by Gaile Parkin
‘Eh, Henry! I hope you’re not going to tell other people about me as a learner? You know it’s not professional to gossip about the people who do business with you.’
Looking ashamed, Henry spoke very quickly. ‘I do know, Angel. It’s just that I’m so happy she’s finally passed! It’s not so much that I’m gossiping about her, it’s more that I’m boasting about myself. Old Mrs Gama was my most difficult student up to so far.’
‘Is she older than Mama?’ asked Grace, and Mama gave her one of her looks that said she must be very careful about what she said next. ‘I mean, how much younger is Mama?’
‘Oh, your mama is a child compared!’ declared Henry. ‘Titi is just a baby!’ He beamed at Titi, who looked down quickly at her slice of pineapple before smiling shyly. ‘Her hair is as white as the snow on top of Mount Kilimanjaro. It’s her granddaughter who encouraged her to learn. Told her it’s never too late to be modern.’
‘That is true.’ Mama helped herself to another piece of pawpaw. ‘But tell me, Henry. Is her family going to celebrate? For Mrs Gama to get a driving licence at her age is a very big achievement.’
‘In fact, they’re all gathering for a party after church on Sunday. They’ve invited me to join them.’
Benedict had been just about to take a bite of banana, but he paused, almost holding his breath. Under the table, the hand that wasn’t holding the banana crossed its fingers.
‘Of course!’ said Mama. ‘How could they not invite you? You’re the man who taught her to drive! Her achievement is your achievement!’
Henry laughed, slipping some more mango into his mouth. Mama continued.
‘Her celebration is your celebration!’
Henry chewed. ‘I suppose.’
‘Of course! Have you not just told us how happy you are that she’s finally passed because people can think that a slow learner means that your impact as an instructor is slow?’ He nodded. ‘And now that you’ve been successful with her, at her advanced age, everybody will know that Henry Vilakati is the driving instructor who does not fail, no matter how difficult the learner. Everybody will know that if they need a miracle in the matter of driving instruction, Henry Vilakati is the man to go to. That is truly something for Henry Vilakati to celebrate!’
Henry laughed, shaking his head, and Titi looked at him as if he really was a miracle-worker. Everybody except Benedict concentrated on their fruit and tea. Benedict could hardly breathe.
Then Mama began again. ‘Old Mrs Gama has become a very fine advertisement for your business, Henry. And yet you gossiped about her in a way that was unprofessional.’
Looking ashamed, he opened his mouth to speak, but Mama wouldn’t let him.
‘Perhaps you could make it up to her in some way? Find a way to thank her?’
Henry was quiet while he thought.
Benedict knew from Mama that men preferred ideas that they had arrived at themselves, but he could wait no longer for Henry to arrive at this one. ‘Eh! Why don’t you take a cake to her party?’
Henry looked at him, his eyebrows shooting up. ‘Eish! My friend! That idea is too good!’
‘One of Auntie’s cakes!’ said Titi, and Henry gave her a very big smile indeed. Almost as big as the smile Benedict got from Mama.
The creamy banana was delicious in his mouth.
The cake was needed for Sunday, so Mama began baking it as soon as Henry left. He had wanted to choose something simple, but Mama had helped him to see that a simple cake wasn’t at all right for a man who could do miracles.
Seated at the dining table with the other children for homework, Benedict had listened to them planning the cake on one of the couches. Baba said there was never no homework, even when teachers didn’t give it. If you were a Tungaraza, you knew that your homework every day was to go over your classwork and make sure that you knew it.
The cake was going to look like the old, lime-green Beetle that the late Mr Gama had left to his brother, only old Mrs Gama was using it on account of the late Mr Gama’s brother being blind. The cake-board was going to be iced in grey to look like a road, with a ridge of marzipan at the side looking like the edge of a pavement, and a white stripe in front of and behind the Beetle to show that Mrs Gama had finally managed parallel parking. Lying on the road next to the Beetle would be a large white square of sugar-paste with a red L on it, torn in two. It was going to be a very fine cake indeed, the kind of cake that might bring many more customers to Mama.
