Another Woman's Daughter

by Fiona Sussman

  The best part of my day was lunchtime, that precious half hour when I could sit on the grassy verge with the other maids and houseboys in the street, talking, laughing, and sharing—a salve for the pain of faraway families and demanding madams.

  One of us usually had a baby strapped to our back. Rarely it was our own; more often it was one of our white charges. Regardless, the child always seemed content, wrapped close to a mother’s flesh and rocked by constant movement and chatter.

  My Miriam started life in just such a way—on my back—her warm, pudgy body pressed hard up against mine. Fearful of losing my job, I had worked until just before the pains came, and returned from the hospital up north only hours after pushing my daughter into the world. I was back at work before the stream of blood sapping my strength ceased to flow.

  When Miriam grew too big to be carried, she would potter about nearby, foraging for insects and treasures, and at night snuggle up close, her small body molding itself to mine. Miriam—my big little shadow.

  For a time I managed to ignore the day looming like a storm cloud on the horizon—the day I would have to send my only daughter back to the homelands. She couldn’t stay in the white suburbs. The law decreed that, like her brothers before her, she must return to her place of birth just outside of Louis Trichardt, a small farming community in the Northern Transvaal. And once again I would have to suffer a separation that would leave me with a deep donga in my heart and an emptiness in my soul. What rhino deserts her calf? What elephant leaves her young? Can a mother turn away from her child simply because she is told to do so? So I clung to my Miriam for as long as I dared.

  With time this became harder to do—juggling my job, the law of the land, and the needs of my cheeky little sprite. Miriam was conspicuous; she had energy. No longer content to simply follow me around on my daily chores, she wanted to play and yearned for the company of others. Sometimes, out of frustration and panic, I would find myself chiding her for just being a child who ran and wriggled and laughed and breathed. In the end I realized I could not contain her and therefore could not keep her.

  Like a beautiful song that eventually draws to a close, so the last handful of weeks passed, and a full orange moon hung once again in the sky. I lay awake wrestling with what was to come; the next day I would have to book a taxi to transport my last born away and out of my life.

  —

  “Sorry, Madam.” I hovered behind her as she sat eating her breakfast.

  Rita Steiner looked up from the newspaper she was reading.

  “Hau, Madam. I must be for one week off work.”

  She straightened, put down her paper, and swallowed her mouthful of toast.

  “For a week!”

  My chest tightened.

  “What is it anyway? Another funeral?” she said, irritation lining her words.

  “Oh no, Madam. I must take Miriam to her granny in the north. She cannot stay in Joburg no more. She must go back to the homeland like my other children, or police will make trouble for me.”

  The Madam shook her head. “No, Celia. Sorry, but no.” The skin on her neck had risen into fat red blotches and her bosom was heaving up and down.

  I did not understand. The Madam never showed strong emotion. Her white way was always so clipped and tidy, her face careful and controlled. Only once had I spied something different, something raw and unchecked—the day her baby died.

  “I can’t let you go. I’m sorry, Celia. It’s a bad time; I’m just too busy at work.”

  My head felt light. I swayed unsteadily as I tried to understand what this answer would mean. I should have been pleased; I could keep Miriam for longer. Yet my happiness was a clumsy bird, unable to take off. I understood there could be no happy ending for a black person who turned her eyes from the law.

  Maybe the Madam saw me dig my fingers into the back of my hand; perhaps she spotted the panic of a trapped animal in my eyes; because suddenly, as if a tight belt had been loosened, her expression changed and she pulled a smile across her face. “Later in the year, hey? You leave it with me. I’ll try and make some inquiries about getting a special dispensation or something. I mean honestly, we can’t send such a bright young button to a farm school, can we?”

  She paused, waiting for me to answer, as if we were engaged in a real conversation. But what could I say?

