Gone but not forgotten

I read an email today telling me that Stella is dead. How sad! Sad, yes, that she is dead. I never even had the chance to introduce my daughter to her. But also sad that I had to learn about her death in an email from a stranger, forwarded to me by my father.

My earliest memory of Stella was watching my mother interviewing her for a job. I was bouncing on the edge of the couch watching her on the other end, sitting straight and respectfully answering the questions my mother asked – I have no idea what my mother asked or what Stella answered. I was supposed to be sitting quietly, but I couldn’t help the little bounces. Here she was finally!

I had listened all week to the talk about Stella when she worked for us – before, when my sisters were little. Everyone was excited about Stella coming back. I wanted to know her too. I wanted to touch her smooth face – so beautiful. I was bursting to tell her… who knows what exactly, but I had a lot to tell her. And I wanted to meet her daughter – mother told me that she was a little older than I was. A playmate living in the apartment behind the car port! I bounced a little higher and mother frowned at me.

She was hired! Mum told me I wasn’t to disturb them there in their home behind the wall, back by the banana trees, swing set and sand box. Even though I could see their area, or at least the free-standing wall in front of their living area, from my swing set, I wasn’t to go into their area uninvited. “It is their house and I am sure they want privacy. No little girls bugging them constantly!”

I don’t know if they invited me or not. Probably not. But I spent hours and hours back there. At first I hid in the banana trees, amongst the twisted roots, and peeked out at them. Then Mavis and I played on the swing set together while her mother cleaned my house. When Stella came back for lunch, I’d squat by the fire with them until Stella told me to go back to the house and eat my own lunch. I loved watching them roll their n'sima on their finger tips and talk with their mouths full. Mother never let me eat with my fingers or talk with my mouth full.

When Stella’s sister came to live with them, she brought her daughter, Lucy. Lucy was older than Mavis and me, and a bit bossy. We would call to her as we played, Mavis and I. “Come play with us. Push us on the swing!” She almost always had to work. She swept the dirt in front of their living area, made n'sima, scrubbed the smooth cement in their open-ended living area, tended the fire under the chimney there... Mavis looked up to her and followed her lead. So when Lucy laughed at me because I couldn’t spit my chewed sugarcane wad through the air and into the banana trees like a true Malawian, Mavis laughed too. Being a ham, I took extra effort to splutter ineffectively and messily, the more to make Esther, Lucy and Mavis laugh. When Esther left, Lucy stayed on to help Stella with Mavis and to clean their house.

I don’t know how they managed in one small room with the three, sometimes four of them: I did not go into their room except once. That was the time it had been storming. The thunder and lightening had been particularly fierce. We couldn’t find Stella anywhere, so we looked in her room. I vaguely remember a single bed, some mats rolled to one side and clothes hung on pegs. There was Stella under the bed with at least one of our dogs! I didn’t understand how an adult could be afraid of thunder or lightening. Afraid enough to hide under the bed? I knew the dogs were afraid because they always cowered when it thundered. I imagined they were very thankful to cower in a dry area with a human.

I know the dogs loved Stella. She made sure to give them scrapings from her fire-blackened pots, to pet them and talk nicely to them. They waggled their long sausage bodies for her just as much as for Mum or Dad. One time, when Rudolph, a particularly runt-like specimen of the dachshund breed, had been missing on one of his wanderings for over 2 weeks, Stella came back to the house triumphant, a very sorry-looking Rudolph in her arms. She said he had almost given her friends, with whom she had been walking, heart attacks. Here they were, chatting and laughing, when a filthy rat of a dog came streaking out from under the bridge and flung himself at Stella. They thought he had rabies for sure and, screaming, grabbed sticks to beat him off of Stella. She told them no, it was her master’s dog. She knew him and she would take him home. I think I cried because I was so happy to have Rudolph back.

Stella always called Mum, “Madam” and Dad, “Master.” I don’t think they required it; she just did it. She called me Lisa. I hated that! But I don’t know that I ever told her. I thought she did it to annoy me and I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of showing how much it annoyed me. I remember sitting in my room one time when I was home alone. I heard Stella outside calling, “Lisa, Lisa!” I didn’t answer because I did not like her calling me that. My middle name was LiZa, not Lisa. I liked everyone to call me Alex. Stella had to call me Lisa. Now that I think of it, maybe it was her pet name for me – a special name she could call me that no-one else used.

