The Housemaid's Daughter

by Barbara Mutch

  It was only after he’d left, when I went up to my bedroom to lie down for a while, that I saw the envelope tucked into my diary on the dressing table, alongside the small vase of geraniums I picked yesterday.

  Is Ada well?

  Mrs Cath came to sit on my bed yesterday evening. ‘No, don’t get up,’ she said as I made to rise, wondering if she was ill, if there was something she wanted, as I’d wondered what Master wanted …

  ‘Dear Ada,’ she murmured, smoothing Mama’s blue shawl that lay across the bottom of the bed. ‘Why did you do it? To threaten the Superintendent – it’s close to blackmail.’

  I hadn’t met the word blackmail before. I thought I’d started a negotiation, although negotations usually try to let both sides succeed in some way, so perhaps it was not a negotiation after all because I had no intention of letting the Superintendent succeed even in part. Later, after Mrs Cath left, I looked up blackmail in the dictionary and it said it was an attempt to get money by threat. And I realised that this was exactly what I wanted, except that the money would go not to me, but to those on whose behalf I had stepped into the town hall that morning.

  ‘I left you a letter,’ I said to Mrs Cath.

  ‘I know, I read it – it’s very good,’ she admitted with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. ‘I taught you too well, perhaps.’

  ‘I decided this on my own, Ma’am,’ the old word slipped out, ‘I never wanted to make trouble for you.’

  ‘I know.’ Her eyes roamed about the room, taking in the sheet music on the table, my Bible alongside, and Dawn’s dressing gown hanging behind the door in the hope of her return one day. ‘Would you have done it if Dawn had still been here?’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head, then gasped as a new thought struck me. ‘Is the Mayor blaming you because of me?’ For mayors were surely like Superintendents, with just as much, if not more, power. I should have realised they would try to attack me through those I love – with Dawn gone, Mrs Cath was next in line.

  ‘I will go back,’ I said urgently. ‘I’ll tell them it has nothing to do with you. I’ll—’

  ‘No, Ada,’ Mrs Cath held up a hand. ‘No. You’ve done a brave thing. Too few people have conviction these days.’ She looked down and I caught a glimpse of Phil in her face, for although Phil mostly resembled Master, there were moments when he appeared in his mother’s eyes and in her lips – and always in the words she spoke. ‘And,’ she went on, ‘with Edward gone and Dawn away, there’s no reason not to.’

  She stood up and walked to the table, bent over one of the music sheets, and nodded at its familiarity.

  ‘Are you quite well after that fall?’ She glanced across at me, her green eyes settling on the scar at the side of my face.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Cath.’ It did not do to complain. And the body takes its own time. I have learnt that.

  She turned back and touched a page with long fingers. She was more stooped now, and she needed special glasses to see the piano keys.

  ‘Who would have guessed…’

  ‘Guessed what, Mrs Cath?’

  ‘My sister Ada, you know the one you’re named for in Ireland? She would have done something like this.’

  She closed the door quietly behind her.

  Chapter 48

  They were waiting for me at the Groot Vis, where Church Street mounts the bridge over the river and then aims for the station and the vast Karoo beyond. They did not come for me at Cradock House – where Mrs Cath might have intervened – or at school, where my students might have proved obstructive. They chose, instead, to wait for me by the river in the cool shade of a pepper tree, as if taking their ease, with the weavers chattering noisily nearby, and the lazy slip of brown water over rocks below.

  ‘Pass!’ one of them demanded as I went by. His partner slouched on the far side of the van, chewing something and eyeing the crowd who shied away from the van, heads down. This was an everyday business. I myself had hurried past many such vans, many such inspections for Passes. I fumbled for my document, hampered by my arm which was stiff in the mornings until I’d played the piano. The man barely looked at it.

  ‘Get in,’ he said, thrusting the Pass back at me and nodding to the other man to open up the back of the van.

  ‘Why?’ I asked, seizing courage, standing my ground. ‘My Pass is in order. My Madam signs it for me.’

