By Rosemund J. Handler
‘Pauline! The kitchen’s a catastrophe!’
That big word is one of Madam’s favourites, Pauline thinks sourly. Everything is a ‘catastrophe’ to Madam. She tells her friends on the telephone all the time how bad the whole world is to her and how good it is to them. Pauline raises her eyebrows and pulls up her nose: ‘How divine for you,’ she burbles to the dirty water in the sink, ‘how fantastic.’
And what does she say to me? Everyday she tells me, every single day, what a decent life she is giving me, what an easy job I have. ‘Do you know how lucky you are, Pauline, working for me? There’s only me and the baby in this entire house. So stop looking so grumpy. Take a good look at all the people around you in this brave new country of yours who have nothing to do and no money to feed their families. They would kill for your job, for the food you eat here.’
Hau! I wish for one day, one day only, she will do my work, and I can lie in her bed and laugh at her and her wonderful job and leftover food.
When she first started to work for Madam, before the baby came, Madam showed her teeth – like fat kernels of mielies, thought Pauline – and said, ‘Pauline, it’s different now in this country. We’re all the same now. You mustn’t call me Madam, you must call me by my name, Mrs Bester.’
Pauline noticed that Mrs Bester’s mail was addressed to Miss. C. Bester, but for a day or two she obediently addressed Madam as Mrs Bester. Until she noticed that at the mention of her name on Pauline’s lips, a cold, fishy expression would swim into Mrs Bester’s eyes of pale green glass. This expression vanished when Pauline reverted to addressing Mrs Bester as Madam.
Pauline begins stacking the greasy dishes, lying in dense grimy liquid in which slimy things float and cling. Though Madam has recently purchased a shiny new dishwasher, it stands untouched in a corner, pristine, heraldic. Pauline supposes that madam purchased it to impress her friends, because it has done nothing to lighten her workload. Dinner parties till two a.m. leave behind dozens of dirty dishes, lurking in oily water and littering every surface. They lie in wait for her, a tall filthy mountain to climb when she walks in at six am every morning from her tiny room at the back of this house with too many rooms and a useless, spotless dishwasher.
Pauline is given clear instructions regarding the dishwasher. Two minutes after it is delivered, Madam stands in front of it admiringly. Then she makes an announcement to the kitchen at large, her slim back turned to Pauline, her head to one side.
‘You people have no idea how to handle machines. You’ll just break it. So don’t you dare touch it, do you hear me?’
And nobody else ever does.
Today Pauline is overcome by an impulse to smear the blank surface of the dishwasher with something nasty. Its rectangular metallic presence, a monument to idleness, at once repels and fascinates her. It seems to be asking something of her, to be challenging her in some way.
Perhaps, she thinks, sweeping cigarette butts from under the kitchen table, her irritation with the new machine is connected to the propensity of madam’s guests to scatter ash and stamp it into the carpets; perhaps it is because the rooms reek of stale spilt liquor; or it could it simply be the clutter of dirty glasses and plates to be hand washed, the beer, vodka and gin bottles to be discarded, and the items of smelly clothing to pick up from chairs and floor.
When she goes into the two big bathrooms, she finds used condoms on the floor of both. Aikona!
Pauline gets down on her hands and knees and scrubs the carpets free of stains. She cleans the toilets and bathrooms, using toilet paper to pick up the condoms. She vacuums the lounge and dining room and mops the kitchen floor. The baby is still sleeping, so she quickly washes and hangs up an assortment of garments that belong to madam, but also to large strangers, the shirts and pants of faceless men.
By the end of the day the palms of her hands will be an angry pink. The ends of her fingers and her knuckles will be peeling from frequent immersion in the harsh cleaning fluids that madam complains vanish faster than the sugar and tea. Her back will ache and protest, but the house will have submitted to her vigour. After hours of hard work it will be shining again.
All this while the baby – Madam’s baby who has many fathers – wails and pukes and shits, pulling at Pauline all day long. While Madam – on Monday, Wednesday, on every weekend – sleeps off the party from the night before.
Pauline hears her name being yelled on the intercom system. Madam’s voice is hoarse and angry. Pauline realizes she is late with Madam’s coffee. She prepares it swiftly, then swoops down to pick up the baby. Perching the tray on her head, she carries the baby down the long hallway to the master bedroom.
‘Jesus Christ, Pauline! You know how I feel after a party! I’m desperate for coffee. Why do I always have to nag?’
Madam’s voice, already loud, gets louder at the sight of her child.
‘Get her out of here! The last thing I need with this head is to hear her whining.’
Madam turns on to her stomach and covers her head with a pillow. Her voice is muffled but commanding.
‘When you’ve brought my toast just take her for a walk or something. And whatever you do, keep her away from me for the rest of the day!’
Pauline rolls her eyes. Everyday, thinks Pauline bitterly. Everyday the same. This woman hates her own child. What about the rest of the cleaning, and the ironing?
For the hundredth time she tells herself that there is too much work in this house, she must look for another job. But Madam pays well and there are too few fulltime jobs now, only char work with nowhere to sleep. And no matter how bad some white madams are, her friends who work for coloured or Indian madams tell her it is worse, and much less money also.
