Another Woman's Daughter

by Fiona Sussman

  I was about halfway home when the resistance in my pedals gave way and my feet started to spin furiously. My bike chain had slipped off its cogs. Not wanting to ruin my new nails by fiddling with a greasy chain, I decided to push my bike the rest of the way.

  I’d had the best time ever, yet as I struggled uphill the warmth of afternoon started to leak out of my day. For some time now I’d been feeling a vague sense of disquiet. It was nothing I could articulate or define, but rather a peculiar, haunting awareness of something—a restlessness without clear shape or definition. And it seemed to plague me the most whenever I was alone and had time to ponder things.

  As I pushed my bike up the street, a familiar circuit of dark thoughts slipped into my mind. Thirteen years ago a woman gave birth to me. My mother. But she gave me away. Was I not good enough? Why didn’t she want me?

  For almost seven years I’d forced these thoughts down, depriving them of oxygen and light. It had taken all my energy to keep them buried this way—existing only as a dull gnawing grayness. But then, as my body started to grow and change, and womanhood knocked at my door, questions—relentless questions—forced their way into my head. I tried to ignore them, tried to plug the holes, but they were insistent and soon became the backdrop of my every day.

  I pushed my bike up the gravel path of our house. The place was in darkness; no one was home. I’d hoped Rita and Michael would have come back from work early on my birthday.

  I was unlatching the back gate when, without warning, my morose thoughts and questions morphed into something more. I sucked in a stuttering breath. An image, which had been hiding in the dark room of my mind, was finally developed. And it didn’t fit with what I’d always been told.

  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.

  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. Her laughter bursts into my head. Then I hear her call me—my name full and round in her mouth. Frustratingly, though, her face blurs under the pressure of my focus.

  I was confused. Had this picture simply grown out of longing? Out of a desperate wish to be wanted? Had I painted it to fulfill a fantasy?

  But there was more. The corners of this beautiful snapshot were curling in and a darkness appeared to be growing like mold over the color.

  I wheeled my bike around to the back of the house. The light was on in the shed. I could hear voices.

  “How can you live with yourself? You promised to give it to her. She was the child’s mother, for God’s sake!”

  “Don’t lecture me with your high-and-mighty morals, Michael Steiner. And don’t pretend you weren’t in on it too. If you go giving it to her now, it’ll just be more difficult. A nightmare, in fact. It’s been no picnic to this point, I can tell you. Had I only known how hard it would be, I don’t think I—”

  “But why keep it hidden all these years?”

  “How is it any different from everything else we’ve kept from her? You tell me! You didn’t want to share her either.”

  “Is there nothing we can agree on, Rita?”

  “How about you trying, just for once, to see it from my side. It’s no wonder the kid doesn’t like me, with you forever critical of what I do. I’ve never been good enough, have I?”

  “Reet—”

  “Anyway, next time don’t go prying under my bed.”

  “I wasn’t prying. I told you. I was looking for somewhere to hide her present. I can’t live with myself, Rita. I promised Celia—”

  “You promised Celia, did you? Of course you did!”

  My bike fell to the ground with a clatter.

  Michael flung open the shed door, outing me in a white shaft of light.

  “Miriam!”

  Behind him stood Rita, her face flushed, her eyes glistening with tears.

  No one said anything.

  Rita cleared her throat. “Miriam, Michael is taking you to dinner tonight. Sorry, but I have a talk to prepare.”

  “But, Reet, it’s Miriam’s birthday.” His eyes implored her. “Your presentation isn’t due till next week. Don’t do this.”

  She pushed past him, past me, and headed for the house.

  “Don’t ignore your duty, Rita,” he shouted after her. “Your responsibility to our child!”

  She turned, her eyes ablaze. “Our child? Don’t you dare talk to me about responsibility, Michael Steiner. You . . . you . . . Her bloody mother gave her away,” she shouted, pointing a shaking finger at me.

  Michael lunged at her, trying to put a hand over her mouth.

  I covered my ears and ran blindly into the night.

  —

  Several hours later, Michael and I sat opposite each other in a dimly lit Chinese restaurant. We were the only patrons in the forlorn room with red and orange lanterns drooping from the ceiling.

  I looked down at the flat banana fritter in front of me. The fizzing sparkler in the middle of my melting ball of ice cream was listing to one side, silver sparks leaping from it like fleas into the night.

  I turned and saw my reflection in the window—a skinny black girl illuminated intermittently by a flashing neon light—The Golden Wok, The Golden Wok, The . . . And as if hypnotized, I fell into a soothing state of numbness.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  1967

  Celia

  At 10:40 A.M. an orange light flashed above the vacated counter. “Next!” A small voice, made bold by the microphone, boomed across the room. I hurried toward the light and the square black letters I knew by heart read Bantu.

  Behind the glass division sat a tiny madam. She could have been no more than twenty years old, but her pale face was empty and her blue-ice eyes flat.

  “Ja?”

  “Thank you, Madam. I come for this.”

