Kirabo realised that Tom was calling for a truce, and she was disappointed. Tom should have held out; truth was on his side. Now Nnambi was going to make her life unbearable.
Ten minutes later, Kirabo’s door opened and Nnaki’s head popped in with feverish excitement. “It is hotting up in the master bedroom.” And her head popped out again. Kirabo sat up, readying herself. She knew she would end up at the centre of it. She did not wait long.
“Kirabo?” Tom called.
“Yes, Dadi?”
“Hurry up here.”
She rapped, then opened their door and leaned in.
“Take a wash and get dressed: we are going out.”
She looked from Husband to Wife, thinking Why go out with me? Wife lay on the bed facing the wall. Husband shone his shoes. The tension was solid. Wife had rejected Husband’s compromise, Kirabo realised. She stayed standing at the door until Tom asked, “Did you not hear me? Wear something formal.”
She closed the door, took a bath, and pulled on a frock. She rubbed a little talcum powder on her face as she had seen Nnambi do. It gave the skin a smooth, even texture and got rid of the greasy shine of petroleum jelly. Then she fashioned her hair, combing some of it into her forehead to get a mini Afro. She glossed her lips with Vaseline and looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. She wished Sio was at the end of the journey. As she got into the car, Kirabo glanced back. Nnambi was peering through a window. Kirabo smiled—Your cheap tricks will not work—and got into the car.
It was a Coffee Marketing Board staff party at the International Hotel. Tom kept apologising for his wife’s absence. “Nnambi is unwell, but she asked to bring our daughter in her stead.” Kirabo endured curious glances, especially from the women, until Tom explained, “She is an early one,” with a wink. Male colleagues smiled knowingly, as if Tom had been the lovable rogue in school. As for the women, they were dumb. They kept saying, “She looks a bit like Nnambi.” Kirabo barely held back a sneer.
She had never seen such a beautiful display of food. Some of it was nonsensical. Who eats fried pieces of pineapple with avocado on a toothpick? Someone malicious had mixed raw onions in with what looked like raw eggs. Ntaate once said that expensive hotels in Kampala caught frogs and snails and snakes and put them on the menu. Everyone had shut him up because Ntaate could say some freaky stuff. Seeing dead milk, bongo, labelled yoghurt, and fried pineapple, Kirabo wondered whether Ntaate knew what he was talking about. She kept close to Tom and only served what he ate.
When dancing started, Kirabo took a walk. Jubilee Park rolled down the hill around her. It was dotted with flower beds, fountains, statues, and monuments. The park was littered with people, especially young couples, lying on the ground or sitting and reading, or strolling. She lingered around the swimming pool to watch the swimmers, then walked to the bottom of the park to see the independence monument. On the way, first, was a mouldy bust labelled KING GEORGE VI, then a metallic statue of a drummer, a rattle man, and a woman dancing like a whirlwind. She walked through the ivy-clad archway to where the independence monument stood. It was lofty but lifeless. The old woman had fallen asleep behind her child, and the child’s delight at being free was frozen. Kirabo walked down the steps and looked out at the Bank of Uganda, the roundabout, then the Standard Chartered Bank. Rich army men and wealthy mafuta mingi sat outside the Speke Hotel, smoking. When a chill came, she walked back to the party. She piled a plate with cakes and biscuits, grabbed a bottle of Mirinda, and went to the lounge to watch TV. From time to time, she went to the hall to check on Tom.
•
Nnambi was not waiting in the sitting room this time. Kirabo hurried to her bedroom. She switched on the light and there, lying on her bed, was Nnambi. Her father’s wife sat up as if disturbed by the light.
“I’m sorry I borrowed your bed. I have a headache; could you sleep with your father tonight? I would like to sleep on my own.”
Kirabo stared, unconvinced.
“I hope you don’t mind.” Nnambi winced.
Kirabo grabbed her nightdress and went to the toilet to change. Then she walked to the main bedroom and knocked on the door. No answer. She pushed the door open. The light was turned off but the beam from the corridor flooded the bed. Tom was sprawled on his back, already snoring. Though his lower half was obscured by a thin blanket, Kirabo could see that his chest was covered in thick fur. She stood and stared, unsure. Grandfather did not look like that. She hesitated, hoping that the beam would wake him up. It did not. She went to the bed and nudged him to move over. “Dadi, Dadi?”
