“Destroy the earth how?”
“When I was young, there were wild fruits, vegetables, yams, and other plants all over this place. But they no longer exist because people cleared miles and miles of the land to make way for shambas of cash crops brought over by the Europeans. Thousands and thousands of plant species replaced by two: coffee and cotton. Soon, little animals and insects that live in the soil will disappear too.”
“Kdto,” Kirabo clicked. Put like that, humans were despicable.
“As a result of these stories, humans grabbed territory—this hill is mine … that plain is ours. Creatures which could not fight back were tamed and locked up; those that resisted were hunted down.” Nsuuta sighed catastrophe. “But then one day male ancients said, ‘Women, stop. You cannot join in.’”
“Why?”
Nsuuta stood up. “Why is where we will start next time.”
“You cannot stop there, Nsuuta; it is going to kill me. It is like giving water to a thirsty person but taking it away when they have only had a tiny sip.”
“Go home; I am exhausted.”
“I come back tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow is too soon. I need to rest.”
“When, then?”
“In three, four days. Now go or I will forget the rest of the story.”
Kirabo used the back door. First, she went to Nsuuta’s jackfruit tree, which bulged with fruit. She spat in both her palms and rubbed them together to get a good grip. As she climbed, the fact that she was not going to see her mother soon turned the knife. She got to the fruit, tapped on each along the way up, listening. None had that deep-belly sound of ripeness. She came down. Nsuuta had found her mother. It was a start. She walked to the passion fruit thicket under Nsuuta’s musambya tree and shook the shrub. Fruit fell like hailstones. Kirabo shook it until nothing more fell. She collected the fruit into a heap, tied a fibre string tight around her waist, and dropped the passion fruit inside her dress until she bulged. She made her way to Giibwa’s home, cracking the shells between her teeth, sucking the sweetness. No, consulting Nsuuta had not been fruitless; her mother had been located. And soon this old state of being would be out of her.
•
Kirabo was about to turn into the trail that led to Kisoga to visit Giibwa—she had forgotten about the fight—when Kabuye’s black Morris Minor came down the road. She stopped. Why were they coming home at midday? Then she remembered. It was Friday; they came home early on Fridays. Kabuye lived two villages away in Kamuli. He, his mixed-blood wife, and their son, Sio, were Zungus—they kept themselves to themselves and spoke English everywhere.
Kirabo stepped off the road and stood on the ramp. She prepared her rudest face. Sio, Kabuye’s son, was the recipient. The car came down. As expected, Sio sat in the back as if he was the car battery. He too was ready.
Kirabo glared.
Sio frowned.
She scowled.
He glowered.
The car went past. Sio turned and stared through the rear window. The dust raised by the car formed a cloud in the air. Kirabo stepped back on to the road, fanning the dust out of her face. Mortification burned under her skin as she recalled her first encounter with Sio many years ago.
•
She was seven, Sio was ten or eleven. It was at Sunday school. Kirabo’s Busy Bees class was merged with Sio’s Pathfinders because it was raining. The Busy Bee classroom windows had no shutters; the gusty rain blew right in.
Kirabo found herself sitting next to Sio. She had never seen him up close, and now she stared at him. At first he stared back, and Kirabo did not look away. Sio, uncomfortable, pursed his lips and started to frown, but Kirabo kept staring. Then he smiled. Kirabo giggled. Before she could admonish herself for giggling at a boy, he reached into his pocket and gave her a red lollipop. Kirabo grabbed it. A lollipop was a lollipop, even when given to you by a boy. She unwrapped it and stuck it into her mouth. The sweetness was so intense on her rural tongue that her legs swung beneath the bench and her head tossed from side to side.
She glanced at him and asked, “When do your feet ever breathe? You wear shoes and socks all the time.”
Sio did not reply.
“Are you dying? The way your parents never let you out of their sight.”
Sio smiled.
“Do you eat sweets and cakes and ice cream all the time in your house?”
