In the Dark Muddling

Susan Fenner

The first night in this foreign house is black and nervous. I lie awake, bitten by insomnia gremlins and intuit the time to be about four a.m. No moonlight breaches the smothering drapes and furniture shapes slur. Humidity pastes me to the sheets, night-swimming. Beside me my husband rumbles deep sleep noises. I have to pee.

The first night in this foreign house is black and nervous. I lie awake, bitten by insomnia gremlins and intuit the time to be about four a.m. No moonlight breaches the smothering drapes and furniture shapes slur. Humidity pastes me to the sheets, night-swimming. Beside me my husband rumbles deep sleep noises. I have to pee.

The bathroom is nearby but in my jet-lagged fatigue last night I forgot to note a bruise-safe pathway through lurking furniture. My inner GPS was faultless for twelve years in our previous home, back in Canada. The body remembers how to navigate night routes: cowhide mat on naked soles, two steps onto hardwood, mattress stroke along my thigh, caress of pile rug, touch teak dresser, right turn, slick contact of painted door.

Relocation muddles everything. Last night we arrived in the small rural community of Sabie, South Africa. Ken has accepted a four year contract with a forest company, post-democracy, but it’s still mired in the dregs of apartheid. Tasked with turning it around, he started work here three months ago while I packed up in Canada. His emails brimmed with pithy observations: “25% of my employees have AIDS”; and “the paper says 50 car-jackings in Pretoria last month, dropped to 40 this month -- at this rate it’ll soon be zero”; and “the biggest problem in our forests is baboons eating bark and killing trees. I’ve seen monkeys in Sabie, and a local man saw a leopard while walking in the forest near town”.

As for me, I’m now ready to shake up my privileged life. But in the beginning when Ken was first headhunted I wasn’t ready for the sacrifice. I cried: kids (newly launched), friends, house -- I can’t lose all that. The decision floated on a Rune Stone. Dorky, I know, but at fifty I can get away with saying that. In my angst I massaged the lumpy velvet bag of Viking oracle stones and formulated my question: Shall I go to South Africa for four years? I drew Breakthrough: rely on radical trust and leap into the void.

A new pathway to blaze now. My feet skim broadloom as I sit blind on the high mattress. A new sensation to memorize: this floor is further. My feet creep as if suspecting a trapdoor. The plaster walls and furniture edges become my guides. I am an explorer in dark Africa.

Without warning a lump -- soft, but leather-crusted -- squishes underfoot. Shit. My barefoot rebounds and I yelp into the dislocating blackness. Ken’s bedside lamp slays the night and my eyes squeeze shut against the light blindness.

With the offended foot contracted mid-air, I jabber out my dread to Ken of shit, disturbed. My imagination deserts me. What animal could have gained access through every locked door, interior and exterior, through three layers of alarm systems in our fortified new house (a necessary paranoia of South Africa) to make a deposit here? Then imagination rebounds like Lazarus and I speculate -- a mongoose, a lizard, a monkey -- entered during the day through doors flung open to fresh air, to skulk Sendak monster-like under the bed.

When my eyes open Ken is hunkered over in front of me. “It’s not what you think. Look.” Coiled like ringworm, an obese millipede lies inert. Ken pokes it with his ever-present pen (did it come from his pajama pocket?) and stretches it long. It does have a leathery skin, the crustiness I had felt. I wonder if they are poisonous, like the puff-adders and green mambas I’d read about. I’ll ask Marjani when she arrives, and also ask her to dispose of it. So no shit happens. Ken has crawled back into bed. I let the room reclaim its shape.

On the thirty-six hour journey to South Africa -- four planes, twenty-five hours air time, plus squandering/wandering time in airports -- my mind fragmented, skittered. A recurrent theme emerged: my imminent relationship with Dumisani, our gardener, and Marjani, our maid. I choke on that word, its layers of colonial righteousness, my need to disassociate, to be recognized for my WASP work ethic.

I have inherited these two full-time staff with the company house provided, and fantasize a personal relationship with each. But I have an internal skirmish, warnings by the locals to not become too familiar with the household help and risk being taken advantage of. Can’t I be friends with both? How cockeyed wrong history has gone to bring it to this point.

Fully awake now, my fear’s edge blunts. I wander to the key rack I’d noticed in the scullery where scads of keys, skeleton and flat-cut, dangle. I scoop up fistfuls and spread them on the kitchen table. I study fifty-three keys, each labeled by the former owner, double sets, except for one skeleton key for the French doors leading onto the verandah. I drop it in my purse to take when I go into town for our bank appointment later. Perhaps this antiquated type of key can be duplicated.

Numbness in my jaw: I’m robbed of autonomy by these keys that signify security. This home is a microcosm of the country. Their obsession with security grazed my consciousness six months ago when Ken and I first came to South Africa for our look-see. I’d heard there was a crime issue, a backlash from fifty years of apartheid human rights abuses, after democracy came in 1994. Properties were bounded by brick walls topped with a froth of barbed wire coils, as if in an attempt to soften the affront. Security guards patrolled parking lots. Pit bulls hurled themselves like grenades at their owners’ gates as we strolled by.

