Maggie Gee: My Cleaner

Typical, she thinks, typical of men. All right, he still phoned and he still sent money, he even came round to do trivial jobs, but he seemed to think his loyalty was to this young girl, just because she happened to be living with him.

Vanessa chops carrots into crisp orange rings, so forcefully she almost cuts off a finger. Usually she is too busy for vegetables, except for the pre-cooked, supermarket kind, but Fifi has suggested that Justin ought to have some, that he is simply short of vitamin C, and that is why he lies in the dark and sleeps. So Vanessa has bought a book called Salads for Life , and is making a mixed salad to share with Justin, though the last one simply sat by the side of his bed, growing limp and brown as the shadows lengthened.

It doesn’t matter, she won’t give up, she will do the right things, even if no one else does, though Justin’s father has let her down, though Mary Tendo has not answered her letter, though Fifi is often unsympathetic, and her hips still ache, and her students are thick. She will keep up standards: she is a stoic.

These thoughts are comforting. She chops less fiercely, approving the marriage of reds and oranges, tomatoes and carrots, garnet-bright grapes, of apple-white celeriac and slivers of spring onion, the light and dark greens of the moonlets of cucumber, the silver-pale edges of the iceberg’s frills, the curves of the onion like the bole of a lute, and all of it sitting like grace on the plate, indisputably good for them, and she has made it.

It matters to Vanessa to do things right.

Mary Tendo

It is early morning. The sky is red as kisses, the passionate kisses of my friend the accountant who said goodbye to me ten minutes ago. (That is what I call him when the bolder young maids try to find out about my private life. In fact, I am happy that Charles is an accountant, and I like to think of him that way, though in my heart I also call him my kabito , my sweetheart.)

There are too many people on this taxi. It is a joke, the law that says maximum fourteen. The driver is greedy, and instructs the boy to hang out of the door and take on more people from the crowds of early morning workers at each stop. There are seventeen of us now, and three live chickens which squawk as we rock into the ruts of red earth where the heavy rains have dug into the road that roars up and down the hills of Kampala. A man in front of me has AIDS, or TB. He is very thin, and coughs horribly, and cannot hide it with his bony hand, and everyone tries to move away, but we are packed together like the dried bananas I took with me when I went to London. I think the chicken is pecking my calves, but my legs are pressed hard against a sticky plastic suitcase that belongs to the fat woman next to me, and I cannot turn round to shoo it away.

I am holding my birthday present on my lap. It is the computer I have always wanted. Not the big heavy thing I had imagined, but a silver laptop, a thing of beauty. It is nearly new, and it is easy to use. I love it more than anyone can imagine. I have longed for one for years, so I can write down the stories unravelling in my head like pieces of ribbon. I will write about my youth, like Hemingway. Already I have written a sentence on it. “dear charles thank you for my present, it is my new baby! yours sincerely mary.” I have not got the hang of the capitals yet. I am clutching it tightly, in case it gets dirty.

At least the boy keeps the sliding door open so air without germs comes into the taxi. It smells of warm rain and earth and flowers, the red-tulip-flowered trees called kabakanjagala which means ‘the King loves me’. (King Ronald still loves us, though he does not really rule us. Now we are ruled by Museveni, and he loves us so much he doesn’t want to leave us. So people whisper he might rig the elections. I think it would be better if he loved us less.)

I spent last night with my friend the accountant who lives in a new flat in the suburb of Bukoto. Charles took me to a smart café, western-style, which opened recently on the Jinja Road, where we had a big table with a white cloth just for the two of us, and small portions, and the waiter was a boy who called me ‘Madam’, though I thought he was laughing at me behind his eyes, and most of the other guests were bazungu , nearly as white as the tablecloths. I think I would rather have gone to Jimmy’s, where you eat smoking hot pork under the stars, delicious muchomo , with your fingers. But in the end I had a very nice birthday, a very nice night with my friend the accountant, and was too busy to read my letter. Now it is morning, although in London it will still be the middle of the night.

Henman is in London. Henman is sleeping. Does she still live in that big empty house, so much too big for only two people?

I worked for her, nearly a decade ago. Miss Henman. Vanessa Henman. Nessie. I spent eight years with her, at first twice a week, then every afternoon, because she found me useful. With her son Justin, who was like my own, but what? But easier to love. (Not that I loved him more than Jamie. I have never loved anyone more than Jamie.)

Easier to love, because not mine. I did not have to fight with his father. Indeed, I liked the little boy’s father, though the writer-woman seemed to despise him, and talked about him jeeringly, both in his presence and his absence. She called him ‘Tiger’, an animal’s name.

In fact this Trevor was very clever. He mended the washing-machine and the boiler. He made the radiators work one winter when there was snow on the ground outside and the heating broke and we nearly froze to death. I became worried about Justin. English children are pale as ice. His little fingers were blue like the sea, the blue-grey sea that is a wall around England. But he said, “My dad is coming soon. I know my dad will be able to fix it.” And his mother was screaming, “Why isn’t he here?” But then Trevor arrived, and like magic, fixed it.

Little blond Justin. Pointy nose, grey eyes. I think he looked very like his father. An English face with sharp small features, except his mouth, which was round, like a rose. He liked to be kissed. He liked to kiss. He liked to be with me when I worked in the kitchen. I liked it too. Children make me smile. All my adult life I have felt short of children.

He wasn’t allowed in his mother’s room. He couldn’t be around her when she was working. He was always with me. I liked him there. The more I liked him, the less I liked her.

I met the writer-woman through a postcard in the newsagent. “Nice friendly family requires trained cleaner.” Trained? What did she mean? Not to do doo-doo on her floor? I was trained to be a teacher or a writer like her. I have been to Makerere University, ‘the best university in Africa’. (Everyone says that who hasn’t been there, and I always smile and agree with them, although bits of Makerere are falling down.)

I went round to see her, smiling, smiling. She shook my hand as if we were equals (I was never equal to the people I cleaned for. I knew all about them, all their dirtiness, the secret habits that no one else knew, the places they left snot, or sanitary towels, the fruit they left to moulder in the bins meant for paper. And so, I was superior.)

And yet, not all of them were bad. Even the Henman is not all bad.

That day she was alone with her small son, who was pulling at her skirt and snatching at her sleeve. I saw she could not make him behave. I saw he needed her to look at him. At the same moment, I started to love him.

I asked her, where was the family? She looked puzzled, and then she laughed. “You are from Africa, of course. This is a single-parent family. That means, it is just me and my boy. Women like me rather like it that way.” She said it with a strange, show-off face that made me think she did not really like it.