Another Woman's Daughter

by Fiona Sussman

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2015 by Fiona Sussman.

  “Readers Guide” copyright © 2015 by Penguin Random House LLC.

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  eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-19481-6

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Sussman, Fiona.

  [Shifting colours]

  Another woman’s daughter / Fiona Sussman.—Berkley trade paperback edition.

  p. cm.

  “Previously published in the UK as Shifting Colours by Allison & Busby / May 2014”—Verso title page.

  ISBN 978-0-425-28104-8 (paperback)

  1. Birthmothers—Fiction. 2. Adoptees—Fiction. 3. Racially mixed people—Fiction. 4. Family secrets—Fiction. 5. South Africa—Fiction. 6. England—Fiction. 7. Domestic fiction. I. Title.

  PR9639.4.S923S55 2015

  823'.92—dc23

  2015014273

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Previously published in the UK as Shifting Colours by Allison & Busby / May 2014

  Berkley trade paperback edition / October 2015

  Cover art: “Woman” by Joana Lopes / Shutterstock; “Bird” by Kichigin / Shutterstock; background by iStock / Thinkstock.

  Cover design by Lesley Worrell.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Version_1

  For my family, whose love and support bind the pages of this book.

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  SOURCES CONSULTED

  READERS GUIDE

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  As I embarked on the writing of Another Woman’s Daughter, I was acutely aware of the challenge ahead—the challenge of writing in the voice of characters whose life experiences and culture were so different from my own. I hope I have not unwittingly caused offense to anyone. In the end I have drawn on my experiences as a mother, daughter, wife, and sister, and I hope that the common denominator I share with my characters is our humanity.

  While the first twenty-five years of my life provided me with personal knowledge of life in South Africa during the apartheid era, I am also indebted to the authors mentioned at the end of this novel, whose works supplemented my knowledge of the world my characters would inhabit.

  If this book inspires you to explore other works set against the backdrop of Africa, you may wish to read Under Our Skin by Donald McRae, We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo, Tsotsi by Athol Fugard, Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton, or The Grass Is Singing by Doris Lessing.

  PROLOGUE

  She stands in front of the stove, her black frame erect and proud, wooden spoon poised over a battered preserving pan. She is completely still, seemingly mesmerized by the rise and fall of the sugary sea. It is a hot African morning and the air is thick with the sweet smell of fig jam.

  Just when I think she’ll never move again, she scoops up a spoonful of the scalding liquid and drops it onto a saucer, then, tilting and rotating the blob of gold, she checks for fine creases in the sample.

  I cross my fingers, hopeful for one more saucer to lick before the golden sweetness is locked away in squat glass jars with shiny brass lids—treasure that will belong to someone else.

  This is the first memory I have of Mme, my dearest mother, the first sweet memory. But it remains tangled with the other events of that dreadful day; I’ve never been able to tease the two apart.

  Many years have passed and still this picture slides into my mind uninvited, the edges polished, the lines clearly defined. I can almost smell her—a comforting cocktail of Sunlight soap and wood smoke—and touch the beads of perspiration hiding in the creases behind her knees. Sometimes her laughter bursts into my head or I hear her call me—my name full and round in her mouth. Frustratingly, though, as with all the memories I have of Mme, her face always blurs under the pressure of my focus.

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  1959

  Miriam

  Mme teetered on tiptoes under the low ceiling beams, placing the last jars of fig jam on the shelf beside the other preserves—a fantastic collection of peaches, cling stone plums, deep purple mulberries, tightly packed apricots, mango chutneys, and lemon achar. I counted one, two, three, four . . . nine fat jars of jam transformed by the fingers of morning sunlight into pots of amber.

  As she balanced there on the three-legged stool, I inspected the soles of her big black feet. They were white on the underside and black on top. I examined mine. They were pale on the bottom too, but not rutted with the same gullies and canyons of hard, dry skin. Mme said one day, when my journey had been longer, my feet would look more like hers.

  She jumped down off the stool and landed with a thud, her bottom wobbling under the taut fabric of her maid’s uniform. I jumped up and down trying to make mine jiggle too, but I couldn’t see far enough over my shoulder to know if it did. Gideon, the garden boy from next door, said Mme had the biggest, most beautiful bottom in the whole of Johannesburg. He would peer over the garden wall whenever she passed and shake his head in admiration. I hoped my bottom would grow round and wobbly like Mme’s.

  A cool breeze swept over the open stable-type door and into the kitchen, diluting the morning heat. Mme shifted her gaze to the kitchen clock, its faded hands edgin
g around the small white face. “Hau, Miriam! Ten o’clock. Still so much to do.”

