The Housemaid's Daughter

by Barbara Mutch

  I lifted the heavy bucket and headed back. It was hard getting back to Auntie’s hut. The bucket was heavier than Dawn’s weight and dragged my right arm down. I had to stop halfway to swap over. I fear that I spilt some water on the way.

  Chapter 26

  I gathered my courage and knocked on the headmaster’s door, as I had done the first time I came to school. Mr Dumise worked long hours. He would be there.

  ‘Come in.’

  He looked up from an open file. But he was not alone. Sitting opposite him and gesturing into the air was Silas, the deputy head.

  ‘Mary!’ At the sight of the blanket tied around me they scrambled to their feet.

  ‘It must be a boy,’ cried Silas with enthusiasm. ‘Only a boy could survive all that noisy music!’

  ‘No, sir. It is a girl. I have called her Dawn.’

  Silas clapped his hands and then grasped mine and began to pump them up and down. The headmaster came around his desk and grinned. These were the first true congratulations I had received, apart from the kind doctor’s. ‘What a fine name,’ he said. ‘Enough, Silas! You must rest, now, with your family.’ He was a kind man, Mr Dumise. I had heard that his wife died some years ago. That must be why his shirts were so poorly ironed. Silas skipped behind me, keen to examine Dawn in her blanket.

  ‘The students can wait a day or two till you’re stronger,’ Mr Dumise went on, still smiling.

  I heard the intake of breath behind me and felt Silas’s eyes on my neck and then on my face.

  ‘Mary!’ He grabbed my arm. ‘How could you? To betray your own people!’ He made to shout something else but instead flashed a glance at the headmaster, snatched his hand off my arm as if he’d been burnt and rushed out of the room, letting the door bang behind him.

  Mr Dumise stared after him, mystified, then back at me. I must harden my heart, I said to myself. This is the enemy-in-waiting. This is my private war.

  ‘I have something to say about the baby, sir.’

  Mr Dumise still had not looked at Dawn. He still had not seen her face and felt the divisive power of her skin.

  He hesitated, then said, ‘It’s not necessary, Mary.’ Perhaps all he suspected was that I had no husband. Perhaps he had been told so by Dina, after her visit to Auntie’s shack. I wished that was all it was. I wished I could nod, and leave it at that. I wished I could be an ordinary girl whose boy left her with a baby and no prospect of marriage. Like Mama. Like Miss Rose?

  ‘It is not the lack of a husband, sir. It’s a matter of skin.’

  He stared at me for a moment, confused by me, confused by Silas, then walked reluctantly round to look at Dawn’s small head poking out of the blanket. I stayed looking forwards. I did not want to see his face; I did not want to witness the disgust once again.

  The papers on his desk were in neat piles, just like Master’s desk at Cradock House when I looked for my bank book. Timetables were pasted on to the wall behind his chair and a brown jacket with a frayed collar hung from a tarnished brass hook. Through the window Veronica’s chickens strutted and pecked in the back yard. He walked back to the desk and sat down. He clasped both hands in front of him and stared at the papers before him. I felt Dawn stir and move her head against my back. In the space between her snuffling and the bent head of Mr Dumise hung my chance for a future.

  ‘I know it is a sin, sir, and I pray that one day God will forgive me. But I ask you please…’ The words rushed out of me like on the day I had asked to be a teacher.

  He looked up.

  But instead of the anger I had feared – as with Silas and Auntie – there was only pity. I’d been preparing myself for anger, steeling myself for it, holding myself upright even though my mind and body were weary and longed to rest. As I stood there, his sympathy began to bend me, to make me want to crumple on to the floor and reach for some understanding, some comforting arms. The hours since Dawn was born had been consumed only with survival.

  ‘There’s no need to beg, Mary,’ he said quietly. ‘If it was only up to me your job would be safe. But as teachers we must set an example. There are those who’ll want you to leave.’

  He saw me struggle with weakness and came round the desk to ease me into the chair against the wall. I sat there, leaning forward to protect the precious bundle on my back, and waited until my heart steadied itself, like I used to wait for Dawn’s kicking to subside.