  I slid a hand into my bra and pulled out two yellowed sheets of paper, unfolding them carefully on the counter.

  The white madam became impatient. “Here. Pass it under the glass.”

  I let go.

  Her eyes moved quickly over Miriam’s birth certificate and the letter the Madam had written with me seven years earlier.

  “Mm-hm. Uh-huh. Yes. And?”

  “I want to speak with my daughter. On this paper, you see, Madam, Miriam, she is my daughter.”

  “Not anymore,” the madam said. “This says you gave her to a Mr. and Mrs. Steiner, who were going to live in England. She’s theirs now.”

  That was not right. I had to explain. “Hau, no, Madam. They say to me they will bring her back and she will write me letters, but nothing.”

  “Look here . . . uh, Celia. According to this letter, you’ve signed away your rights to the child. It says you agreed to them adopting her in England. Is this your name? You put this cross here?”

  I couldn’t keep up with the madam’s fast words as they spilled out of her thin, pink mouth.

  “Is—this—your—name?” she repeated. “Celia Mphephu?”

  “Yes.” I smiled. We were getting somewhere. “Yes, this is my name.”

  “Then you have agreed. There is nothing more I can do.”

  Nothing more I can do. I understood those words.

  “Hau, Madam.
I am trying for so long. Six years. Please, you must help me—”

  A loud buzzing noise rang out, interrupting us. I spun around, ready to run. It was either a bomb scare or a fire alarm. But no one was trying to escape the room. I turned back to the madam just in time to see her pushing my papers back through the small gap between us, then she pulled down the sliding glass partition with a loud clunk.

  “Koffie?” I heard her say to the white master in the next booth, as she rolled her chair away from me and tottered toward a door at the back of the office. It was her coffee break.

  My swollen feet throbbed and my tummy growled as I stood waiting for the pretty one to return. I had been up since four that morning and had caught three different buses to get to Pretoria, where all official matters were dealt with. My boss had agreed to give me the day off, so long as I worked Sunday instead. I was hungry, and the thought of coffee made my stomach call out, but I dared not leave the queue I’d been waiting in since before sunup.

  At 11:00 A.M. the madam lifted the glass wall and sat down.

  “Ja?” There was no recognition in her eyes.

  I pushed Miriam’s birth certificate back under the counter, uninvited.

  “You? Still here! I thought I told you there’s nothing I can do.”

  “Asseblief, miessies. Please. I love my daughter so bad. She needs her mummy.”

  “You should have thought about that before you gave her away,” she said, refusing to pick up the document. Her blue eyes met mine. My heart looped inside my chest. For a moment we were just two women together in this world. Then she looked away.

  “Please, Madam.”

  She sighed a sigh that said, I’m not going to get rid of this girl so easily.

  The master in the next booth looked up, and she rolled her pretty eyes at him. He laughed, commiserating with her over their frustrating job. “Whites adopting a native,” she said, lifting up the limp sheet of paper. The master’s smile disappeared and his top lip rolled back over his square white teeth.

  “Look,” she said, turning back to me. “Leave your details. I’ll see what I can find out. I doubt this is even a legal document. What’s your address?”

  “Thank you. Thank you, Madam!”

  Before I could give the answers she wanted, she realized it was going to be quicker to get the information herself than wait on my broken sentences. “Dompas.” She stretched her arm under the glass, opening and shutting her hand like a duck’s mouth.

  I fumbled for my passbook.

  The madam scanned the pages. “You’re working as an office cleaner in Joburg?”

  “Yes, Madam. Office cleaner. You can write me at my boss—Master Nicholson. Nicholson Commercial Cleaners, P.O. Box 196, Johannesburg.”

  The woman scribbled the address down. “And your full name and date of birth?”

  “Celia Dembe Mphephu,” I said, feeling important.

  The white one continued to page through my passbook, preferring to trust the official print. Suddenly she stopped. “What’s this?”

  I craned my neck. All I could make out was a meaningless blur of print, stamps, and pen marks.

  “You’ve been in jail?” she said, her small voice growing loud.

  The big hall went quiet. People in other queues turned to see what the commotion was about.

  My mouth felt dry. “Yes, Madam. But it is mistake. Big mistake.”

  The pretty one’s cheeks had turned pink and her blue eyes were now almost all white, as if finally frozen over. She wasn’t listening to my words.

  I kept trying. “Six year ago I leave very bad job. The madam—a Portuguese madam—hau, she get too angry. She tell police I am a thief. But it is wrong. It is not true.”

  “Go! Don’t waste my time.”

  I wanted to say more, but I couldn’t; her words had winded me.

  “See how long the queue is behind you? We have no time for tsotsis. Your daughter is better off without you. Now leave!”

  Her words kept coming, exploding like bullets as they hit.

