My Cleaner Page 10

  Yet when I start to think about Kampala, Ugandans are not angels either. For in many families there are cousins and aunties who do the cooking and the cleaning, relatives who live like beetles in the kitchen and do not have any other jobs. Of course this happened in my own village, but there most of the aunties had somewhere to live, because to build a hut is not so hard, and it is easy to grow things, or keep a chicken. It is different in the city, where families squash together. While I lived in Kampala I did not really notice. Everyone at home just says, ‘Oh, she is family’, and these people are family, but they are slaves as well, and some of them are desperate for the chance to escape these hard families where they work like ants, to get a real job that is paid with money.

  I was good at cleaning, and in a way I liked it, because I knew the money helped Omar to study, and afterwards it helped me buy nice clothes for Jamie, and toys and books, so I was pleased with myself. Though there was never enough time to play with Jamie. And so his father taught him to read, which made me jealous, though he was a good father, and when Jamie read to me for the first time, I was proud and glad, and we were all happy, and hugged each other, and were a family.

  I worked long hours, so I earned good money, although in the end I got tired of it. I cleaned houses and offices. Then later, hotel rooms, in Morocco and Paris, when I followed Omar on his first postings. When we were first together, he believed women were equal, and quarrelled with the imams who said we were not, and quoted the Koran, with passion. But as people age they become more fearful. Omar did not really want me to work any more, and yet he never earned enough money for us, and so he could not stop me working. And I think he was ashamed that I was only a cleaner.

  (It was not my fault; when we went to Paris I applied for many jobs in schools and offices, but once they saw I was African, they would not look me in the eye, and usually they said the job was gone. Yet the French did not mind my cleaning their rooms, so long as they did not have to be in my presence, just the dirt and mess that came from their bodies.)

  Also Omar was jealous, especially in Morocco, because I had to clean the rooms of men. He thought that, if I was alone with a man, I would not be able to stop him making love, although when we were students in London, and young, he knew I was often with other men, and I did not even notice them. Because I loved Omar, as I always would. Even when my marriage was ending, I loved him. Even when I hated him, I loved him. And even now, because he gave me Jamie, even if later he took him away.

  But I never told Omar about the men who came when I was working and brushed against me, as I was bending over to dust or polish. They pressed themselves against me through my overalls, and I had to be polite, and beg them not to, when I wanted to punch them hard in the stomach. And I could have done, but I knew they would sack me. In my dreams, I push them away, even now. I have strong muscles. One day I shall use them.

  I know everything there is to know about cleaning. Because African people are forced to be clean. In Uganda, there are many diseases that kill you if you are not clean.

  But nobody likes to clean other people’s toilets. No one wants to put their head near the stains of shit and urine from other people’s bodies. The carpets smell of urine round the toilet bowl. And many people do not flush their toilets. Until you are a cleaner, you do not know this. Until you find things floating like slimy brown crocodiles. Nobody likes to clean the hairs from the bath, dark hairs from their privates, curled like worms.

  Nobody likes to brush the dandruff from the dressing-tables where rich women sit and do their make-up. It lies on the wood like dirty yellow snow, not melting, and they are off dancing, or flirting with men, with stiff shiny hair, in tight-fitting dresses, smelling of vanilla or lemons or roses. Then cleaners like me, dressed in overalls or track-suits, come silently to take away their leavings. We dance with the brooms and the vacuums.

  Sometimes it is cheerful, when the bosses are out, and we can play music, and shimmy as we work, and make faces at ourselves as we clean the mirrors, which are sprayed with a lacy veil of toothpaste that makes us beautiful and vague as brides, beautiful as our queen, Nagginda Sylvia Luswata, before Kabaka Ronald lifted her veil. But people like the Henman will not let you play music, because it disturbs them in their important work, which is sitting reading in a bubble of silence. Yet I can read anywhere: on buses, on trains. Today I read Hemingway on the underground. I was in another world, in The Torrents of Spring. I did not shush my neighbours, or frown, or complain.