  ‘Is there anything more you need to tell me?’ His voice was gentle.

  I looked up, bewildered. What was this now? Did he want to know who the father was? I dare not tell anyone, in case it got back to Cradock House and Madam.

  He leant against the desk. ‘What I mean is, will there be any…’ he frowned and searched for the right word, ‘difficulty? With the father?’

  ‘Oh no, sir,’ I said, relieved to have an answer that would satisfy. ‘The father will never know.’

  He looked at me uncertainly and I could tell he was wondering about the circumstances of this baby, wondering if I had fallen in love across the ‘colour line’, or whether I had been taken against my will.

  I pulled myself to my feet. For all his sympathy, Mr Dumise could not guarantee my job. It would be up to my fellow teachers, and how they viewed a black woman who had sinned with a white man – whatever the circumstances. I must go back to my classroom. I must give them no other cause for my dismissal. The child on my back is innocent, but even so she will expose me, and challenge those around her into acceptance or rejection of us both. And then divide them by their choice.

  ‘I will go to my class now, sir.’ I clasped my hands together and felt their roughness from outdoor washing. My heart must grow a similar hide.

  ‘Are you feeling strong enough?’

  ‘Yes thank you, sir.’ I looked across at him, at the worry on his face above the shirt frayed from too much washing. I hesitated, then asked, ‘Will it be all right with the other teachers?’

  He shook his head and moved some papers around on the desk. ‘I don’t know, Mary. That’s a battle you will have to fight.’

  I wonder if Ada still plays.

  I remember her Chopin – the Raindrop – and her Debussy. Where I could impart gaiety, Ada could show brilliance. Where I aimed for gentle melancholy, Ada found heartbreak …

  I will be going to KwaZakhele.

  By dint of quiet manipulation, I have arranged for our minister’s wife to lead a pastoral visit to our sister worshippers at a church outside Port Elizabeth. We ladies will be escorted by the minister and his parish council. The aim is to build ties and find ways in which we can support the many poor women and children at that place.

  Edward, after a private visit from the minister, has given grudging consent. I don’t imagine I will learn anything more about Ada from the trip, but I will see Miriam’s grave and I will pray for Ada’s well-being.

  For I am convinced she is alive.

  And when I return, I intend to widen my inquiries.

  Chapter 27

  ‘Out!’ shouted Auntie, waving her arms at me when I arrived back at the hut. Her doek was awry, her overall creased from bending on the riverbank. ‘Take your things and go!’

  She had dragged my suitcase to the door. She had rolled up the mat that I had lain on for the months since I had arrived in the township. Poppie watched from the gloom of her own hut alongside but did not intervene.

  ‘I will go,’ I said, ‘but first I need to feed Dawn.’

  I bent over and untied her from my back with shaking hands. She was crying, her eyes tightly closed, her mouth wide open as if in protest at Auntie’s harsh words. I pushed the overall aside and lifted her to my breast. The eyelids flickered, the tiny mouth pursed and latched on to me and I felt the tug of her gums and the answering response of my body. I am not sure she received much nourishment what with Auntie’s rage and my own nervousness, but the doctor had said I should let her nurse often to encourage the milk to flow.

  ‘Who is the father of this child?’ Aunti
e stood over me with her hands on her hips.

  I remained silent. If I said that Dawn sprang from duty, she would surely conclude that my Master was the father. There were no other white men to whom I was bound by duty. Auntie was shrewd in such matters.

  ‘If it was by force, then it must be said so. A girl who is raped gets more sympathy.’

  Still I remained silent. Dawn’s sucking filled the air between Auntie and me, as she had filled up the space between us when she was inside me.

  ‘I want you gone when I come back,’ Auntie shouted finally, heaving a pile of dry washing on to her hip for delivery to its owner.

  Dawn was falling asleep, her lips were losing their grip on my breast. I lifted her up and patted her back, then wrapped her once more in the blanket and lifted her on to my back. Once she was secure I knelt down and opened the suitcase to check that my spare money and my Pass were still at the bottom. My hands were shaking so much that the paper creased and the money would not stay in one place. Then I pulled my towel from where it hung alongside Auntie’s and put it in the case. There was nothing left here for me now.

