Women Are Bloody Marvellous! And Other Stories

by Betty Burton

  I know that you will miss Esther as she has been your baby more than mine. Also Esther does not know me as her mother. She will soon get used to this.

  The Baas is in England for a few days. The Madam is making very many telephone calls about Esther, also she says we must hide Esther until she gets the right papers. She says we must trust only Mabel. The Madam has always like Mabel.

  I am sorry that you did not tell me a long time before this that you were so very much ill. I will come home to visit very soon. I must first get papers for Esther to live in the city. The Madam says she will surely get papers because she is my child and that there is now no one is at home who can look after her. I think the madam will fix things for us. Baases from the City Council come often to have dinner with my Baas and Madam. They will know what to do.

  Please mother, do not worry any more. You must get well.

  Your loving daughter, Sara

  101 Chaucer Hall

  Illova

  TO The Department of Native Affairs

  Dear Sirs,

  Can you please tell me how to proceed to obtain a permit for a non-European servant to bring her child to live in the city?

  Yours faithfully, E. Burford (Mrs)

  Department of Native Affairs

  Carlsburg Place, Johannesburg

  Dear Madam,

  Reference to your letter of December seventh, I have to advise you that no such permits are available.

  Yours faithfully, Kobie Van Rensburg

  p.p. C. Cotzee

  Dear Sirs,

  Can you please give me some advice on how to proceed regarding the child of a non-European...

  Dear Madam,

  The issue of any permit, pass, etc. is entirely dependent upon age, and other considerations.

  At the age of fourteen, if a Working Permit is being sought then you should write to...

  Dear Sir,

  Can you advise me...

  Dear Sir,

  Can you please give me some advice...

  Dear Sir,

  Can you please advise me...

  Dear Madam,

  We are unable to advise you...

  Dear Madam,

  We would refer you to the attached leaflet DBA44 paragraph 145N wherein it is stated that 'no dependent child or children of non-European workers...'

  Dear Madam,

  In reply to your enquiry. There is no provision made...

  Department of British Affairs

  Temporary Residents' Department

  Dear Madam,

  Your letter to the British Ambassador has been passed to me.

  I am instructed to inform you that we are unable to offer any assistance.

  This is a matter for the non-European Administration, and we would suggest that the non-European worker in question makes enquiries.

  Yours faithfully, Brian C. Keough,

  Administrative Assistant

  Parkwood

  My Dear Mrs Burford

  Your letter to the Bishop's Palace has been passed to me as the matter is not something which the Bishop can properly deal with.

  I regret that I can offer little real help, and whilst I appreciate your concern, there seems to be nothing we can do but offer the suggestion that you write to various appropriate bodies.

  With regret that I am unable to help.

  Yours sincerely, Jacob Mansbridge

  101, Chaucer Hall

  HAPPY CHRISTMAS

  Dear Stell,

  Hard to believe, but it is Christmas afternoon. It is ninety in the shade, and we are harbouring an illegal immigrant. You would think it was an escaped convict or a terrorist, the great carry-on there's been.

  Actually I believe I could cope with that situation better than this one. This immigrant — this illegal immigrant — illegal child, is a bony little ten-year-old in a frilly skirt and pink hair-ribbons...

  JANUARY

  c/o 101 Chaucer Hall

  Dear Overseas Grandmother,

  Thank you for the New Year present you have sent to Esther.

  It has been very worrying for us. I would never bring this trouble to the Madam. The Baas knows many city official people, I thought it would be easy to fix. Esther is my child and there is no one else who she can five with.

  The Madam has written to everybody and made many phone calls. They say Esther must go away, which means that I also must leave. Then how would we live, I left Kimberley because I could not get work there to keep Esther and help my mother.

  Right from when they are born children are hard to care for and to make them grow up well. It is always hard for the mothers.

  Esther's father is a teacher and I want for her to have some good future like his. I do not know where this man is now. I do not want to know him. He was my teacher and I am pregnant when I am still at school.

  My mother is dying. Never has she had one day without the worry of children. When she was just young she was a nanny. Then her own children. I have six brothers and sisters. It is always like this for the old people, when sons and daughters go to the cities to find work the old people must care for the grandchildren.

  The Madam and I many times have talked about all the things in the world to put right. If the world could be made better just now ... it would be too late for my mother.

  Yours sincerely, Sara Mashele

  Cherry Hinton

  Aylchester, Hampshire

  Dear Liz,

  The letter from Sara broke my heart. What worries me is that you will do something silly and start getting yourself into trouble. It's no good you putting Simon and Brendan at risk no matter how terrible you think it is for Sara's little girl.

  I wish John had never been sent out there. I just hope that he is being level-headed about it all. I just hope he gets his job done and gets back home as soon as he can.

