DIFFERENT VALUES --- by Barbara Makhalisa

HELLO! – Ah, Clara, your voice sounded different. I thought it was your madam. Well, I’m so bored. Yes, well a few minutes back I was huffing and pugging away playing a game with Popi. Let me get a chair, hold on please! Hello! Oh, as usual! As it is, Popi is standing by the door, tongue out, drooling, waiting for me to come and resume the game. – Mh! – But I have to! – Yes, daily! – Of course! Anyone passes by and sees me racing Popi up and down the lawn, rolling with her and doing all sorts of silly little pranks would think I was a fifteen-year-old who was having a whirl of a time and had a lot of extra energy to burn away. Of course not! – I’m thirty-two, silly! – But it’s a job, and I must do it! – Mh! – Yes, everyday, heh-heh! Can’t you see that I have shelled off some of the extra fat? That’s the only benefit I get for my efforts, though I am not particularly grateful ,because I just hate it all. you know I’ve always hated dogs – Yes, the worst of it is that Popi has no dog house outside so she sleeps in the kitchen. Her toilet is in the kitchen – You just have never seen the likes of the mess which I have to clean up daily from the kitchen. And to think I cook their food in the same room! – No, no, no you are better because you have to contend with human mess. You have been a mother yourself, and there is nothing unnatural about that. At my hope Popi would live outdoors and take care of his own mess. But here… – Yes, well, you’ve seen the likes of Popi all over. They’re so precious, or baases would rather share the inside of a car with them than with their gardeners. What? – Poison Popi? – Don’t be ridiculous! – I have two children to think about at home, ared for by my poor mother, to whom I must send money and food every month. Do you think I play with Popi for fun? – Call me what you will but I am paid for it just as you are paid to wash little Lolly’s soiled nappies and the rest of it. One can’t complain in the circumstances. Yes, and you know some of our friends do not even get the minimum wage still. Oh that… No! Do you think he’ll ever change? Some of us who have not a bean to our names are better off that that woman, I tell you. indeed yes! Tina was telling me only the other day that Aunt came to visit them last Friday and did not stay the weekend through. Why? – How could she? – Although she lives in the communal area she is well off by communal people’s standards. Tina says she complained that she could not live on vegetables from the garden when they had more than five hundred fowls cackling in the big-fol run. I’m not joking! No, it was her very first visit to them, and the poor woman dared not slaughter one of the fowls to provide relish for her Aunt without his permission. He’s a proper miser, that man is! Oh yes, she still goes to work. My dear – don’t you be deceived by all this outward gloss and high and mighty airs about education from abroad. Some of these educated husbands like “Miser” treat their wives in the most atrocious fashion. Tina actually told me that the poor woman does not even touch her salary. It all goes into his fat bank book and she only gets a little pocket money at a time, which hardly sees her through the month – Housekeeping? – Of course he buys the groceries, only a little of everything every week and is forever snapping at her for over using mealie-meal and all. Ha-ha! I laugh but it’s not funny! – Yes – that’s why those children are only ribs sticking out of their chest. Yes, probably the good furniture and other property in there are all for outward show and prestige, you know. – Shocking! – Of course she is highly educated. – Yes, she works in one of the big offices in town. – Well, I don’t know whether it’s love or fear of him. Goodness knows what she ever saw in a miser like him. – Yes. – Probably. – Well, if I were that educated, I don’t see what I should be begging for in a man like that miser! – Oh yes, I ‘ve heard it too. It’s true. I’ve heard from very reliable sources that she is not permitted to call him by his first name, yet all the office girls use his first name. – Imagine! I wonder what she used to call him when he was courting her. Oh yes, I’ve heard that one too, and have never seen her wearing lipstick yet she used to before she got married. But the girls he goes out with do. – It beats me! I wonder what he feels when other men are in the company of their dear wives at the parties he goes to. – Men! – Hey – hang on let me check… sounds like my madam’s car! Hello! No, it wasn’t. Get off Popi! Come on, get off! Out, you beast! Out! I am coming in a minute! Well, yes. He was tugging at my clothes as if he might tear the to pieces. – Mh, he still wants to play. – Aha! – Actually, is your madam in this morning? I know she is not finicky but we’ve been on the phone for ages. – Not again! – To the doctor’s? That bad! – Honestly he’ll kill her one of these days. – But why? – Yes, indeed, it’s a mystery because I have seen them quite a few times together, and he behaves just like a proper gentleman. – Yes, That’s why sometimes I tell myself I that I should stay put and never worry about marriage. – What’s the point? – Well, in a way. I agree it is every girl’s wish to get the best deal in marriage. – Yes, a few people are lucky and experience bliss in marriage, but the bulk of unhappy marriages. I notice is most discouraging – Mh? – You think it’s muti? – Might be! I for one cannot understand the muti science, but I believe people can do a lot of evil with it. you think it’s the girls who are trying to displace her? – Yes. Possible. – What’s that? Alcoholic? – I don’t understand. You mean, a little sip just makes his sense snap? – Really? – Well, well, I do not believe that. How many drunks do we see about who are hardly ever violent to their wives? — Hmmm? – Her relatives have advised he to go to a n’anga to dispel the spell? – I don’t know whether that is the best thing to do because most of these n’angas just cheat people out of their money. – Mh? – Set a thief to catch a thief? – Maybe, but I’ve seen many homes break and friends becoming enemies because of n’angas. – Poor woman – I feel so sorry for her because she’s so sweet, she does not deserve such beastly treatment. – Yes, you were lucky unlike some of us here. – Hm? – What’s that? No, thank you, my friend. Not at that hour! – Why not? I don’t want to be caught in the snares of this notorious crackdown on suspected prostitutes. – Well, it’s no longer a free for all world you know. We live in a men’s world, and we women have to toe the line. – Yes, but do women commit the so-called crime on their own? – My baas and madam were discussing the issue yesterday, and I heard them say many advanced countries have tried to stamp out prostitution and have not really achieved abounding success. It is an age-old social cancer, they said. – Yes, well, I agree, but then the way it was done leaves one with a sour taste in the mouth. Imagine yourself window-shopping at about 7.00 in the evening, or going to catch a bus to visit your Auntie and you suddenly find yourself surrounded and turned from your way into a dreary truck, and the following day you are in Mushumbi Pools.

