Mary the Mchawi by Farah Ahamed

We in this house know our place. We never pry, ask unnecessary questions or poke our noses into our boss’s affairs. Occasionally, however, we admit, we gossip. Of course, we keep an eagle eye on anyone new who joins the house.  We work here and live in the DSQ, or Domestic Servants Quarters.

We want to tell you about Mary. She was the new cook and came at the beginning of March when the old cook sent Ma’am a message to say he wasn’t coming back. He didn’t offer any explanation and Ma’am said she’d been left in the lurch yet again. She grumbles, but we’ve been with the house for more than ten years and she knows we are faithful.  

Before we had a chance to ask our relatives and friends if they wanted the old cook’s job, Mary showed up. She appeared one morning at the gate wearing an orange dress with purple flowers. When the guard asked her what she wanted, she said she had appointment with Ma’am. He let her in and we watched her walking to the kitchen door with slow, steady steps. The rucksack on her back looked heavy, which struck us as strange. What on earth was she carrying in that bag? 

After a brief interview, which we observed from a distance, Ma’am gave Mary a blue and white chequered uniform, with a white apron and headscarf. She brought Mary to the DSQ and introduced her to us. We told her our names but she didn’t say more than hello.

At lunchtime, instead of coming to the DSQ to eat with us, Mary went and sat under the Jacaranda tree near the car park with her rucksack. She took out a Tupperware container and a spoon and began eating. We couldn’t be sure what the food was, but it looked like plain rice. We accepted that Mary might have been shy om her first day.

We discussed among ourselves how Mary was different. We couldn’t tell you precisely what it was about her, but we knew instinctively. We tried to pin point if it was her appearance. She was short, her nose was wide and flat, and her feet and hands were small. She wasn’t petite, but stocky, and her manner was placid, not hasty and shrewd like some of us in the house. Was it her blue flip-flops slapping the kitchen floor that got on our nerves? Or her high pitched voice? We decided whatever it was, we didn’t trust her. 

Nevertheless, after a week, we invited Mary to have her tea with us at the DSQ. She declined, giving no reason. Instead, she went to her usual spot under the Jacaranda tree with her rucksack. She dunked her bread in her cup of tea and sat there eating, without casting so much as a glance in our direction.  

We asked Ma’am where she’d found Mary. She said she’d come highly recommended from a friend. We wanted to know, did Mary have a family, or did she live alone? Was she married and if not, why not? Did she have children? How many? Ma’am said Mary had informed her, defensively, yes, she was married and had a son, but she was living by herself. We asked Ma’am if Mary would be coming to stay with us in a room at the DSQ. She said Mary had refused, and preferred to carry on living where she was. When we ventured to suggest there was something odd about Mary, Ma’am scolded us for speculating. Maybe, we said. 

Ma’am told us that Mary had hesitated when she’d asked her about her previous employers, who they were, where they lived and how long she’d worked for them. Only when Ma’am pressed her had Mary revealed that they’d been expatriates and had left the country. But where were they from? Ma’am had asked. Abroad, Mary replied.

Her quiet presence around the house began to unnerve us. When we hinted to Ma’am about this, she said Mary’s cooking was good, and that was all that mattered. But we knew there was more to Mary. Why didn’t she talk to us? What was she hiding? We decided we should visit the place where Mary lived to find out, but Ma’am said it was none of our business and we should respect Mary’s privacy. We told Ma’am we were doing it to protect the house, and reminded her of past incidents with gardeners, drivers, maids and cooks. She relented and gave us Mary’s address on the other side of the city, near the airport. ‘But for god’s sake don’t go upsetting her. The children like her samosas, banana cake and omelettes.’ We decided to wait.

It intrigued us that Mary chose to live so far from the house, on her own, and spend time and money commuting, when she could have lived with us for free, in the DSQ of the house. This made us suspect she might be a sex-worker by night, which would explain why she was always so tired in the morning. Of course, we realised it could be that her commute was an hour and a half each way. People often told lies to protect themselves, we knew that, but Mary’s lies became a very big deal for us in this house.

It was the smell that confirmed our suspicions about her. The gardener was the first to notice it coming from the kitchen, when he was watering the plants one afternoon. He complained it was like rotting flesh and made him nauseous. Later, he said his wife had no sympathy and she’d told him she was tired of his petty moaning, and to send her more money as life in the village was hard.

A few days later the maid said the stench from the kitchen had given her a pounding headache, aching bones and a fever like malaria. She was sure it was caused by Mary’s cooking. She said she’d snooped when Mary was having her tea under the Jacaranda tree, and there was nothing on the stove, but the kitchen was filled with a haze of smoke and a smell so malevolent and primitive, it made her head burst. The maid also reported that her husband had been ignoring her phone calls, and she’d heard from neighbours that in her absence he’d taken to heavy drinking. 