  I will write more when Auntie Nance has gone back.

  Love, Mum

  FEBRUARY

  2 × 5 Avenue

  Clipton, Nottingham

  Dear Liz,

  Your last letter was a bit of a jumble. You said that Sara had gone to join the women in the cathedral, but you didn't say that they were starving themselves as a protest. It wasn't until I saw the piece in the Observer that I understood. I remember what my own Mam told me about force-feeding the Suffragettes. I hope they don't do that to them.

  Give Sara my love and tell her that I think she's bloody marvellous.

  Jessie

  From outside St. Joseph's Cathedral

  Dear Stell,

  I have to tell you as much as possible about what is happening here. It is important that you know so that you can tell others. I believe that there has been almost total indifference back home, to what is happening.

  I don't know whether Sara knew about the protest before she brought Esther here, and it doesn't matter. What matters now is that she is involved.

  The women could easily die, and you must tell as many people as you can. I get the English papers and there has been almost total silence (or indifference) to this protest.

  This hunger strike is as serious and important as anything prisoners in the Maze have done. Here are mothers starving themselves to death. Quietly with their children around them, whilst the press gives pages to an MP who ought to have got himself vasectomized, and princes ... who likewise.

  At last John has seen the kind of society IBCC and companies like it are supporting. No, that's not true, he's always known but because of this ... obsession ... he has about security for me and the kids, he could rationalize what he does. And so could I. Now he wants out.

  It's a long time since we have been so close. He has taken leave that is due to him and is at home looking after the children. I am just sitting around outside the cathedral and it is cold. I hardly know why I keep coming. I can do nothing. I only know that I need to be here, to be near these women who are taking on the almighty State.

  There are now sixty inside. It is nineteen days since they had a
ny food, and they are determined to continue until the Government agrees to give them the right to live and to bring up their children in the areas where they work.

  The children are fed and play about apparently quite happily, but the women are becoming very weak. As I have learned over these last months living closely to Sara — most women who work as servants live almost entirely on starch, sweet tea and junk food, which makes them overweight and lacking in stamina. I wonder how many fences would be pulled down at Greenham if we didn't get our protein and vitamins.

  Calm determination is a journalistic cliché; but I tell you, Stell — that's what you see in this cathedral.

  In sisterhood dear Stell,

  Liz

  Greenham

  Dear Liz,

  'Women, like flames have a destroying power, Ne'er to be quenched till they themselves devour.' It's Congreve — had you heard it before? Not that it's any comfort, but it does seem to be our way doesn't it? Sara's women and the Grannies here who sleep rough in the camps in bitter weather are devouring themselves. Now They are coming in to destroy our camps — legally. We rebuild and they come again. I look at the Grannies at the fence and ... yes, yes, John's mother is right — women are bloody marvellous.

  In solidarity and sisterhood.

  Stell

  St Josephs Cathedral

  Dear Madam,

  I am sorry that our time together finishes with so much trouble.

  For me the time at the flat was good. You and I, Madam, learned so many things about each other.

  All the weeks that I have been here, I have had so much time to talk and listen to the others.

  You know that I have always been proud that I am a Swazi. Swazis think we are the most intelligent of all people. And you know also what I have said about the Zulu — loud in the mouth and show-off. And the Baca — the great fools who know how to do nothing but to sing when they collect garbage and to run with their dustbins.

  All my life I have live close with girls of many tribes but never like now. Here we are not tribes, we are parents only ... mothers.

  If we die, it will perhaps be that people will look at our bodies and see that servants of all the tribes need to have their children to live near them.

  I think that is why this fasting protest is important. If the Government sees that we are people ... not natives ... not nigras ... not Mary or Jim or Hey-boy! or Hey-girl! but sees us as people like all others, then they cannot forbid us our children.

  The Bible says that we must not kill our own bodies. But Madam, at last I see that the Bible is full of men's words. Women have no hand in writing it. Always it is the men telling us what God has said. Even that God is man. So perhaps he is, for a woman would perhaps make a more kind world. Madam, I am not now shocked, as I used to be, that you do not believe in any God.

  Also I do not now believe that it is sin to kill our own bodies. For us there is no other way.

  Yours sincerely, Sara

  Dear Sara, I have had a visit from Mabel Nguma. It was a strange meeting. Chattering Mabel who boiled the sweet tea for us in her madam's kitchen, when we gossiped at the corridor ends, called upon me as Mabel the political, intellectual. She said I ought to stay away from the cathedral, that people like me did not help. It must be 'the fight of the mothers' she said. I said to her, I am a mother, but she shook her head. She said that blacks must fight on their own; that when the real fighting starts there would be no time to stop and wonder if the white in the line of fire is a friend. Bullets come out of machine-guns too quick to choose, she said. Perhaps she is right. So, Sara, it is better that I don't come to the cathedral any more. It is better too, that I don't write any of this down. For the first time in my life I feel afraid to write or speak my mind.