He opened his eyes.
“Could you move over, please?”
He lifted his head.
“I am sleeping here tonight.” Kirabo started to slip under the covers.
Tom sat up and then jumped out of the bed, taking a sheet and the blanket with him. The blanket fell. He clutched the sheet around himself.
“Dad, it is me, Kirabo.”
“Why?” Tom gasped. “Do you not have your own bed?”
“Mum is sleeping in my room. She told me to sleep with you.”
As soon as the words were out, she realised Nnambi’s request “… sleep with your father …” was sexual. To make matters worse, she became aware that Tom was naked underneath the sheet.
“Step outside so I can get dressed,” her father said.
Kirabo ran out. She went to the sitting room feeling sick. She gave in to tears. The idea that she had almost got into bed with her naked father brought on a new wave of nausea. She wept for everything that had happened to her since her arrival in Kampala. She was returning to Nattetta first thing in the morning. She would tell everyone what a witch Tom had married. She was not living this disgusting life a minute longer.
A door banged. “Let go of me,” Nnambi screamed. Kirabo ran to see what was happening. Tom dragged her out of Kirabo’s bedroom and dumped her in the corridor.
“She might as well share your bed. After all, she is your wife now.”
“I begged you to come.”
Nnaki and Mwagale stood at their door, staring.
“Tomorrow, pack your bags and go back to your parents. You hear me?” Tom panted. “I should not find you in my house when I come home. Take whatever property you wish, but don’t touch my children. You two”—he pointed at Nnaki and Mwagale—“back to bed.” He turned to Kirabo. “Come on, let’s go to bed.” He led her back to his bedroom and helped her into bed. He covered her and rushed out. “You heard me, Nnambi? Pack your bags tonight-tonight.” He clapped his hands rapidly to denote the urgency. “Now-now. Back to where you came from first thing in the morning. Then we shall see who is who in this house.” He returned to the bedroom, breathing hard. Then he stormed out again. “And do not touch my children. You go back to your home exactly as you came.”
Nnambi was silent. The minute Tom threw her out of their marriage her tongue froze into ice.
Tom appeared at the door and got into bed fully clothed.
“Go to sleep, Kirabo.”
Kirabo lay at the edge, even though it was a double bed. But she was soon overcome by exhaustion, and woke up to the sound of Tom’s alarm. He got up and told her to go back to sleep. Kirabo covered her head, but the events of the previous night came back with such force she moved to the edge of the bed again. Tom got dressed in the bathroom. When he came back to the bedroom, he guzzled tea like water.
“Can I go back home?”
“This is your home, Kirabo.” He wrapped a tie around the raised collar of his shirt.
The sound of the chain on the gate clinked. A car drove in. Tom grabbed his coat and said, “Come, Kirabo.” She jumped out of bed and followed him back to her bedroom. Her bed was made. The witch had not slept in it after all. “Stay in here. Don’t go out until Nnambi has left.” As he hurried out, he called, “Nnambi, I don’t want to come home and find you here.” The house went silent again. Kirabo closed her eyes. Where is my mother?
UTOPIA
1<
br />
April 1977–April 1981
Kirabo put the last piece of her luggage into the car boot and closed it. She wore the uniform of her new school—a brown wrapper, beige short-sleeved shirt tucked in, brown back-to-school shoes from Bata, and grey scholar’s socks with three yellow bands. The uniform felt stiff with newness. The shirt was a tent, the skirt too long, her head newly shaven.
Two days earlier, Aunt Abi had sat her down on the floor, held Kirabo’s shoulders between her knees, and, with a razor mounted on a soft comb, shaved her hair according to the new school’s regulations. At first, Kirabo felt the hair fall over her shoulders soft and light, but as Aunt Abi got to the back and her head was bent low, she saw her hopes of growing a decent Afro drop around her like black soapsuds. She had picked up the thicker tufts and rolled them into a tight ball. For a while, she hung on to that ball until it became unhygienic to mourn hair like that. Touching her head now, she felt a growth of prickly stubble.