  She scooped me up and pressed me to her. I loved all her big bits—her bosom, her bottom, her shiny black calves. She had no angles or peaks, just gentle hills and gradual valleys. “Today is a special day, child. The Madam, she will come home with a new baby. We must make everything good.” Mme was excited, so I was too.

  Sitting me down at the kitchen table, she secured a tea towel around my neck, picked a plump mango from the fruit bowl, and, with a small paring knife, began to strip away the thick orange skin. She did this with maddening skill, leaving scarcely a trace of sweet flesh on the peels for me to gnaw at while I waited.

  The fragrance of the ripe fruit blended with the smell of caramelized sugar still hanging in the air. I breathed in a hungry breath. Mangoes were even better than jam. Then I was chasing the slippery orange ball around my plate, wrestling with it and shrieking each time I lost hold. Finally, Mme secured it for me with the stab of a fork, and at last I was able to sink my fingers into the flesh of my favorite fruit.

  It wasn’t long before all that was left of my treat was a pale, hairy pip, which Mme rinsed under the tap so I could add another member to my Mamelodi mango family.

  “This is Baby Mamelodi,” I said, teasing the long, stringy fibers into a frizz.

  Mme frowned as she wiped clean my sticky mustache. “Babies do not have big hair when they are born. You will see the Madam’s baby. Maybe it will have no hair.”

  No hair? My skin prickled. I didn’t like the thought of that. It sounded like a snail without its shell.

  “My baby will have hair,” I said defiantly, putting Baby Mamelodi out on the back step to dry.

  Mme shrugged.

  Later I would draw on eyes, a nose, and a wide-open mouth; Mme said babies could cry a lot. But the hair thing kept bothering me like an annoying fly, and later, when no one was watching, I chopped off Baby Mamelodi’s hair.

  As Mme moved through the rest of her chores, I drove a cotton reel between her busy feet, watched as a tribe of ants swarmed over a blob of jam, and arranged a circle of pebbles around the giant pine tree in the garden. Mme said it had once been a small piccanin of a Christmas tree the Madam had tossed out. Now it stretched to the sky, its roots lifting the slate paving into crooked ripples.

  By the time the sun was high in the sky, a honeyed smell of furniture wax filled the huge home. Bathroom basins boasted gleaming white bowls, wooden floors shone, and the brass reflected all the funny faces I pulled. The house was ready.

  “Everything done,” Mme said, sinking onto the kitchen stool with a mug of hot tea. I leaned in against her. Her skin was shiny and her uniform damp and strong smelling.

  She poured some tea into an egg cup for me, added a drop of milk and two cubes of sugar, then stirred. Now we could drink tea together like grown-ups.

  I stirred again—clink, clink, clink. Then the room was quiet, except for the refrigerator humming in the corner like a hive of bees. I was just about to take my first sip of tea when the neighbor’s dogs began to bark, then the doorbell screamed, cracking open the afternoon stillness.

  I shot under Mme’s skirt.

  “The Madam is here,” she whispered, her words steady and reassuring.

  Taking my hand, Mme started toward the front door. “Remember, we must not upset the new baby.”

  “Celi-a!” The Madam’s voice forced its way through the open louvers into the entrance hall. “Celia!”

  “Coming, Madam.”

  As Mme turned the key, the dark panels of wood lunged toward us. I ran and hid behind the umbrella stand, a hollowed-out elephant’s leg. It smelled of sour milk and damp clay. I wished I hadn’t hidden there. I didn’t like the leg. Somewhere in the veld was an elephant hobbling around on three legs.

  Peering out from behind it, I saw the Madam standing in the doorway, her wide shape silhouetted by the afternoon sun.

  Rita Steiner wasn’t pretty like Mme. She had a curiously flat face, with black button eyes and purplish-colored lips, and her big body was draped in loose skin like an elephant’s slack hide. She had long brown hair, which she kept twisted in a knot at the nape of her neck. Mme said it fell right to her bottom when it was let out. I wished the Madam would let it out. Every night I pulled at my frizzy black curls till tears of pain squeezed out of my eyes, but still I couldn’t get my hair to reach below my ears.

  The Madam rested her hand on the shiny brass knob—a smooth white hand, which didn’t belong to the rest of her lumpy body.

  She moved out of the bright light into the cool darkness of the house. Behind her, hidden until now, was the Master—Michael Steiner. I liked him. He was long and thin like a stick insect, with a nest of brown hair confusing his straight lines, and kind gray eyes that smiled when he spoke. Today his eyes were red and his shoulders curled inward, like a piece of wet paper that had dried awkwardly.