Marjani will be in soon from her annex. I had met her and Dumisani briefly during that look-see. Their presence has elevated me to the status of Ma’am. They called Ken Master. The word startled me, loaded with neo-colonial implications -- past associations, racist requirements played forward. I stammered a request then to call us by our names.

They have their responsibilities from five years service in this house. I do not know mine, but I fretted a lot about it on the flight over. First impressions. I’ll be reserved to start with. But kind, of course. I’ll stay in the kitchen to greet Marjani as she comes in through the back door. Perhaps not -- my pajamas vs. her crisp uniform may undermine my authority. But I need to assert my presence in this space from the start. Maybe Ken and I should come to breakfast together, present a united front. I retreat to the bedroom.

Ken is getting ready for his day at work. We talk about my lack of sleep . . . I say I’ll have a nap this afternoon, (I’ll ask Marjani to have tea with me later, a get-to-know-you session); Ken reminds me of our appointment at the bank, (I’ll shake Marjani’s hand in the comrades’ way); I must send an email this morning to our almost-adult offspring in Canada, (I wonder if Marjani has children); I’ll ask her what was that fat creature I stepped on, whether it’s poisonous, (I must remember to maintain the employer/employee distance – the neighbours will be watching – at least until I find my way).

Ken and I walk down the hallway hand in hand. The smell of coffee and toast teases us half way.

“Good morning, Marjani.” I extend my hand, then flub the handshake – is it down-up-down or the other way around? I’m off-kilter.

Marjani giggles and knee-bobs a whiff of a curtsey. “Good morning, Ma’am. I am very pleased to see you.” Her words are uttered in carefully measured teaspoons. Her English is surprisingly good for a fourth language. My face is a mask of self-assurance I don’t own. “Good morning Master.”

Master. Oh my God, still. Words lose their meaning, get normalized through overuse. A generation ago Oh my God was sacrilegious. How long before we chuckle about Master during kinkier moments between sheets?

She serves our boiled eggs exactly as Ken has taught her. He says, “It’s a good thing Ma’am doesn’t have to eat off the ironing board her first day, hey Marjani?” and they bubble with laughter, evaporating any delusions of decorum I’d held.

I had heard that story. On Ken’s arrival three months earlier the kitchen table had not yet been delivered and the new CEO of the company sat at the ironing board to eat his breakfast. The story made the rounds of his staff who expected a new boss as firmly laced as their previous. It made the rounds, no doubt embellished by my husband who, upon graduating as class clown cum laude, would have just as readily enjoyed a career as a stand-up comic.

Thunder grumbling draws our eyes to the window where clouds smear the sky, ointment thick on a bruise. Ken has told me about frequent power outages during numerous electrical storms and I feel an urgency to do my email. The driveway gates swing open and we see Dumisani arrive. He clicks his remote again to close the gates and pockets it in his overalls.

After breakfast I slip out into the muggy morning to look for Dumisani, and hear him singing hymns, administering to the azalea bed. Crossing the verandah to the steps down to the lawn, I am apprehended by a robotic command: Warning! Private property! If you are not authorized to be here, the police will be notified immediately! The voice alarm, the second layer of security on the property. I stumble in and punch its code. This system is new to me, a variation of outdoor motion sensor lights, except these trip a vocal warning to frighten night prowlers. Perhaps lining the perimeter with my night-encountered millipedes would have the same effect.

Dumisani’s smile fills his face. “Ma’am, you are come now. Long time.” He tosses his gloves, shakes my hand -- one pulse down, clasp up, final pulse down. I sense relief in his grinning eyes. He’s been self-directed lately, responsible for this award-winning garden planted by the previous green-thumb owner. My thumbs are not. As we tour the grounds he expresses his need for annuals, fertilizer, new pruners. Unexpressed is his need for appreciation and to work with me, another expectation to grope my way through. The sky is closing in. I need to get to my email; I crave a connection to the familiar I’ve forsaken.

Marjani has her own laundry going in the scullery -- Mondays are hers. Ken leaves for the office -- a kiss for me, a sala gabotse for Marjani.

Sepela gabotse she replies with a collaborative grin. ‘Good-bye’ varies according to whether you are the one staying or leaving. Note to self: learn a few words of greeting in their language soon.

“Marjani, there is something I’d like to show you when you have time.”

She smoothes her apron and adjusts the scarf on her close braids as we walk to the bedroom. I compliment her smart uniform and she says her previous Ma’am bought it for her.

“We want you to know it isn’t necessary to wear a uniform for us, if you would prefer to wear your own clothes.”

“No, Ma’am,” she says. I’m slipping into a linguistic crack -- she doesn’t want to wear it, or she does?

“I like to wear the uniform, then people know I have a job.”

A maid’s uniform, from symbol of servitude to status symbol. I’m night-swimming again and she has just cart-wheeled my Canadian perception in this rural corner of South Africa where unemployment is fifty percent.