  “Now, today I want you to polish the brass,” she said, picking up her newspaper again. “I’ve bought a new tin of Brasso. And remember to cover the table with a thick layer of newspaper. See how you’ve scratched the surface here with one of those heavy pots?”

  I nodded and turned to go.

  “Oh, another thing, Celia.”

  “Yes, Madam.”

  “I’m having guests on Saturday night so I’ll need you to work late. Ask one of your friends to help, if you like. Maybe Mrs. Brink’s maid, Sarah.” She picked up her half-eaten piece of toast. Fig jam dripped onto the plate. “She must be here by six, and I’ll need her until at least midnight.”

  —

  So life continued, with Miriam shadowing me as I scrubbed toilets, peeled vegetables, polished floors, hung washing, and cleaned windows, her presence and cheerful chatter lending a welcome lightness to my day. Sometimes I sang to her as I worked, and, when not too busy, told her the stories my mother had once told me. These were the days we both loved best. She would listen wide-eyed as I explained how the leopard got his spots, why the giraffe’s long neck once became knotted, and how people in the villages went blind if the smoke from burning tambuti wood got in their eyes. These tales carried us both beyond the concrete confines of Johannesburg to the red earth and simple life of my childhood—to a magical place where we trembled when the lion roared, laughed as the monkeys fooled, and basked in the glow of the sun as it set behind the old thorn tree.

  At the end of each day, around five o’clock, Miriam would listen out for the sound of a car horn announcing the Madam’s arrival, then she would race outside, beating me to the gate. There she would stand, out of breath and to attention, ready to help carry in parcels and bags from the car.

  Sometimes the Madam arrived home with a special surprise for Miriam—a currant bun or packet of Marie biscuits—which she would be invited to share with the Madam in the sunroom.

  Gradually Miriam grew less wary of my employer, and although she held on to the reserve every black child was brought up to have in the presence of a white person, I saw how much she looked forward to the Madam’s homecoming—a welcome relief from the monotony of her days with only me for company.

  One afternoon, as I dusted bookshelves and Miriam gulped down a long glass of lychee juice, the Madam reached into her big maroon bag and pulled out a book with bright orange letters scattered across the cover.

  “Miriam, would you like to learn to read?”

  I turned. My child was nodding excitedly. Fire and frost swept through me. I could not read. It would be good for her to learn . . . but I would not be the one to teach her. Up until that moment all Miriam’s discoveries had been through my eyes; she had held my hand and I had led. Now that privilege was being pried from me.

  “Ooh, yes, please, Madam, thank you!” she cried, her hungry excitement washing over the room.

  And it wasn’t long before her world, and so mine, burst its banks to embrace castles and crowns, Wonderland and Toad Hall.

  CHAPTER THREE

  March 1960

  Celia

  The dead lay between lost shoes and scattered litter, their faces in the dirt, their limbs holding on to the shape of their last movement. Their blood showed up black in the newsprint.

  I covered Miriam’s eyes and took another look at the photograph that owned the front page of The Star.

  “Hau, sixty-nine dead,” Johanna whispered, her hands trembling like mine. “Too many wounded.”

  It was our lunch break and we wer
e sitting in the generous shade of an old jacaranda tree. The day was hot and dry, but the mood dark.

  Philemon, the gardener from number forty-three, kept reading.

  I held Miriam tightly on my lap; danger felt close. But she squirmed and wriggled, unhappy to be restrained. There were crickets to be caught and ants to arrest.

  “This is just the beginning,” Philemon said, lowering the newspaper. “There will be more violence. You will see. And not only in Sharpeville,” he warned. “It is going to spread. The young people, they have had enough.”

  “So bad, so bad, so—” Johanna kept repeating.

  “It was a peaceful protest,” Philemon exclaimed, his voice rising above a safe whisper. “They were carrying no weapons. The crowd was well behaved. Yet the police, they gave no warning. Women and children shot in the back as they ran away!”