When he did not reply, Kirabo became suspicious. She looked at him from the head downwards, taking in his pale skin, his T-shirt striped with all the colours in the world, his blue shorts, his chubby legs, his pretty socks and shoes. Along the way, she became conscious of her dry, dark, scrawny self. He thinks he is better than us, she thought. There was a time when her grandfather was the richest and her family the most educated in the three villages—Nattetta, Bugiri, and Kamuli. Kisoga, Giibwa’s village, did not count. Only labourers lived there. There was a priest in the family—Faaza Dewo, Miiro’s oldest brother. There was a doctor in the family—Levi, Miiro’s youngest brother, though he preferred to be called Dokita. Miiro had a diploma in agriculture from Bukalasa. All his children were educated. But then Kabuye arrived from Bungeleza with all his cars, haughty mixed-blood wife and their spoilt son, and Kirabo’s family started to fade.
“You are so delicate I would beat you at football.”
Sio smiled.
“I would wrestle you to the ground, sit on your stomach, cross my legs, and you would scream walalala.”
Sio gave her another lollipop, a yellow one this time.
It tasted like pineapple. Kirabo had two lollipops in her mouth; talking was difficult. She caught her breath and took them out of her mouth. She looked at them; they were still big. Before sticking them back in she said, “My father speaks English properly like pshaypshay, pshay.” She mimicked her idea of English.
Sio said nothing.
Kirabo licked the sweets from yellow to red, concentrating on the flavours. “Unlike your father, mine lives in the city. He drives a car bigger than your father’s Mercedes. He works for the Coffee Marketing Board, but I don’t show off.”
Sio burst out laughing. Then he choked and coughed. The Sunday-school teacher came and tapped him on the back until he stopped.
“I am sorry,” Sio said in English.
“Ha,” Kirabo could not believe it. Sio spoke real Zungu English. Then it dawned on her. He did not know any Luganda. All along he had not understood a word she had said. No doubt he looked down on her because he was born in Bungeleza and his father was a surgeon and his mixed-blood mother was a nurse and they had cars and a multi-storeyed house and Sio studied in the city in a posh school and he was driven everywhere as if he had no legs and they spoke woopshywoop English. She scowled at him for the rest of the class while she ate his sweets.
At the end of the class, Sio gave her three more sweets. If it was not for the fact that she rarely saw sweets, Kirabo would have declined them, but she said, “Thank you very much,” to let Sio know she spoke English when necessary.
Sio’s smile broadened and he ran to his mother, who had come to collect him. After the service, Kabuye’s family never lingered. They snapped elastic smiles—which residents called lying smiles under their breath—and walked on to their car. But Sio came back running, with a bag. He put it down and pulled out a contraption that looked like a cross between a camera and binoculars. It had the word VIEW-MASTER between the eyepieces. All this time he spoke, but his words sounded like schpshpsh. He held the contraption against Kirabo’s eyes. She looked in and gasped. Inside, it was like a motionless film. It was so lifelike Kirabo did not realise she had reached to touch it until she felt Sio bring her hands down.
“It is London.”
She understood that.
He lifted Kirabo’s hands and showed her how to hold the contraption. He put her forefinger on a lever and pulled it down, his finger on hers. A new picture came. Kirabo made noises. She let the lever go and it snapped loudly. She jumped. They laughed. Kira
bo looked in again. London was still there. As she pulled the lever again, Sio said, “Tower Bridge … Buckingham Palace … Westminster Abbey … Change of Guards … Crown Jewels …” Even though Kirabo did not catch a word he said, it did not matter; the world was crisp.
She was so lost in London, she did not hear Sio’s mother calling. She dialled, a new picture emerged, and she ahhed. She dialled, dialled, while Sio gave her a commentary. When the picture she had first seen returned, Sio grabbed his contraption, removed a cardboard disc, put it in a paper wallet with so many other discs, put the contraption in its leather skin, waved, and dashed to his mother, leaving Kirabo in mouth-open wonderment.
When she recovered, she ran to Giibwa’s to tell her about that Sio, Kabuye’s son, his sweets, the sinema in his camera, and how he did not speak an ounce of Luganda.
“Not at all?”
“Not one tiny bit like this”—Kirabo indicated a segment of her tiny finger and the girls felt so superior. “Oh, by the way, he is so left-handed he chews with the left side of his mouth.”
