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 it be a big loss on your part if I borrowed her to help me out?’ I said.
She smiled ever-so-sweetly, probably welcoming the opportunity to have another ex-con off her hands, and asked me which one I had in mind. ‘Marita,’ I responded, quickly adding, before she said no, ‘I am also very keen for my son to learn what I feel is an important South African language. Unfortunately my Afrikaans knowledge is dismal at best. Marita is the best speaker of that language I have come across – apart from yourself of course,’ I ended, with a flourish. Obviously I had pressed the right button because the coordinator’s face, which had become rather pinched when I mentioned Marita’s name, lit up. ‘What exactly would she be doing?’ she asked.
Knowing the sensitivities of South African society, new South African or not, and knowing equally well that I would never be allowed to cross the line of having a white woman for a maid, I deliberately fudged, ‘I know that she has been doing some sewing and I have a cottage where she can do that and perhaps market her clothes. In return she could also help me, in her free time, to pick my son up from school and tutor him Afrikaans and his other homework.’
The coordinator seemed to like the idea. ‘We just need to ask Marita,’ she said, sending someone to call her.
When Marita came in the coordinator said sternly, ‘Marita. This lady wants you to come and help tutor her son in Afrikaans while you are staying with her. How do you feel about that?’ So she was primarily a tutor now. But I was not going to make corrections and I knew I had it in the bag when Marita said, in her thick Afrikaans accent, ‘Really? I can come and stay with you? Oh thank you so much madam. Thank you, thank you.’ She had called me madam! The only people who call me ‘madam’ are Mandla’s friends and they say it in a denigrating way. I thought, ‘I like this girl. Yeah. I could definitely work with her!’
With the deal done, I walked out with Marita, who was still calling me madam, to Siz and Hintsa. ‘She sure knows her place – Lauren would like her too,’ Siz whispered to me as I got close to her. I nudged her and muttered, ‘Shuddup . . .’
Marita may have called me ‘madam’ but her job was not secure yet. I had to make sure she got on with the ‘prince’, who would be doing most of the interaction with her. I introduced them, and Hintsa smiled at her shyly. She managed to coax him into a conversation, and soon they were having an intense discussion about what happened in the last episode of DragonBallZ.
Away from the coordinator, I explained that she would have her own cottage, furnished with a bed, pots, plates, fridge and stove, and that she would have to help me out with hanging the laundry and ironing and cleaning the house, in addition to taking Hintsa back and forth to nursery school. ‘Is that okay?’ I asked, searching her face for signs of protest to my generosity. Instead, what I saw was a face that lit up with delight.
‘It is. It is, and thank you for thinking of me,’ she answered with enthusiasm.
‘But aren’t you going to have a problem with people referring