“Do you feel pain when they come on?”
“A lot.”
“Dysmenorrhea,” the nurse called out to the other, who was jotting things down.
“What is the pain like?”
“Back pain. It radiates. Sometimes the whole pelvic area, including down there, is on fire.”
“No pain in the lower stomach?”
“Cramps.”
“How heavy is the flow?”
“Very heavy. I change like six times a day. But it lasts two days.”
“Dizziness?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, get dressed. As soon as they come back, come and tell us.”
Later, Kirabo found out what dysmenorrhea was, how the nurses were nice to sufferers and would give you bed rest in the San, heavy-duty pads, and painkillers. Being in the San was a treat. You ate food from the convent. There were girls who were admitted to the San every time their periods came on. Like Nnakidde, whose periods made her so dizzy she could not go to class; Imma, who flowed so heavily that if she came to class, it would seep through; or Specioza, who would writhe in pain as if in childbirth. Sometimes, Specioza’s father came and took her home. Sometimes he stayed with her in the San as she cried. In Nattetta, when Kirabo first told Grandmother about the pains, she said, “Oh, that. Lie down if it is too much, but don’t get into the habit. Many women get those pains, but if we all stopped when they came on, the world would grind to a halt.”
When they were done, the other nurse ticked her name on the register and told her to go the next room, where an optician flashed a tiny torch in her eyes and told her to read letters on the wall across the room with one eye closed. Then she was sent to the next room, where a dentist treated her gums and teeth roughly, calling out numbers. After that she was told to go straight to class.
•
When she came out of class at lunchtime, something was in the air. Elders were staring in the direction of the car park. Kirabo went to see. A heap of luggage sat in the car park outside the San. Nunciata, the office messenger—girls called her AOD for Angel of Doom—was adding to the heap. Nunciata was the AOD because when she collected you from class or dormitory, it was expulsion, suspension, or death in the family. As Kirabo arrived in her dorm, anda, a loud elder with a droopy arse, came shouting, “1977’s Bunsens have broken the record—ten pregnancies.”
Kirabo panicked. She knew she could not be pregnant, but an irrational fear gripped her. It was made worse by the elders’ inhumanity—clapping, drumming, and hooting as if it was something to celebrate. Meanwhile, anda spoke into the cable of a kettle like it was a mic. “Once again, the long arm of the patriarchy has reached deep into the nuns’ womb of resistance and made off with ten chicks.” She contorted and twitched. “The nurses are taking them back home as we speak. Let’s observe a moment of silence.” She dropped her head.
“Not to worry,” another girl said. “Ten girls on the waiting list will step into their places, and life, like the Nile, will carry on.”
Kirabo’s fear did not let go until she found out that the pregnant girls had been detained in the San all along. Once you were discovered to be pregnant, you would not be allowed back in the student body, not even to pack your belongings. As if pregnancy was contagious. Apparently, it was because those girls had transformed into women; the school was for girls only.
How do you go back home? How do you face your family? Kirabo imagined confronting the double loss—a childhood lost and a future squandered for early motherhood. You would think St. Theresa’s, with all its Us women in this together stance, would be sympathetic to girls in these circumstances. Especially because throwing girls out of education ensured one thing: their babies would be born into poverty. When the girls were led out of the San to get on the school bus, Kirabo pondered. The boys who had made them pregnant would carry on as before, their lives uninterrupted.
4
There was no time to see the term go by, no time to crave her mother, no moment to miss Sio. St. Theresa’s had no space for baggage carried from home. Besides the busy schedule, Kirabo was mesmerised by the difference between the St. Theresa’s she had imagined and the St. Theresa’s she was experiencing. Out in the world, St. Theresa’s was a successful matriarchy. A paradise where a lucky clever girl was moulded into a whole woman before being thrust back into the patriarchy. The perception was that without the presence of masculinity girls lived in harmony, worked hard, and were thankful for the privilege. The reality was different. Despite the nuns’ best efforts, some girls still went on French leave; there were rumoured abortions found wrapped in plastic bags in the filled-up latrines and a newborn found in the piggery; there was drinking and smoking after lights out and kasaawe couples who claimed to be “trying out” lovemaking before they met men. These things went on beneath the excellent grades and glittering reputation, beyond the nuns’ reach.