When he had finished his homework, Benedict went outside into the garden, which had the kind of tidiness about it that Samson always left behind him on the days that he came, a bit like the look Benedict and his brothers always had after Baba had cut their hair with the hair-clipper. The grass was shorter – cleared, at the side of the house, of the fallen leaves from the large lucky-bean tree – tidier near the yesterday, today and tomorrow bushes, and neater where it met the bed of arum lilies, strelitzias and red hot pokers at the garden’s edge. Benedict had never imagined that trees and plants and flowers all had their own name, but there was a book about them in the bookshelf, and all the ones in the garden were in there, with pictures.
Beyond the flower bed the ground fell away sharply, held in place on the steep slope down to the garage by a wild mass of banana and pawpaw trees. But there was never any fruit for the people in either of the two houses, on account of the monkeys always getting to it first.
In the clumps of wild trees where the garden ended at the side of the house beyond the lucky-bean tree, Benedict could see flickers of movement. Birds were waiting for him to go or to settle into stillness so that they could feel safe enough to come down and explore what Samson’s gardening had turned up. A few butterflies flitted amongst the flowers. But he wasn’t in the mood for sitting quietly in the garden and watching.
Making his way down all the steps to the garage, he hoped that he would see Uncle Enock’s bakkie there. It was a Friday, and sometimes on a Friday Uncle Enock managed to get away a bit early. But the garage held only the red Microbus and the yellow Hi-Ace.
Wiping his feet on the mat, he knocked at the open front door of the other house, and Auntie Rachel called for him to come in. She was trying to tame the hair of one of the three littlest children into a pattern of small bunches, but the girl was squirming, wanting to get down on the floor to play with the other two little ones.
‘Hi, Benedict. Ag, how many times do I have to tell you, you don’t have to knock?’
‘Mama says it’s polite.’
‘Ja.’ Auntie Rachel gave a small shrug.
‘Is Uncle Enock coming early today?’
She gave up on the child’s hair and let her join in the others’ play. ‘It’s month-end Friday, hey.’
Benedict felt disappointed. Uncle Enock spent every day taking care of sick animals and saving their lives, but the last Friday afternoon of every month was different because that was when he worked at the dog orphanage. The dog orphanage got very full on account of people changing their minds about wanting a dog, and on account of other people letting their dogs have too many puppies, so every month they had to make more space. Dogs that had been there for a long time without being chosen had to go to sleep for ever, and it was Uncle Enock who helped them to go.
It was a job that made Uncle Enock sad. He would come home saying how many more tails were wagging in Dog Heaven now, and he would want to be left alone.
Benedict wasn’t sure that he liked the idea of a separate Heaven for dogs. Say you loved your dog and then you both got an accident and went to Heaven, but your dog had to go to a separate Heaven. Wouldn’t being without your dog feel more like being in Hell? What if the Heaven for dogs was next door, and you had to speak to your dog through a fence and you could never hold him? Eh! God had made people and animals, all creatures great and small, and He had put them all together here on Earth. Why would He put them in separate Heavens afterwards? It didn’t make sense.
It sounded much more like someth
ing people would do, not God. Auntie Rachel had told him about an old law in South Africa that said people had to live separately according to what colour their skin was. That law said that when Auntie Rachel had come home from being away learning her teaching diploma and she had found Uncle Enock doing his practicals on her parents’ farm, they weren’t allowed to fall in love.
They had tried falling in love in secret, but Auntie Rachel’s parents were afraid the law would put them in jail, so after Uncle Enock qualified they came to get married here in Swaziland where Uncle Enock’s parents were from and where there wasn’t that law, and then Auntie Rachel’s parents bought this small farm for them.
‘Ag, sit, Benedict. I’m going to have some tea. Would you like a glass of milk?’
‘Yes, please.’ He loved the fresh, creamy milk from the farm. In the house up the hill they had semi-skimmed milk from the supermarket on account of Baba watching his cholesterol and Mama watching her hips, and it just wasn’t as nice.
