Although, to be fair, they themselves have nothing. The monthly wage of a house-girl in Kampala is not much more than five English pounds.
In any case, now I feel happier. Mary is coming. All will be well.
Of course she will have changed. All of us have changed. Justin was a boy, when she was here, and such a darling, so clever and happy. I was still struggling to make my name. Mary seemed like a girl to me.
Though she can’t have been a girl, she had just had a baby. She started with me as an hourly paid cleaner. I remember how deferential she was, calling me ‘Madam’ at the interview. (She must have thought she embarrassed me, because she never did that again. Not that I was sorry, but it sounded quite sweet. Her voice was lilting, like a little dark bird’s. The ‘Madam’ fell on my soul like balm.)
I think that Justin was only three. Such a beautiful boy. Red lips, blond curls, smile of an angel, though he did have a temper…Gifted. Oh yes, he was very gifted. Walking at ten months, talking at eleven, trying to read the cornflake packet at two, admitted to school nearly a year early — at my insistence, but they were pleased to have him. Already a fluent reader, of course; they slowed him up, if anything. And oh, so charming, and amusing. Though tiring, of course, when one was working hard. Motherhood’s never an easy option.
Justin made all the other parents jealous. They must have got tired of hearing all his achievements. Their own children seemed to have all kinds of problems: eczema, asthma, dyslexia, dyspraxia, while Justin was wonderfully lexic and praxic. Yes, and his skin was like silk under glass.
I don’t understand what has happened to him, why he lies there dully staring at nothing, not reading books, actually not reading when his room is full of wonderful books, not writing anything, though once he wanted to be a writer, not combing his hair or washing or smiling. I suppose that part of me is angry with him, but the other parts of me are racked with sorrow. It isn’t in the family, this kind of depression. Not on my side of the family, at least. Just my mother’s brother who killed himself, and that was because he had the wrong medicine. Admittedly my mother was sometimes unwell, but she never actually stayed in bed. Once or twice she went away to hospital. But the rest of us are perfectly cheerful. My cousin Lucy was such a happy girl.
It must come from Justin’s father’s side. Of course, Tigger would never admit it. He doesn’t believe in introspection.
That is my only reservation about Mary. She got on too well with Justin’s father. It’s the African way: defer to the men. They tell me that is changing now. Perhaps she will come back a feminist! In which case we shall get on better. I myself have always been a feminist, though not, of course, a man-hater. And after all, Mary is now divorced. She mentioned this in a letter she sent that may or may not have been asking for money — there were hints, I suppose — three years ago. Both her parents were ill in the government hospital. The hospital was free, according to Mary, but the drugs had to be bought from a private clinic. It seemed a peculiar system to me, but I sent a little money by Western Union. It’s true that Justin more or less insisted. One was happy, of course, to have been of use. She wrote again later. The parents died. It would be heartless to think it was a waste of money.
When she first came to us, Mary was probably in her early twenties, though she looked like a teenager. She and Justin hit it off at once. He certainly wasn’t as old as four. She began by cleaning two days a week, and ended up coming every day to look after Justin when he came home from primary school. I was a slightly older mother, thirty-eight when I had Justin. I didn’t feel old: I was slim and fit. Older mothers can be better mothers. We have more resources — to be frank, more money — and more knowledge, and of course we value our children more than some teenage alley-cat casually dropping a litter of kittens.
Justin was a very wanted child. I keep telling him that, but it seems he can’t hear me.
By the time Mary arrived I was in my forties, though she probably assumed I was in my thirties. Having a baby takes years off you. As long as you have help, as I did (a maternity nurse, and then a nanny until Justin started nursery school).
Mary, of course, must have had help too, because she was busy till late at our house. She came to me at one every day and stayed until Justin went to bed. She probably had some cousin or other looking after Jamil while she was with us. She did once ask me if she could bring her son along to work with her here when he was poorly, but I had to say, ‘No’, lest he infect Justin. Sometimes she baby-sat for me, though she started to ask for extra money, and sulked if we got back after midnight, claiming she had to get up very early. Perhaps she did have to get up early — in fact, I believe she did several jobs, because the husband wasn’t earning. He was some kind of perpetual student, at that time. Later she claimed he was a diplomat.
Now I think perhaps I got some things wrong. Justin was always very sweet with little children. Perhaps I should sometimes have let Mary take him back to her place, to play with Jamil, as she asked. There would have been advantages for her son, playing with a clever, articulate boy. But then, Justin had so many activities: judo, maths for gifted children, drama, Franfais pour les jeunes, chess club, gym, kiddy Pilates, Fun with Yoga. Mary was always driving him somewhere, and he loved his activities, I’m sure he did.
(Curious that now he is completely inactive. The doctor says that his muscles are wasting.)
I would come in to the kitchen unexpectedly and find them cuddled up at the table, singing. He used to make up nicknames for her. She taught him all sorts of African songs which must have increased his cultural awareness, though it gave me a strange feeling when he sang them on his own and I couldn’t understand a single word. It was like living with an African boy! So I bought a tape of nursery rhymes and asked her to teach him some English songs.
Of course there is no competition between us. We shall be united in caring for Justin. Perhaps I was a tiny bit jealous of her when she started to let him call her ‘Aunty’. It was an African habit, not appropriate for England. The child had real, blood aunties, and it only confused him to call Mary ‘Aunty’.
It was as if he loved Mary more.
More than his real aunties, not more than me. He can never have loved her more than me.
I do believe in being honest with children. I sat him on my lap and explained to him, one evening, that I paid Mary to look after him, and that if I didn’t pay her, she wouldn’t do it, whereas Aunty Becky and Aunt Isobel loved him for nothing.
It suddenly comes back, what he said to me. He must have thought I was attacking Mary, when I was only trying to give him the facts.
“Who is Aunt Isobel?” he asked. I couldn’t believe he had forgotten his godmother. Of course she lived a long way away. “And I only see Aunt Becky at Christmas. Why don’t you pay them too? Then they’ll love me more. They hardly ever come to see me. Mary comes to see me every day.”
He left me winded, with nothing to say. He was staring at me with eyes like stones, and his fists were clenched as if he wanted to hit me. His father had a temper, and so does he.
Then he said something worse, shouting, crying.
“Why hasn’t anyone paid you to love me?”
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