Maggie Gee - My Cleaner

When she comes into the street, hot and happy, at three am to catch the night bus home, she sees, sharply lit up, in the sudden chill, a familiar face, smoking a cigarette under the street light. “Abdu?” she says, amazed. And it is him. Abdu Mawanga. Her friend from her early days as a cleaner. Now waiting to pick up two of his daughters, who are still strutting their stuff inside. They reminisce in the cold night air, sending plumes of white breath up to join the pollution, and Abdu asks Mary to lunch in Dalston, where he has a good business he wants to show her.

Next day Mary decides to invite Juanita, a Spanish cleaner they had both been fond of, in those days as fragile and twittery and bright as the pet shop budgies that Mary loves. And to her surprise, Juanita is still at the phone number she had all those years ago, still living in the same council flat, though it must be over a decade since they cleaned together.

They manage to meet, at Dalston Kingsland Station, three days later, all three of them exuberant.

“The money was good,” says Abdu Muwanga, escorting Mary along, with one affectionate arm, through a crowd of chattering, many-coloured peoples. “Didn’t we think the money was good, at the time?”

“It was riches,” Mary says. “Not the houses, but the offices. And it wasn’t lonely. We did have some laughs.”

They are picking their way between the blowing striped awnings of the market stalls at Dalston Kingsland. Ridley Road is smarter than it was ten years ago, with more brick-built shops and less rubbish on the floor. It is a weekday: business is quiet. Yet the young men are out there with lavish displays of bright red meat, surely too red to be true, shining rich as velvet in the fresh cold air. The fish-stalls have jewel-like sweeps of crushed ice from which the heads of fish poke up like beaks, pink and turquoise, with round veiled eyes. Even the thinnest stalls have something to sell: dull stumps of brown manioc or cassava. An old woman sits by a tiny pile of pastries. “ Oly otya Nnyabo ,” Abdu says.

“ Jendi Ssebo ,” the woman replies.

“ Story ki? Business egenda etya? ”

“ Bwetyo. Tuuli waano tugenda mpora .”

“Is everyone here from Uganda?” asks Juanita. In some ways the little Spanish woman is unchanged. She has the same squeaky voice, the same short, breathless body that taps along on too-high heels, never quite catching up with Abdu and Mary. But her face is less happy, and more lined, and the vivid rose of her cheeks is painted.

“The lady with the pastries was Ugandan,” says Abdu. “Most people, not. Lots of Nigerians, Ghanaians.”

“You Africans,” says Juanita, at least half-disapproving. “You everywhere. Not bein’ funny.”

They are going to have a look at Abdu’s business. He is very proud of his success. Once the three of them had soldiered together on the early shifts for a contract cleaner: now Abdu and Mary have escaped, but Juanita is still spending her mornings cleaning and her afternoons as a school meals assistant. She has dressed up more than they have, to make up for this. Later they are going to a café on Mare Street that serves Ugandan and western food. Mary knows that Juanita will shriek in horror when she sees the steaming mounds of carbohydrate.

Abdu’s shop is on the side, solidly built, solidly roofed. He has several people working for him, who smile respectfully as he arrives. He sits Mary and Juanita down at the back, and begins to show them what he imports. “This Chicken Curry Masala you can only buy here. People come from all over London to get it. Authentic Ugandan spices, of course. I am building up my chain of supply. If you have a good product, people will buy it…” Mary listens to him talk, with shining eyes. She is happy that Abdu has become successful. When they were both young, he was kind to her, hauling machines for her that she could have carried, always asking after Jamie and Omar, showing her the respect she needed. And he has stayed the same, though he is plumper, more substantial. His hair is thinner, and he wears good shoes.

Juanita is impatient, and darts around, picking things off shelves and putting them back, sniffing suspiciously at unfamiliar vegetables, glad when she finds something she can name.

“Peppers,” she says. “Red peppers. Nice?”

“Those are special,” says Abdu. “I’m proud of those. They come from the same seed as Caribbean peppers. But there’s something about the Ugandan soil. Don’t you agree, Mary? Ettaka lya Uganda lilina akakondyo! And the Ugandan weather too. These peppers are delicious, they have more flavour but they’re not too hot. No one thought I would be able to sell them here. I began with one box a week, a few years ago. Now I can shift two hundred boxes a week! Nekolela maali wano , not bad money!”

“Big man,” says Juanita, a little mockingly, lifting her tiny nose towards him. Her hair is full of small combs and decorations, too girlish for her, and her eyebrows look surprised, a thin black arch that she now raises even further. “You have become a very big man, Abdu. But I am starvin’. Some of us still workers! My afternoon off, I always get a nice lunch.”

“Time to go,” Abdu agrees, and aside to Mary, “ Naye kati enjjala enzitta .”

“It’s the weather,” Mary says. “I am always hungry here.”

They set off towards the café through the cooling wind. Can this really be London? Mary wonders. Only ten percent of people are bazungu , and some of those are probably Spanish, like Juanita, or maybe Eastern European.

A tall handsome man with a huge purple turban and one long earring like an elephant’s tusk emerges, half-dancing, from a side-alley from which reggae music ebbs and flows. He embraces Abdu like a brother.

“This is the Doctor,” Abdu says. “And this is my sister, Mary.” They shake hands. “And my other sister, Juanita,” he adds, almost too late, pushing her forward.

“Are you from Uganda?” Juanita asks, suspicious.

Abdu bursts out laughing, and pats the tall man on the back. “ Nawe ori munauganda’? Which part of Uganda are you from, my brother?”

“Don’t use your barr-barous language with me, Abdu. I’m from the Ca-rib-bee-an, miss,” he spells out, laughing. “The Doctor is my name. Everyone knows me.”

Juanita nods without understanding. “So what part of Africa did that tall man come from?” she asks, once they are settled in the warm café, with its view of the street and all its peoples.

“Montserrat, not Africa,” Abdu tells her. “A tiny island. But he knew Bob Marley.”

“I know Bob Marley,” says Juanita, jealously, eager to recover from any mistake. “Everyone knows Bob Marley.” And she gets up, laughs, and begins to dance, as if she were young again and happy, to the words she is singing, in a high cracked voice, “Don’t rock the boat…Don’t rock the boat,” and Abdu and Mary sing along with her.

Abdu recommends the goat curry, and he and Mary order lots of ‘food’, Ugandan-style, big starchy roots of sweet potato and cassava. He tells them about other businesses he has, renting rooms to Ugandans in Forest Gate. “I don’t mind them sharing, three to a room, if that is the only way they can afford it.”

“Oh yes, very kind, very nice,” says Juanita. “And that way you make more money, no?” She orders, with much frowning at the menu, a steak, then tells the waitress the meat is tough.

Throughout most of the meal, she complains, like a poem. Her sadness is real; her husband is ill, has not worked for years, because of diabetes, her daughter, who was clever, left school at fifteen and got involved with a drug-dealer. The fact that he was black has not endeared her to Africans: “I’m not sayin’ nothing, but he was coloured.” Now the daughter has a baby that Juanita ‘never’ sees (though it turns out that this means every other weekend). “Why? Why has God done this to me?” Then Juanita has a beer and becomes even franker.