1st March 2017
Lusaka.
Madam,
Re: Resignation – Prisca Banda
Madam, many months now, you been talking at me, saying, ‘Prisca, you need English if you want to be somebody.’ You say this last word slow, pounding it into three small pieces that come out with your mouth squeezed like this and your nose pointing up. I take your meaning to be: If I want to be some-bo-dy, like you, who can make your maid and garden boy scatter to look busy at the sound of your revving Subaru engine, I must add more English to my talking.
So, with my Christmas bonus last year, I register myself into night school at Lusaka Girls’ and start putting somebody-making English into my head.
And thank God, because now I can say my resignation without the trouble of looking in your eyes, which, when they are angry, can chase all the words from my mouth and push them back inside my throat.
This word, resignation, I pick it out of Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English in class last week. It mean ‘an occasion when you officially announce that you have decided to leave your job,’ and ‘when someone calmly accepts a situation that cannot be changed, even though it is bad.’
Last time I am stop this job, it wasn’t my own wanting, no. Yourself, you chase me. You call me ‘dirty little thief!’ of your nice, shining Brazilian wig––the one which you buy on nkongole from Bana Musebo. Even though, when Bana Musebo, she come to pinda you for her monies, I tell her that you fly to Dubai just that morning. In true, you have just run into the pantry, like one of those fat rats which hide behind the sack of mealie meal.
When you finally unlock the door and come out peep-walking, slow-slow, back into the kitchen, with your dress stinking of dry tilapia and your face no more the nice brown of groundnuts but the white of mealie meal, I keep my laugh buried on my inside. I just tell you, ‘She’s gone, Madam,’ and keep on scrubbing the black burnings in a pot at the sink.
You say to me, ‘Oh my gosh, Prisca, you’re such a lifesaver!’
But one small month afterwards, Madam, you forget all the lifesaving I did by lying on you to Bana Musebo, and dress me in that dirty name: thief.
Thief, it mean to ‘steal another person’s property.’ Which, if I say the true, I do it sometimes, but only to the cooking oil because my own, it finish too-too fast. Plus, I know if I aks you, you’ll just talk me: ‘Prisca, you need to manage your salary better!’ As if 500 kwacha, it is very big monies which need even to be manage. But your wigs? Never! Me, I like my hair in simple mukule just like this. Yet, even after I explain this, Madam, even after I beat my chest and swear, ‘Akalumba fye, Madam, it was not me,’ you still chase me.
‘Get out of my yard, you little thief! Don’t dare bother me about your salary.’ This was you shouting big, squeezing all your face into one tight ball like you ate too much impwa.
Quiet, I pack up my shame and fold it under my arm together with the yellow Shoprite plastic bag where I keep my spare clothes. I carry it out and walk back to Ng’ombe.
Two days go like this, with me having no job. But to tell you the true, it was no different than before, except I spend both of the days at Blessings Maid Centre instead of polishing your floors, and making your daughter, Lubuto, laugh when ZESCO takes away the electric and she can no more laugh at Disney Junior. I wait there for another Madam to walk in and say, like you, ‘You, in the corner. You seem like a hard worker. Come with me!’ I wait because I know that I still have enough beans at home to carry my stomach to the month-end. So, the only trouble that worry me then is where I should find the money to give my landlord his rent. But before this problem can press itself into the corner of my eyes and pound my head, my phone ring once.
‘Hello, Madam,’ I answer.
‘Hello, Prisca,’ you say, with your voice now butter soft. ‘I have no one to take care of Lubuto. Could you please come?’
I know already that you have no one to watch Lubuto because that child takes many days to learn a person’s face and longer even, to accept it. I know also that it isn’t Lubuto making the butter melt and slide your tongue soft like this. You must have find your wig buried somewhere under the pile of clothes you haven’t been able to fit for many months now because your stomach, after Lubuto, it stay swollen like you are too full. This is your Sorry.
Lubuto, she is just a baby––only one years, not even big enough for school, and it has only been two days. Too short for her to learn a new maid’s face.
‘Okay, Madam,’ I say, ‘I’m come.’
