Thinking of The Help

When I was very little I took the bottle of gin out of our pantry and emptied the contents into the sink.

Not much time passed before I heard my parents talking about the shockingly empty bottle of gin. I was in the kitchen while they cooked, and since my sister and I were in the age ranges of six to nine, the only possible culprit they could imagine was our maid.

I waited. My strangely potent aversion to alcohol at the tender age of six wasn’t very well understood by my parents (particularly since I’d only ever seen one of my parents drunk once and had no logical reason to hate alcohol with the venom I encumbered for it). I bated my breath and waited for the sentence to pass.

And then my parents came to the conclusion that, if she was drinking on the job, the maid must be fired.

I swallowed heavily and with a whimpery voice confessed my crime. I cannot remember the punishment, but my parents seemed more confused than angry.

Today, I feel a certain redemptive albeit very small pride in taking responsibility for my action.

I recently watched The Help, which is based on a novel by the same name that exposes the trials and degradation black maids faced in the US during the 1960s. I was entertained and touched, and furious that people had been treated so inhumanely.

A poster for The Help

But before I could get too sanctimonious, I realised that the situation maids in the 60s faced in the Deep South might be more relevant to post-apartheid South Africa than many white middle to upper class families would like to admit.

Even in a post-apartheid society, the average white family employs a black domestic worker. Some of the main issues in The Help ring uncomfortably true to my experience with our domestic workers while growing up, as well as what I saw in the houses of my friends.

I never witnessed or saw a maid treated badly. I can say with confidence that domestic workers my family has employed have been treated well and paid fairly.

But the thought that struck me after watching The Help was that maids still have separate cups and cutlery, and generally use bathrooms outside of the house (in the wake of apartheid laws which recommended separate amenities for different races, many houses or complexes built during the era have toilets and small rooms built apart from the main house).

They still travel far and long each morning to get to their employers’ houses. Our current maid, Emily, gets up at 4 AM to catch the various buses that will bring her to our doorstep. She gets home around nightfall, to a little girl running to hug her mother.

Emily has been working for us for over five or six years. Last year I saw her house in the KwaMahlangu township for the first time. It’s a small shack on a spacious lot that overlooks a valley. As far as the view goes, her little family is set. When it comes to sanitation, privacy and living space, the outlook is less idyllic.

Emily and her two children and nephew outside her house in KwaMahlangu

As we arrived, her sister’s son was bathing in his underwear in tub haphazardly perched on the uneven ground. There was a squeal from the dark shack and a little girl came bursting out, surprised and overjoyed at the unexpected sight of her mother returning home early.

Since we had redone our bathroom, we were giving Emily the shower structure we were no longer using, along with a table and a few chairs.

Trying to write this article makes me shocked at just how little I know about Emily’s past. I know about her present. Her little girl is seven and went to her first day of school not too long ago. Her son is a little bit older, and sported a defiant tilt to his chin as he posed for my sister’s camera.

After our expedition, and after we gave Emily the photos my sister took, she brought me a photo of her daughter dressed in traditional clothes and dancing. She tells me what her children think of school. She asks how long still I will be away at university.

And it’s these kinds of things that make me feel better about the situation in South Africa and what I saw in The Help. My family and I don’t treat Emily with the kind of derision and superiority you see in the movie and hear about from articles in the South African press. We help where we can, and don’t see her as a servant, but an employee and a dear person.

I’m still not sure though why Emily chooses to use the same cup, which is particularly different from the medley we generally use, every day. Perhaps she just particularly likes it. Unfortunately that would be a naive assumption.

The harsh truth is that an old power structure still remains. Emily and my parents are of a generation that grew up in apartheid. Although I don’t think this forms any part in the value they attribute to the other, I can see the conceptions of apartheid seeping into the interaction between them. Emily still calls my father “baas”, and my mother “mies” (short for miesies). She still uses her own (self?)designated cup, and sits outside when she eats.

To my knowledge, we haven’t told her to do so. To my knowledge we haven’t minded whether she does or not. We treat her well. She seems to like us. We like her.

It’s hard to say what I should be bothered about. I don’t think I’m bothered about where she eats or what she uses or what she calls my parents or what we call her. I’m bothered by how these sets of behaviour just fell into place without any consideration.

I think I will, next time I’m home, ask Emily why she has her own cup and sits outside. I’ll ask her where she grew up, and what she likes to do over the weekend.

I’ll ask her surname, and that will be one less detail that modern society will make me feel guilty for not knowing.

Emily in her very neat one-room home, which she shares with her two children and husband.

Photos of Emily and her family by Nadine van der Wielen (http://snapmepretty.blogspot.com/)