Читать книгу The Madams - Zukiswa Wanner - Страница 8

Chapter 4

The Recruitment

It’s May. The rain has stopped and one can now see the dead leaves. I hate autumn with its browning grass, shedding of leaves and the uncertainty of whether it’s going to be an acceptable winter or a freezing winter – freezing to me being anything below twenty degrees centigrade.

It has been two months since I resolved to get myself a maid and I have not yet done so, because I have been too busy during the week, and too lethargic during the weekends, but I cannot do all the housework alone anymore so today is the day. Besides, I have done my seasonal wardrobe upgrade and there is no space for the extra clothes, so going to the halfway house will therefore serve two purposes. Vuyo is taking his sons to see his family in Soweto today and Siz, who has also done her wardrobe clearance, is coming to pick me up.

I hope Marita is still there. She’s a sweet Afrikaans girl from Kroonstad I’ve talked to the few times that I have gone to do voluntary bookkeeping at the halfway house. She is funny, seems quite intelligent, and from my few conversations with her she is ‘right on’ in her approach to life. And of course, she is white.

Siz arrives wearing a BabyPhat tight tank top in pink, a pair of BabyPhat blue jeans and some pink Pumas. Her casual look is so well pulled-off that she looks as though she is in her very early twenties and would make many in that demographic jealous. More importantly, she is making me feel dowdy in my coffee and cream khakis and tee. Dammit, I am really beginning to feel as though ‘my butt looks big in this’, but it wouldn’t look too good if I went to change, so I just get on with it.

‘Hey girl, looking good,’ I say to her.

‘You don’t look like the mother of a five-year-old, so pretty good yourself,’ she responds. It’s not really a compliment but I dutifully give the prerequisite Continental European three kisses for intimates. I’m still not used to kissing people on the lips, à la most South Africans – it feels too much like a violation. With Mandla’s mother, it even begins to feel like incestuous lesbianism. Eeuw!

Siz and Mandla are the only ones who have been apprised of what is about to happen, and with this in mind she says, ‘I can’t wait to see the look on Lauren’s face when she gets hold of the situation.’

‘Girl, just chill. You know what Lauren’s like so if I get the white girl, please be cool about it and act like it’s the most normal thing in the world,’ I say.

She responds with a laugh, ‘But it isn’t, is it? Boy, I love South Africa. Only here can you think of baiting your white friend by getting a white maid, while all your sisters in England have white babysitters.’

As usual Siz’s boot and passenger seats are filled to the brim with all the clothes she purchased in Paris on multiple business trips – clothes she thought she was going to wear, but never got around to. Talk about a shopaholic. I am therefore going to have to take the Bond-machine , my metallic grey Aston Martin. I ask my son, who by now is having a very intense conversation with his godmother, ‘Babes, do you want to come with mommy and Aunt Siz or do you want to stay with daddy?’ I want Hintsa to come with us, to make sure that Marita, or whoever I get, is good with children.

Sensing he is about to say no so he can stay on the Playstation with his dad I add a bribe: ‘Afterwards we can all go for ice creams.’ Forget my figure. I only live once, right?

The ice cream wins him over, but he insists on riding with Aunt Siz. That means I get a chance to drive by myself and look like a cool, successful, single chick, so I agree.

‘Make sure you look at the road and if anyone ogles you at the traffic lights, put up your left hand and tell them you are happily married to the man who bought that expensive piece of jewellery.’ Mandla has just come to the door and says this to me as he kisses Siz hello/bye.

Yeah, whatever. I feel like I have ‘married’ tattooed on my forehead, and if anyone ogles it’s going to be at the car and not at wifely, mommy, think-my-waist-is-getting-too-thick Thandi. I put the top down and start fantasising about the first time I introduce my new maid to Lauren.

Marita’s story is a sad one. She’s from one of those few poor Afrikaner families who failed to take advantage of apartheid’s provisions; a girl who grew up in a caravan park with her ma, pa, oupa and ouma, four brothers and three sisters. She felt privileged when some biker boy from Johannesburg came by, swept her off her feet and whisked her away at full throttle to what she thought would be a great adventure in Joburg.

Alas, they had different expectations. He had hoped to get a mevrou to install in his rundown Hillbrow studio flat who would love, obey, honour and constantly get him money for alcohol through the oldest trade known to womankind, while doing his washing and cooking his food in her non-business hours. But that wasn’t all. This oke started beating on her every time she didn’t make as much cash as he expected. One day, when his Boere ancestors were evidently not with him, Marita got fed up with being beaten, took the revolver he used to threaten her with, and blew his brains out.