“You lie. But there are no blessings on the left hand.”
“Does he need blessings? His parents are wheezing with wealth.”
Soon after that, Sio joined his parents in church for the adult service and Kirabo never saw the contraption again. He went to boarding school and grew tall and his Zungu airs grew higher. In the holidays, when he came to church his eyes looked above people’s heads. He scowled all the time and Kirabo glared at him.
•
Kabuye’s car had disappeared in the valley below when Kirabo realised she was inflated with passion fruit inside her dress. Ha! She stopped. Sio had seen her looking like that? She looked down at herself in dismay. Now that boy was going to imagine only his family was civilised.
7
Despite Nsuuta’s instructions, by midday the following day Kirabo was running across Nsuuta’s courtyard. Her excuse? Grandmother might return from Timiina sooner. Then I will not know the story. Then I will have to get rid of our original state. The truth was that she had thought about nothing but her mother. By morning she had convinced herself that her mother had made contact with Nsuuta in the night.
Nsuuta was not sitting in her usual place. Kirabo walked up to the door without Nsuuta’s usual greeting, “On whom do I see?” She peered inside. Nsuuta was nowhere. Then she heard the radio in the kitchen. She turned and walked to the kitchen, which was set a few yards from the house. Like all old people, Nsuuta was listening to the bilango—for the dead and their burials, last funeral rites and where they will be held, those who are in hospital dying, and the mentally ill who have been lost or found.
Kirabo crept to the kitchen to test Nsuuta’s fabled lumanyo, the ability to see behind her blindness. She hoped the radio would mask her footsteps. When she got to the doorstep, Nsuuta was lifting a pan of food from the fire. Kirabo stopped and stood still. Nsuuta placed the pan on the floor, threw off the thick outer layer of banana leaves, and steam blew everywhere. Then she cooled her hand in cold water and removed a satchel of steamed katunkuma vegetables. She mashed them, then added them to the groundnut stew, sprinkled in salt, and stirred. Kirabo remained still. Nsuuta placed the kneaded mound of matooke in a basket and on top she added pieces of sweet potato and cassava. Then she looked up and said, “Kirabo, take the radio to the house first, then come back for the food basket.”
Kirabo’s knees went soft; she almost suffocated on her mortification. She knelt down and greeted Nsuuta. The look on Nsuuta’s face said Don’t you ever try that again.
Nsuuta’s radio was exactly like Grandmother’s Sanyo. Apart from the handle and a gap where she turned the knobs on and off, it was wrapped in a kitambaala, a home-made tablecloth with crocheted floral patterns, to keep it looking new. Kirabo put the radio on the coffee table in the diiro and returned to carry the basket of food while Nsuuta took the stew to the house. Because of her rudeness, it became difficult to ask about her mother immediately.
“Get the plates from the cupboard.” Nsuuta pointed to a high cupboard in the back room. “Today, I am not eating on my own. Even a witch gets tired of humming to herself. Then I will tell you some of the story.”
Kirabo panicked. It was rude to say no to food, but eating in Nsuuta’s house was to take familiarity with a witch too far. How would she explain missing lunch at home, anyway?
Nsuuta answered Kirabo’s thoughts. “I have been thinking. Now that you come every day, we will eat early, just a little; I will tell you bits of the story; and you will run home for lunch at two o’clock. How do you see that?”
“That is okay, but last night I had a feeling my mother made contact.”
“You did? That is because I saw her again, and this time she revealed more of herself. You have her eyes.”
“I do?”
“You took Tom’s colour, facial structure, and height, but you have your mother’s eyes, nose, and lips.”
Kirabo was on her knees, drinking in every word.
“For those who have never seen your mother, you look like Tom, but I tell you, if your mother had not been so light-skinned, you would look like her exactly.”
“She is light-skinned?”
“Very.”
“Yii?” Kirabo sat back wondering how that could be. Everyone said that her dark skin had been soaked in Kanta hair dye for nine months. How could her mother not be dark? “Did she say how soon I can see her?”