  Mme looked down. She said it was rude to look a white person in the eyes, but my eyes were very disobedient and kept creeping up.

  Sunlight forced its way into the entrance hall. An African afternoon clamored to be let in—the smell of frangipani, the cricking of crickets, a furious blue sky. My mind began to wander to acorn houses, pet lions, and painted warriors.

  The wooden door banged shut. The Steiners were standing in the hallway, their arms empty. I peered out through the louver slats. The car was empty.

  No one said anything. No one moved. An awful gloom coiled itself around the room like a snake squeezing out all the air and light.

  I smiled at the Master. Mme frowned at me.

  “Bring us tea in the sunroom, then get the bags out of the car.” The Madam’s voice cut a hole in the afternoon.

  “Yes, Madam.”

  I wondered why the Madam was walking in such a funny way. She looked as if she were balancing a ball between her legs. Once I made it all the way to the bottom of the garden with a tennis ball gripped between my knees. I didn’t drop it once.

  “Hello, Miriam.” Michael Steiner stepped out of the shadows and rested a warm hand on my head. I wasn’t sure whether to smile or not, so I did a quick up-and-down one.

  The Madam disappeared into the sunroom and the Master quickly followed.

  “Come, child,” Mme whispered, ushering me back to the sunlight and sweetness of the kitchen, and we left the entrance hall to the dark tambuti table that lived there and the wrinkly old elephant leg balancing in the corner.

  For the next few days the Madam stayed upstairs in her bedroom with the blinds lowered and the thick drapes drawn. Mme took her meals up on a tray, and later collected them, barely touched. Once, when I followed Mme, the Madam complained that just seeing me sent pains through her swollen bosom and tugged at her collapsed belly. From then on I was confined to the kitchen as Mme moved through her jobs on tiptoe and voices were kept to a whisper.

  The days that followed were slow and tedious, unless the Steiners were fighting. Then their angry words would burst open the long silences and I’d yearn for the boredom of before.

  “No, Michael, we won’t try again. That’s it! You hear me? Enough!”

  “Reet, I know how you feel. I—”

  “You have no idea! I can’t go through it again. Not again! Two miscarriages, and now . . . now my daughter stillborn!”

  So the Madam’s baby had missed two carriages and was still waiting to be born.

  The Madam’s voice rattled and shook as if she were about to laugh, then she started to cry. “I can’t do it anymore, Michael.”

  I covered my ears, but still her voice found its way into my head.

  “And besides, I don’t really want a child. This has been about you all along. What you want.”

  “That’s unfair, Rita. You know it is. You’ve longed for a child as much as I have. You’re hurting—I understand that. Just
don’t let it come between us. We can—”

  “Leave me alone! Get out!”

  Master Michael asked Mme to make up a bed for him in the spare room, and after that he and the Madam slept in separate beds. It must have been lonely. I would have hated to sleep in a big bed all on my own. What if the tokoloshe came?

  The long hours turned into long days, and then long weeks. Darkness skulked in every corner and lived under every floorboard. It hid beneath the roof tiles and pushed down on all of us, making our minds heavy and our bodies sluggish. It was a relief to escape into the sunshine.

  Then one morning, as the leaves on the trees began to fall, no longer able to hold on to autumn’s gold, the Madam came downstairs, had breakfast, and left for work. Life in the big house returned to the way it had once been, and no mention was ever made of the day the baby didn’t come home.

  CHAPTER TWO

  1959

  Celia

  It was easy to forget what lay beyond, living in Saxonwold—the leafy, white man’s suburb, where the engines of large cars sung deep-voiced hymns, the lawns were grasshopper green, and the thwop of tennis balls being hit back and forth infected us all with a lazy calm.

  The street where I worked was lined with jacarandas, and in spring the road was covered with a carpet of purple petals, which softened the sound of tires on the tarmac and filled the air with the scent of summer.

  I was one of the lucky ones. I had a pass permitting me to live on my employers’ premises, far from the townships and compounds where smoke and corrugated iron traced a different landscape. I could walk down the quiet, shady streets, even when a police van prowling for illegal overstayers appeared from nowhere, sending other black people scattering like pigeons. I didn’t have to wake at four in the morning, wash with cold water from a communal tap, then dress by the shy light of a candle. Nor did I have to catch a train into the city, followed by several buses into the suburbs, sharing the journey with skelms and tsotsis—township thugs who harassed, robbed, and raped. For eight years I had managed to escape this reality.