She was given a life sentence but the New National Order (read: post-apartheid government) worked it such that she was paroled, and now she is at the halfway home awaiting permanent employment and a fixed address. She has since been forever grateful to the NNO, and I am sure she will be relieved at getting a job offer, regardless of who offers it, because she has already been there for a year.

Siz and her godson pull up in her black C200 and park next to me when we arrive. I get out and pull my T-shirt down over my khakis. Shit, I really need to lose weight.

After two trips to my car and what seems like ten to Siz’s, we finally have everything. By this time the girls at the House have gathered around us in the visitors’ lounge and are admiring the clothes in the boxes. Marita is one of them. Thank God, she was still here.

We exchanged pleasantries and I quickly decided to go and talk to the coordinator. I left Siz with Hintsa, knowing that she might titter or make some sarcastic comment, which would result in my not getting the girl of my choice.

I knock on the coordinator’s door and, after the niceties, I get straight into it because I always find it tough beating about the bush.

‘I’ve been talking to one of your ladies since I started coming here and I was wondering, would it be a big loss on your part if I borrowed her to help me out?’ I said.

She smiled ever-so-sweetly, probably welcoming the opportunity to have another ex-con off her hands, and asked me which one I had in mind. ‘Marita,’ I responded, quickly adding, before she said no, ‘I am also very keen for my son to learn what I feel is an important South African language. Unfortunately my Afrikaans knowledge is dismal at best. Marita is the best speaker of that language I have come across – apart from yourself of course,’ I ended, with a flourish. Obviously I had pressed the right button because the coordinator’s face, which had become rather pinched when I mentioned Marita’s name, lit up. ‘What exactly would she be doing?’ she asked.

Knowing the sensitivities of South African society, new South African or not, and knowing equally well that I would never be allowed to cross the line of having a white woman for a maid, I deliberately fudged, ‘I know that she has been doing some sewing and I have a cottage where she can do that and perhaps market her clothes. In return she could also help me, in her free time, to pick my son up from school and tutor him Afrikaans and his other homework.’

The coordinator seemed to like the idea. ‘We just need to ask Marita,’ she said, sending someone to call her.

When Marita came in the coordinator said sternly, ‘Marita. This lady wants you to come and help tutor her son in Afrikaans while you are staying with her. How do you feel about that?’ So she was primarily a tutor now. But I was not going to make corrections and I knew I had it in the bag when Marita said, in her thick Afrikaans accent, ‘Really? I can come and stay with you? Oh thank you so much madam. Thank you, thank you.’ She had called me madam! The only people who call me ‘madam’ are Mandla’s friends and they say it in a denigrating way. I thought, ‘I like this girl. Yeah. I could definitely work with her!’

With the deal done, I walked out with Marita, who was still calling me madam, to Siz and Hintsa. ‘She sure knows her place – Lauren would like her too,’ Siz whispered to me as I got close to her. I nudged her and muttered, ‘Shuddup . . .’

Marita may have called me ‘madam’ but her job was not secure yet. I had to make sure she got on with the ‘prince’, who would be doing most of the interaction with her. I introduced them, and Hintsa smiled at her shyly. She managed to coax him into a conversation, and soon they were having an intense discussion about what happened in the last episode of DragonBallZ.

Away from the coordinator, I explained that she would have her own cottage, furnished with a bed, pots, plates, fridge and stove, and that she would have to help me out with hanging the laundry and ironing and cleaning the house, in addition to taking Hintsa back and forth to nursery school. ‘Is that okay?’ I asked, searching her face for signs of protest to my generosity. Instead, what I saw was a face that lit up with delight.

‘It is. It is, and thank you for thinking of me,’ she answered with enthusiasm.

‘But aren’t you going to have a problem with people referring to you as a maid for kaffirs?’ I asked, wanting to get it out of the way.

Marita flinched visibly when I used the k-word and said, ‘Sorry madam, please don’t use words like that around me, ne?’ It was obvious she was being genuine. ‘The only people who have been really good to me are black people. I even voted for the ANC in the last election and would have done the same in the last two elections if I hadn’t been in prison.’ Siz, who was watching from the sidelines, playing with Hintsa and pretending not to pay attention, laughed.

Siz knows how I dislike it when white people try too hard to show that they are liberal; I find it insincere. How did Marita even know I was pro-ANC since we had never talked politics? (Although it would be difficult to find any middle-class black person who is strongly anti-ANC at this moment in time.)