We began to monitor Mary’s every move and recorded them in a diary. We made notes about where she was, and what she did and said, hour by hour. She drank black tea without sugar thrice a day. In the mornings she had a slice of bread with her tea and at lunchtime she ate plain, boiled rice from her Tupperware container. At three in the afternoon, she took only tea. In her little free time, she sat under the Jacaranda tree with a book resembling a Bible, from her rucksack. She alternated between three outfits: the orange and purple flowery dress, a forest green sweater and brown trousers, and a plain grey dress. She had black trainers, black wedge-heel sandals and black lace-up boots. We couldn’t detect a pattern in which shoes she wore and when. We agreed it could be random. But every evening, when she’d finished her work in the kitchen, she’d polish her shoes before putting them on. We wondered if the ritual cleaning was to stop the smell clinging to them. 

Unlike some of us, Mary didn’t care about how she looked. We never saw her use a mirror to adjust her hair or her clothes. She didn’t carry a comb, mirror, make-up or deodorant in her bag. We knew this from observing her. However, she did own a flashy mobile phone, an iPhone 6, an old model, but we are Samsung people, and we resented its more advanced features. We wondered if she’d stolen it or received it in exchange for some immoral favour.  We entered all of this in the diary. 

The foul odour continued day after day. We sent the driver to the kitchen as a secret agent, under the pretext of giving Ma’am a utility bill. He returned saying he’d found only a pan with boiling water and potatoes on the stove, so the smell must be coming from inside the oven. But there was no way we could find out what it was, unless we opened the oven ourselves, which was impossible. The driver refused to go back and confront Mary.

However, one afternoon, when he brought the children home from school, he asked them who could smell something strange coming from the kitchen? They thought it was a funny game he’d invented, and started pulling faces and shouting they weren’t going to eat whatever Mary had baked. Ma’am was displeased with the driver for teaching the children bad manners. She told him unless he was ready to put on an apron and prepare supper for the children himself, he should stop interfering in the kitchen. 

That evening, after Mary had left, we asked Ma’am if she’d smelt anything unusual. She said if this was part of the driver’s game, she wasn’t amused. We insisted it wasn’t, and asked her to sniff the air in the kitchen. She stood there frowning, and took several deep breaths. No, she said, she could smell only spices and food. She told us she’d noticed we’d been slacking at our work, wasting time chit-chatting and inciting the children to misbehave. She said she’d been feeling unwell recently, her blood pressure was low and she’d been groggy in the afternoons and had to rest. Your gossip about Mary is making it worse, she said. Sometimes I think I’m losing my mind. We noted in the diary that she and Bwana, our big boss, had been arguing a lot.

We took turns spying on Mary through the kitchen window. We studied her expression, which was always the same, calm and unperturbed. Her mouth was small and her lips thin, and she spoke in a voice barely above a whisper. It was only when she was singing while cooking, that she raised her voice, sending a shrill current through our bodies. Once we saw her chopping vegetables with a hint of a smile on her face, at some private joke. Another time she was kneading the bread dough, and talking to herself.  Mostly she looked preoccupied, as though in another world filled with sorrow. 

One morning the driver woke moaning about his ankle. It had swollen up overnight and filled with pus. He could barely walk, let alone drive, and the doctor said it was a poisonous insect bite. The driver told us his wife had become extremely quarrelsome and threatened to leave him, even though he’d sent her money for the children’s school fees. He lay on his bed in the DSQ, saying he had no energy and felt his life was slipping away. 

Three of us in the DSQ were sick, and we were all in conflict with our spouses. None of us could understand what was happening. The smell from the kitchen continued every afternoon. It was dank, as though from a festering septic tank, or the stench of decay, green, brown and mouldy, and permeated our clothes and skin.

Our peaceful evenings were a thing of the past. Now every night we heard Ma’am and Bwana arguing in the house, Ma’am accusing Bwana of drinking too much, and he shouting that she was over-spending. Ma’am was crying, Bwana was swearing. Ma’am threatened to leave him. As the days passed, we noticed the younger child growing thinner and the older one had stopped riding his bicycle around the compound. Instead of kicking the ball in the garden after school, they now lay on the grass drained, and looked at us with listless eyes. 

We had to alert Ma’am. We showed her the diary with our detailed notes and proof of Mary’s spells. We pointed to each other and told Ma’am about our ailments and how our families were falling apart. Ma’am heard us out, then became angry. She said we were talking nonsense, and she didn’t pay us to spend the day gossiping. Mary was a good cook and she wasn’t going to let her go, so we must learn to get along with her. Later that afternoon, however, we heard her telling Mary to stop singing because it was driving her crazy. Mary replied she was sorry and they were only Bible songs, but if it upset Ma’am, she wouldn’t do it. As soon as Ma’am had gone upstairs, Mary’s shrill voice continued.  

