expertly executed plans against her, she knew they hated her without any good reason, but she was too proud to confront their persistent looting of her and, as she saw it, Peter’s life.  When they hurt her, she hid the innermost chambers of her heart from them, knowing instinctively they would glory in her sorrow if they knew how they were tearing her to pieces. 

The main issue on which she confronted them was when Charles, especially, said nasty, soul-demolishing things to Peter.  Because Peter told her how Charles abused him as a child and she personally experienced that he was an unreasonable, violent man, she fiercely defended Peter on such occasions.  “You break everything you touch,” and “where there’s no sense there’s no feeling,” were some of Charles’ well-known slogans.  Knowing nothing about Peter’s lifelong blame-shifting to cover his irresponsibility, Anna’s resistance of Charles’ assaults carved their dislike of her even deeper. 

When she finally began to say “no” to Peter’s boozing and other disruptions with them, they told everyone she is a ‘control-freak witch,’ who ‘thinks for Peter and he is so spineless he jumps on her every command.’  Nothing could have been further from the truth, as Peter usually kept quiet during conflicts to let her take the heat, but he was the one who made all the important decisions in their life — most of which turned out as utter disasters.  Still, she refused to tell them how bad Peter was actually treating her. 

 

Every time she recovered from another one of the malicious roller-coaster rides with Peter and his parents, Anna decided henceforward, she would do everything to the best of her ability, no matter what they forced her to face. 

She knew she would never be perfect on this side of the grave, but she would keep herself well groomed and be the best wife she could be. She would love Peter, her in-laws, and family as best she knew how.  She would be the best cook, baker, and homemaker she could be.  She would pursue a career from home and contribute to their finances to the best of her ability.  If God granted her the privilege to become a mother, she would be the best parent she could be.

She would make Peter and her in-laws proud.  In the end, they will see they were wrong all along.  Then, they will turn around and love her like a man should love his wife and like parents should love their daughter.  The main thing she wanted from Peter was to love her enough to let them live in peace and harmony together.  But he denied her every time. 

Bizarrely, for nearly all their life together, Anna had a reoccurring dream.  She repeatedly dreamt they have a beautiful home, but it was built on sinking sand.  While part of it was slipping into a bottomless abyss, several tornados were also approaching, threatening to blow the rest of their home to smithereens. 

She always woke before the tornados struck. 

 

ALL THE WHILE, ZEENA AND CHARLES CONTINUED TO CAUSE HAVOC IN PETER AND ANNA’S LIFE   

Adding to Peter’s many unbelievable tricks and taunts, Zeena and Charles were not just causing havoc in his and Anna’s home during those early years, but in their own house too.  They were endlessly fighting with each other, finding fault with Anna, (she was either too fat or too thin; too clever or too stupid; too energetic or too lazy, too clean or too dirty,) and all the while, they seemingly remained oblivious to their shameless, senseless disturbances in the couple’s life. 

For instance, late one Saturday afternoon, when Peter and Anna were treating a house full of guests to a home movie, (it was before the days of television,) the parents brought a male ‘friend’ named Gert with them, but Manson was too drunk to get out the car.  Zeena and Gert left him to sleep in the back seat of the car and snuggled close together on the couch between the other  guests.  They were quite drunk, and Zeena rested her head sleepily on the man’s shoulder.  In a most familiar way, every now and again, Gert took her packet of cigarettes from between her legs, lit them each one, and pushed the packet back in-between her legs. 

After they left, a friend of Peter asked, “Hey man, is that your mother’s new boyfriend?  What happened to your dad?”

Peter shrugged his shoulders and stared at the carpet.  He must have remembered how, when he was about ten years old, his mother had an “affair” with Roelf, a younger man, who lived down the street from them.  Zeena’s husband was so furious he took her and Peter to live with him in a hotel in town while he decided what to do about the matter.  While both of them were working during the day, Peter had to see to himself and often remained hungry in the afternoons after school.  It was during their stay in the hotel that one of the guests began to sexually abuse the neglected, unprotected boy.  Later, this destructive trend persisted when older kids also took advantage of him, as Zeena and Charles often dumped him with family, friends, and neighbors to enjoy their weekend parties and long holidays without him. 