What the heck though, at least I would have a maid who had passed Standard Nine, had passable English and would be able to read Hintsa Aesop’s Fables when I stayed late at the office. She would also be able to help him with his alphabet and other little pre-school homeworks. And since my knowledge of Afrikaans was, as I had told the coordinator, almost non-existent, she would definitely be handy to have around should Afrikaans become one of the eleven official languages the little man wants to learn. ‘Okay then. Consider yourself hired,’ I told her.

I arranged to come and pick Marita up the following Saturday. This would, hopefully, give her sufficient time to pack.

‘Ag, sorry to bother you madam, but I don’t have any bags,’ Marita said meekly. ‘Can you mos lend me some?’

Here was my chance to get my future maid to think I was the greatest person on earth, while getting Mandla to think I had actually consulted him on a ready-made decision about the maid. ‘I can do better than that,’ I told her. ‘I’ll go buy some and my husband will bring them to you tomorrow, is that all right?’

‘Baie dankie, madam. Oh thank you so much,’ she gushed.

Hintsa, Siz and I immediately made tracks to Eastgate to test the power of plastic. By mid-afternoon, we had amassed loads of bags full of shoes and the little man was complaining that he was tired. ‘That’s why I never want to come with you and Aunt Siz, mommy!’ They grow up so fast these children – now when did this boy learn to talk in absolutes? ‘How dare you say never to your mummy, boy?’ I playfully spanked his bum.

Siz smiled and said I should celebrate the joys of motherhood. Hers was a sad, longing, smile. I knew she wanted children judging from the way she spoilt her godson, nephew, and Lauren’s children – not to mention the Vuyos 2 and 3, who she didn’t even like – but the gods had not been so kind to her. And the mothers of her stepchildren showed her absolutely no respect or gratitude for all she was doing for their offspring.

Munchies led us to Ocean Basket because I was craving mussels. ‘Girl you know I hate all that pretentious black people eating seafood crap, but just this once, since we are celebrating your madamhood, I will put up with it.’ Unlike me, Siz is seriously lacking in adventure as far as food is concerned. If it’s not beef, chicken or fish, she ain’t having it. The food was good, the wine was better and the conversation was, as usual, highly controversial. I think Siz and I probably talk too much politics because more than once Hintsa has chipped in with his little opinion about the land question, white people or BEE, and I know it was not really a five-year old’s opinion but something he had overheard. Siz was, naturally, impressed, ‘I wish the junior Vuyos could be more like your boy.’

‘Nu-uh. Siz, I think we are talking too much politics around this boy. I don’t want him expelled from pre-school for airing our prejudices. Besides, Hintsa would probably be more subdued if he had an evil stepmother like you,’ I teased.

I called Mandla to check in. ‘Whatcha doing?’ I asked.

‘Some boys from Soweto just dropped by and we’re having a few beers. Can you grab us some food, babes?’

Now I was not too anxious to get home. Unfortunately, Siz had to leave and I could not stay at the mall indefinitely, so I suggested to Hintsa that we go video-shopping at Game and thereafter lock ourselves in mommy and daddy’s room with home-made buttered popcorn, liquorice and juice and watch some great cartoons.

As we walk to the parking lot my son looks up at me and tugs my hand.

‘You know the nursery rhymes that I have at school?’ I nod. He continues, ‘Well, I have been thinking, if Jack Sprat’s wife ate no lean, and Jack Sprat ate no fat, that would mean they did not eat well, right?’

‘Yes baby. I am sure Jack Sprat and his wife did not have a balanced diet.’ I laughed to myself: is the child a future psychiatrist or philosopher, or maybe just a really insightful head of state?

‘Does this mean that Jack was really skinny and his wife was really fat?’ he asks.

‘Sweetie, it’s rude to say skinny and fat. You are supposed to say a little overweight and a little underweight.’ Why do I preach the kind of political correctness I do not exercise?

‘So, are they like Auntie Lauren and Uncle Mike?’

I cannot laugh, but I tell myself that I’ll save it to tell Siz. Meanwhile, I have to protect my friend’s honour and her weight from my TV-addled, perfect-looking-cartoon-chicks-watching son.

‘You see baby, Jack Sprat and his wife are not real people. They are made up and they did not eat right. You know Auntie Lauren and Uncle Mike eat right because you eat at their house all the time, so you cannot compare them to Jack Sprat and his wife,’ I lecture.

