Masonto.

Masonto is a name derived from the Zulu word for Sunday, Amasonto.

Finally, a day of rest.

Hardly.
My memories of Masonto span almost my entire lifetime. When I was as young as my memory will allow, she was square and solid, untidily wrapped in a usually grubby house dress, barefoot with corn rows sticking off her head haphazardly.
I have no idea of how old she was -- old enough to have two strapping sons, and then a little doe-eyed one, nicknamed Bambi for the rest of his life.
Young enough to play hours of hide-and-seek with us children, sent down the street to my grandmother's house in the hot afternoons when my mother would rest.

There were brown bread avoacado-and-vinegar sandwiches at the melamine kitchen counter, hot tea with a scoop of my grandmother's prized condensed milk, and then we were shooed outside into the boisterous hands of Masonto. She always smelled of chicken fat and hair oil, and never, ever sat still or kept quiet, for that matter. My head fills with the sound of her shrieking laughter and animated conversation when I think of her.
She was the younger sister of my childhood nanny and maid, Somblugu, and the two of them could not have been more different. Somblugu was Chopin, Masonto, the Rolling Stones.

She cooked, cleaned, babysat, dished out advice, fought raucously with a wayward husband I never did see, and whom eventually finally disappeared in a manner only whispered about in the presence of children.
She cared for everyone -- the waves of yapping little dogs my grandmother always seemed to love, kids from all corners of the family, my quiet grandfather and his clockwork coffee-breaks and pipe-smoking meditations, and my aunts who lived there until they married. She pressed outfits for monumental dates, helped to paint toenails scarlet and scrubbed feet with a pumice stone. Grooming seemed to have been her specialty. Whenever I appeared before her with my tousled teenage head, she would grab a comb and rush at me, begging to be allowed to worry out those snarls that seemed to trouble her so.

She was loud music, crude jokes and good natured bantering. She ran the dickens out of her little hand cranked Singer sewing machine on a Saturday afternoon when we were bored, my mother was visiting in the house, and the homemade cake had been eaten. She sewed narrow little strips of scrap fabric into squares, and made multi-colored quilt-like mats. I loved them but never could understand what they were really for.

She was the backbone of that house.

When Jenna was a few months old, Henk and I went to Durban and stayed at my grandmother's house. We slept in one of my aunt's old rooms -- her giant old porcelain dolls stacked on top of a huge wardrobe. Masonto stepped right in and cared for Jenna as naturally as breathing.
She brought us tea on a tray in the morning, and changed the baby's diaper. She was as comforting as my grandmother to me.


Our ambitions grew, and our small family moved across the globe. My grandmother grew old.
Mostly I heard of her health and happiness. After all, these are the questions we ask about our loved ones when calling from ten hours away. She was being well cared for and living with my lovely, youngest aunt. When she moved in with my aunt, all I heard about was how she was resisting the move and then how happy she was when she settled in.

What about Masonto? I asked.

Oh...... she has gone back to the township, I heard. What does that mean? Did she have another house? I never knew. I only thought of her and loved her within the framework of my grandmother's house and her quarters in the back yard.

What happened to her? Does she have enough money? Who is taking care of her? My mother responded in anger, with no answers. I don't understand what I am hearing. Is this guilt, shame or frustration I am hearing? I can't decide.
I am not in Durban, South Africa. I cannot read expressions, feel undercurrents or press family members for answers. No-one says anything, and I am distracted once more by my daily rituals. It bothers me.

A while later, in the middle of a lengthy conversation with my mother over the phone, she tells me that Masonto has died.
I think, she was not that old at all!
She was locked in her house and burnt alive for being a witch, my mother says. She sounds unshocked. I am stunned. Her sons stood and watched her screaming in the house, my mother says.
I don't know what to say to her anymore.
She sighs, and begins a litany of negative Masonto words that I do not hear.

I remember her lifelong service to my extended family. I remember her enormous soul.
I grieve.
I am horrified and sad.

I hear nothing from my family. Their silence is deafening. They are good people, but they say nothing.

Am I also a good person who says nothing too?