The Housemaid's Daughter

by Barbara Mutch

  ‘Oh Danny boy,’ they crooned, discovering tenderness amidst the school’s clamour, ‘the pipes, the pipes are ca-a-lling…’ The human voice is every bit as able as the body to take us to another place.

  I was under no illusions. There was certainly gossip about me and some laughter behind my back. But in the classroom, where I could hold their attention, music occupied us more than the shame of a teacher who had sinned with a white man rather than with one of her own. As long as I could keep their interest with my stories and my playing, they overlooked the colour of the child. If only it had been so with Auntie. And with my colleagues on the staff.

  * * *

  The first year of Dawn’s life coincided with a lack of rain. This took on a new meaning for me, beyond the brown dust and the shimmering heat and the worse-smelling latrines and the longer queues for water at the communal tap.

  It meant that the drifts were open.

  It meant that my journey to school from Lindiwe’s hut in the township beyond Bree Street could be made across the Groot Vis at the drift. It required only for me to take off my shoes and wade across. It meant that although I now lived on the same side of the river as Master and Madam, there was little risk of them seeing me. I could stay well away from Bree, from Church Street where it ran down to the iron bridge, and Dundas Street beyond that, where Cradock House lay with its apricot tree that once carried me in its sap, and its wooden floors that once shone back at me as I polished them each week.

  Yet even as I stayed out of sight, there was nowhere to hide my black skin. For around the time that Dawn was born, the people who ruled my country began to make many new laws in relation to skin. Some of them I knew about, like the ones that said black people were less important than white, and that you had to be born in a place or have lived there a long time before you would be allowed to stay. One law that I didn’t know said it was illegal for a white man and a black women to lie together.

  I already suspected that such a lying together was not right in the eyes of God but I learnt only later that it was against the law of the land and that, if discovered, you could go to jail. I wonder if Master knew of this law when he stood in the doorway of my room at Cradock House and said he would not hurt me? If so, why did he take such a risk? Was the loneliness in him so great that he was prepared to risk even the white man’s jail – and the shame that would fall on him and on Madam? Perhaps, therefore, it was a good thing for him that I left.

  Mama had always said that jail could reach out and take you even if you had done no wrong. As I grew up I used to doubt if that was true, but perhaps Mama was wiser than I realised. She knew what was coming. For with these new laws, jail now had the right to do so. You did not need to be a bad person to be sent there, you did not even have to do anything wrong, you just had to be someone of the wrong colour. The policemen that cruised the township in their vans knew this.

  The arrival of Dawn with her coloured skin amidst such new laws presented a dilemma for my fellow teachers. It was bad enough that black people were beaten for the smallest offence, and suddenly forbidden to enter certain places or sit on certain benches – there were now ‘Whites Only’ signs in the Karoo Gardens – and unable to move away to work just because they wanted to. But now they faced the difficulty of having to take sides over a mixed-race baby. Our once happy staffroom became divided territory. Silas would arrive early, turn his back on me and gather about him those who agreed I should leave rather than advertise my betrayal of fellow blacks daily via the pale child. Into my corner, however, strode the colourfully turbaned Dina – after initial dismay – and the quiet Sipho Mhlase who taught numbers. Dina was sure I must have been the victim of a wicked man. I had shown courage in not pleading for help – shades of not grovelling – therefore I deserved support. At the worst of this time, I wondered if it might be best to stay away from the staffroom altogether. It was Lindiwe who talked me out of it.

  ‘You have to fight!’ she said to me in the candlelight of her tiny hut as we ate soup one night. ‘Hold your head up and they will respect you.’

  Through this difficulty, Mr Dumise trod a careful path. He had no grounds to dismiss me because my teaching was popular and I was never absent from school.

  ‘But look at the example she sets for our students!’ retorted Silas.

  ‘Have you no pity?’ I heard the headmaster say softly. ‘She was no doubt raped.’

  ‘She deceived us!’ Silas went on heatedly. ‘She should have said she was having a coloured child when she applied for the job.’

  Chapter 28

  I played the Raindrop today and it brought back memories of Ada.

  As I expected, there was nothing to be found about her on my trip to KwaZakhele, not from the minister, or from the site of dear Miriam’s grave in a cemetery of the utmost starkness.

  Such was the poverty and deprivation of the place that I came back determined to do something – not in KwaZakhele, for that is too far away – but here in Cradock. We sit across the river from a township where the people must be equally wretched. Unlike KwaZakhele, they do not even have a church. I believe they meet outdoors on Sundays at the foot of a koppie.

  And as for Ada, I still feel she is alive. I sense her every time I play. But as the months turn into years I am less hopeful of seeing her again.

  The township beyond Bree turned out to be different from Auntie’s Lococamp community. It was not a jumble of huts and a tangle of alleys with no order to it. This place had been laid out with roads that were intended to be straight, and schools and playing fields that encouraged healthy minds and muscles. Good behaviour comes from such a combination. At St James School the children wore their uniforms proudly, and played football, or sang in the choir I’d heard that first day. This township had pride. Even the mayor sometimes listened to Rev. Calata when he spoke out against the police that careered along the rutted streets and threw residents in jail for no reason other than the matter of skin. Indeed, Rev. Calata used to say, why should such a place not think of itself as part of Cradock, subject to the same laws and benefits? In contrast, Auntie’s township over the Groot Vis had grown up on its own and knew itself to be separate and unworthy.