  In a daze, I turned to walk away. My mind was tired and my desperation finally robbed of its power. Then I remembered Miriam’s birth certificate. I swung around just in time to see the flimsy sheet shimmying off the counter and floating to the floor. The Bantu queue parted as I dived between bags and black legs and scrambled on all fours to retrieve the document. People looked on, my story distracting them from their own. Clutching the crumpled prize to my breast, I climbed slowly to my feet and, putting one foot in front of the other, crossed the wide-open space. The piece of paper in my hand was the only proof I had that thirteen years ago I had given birth to a baby girl. It was the only piece of Miriam I had left—all that stood between me and madness.

  Above the hush of the room, I heard the master ask the one with empty blue eyes out for a drink that evening. “Drink vanaand?”

  I looked back.

  The madam, her cheeks still an angry pink, smiled coyly. “Ja, goed,” she said, crumpling up the paper with my details.

  I stumbled out of the building into the white afternoon light.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  1969

  Miriam

  One Tuesday morning as I finished my breakfast and contemplated the prospect of double algebra, I became aware of a strange, warm sensation between my legs. Thinking I’d spilled some porridge, I looked down and saw a bright red stain on my seat. I was bleeding.

  “Reet!” I called out, dashing into the hallway. Rita was just leaving for work. “Reet, something’s wrong! I’m bleeding.”

  Already wrapped in her coat and scarf, she dropped her bag and, with a bemused expression, retraced her steps. I’d come to understand Rita didn’t like surprises. Anything unexpected challenged the order and routine for which she perpetually strove. To Rita, life was either black or white; she detested the gray messiness of real living. Feelings frightened her. It was no wonder she and Michael clashed constantly. Dear, disheveled Michael. He embodied the very muddle of existence—the capriciousness of emotion, the color of chaos. Michael was all heart and humanity; Rita, all reason and logic, her career at least offering a comfortable corner on the edge of the bedlam. The labeled laboratory slides, obedient corpses, and microscope magnifications were predictable, manageable, nonjudgmental.

  “Must be the curse,” she said with a barking laugh. “No need for an ambulance, then.”

  I swallowed. “The curse?”

  “You know . . . a woman’s curse. Your monthly.”

  I knew a little about monthly periods, gleaned mostly from discarded snippets of schoolyard talk divulged in whispers and giggles. You could bleed to death if your period was heavy. If you kissed a boy while you were bleeding, you could have a baby. You could also get off PE if you brought a note from home.

  “Hang on,” Rita said, ducking into her bedroom and reemerging moments later with an opened packet in her hand. “There you go,” she said, shoving it at me. “Now I’d better be on my way, or I’ll be late. See you tonight.”

  “Okay.”

  I inspected the bulky parcel of maxi-sized sanitary pads. Inside were five rectangular wads of cotton wool with a loop at either end. A rip in the packet had obscured the diagram, but it appeared the pad attached to some sort of belt worn around the waist. I looked inside the packet. No belt.

  The front door opened and Michael walked in with the newspaper. I shot into the bathroom and locked the door.

  “Miriam, I’m just off now,” he called out, his bright voice pushing into my loneliness. “See you tonight.”

  “See you,” I said, trying to sound normal.

  I’m not sure how long I sat there in the long, narrow room, leaning against the cold green tiles. My bottom was numb and my legs clumsy with pins and needles by the time I finally got up and headed for the Patels’, where Mrs Patel demystified menstru
ation for me over chapatis, sweet tea and tears, and a loaned sanitary belt.

  “Wait,” she said after our long chat, disappearing into her bedroom. I half expected to see her emerge bearing a pack of pads. Instead, she was holding a small velvet box, which she put down on the table in front of me.

  “This is for you, my dear, to celebrate your entrance into womanhood.”

  I didn’t know what to say. This whole womanhood thing didn’t seem like something I wanted to celebrate.

  “Open it,” she said encouragingly, pushing it closer. “It’s a present.”

  I picked it up. The box felt so light I thought it was empty, but as I turned it over, something inside clinked. I fingered the corners where the smooth navy velvet had been worn away to expose gray card, then I lifted the lid. Inside, lying within a nest of coils, was a rose-gold locket.

  “Mrs Patel, it’s beautiful!”

  “It was my mother’s,” she said, touching my arm. “She was a fine woman, just like you.”

  It was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever given me.

  “But—but it’s yours,” I stuttered. “Your mother’s. I can’t keep it.”

  Mrs Patel dispensed with my protestations with a wave of her hand.

  I opened the locket. It unfolded into two perfect ovals.

  “Maybe someday you’ll put a photo inside of someone special,” she said, choking up with tears. Everything blurred. “Come now, aren’t we a right pair!” she said, passing me a tissue. “No more tears. I want to see it around your lovely young neck.” She shot a dissatisfied glance in the mirror. “Not my old, crepey one.”

  The locket was still warm from her touch as it settled in the gap between my collarbones.

  “Thank you, Mrs Patel.”

  “And, while we’re immersed in women’s business,” she said, “I think it’s time we bought you your own bra, young lady. Definitely overdue.” And with that, we headed into town.