Some girls did not make sense at all. Like Aate Baba, who slept in Kirabo’s dorm. Aate was gifted in maths, chemistry, and physics—subjects considered to be masculine. Art subjects were feminine. The last time the school went to SMACK—St. Mary’s College Kisubi, a boys’ school—for a maths competition, Aate had reduced the SMACK team to spectators, which earned her hate mail from SMACK, cartoons depicting her as an intersexual freak. Yet Aate’s ambition was to get married and have children. She had no interest in further studies. Her mother had once been her father’s housemaid. Aate lived in absolute squalor at her mother’s house and in ridiculous opulence at her father’s. She called her dad that man. Apparently, she once asked him whether a housemaid could have a consenting relationship with her cabinet minister master! Yet Aate insisted that as long as men were stronger and faster, equality between the sexes was a delusion. That Aate sneered at mwenkanonkano as women aspiring to behave as badly as men.
But the most peculiar phenomena were the flare-ups of tension in the community now and again. They came like a storm, fast, deadly, and then died, leaving behind devastation. For every flare-up, at the bottom of it was the rivalry of two clubs—the Career Women and the Homemakers. If Homemakers committed suicide by drowning, Career Women would self-immolate, claiming that fire was by far the superior element. Homemakers tended to be very religious; they were the well-behaved girls, girls keen on cultivating a good reputation and a non-threatening femininity. They avoided mwenkanonkano discussions like the plague. During house sports competitions they were the girls who let their houses down because running, jumping, or even throwing the ball might make them muscly. Their club was about cookery, a balanced diet, baking without sugar, knitting, and childcare. Aate Baba was their vice chairperson.
The Career Women’s Club, unlike the Homemakers, was exclusive. You did not saunter in there, faa, and register. Members were headhunted, recruited from clubs like the debating, French, literature, modelling, and drama clubs. They looked for girls who were pretty, articulate, assertive, and confident. The whole Prefects’ Council was part of it. Kana, the tall, deep-voiced mwenkanonkano extremist, was the vice chairperson. Kirabo was keen to join the Career Women, but her spoken English was still Nattetta-esque. You could not say things like biskwit, clothez, or Irie-land and step into the Career Women’s Club. There were rumours that Career Women smoked, drank, and were lesbianing themselves, but Kirabo still wanted to join.
Two weeks before exams began, the atmosphere changed. Girls, now short of pocket money and snacks and besieged by the pressure of exams, had turned meaner. Fights were not uncommon. Sometimes girls were so vicious it was scary. Like that thing between Angelique from Yaa Asantewaa House and Talemwa from Nzinga. Angelique was an S.4 and a Career Woman. At St. Theresa’s, S.4s were allowed a day out once a year to exercise their maturity. On such days, girls did not wear school uniforms. They visited boyfriends if they had one or went out to daytime discos with friends. Only nerds went home. The mad ones came back with lurid stories: We banged it so hard I am sore.
A week after the S.4s’ day out, a rumour st
arted. Angelique had “stolen” Talemwa’s boyfriend. Talemwa, an S.3, was a mild-mannered girl who minded her business. Everyone in the school knew Talemwa because her boyfriend, Ssaka, was very handsome and visited her every Visiting Day. He brought her snacks and they sat on the steps of the Sanatorium, wrapped around each other. Talemwa was an orphan whose father had disappeared the way rich fathers were disappearing in Amin’s regime. She lived with an aunt who did not come on Visiting Days. The whole school was in love with Talemwa and Ssaka.
Angelique, on the other hand, was one of those girls who had it all. Her grades were stellar. She was always the MC at social functions. Her family had a holiday home in France. She was a trendsetter. Always coming back from holiday with new fashions. Angelique was so pretty she could get any guy she wanted; why go after Talemwa’s man?
Overnight, Angelique became a pariah. And in an intense community like St. Theresa’s, being a pariah was every minute of the day. The story spiralled out of control. Angelique was actually a thief, many girls had always suspected it, but she was too clever to be caught. Kleptomania ran in the family. Her father was a highway robber—“Where do you think they get the money to go to France twice a year?” Her mother had lost her job in a bank over missing funds. Her sister in Gayaza High had also been caught with stolen stuff. Girls worked themselves into a rage.