Finally, after six months in the hotel, Charles decided they had to move back to their house.  On their return, Zeena’s  lover had moved out of the neighborhood and Charles began to slide deeper into drunkenness.  They were letting the house to Charles’ brother Khan and his family during their stay in the hotel.  Since then, they have always raged behind his back about how “dreadfully Khan and Marty ruined the house in such a short time!” 

 

After the incident with Gert, in casual conversation over his glass of brandy, Charles told Peter and Anna that Gert, who treated Zeena with such unabashed forwardness in her son’s home, shared the bed with him and Zeena when they got too drunk to “let him go home by himself.”  When Charles Manson told Peter this filthy story, he failed to explain why threesomes did not bother him at all.  Every other man would have chased Gert out his house - or at least, made him sleep in one of the two spare bedrooms in the house.  Anna also did not think clearly about this confession at the time.  But what this incident and Charles and Peter’s casual response to it proved, was that they raised Peter in total immorality. 

It was also unavoidable that Anna often had to watch with great disgust how Charles pour half a glass of neat brandy down his throat, and then vomited the stinking stuff into the glass to swallow it again.

Once, she remarked with revulsion, “Sis, that’s atrocious!  How can you do that?” 

“Nice old Brampy!”  He laughed and smacked his lips aggravatingly while pouring another. “Always cheaper to make two out of one, my dear!” 

“Sis on you!” Anna shuddered.  “That’s sickening!  Sis, sis, sis…” was all she could utter. 

She did not know when she despised that awful, foul-mouthed, spiteful man the most — when he “made two out of one,” or when he sat in shorts without underpants, his legs spread to keep him from falling over, battling to keep his dangling head up.  That was a sight that could have turned Anna off from all men for the remainder of her life. 

Years later, Anna still could not understand why she never chased those two monsters from hell from her home, and from her and Peter’s life, forbidding them to ever return…  

Guess she did it “for Peter’s sake.”  Instead, her ‘kindness’ to Peter was to his (and especially her own) detriment. 

THE MOTHER STOPPED DRINKING BUT IT WAS TOO LATE FOR HER HUSBAND TO CHANGE   

After Anna and Peter’s first son was born nearly four years after they got married, Zeena suddenly began to rehabilitate herself — to the great relief of her daughter-in-law.  Peter never uttered a word about it.  However, it was too late for Zeena’s alcoholic husband, who, by then, was unemployed and bedridden with alcoholism.  Suddenly, the greatest dilemma of her life faced the now booze-free Zeena, which made everything more miserable for Peter and Anna. 

During his binges, Charles Manson went completely crazy.  He did not eat, bath, shave, or brush his teeth.  He only moved between the bottle store, ‘Brother Mike’s’ shebeen, and his stinking bed.  He frequently left his car in the middle of the street with the door wide open, and began to sell everything he could find to support his suicidal drinking sprees. 

Manson was not only ruining himself and his wife financially; he was constantly assaulting Zeena and chasing her violently out the house.  Each time, Peter and Anna had to take her into their home, supporting her for weeks at a time without Zeena contributing as much as a slice of bread to the household.  Yet, Anna treated her to home cooking and even packed her lunch every morning just as she did for Peter.

Once, Zeena remarked wryly, “The people at work are laughing at the pies you give me for lunch.” 

“What pies?”  Anna frowned naively.  “I gave you mince and potato sandwiches.”

“Exactly,” the woman grinned.  “Packed so thickly I needed a knife and fork to eat it!” 

A ‘thank you’ would have been in order occasionally, Anna thought, but kept quiet.  Peter and his mother had leftover mince and potato sandwiches for lunch; Anna and her little son had bread and jam.  Living between fight and flight modes were the norm for them, but not for her.  She did not know that by willfully turning her life upside down, all three of them were narcissistically supplying themselves with “power and control” over her, which made them feel great and invincible. 