  MARCH

  101, Chaucer Hall

  Dear Sara,

  I have to tell you that we are going home to England almost at once. My husband is going to teach at a college in England.

  Mabel tells me that the Government is sending a Minister to look into the 'illegal children'. At least that shows that they are admitting that you have a valid case and will now have to do something.

  You do not need me to tell you how unhappy I feel that I shall not be there to meet you when you leave the cathedral.

  In sisterhood and with affection,

  Liz Burford

  St Josephs

  Dear Madam,

  I will try to let you know what happens, but already I am so weak. I write often to keep my mind thinking.

  Do you remember when we all went to Amanzimtoti and I said why does the Baas not buy a hotel for us to run. We could all live in it and I could cook English food for tourists. The Madam could be in charge and the Baas could build the engineering things if he wanted to. The children could go to the beach every day. Do you remember how the Baas laughed?

  It was before you knew about Esther. I thought that she too could live in the hotel and go to school, and then get to be a doctor or a teacher or anything ... but not a servant.

  It is twenty-four days that we have not eaten. Sometimes I am not sure whether the singing is in the cathedral or inside my head.

  I shall be sad not to have my Overseas Madam and Baas, and I shall miss Simon and Brendan so much. But Madam for girls like me, always it is like this. Good jobs do not last very long, but bad jobs also do not. We get used to moving on always.

  My fingers do not work very well, and I cannot hold a pen, only in my head can I write to you ...

  MAY

  Dear Madam,

  I have received the letter and money you left with Mabel.

  My mother died before we came from St Joseph's. I have not seen her grave.

  I cannot give you an address for me, because this place where the women have been sent is not anywhere, and they keep moving us.

  In the fourth week of the fast someone came to tell us that the cases of the illegal children would be heard. At first we said that it was not true, that it was a plot to get us out, because if we died it would be bad for the Government. They said that it was true. They said we must trust. A man high in Government was told to listen to us.

  It truly was a plot.

  We came out of the cathedral. We were brought here in lorries. We make shelters of boxes and sacks but the bulldozers keep coming and coming and we keep building again. We must. We have nowhere to go.

  We stay here in this place made of cardboard and sacks. It is now many months since we were brought here. Nothing has been done about our children.

  Now that we are not in a cathedral starving to our death, the newspapers and photographers do not come. People who starve in shanty-towns are not news. We should never have come from the cathedral, but let them carry out our bodies for all to see. But we believed them when they said that we had won, that we should be heard.

  Mabel got Esther a place in Bethesda Hostel for homeless children. It is near the old city. Mabel says that Esther is now speaking some English and is learning reading and writing. If I get back my Passbook I shall try to get work again in the city so that I may see Esther sometimes.

  I am afraid to go to the city until they give me my papers back. Madam, is it not strange how these things turn about. Now that Esther is allowed to stay in the city, it is I who am illegal.

  Your friend, Sara

  JULY

  Bethesda Hostel

  Johannesburg

  Dear Mother,

  You see, I can write. I am learning to cook. Soon I shall get a job and I can send money for you. I pray for you every morning.

  Esther Mashele

  FOUND DRUNK IN PARADISE STREET

  FOUND DRUNK IN PARADISE STREET

  It is Friday. This is the List.

  Court Number One

  Sitting at the Law Courts, George Street, on the ... twentieth ... day of ... Nov ... 19...

  Informant or Defendant Nature of Offence or

  Complainant Age or Date of Birth Matter of Complaint

 
; Police Mary MALLORY Found drunk in Paradise St.

  Mary MALLORY. And eighty-five others.

  The Police, the DHSS and the Council. The usual Informants and Complainants. Familiar names are here. 'Hello, he's been at it again.' The Gross Indecency, the Attempting to Pervert the Course of Justice, the Distraint Warrants, the Driving with Excess Alcohol ... the Found Drunk.

  Mary Mallory you are here again ... my bête noire, my scourge, running sore of my conscience. Always here, brought up from the cells week after week. She appears in many guises, under different names, young and old, cocky and humble. Sometimes she has been shop-lifting ... stole a pair of velvet curtains from British Home Stores — stole two Porsche Turbo cars together valued at £5.90. Sometimes she has had a go at her neighbour ... Must show cause why she should not be Bound Over to be of Good Behaviour to Keep the Peace. She keeps me in thrall because she is a woman and I am a woman, and there but for the grace of God and all that kind of thing. And I am kidding myself if I think she cares a damn. I'm THEM and she's US and it's no good me kidding myself that I'm US when she's in the dock and I'm in charge of Court Number One.