Madams by Abigail George

My mother is screaming, yelling at Mildred Jacobs to go. If she doesn’t want to work she should go. “But I am finished with the kitchen.” Mildred Jacobs says lamely. My mother says, “You didn’t do the floors. You didn’t clean properly. You didn’t wipe the cupboards.” I hide in my bedroom. All Mildred Jacobs says with a defiant air is, “I am finished with the kitchen.” “You must go now. I will pay you.” My mother says, tired and her voice strained, “If you do not want to work then you must go...”

This story has been selected for the StoryTime anthology African Roar 2012, please go to the African Roar site for more info.

Madams was written by Abigail George.

Copyright © Abigail George 2010.

I am a writer of short stories, articles, personal essays, a memoirist, diarist, grant writer and poet who was born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa in 1979. I studied film and television production for a short while at Newtown Film and Television School in Newtown, Johannesburg, South Africa which was followed by brief stints as a trainee at a production house, studying Business Administration through correspondence, Bible School at Word of Faith Christian Centre in Port Elizabeth, South Africa and studying creative writing through the Leisure Study Group’s Writing School via correspondence again.

I have been published widely in print and online in journals and magazines in South Africa namely Litnet and on Litnet’s Blog, Sun Belly Press, Botsotso, Carapace, New Contrast, Kotaz, Timbila, Echoes Literary Journal, Upbeat and Tribute and online in Africa in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Turkey and Zimbabwe and internationally in the United States, England, Finland and Canada.

I have received two grants from the National Arts Council in Johannesburg. In 2005 for a poetry anthology entitled, Africa, where art thou? and again in 2008 for manuscript development for a collection of short stories entitled, The Origins of Smoke and Mirrors. In 2010 I was published in the following anthologies; Poems for Haiti (Published by Poets Printery), Animal Antics, Soulfully Seeking (Published by the Poetry Institute of Africa) and the forthcoming African Roar 2011.