  Was this the Philemon I knew? Philemon with the missing tooth and mischievous smile? The “yes-baas, no-baas” garden boy? The dependable Rhodesian worker? Anger distorted the calm lines of his face, and it scared me to see him this way.

  I stood up. It was two o’clock. My lunch break was over.

  “See you tomorrow, sister,” I think they said. I barely heard them. The situation in the country was not right. I knew that. But to try to change it would only bring more suffering and bloodshed. It was easier to keep things the way they were; to dream was too dangerous.

  That afternoon I worked on all fours outside the Madam’s study, rubbing beeswax into the wooden floors with such force my arms ached. I was trying to scour the horror from my mind and erase the new and frightening uncertainty the day had imported.

  The floor gleamed and I could see the shadow of my reflection in the golden strips of wood, my silhouette interrupted only where dark grooves divided each floorboard.

  “Yesterday thousands of black South Africans answered the call for protest against the pass laws. Peaceful demonstrations took place . . .”

  I stopped.

  “Early in the day, in Sharpeville, an unarmed crowd started to gather outside the local police station.”

  The radio had been turned on in the Madam’s study.

  I shuffled closer and put my ear to the cool door.

  “. . . policemen inside the station soon outnumbered . . . squadron of aircraft flew low over the crowd in an attempt to . . . reinforcements were called . . . conflicting reports . . . panic . . . no warning . . . opened fire . . . people turned . . . police continued to shoot . . . shot in the back. Women and children are among the dead. There has been international outrage. In a written statement, the Minister of Police—”

  Then without any warning, the study door swung open and I was staring at the Madam’s green and gold sandals, her pale flesh spilling over the straps like rising bread dough.

  “Celia!”

  “Madam.” I leaned back on my haunches, my head bowed, my heart beating out the long seconds that followed.

  Finally she spoke. “Bring me a jug of cold water.”

  I jumped up and hurried to the kitchen, my breathing fast and loud in my ears. With shaking hands I grabbed a jug from the cupboard and opened the tap, water spraying over my face and uniform.

  “Hau!” I cried, chiding myself for my clumsiness and more.

  I twisted the ice tray, and frozen cubes dropped like hailstones into the pitcher, screeching and squealing as they hit the tepid water. Quickly I sliced a lemon, crushed the thick circles of fruit against the glass, then covered the jug with a crocheted cloth, before placing it on a tray.

  “Put it down here,” the Madam said evenly, pointing to the bamboo trolley beside her.

  I moved into the room, my unease starting to settle. The Madam did not appear to be any different, despite her having discovered me eavesdropping.

  I froze. Lying on top of the trolley was a copy of The Star.

  Time slowed.

  The Madam followed my stare.

  Her cheeks rippled.

  She looked back at me.

  I tried to look away, but I couldn’t; the Madam had wound her gaze too tightly around mine. Then in two quick movements she’d folded the newspaper and slipped it into the wastepaper basket, her eyes never once leaving my face. I felt sick, as if I’d unwittingly uncovered some terrible secret, as if I had somehow found her out. Her eyes searched mine, looking for a way in. I did not see anything. I know nothing. This day is no different from any other.

  After what seemed like forever, she leaned forward and picked up the jug. The sound of the ice cubes colliding with each other cracked open the silence.

  I sucked in a stuttering breath.

  That was when I noticed the Madam’s fingers, which were gripping the jug handle; the newsprint had stained them black.

  In the days following the Sharpeville Massacre, violence broke out in townships across the country. There was a boldness in the eyes of the black youths—an insolence I had not witnessed before—and it frightened me. These township kids had looked down the barrel of the future and seen little hope. They had nothing to lose.

  Police vans were fuller and appeared from nowhere, more often than usual. Whites bought handguns and tiny tear-gas canisters, which could be slipped easily into handbags and blazer pockets; vicious dogs paced the perimeters of huge homes; and snatched snippets of dinner-party conversations were always about “getting out.”