  You would think they were not real, these pale fragile people. You would think they did not have mouths, or arses. Perhaps they would not know the word for it. And then you find out how real they are. No one would believe how real, how dirty.

  No one wants to touch used sanitary towels. These women take them out and forget about them. They are black with old blood from the women’s bottoms. Or sometimes bright red. Like snow with roses. They smell like meat, like salt and iron. Perhaps the bloody ones do not think about this. They throw the things away into a bin in the bathroom, and later the bin is emptied by magic. I do not suppose they do it on purpose. But when I pray to Jesus, I pray against these women. I pray He will make them do their own dirty business.

  Also, when you are a cleaner, everyone blames you. If anything is lost, the cleaner has moved it. If anything is broken, the cleaner has broken it. Usually of course the employer is right, but you cannot clean without breaking things. You must always say it was already broken. Or else they will take it from your wages.

  It is their fault because they have too many things. In Ugandan houses, there are no things. There is nearly nothing, except cooking pots and blankets, rush mats for sitting on, perhaps a table. Ugandan houses are clean and airy. British people’s houses are full of little objects. They get dusty and dirty, they break and they fall, they fade and get old, there are more and more of them.

  They interest me, though. These British houses tell a story. They are full of letters, and photographs, also. (If Miss Henman and Justin both went away, I could find out their story from the things they have collected. But because she is a writer, she never goes away, though she is very proud she went to Kampala. I wish she would go to Kampala again.)

  In Kampala, only the rich have cameras. Most people have only wedding photos, which we keep in a shiny plastic book, and show to all visitors when they arrive. But Miss Henman’s house is full of photographs, perhaps a thousand, perhaps two thousand. Shiny piles of photos of her and Justin. And other faces of white strangers, too many of them to look at, or dust, or remember. And other pretty things that are not useful. And broken things she does not put in the rubbish.

  It is hardest to clean when the employer is at home. Eleven years ago when I was her cleaner, Miss Henman was often working in her study, which meant she sat reading a novel all morning, or talking to her friends on the telephone. (To be fair, I did sometimes see her typing.) Whenever she was home, I could not be happy. She was always coming through to make herself some coffee, or cook herself lunch while I cleaned the kitchen.

  It did not matter that I had already cleaned the cooker. It did not matter that I had wiped the surfaces. The Henman left them covered with crumbs and grease, and always tipped the last of her coffee in the sink. It sat on my clean sink like a filthy black feather from one of the greasy old karoli in Kampala. Then she left the dirty cup on the draining-board, just after I had whitened it with bleach.

  And I had to hear all her advice about cleaning. The Henman is a teacher, and cannot stop teaching. ‘I think you might be using too much bleach. It is very bad for the environment.’ ‘Mary, please put all vegetable waste in the compost’ (although she dropped her apple-cores all over the house, going sticky and brown in the wastepaper tins). ‘Mary, do please get the washing straight out, if it stays in the machine it gets horribly creased, and I know you don’t always get time to do the ironing.’ (There was never enough time to do the ironing, though she left it in a tall pile on the landing, and after I s
tarted it, she would bring me more, and because I am not lazy, I did not like to leave it. So I went on ironing as I played with Justin. Once he nearly pulled the hot iron down on his head. But when I told the Henman, she only blamed me.)

  She was always there, with her pale eyes staring. So I could not read her letters, or examine her drawers, which were very untidy, when I did look quickly, or try on her clothes and necklaces, or call my Omar on the telephone, or call Uganda, as other cleaners did, or watch the television with Justin, since his mother said television rotted the brain. I could not drink a cup of tea in the garden. I could not take a shower, or try on her perfume, or sip at her bottle of ‘London Gin’, which had a nice picture of berries on the label, or dry my hair with her hairdryer. You see how Miss Henman interrupted my cleaning!

  I am glad my kyeyo days are over, the days of doing dirty work for nothing.

  And now I am going to meet some friends from the days when I was young, and a cleaner.