No, no, no, they were randomly picking up every woman they came across, guilty or innocent – and were not listening to explanations. Yes, I feel so sorry for some decent mums. It is agony for both their children at home and them. – Yes. – Well, I’m not taking any chances. If I am arrested, goodness knows how long I’d be kept before I was freed. I’d probably find my job gone, given to another. Oh, oh, madam’s car! Bye!

“Good afternoon, madam?” very respectfully.

“Afternoon! Has Popi had enough exercise, Liza?”

“Yes, madam.”

“I don’t think so. He looks very restless.”

“But madam. I played with him for over an hour and have since sprained my ankle. I’ve been rubbing and rubbing it. I can no longer run, and I have to start on the ironing now.”

“Where’s Tommy?”

“He’s watering the new flowers, madam.”

“Tommy! Tommy!”

“Madam!”

Tommy runs in and stands before our mistress.

“Tommy, when you finish with the new flowers, please race Popi for about 30 minutes. He’s still restless and Liza has sprained her ankle.”

Tommy glares at me, and I turn away without batting an eyelid and limp painfully towards the laundry room.

“Liza!”

“Madam!”

“You’ve been on my phone!”

“No, madam!”

“Look at that!”

“But, madam, should I let the phone ring and ring and ring?”

“Who was calling?”

“It was the wrong number, madam.”

“Wrong number! There are too many wrong numbers coming through. I think I’ll get a lock now.”

“As you please, madam. But in case of emergency, theft for instance, would it not waste a lot of time to run next door?”

“Yes, well, tell your friends to stop ringing wrong numbers. And don’t threaten me with theft because I will get the police on your back before they search anywhere else.”

I walk to the laundry-room smiling to myself. As I turn into the door, I see Tommy watching me intently, and his redshot eye reminds me that I am supposed to have a limp.