maybe Siz is right. Maybe sometimes I tend to overcompensate in order to fit in, just as other ‘bi-racial’ (as the Brits like to call us) children tend to do in order to be welcome by our darker kinsfolk. I mean, just a look at history is enough to highlight this. Malcolm X was bi-racial (his grandfather, like mine, was white) and he detested white people with a passion. Bob Marley wrote many controversial songs directed at his white ancestors.
Somehow it is always the blackness that is celebrated. Is it possible that the black ancestral blood running through their veins comes back to haunt white people through the cultural loss of their children? (Of course if this is the case, the black South African ancestors, apart from my parents and a few others, have remained rather passive in this respect.)
Perhaps I am seeking revenge for my black ancestors by doing the white maid thing? Granted, since I will be paying her more than the minimum labour allowance set by the Domestic Workers’ Union it’s more like fair employment than revenge, but I cannot help feeling some sort of glee in the darkest chamber of my dark heart that yearns to yell at middle-income white people with black maids: ‘We are all equal after all, you got a black maid and I have a white one!’
4. The Recruitment
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
