Listen to Juliet McShannon read this excerpt.
On the morning of South Africa’s first democratic election, the autumn sun lit the red Victorian bricks of my old schoolhouse, now a makeshift polling station. It warmed my face, and the faces of the other voters who formed a line that snaked around the perimeter and down a Jacaranda tree–lined street in an upscale white neighborhood. The bus stops, dotted at intervals, were used by maids coming into work before the sun rose and returning to townships when it set. Now, an old white couple rested on a bus stop bench, the woman sitting straight-backed with pursed lips and the man rubbing his knees, looking glum. A Black mother passed behind them, singing a lullaby to her baby wrapped on her back. This set the guard dogs barking from behind the electric fences of nearby houses. The mother kept singing.
I had arrived in Durban the previous day to cast my vote. Our family had immigrated to South Africa from England when I was a child and I had acquired dual citizenship. I could have mailed in my ballot from my newly adoptive California, but I didn’t want my personal legacy to be marked by departure. Five years before, in 1989, a new white President had promised democracy. But what if change didn’t come fast enough for some, or too fast for others? What if it didn’t come at all? The rallying cry of “One Settler, One Bullet” could not be unheard or unimagined. I made the decision to leave that year along with other young, white professionals, who could.
I immediately noticed the woman who raised me was two ahead of me in the voting line. Even in my jet-lagged state, I could tell it was Beauty. She looked smaller, shoulders hunched, and was wearing her work uniform: a button-down housecoat with a white frilly apron and a white doek covering her head, the ends sticking out like lambs’ tails. I felt a rush of tenderness, then disquiet, remembering how, and why, we had parted ways.
On seeing me, Beauty called out my name and broke from the line. As she came up to me, I caught a whiff of Lifebuoy soap. I didn’t know they sold that anymore. It belonged in the past, on the bottom shelf of the pantry along with Beauty’s wash cloth and an enamel mug and plate, washed separately from ours.
Beauty stood facing me as if waiting for me to speak, but I didn’t know what to say, where to begin, and so was glad for the distraction of a poll worker, an older Black man with graying temples, going down the line reminding us to have our ID documents ready to show. Today that old tool of Apartheid control was a symbol of Beauty’s right to vote. She held up her ID book and made a quip in Zulu, and they laughed together in the manner of an inside joke. We’d only just begun our awkward small talk when Beauty pointed to her companion, who was anxiously calling her back to their place in line. As Beauty turned to go she touched my arm, or maybe just brushed it. Back in line, I saw her nudge her companion and point my way. The companion adjusted her own doek and clicked as if to say, we all have one of those.
The line inched forward, and a few people cheered. I regretted not bringing a book or magazine to pass the time. The white man in front of me opened a newspaper and I tried to read it over his shoulder, but I had always struggled with Afrikaans. As if sensing my gaze, he dipped the paper, and I caught a glimpse of Beauty’s doek tails bobbing up and down as she talked animatedly, punching the air with clicks. I could not help but wonder where she now worked, and if she liked her new madam. Did we even say madam anymore? Did she? In these changing times, would she have addressed my mother instead as Mrs. Carvalho or (like everyone else) the easier Mrs. C?
The man closed his newspaper and tutted about the wait. I wanted to tell him to shush. I was listening to Beauty’s inflections and trying to figure out if she was talking about me; whether on seeing me—and this made my heart race—she was reminded of our old house, or remembered (how could she not, today of all days?) the promises of four years ago, when Nelson Mandela walked free?
On that Sunday, Beauty had come into work to make up for a missed day earlier in the week. I was on my first visit back to my mother after having moved to California a few months before. I motioned for Beauty to join me on the sofa to watch the televised event, but she declined, opting to stand in the doorway, hands deep in her apron pockets. When I next looked around, she had disappeared. This is the moment! I called through to the kitchen. The cameras were zooming in on the gates of Victor Verster Prison. The world was watching. Beauty? I turned up the volume and went to the kitchen . . .