During that time, Anna did not only have to cope with the supposedly ‘passive’ Peter’s narcissist sponging and his invasive,  ungrateful mother.  Sheltering Zeena from her berserker husband unleashed Manson’s violent cruelty, spitefulness, and cursing upon them.  By then, Zeena had installed a telephone in their house.  Charles phoned Peter at all hours of the night to demand that he came all the way from the countryside to buy him a ‘nippy’ of brandy from Brother Mike, as his money was scarce.  If Peter, on the insistence of Anna, showed enough courage to refuse, Charles swore at him in the foulest language imaginable, threatening to rearrange his face, and to do something far worse to “that witch, who always thinks she’s clever.”  If Anna ‘dared’ to send Peter to him with a plate of food to try to keep him alive, Charles chucked the food out the window, shouting at the top of his voice, “Tell that f*****g witch I will not eat her rubbish!  Let her poison you if you like!  I have brains, I’m not a senseless mule’s [swearword for a prostitute’s genitals] like you are!” 

 

Constant arguments between them and Charles broke out.  Unless everyone submitted to his demands and fury, there was no way to avoid his mad attacks.  Anna was the only one that openly defied his lunacy.  Once, when she tried to reason with him to sort out a problem, he took out a sjambok, (a long, stiff whip,) to “hit her all the way home!”   As he was chasing her down the stairs, he fell and twisted his ankle.  She grabbed the whip and could have assaulted him as he was swinging his fists to hit her and swore at her all the time, but she restrained her anger.  Of course, for weeks afterward, Mad Manson remained on the rampage against her. 

 

On another occasion, during a fight between him and Peter, Manson waited until he had turned around to speak to his mother, then he assaulted him with a glass ashtray from behind, simultaneously attacking him with his capable boxer fists.  With blood streaming down Peter’s face and shoulders, he had to use all his strength to restrain the infuriated man’s calculated punches, landing a few of his own. 

Anna shrunk in horror.  She grew up in a decent home.  She never saw her father drunk.  Never heard him swear such filthy words or saw him assaulting her mother or her two adult brothers.  To think that her brothers would engage in a fist fight with her dad, was unmentionable evil.  This escalating dirt and brute violence continued for several years after Zeena had sobered up.  In-between, the usual ceasefires followed.  However, whether drunk or sober, Peter’s parents continued to drive her crazy while Peter apparently had no opinion about it.  By then, Anna was so trauma and treason bonded by their constant abuse, she did not think of moving to another city or country.  Alternatively, it never entered her mind just to say “no” to his parents’ inhumane treatment.  The reason might have been that Anna knew normal parents would have heeded a simple request to respect their life, marriage, home, and family.  However, Charles and Zeena were anything but normal parents.    

 

When their son was about two years of age, Peter and as a result, Anna too, contracted a nasty venereal disease. 

Old doctor Marks had only one thing to say, “The results show that Peter infected you, Poppie.” 

He called all the women “Poppie.”  His face remained professional, but there was a note of agitation in his voice. 

Peter fiercely denied that he committed adultery and she was confused, as she had always been faithful to him.  Peter explained that he might have contracted it from a toilet at work.  Anna knew nothing about venereal disease, but she could not believe that story. 

“Is it possible that he got it from a toilet?”  Anna asked the doctor with her next visit. 

“No,” was the short and certain reply. 

Anna, deeply embarrassed, left it at that.

However, when she confronted Peter again, he insisted that either the test was faked or the doctor lied. 

They fiercely argued for a while as she wanted to know who the woman was that gave him the clap, but he stuck so immovably to his story, and he so aggressively refused to discuss the “silly matter” any further, that he left Anna no choice but to keep quiet about it.  When she again dared to get to the bottom of this serious matter, he made it clear at the top of his voice that he was greatly ‘offended’ by “her  false accusations,” as he is a “good, hardworking man,” and he “will not tolerate being so innocently blamed for doing nothing wrong.” 

She knew he was lying, but she could not think of anyone he could have been sexually involved with.  Additionally, she did not have anyone to trust with the matter, or the resources to follow it up.  Helpless to defy him any further, Anna discarded all bad thoughts and simply forgave him for whatever he had done. 