  ‘It’s not about the Pass,’ he said. ‘Get in.’

  This was no random check. They knew enough about my movements between school and Cradock House to know where to position themselves. They’d been watching me, and then they’d lain in wait. It was an ambush, like when Phil had been ambushed by tanks in the desert at Sidi Rezegh. Like when leopards stalk and then pounce on their prey in the veld.

  I had broken the law. I had lain with a man who did not share the same colour as me. I had also stepped into the Superintendent’s office and tried to trade letters I’d written for the compensation that my fellow blacks deserved. They were right. It wasn’t about the Pass.

  The back of the van was cramped and I struggled to sit with my knees drawn up to my chest. Dawn, I found myself whispering, Dawn … The van made a U-turn and then swung off Church Street and down Bree, towards the jail that Mama used to say could snatch you even if you were innocent. Houses I’d once walked past whipped by in a blur, there was the purple bougainvillea draped over a fence, now came the cream stone of St Peter’s Church where I’d first heard an organ, then the jail. The van lurched to a halt.

  They hustled me through a rear door and took me to a room with no furniture. There were bars on the single high window. I stood in the centre for a while but no one came, so I sat on the dusty floor with my back against the wall and stretched my legs out before me and watched the sun’s rays edge across the opposite wall. My hands would not be still. I lifted them up from my lap and held them out in front of me, willing them either to stop, or to move to an imagined piece of Beethoven, or the single notes of the Raindrop. Phil’s hands had never stopped shaking with the memory of his dead friends …

  Should I give in quickly and say I was mistaken to write such letters? That I didn’t mean to threaten the Superintendent, that I am just a simple, stupid woman who believed she could help? If I’m lucky, they will look no further than me, they will threaten me and then toss me out, or beat me first and then toss me out – far from Cradock House and the township and all that I’ve ever known, sent to a part of the land that I have never been to, like Transkei, where Mrs Pumile always says she is going to but never does. I would be an exile, but I would still be alive. And, if God is merciful, so would my daughter.

  Or should I ignore my trembling hands, and the growing fear that they will go after Dawn in Johannesburg, and wait? Say nothing? Wait for the Midland News to publish my letter. Wait for Mrs Cath to show hers to the town council. Wait for the newspaper across the sea to take an interest in a black woman from a small Karoo town known for little more than rocky koppies, brown dust and a lack of rain.

  But maybe I am stupid to imagine that anyone would take notice of me. That the council or the Midland News or the paper overseas would feel any need to act upon my story.

  The door burst open.

  ‘Staan op! Stand up!’

  Two men in uniform came in. They had guns in shiny leather holsters on their hips. Behind them came two black men in overalls carrying a table that they positioned in the middle of the room. They went out and came back with two wooden chairs that they placed carefully on one side of the table. The black men did not look at me. The men in uniform sat down on the chairs. I have often been in places where seats were not meant for me.

  ‘You’re under arrest for crimes against the state,’ one of the men said, opening a file on the table. ‘Don’t deny it – we have all the evidence. Verstaan jy – understand?’

  ‘There will be a trial, sir?’

  He slapped through the pages till he came to the one he wanted. The other policeman examined the ceiling.
<
br />   ‘You’re a member of a banned organisation – verdomde ANC.’

  ‘No, sir, I belong to no organisation. I am a schoolteacher. I did what I did on my own.’

  ‘You want to bring down the country. They gave you orders to cause trouble.’ Still he spoke towards the table and the file before him, like others have done when they were unwilling to meet my eyes. They do it to show disdain, but to me it speaks of cowardice.

  I looked at him, his uniform surely ironed by black hands, and I felt the anger build. Why is it that even when we’re hated so much, we’re still so useful?

  ‘If you wish to put me on trial, sir, I shall defend myself.’

  He looked up then, and his companion tore his gaze from the ceiling to regard me with hostility.

  ‘Your English is good,’ he said, considering. ‘But there’s no need for a trial. The evidence is clear. Finished and klaar.’

