The Housemaid's Daughter by Barbara Mutch

Author:Barbara Mutch [Mutch, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2011-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 30

Maybe there was more to Dawn’s escape from illness, and my escape from being seen in town, than powerful medicine and good luck. The minister on the koppie always said that God the Father had a plan for each of us, however much we disappointed Him. Sometimes I thought I could see a part of it just out of reach, like the mirage I’d show Dawn as it hovered across the veld at midday. Even though I’d sinned, it seemed He still cared for me and protected me, especially where it touched Dawn. Her survival therefore required my own, and perhaps this was the plan. And so when Dawn was better, I put her on my back, waded through the drift, and gratefully returned to the piano that was my refuge, and to the demands of my students who had missed their daily ration of jive and Beethoven.

Slowly the days began to settle into a steady, though savage, rhythm. I let the good things in, and fended off the bad as much as I could, for apartheid was closing its vice upon the township and making men on both sides do things that God the Father surely disapproved of. It was becoming a war, and like in all wars there are shortages of love and food but not of smoke and blood, and there are friends that might turn out to be enemies-in-waiting. Sometimes I thought I saw Jake near where baying youngsters threw stones at the police, or in the shadows by the beer hall, or with groups of older men around a street fire at night. I never called out to him, and he never showed that he saw me, even though he would appear at my side in daylight near the Groot Vis and pull faces to make Dawn laugh while the river rippled about our feet. This was the future: from the dangerous streets that bore me from hut to school and back again, to the ‘Township Bach’ whose clashing strains accompanied me wherever I went. It was messy, it was spirited; it must be seized if God’s plan was to work. This was His gift to me. But these words don’t tell of the unspoken need to be on guard for my child’s life throughout each hour of the day. Trouble lurked at every step, and avoiding it could only be achieved if the threat was spotted early enough. One hand on my child’s shoulder, one hand on the bicycle spoke in my pocket, both eyes alert to the unexpected move. I am ashamed to say it was not always easy to think of it as a gift.

So I turned my head away from the actions of those like Jake and Silas who wanted not just liberation but revolution as well. There could be no place for me in that kind of war if I was to serve God the Father by keeping my child safe. I began to set aside some coins once

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