Maggie Gee - My Cleaner

“Cleaning is hard work,” says Mary Tendo. “To do it well is not so easy.” She looks to Trevor for support, but he only smiles and looks away.

“I’m not an expert. Blokes never do it.”

“Men are so lazy,” says Vanessa, but half-heartedly, as if she has her eye on other prey.

“I’ll be off then,” says Trevor. “I’ve fixed the toilet and got that shit out of the gutter.”

“There’s a tear in your shirt,” Vanessa says, critically. “This Indian person doesn’t look after you—”

“Soraya’s from Iran,” Trevor corrects her. “And I’ve never asked a woman to mend my shirts. Look, I’ve really got to go, Vanessa, Got to read a book.”

“What’s the rush?”

(But he’s always talked about reading like this, as if it is an urgent need, something he has on a timetable and might lose forever if he misses a moment. When he lived with her, briefly, he kept his books in a wooden chest he had crafted himself, ingeniously fitted with internal folding shelves and adjustable compartments, a cross between a tool-box and a nineteenth-century writing desk, but big enough to contain twelve dozen books, as he had told her proudly, no more, no less. “One hundred and forty-four books,” he said. “That’s all the books I have in the world.” At which her lip had curled, slightly. Poor man, he thought he was a great reader. “I have four thousand or so,” she replied. “But you haven’t read ‘em all, have you?” he asked. “Nobody does,” she said, amused. “I do,” he told her. “Then I pass them on. To a friend who might like it, or a charity shop, so the good books keep on doing the rounds. And then I buy another one, and read that. Reading’s the breath of life to me.”)

So she doesn’t wait for him to give an answer. It’s just the way he is, and always was. “Did you paint that chip in the bath enamel? I’ve been asking you to do it for ages.”

“No, too lazy,” he says. “Ta ta. Nice to see you, Mary. Keep trying with Justin. He looks a lot brighter since you arrived.”

“Cleaning is hard work,” Mary doggedly repeats, but neither of them is interested. They have wandered, gently squabbling, into the hall, and Vanessa is seeing him off into the twilight. The toilet is working, the gutters are clear, Justin’s peas are eaten, Anya is hired. Things seem to work better when Trevor is around.

Vanessa pats him on the shoulder with her thin pale hand, which he has been familiar with for half a lifetime. Unconsciously, he always checks for the ring. “Bye bye Tigger. See you soon.”

“Not if I see you first,” he says, and manages to kiss her on the cheek before she backs away from him, laughing and protesting, into the dark house where Mary waits.

Mary Tendo

Ihave nearly finished showing Anna how to clean. She tells me she is experienced, but I see as I watch her that she is not. She brushes towards her with the long brush, when you should push the dust away from you. She begins her work by emptying the waste paper tins, though as she is cleaning she will fill them up again. She vacuums the floor before she tidies, though when she tidies she will find more dust. She does not look under the cushions on the dining room chairs, but of course crumbs always creep under cushions. Still she is very quick and she smiles all the time and when she does not know, she does not worry me with questions, and her hair and her skin are very white and clean. I am surprised that I chose a white-skinned cleaner, but it is good for them to learn a new skill.

Now that I have settled the cleaning question, I can concentrate on two things which are more important. I shall do my detective work, for Justin, and make a beginning on my new project. I have set up my laptop on the dressing-table. It makes me smile to watch myself, sitting there writing in my rose-pink room. I did not have a mirror until I was fifteen. I shall write my Autobiography and Life. In Kampala, of course, I would be too busy. I took the name from some papers that Miss Henman left on the table in the kitchen. It is the new course she is teaching at her college: ‘Autobiography and Life Writing’. The description used show-off words, of course, which is not her fault, as I know myself from the years I spent at Makerere University. You cannot pass exams if you do not show off (though some people enjoy it more than others).

“There is a pervasive discontent with the traditional convention-driven narratology of novels, and people are turning to life writing to reappropriate their own narratives. This is especially evident in a post-colonial and post-imperial context.”

I am ‘post-colonial’ and ‘post-imperial’, and so I have exactly the right context. Though if anyone else said it, I would be annoyed. I do not want the empire and the colonies attached to me like a long tail of tin cans. I am going to write about my life in England, Uganda and all over the world. My Autobiography and Life . Or perhaps, The Life of Mary Tendo . Everything will be finished by Christmas. I find myself wondering who will read it. Sometimes I think, thousands of people, sometimes I think only my kabito .

I hope it will end with an adventure, once my work as a detective comes to a climax.

From The Life of Mary Tendo

Everything begins with the mango tree. We sat under the mango tree and told stories. Sometimes I could not wait for my turn. I hope our tree has not fallen down.

In London mangoes were very expensive when I first came here, all that time ago. My employers used to buy them, and leave them to rot. They hardly ever ate the fruit in their fruit bowl. It was me who had to throw it away. In the end I started taking the fresh fruit for my baby.

I dreamed that England would make me rich. Instead, it made me a fruit thief and a cleaner.

I cleaned up other people’s mess.

Hair-balls, chewing-gum, pellets of snot.

Sperm-stiffened towels, cigarette butts, blood.

Baby sick, nappies, sanitary towels.

My professor said to me, “Remember, Mary, you always have choices,” but once you are a cleaner, there are no more choices. Every kind of dirt becomes your business. Some people would say I was less than my parents, but I know how much I paid to get to London. I am proud, not ashamed. I am a Ugandan.

In the village, my family was considered rich. We had a square house of plaster, with a flat roof of tin. You could see the bricks of the inside walls. But most people still had mud huts, roofed with straw, little round huts like baked chocolate, with lizards dropping from their thatch like rain. My mother told me not to laugh at them. We had boys who fetched water and helped with the crops, aunties who sewed and made clothes for us, cousins who helped to cook and clean. What was there to clean? Only the cooking pans, the cook-house. No rows of books, no polished floors, no expensive carpets to brush with soft brushes. Just dust and insects when it was dry, mud and frogs when the big rains came, splashes from the cooking, ash from the fire. The bedding to be washed and dried in the sunlight, and spread flat as paper, to kill the jigger flies. Life in a village does not have to be dirty.

And in London, Paris, Tripoli, also, all the rich cities where I have cleaned, I found what? I found dust, and mud, and insects. More dust than at home, because the things were everywhere. All of the houses were stuffed with things, mirrors, pictures, toys, money, left lying around, mostly white people’s money. And the dust was grey, mostly white people’s dust. It came from their skins, their hands, their heads. It wasn’t sand. It wasn’t earth. It wasn’t alive. It was dust from their faces. The city is dirtier than the country.