Most ‘unaccommodating’ madams

THE MAID’S ROOM Fiona Mitchell Loot.co.za (R196) Hodder & Stoughton

REVIEWER: JEAN VON WITT

NANNIES are news, it seems, judging by the latest international blockbuster, The Perfect Nanny, which has climbed up the New York Times’ bestseller list since being translated into English.

But while Leila Slimani’s elegantly written take on the classic nanny nightmare tale, Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, tackles contemporary issues such as racism and refugees from her own Moroccan-French world view, the tone of the book could less illustriously be compared to one of the many made-for-TV movies that make hiring a nanny seem like a horror story.

That said, a different kind of horror is unveiled in Fiona Mitchell’s debut novel, The Maid’s Room, which takes an unflinchingly realistic look at the lives of Filipina maids in contemporary times.

And, yes, while this well-researched book, based on the author’s two-and-a-half-year sojourn as an “expat” in Singapore, exposes exploitation “abroad”, the parallels between the lives of domestic workers then and now in South Africa cannot be denied.

Even the choice of words is loaded, down here on the southern tip of Africa: is the term “maid” derogatory, or is it just in the context of being called a “meid” in some circles? What about referring to staff as “domestics”, leaving out the more important, human component of “worker”?

A lot of us like to say we have “helpers” around the home, but that was the pejorative word used in the American Deep South portrayed in the book-cum-movie The Help, wasn’t it?

Anyway, a housekeeper by any other name usually includes the duties of a childminder, babysitter, nanny, ironing lady, laundress, toilet cleaner or anything else under the umbrella of the UK term “charlady”.

Chores notwithstanding, the real living hell portrayed in this book is in terms of accommodation.

“But it’s like a bomb shelter, there’s no window,” the author recalls saying when shown a windowless cupboard/room just off the kitchen in the condo she and her family were going to be renting in Singapore in 2009.

While others in the complex she lived in didn’t see any harm in calling this airless hole “a maid’s room”, Mitchell declined to hire a live-in domestic helper while living there. Instead, as an ex-journalist of some 20 years’ standing, she started to interview the Filipina women who lived in these bomb shelters.

“Oh, it’s fine,” one of the women told Mitchell. “I used to sleep on the floor under the table in the living room in one place I worked.”

And, as for the ablution facilities, the author was shocked to hear that some helpers were banned from using any toilets in the apartments they worked and lived in, apart from the one assigned to them next to their room off the kitchen.

“One helper explained how she wasn’t allowed to use any of the apartment toilets at all and was forced to go downstairs to the communal toilets in the grounds of the condo…”

Sound familiar, South Africans?

I cringed when reading this, remembering the “servant’s room” and, indeed, separate toilets behind the garages in my granny’s block of flats; not so long ago and probably happening in many gated communities as we speak.

But in case this is making the book sound like a dull, but worthy, treatise on the rights and wrongs of an employer/ employee relationship here or elsewhere, Mitchell has a light touch when it comes to describing the icy-cool lives of the women living in air-conditioned luxury in the tropics; so much so, that at first I thought this would be a pleasant “chick-lit” read, with all the conspicuous consumption trappings of the “women who lunch” and their, mostly, unhappy marriages.

Well, except for a couple of chapters describing how the Filipina maids replaced the mothers in their childrens’ affections (again, striking a resonant chord), this novel is anything but a tale of shallow lives revolving around skinner and shoes, à la Imelda Marcos (the ultimate “madam” from the Philippines?)

The fraught lives of the maids, fearing deportation should they disobey any of the strict rules regarding curfew, conduct, etc, at times reads like a thriller. And, when one of the more enterprising of the characters uses her computer skills to create a blog telling the truth about what it’s like to be a domestic worker… well, #Maidhacker goes viral in their small community and elevates the main plot, and sub-plot, to an entirely different level.

Harrowing, poignant moments aside, there is also lots of love and laughter lurking behind the stories of the women – both the maids and their madams. But at the risk of a spoiler, be warned tears will flow when one of the maids escapes her poverty-stricken life and returns to see her children back home.

“After I left the Philippines, I didn’t see my young sons for three years; imagine that,” she tells her new employer, more sympathetic than some.

Once more, need I point out the parallels?

But, last word to Mitchell: “At a time when an estimated 67 million people are working as domestic helpers across the globe, and a quarter of these are afforded no legal rights at all, perhaps my novel might just be a small symbol of hope.”

I cringed when reading this, remembering the (apartheid) ‘servant’s room’