  My head was beginning to ache as it often did these days, but I still understood what they were trying to do. They wanted me to confess. But I have read books, and I have read the Midland News. If I don’t confess, they can’t keep me here forever without giving me a trial. This I know.

  ‘Then I will stay in your jail, sir, until it is time for you to release me. If you wish to keep me for longer, then the law says there must be a trial.’

  He snatched the file, leapt to his feet and upturned the table. It crashed to the floor in front of me. I fell back in fright, my body tumbling to the ground, my weak arm crumpling beneath me, my hands – oh God, protect my hands for the piano – jarring on the concrete floor.

  I didn’t hear them leave, I only heard the door slam and then I was alone. I dragged myself to the wall and lay down against it. The pain in my arm subsided but my legs were trembling and my hands burned and one of my fingers was bleeding where it had slammed into the concrete. My head, surprisingly, was clear.

  They don’t want a trial; they want a confession.

  A trial means publicity, like the publicity around an ANC man called Nelson Mandela, who made his own defence and gave a speech that has resounded from one end of the country to the other. White men don’t like publicity about blacks. They don’t like such things to be exposed in newspapers.

  * * *

  They left me alone for the rest of the day. I blew on my throbbing hands and stared at the slow march of the sun across the wall and forced my heart not to think of Dawn, making her way in Johannesburg, imagining she was safe. Vans drew up outside and the guttural laughter of policemen reached me through the high window. And then Phil came to sit by my side, and Dawn danced for me with flying hair and heels, and Mama patted my shoulder but shook her head to see where I was. Shoo, child, she seemed to be saying with disapproval, I taught you to know your place, what foolishness has brought you here?

  I don’t know God the Father very well. I pray to Him often, but He never replies or perhaps I don’t hear what he says. There are others who say that they hear His answers every day, but I have only ever heard Him once, when He set me on this course. ‘This is my plan for you,’ He whispered over the shouting at St James. ‘This is why I have saved you’.

  But as night came and my body stiffened with the cold and my throat dried up for lack of water, I began to wonder if what I had heard was truly His voice, if what I had done was truly His plan. If only He would come to me now, and tell me so …

  But maybe I’m being unfair. Perhaps it was He who sent Phil to sit at my side on the concrete floor, and Dawn to entertain me as the light faded, and Mama to remind me of where I came from. Perhaps this is His way with me. To speak to me not directly, but through those I love.

  It must have been hours later that the door opened and someone shoved a latrine bucket through, and a plastic cup of water.

  They left me for another whole day. I watched the time pass in the wandering of the sun across the wall, and the slow darkening beyond the barred window. They pushed a small amount of maize meal on a tin plate through the door with the cup of water. I ate the porridge and dipped the edge of my skirt in the water to clean the cut on my hand. The material came away brown from the dried blood. I drank the remaining water slowly, holding it in my mouth for as long as possible before swallowing.

  No one came.

  The night was blacker than any night I’ve known. Even under the township smoke there is still some light to be found, but here, in this cell that I could walk across in five steps, they had the power to blanket the stars beyond the window, and shroud the moon from where it hung for the rest of the world to see.

  ‘Staan op!’

  A powerful light – the moon after all? – stabbed my eyes. I tried to scramble away from its harsh beam but it followed me on the floor, trapping me on all fours like the night animals captured in the headlights of Master’s car.

  ‘Who gives you orders?’

  It was the same policeman, but there was no second policeman, and no table and chair following. My head, from lying on the concrete, didn’t want to work. I’m no longer young, it’s true, and my head takes longer these days to find its starting point. Perhaps I’ve become soft and used to my mattress at Cradock House—

  ‘Who? Wie?’

  I don’t know what he wants. I only take orders from Mr Dumise. These are not the orders he means.

  ‘I have no orders, sir. I am a schoolteacher.’

  ‘When did you last see Jake Bapetsi?’

  ‘I don’t know Jake Bapetsi.’

