The Housemaid's Daughter (21 page)

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?’ Lindiwe 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.

‘Be careful,’ said Lindiwe when it was time for her brother to leave.

‘Good luck, Ada,’ he said, taking my hand in the African handshake. ‘I will see you again.’ He turned to hug his sister.

‘Be careful,’ repeated Lindiwe, watching him as he stepped through the doorway and melted into the darkness of the township streets. Jake was always quiet like that. You never heard him arrive and you never saw him once he was beyond the door. I wonder if he was the one who taught Lindiwe how to use a sharpened bicycle spoke.

Chapter 29

I
 am the black woman with the coloured child. Everybody knows me, even in this place where I am a newcomer. Even so I am lonely. Such loneliness, I have discovered, does not yield when a future beckons. The birth of Dawn meant I was up at night to feed her, and in the dark of the hut a hollowness plucked away at me. If only I could heal my heart, if only I could tell someone about Master Phil – and what might have happened if I’d realised his love for me was not that of a brother towards his sister …

The only time this loneliness faded was when I played for my students and let the music carry me away. But then, cruelly, it lay in wait for my return and tricked me into remembering once more. The ‘Township Bach’ narrowed into the whoop of an owl outside Master Phil’s bedroom, or the sweet soprano of Madam as she sang notes for me to find on the piano. When I walked with Dawn through the Karoo scrub I saw, instead of the crouching plants, Madam’s favourite pink roses in a vase on her dressing table and smelt their perfume as clearly as I could read the pages of her special book. Memories never fade, they simply hide, only to emerge greater in number and intensity, and fresh as when I first made them.

I also don’t belong here yet. And those who don’t belong can find themselves used by those who do. If you have stepped out of your place in the world, if you have sinned against your fellows, you must expect to be a target. You must expect to be used by others for their own purposes, for their own causes. In this case, the protest against Passes. I myself had only ever been asked for my Pass twice on the streets of Cradock, but in Johannesburg – maybe on account of all the gold in the ground – it happened all the time. Maybe it was to do with money. Maybe white people in Johannesburg felt there was not enough gold to go around and so they wished to send some black people away and keep the riches for themselves. Maybe the business with Passes was just an excuse. Maybe riches from the ground were for a white future only.

Whatever the case, I was very nervous of anything to do with Passes, given my lack of one in Mary Hanembe’s name, and the fact that the one in my own name had not been signed since I left Cradock House. There were more police in the new township. More police with shorter tempers and growling dogs that strained at their leashes. More police to ask to see your Pass and throw you in jail if it was missing, or unsigned.

Silas wanted to protest against Passes.

‘We’ll march from the school across the Groot Vis, up Church Street to the town hall!’ he announced, waving his arms during teatime. ‘We’ll show strength in numbers! The St James teachers will join us – the choir will be there.’

The town hall! The Karoo Gardens where I used to sit on a bench beside the aloes, warming my feet in the sun! But it was too far, there would be too many eyes watching.

‘And after we’re at the town hall?’ asked someone.

‘We hand in a petition about how we hate the
dompas,
then march back the same way,’ Silas said, searching through the staff with a determined eye. The jazz man waved his fist in the air like the congregation on the
koppie
had done. Mr Dumise frowned.

‘What about you, Mary?’ Silas’s smooth tone caught me. ‘Where do you belong on this?’

The room turned to look at me.

I wanted to say that this was not a matter of belonging, but rather a matter of singling out. Of finding another means to show that I didn’t belong at the school, and never would. And that it had less to do with a march about Passes, and more to do with punishing me for lying with a white man.

Silas waited, as all enemies do, with a smile on his lips.

‘Members of staff must make their own choice,’ came the voice of Mr Dumise, quietly but clearly from his position at the teapot. ‘It is a personal matter.’

‘Then let’s hear Mary’s personal opinion,’ interrupted Silas on a rising note.

I could tell some of my colleagues thought Silas had indeed pushed into a place that had nothing to do with Passes. Hold up your head, I told myself sternly, remembering Lindiwe’s words. Hold it up and maybe they will respect you for that.

‘I will not put my child at risk,’ I declared, forcing my voice to be firm.

Silas hesitated, then turned away with a flash of irritation and called for a show of hands in favour. A few arms went up, but only reluctantly.

‘No matter,’ he said defiantly, making a fuss of slapping the back of the jazz man and the few others in favour. ‘We’ll go ahead anyway. We’ll show the marchers from St James that we’re united!’

I met Mr Dumise’s glance across the room. Church Street and Market Square was a boundary I dared not cross.

My lessons finished soon after the meeting. I set off for Lindiwe’s hut through the usual packed streets and then across the drift at Cross Street with the water cool on my bare feet.

‘Ada?’ A small man suddenly appeared at my shoulder, from the shade of the mimosas. He walked just behind me, alongside Dawn in her blanket. It was Lindiwe’s brother, Jake.

‘What did they decide?’ he asked into my ear. His rough jacket brushed my arm.

‘What do you mean?’

‘At your staff meeting. What did the staff decide?’ Dawn shifted on my back at his voice. Dawn loved Jake, for he swung her over his head, or sometimes brought her a tiny toy he’d carved himself. Dawn was not the only one he treated kindly. Sometimes he brought me an apple, or the latest newspaper.