Auntie Rachel called for Lungi, and when Lungi didn’t come, she got up and went to look for her. The house was once the same sort of size as the Tungarazas’ house up the hill, but the Mazibukos had added on a big extra room at the side where the children could play and watch TV, and a whole new upstairs with more bedrooms. Benedict sat on a chair near the door, marvelling as always at the full bookshelves lining the walls of the lounge. Some of the shelves went all the way up to the ceiling, and others were shorter, like the one in the house up the hill.
On top of the shorter shelves stood some framed photographs of Auntie Rachel’s family and Uncle Enock’s, which always made Benedict think of the photograph hanging on the wall of the lounge up the hill. It showed the first baba he shared with Grace and Moses, and their first baba’s sister, the first mama of Faith and Daniel.
In between the Mazibukos’ photographs were some special stones and rocks called crystals, which Auntie Rachel believed in. She was supposed to believe in the God of the Jewish people, but Swaziland didn’t have a place where a Jewish somebody could go to pray. Mama said Auntie Rachel was out of practice, but Baba said she had rocks in her head.
She came back in now with Benedict’s milk, saying that Lungi was just making her tea.
‘Auntie Rachel, you know hoopoes?’
‘Ja?’
‘I heard they’re called King Solomon’s queen.’
‘Ja, I’ve heard that. Their crest is supposed to be a crown he gave one of them to thank it for giving him some advice.’
Benedict sipped the delicious, creamy milk. ‘Do you know what advice it gave?’
Leaning forward with a tissue and dabbing at the milk at the corners of his upper lip, she gave him a serious look. ‘Okay, you have to understand that it’s a story from a very long time ago, long before people learned to respect women.’ He nodded, knowing from Mama that respecting ladies was important. ‘Apparently the hoopoe advised the king that women mustn’t be honoured, they must be tamed and controlled.’
‘Eh!’
‘Exactly!’
Lungi came in with a mug of tea on a tray, carefully stepping over the three young children playing on the floor. She and Benedict exchanged greetings in siSwati before she went back to the kitchen. Watching her go, Benedict smiled. Lungi always wore black, which a Swazi lady had to do for two whole years after losing her husband, but tucked into the waistband of her skirt at the back there was always a brightly coloured duster on a stick that looked like the bushy tail of a squirrel all dressed up for a party. She didn’t need to have a duster handy, it was Mavis who cleaned while Lungi cooked. But still.
Auntie Rachel took a sip of her tea. ‘You lot are clever, hey? You learning siSwati, Titi learning English. How’s she doing, by the way?’
Titi was coming for English lessons with Auntie Rachel in exchange for a bit of childminding. Benedict was fond of Titi. She had been taking care of him since before he had come to live with Mama and Baba four years ago.
‘She’s doing well,’ he said. ‘She speaks English with Mama every evening while they’re cooking supper.’
‘Ag shame, she’s trying hard, hey?’ Auntie Rachel sipped more of her tea. ‘You know, that story about the hoopoe has always bothered me. I mean, King Solomon wouldn’t have made the hoopoe a queen unless it was a female, so why did a female give him advice like that? Unless it was saying only female people needed to be tamed and controlled.’
Benedict gave it some thought as he finished his milk. ‘Maybe. Wasn’t the female hoopoe already tame? I mean, it spoke with King Solomon and it let him put a crown on its head. You couldn’t do that with a wild hoopoe in the garden.’
‘Ja, maybe you’re right.’
Then Mavis came in to say the bath was ready for the small children, and she knelt on the floor to gather up their toys and tidy them away into a plastic crate. Benedict thought Mavis looked almost small enough to be one of the bigger Mazibuko children, and he often wondered how old she was. But he never asked. He knew from Mama it wasn’t nice to ask about a lady’s age.
When Auntie Rachel stood up to help Mavis to get the little ones upstairs, Benedict said thank you for the milk and left. There was no point in waiting around for Uncle Enock, who wouldn’t feel like talking to him after his time at the dog orphanage.
Further down the hill, Petros was leading the cows from the milking shed towards the one where they would sleep, his dog by his side. He gave Benedict a small wave, and Benedict returned it before heading back up the hill.
