Zyphera

Helena is a fresh flower grown in mud. She is covered with it, with dirty black soil, and she bends under its weight. Nevertheless, she sparks.

Helena is a forty-year-old Congolese woman. She washes clothes while listening old Congolese rumba, poorly recorded on an old radio. I hear her singing, and when she does, her voice softens my heart. Helena is what we call a domestic in Congo. We don’t say housemaid, we don’t say hostess. However, she gives life to the house. She is the one who washes, cleans, cooks, and takes care of everyone. « You have to eat Mademoiselle! Because, one day we will die. But what we eat … we keep it. » What a philosopher! « Do not walk barefoot, Mademoiselle, your feet will swell, » she warns, anxious to see me without shoes.

She has a small face with two small, round, intelligent eyes. Her mouth is very thin and her lips slightly curved. Her slender hands are damaged from washing. Her skin is black, and her unwashed hair is always tied up. When she scrubs the floor, her back points to hell and her large buttocks, stretched in the air seem to say « kiss it » to the One who hasn’t heard her prayers.

This is how I see her. She possesses a hope in life that is beyond my understanding. She has four children, and now she can no longer conceive. Her husband left her for another woman, and she says she is fine with that, -because now, he may have more children, and this is what she wants for him. She is so natural and spontaneous.  She doesn’t feel shy telling me the details of the pain she feels when they made love; what a relief it is to her that her husband is gone.

When she smiles, she looks as if she is always on the verge of laughing. She looks at everything and everyone the exact same way. Her gaze is a mix of curiosity, compassion and impertinence. Alongside other, more docile Congolese women, she appears shameless.

I like to know the meaning of names, whether or not they truly reflect the person. “Helena” comes from the ancient Greek? meaning « glory of sun. » It suits her perfectly. I see her as glow and as the sun itself. When I watch her, I’m smiling without knowing why. The “sun woman” dries and cracks mud around her.

Destiny caused her to be born here, in Congo, and left her in her condition. I wonder what she could have been in another life, in another place, at another time. I dream that she would be an excellent manager in any social field – steady, human and intelligent all at once. Her children would be beautiful and full of life. Her house would always smell delicious cakes. She would always dress simply yet elegantly and colorfully. And her big buttock would no longer say « kiss it », but would sit triumphantly upon the misfortunes she never had to endure.