Her singing troubled us. We speculated about the lyrics and the nature of the hymns. Were they in fact, curses? Mary had no reason to cast an evil eye on us, but there was something sinister about her songs. We saw ourselves as undercover detectives. We spied on her every move, through the window, the way she held the knife to chop vegetables, dice fruit and skin chickens, and how she stirred the pan on the stove and washed the dishes. We were doing this for the sake of Ma’am, Bwana, the children and the entire household. We saw ourselves as exorcists.

One evening, we waited till Mary was absorbed in cleaning her shoes, and seized the chance to go through her rucksack. We found a Bible with specific verses underlined in red. We also discovered a folded piece of paper in the back, with a list of a dozen words written in blue ink. When we spoke them, they sounded like a prayer – or a curse. We left the bag as we’d found it, but when Mary was leaving, she stopped at the gate and turned to stare back at us.

It was the electrician who saved us. He came to fix the water-pump one afternoon, and identified the smell saying he knew what it was, but he refused to name it for fear of its evil potential. He recognised it, because his step-mother had used it to turn his father against him. He warned us about the object Mary put in the oven. It looked innocent, like a brick or a piece of dried dung, but in reality it was dangerous.

Every night until late, unable to sleep, we sat around the jiko, warming our hands on the glowing coal ambers, trying to reassure ourselves that this would pass, and we’d soon go back to chatting about trivial things. We became depressed, imagining Mary in the kitchen, chanting her strange songs, and sifting, sieving, mixing and kneading, while malign energy drifted from the kitchen through the whole house and garden, and into the DSQ. We were miserable and resentful of each other: if you hate her so much, why don’t you do something? Why don’t you? 

One morning, soon after the electrician’s visit, when Mary was cleaning the larder, we opened her rucksack again. This time we found not only the Bible but also something heavy and damp, wrapped in a newspaper. It was soft on one side and flat and hard on the other, and could have been a small, dead animal. We heard Mary’s flip-flops, so we dropped the bag and ran. Later, we agreed the parcel could have been Mary’s shoes, wet from the rain.

A few days later we heard the maid accusing Mary of leaving a bucket in the library filled with water and animal faeces. She called Mary a mchawi, a she-devil.  Mary gave a malicious laugh. Chills passed through our bodies. Mary threatened to tell Ma’am. The maid said she was an outsider, and Ma’am would never believe her. Mary replied she didn’t care, her husband had left her for another woman and taken her son. She had nothing to lose.  

Generally, our house has always been harmonious. We’ve shared our food, donated gifts and money for one another’s relatives’ funerals and weddings, and been supportive. But when the maid returned to the DSQ after her confrontation with Mary, none of us offered sympathy. The maid said Mary had brandished a bread knife at her. We kept quiet and showed no compassion, we were afraid for our own lives. The maid called us useless cowards. We began quarrelling, pushing one another, shouting: it’s you, ni wewe. Wachana mneno, stop telling lies. You’ve always been a thief. You’re to blame. Ma’am heard us and demanded to know what was going on. She said if this didn’t stop, she’d sack us all.

We calmed down, but the next time Mary came out of the house we shouted her name. You witch, Mary. Mchawi. She turned and walked towards us. We prepared to defend our territory as she drew closer, but she stayed a few feet away and threw something into the jiko, causing thick, putrid smoke to rise from the burning coals. We clutched our throats, fighting for breath, choking and nearly vomiting. Mary went back inside the house, leaving us in a state of collapse, unable to speak or move.

We understood now, her presence could destroy us. That evening, when Mary took the bus to the outskirts of the city, we trailed her from a distance in a rickshaw and alighted when she did. She sat down on a bench under a tree, near the bus stop, and we hid in the bushes. She took out her iPhone, and looked around. We wondered if she was on to us. We listened as she spoke into it, so quietly we had to strain our ears. Then she raised her voice, crying, and saying: but I sent you the money, you promised I could see my son. 

She put away her phone, wiped her eyes and took out her Tupperware container and spoon. We gathered around the bench and grabbed her arm. The container fell from her lap, scattering rice on the pavement. Her face twisted with pain. What do you want? she cried. The driver covered her mouth with his hand. The maid pushed her and she fell sideways. The gardener pressed her throat. The electrician said: you’re a mchawi. Mary kicked and struggled as we tied her to the broken bench and told her what she was going to do. 

We grabbed the iPhone and started to run, fighting over it as we fled, with echoes of Mary’s screams pursuing us.

Farah Ahamed’s writing has been published in Ploughshares, The White Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Markaz Review amongst others. She is the editor of Period Matters: Menstruation Experiences in South Asia, Pan Macmillan India, 2022, (periodmattersbook.com.) You can read more of her work at: farahahamed.com. 

11 May 2023