THREE
THE SLOPE OF THE STEEP HILL TO WHICH THE FARM clung lay in almost total darkness. A little further up, not a single light shone in the other house where the kwerekwere family slept, while some distance further down, the hostel for the dairy workers was lit only by a sliver of moon. In the main house, everybody was asleep – or, if they lay awake, they did so without switching on a light.
It was only in the small servants’ room behind the main house that a light burned, the naked bulb suspended from the ceiling over the narrow space between the bed in which Lungi snored softly and the one in which Mavis sat, her hands expertly rapid with her crochet hook and a large ball of soft, pale blue wool. When the baby-jacket was done, she would place it with the other pieces that lay folded neatly in the plastic bag on top of the wardrobe – a child’s jersey striped in yellow and red, a lady’s jacket in black, three hats in different single colours – ready to take to the friend who would sell them for her at the market in Mbabane. The money would go with the rest, in the cleaned-out Cobra floor-polish tin under her bed.
Cleaning for the Mazibuko family was certainly a good job to have. Madam paid Mavis the same kind of wage that any cleaner in Mbabane might be paid, and she also got this room to live in and three meals a day, left over after the family had eaten. The family was big, but Lungi cooked a lot of food, and there was always plenty left.
Mavis earned enough money, she didn’t need to crochet for extra. No. She crocheted because she needed something to do whenever sleep fled from her in the night, leaving her suddenly wide-eyed and restless. When that happened, she would tiptoe from her bed to the door of the room, slide her hand between the wall and the big wardrobe, and press the light switch slowly, careful not to let it make a sound that might wake Lungi. Then, retrieving from under her bed the old pillow-case that was her crochet bag, she would get back into bed.
Tonight, as she worked, her thoughts went to the other house, and in particular to the maid there. Titi would right now be asleep not just inside the house, but inside one of the bedrooms with the family. Eish! Madam had offered – Mavis had heard her with her own ears – to clear out all the things that were stored in the other servants’ room behind the main house, the one just the other side of the shower and toilet that Mavis and Lungi shared, the one that Samson didn’t need because he came to work in the garden just two days a week. But Titi’s madam had said no, Titi would sleep inside, she was part of their family.
Their family had
lived in many places and they always took Titi with them, so Titi had already seen the world. She had finished her primary schooling, just like Mavis had, and now she was coming to Madam for even more learning. Mavis tried to make sure that she was dusting or polishing nearby whenever Madam was teaching Titi, but it wasn’t always easy because the smaller children needed watching then and Lungi was sometimes too busy watching a pot.
Madam had taught Titi the word minor, which meant not grown up, like all the children in the house. That was what a woman was here, she needed a man to be in charge of her or to sign things for her. Titi had told Madam it was different in her own country, there she was allowed to own cows if she wanted, and also land. But Mavis wasn’t so sure that Titi was telling the truth. If Titi could own cows and land at home, why was she here with her madam’s family, doing all the cooking and cleaning all by herself? Titi couldn’t be cleaning nice-nice, there was too much work: the kwerekwere family was big, almost as big as the one here, meanwhile this family had both Mavis to clean for them and Lungi to cook for them.
Boys made more mess than girls, every maid in the whole of Swaziland knew that. Here there were only two boys, but at the other house there were three. The two younger ones were always here, playing in the garden with Fortune then tracking mud and dirt into the house. Eish! Mavis shook her head as her fingers worked. She had asked Madam to speak to them about it, and Madam had, but still they tracked in mud and dirt.
The eldest kwerekwere boy was different, he always wiped his feet on the mat before he came inside. There was often soil on his clothes, but that was Titi’s problem, not Mavis’s, and it was a big problem because the other house didn’t have a machine for washing and Titi had to use her hands. Mavis had had jobs before where she had to wash with her hands, and it wasn’t until she got this job here and learnt to use a machine that she fully realised how much time and how much work it had always taken to do a family’s wash by hand. Here there were two machines, the new one in the kitchen that opened with a round door at the front, and the old one outside the back door in the sheltered area where she could hang the washing when it rained and where Samson kept his mower and his other gardening tools. That machine opened at the top, and she had to fill it with a hose attached to the outside tap. Titi had one like that back in her country, not one like the nice new one inside.