I spent a lot of time with Stella in those early years. After Mavis started school, I followed Stella around as she cleaned. How annoying that must have been! But she listened to me prattle on and answered my questions. She taught me how to make a bed and wipe a table properly and how to fold a shirt before packing it in a suitcase. These were tasks she learned in school, when preparing to become a maid. She was the head girl of her secondary school in Zimbabwe. I could believe it. She did everything well. She not only kept the house spotless, but she could always find Mum’s contact lens when she lost it – in fact, it came to the point that, when mother lost her lens while trying to put it in her eye, we all had to wait for Stella to come in at 7:00 because only she had eyes sharp enough to find that lens. Stella also read me stories and could help me with my homework if I asked. She spoke English perfectly and knew how to speak Shona, Chewa and a smattering of Sena.

Just as well. She somehow met a man from Mozambique and he only spoke Sena. Even though he lived in Mozambique, which was in the middle of a civil war at the time, and Stella lived in Malawi, they married. To visit her, he had to cross hundreds of miles, many riddled with Mozambique’s infamous land mines. He walked through the bush to cross the border. One time, Stella told Mum, “He was walking though the bush, and yes, he even met a guerrilla!” Mother mistook her and said in awe, “Oh my. He must have been so frightened. Still, to see a gorilla!” Stella answered, “Yes. And the guerrilla was carrying a gun.” Thankfully, Louis was able to talk his way past the guerrilla, but to this day, Mum tells the story of her imagining Louis Gimo confronting a gorilla with a gun in the middle of the bush.

Stella and Louis were married for years, but they rarely saw one another. He eventually found another wife in Tête and Stella divorced him. Stella stayed with us – she still cleaned our house and looked after me when I wasn’t in school. I don’t know why she was a maid. I think she could have done anything she put her mind to, if she wanted. Maybe it had something to do with her Uncle. When her father died, he left his land – maybe cattle too, I don’t remember – to Stella and Esther. They never saw any of it. Because of the inheritance laws, or maybe just cultural tradition in their area of Chikwawa, their Uncle had custody of their inheritance for them. But Stella said he never gave them anything. Maybe she became a maid to earn money or until she found a better job.

When she left us – much later, when I was a preteen – she worked in an office in town. I think she was a secretary, but she also did sales and accounts. She would show up at church on occasion. She was a member there. She would ask, “How is the master?” Dad was never in the Blantyre church because he had two or three other churches he had to visit in the villages on Sunday. Then Mum would ask how Mavis was. Mavis had a baby when she was still in school. I don’t know that she finished secondary school. She joined the police band and that was her job. I didn’t even think she could play an instrument. Eventually, she married a police man she met in the band. Stella was so proud to have a daughter in the police and to have grandchildren. Stella was also proud that she worked in an office, but she didn’t enjoy it. When I came back to visit with my son, she asked if I would move back so she could work for me and look after my son. Oh, such temptation – to move back home and raise my son like I was raised. But circumstances change and life moves on.

Stella did leave the office job and go back to being a maid – not for us, though – someone else. Mum would give me updates periodically when she saw her in church or in town. When I next visited Malawi in 2004, Stella did not come to church and, though we sent word to her, we never managed to meet. Soon after, my parents retired and left Malawi. We all live in the USA now, and that is a world apart from Malawi. Hearing of her death brings that other world back into focus.

This email…the man writing it didn’t even know Stella.

“The deceased was your erstwhile house maid, Stella, whose surname was either Jim or Gite or both.

She belonged to Epiphany, served by Rev. Frackson Chinyama.

Some months ago I happened to be at Epiphany at a worship service and I saw Stella at that time. She was up before the congregation to repent.

Heaven knows what her offense was. I seem to remember that it was that she hadn’t been coming to church regularly and she wanted to repent of that.

Well, now she is gone.

This morning Revs. Chinyama and Pembeleka went to a village in Chikwawa for Stella’s funeral. She died two days ago, which would be November 22.”

That is all he could write about Stella. That is all he remembered. But I remember Stella. I pray she is enjoying her reward in heaven. There is still hope she can meet my daughter one day.