I fight. I have gone on fighting, like a lioness.
Sometimes I thought she was dead. She sat deathly still staring ahead of her. When I shook her gently, she said ‘Je souffre. I’m suffering.’
And I said: ‘I’m here, Mummy, I’m your little one, your baby. I was in your tummy. If I could, I’d crawl back inside. Then we’d be together forever.’
I said: ‘Shall I put a flannel on your forehead? Shall I get you a glass of milk? Shall I turn out the light, turn on the light, lower the blinds, raise the blinds?’
I’m suffering now too, Mummy, I’ve suffered so much. I didn’t know a person could suffer so much, but still our suffering is nothing in comparison to the suffering of Jesus, Son of the Almighty, who is called Jehovah. Amen.
I remember everything, Mummy.
Every week our house was cleaned from top to bottom, even when there was no dirt, even when my mother was depressed. Turning the place inside out, my mother called it. ‘We’ll turn the place inside out. On Saturday mornings after breakfast she and I tied cloths over our hair. They weren’t cloths, but worn-out scarves. Or ones that my mother considered worn-out. Ones she could not be seen in the street with without looking ridiculous. I could still manage it, she said, because I was young, and young people were less harshly judged, but that didn’t last forever. Nothing lasted forever, certainly not youth. ‘Have no illusions!’
She pulled the scarf off my head, braided my hair, rolled the braid up and fastened it with a hairpin. Now the scarf could go on top. And when was I going to cut all that hair off? It served no purpose, did it, all that hair? Was I planning to sell it? Had I let myself be talked into believing I could sell it? ‘My daughter doesn’t sell herself, understood?’
‘Yes, Mummy. Of course, Mummy.’
‘I wouldn’t want…’
‘I know, Mummy.’
Those words were sufficient to focus our minds on what bound us together forever: my dear Dad, who had loved us both deeply and we him. We lived in his house, and that’s why we had to look after it. Mummy and Daddy had had the house built to be happy in with their daughter Odette, for whom they had had to wait a long time, almost fifteen years, which had made the joy at my birth all the more delirious. Unfortunately their happiness came to an abrupt end. Sweet songs don’t last long.
Mummy and I put on rubber gloves and plastic aprons, armed ourselves with vacuum cleaner, buckets, mops and cleaning products, and went upstairs. In the bathroom Mummy filled the buckets with hot water. She added a dash of Mr Proper—with lemon!—and soaked the mop in it. ‘Vacuuming isn’t enough,’ she said. ‘People think they can solve everything with a hoover, but that’s not true.’ Meanwhile I turned on the vacuum cleaner and went to work. God help me if I left any dust! There must be no fluff on the mop later. Every bit of fluff was one too many, one that should have wound up in the vacuum cleaner.
‘Is there still plenty of suction, Odette? Don’t we need a new bag?’
‘There’s suction, Mummy.’
Three and a half hours later we pulled the front door open to scrub the threshold and the step. And then we scrubbed the threshold of the back door.
Every other week we cleaned the windows and needed an extra hour. But even then we didn’t take a break. There was time for a break when we’d finished. And there was time for a bath too then, and for clean clothes. Exhausted, Mummy slumped into her chair, turned on the television and stared into space. Not a drop of energy was left. When I took her a cup of coffee, she sometimes did not have the strength to raise the cup to her lips. And if the TV guide slipped off her lap, she had to call me to pick it up for her.
She could not breathe in a house where there was dirt. Or where she thought there was dirt. But it took a lot out of her, too much. It wrecked her health.
‘Odette is very good at cleaning,’ M would say about me to his mates, in that special tone of his. Only a trained ear could hear the danger. Anyone who didn’t know him didn’t smell a rat. They called him friendly. Charming. In the mountains dogs start howling long before a human ear has picked up the first rumble of an avalanche. I was a dog like that. M had turned me into a dog. Not a St Bernard or an Alsatian like my faithful Brutus and Nero, but a Jack Russell, like Fifi: small but brave, and especially tireless. The way I worked for that man! Worked my fingers to the bone. And it was never enough.
‘Odette, show us how well you can clean.’ He kicked the waste bin over. ‘Sorry. Accident.’ Or he would pour milk on the ground, step into the puddle and leave a trail of milk all over the house.
‘Thank you, M.’ And then I mustn’t forget to pull my mouth into a smile.
‘Odette wasn’t made to sit on her arse,’ he said.
And why was that, M?
He himself had never had a mop in his hands. No one in that family had ever held a mop. His father hadn’t, his mother hadn’t, his brothers hadn’t, his sister hadn’t, and M definitely hadn’t. He was even too lazy to wash himself. His parents had been in the Congo, at the very end, just before they chucked out all the whites. But they had been there long enough to learn how you could get others to do the dirty work for very little money. You had to pick young people and have them live in. That cost virtually nothing. At table they ate together with the whole gang. Now and then you stuck some pocket money in their hands and voilà, the housework was done for a song.
You could fuck them too. Those black women liked nothing better. ‘Come here!’ you had to say to them. You pointed to them and said: ‘Come here.’ And they would come. Those Congolese women fucked like we breathe. They could go on calmly working while they were being fucked. When nine months later a child rolled out of them they still went on working. They picked the child up, licked it clean, tied it onto their back, bent over their plot again and went on hoeing. Or they submerged their mop in a bucket, rinsed it, wrung it out thoroughly and went back to work. And a baby was never murdered by its mother. Never! White women could take a leaf out of their book.
It was there that M saw how cheap people are, and how easily new ones can be made.
He called me his ‘pute’, or whore. It was meant as a term of affection. Or perhaps even a compliment. But I was less than his pute. I was a prostitute he didn’t have to pay. His free pute.
His brothers should have stood up for themselves. They let themselves be treated as his servants, unpaid servants. They had to carry his satchel. He stuffed it full of comic strip books, but that was no problem, as he had porters. Those lads were no good for anything else, he said. ‘Why do you think they’ve become postmen? They should be grateful to me, I trained them.’
Hahaha.
When his father told him to do the weeding, he called in his brothers. In life the art was to delegate, and to fool the naïve souls who wanted to be fooled.
He rented out the comic books at school at one franc a day. And from the proceeds he bought sweets, which he did not share with anyone.
He never shared anything with anyone. Ever.
His brothers should have demanded their fair share. They should have thrown his satchel on the ground. Carry your own rubbish!
The comic books were theirs too, but he acted as if they were his.
‘The eldest son is the only one who counts. He is conceived with strong seed. The best of the father and the mother goes to him. His brothers and sisters have to make do with the remnants. In the Middle Ages the eldest son inherited everything: the estate, the house, and the serfs. Those who came after him had to go into a monastery, or on a crusade. Or they had to contrive to marry a rich daughter. One with a dowry.’
Yes, M. Of course,