Sandy's Say: Beauty - 2
...She remained perplexed however by the hole in the wall that spat out money. No matter how hard she tried she could not make banknotes magically appear as they seemed to do for the rich people. She became an avid user of the telephone but she drove my father scatty by shouting the whole way through her conversations. He did not understand that in Zulu culture it is considered rude to talk softly or whisper in case one is misconstrued as gossiping about someone who is present...
Sandy James tells of the sad end to the life of a Zulu called Beauty, who, although her appearance did not match her name, was an extraordianry and fiercly determined woman.
To read the first part, and other stories and articles by Sandy, please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/sandys_say/
During Beauty’s regime I was a safe distance away at university where, coincidentally, I was learning the Zulu language. Every eight weeks or so I would arrive home for the holidays to find my mother and Beauty both at their wits’ end. They would hover urgently in the hallway as I walked in, each waiting for me to hear their case and start the translations and arbitration.
“Please tell Beauty that she does not need to clean the whole house every day. If she just concentrates on one room per day and then does the washing and ironing and prepares vegetables for dinner that is plenty,” said my mother.
“What is the meaning of this ‘donkey, donkey’ that Madam keeps saying?” Beauty asked me.
I had to laugh because here was an example of misunderstanding in its extreme. In Zulu the adjective ‘onke” means ‘all’ or ‘every’. My mother had managed to pick this much up but was pronouncing it ‘onkey’. What she didn’t understand is that adjectives in Zulu do not stand on their own and are prefixed with letters relating to the subject. It is precisely this grammatical rule which gives Zulu its lilting, lyrical quality. For example ‘zonke izikamelo’ means ‘every room’ (repeating the ‘z’ sound), ‘bonke abantu’ means ‘all people’ (echoing the ‘b’ sound). My poor frustrated mother was just using the English word ‘donkey’ to cover all bases and as a result getting nowhere.
Beauty, to her credit, had been trying to learn some English words but seeing as she had never seen them written down, was battling with the nuances of pronunciation. When she tried to say ‘piece’, my mother heard ‘piss.’ When she tried to say ‘back garden’ my mother heard “beck guddin’, ‘each’ became ‘itch’, ‘gate’ was ‘get’, “further’ was ‘feather’ and so the frustration built up on both sides.
Whilst Beauty’s progress with English was slow, she was proud of the rapid advances that she was making with the ways of the city and modernisation as a whole. She was soon competent at catching buses and trains and no longer hesitant at crossing the road. She had mastered the art of going through automatic opening doors and after two shin bruising episodes she had plucked up the courage to use the ‘moving stairs’ or escalators at the shops. Lights which came on when their sensors detected movement no longer spooked her and she came home almost crowing on the day that she had managed to use the revolving door at the bank.
She remained perplexed however by the hole in the wall that spat out money. No matter how hard she tried she could not make banknotes magically appear as they seemed to do for the rich people. She became an avid user of the telephone but she drove my father scatty by shouting the whole way through her conversations. He did not understand that in Zulu culture it is considered rude to talk softly or whisper in case one is misconstrued as gossiping about someone who is present.
Beauty and Gideon lived in the servants’ quarters which were separated from our dwelling by a walled, concrete courtyard. Each of them had a room and they shared a shower and toilet. Both of them placed their beds up on piles of bricks so as to keep the dreaded tokoloshe away. According to Zulu folklore the tokoloshe is a dwarf sized zombie or evil spirit which has a reputation for raping women and biting off people’s toes whilst they sleep.
As a young child I used to think this custom eminently sensible as every little person knows that monsters hide under the bed. At least our servants did not have to concern themselves about the monster in the cupboard as their few clothes simply hung on an open rail.
Gideon’s Zulu name was ‘uManelesi’ which translates as ‘the satisfier.’ He seemed to live up to his moniker as he had a steady stream of girlfriends or ‘squeezas’, as he called them. Which begs the question doesn’t it? Did his father simply name him appropriately with great foresight or had this given name created a pressure on Manelesi to live up to the expectation which it placed on him? Either way, at night, these young women would stand at the back gate and call out to Gideon. Our dogs had their kennels in the courtyard and the women were understandably afraid to run the gauntlet to Gideon’s room for fear of being attacked. This arrangement suited our Romeo as it meant that he could never be caught out by having one young lady arrive at his bedroom door whilst he was entertaining another.
Beauty, on the other hand, appeared to us to be still in mourning for her husband and she never seemed to have any male visitors. However, one morning she took us all by surprise when she smugly announced, through me, that she was getting married in two day’s time. His name was Albert Ngobese and she had sat next to him on the train the previous day and before the journey’s end he had asked her to be his fourth wife. She would have preferred the higher status of first or second wife but, as they say, quarter of a loaf was better than none at all. In addition, he had offered to find her a job in a nearby textile factory and although the work would be basic and repetitious, the wage would be considerably more than that which she was earning as a housemaid. She dropped the bombshell that she would be ceasing to work for us as of that very moment and she ran off in ditzy excitement to pack her belongings.
My mother, who was expecting overseas visitors the following week, was understandably annoyed at being dumped without Beauty giving her at least two week’s notice. Nevertheless, in those days there were no such things as employment contracts drawn up between madam and maid and so there was nothing that my poor, abandoned mother could do about it. It had all been so sudden that my shell shocked mum asked me if it was possible, in Zulu culture, to go from single to married in just a few days. I assured her that it was and that ever since the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, which was one of the Apartheid Laws, had been scrapped, I had been receiving frequent marriage proposals from Zulu men myself. In my case, I had quickly learnt to stall their enthusiasm by stating that my ‘lobolo’ or bride price was set at twenty cattle when the average price was eleven or twelve. I was fairly safe in the knowledge that most of the men who were trying to pick me up off the street could not afford this exorbitant expense.
Beauty disappeared from our lives that day under a cloud that she was too euphoric to even notice. She was off to start her new, thoroughly modern life. Beauty of Babanango had finally thrown off her country bumpkin mantle with a vengeance.
Eight months later the ever reliable bush telegraph reached us via Gideon. Apparently the goods lift at the factory had been under repair and a notice, ‘Danger, do not enter. Workmen above’ had been hung on the lift door. Beauty, who could not read, had blithely sauntered along, pushed hard on the faulty lift doors which had parted all too easily and she had almost toppled down the empty lift shaft.
Miraculously, at the last minute, she had managed to grasp onto the edge and was dangling perilously over the hoist way, screaming for help when the lift car shot down and decapitated her. Nobuhle was dead - gruesomely destroyed by the very technology she had strived so hard to master.