On our way home, I drove to Ivory Park and picked up some braaied meat for the drunks, along with some pap and atchar, to ensure they would not interrupt Hintsa and my video session.

On arriving home Mandla, aka daddy, and his friends Nathi and What’s-his-face were drunk as skunks. How could that be possible in the few hours that we had been away? And they kept drinking.

‘Daddy, mommy was telling Auntie Siz that you would be drunk when we got home. Are you drunk?’ my big-mouthed son asked.

His drunken father responded, ‘Boy, I told you not to pay attention to the senseless words of women. Of course I am not drunk. Real men can handle their alcohol.’ He was rewarded with a withering look from me which seemed to penetrate his drunken mind because he apologised. Mandla knew I hated it when he made sexist statements, particularly in the presence of our son – I wanted to raise a man who respected and cherished women.

In a huff, I took Hintsa into our room and locked the door. Thank God our bedroom has a fridge (for ‘mommy and daddy’ reasons I will not go into right now), an entertainment centre and an en suite bathroom. The drunken men were really annoying, but the plus side was that I got time to bond with this boy via something we both love greatly: watching Shrek and Antz. Hintsa fell asleep during the second movie so I carried him to his room and tucked him in.

Fortunately the guys decided not to sleep on the floor of my living room. It appears Mandla and his pals had yet another of their drunken fights, which normally result in mental kisses and all being forgotten next time they see each other. The good news for me was that there was only one semi-drunk fool I would have to make breakfast for the next morning. The bad news, alas, was that I was regaled with, ‘I don’t want to deal with these miscreants anymore. Let them eff off. They just want to mooch from me. . .’ This, in typical drunken Mandla fashion, would go on until he fell asleep – because, should I nod off first, he would keep on waking me up to ask me what I thought and giving me sloppy, beer-soaked kisses.

When I woke up, I knew why the man said he was easy like a Sunday morning. Sunday is such a laid-back day – if it weren’t for the rugrat who was knocking on his parents’ door asking whether he could go next door to play with Lauren’s kids. There was always more than enough food at Lauren’s house, but I called Lauren anyway to warn her that my ‘little Hoover’ would be there in a mo. The kids were going to swim, and I would warm up the grill later on so Lauren, Mike, Siz, Vuyo and the kids could join us for a braai – after Mandla had completed his errand of taking the bags to Marita.

I played the sweet housewife and brought Mandla breakfast in bed (a ham and mushroom omelette, his regular five slices of bread and a Hansa). You could see the fool was hung over by the way he was squinting at the sun streaming through the windows after I cruelly opened the curtains. He could not help being sweet, though.

‘Thanks for breakfast babes. I really needed the Hansa.’ He paused. ‘By the way, where is the boy?’ I told him he was next door, then he winked that knowing, leering, post-drunken wink and said he would break his food fast after he had his soul food – I knew he meant me and I smiled flirtatiously, ‘It can certainly be arranged, my dear husband, as soon as you run an errand to Marita and play your host role perfectly when the gang comes for a braai.’

You would think that would be a passion killer, but for this man anticipation seems to work up his appetite even more and for that I say ‘yeah!’

Mandla had called Vuyo to come along with him. I asked Mandla what they thought of Marita and he said she seemed enthusiastic and appeared as if she would make an alright maid (‘alright’ being the greatest compliment that comes out of Mandla’s mouth, unless he wants something or he is writing a best man’s speech). He and Vuyo did not tell Mike about Marita as we still wanted to surprise Lauren. Apparently Vuyo was drooling – told Mandla that one cannot have chocolate ice-cream every day and in fact, a man’s life called for a bit of vanilla.

The whole gang arrived in the afternoon. The men were busy with their beers and the grill, the kids were paddling in the pool and, while we sipped our wine and made the salad, I was counting the minutes until Lauren and Siz got into a confrontation. I just hoped that Siz would not mention my bloody maid to Lauren during one of her ‘we are better than you’ moments. Fortunately she was not in a baiting mood and it all went rather pleasantly.

It had been a highly laid-back, if momentous, weekend and a great way to begin a new week. One in which I would no doubt have to deal with the psychotic, lazy, ‘I-don’t-know-who-the-fuck-you-were-sleeping-with-to-get-the-post’ deputy I reported to. This guy was the reason why, even when there was little actual work on the office front, I ended up getting home exhausted. I seem to spend most of my time clearing up his mess. I guess that’s why The Woman always says, ‘The best man for the job is a woman.’