Before she got in the car, Kirabo looked back at her new home. Who would have known when she was showing off about leaving Nattetta that the city would trounce all the truths she knew? She looked at the mosque that had once been the Gurdwara Temple, the semi-detached houses formerly belonging to the expelled Asians, and realised Kampala was such that she could be dead, carried out of that house like a log, and this place would look exactly the same: indifferent. In Nattetta, if she was going away to boarding school for the first time, the whole village would have wished her well, old people saying Let your ancestors’ blessings walk with you, grown-ups sneaking pocket money into her hands, relatives sitting her down to talk about “hard work” and “good behaviour” and warning her to stay away from men. Who knew she would miss Nattetta’s aggressive Your-business-is-our-business attitude?
She opened the back door, stepped into the car, and slammed the door behind her. Tom started to mess with the gears. “We go?”
She nodded.
“Got everything?”
“Hmm.”
Aunt Abi, in the passenger seat, turned and scrutinised Kirabo’s face with a happy smile. She touched a finger on her tongue and scrubbed something crusty out of Kirabo’s eye. “There,” she sighed. “Big girl going to secondary school.” The car reversed into the road. Then Aunt Abi’s house started to recede. When it disappeared, Kirabo leaned back in her seat and contemplated the fluidity of her life, the constant departures and arrivals, the packing and unpacking. It was beginning to make her feel rootless. It is because you don’t have a mother … She stifled the thought and stared out of the window.
•
Nnambi won. She did not go back to her parents as Tom had ordered her; instead it was Kirabo who left. At around two that day, Grandmother came with Aunt Abi to collect her. When Nnambi saw Grandmother arrive, she jumped out of the chair to humble herself as if she were human. As she knelt, Grandmother cut her off. “I have come for my grandchild.” Imagine your husband’s mother talking to you like that. Grandmother did not sit down, she did not even ask about her grandchildren, or say Can I have a glass of water? as you do in a house you are visiting for the first time. Nnambi remained on the floor, kneeling. Grandmother told Kirabo to pack her bags. Then she turned to Nnambi. “I understand you have been told to go back to your parents.”
Nnambi wept into the armrest. “I was about to leave when you arrived.”
“Ha,” Kirabo started to protest, but Grandmother raised a finger.
“I suggest that you stay and bring up our children. I will talk to Tomusange.”
The shock of seeing her grandmother intervene on the side of Nnambi halted Kirabo’s tears. Her injured air vanished. Nnambi was not only walking free after the abomination of her behaviour, she was keeping Tom too. Aunt Abi, who would have made Grandmother see sense, had stayed in the car once she found out that Nnambi was still in the house. Aunt Abi and Nnambi did not occupy the same space. If Nnambi was in a place, Aunt Abi stayed away, and vice versa. Apparently, Nnambi once told Aunt Abi that she clung on to her brother too much. “Get your own man,” she had said.
An urge to push Nnambi over gripped Kirabo, but she held herself back. You had your moment, she told herself. Small, but a moment nonetheless.
“Have you finished packing?” Grandmother’s voice was gravelly.
Kirabo ran to her bedroom. By then, defeat hung everywhere. That house and everything in it had rejected her. So when Nnaki came to help her pack, Kirabo ignored her. After she had packed, she walked out without a word to her.
•
Kirabo’s moment arrived around noon, just before Grandmother arrived. She had been in her bedroom all morning as Tom had instructed, waiting for Nnambi to leave. She had not had breakfast. Desperate with hunger and buoyed by Tom’s decisive eviction of his wife, Kirabo decided it was time to assert herself, Jjajja Nsangi–style, to raise her voice and stretch her legs in her father’s house. She was blood; Nnambi, on the other hand, was a chance meeting on a street. A marriage certificate could be ripped up, but blood was indelible. She went in search of her.
Nnambi was in Tom’s bedroom tidying up; she had absolutely no intention of going back where she came from. “This woman is a lukokobe proper. She has got her talons dug too deep into Tom’s back to retract,” Kirabo muttered under her breath. Because the bedroom was in semi-darkness, Kirabo walked past Nnambi to the window and drew back the curtains. Nnambi spun around.
“Don’t you knock?”
Kirabo turned, raised her eyebrows as if to say Who are you? and went back to opening the shutters. When she finished, she asked, “Why should I?”
Nnambi floundered.
Kirabo walked away from the window, the question ringing in the air.
