Another Woman's Daughter Read Online Free Page A

curter and the Master more distant. There was distrust in every shopkeeper’s eye, even old Master Gupta’s. I felt guilt and shame for all the trouble my people were causing.
    Finally, an eerie calm spread over the country and hung there uncertainly.
    After a time, rumors started to subside and worries, even mine, abated. One morning I awoke to find this pretend peace had become permanent. The white suburbs once more breathed with ease, and life as we had always known it began again.

CHAPTER FOUR
    October 1960
    Celia
    â€œCelia, the Master and I would like to talk with you after you’ve finished your dinner.”
    It was an unusually chilly October evening and the Madam had rung the bell, summoning me to clear the dinner dishes. The Madam, the Master, and Miriam had just finished their evening meal.
    The first time Miriam was invited to join the Steiners for a meal had come as a shock to me, as if I’d chanced upon a burglar in my room. Yet when I looked back, there were many clues; my eyes had just been blind to them. For Miriam to join the Steiners for dinner was as natural as one foot following the other.
    Miriam loved everything about these evenings—the heavy pieces of silver cutlery, the stiff white napkins I’d starched and ironed earlier in the day, the salt and pepper cellars in the shapeof small dogs. Best of all were the tales Master Michael would tell her—he could stretch out a story like a beautiful sunset, painting it with color and magic and wonder. Twisting his lips, peaking his eyebrows, and making funny accents, he’d captivate Miriam so completely I’d have to bump the back of her chair to remind her to eat. Stories were a luxury, food a necessity. I knew the steak would have no gristle and there would be no pockets of green in the potatoes.
    Miriam’s favorite story was “The Gift of the Magi.” I came to know it well. She never tired of hearing how the two poor lovers each gave up the one thing most precious to them in order to be able to buy a present for the other. Whenever Master Michael told the story, Miriam was always hopeful that, somehow, their predicament would be solved. But as Della’s long hair inevitably fell to the ground, Miriam would be gripped by the calamity of it all, as if she were hearing the story for the very first time.
    â€œ
Hau
, Master!” she’d cry, devastated that Della had sold her hair to buy Jim a chain for his watch, only to discover he in turn had sold his watch to buy combs for her beautiful long hair.
    And later, when the moon was high in the sky, she’d lie next to me, reliving the evening and retelling the well-worn tale over and over. “
Mme
, Della was too silly. When my hair grows long I will never cut it!”
    â€”
    I had been aware for some time of a change at the Saxonwold house. The mood had grown as light and easy as a butterfly in flight. Even the Madam seemed happy.
    â€œTake Sunday off, Celia,” she’d say. “Just set the breakfast table and that’ll be fine.” Or, “I’ve left out some pickled fish for you to have with your
mielie pap
today.”
    I noticed too that the bed in the spare room had often not been slept in, while most mornings the sheets on the big bed were in complete disarray.
    The Master started playing records again, and his white man’s music would travel out of the wide-open windows on an evening breeze to slip under my door and fill my room with gentle sound.
    In the midst of everything, in the center of this new lightness, was my Miriam—her little brown body running, her infectious laughter ringing, and her wonderment spilling over into the airy, high-ceilinged rooms.
    Then things started to
really
change.
    Master Michael began coming home from work early to take Miriam fishing in the creek at the bottom of the garden, and one Saturday in late September, the Madam took her on an outing to the zoo. On another weekend