 

Anna completely overlooked the fact that, as Peter was often working night shift during that time and afterwards, she continually brought her eldest niece to stay over to keep her company.  She was a 12-year old bridesmaid at their wedding and virtually grew up in their home.  Anna never suspected the girl, as she called Anna “Mommy” and Peter “Daddy.” 

During that time, when her niece stayed with them, she caught the bus to and from work.  Each time she tried to come into the house, Anna’s little toddler would suddenly turn on her.  He attacked her, screaming and kicking hysterically, and tried with all his might to close the door in her face to prevent her from entering. 

Baffled by the child’s strange behavior, she had to drag him away from her every time.  Only years later, would she understand that God used her little son to draw her attention to this girl.  She already knew that her niece had a crush on Peter and could not keep her hands off his cousins and the bus drivers.  But baffled by his declaration that he “hardly knows the silly girl exists,” she trusted him with her “sister’s child,” as he called her.  Anna never once saw, and thus could have suspected that he gave the “girl” any attention that was out of the ordinary. 

Even so, similar but less serious, reoccurring venereal problems plagued Anna throughout their life together and in the end, ruined much of her women’s health.  Only years later, a gynecologist put Peter on medication with her, but Peter heatedly denied being unfaithful to her.  Very annoyed, he called the doctor to tell him he was causing unnecessary marital problems for him as he was innocent.  And because he had no symptoms that she was aware of and the doctors kept quiet about adultery as the cause, she accepted that this suffering too, was ‘probably a normal part of married life.’  She did not know that carriers of venereal diseases are often completely without symptoms. 

THE INFANTICIDE DEATH TRAP — THEY SUPPOSEDLY “GAVE THE HOUSE TO PETER” 

When Peter and Anna were married for eight years, and after the birth of their second son, Peter and Anna decided to buy a house of their own and vacate their beautiful, spacious, but rented house in the country.  It was wholly possible for them to buy a house of their own.  They actually qualified for a government subsidy for ‘first home owners’ that was available at the time.  Anna’s father also offered to assist with the deposit on a house should the couple need it.  Peter and Anna started consulting with estate agents in their area.  However, when Peter’s parents heard the news, they came to interfere.  Surprisingly, both Charles and Zeena suddenly insisted on “giving” the “house” to “Peter,” as it was “unnecessary for him to buy a house of his own.” 

As usual, Anna was not mentioned in any of Charles and Zeena’s plans. 

Moreover, “the house” was not the grand home Peter’s parents pretended it to be.  It was a neat yet smallish, middle-class, characterless house with a single garage, built on a skimpy stand in an ordinary suburban neighborhood – nothing Peter and Anna were used to up until now. 

Ah, but despite these facts, there was a catch! 

The parents added immediately, in exchange for the “gift” of the house, they wanted a cottage of their choice in return, which Peter had to build for them on the same property. 

In fact, they never intended to “give” Peter anything, but it was as if the couple’s minds were restrained from thinking clear.  Zeena and her husband also failed to mention, they never planned to transfer “the house” [or actually the property,] legally into Peter’s name.  At that stage, their plan was to burden Peter with the payments for their cottage, while Peter was building them a cottage as big as a house on ‘other people’s’ property.  More importantly, those ‘other people’ were the most unreasonable, unfair humans on the planet.   

But as if they had hexed the couple, the parents’ hidden agenda eluded the gullible Peter and Anna completely.  The couple believed it would be good to “accept” this so-called “gift” of “the house,” and to build a ‘cottage’ for the parents in return.  At that stage, the parents’ disruptions on their marriage and family life had become unbearable.  Without familiarizing themselves with the nature and consequences of this so-called “gift,” Peter and Anna hoped, by moving that close to his parents, his mother would at least remain in her own house; lessening the burden on their private life.  Confusingly, they also thought the “gift” of the house would mean that they would have to pay less for “the house” than for a property and house of their ‘own!’ 

Truth of the matter is, at the time, moneywise, Peter and Anna could have bought an entire unburdened property (with a spacious house,) for the price they had to pay for the parents’ cottage!  Hence, buying their ‘own’ property would have cost much less than this devious deal, which the parents were dragging them into.  

(Continue)

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