  But sadly, at the time I arrived, I could see that much of what had been planned was falling into the kind of disrepair I knew so well from across the river. The straight roads reeked from overflowing latrines. Rubbish that was once collected now piled up to attract flies, and illness followed toddlers that played in it. Paint peeled from the impressive walls of St James School, and the grass on the sports grounds withered from missing care and water. The soup kitchens that used to feed the poor were manned less often now, and I even heard talk about the taking of money from the shebeens into the bank account of the town council to pay for white services, instead of black. I wondered if Master knew of this, if Master approved of such theft. There were also signs that the well-behaved children were starting to run wild like the youngsters across the river.

  Down on the riverbank, the women that I thought were my friends now steered clear of me – probably warned by Auntie – and tried to turn their backs on Lindiwe as well. Their views were a mixture of what I faced at school. Like Silas, they believed I had deceived them – and, more importantly, Auntie – by keeping quiet about the colour of the coming child. Like Veronica and Mildred, some would not condemn me to my face but rather avoided my eyes and took their washing to a distant rock. Others never spoke to me again. The low singing that I loved now came from further away.

  Lindiwe even had to reassure some that I would have nothing to do with their washing. I could tell she was worried and I used to ask her at the end of each day if she had had enough business and whether she wanted me to leave.

  ‘Stay,’ she would say with a weary sigh as she stretched out on her bed and closed her eyes for a rest before our simple evening meal. ‘It will be all right.’ Between those of her customers who stayed faithful and the money I paid to her in rent – I willingly gav
e her more than I had paid Auntie – she kept going and after a while there were no more questions of Lindiwe, although I myself was never particularly welcome on the riverbank.

  As the washerwomen turned away from me, so did others. There was no invitation to return to the church on the koppie, where vibrant singing swept over the polished stones and far into the Karoo veld. I could go to St James Church now, with its disciplined choir and its carved cross above the pulpit, but I still missed those Sunday mornings outdoors – I even missed the minister with his wild talk of a war of liberation, and the joyous chants of the congregation in response. Joining their soaring hymns had bound me to a new family. Not since Cradock House had I felt such a sense of belonging – even though some of what they said frightened me – and such a sense of escape.

  For this new belonging was indeed a kind of escape. As I sang, it lifted me out of the township, it freed me to roam across the veld in my mind, like I used to imagine from Master Phil’s toy box on the top floor of Cradock House. It showed me the brown desert floor rearing up to the mountains where there was snow in winter, it let me trace the first shining trickles of water that fed the Groot Vis. It even flew me to another desert where Master Phil lay beneath the palms of an oasis. To belong – and yet to be alone under a seamless sky – surely this was a gift from God? A gift to replace the house and garden of my childhood? A gift to replace the people who were once my horizon?

  When I missed this belonging-yet-aloneness, I would put Dawn on my back and walk out of the new township towards where the sky met the earth, for the pleasure of being on my own and yet part of a company with the birds and the small animals that scurried about us. When the sun was at its highest, Dawn and I would squat in the bony shade of a thorn tree and I would describe to her that other thorn tree I’d first met as a child. The air trembled not with the outdoor church’s massed singing but with the heat of the veld as it stretched into watery mirages far ahead.

  ‘Look, Dawn,’ I whispered, pointing into the distance, ‘the land is melting.’

  * * *

  In the township beyond Bree I learnt that there were times when it wasn’t possible to run away. I learnt that there were times when violence had to be met with violence. I’m not proud of this knowledge; it’s something I wish I had never learnt. For once you let it in, it’s possible you may use it without reason. And what God the Father thought of this knowledge, I do not know. But then, I do not know what God the Father thought about the random cruelty of the white policemen that patrolled our streets either.

  This knowledge concerned men in particular. I learnt to be especially careful with men. I got to know the alleys where men lived who assumed – because of the difference in colour between my child and me – that I did not care who I lay with and would do so again for money or under threat.

  When I confessed my fear to Lindiwe, she pulled something slender and pointed from beneath her bed and held it out to me. It was a sharpened bicycle spoke. I didn’t want to take it.

  ‘No,’ I whispered, horrified by its evil thinness, the intent of its pointed end.

  ‘Like this, Ada.’ Lindiwe ignored me and demonstrated in the dark of the hut. ‘Thrust inwards and upwards for the heart.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You must.’ She held it out to me. ‘Take it. I have another one.’

  At first I wouldn’t carry it. I didn’t think I had the courage to use such a thing. I feared that God would not forgive me a second sin. But then one day I saw a young woman dragged away before my eyes and I ran back to the hut to fetch it from where it hid beneath my sleeping blanket.

  In my old life on Dundas Street I could never have imagined defending myself like this but here, with Dawn vulnerable on my back, I knew I wouldn’t hesitate.