I ask the proper name of her position and she responds with utter dignity, “I am a domestic worker.” I roll the phrase like tic-tacs sweet in my mouth, spit out the stone weight of m-a-i-d.

The unlucky fat worm lies in a salmon-coloured whorl, huddled against the wall where Ken flicked it. “It is a shongololo,” Marjani replies to my questions. “No, not poisonous.” She giggles, perhaps from her amusing vision of Ma’am muddling barefoot in the dark and crunching this prowler, or out of nervous doubt at Ma’am’s lack of shongololo acumen.

“They creep under doors when the rain soon comes.” This is entirely possible given the sweeping flow of terracotta tile from indoors onto the verandah, free of thresholds.

“If you touch it when it move, it will curl up quick-quick and play dead.”

Lightening flashes through the room, thunder slams, the rain streams. As if it’s a commanding gong, I head for the computer and Marjani begins shongololo clean-up and vacuuming.

In fifteen minutes I have tapped out the mind flurries of my earliest impressions of dramatic differences: squatter villages of board shacks contrasted with walled brick mansions; ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­crazy-making legal speeds of 120 km/hr on twisting highways while driving on the left; grappling with my role of employer to household staff. I scan for typos. Simultaneously, a thunder-light explosion detonates into silence the vacuum cleaner, dishwasher, laundry machine, the hum of the computer. My email has been swallowed into blackness. Unsaved.

I am sucked back into the night silence for an instant. Above my irritated moan I hear Marjani yelp. More déjà vu. I find her in the pantry, flashlight pointed at a small creature the size of a Canadian loonie in a dark corner. “It is a scorpion,” she says. I step back. My life experience lacks reference to this.

“It is a baby,” she says, “I want you to know it.”

I imagine several corollaries to this discovery, then say, “If this is a baby, where is its mother?” She breaks into surprised laughter at my fear of bigger night-frights to come. I continue, “What do we do?”

“I must kill it.”

“Let me.” With my feet now armored with leather soles and needing to feel empowered, I exterminate it with a triumphant crunch.

Electrically disempowered, I decide to drive into town early for our bank appointment, try to get the duplicate skeleton key, and locate our post office box which Ken has been using.

In the garage gloom I click the remote. The door is defiant. “Marjani,” I poke my head into the kitchen, “the garage door is broken. I’m trapped forever.”

She giggles -- my self-mockery is not lost on her. She crosses to the verandah door and calls Dumisani. “The car is his job.” Ah, the division of labour, and I wonder what else identifies their roles. I will get to the bottom of that later.

Dumisani tugs a few latches and pulleys, works his Houdini tricks, and my car and I escape. I click the driveway gate remote -- still trapped. Dumisani comes to the car window and says, “Sometime it work with no electricity, sometime no. We need the keys.”

I had seen three different keys labeled ‘driveway gate’ this morning.

“All.”

“We need three keys to open the gate?” I am incredulous -- either overkill or poor planning.

When Dumisani’s knees are mud-soaked and he has performed a key ritual, one in a magical box, one in each gate, he manually swings them open.

Downtown Sabie is two blocks long, the hardware store is not difficult to find. The floorboards squeak, the smell of metallic shavings and grease hasn’t been washed away by fresh rain. The shrill whine of a key cutter draws me to the back where a man, whose head sits squarely on his burly torso, finishes a key. My eyes wander loose over a decorative display of dozens of skeleton keys on the wall behind him.

He turns and I dangle my key. “Is it possible to cut this type of key?” I am self-conscious -- my lack of knowledge, my accent marking me as a foreigner.

“Ag, neer.” His head shakes despite the absence of neck. “But we can match it right enough. What number is it?”

I hadn’t seen a number, but scrutinize it now. Etched at the end is C-13.

“Hmm, C series,” and he turns to the wall behind him. With a pudgy finger that reminds me of the salmon-coloured shongololo, he scans along the third row, plucks one from a hook, and hands it to me. “C-13, there it is.”

The procedure leaves me unsure whether to laugh or be scandalized. All the security around our new home in South Africa and anyone can walk in off the street and buy a key to our door. I’m giddy with the concept of access implicit in what I’ve just observed, keys to this bare-bones adventure about to unfold before me. No guarantees.

“Twenty rands, pay at the front till.”

The warped floorboards have an imperceptible rolling pitch -- I stagger slightly. Or perhaps it’s jet-lag playing balance tricks. Off-kilter again. The differences bombard me, the novelty and fascinating strangeness saturate me, baffling and beguiling. I stumble to a stop at the cashier just as all the store lights snap off. A chorus of groans arises in the dark and the clerk says, “Sorry, Ma’am, till does not work. Electricity stopped. Come back later.” I depart without the key to many South African doors. But with the understanding that this floundering in the rumpled dark will be with me for awhile.

Outside, head bent down against the rain, I spot a shongololo inching across my path. Reflexively my foot pulls up to stomp, hesitates, and I toe it warily on the tail. It coils instantly into its protective spiral. I have a strong impulse to do the same.