  During our lunch breaks, the other maids and I pooled the crumbs of information we’d gathered from whispered rumors and stolen nibs of news. Slowly we pieced together a patchwork picture of what lay beyond the nervous calm of Saxonwold.

  Riots were spreading. A man by the name of Nelson Mandela—a member of the African National Congress—had publicly burned his passbook and called for countrywide protest strikes. Black activists were being detained and tortured at Marshall Square, while some simply mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen again. Others were tossed from fast-moving vehicles, to lie like bloating sheep in the midday heat.

  Unease hung over the country like a thick fog, dulling the gold from the mines, fading the rich crops of corn, and cooling the endless sunshine. And each day the knot in my stomach drew tighter. I didn’t want trouble. This was the life I had been born into, the life I knew. Against a background of hardship, I had found a safe and comfortable corner. Change was frightening and promised nothing.

  Then a state of emergency was declared, and just as if power and telephone lines had been brought tumbling down in a storm, all free communication ceased. Newspapers were muzzled, radio stations gagged, and public gatherings of more than three black people banned. Even our lunchtime get-togethers had to be cautiously pared. The police and the army were everywhere. The Madam seemed curter and the Master more distant. There was distrust in every shopkeeper’s eye, even old Master Gupta’s. I felt guilt and shame for all the trouble my people were causing.

  Finally, an eerie calm spread over the country and hung there uncertainly.

  After a time, rumors started to subside and worries, even mine, abated. One morning I awoke to find this pretend peace had become permanent. The white suburbs once more breathed with ease, and life as we had always known it began again.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  October 1960

  Celia

  “Celia, the Master and I would like to talk with you after you’ve finished your dinner.”

  It was an unusually chilly October evening and the Madam had rung the bell, summoning me to clear the dinner dishes. The Madam, the Master, and Miriam had just finished their evening meal.

  The first time Miriam was invited to join the Steiners for a meal had come as a shock to me, as if I’d chanced upon a burglar in my room. Yet when I looked back, there were many clues; my eyes had just been blind to them. For Miriam to join the Steiners for dinner was as natural as one foot following the other.

  Miriam love
d everything about these evenings—the heavy pieces of silver cutlery, the stiff white napkins I’d starched and ironed earlier in the day, the salt and pepper cellars in the shape of small dogs. Best of all were the tales Master Michael would tell her—he could stretch out a story like a beautiful sunset, painting it with color and magic and wonder. Twisting his lips, peaking his eyebrows, and making funny accents, he’d captivate Miriam so completely I’d have to bump the back of her chair to remind her to eat. Stories were a luxury, food a necessity. I knew the steak would have no gristle and there would be no pockets of green in the potatoes.

  Miriam’s favorite story was “The Gift of the Magi.” I came to know it well. She never tired of hearing how the two poor lovers each gave up the one thing most precious to them in order to be able to buy a present for the other. Whenever Master Michael told the story, Miriam was always hopeful that, somehow, their predicament would be solved. But as Della’s long hair inevitably fell to the ground, Miriam would be gripped by the calamity of it all, as if she were hearing the story for the very first time.

  “Hau, Master!” she’d cry, devastated that Della had sold her hair to buy Jim a chain for his watch, only to discover he in turn had sold his watch to buy combs for her beautiful long hair.

  And later, when the moon was high in the sky, she’d lie next to me, reliving the evening and retelling the well-worn tale over and over. “Mme, Della was too silly. When my hair grows long I will never cut it!”

  —

  I had been aware for some time of a change at the Saxonwold house. The mood had grown as light and easy as a butterfly in flight. Even the Madam seemed happy.

  “Take Sunday off, Celia,” she’d say. “Just set the breakfast table and that’ll be fine.” Or, “I’ve left out some pickled fish for you to have with your mielie pap today.”

  I noticed too that the bed in the spare room had often not been slept in, while most mornings the sheets on the big bed were in complete disarray.