Then a girl lured Angelique to Nzinga House. Perhaps Angelique was not aware of the extent of the hatred in the school. If she had been, why would she have agreed to go to Nzinga, which was Talemwa’s house? It was well timed for Sunday afternoon, when the prefects had gone masturbating—that was what girls called the weekly tea and biscuit meetings between the prefect council and Sister Ambrose.
Once Angelique entered the dorm, ba ppa, the Nzingies locked the door. Heckling started. Kirabo, who had gone to borrow a copy of Introduction to Biology, was caught in the middle of it. When Angelique realised, a look of the condemned came into her eyes. But someone good-natured stopped the baying and suggested that Angelique be given a chance to say something for herself. Was she a man thief? “Yeah, tell us; why do you steal people’s men?” Angelique, like a goat to the slaughter, just stared.
“Slut.” A shoe flew over her head and hit the wall.
Missiles of crinkled paper, balled socks, shoes, slippers, and other objects flew from all directions, never hitting her but coming close. And that was the savagery of it—the suggestion, keeping her in trepidation. Just then a gang of Asantes arrived, made up in bright tribal war paint, armed with sticks, clubs, and tree branches. There were as many as twenty. Ten Asantes jumped into the dorm through the windows, opened the door, and ran across the lawn to open the gate. The rest of the gang broke through the mob, grabbed Angelique, and led her out. Their attitude was If you don’t know how to pleasure your men, step out of the way. When they got outside the dorm, they stood on Nzinga’s quadrangle and told the Nzingies that if they craved a beating, they could come and collect it from Yaa Asantewaa any time. By the time Nzinga House recovered, the Asantes were safely behind the walls of their house reciting their war cry:
Is it true the bravery of Asante is no more?
We, the women, will.
I shall call upon my fellow women.
We will fight.
We will fight till the last of us falls in the battlefields.
For the rest of that day, public opinion wavered. While most girls still despised Angelique, the Asantes had earned respect for their successful raid on Nzinga House. But then Aate declared Angelique a homewrecker, and the Homemakers, together with Nzinga House, started to hunt for Angelique. The Career Women joined the Asantes in protecting Angelique. They had managed to sneak Angelique into the Sanatorium and checked her in with a splitting headache. Kana was contemptuous: “Which home did she wreck? Men are not objects; they cannot be stolen.” There was such anger on both sides that Kirabo wondered where the rage had come from. The Christians took Talemwa’s side and advised her to read the Novena.
By the end of the nine days of Talemwa’s Novena, it had come to light that Talemwa had been dumped because she was faulty down there: “Teaspoon in a mug. Ssaka said it himself …” Apparently, Ssaka had never “tasted” another girl until Angelique. Embarrassment for Talemwa started to seep into the community. Girls avoided looking at her, then avoided her entirely. What is the point of being a woman if you are faulty down there? For some reason, being defective became Talemwa’s fault. The wind turned and clawed at her. Meanwhile, Angelique was back on the social scene as if she had never left. The Career Women treated her like a celebrity.
To compound it all, during the Variety Show at the end of term, a girl sang, begging a certain Jolene not to take her man just because she could. Angelique responded with a spectacular rendition of the Swahili love song “Malaika” as if Ssaka were sitting right there in the main hall. It was heartbreaking because it was the Career Women who had registered both items in the show. In the end, Angelique became this carefree girl who was in charge of her emotions. Talemwa became that tasteless girl in Nzinga.
Kirabo began to see how Nsuuta’s idea of kweluma operated in real life. Girls had reduced themselves to their vaginas, to objects for male consumption. They had turned on one another over a boy who visited the school once a month, a cheater at that. If they could turn on each other in a community designed for their safety and emancipation, what chances did mwenkanonkano have out there in the world? The nuns might have removed any male influence within the school gates, but by the time the girls arrived, the shrinking herb had already been sewn into their skins.
•
The examination season descended and the school hushed. It reminded Kirabo of what St. Theresa’s was all about. No cheer, no gossip, no squabbles, no clubs. Girls budgeted their time stingily—classes, bathrooms, mess, preps, sleep. Had there not been a lights-out hooter, some girls would have studied all night. It lasted the first three weeks of July. For the S.1s and S.2s, there was no break from exam papers because they did all fifteen subjects.