‘You’re such a darling, Prisca.’
Now, today, you forget the darlingness and put in its place, pro-stute. Madam, even for this paper, the word is too ugly. It’s still paining me. My chest is still the heavy of cement brick from remembering how you say it so easy. ‘I should have known you were just a pro-stute, Prisca!’ With your eyes pointing at me straight as if you’re talking me something simple like, ‘Prisca, bring this to the car, please,’ or maybe, ‘Check on Lubuto, please, she’s crying again.’
The worser thing is, you spit this ugly word in the front of Collins when already, you know, this garden boy has no respect for me. Each time you send me to tell him to water the flower bed, what does he do? He shout, ‘Ah, iwe!’ even flipping his hand like that, as if I’m his size. ‘You’re just a kaboyi, like me!’ Like his big eyes are blind to see that: 1. I’m a maid who work inside the house and not outside with the dirty, and 2. I am two times his small sixteen-years age.
Worsest, you know me, I pray. You seen me with your own two eyes, wearing my blue-white Dorcus Mother uniform on the Sabbath mornings you bring Lubuto for me to take care of, even though I am off work. How can you now call me a pro-stute all because you find that big black pant swinging from the inside hinges of your bedroom door? Big black pant like that, which is not even to my size.
Madam, I beg you, listen me well here, please! That your husband—he was home, yes. For lunch only. I even serve him his favourite: curry chicken with fresh kalembula. I cook it exact the way he want, putting oil at the beginning and again at the end, in between sprinkling crushed chillies and garlic. While he eat, I make myself busy outside, polishing his shoes and reminding Collins to water the roses. Remember you find me on that same verandah? I was putting your husband’s shoes to air out the ‘five-day stink,’ as you say.
Every Friday before this one, you never come home for lunch. Friday is when you get your eyebrows cut into the nice surprise-shape even if it not look like the TV womens. But this Friday, you drive in, rush out of the car and into the house before Collins or me can collect any packages or give you a word. You say, ‘I forgot my purse, Prisca––just need to dash in and collect it quick—Lubuto give Mommy a kiss,’ fast––fast like that, as if the words are chasing your feet.
Instead of purse, you find your bedroom door open like a mouth—inside it, your husband breathing like a man running, and that black pant stuck in the door like burnt meat between teeth.
It feel like the time start to crawl and then stop sudden when you rush back to slap me. If you are not busy calling me pro-stute, I could have tell you that Bana Musebo, she come today. If you are not too busy shouting, ‘You little bitch! You bitch! You’ve been fucking my husband? Shit,’ maybe I could have tell you how Bana Musebo, she did not even ask me, ‘Is your Madam inside?’ She walk into your house, proud on her pointy shoes like this, shaking her buttocks like two ripe mangoes begging to fall from the tree. Like that, she go straight into your bedroom with your husband following behind. Me, I keep myself outside because if I see nothing, I’ll have no lies to tell. But even from out there, with the loud of tyres on Independence Avenue, and dogs barking at them through gates, your husband’s voice comes running out, shouting, ‘Fuck!’ for all of Woodlands to hear it.
But, it like, the way your voice climb from alto to soprano quick, scare my own voice. Even when I open my mouth, nothing come out. In my head, I tell you how Bana Musebo, she’s tiptoeing out of the kitchen door and through the back gate, holding her sharp shoes in her hands. If you just pause, small-small, between those bad words, I could’ve maybe point one small finger behind. You could turn your head and see; even the strap of her bra was looking out of her shirt to show you who pro-stute is, for true-true.
One last-last thing here, Madam: next Friday, maybe drive home early by small minutes. Twenty minutes, maybe. Enter the house soft. Maybe you catch Bana Musebo before she have a chance to put herself back together. Coincidence, say my dictionary: ‘A remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection.’
If it don’t happen: good! But if it do, allow your tongue to move quick this time, like hot butter in a frying pan. Don’t say, ‘I need someone to watch Lubuto,’ no. Say Sorry for true-true, this time.
Yours, Prisca.