Pauline’s two children are at school in Mdantsane, living with her mother. They need money for food and clothes and books. She sighs, the baby’s grizzling in her ear interrupting her futile mental treadmill. This baby is very unhappy, thinks Pauline grimly. Maybe she knows she has a bad mother.
While the baby drinks her bottle, Pauline prepares Madam’s toast and takes it in to her. Madam is fast asleep. She leaves the toast on the bedside table and, dreading madam’s dissatisfied bray, tiptoes out of the room.
She readies the pram for a walk. It has finally stopped raining and timid sunlight peeks from a cloud-streaked sky. The baby brightens as soon as they are outdoors. She gabbles contentedly and waves her hands about. As Pauline pushes, she feels herself relaxing for the first time that morning.
They stay out for more than an hour, peacefully enjoying each other’s company. The baby is asleep by the time they return to the house. Pauline is pleased. Madam will not want lunch until later, and Pauline can tackle the pile of work that awaits her. She puts the baby down in her cot in the nursery at the end of the hallway and walks rapidly to the kitchen, her mind already sorting shirts, jeans and dresses for ironing.
An unfamiliar rustle of sound halts her in her tracks. Puzzled, she listens for a moment. The noise comes again, slightly different, a smothered, discordant drone that reminds her of something. Padding towards the master suite, she puts her ear to the door. Her eyes widen. Her mouth falls open.
Pauline pushes carefully at the door. It opens a crack with a tiny click. She stares, unable to move. Her hand closes over her open mouth as if to stop her breathing.
Madam lies sprawled on the bed, the bottom half of her silky pajamas a rosy pile on the floor and the top coiled scarf-like around her neck. Her legs are obscenely wide and gaping, her nakedness pinkly exposed, shiny seashell pale amid damp blond tendrils. Two thin bluish ankles are firmly grasped in large black hands, belonging to a kneeling man whose back is as wide as Pauline’s mattress.
Madam’s hands are above her head, tied with her pantyhose to the wooden spokes at the back of the bed. She is tossing her head violently from side to side. Her eyes are swollen shut; her nose is bulbous and purple, her face running with snot and tears. From her gagged mouth comes a dull burr of sound.
That is what I heard, thinks Pauline numbly.
A second man appears as if from nowhere. He looms over Madam. He too is huge and black and silent. Pauline – her hand pushing so hard against her front teeth that they hurt – recognizes him. He is the son of a maid who works up the street.
They are swift, these two men. There is not a single wasted movement. As Pauline watches, first one lowers his jeans and then the other. Madam’s face pours water, the long low moan of a cow giving birth continues behind her blocked mouth. But her rapists are quiet: a small grunt only, from the one who goes first, the son of the maid.
As he gets off Madam, the other man mounts her.
A cell phone lies in a corner of the room. Just as Pauline spots it through the crack, the telephone in the hallway rings.
She does not turn around. She watches herself watching them, colour and action videotaping in her brain. She is outside what is taking place in front of her, but she is also outside her own body, somewhere above it, observant and detached.
The hidden camera in her head misses nothing; it clicks on every still, rolls through every inch of footage, is perfectly remote.
The son of the maid picks up Madam’s purse while the other man, with a minimal, efficient search, locates her velvet box of jewellery in a drawer. He hands it to his friend, then removes Madam’s watch from her wrist and gently pulls the sparkling rings off her flailing fingers. Lastly, he fetches the cell phone from the corner of the room.
Not a word passes between the two.
They climb, one after the other, through the French windows – the bars, weak, ornamental, have been pushed aside – and streak across the lawn. They are gone before Pauline remembers to draw breath.
From her suspended state – it feels like a sleep during which she has been vividly dreaming – Pauline comes back to herself to find she is trembling uncontrollably, she is wet with sweat. It is as if she has expended more energy than any housework has ever demanded of her.
She wipes her wet palms on her apron and walks slowly to the kitchen. Her breathing is painful, as if something is broken, her collarbone or a rib. She goes to the sink and washes her hands in hot water, rubbing each finger of one hand with the thumb and forefinger of the other, and then repeating the process until the water begins to cool.
Something hard and grinding bites inside her. She waits for this thing eating inside her body to leave, for the pain of it to pass. Her hands in the cooling water fall to the bottom of the sink and lie there, fingers floating like fronds of seaweed.
When she takes her hands out of the water, they are steady. The trembling of her limbs, her entire body, has left her.
Though it’s still early, she begins to prepare Madam’s sandwich for lunch.
Balancing the tray in one hand and the vacuum cleaner in the other, she knocks on the door of the master bedroom.
Pauline puts the vacuum cleaner and the lunch tray on the carpet and approaches the bed. She removes the breakfast tray with its two slices of cold toast from the side table and puts it on the carpet. She takes the lunch tray and places it on the table. Calmly she reaches out and pulls away the pajama top wound around Madam’s neck. Then, without damaging them further, she unties the pantyhose binding Madam’s thin wrists. She picks up the pajama bottoms from the floor and folds all the garments neatly, piling them onto a chair.
Finally she removes the gag, which is Madam’s sweet-smelling facecloth. Madam begins to splutter and choke and sob.
Pauline picks up the breakfast tray and watches her for a moment.
‘Mrs Bester,’ she says, ‘the baby is crying. I will vacuum later.’
She walks unhurriedly from the room, aware that the weeping has stopped.