Me and Rose had four floors of rooms to clean every day, and the other teams got other floors. We had a routine. Rose would do the bathrooms, while I did the beds and vacuumed. Then we would switch. We were good together. We never had an argument. We kept far away from the head housekeeper also, and from the other white people in charge: the receptionists, the restaurant manager. That was Rose’s idea. Stay out of trouble, that’s what she said. We had to deliver the tablecloths to the restaurant in the mornings. We’d see the tables and all the glasses stacked. Our boss, Josephine, was from Soweto also, so if we needed anything – more towels for room 310, an extra blanket for room 209, one time a new mattress for the penthouse - we’d ask Josephine. It was no problem. No arguing with a boss who wanted this, wanted that. Rose had that before, she told me, when she was a domestic in Athol. You know, with the boss ladies in the big houses, so fussy, so fussy. Now we didn’t have those problems any more.
We laughed a lot also at work those days, me and Rose. We’d see crazy things in the rooms. There were businessmen from Cape Town who had women, you know, sent up by the porters at night. Fancy ones with long, shiny legs and long yellow hair. Rose and me saw them, those days. There were German tourists one time, with their cameras and their language that sounds like Afrikaans. I heard they were like the Afrikaners too, those Germans, but I never saw for myself. They gave good tips, so that was fine with me. One of them left twenty rand for the maids on the night table. Me and Rose planned all afternoon what we’d do with twenty rand extra. I joked with Rose it was an advance on her boy’s next pair of shoes. She laughed at that, but God’s truth, that’s what it was, I’m thinking now.
When Rose’s boy was nearing matriculation, that was in 1976, there was all the big trouble with the schools: the protests every day, and the police in the streets. Rose told me he still went to school, even though the schools weren’t open so much, but he still went, and he did his homework, and his teacher sent special work home with him. He sent work home special with Rose’s boy, because Rose’s boy was so good and wanting to learn. But I think Rose was getting a little worried in those days, about the school, and about matriculation. I was worried also because of the trouble in the streets, and the police in the streets. So I told my children and my sister-in-law stay in the house, see, stay in the house. So mostly those days I think they were staying in the house, or they were running on the path behind, but not on the streets any more. You know how it was.
One day Rose didn’t come to work. It was the first time that had happened. Rose was always at work. Even if Rose had a cold and was coughing all over the place, she came to work. I told Josephine I think it’s the boy must have trouble, otherwise Rose would surely be at work. I had to get another partner for work that day. It wasn’t nearly so good either, with the partner I got that day.
When Rose came to work the next day she told me she can’t talk loud any more. I said what you mean you can’t talk loud. Rose says we have to be speaking careful now. Rose didn’t have her usual carefree way. You know? It took her a long time to explain it to me, because I think she was not understanding so well herself what was going on. And me, I’m not understanding so well either. Because I never had anything to do with all that before. I never knew what’s going on with the political people. And we were afraid you know. So Rose told me her son had been going to a house at night sometimes, where there were the political people, talking, talking at night. The boy didn’t pay so much attention to his homework any more, she said. She found out by accident, that’s what bothered her a lot also. He said he was going to do his homework with a friend, and one night she followed him a way up the back street, and she saw the house, and the boys who were going in there. She knew about that kind of house. They talk and talk in the night in those houses. They smoke cigarettes. They do work for the leaders on the Island. I don’t know. We keep away from those houses because we don’t want trouble with the police. You know how it is. But that’s where Rose’s boy was in the evenings now.
Rose told me she shouted at the boy. No, it’s no good, she said. You’ll end up on the Island too she told him. She cried and cried. That’s what she told me. She was shaking and afraid in her house now. And her boy, he takes his books to the paraffin lamp and he reads and does his homework still, but Rose thinks there’s other books he reads now also. Books from the other house where he goes. Rose isn’t sure now. But Rose was very afraid also to talk.
So for a few months Rose was agitated at work, and she was afraid of talking, but she would still be talking. I would listen, then I would try to tell her her boy is clever, he’s a clever boy, he won’t do something stupid. And I told her maybe something good would come out of it, because those other clever ones are on the Island but they say they will change things one day. I don’t know. I don’t know. It was a long time then the leaders were on the Island, and nothing come of that. Rose was very upset. I used to come home upset also. I felt very nervous, in truth. Because then I got to thinking if the police find Rose’s boy and what he’s doing, then they will find Rose, and if they find Rose they will find me, because I work in the hotel with Rose. I wasn’t sure what the police could want with me, but you never know. You have to keep away from them. They want to know things always about people who are making plans. They don’t want plans. You know how it is.
My sister-in-law meantime was just carrying on as usual with a new man she found at the Indian’s shop, another no-good one, and he used to come and hang around at night in my house, and drink meths in front of the children, and keep the children up. I was getting very upset with everything in those days, because then in the mornings I had to go to work and see Rose who was also getting more and more agitated.
Then one terrible day Rose came to work, but as soon as I saw her in the laundry by the uniforms I knew it was a very bad day. She was shaking when she took her uniform. That day Rose sat mostly on the beds in all the rooms we were cleaning, and cried many tears. I did all the work, and I was sweating because I wanted to cover for Rose, but I was also sweating because of what she told me. Her boy had left the night before, in the middle of the night. He was gone to Lusaka, in Zambia, up there – gone. Gone, I said. What you mean gone. He told Rose the Movement was sending him away to the training camp overseas. It had all been long planned, but he couldn’t tell Rose before because it was very dangerous. She must not know. That’s another reason I was sweating: because now I knew about this boy who had been sent by the Movement to train overseas. To train and come back with guns and bombs and everything. Rose kept saying, guns and bombs and guns and bombs and everything and then she would be crying again. He’s only seventeen years old Rose said, many times. Many times she said that. And I would be thinking about the black school shoes, and the report card with a line of A+’s all the way down, and my heart was deep sore too.
December 15, 2008
Goose Lane Editions Launches New Online Media Resources
December 15, 2008
New From Gaspereau Press