  For times when bicycle-spoke defence was not needed, Lindiwe had contacts. These contacts, I discovered, were good for all sorts of things. The bread seller that she used – unlike the old man who sold to Auntie and Poppie – could supply milk as well, and at a price that allowed us to buy one bottle a week. It meant that for half the week we could have milk in our tea. Then there was the woman that stacked shelves at N.C. Rogers General Dealers on Market Square. She often found spare maize meal that she sold to Lindiwe for less than the spaza store in the township charged. Sometimes a twist of sugar appeared in the same packet as the meal. Lindiwe gave this woman a very good washing service.

  Lindiwe explained that you did not need to work with money in order to make a living. You just needed to find people that had goods that you wanted, and then offer them goods or services in return. The hardest part was deciding the value of each side of the trade. How many loads of washing should Lindiwe give for a five-pound pack of mealie meal and a tin of tea? Tea was also spare at the store, it seemed.

  Lindiwe also had a brother. At first I was not sure what he was good for – other than words – but he never arrived empty handed. Often, though, what he said made you forget about what he had brought. This was unusual in the township where outside goods were highly prized and far more valuable than words.

  ‘This is Jake,’ she said to me one evening when a short man stepped silently through the door as we were practising her reading. They hugged and murmured together before he shook my hand in the African way and stared at Dawn in her wash basket. He was some years older than Lindiwe and wore a tattered jacket over trousers held up with string. He had his sister’s bright, inquisitive eyes. Like hers, they were also able to see inside people.

  ‘Lindiwe says you teach. It must be hard.’ He glanced across at Dawn’s pale face above her blanket.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Some teachers understand, some want me to leave.’ It was odd to hear myself speak with a stranger so soon about something so important. But that was what Jake did. He didn’t waste time on matters that others spent hours upon. And he took you along with him in his manner of speaking.

  ‘What will you do?’ he asked, as if he had known me all my life and not just a few minutes in the hut of his sister.

  ‘I shall stay,’ I said, relieved to find I could say the words strongly, ‘as long as they let me. They like my teaching. And I fill in when other teachers are absent. Our school is not as big as St James.’

  ‘You’re reliable.’ He nodded. ‘We need reliable people.’ He glanced across at Lindiwe, then pulled a brown paper bag out of his pocket and handed it to her. She unwrapped it quickly, her fingers eager, like Madam’s fingers used to be eager to play the piano before young Master Phil went to war.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ She gasped and showed me four sausages nestling in the bottom of the bag. She sniffed. ‘And so fresh!’

  Jake smiled. Lindiwe looked at him with suspicion.

  ‘I found them,’ he said, grinning. ‘They were spare at the butcher.’

  ‘The butcher on Church Street?’ The words were out before I could help it. The bright eyes of Lindiwe and her brother turned on me. Lindiwe believed I had come from KwaZakhele. I had always said that I did not know Cradock well.

  ‘I once walked past that butcher,’ I said, shrugging. ‘On my way here from KwaZakhele.’

  It was only a small lie, just like the ones I had told Auntie when I said I was tired of working across the Groot Vis. Or when I lied to Mr Dumise about my real name. It was just one more lie to protect myself and Madam and Master, especially since the law meant jail if you were caught.

  ‘It is a good butcher,’ said her brother, watching me carefully. ‘The white man there charges a fair price.’

  I could see them wondering, as Mr Dumise had wondered, about the father of my child, as anyone who met me seemed bound to wonder about the father of my child. Any white man – even a butcher – was a possibility. I wanted to say: it’s not what you think. I do not even know that man! When I asked for Jacob Mfengu – Jacob Mfengu who might have married me – I asked the black man who is his assistant. I do not even remember what that white man looks like.

  ‘Ada?’ Lindi
we put her hand on my arm, sensing my panic. ‘Let’s cook the sausages now, while Jake’s here.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, getting up hurriedly to light her paraffin stove. ‘Yes, I will do that while you and Jake talk.’

  Even with Lindiwe who had remained my friend, who had taken Dawn and me into her hut and shared her life with us, even with Lindiwe I must guard what I say. One careless word about my old life and it would suddenly find me. And find the shame that I carried with me.

  The sausages hissed in the pan and gave off glistening beads of fat. I warmed some leftover maize meal alongside them, letting the sausage juices mingle with the stiff meal and crisp its edges. Lindiwe and Jake talked quietly but sometimes fiercely in the candlelight – several times I saw Lindiwe shake her head at something he said. I thought of what he’d said about me being ‘reliable’ and that ‘we’ needed reliable people. Usually I understood what black people meant when they spoke. They did not use words that took different moods upon themselves. But Jake was not talking about my dependability as a teacher. He was talking of something else, some cause that lay beyond my work. Something that lived underground and drove men like him to meet in secret to plan what they called a Revolution.

  I’d only ever heard this word since coming to live in the new township, and so I looked it up in the dictionary at school and found it was related to liberation. Liberation – what the minister at the outdoor church said would happen once we’d been through the fire and found freedom. I already knew that this liberation did not always mean peace. Revolution, I discovered, was not so unsure of itself. Revolution was liberation with blood. Revolution didn’t care for any half measures. And it was not concerned with what came after.