On the last Thursday of term, Kirabo’s class lined up for report-signing. Every pupil had to be present as Sister Ambrose put her signature on their report. The girls had to account for any poor grades or negative comments by teachers on their report form. Disciplinary action was administered where necessary, promises to do better made by earnest students. Kirabo’s bottom was smarting with anticipation when her turn came.
“Miiro?”
“Yes, Madam.”
“I am not Madam. I am Sister. Madam is for women who marry men. I am married to Christ.”
“Yes, Sister.”
“Sit down and tell me how you have found the school.”
“It is fine, Sister.”
“Have you made any friends yet?”
Kirabo nodded.
Sister Ambrose examined the report. “If everything is fine, how do you explain the low mark in music?”
“I don’t understand music at all.” Kirabo could not explain the tadpoles strung on a bar. For the exam, the teacher gave them symbols mounted on a staff and told them to decipher them on to sol-fa. The second part, he gave them sol-fa and told them to draw the tadpoles on a staff. When she looked up, Sister Ambrose had taken off her glasses and was staring as if Kirabo had insulted her.
“You never, ever say that to me again, young lady.” She pointed at Kirabo with her spectacles. “You have just informed me that you have no intention of improving your music.” Kirabo was beginning to protest when the nun waved her quiet. “You realise, I hope, that you did not attain the minimum grade for this school.”
Kirabo nodded.
“Haven’t you asked yourself how you came to be here?”
Kirabo hung her head, thinking of Miiro visiting his brother, Father Dewo, who must have pulled some Catholic strings.
“Well, you are a part of an experiment I am conducting. I suspect that children from rural schools who attain good grades could be better than some of the spectac
ular grades we get from the privileged schools. You are part of the first group. It is up to you to prove me right. So far, I am satisfied, but only satisfied. I want to be vindicated. Work harder at art and music next term. Nothing below 75 percent. Have a nice holiday.”
The moment she drove out of the school gates the following day, Kirabo was plunged back into her old life. Her rootlessness. Her motherlessness. Earlier in the term, because she now knew her mother’s name, she had hoped to use the school to locate her, approaching first the girls with Ffumbe clan names and then the other Ganda girls. But she had soon chickened out. Now, knowing how the school worked when there was any announcement to make, she decided to put up posters like girls did for shows, at the mess, chapel, and main hall entrances the following term.
5
Kirabo first saw Sio again during the Christmas break of 1978. She had finished her second year, and so far her DO YOU KNOW LOVINCA NNAKKU posters had revealed nothing but the incredible cruelty of girls. Some had been scribbled over with taunts: No one wants dark tan babies or Abandonment issues. Others had been torn or pulled down off the wall. But occasionally girls were supportive, asking if Kirabo had found her. Some shared their experiences of unknown fathers or a parent who had died before memories were formed. But for Kirabo, as long as more than two hundred Bunsens plus a hundred S.5s joined the school every year, there was hope. Some girls suggested Kirabo put special announcements on the radio. She decided that, if she finished her O levels before finding her, she would. She did not want to jeopardise her mother’s marriage.
St. Theresa’s was a body of water. You dropped girls in it and they found their depth. Some sank to the bottom like stones, some floated on the top like feathers. In between, the largest group formed the middling layers, like strata.
At the end of the first year, when the mixed list of all S.1s was put up on the noticeboard, a trend became apparent. Girls who had been at the top of the admission list with 280s and 270s were gravitating downwards. Perhaps the pressure was too much. Every girl in St. Theresa’s was clever and competitive, but many of these girls were on their own for the first time: no mum and dad to pay for coaching now. Besides, being on top made you a target for all the girls below you. Perhaps the way you performed in three subjects at primary level was not the way you did in fifteen subjects at secondary level. Perhaps boarding-school life was not for every girl. Unfortunately, the general feeling was that those girls drifting downwards had cheated in primary leaving exams, and every time results were pinned up, a new set of girls joined the disgraced. Kirabo and other girls from “Third World Schools,” as the girls referred to them, had so far proved they were worth investing in. None was in stream E any more, and none was under threat of elimination.
A Girl is a Body of Water Page 18