“She cannot escape her husband. He is watching her too much. She does not even visit her parents. But I saw her pain.” Nsuuta held her heart. “It is killing her, poor woman. So, whenever your hurt becomes unbearable, remember she hurts more.”
Kirabo absorbed that quietly, because her tears were not listening. Nsuuta must have felt her struggle, for she rubbed Kirabo’s back, round and round, the way Grandmother used to do when she struggled with constipation.
“Tell me, is your grandfather back from the city?”
“Who lied to you? Grandfather has not been to Kampala at all.”
“Not even to Kayunga or Jinja?”
“Not once.”
“So how does he spend his day?”
“As usual. In the morning, he is in his coffee or cotton shambas, afternoon, if he is not at the koparativu stowa or those school board meetings, he goes to Nazigo.”
After eating, Nsuuta put away the food wraps while Kirabo washed the plates behind the kitchen. Then Kirabo sat down and waited.
“Where did we stop yesterday?” Nsuuta asked.
“When women were prohibited from grabbing land and animals.”
“Oh yes, that was because the ancients had told another story—that women were not of land.”
“Women not of land, how?”
“Ancients saw the universe as divided into four realms. Bring me the pencil on top of the bookshelf”—Nsuuta pointed above Kirabo’s head towards the bookshelf—“and the blue exercise book. I will show you.”
She opened the exercise book to a fresh page, placed it on the floor, and drew a cross compass. “The first realm was heaven.” She wrote HEAVEN where North would be. “Then UNDERWORLD.” She placed it on the South point. “Then SEA.” She placed it on the West point. “And finally, LAND.” She placed it on the East point. “That is the ancient compass.”
Kirabo stared at the compass. It made better sense than the one pinned on the wall of her classroom. She was tempted to say You are not really blind, Nsuuta, but she swallowed it.
“Heaven was the world of the gods, yes?”
“Yes.”
“The underworld is where the dead begin a new life—yes?”
“Yes.”
“If land belonged to man, what is left?”
“The sea.”
“Ah haa. The sea, the ancients claimed, was woman’s realm.”
“Whaat? Women belonged in water?”
“And if they did, they could not share in land wealth, could they? ‘If you want property,’ they told women ancien
ts, ‘go back to your sea and grab to your heart’s content.’”
“Yii yii, even when they saw baby girls born the same as boys?”
“They claimed that the very first woman rose out of the sea while the first man emerged from earth.”
“But that is not true. Nnambi was Gulu’s daughter. She came from heaven.”
“Gulu was her father, but who was her mother?”
“She did not have a mother, only a father and brothers.”
“See? They had found a hole in their first story of Kintu ne Nnambi and now filled it. Nnambi got a mother. A woman who, apparently, rose from the sea. Her name was Nnamazzi. In fact, Nnamazzi was said to have brought all water bodies on land.”
“I have never heard of her.”
“Because this story was buried.” When Kirabo did not respond, Nsuuta carried on. “Apparently, Nnamazzi was so magnificent that when Gulu saw her he was mesmerised. She gave him a lot of sons, including Walumbe, the bringer of death, and Kayikuuzi, the burrower, but only one daughter, Nnambi. Then one day, after years and years of being together, Nnamazzi, without provocation, without explanation, got up and went back to the sea. She never came back. Gulu was so heartbroken, he never remarried. He brought up his children on his own. So, if the first woman came from the sea and returned to it, women belonged there.”
“I like Nnamazzi. I like that I came out of her.”
“Focus, Kirabo; she is a story. A story which aggravated our situation. They used her to link our original state to the sea. You do not realise, but ancients had such an irrational fear of the nature of women that they would try anything to keep them under control. They supported this story by pointing to the sea. Apparently, both women and the sea were baffling, changeful: today they are this, tomorrow they are that.”
“How was the sea changeful?”
“Water has no shape, it can be this, it can be that, depending on where it flows. The sea is inconstant, it cannot be tamed, it does not yield to human cultivation, it cannot be owned; you cannot draw borders on the ocean. To the ancients, women belonged with the sea like in marriage.”
A Girl is a Body of Water Page 5