  ‘Ada?’ It was Poppie. She peered through the gloom at me. ‘I have brought you some nappies.’ She offered a pile of worn but clean cloths.

  ‘Oh, Poppie,’ I whispered, clasping her hand, ‘you are more kind than I deserve.’

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘I have a friend,’ I said, taking up my case, speaking with a strength I did not feel inside. ‘I must hope she will be kind too.’

  Poppie hesitated, then said, ‘Come back and see your auntie in a while. She will see she has been too quick.’

  And so it was that I found myself once more walking the length of the township on the day Dawn was born. My legs were tired, and my arms ached from carrying the cardboard suitcase and my back was not yet used to the weight of my child. But I must not complain, for this was the easy part. The danger came in crossing the Groot Vis to get to the township at the end of Bree Street where Lindiwe lived. If I was lucky, the river would be low enough to take the drift below Cross Street. If not, I would have to take the iron bridge that I’d vowed I would never cross again. And if I ended up living beyond Bree Street, I would have to make that trip every day, for Lindiwe’s hut and my school lived on opposite sides of the Groot Vis. The river would have to be crossed if I and my child were to survive.

  I found myself remembering the very first long walk – when I left Cradock House with my suitcase in my hand and Dawn growing within me and little prospect of a future beyond washing for a living – and the fear of discovery rushed over me again, and made me turn my face away from passing cars in case Madam and Master should drive by.

  By now it was late afternoon and the streets were thronged. The press of strangers troubled me less than it had that first day, and I found myself listening for the rough ‘Township Bach’ to bear me and the child and my suitcase onwards through the tight crowds. Ragged children wove past, bowling uneven hoops of wire before them. Who would Dawn play with when she was their age? Who would be prepared to be her friend?

  I was lucky with the river that day. The drift was open. I sat down on the riverbank to take off my broken shoes. It would not do to get them wet – they were the only shoes I had. The brown water of the Groot Vis slipped smoothly over my feet as I waded across, cool as the water on my neck from the tap in the laundry at Cradock House.

  Lindiwe was not at home when I arrived, so I sank down with my suitcase outside her hut, grateful for the chance to rest. The hut was not far from the strict St James School, and from there came the sound of a choir singing Panis Angelicus. Then an African song with chanting and clapping. I should form a choir, too. I should help my children to sing and not just to dance to my piano.

  Lindiwe’s hut was newer than Auntie’s, with a good thatch roof that seemed thicker than Auntie’s and one small window cut in the side with a square of glass propped within its uneven edges. This meant the inside of the hut was lighter. Perhaps, I thought through my weariness, I could pay Lindiwe not only money for rent but also teach her to write without her needing to worry about paying me. That is what I could say to her when she saw me sitting outside her door. That could be my plan. A negotiation, I murmured to myself. Before I learnt the word from young Master Phil, I never realised how much of life seemed to revolve around negotiation.

  Some barefoot boys in crumpled shirts and grey school shorts ran past, staring at me curiously, wondering why I sat clutching my child on the bare earth outside Lindiwe’s hut in the growing cold of evening. A man and woman lurched away from the youngsters’ path, and yelled after them but their voices were thick with drink and hardly carried. I looked away.

  The choir-singing had stopped and the sun was moving down past the huts now, casting long shadows that painted the ground black behind them. The creeping shade took me back to the darkness of young Master Phil’s bedroom, broken only by the bar of yellow sunlight that used to wander across the floor from the gap in the curtains. Once, when we’d been reading Great Expectations, the sunlight came and fell across his bed and he stretched his fingers into its yellowness and said I already knew what part of Pip he had inside himself. At the time, I never thought too hard about what he meant. I never felt it was my right to know. But maybe I should have done. Maybe if I had thought more deeply, I could have saved him.

  ‘Oh sir,’ I murmured, too tired to guard against the welling loneliness, ‘forgive me.’ Yet what risk would I have run to know such things? Even after all this time I cannot bring myself to accept what he might have meant. It is too dangerous, it takes what I did out of duty with Master and recasts it with Master Phil as something altogether different.