But Nnambi was a fighter. “Do you call my bedroom a market?”
“No.” Kirabo stopped, crossed her arms, and looked down at Nnambi’s head to emphasise that she was taller. “This is my bedroom now. I slept here last night. I don’t have to knock any more.”
“What do you want?”
“Did I say it is my bedroom or was I munching myself?”
When Nnambi’s eyes flickered uncertainly, Kirabo seized the moment. She sat down on the bed and crossed her legs, knowing very well that to sit on Nnambi’s marital bed as though it was a public bench was the rudest thing she could do to her. She had not planned this. She had come to ask Nnambi when she hoped to leave so she could come out and have something to eat, but this was so much better.
“When you were young”—Kirabo looked up at Nnambi—“did anyone ever tell you the story of Tamusuza, whose wife died and left him with a little girl?”
Nnambi stood like a tree. She stared as if she could not believe the world.
“Oh.” Kirabo clapped to emphasise the oversight, as if it fell to her to rectify it. “See, Tamusuza married another woman to help him bring up the orphaned child, but this woman, the new wife, hated her stepchild because the little girl was so beautiful and everyone loved her, and”—Kirabo leaned in and whispered—“the woman had given birth to an ugly daughter who was also spoilt.”
Nnambi’s eyes dilated.
“Every time people walked by, they asked about the orphan and picked her up and tried to make her smile because she was always sad. Do you know what the stepmother did? She stopped giving the orphan baths and did not feed her properly. She would wash and oil her ugly child and then put both out to play. People came by, but still they pointed at the orphan—That filthy child over there, how pretty she is. The stepmother, maddened, smeared the orphan with chicken poo, can you imagine? Chicken poo. But wa! People came, people saw, people said Is that scrawny child crying over there … is that chicken poo?”
“So what are you saying?”
“Nothing. Just saying.” Kirabo stood up and stepped out of the room.
•
As they drove away from Tom’s home that day, Aunt Abi sighed, “Mother, Nnambi is a demon. My brother is under torture. As soon as he comes home, she descends on him
. I am telling you, the minute Tom put that ring on her finger, ba ppa, Nnambi said I have got you. What could Tom do? He was in chains.” Kirabo sensed an accusation at the edge of Aunt Abi’s voice: that Nnambi was as bad as she was because Grandmother and Grandfather had not intervened. But Grandmother only said, “Hmm,” and looked through the window. “This is exactly what she wanted,” Aunt Abi was saying. “To drive Kirabo out of Tom’s life entirely, so she and her children could occupy it exclusively. She must be celebrating.” Still Grandmother did not volunteer an opinion. When they got to Aunt Abi’s house, Grandmother talked about Nattetta: “Rain is late. All the maize we planted died; termites cut the stalks … groundnuts were eaten by insects before germinating … weaverbirds are back, all my banana leaves, shredded …” and Kirabo felt herself melt into the familiarity of her grandmother’s words.
•
That evening after work, Tom came straight to Aunt Abi’s house. Before Kirabo and Aunt Abi could say to him Welcome back, how was your day? Grandmother pounced on him. “So, you threw out your wife, hmm?” She took everyone by surprise: there had been no indication that she was waiting to chastise Tom. “How many women do you intend to bring into the family, hmm? This one enters, that one exits, this one arrives, that one departs, in-out, in-out.”
“But Mother—”
“You are talking back now, hmm? You have become an important man, a ssenkulu, hmm?”
Tom kept quiet. You could see bewilderment rattling in his head.
“That child”—Grandmother pointed at Kirabo—“is without a mother. Are you going to make those two motherless as well?”
Tom could not take it any longer. “Mother, Nnambi is not a woman: she is a mujinni …”
“Wangi?” Grandmother almost choked. “What did you call her? Let me hear you say it again, Tom.”
Tom shot Aunt Abi a desperate glance, but Abi just stared at the floor. He plopped into a chair and kept quiet, but Grandmother was not yet finished. “Let me hear that you have thrown your wife out of her home like rubbish, when her children are watching, and Tomusange, I promise you will see a side of me I have been hiding. Now”—she stood up—“I am going to find my way back to Nattetta. But do not make me come back here, Tom. And you, Abisaagi?”
A Girl is a Body of Water Page 15