  25

  Mary has begun to have a social life. Now she has recovered from the shock of arrival – the big dark house with its frozen inhabitants, her shrivelled, nervous, yellow-haired employer, the sleepy, sulky, ruined boy – now she has got started on her task as a detective, and feels she has deserved a little time off, she has used the phone numbers carefully written in the new pink notebook she bought in Garden City.

  And as soon as she’s hooked up with Ugandans in London, Vanessa seems physically smaller, to Mary. The house is less oppressive, less like a prison. Justin’s state of depression, like the body of a grub very slowly burrowing away in the dark, no longer lies like a stain on her heart. She is still a Ugandan. She can be happy.

  It is worth the journey to the other side of town to sing her heart out on Sunday morning with other Ugandan Anglicans who know you open your mouth when you sing. Who laugh and chatter after the service, and do not whisper, or pretend to be humble. Mary eats muchomo on Saturday nights with friends of her elder sister’s ex-boyfriend, and the smell of roast meat is the best in the world, both salty and sweet, with burnt-sugary juices that coat the pink core in dark caramel – though they tell each other that they miss Kampala, the sprays of white stars on the blue night sky, the punters eating their pork out of doors, licking the salt off bare warm fingers. They complain, they talk loudly, they roar with laughter. They tell stories about kyeyo in London: one’s a lawyer in Kampala, but a bouncer here: the teacher washes dishes: the senior civil servant is selling kitchens on the telephone. Most of them hold down at least two jobs, and some of them are studying as well. All of them have fallen asleep on buses, as Mary once used to, years ago. All of them find London ferociously expensive, and yet they send money home, and save, and manage to go out as well. ‘We are Ugandans. We know how to party.’ Now Mary remembers how to party.

  She goes dancing in the early hours at Club Afrique in Canning Town, and although ten pounds is a lot of money, although there are too many Congolese, it is wonderful to hear Ugandan music, Ragga D, Trishlaa and Jingo Shoe, and Mary loves dancing, though when she was with Omar she only danced at home, with him. Now all the men want to dance with her, although she is a decade older than some of them. The beat is in her blood, her hips, her heels. She could dance for ever: she’s the Dancing Queen. Oh, and here is her favourite, Chameleon.

  When she comes into the street, hot and happy, at three am to catch the night bus home, she sees, sharply lit up, in the sudden chill, a familiar face, smoking a cigarette under the street light. ‘Abdu?’ she says, amazed. And it is him. Abdu Mawanga. Her friend from her early days as a cleaner. Now waiting to pick up two of his daughters, who are still strutting their stuff inside. They reminisce in the cold night air, sending plumes of white breath up to join the pollution, and Abdu asks Mary to lunch in Dalston, where he has a good business he wants to show her.

  Next day Mary decides to invite Juanita, a Spanish cleaner they had both been fond of, in those days as fragile and twittery and bright as the pet shop budgies that Mary loves. And to her surprise, Juanita is still at the phone number she had all those years ago, still living in the same council flat, though it must be over a decade since they cleaned together.

  They manage to meet, at Dalston Kingsland Station, three days later, all three of them exuberant.

  ‘The money was good,’ says Abdu Muwanga, escorting Mary along, with one affectionate arm, through a crowd of chattering, many-coloured peoples. ‘Didn’t we think the money was good, at the time?’

  ‘It was riches,’ Mary says. ‘Not the houses, but the offices. And it wasn’t lonely. We did have some laughs.’

  They are picking their way between the blowing striped awnings of the market stalls at Dalston Kingsland. Ridley Road is smarter than it was ten years ago, with more brick-built shops and less rubbish on the floor. It is a weekday: business is quiet. Yet the young men are out there with lavish displays of bright red meat, surely too red to be true, shining rich as velvet in the fresh cold air. The fish-stalls have jewel-like sweeps of crushed ice from which the heads of fish poke up like beaks, pink and turquoise, with round veiled eyes. Even the thinnest stalls have something to sell: dull stumps of brown manioc or cassava. An old woman sits by a tiny pile of pastries. ‘Oly otya Nnyabo,’ Abdu says.

  ‘Jendi Ssebo,’ the woman replies.