  I hope God the Father will forgive me for more lies, but I will do nothing to endanger Lindiwe. I will pretend to know nothing of Jake who used to swing Dawn in the air and bring us sausages and talk of the struggle. Jake, who used to meet me by the river, and once smiled at me with fondness. I will say nothing of his plans to go over the sea to learn about guns and bring them back to start the revolution.

  The light swept away. Swift footsteps followed it. The door slammed shut. I huddled back against the wall, drawing my legs in, protecting my swollen hand against my stomach. I would like to whisper a message for Lindiwe to the black hand that takes away my latrine bucket every day, but I can’t risk it. Everyone knows there are traitors who put white before black. In the township, the izibonda – the black policemen – show no mercy to their own people.

  The outline of the cell began to emerge as day came, and the sun proved stronger than the policeman’s ability to hide the moon and stars from me.

  They brought me water in a cup.

  ‘The latrine is full,’ I croaked, through parched lips. The black hand came through the door and I passed it the bucket.

  I made myself sip the water slowly, running my tongue over my lips to soften them with the last of the liquid. If only I could put my head forward and feel the cool drip of water over the back of my neck like I used to in the laundry at Cradock House. I began to dream of water. I moved my toes – they have taken away my shoes – and felt the brown river surging over my feet in the drift, and Dawn drowsing on my back in her blanket …

  At the point when the sun was at its strongest on the wall, there came a rising tide of sirens and shouting from outside the window. I strained to make out what was being shouted but it was white shouting and it was in Afrikaans and I don’t know Afrikaans well. Instead I watched a column of ants, somehow alerted to the prospect of food, as they marched in a line from the window and across the floor and swarmed over the tin plate that had carried yesterday’s porridge.

  * * *

  Weakness is gathering me in.

  I stand up and force myself across the cell to keep my body moving. Five steps forward, turn, five steps back. My arm is hurting again, my hands are swollen and too large for the piano keys.

  Five forward, five back.

  ‘Who gave you orders?’

  ‘No one gave me orders. I am a schoolteacher.’

  A cup of water on the floor. Sometimes porridge, sometimes nothing.

  ‘Where is the kleurling girl?’

  ‘No one gave m
e orders.’

  ‘We know she left, we can get you for immorality.’

  ‘I am a schoolteacher.’

  It is night. I’m an animal caught in the lights.

  Chapter 49

  I spent all morning at the jail on Bree Street, having finally been directed there by the policeman at the charge office in town. He knew nothing, I think he shifted me to the jail for want of any other course of action. But as it turned out, I have indeed found Ada.

  At first they denied they were holding anyone by her name in their cells, but then a young reporter from the Midland News happened by. He’d been sent by his editor following their receipt of Ada’s letter. Apparently they’d also had an inquiry from the overseas paper to whom Ada had already posted the third letter.

  Clever Ada. Foolish Ada.

  On the one hand I’m so proud of her, on the other I fear the storm she’s unleashed.

  Will they track down Dawn? The police might want to make an example of them: immoral black mother, coloured child, illicit activities …

  ‘She is a simple woman,’ I said, advancing the argument for Ada’s naivety. ‘She meant well. I will take responsibility for her if you release her now. She’s a good teacher. She keeps children in school, so important these days.’

  Come back tomorrow, they said.

  May I see the investigating officer? I inquired.

  What is the status on compensation? the reporter asked.

  Come back tomorrow.

  My throat is sore from the talking, and I have no energy for the piano. And even if I did, my hands are shaking so much I doubt I would be able to play. There is no one I can talk to about this.

  They threw my shoes back into the cell.

  ‘Staan op!’

  ‘No orders—’

  Hands pushed me from behind. I tried to reach my shoes but they were too far away. Someone cursed, and shoved them at me.

  The corridor outside my cell was bright with light. Boots stamped on the floor behind me. A hand grabbed my shoulder and a voice hissed in my ear, ‘You make any more trouble, you won’t get out of here next time. And we’ll find the girl – the kleurling. Now go!’