  ‘Ada?’ Lindiwe stood before me, shoulders bent under a heavy load, the muscles standing out on her arms and neck like thick cords.

  ‘It will only be for a short while,’ I said urgently, struggling to my feet. Dawn cried into the blanket on my back, then fell silent. ‘I will pay you. And I will teach you everything I know for free.’

  ‘Oh, Ada.’ She slung down her load and sat down. I levered myself down beside her. This time she didn’t avoid my eyes and I could see that hers were no longer uncertain, merely weary. ‘How could I turn you away?’ She motioned inside the hut. ‘But it’s so small.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I gasped and took her hand. ‘God bless you! I will try not to be a burden.’

  The tears that had stayed away since the early morning suddenly came back. And then Lindiwe leant against me and wept too, saying that she had hated herself all day for the manner in which she had greeted Dawn that morning.

  ‘I don’t know if I can do this,’ I said, tears and relief mixed together. ‘I have sinned against someone I love and I have made God the Father angry.’

  ‘Hush,’ murmured Lindiwe, stroking my arm. ‘That is past. God will forgive if you serve Him through the child.’ She paused and her forehead creased and I could tell she was searching for the right words like she used to during our lessons. ‘God is not like the white man. He does not hate Dawn because of what you did.’

  I thought about this for a while as darkness gathered about us and my body began to stiffen, and the sky deepened to an inky blue. It was what I hoped too. While I myself was perhaps forever flawed, I could still serve Him through Dawn. And whatever happened, God would not punish the child. But what of Madam? Even if I found a measure of forgiveness through Dawn, I could never receive it from Madam.

  Candles began to flicker from nearby huts. A woman was singing to her child, Thula thu’, like Mama used to sing to me, like I would one day sing to Dawn. Back towards Bree Street, Cradock’s electric lights beckoned through the bluegums and the pepper trees in front gardens. Madam would be sitting down in the lounge opposite Master. The light would be shining on the brooch she wore at her throat, perhaps the green one, perhaps – still – Master Phil’s military badge.

  ‘She’s beautiful,’ said Lindiwe, holding down a fold of
the blanket and examining Dawn’s sleeping face closely. ‘One day you will be proud.’

  * * *

  Before Dawn was born, I was in the midst of a negotiation with my students. It was not a negotiation about money, like with Auntie, but about lessons. I needed to find a way to teach that went further than playing every noisy piece I knew. But I proceeded slowly, as young Master Phil had told me. Negotiations, even about things that don’t involve money, take time. So I played and played, and waited for the day when they would be prepared to give me some quiet at the start of each lesson to talk about what lay behind the tunes they loved to dance to. That was the negotiation: a little teaching, in return for more jive.

  But, as it turned out, I had no need for such tactics. Dawn proved to be the ultimate silencer. One look at the child’s pale skin and all riotous behaviour ceased. ‘Have you heard of a man called Beethoven?’ I asked into the unexpected hush, playing the first bars of the Eroica symphony. They stared at me, they stared at one another, they peered furtively at the new baby on my back, and then they listened. They discovered that Beethoven had been deaf and yet still managed to make beautiful tunes. They also discovered that many musicians were as poor as they themselves were, and experienced hunger like they did, and found joy in music as they did. Many were outcasts among their own people. The colour of Dawn – herself an outcast – was somehow a backdrop to the stories I told, and to the tunes that brought the class alive at the end of each lesson.

  So while I had feared jeering, it did not come about. Instead, Dawn provided both the lull and the spur to take my teaching to a new level. Now, I taught first and played afterwards – to a rapt audience. They accepted the new arrangement without objection.

  After this success, I went further. Since hearing the St James choir, I began to play tunes that could be sung to. I would write the words on the blackboard before the children arrived in class, and leave them to sing along if they wished. Rousing pieces, like Ode to Joy, or lilting songs like the ones Madam used to sing about Ireland. At first they only danced. Then, later, they began to sing too. Roughly, wildly at first, then with more understanding, even though, like me, they’d never seen the places we sang about.