  ‘Story ki? Business egenda etya?’

  ‘Bwetyo. Tuuli waano tugenda mpora.’

  ‘Is everyone here from Uganda?’ asks Juanita. In some ways the little Spanish woman is unchanged. She has the same squeaky voice, the same short, breathless body that taps along on too-high heels, never quite catching up with Abdu and Mary. But her face is less happy, and more lined, and the vivid rose of her cheeks is painted.

  ‘The lady with the pastries was Ugandan,’ says Abdu. ‘Most people, not. Lots of Nigerians, Ghanaians.’

  ‘You Africans,’ says Juanita, at least half-disapproving. ‘You everywhere. Not bein’ funny.’

  They are going to have a look at Abdu’s business. He is very proud of his success. Once the three of them had soldiered together on the early shifts for a contract cleaner: now Abdu and Mary have escaped, but Juanita is still spending her mornings cleaning and her afternoons as a school meals assistant. She has dressed up more than they have, to make up for this. Later they are going to a café on Mare Street that serves Ugandan and western food. Mary knows that Juanita will shriek in horror when she sees the steaming mounds of carbohydrate.

  Abdu’s shop is on the side, solidly built, solidly roofed. He has several people working for him, who smile respectfully as he arrives. He sits Mary and Juanita down at the back, and begins to show them what he imports. ‘This Chicken Curry Masala you can only buy here. People come from all over London to get it. Authentic Ugandan spices, of course. I am building up my chain of supply. If you have a good product, people will buy it ...’ Mary listens to him talk, with shining eyes. She is happy that Abdu has become successful. When they were both young, he was kind to her, hauling machines for her that she could have carried, always asking after Jamie and Omar, showing her the respect she needed. And he has stayed the same, though he is plumper, more substantial. His hair is thinner, and he wears good shoes.

  Juanita is impatient, and darts around, picking things off shelves and putting them back, sniffing suspiciously at unfamiliar vegetables, glad when she finds something she can name.

  ‘Peppers,’ she says. ‘Red peppers. Nice?’

  ‘Those are special,’ says Abdu. ‘I’m proud of those. They come from the same seed as Caribbean peppers. But there’s something about the Ugandan soil. Don’t you agree, Mary? Ettaka lya Uganda lilina akakondyo! And the Ugandan weather too. These peppers are delicious, they have more flavour but they’re not too hot. No one thought I would be able to sell them here. I began with one box a week, a few years ago. Now I can shift two hundred boxes a week! Nekolela maali wano, not bad money!’

  ‘Big man,’ says Juanita, a little mockingly, lifting her tiny nose t
owards him. Her hair is full of small combs and decorations, too girlish for her, and her eyebrows look surprised, a thin black arch that she now raises even further. ‘You have become a very big man, Abdu. But I am starvin’. Some of us still workers! My afternoon off, I always get a nice lunch.’

  ‘Time to go’, Abdu agrees, and aside to Mary, ‘Naye kati enjjala enzitta.’

  ‘It’s the weather,’ Mary says. ‘I am always hungry here.’

  They set off towards the café through the cooling wind. Can this really be London? Mary wonders. Only ten percent of people are bazungu, and some of those are probably Spanish, like Juanita, or maybe Eastern European.

  A tall handsome man with a huge purple turban and one long earring like an elephant’s tusk emerges, half-dancing, from a side-alley from which reggae music ebbs and flows. He embraces Abdu like a brother.

  ‘This is the Doctor,’ Abdu says. ‘And this is my sister, Mary.’ They shake hands. ‘And my other sister, Juanita,’ he adds, almost too late, pushing her forward.

  ‘Are you from Uganda?’ Juanita asks, suspicious.

  Abdu bursts out laughing, and pats the tall man on the back. ‘Nawe ori munauganda? Which part of Uganda are you from, my brother?’

  ‘Don’t use your barr-barous language with me, Abdu. I’m from the Ca-rib-bee-an, miss,’ he spells out, laughing. ‘The Doctor is my name. Everyone knows me.’