“Are you catching the earliest bus back home?” the woman asked. Her tone, however, said You are catching the earliest bus home.
“Yes.”
“I will wake you up.”
•
When Sio’s aunt roused Kirabo the following morning, breakfast was ready. They ate together, smiling and friendly again, as if she had not suspected them of lust. Kirabo gave Sio her home phone number and the one of her school’s public phone. The woman and Sio waited with her at the roadside until she caught the Guy bus at seven in the morning.
6
There is nothing like love lost and found. It is unreasonable; it is reckless; it is hungry.
Kirabo’s visit to Sio’s was a lit match thrown on thatch. The fire caught fast; it burned with more intensity than before. All this time, Kirabo’s feelings for Sio had been buried, the way Grandmother buried embers so deep in the hearth overnight you thought the fire was dead. But poke deep into the ash the following morning and the embers glowed with life once more. Cradle those embers in a sheaf of hay, blow on it, and before you know it the blaze is out of control.
Sio was new. He was so much more than Kabuye’s son. Kirabo loved him the way she could not love her mother. He belonged to her the way Tom no longer did. Sio too must have found in Kirabo a distraction from his father’s abduction, from the dark emptiness of his home. The way he came to see her during those Christmas holidays when it was dangerous to travel, the way he wore khaki shorts—so awkward on his hairy legs—and a school shirt with a badge; the way Kirabo walked long distances to Jinja Road to meet him; the way she risked Aunt Abi catching her at it, meant theirs was not a matter of hearts, it was blood. The Ganda had it right. Love is blood choosing blood. Nothing to do with the heart. The heart speaks, you can reason with it. But blood? Blood is inexorable. Once it has decided, it has decided.
Because now Kirabo had a language, she was bold. Because her tongue was untied, she revealed herself. Besides, what was unsaid was in her eyes. She was much more than Miiro’s tomboy granddaughter. She had ideas, attitudes, opinions, and a world view. Sio was so natural with her she found herself opening every part of herself to him. There was so much to discover and explore about each other. Even the limitations of Nattetta became nostalgic. Kirabo started making fun of her pain: “I am the sad product of games children should not play.” When Sio sighed, “My parents were plain lazy; they could have given me a sibling or two,” Kirabo was sceptical: “I have siblings on both sides, Mum’s and Dad’s, but they belong more to my parents than I do.”
Then the surprise. Like the fact that the chicken pens Kirabo had seen behind Sio’s house were not his parents’ but his own. “I am going to start a farm.” Which teenage boy says that? “I will do agriculture at university.” Only students who had failed to get the grades for medicine did agriculture. “My father has a lot of land, I might as well farm it.” While every boy and girl in Nattetta with any respectable ambition was escaping to the city, Sio asked, “Have you ever thought of becoming a vet?”
“Me?” Kirabo was flabbergasted.
If Sio was not already flowing in her blood, this was the moment she would have stepped back and said What am I doing with this boy? But she found herself thinking that raking cow dung, mucking out chicken pens, and spending the day sweating in the shambas together in Nattetta would not be such a bad future for her. That gulf—London-born and gasping rich—which had lain between them as children had closed. They studied in “First World” schools, spoke the same boarding school language, listened to the same music, danced the same, watched the same UTV programmes.
Sio lent Kirabo her first Bob Marley cassette and got her hooked on “Stir It Up.” He said the intro was foreplay just. While Sio swore that Grace Jones was the epitome of black beauty, Kirabo declared she was ready to marry Bob Marley any time.
Sio came twice, sometimes three times a week to see her. Mulago Hospital had given him his father’s salary, told him to keep picking it up until Dr. Kabuye was certified dead. Then it would be replaced by his father’s pensions. It was for his school fees, but he used some of it to travel to see her. They met outside Christ the King church and strolled up to the International Hotel and lay in the grounds of Jubilee Park. Mostly, when one of them had money, they went to the Neeta Cinema and watched old Bollywood films. Not that they saw the films at all. While the Indians sang and danced their love, Kirabo and Sio sat at the back of the empty auditorium, their hands exploring parts of each other they would not dare touch in daylight. It was there that Kirabo discovered what she was capable of.
•
At the end of January 1979, on Sio’s last visit before the new term began, a sense of uncertainty hung over them. They lay on their stomachs under a tree in the city square, contemplating not seeing each other for so long. Sio’s mother was fretting. She had told him real war was coming. Apparently, the multitudes of Ugandans who had fled into exile over the years had regrouped in Tanzania and were coming home. She wanted Sio to join her in Dar, but crossing into Kenya through Malaba was too dangerous. Amin’s spies could be watching him. On that visit there was a lot of silence and sighing as they contemplated being torn from each other again. Yes, people wanted to get rid of Amin because “the country was not functioning,” as the grown-ups put it, but to Kirabo things were no longer clear-cut. She had just found Sio again, and now the stupid war was coming. She was staring at the impossibility of life without him when Sio said, “I have never seen a woman’s wokoto.”
Kirabo was shocked. “Wokoto? Is that what you boys call it? And what do you call yours?”
“Ssebukuule.”
“Hail ssebukuule. I bow down in awe. Meanwhile, wokoto says ugly.”
“I am sorry.”
“I take it you have never seen Penthouse.”
“What?”
“The blue magazine. Girls bring them to school. Those women put everything, and I mean everything, out there in the sun—like a goat’s tail.”
Sio sat up. “I will show you mine too.”
“Oh, so you want to see mine?”
Sio dropped his head.
“Why didn’t you say so? We shall go to a toilet and I will show you my flower.”
Sio looked at her sharply.
“That is what we call it—the flower.”
He grinned.
“Don’t worry. We have a saying at St. Theresa’s …”
“That?”
“… sharing out what does not deplete makes you lavish.”
Sio looked down, embarrassment burning his face.
“I will lavish you. After all, all you want is to see.”
“Yes.”
“Name the day, the time, the place, and I will unfold my flower for you.”
Sio picked up a stick and lashed the ground. Then he looked up. “But not in a toilet. We cannot go to the same toilet. We need a room.”
“You don’t want to see, you want to do.”
“No, God no, Kirabo. I would not. Trust in God.” Being so light-skinned, his skin was transparent. His embarrassment was painfully visible. “You could get pregnant.” He paused. “Okay, perhaps I will touch a little.”
“We have been touching.”
He poked the ground with the stick. “It is not the same.”
“Okay, Sio. I will show you in a room. In fact, on a bed, lying on my back.”
He whacked the ground.
“What now?” Kirabo asked. “I have agreed to show you my flower.”
He looked at her, unable to say his hurt, but the silence was brutally honest.
“Relax, Sio,” Kirabo responded. “I have not had sex with anyone—yet. I have not had a boyfriend since, I am not in the habit of showing boys my flower, and no other boy has touched me there—yet.”
“I did not say you did those things.”
“You did not have to. It was in your eyes. Tsk”—Kirabo sucked her teeth—“you boys are confused. You ask a girl for sex but expect her to pe
rform shock: Do you call me a slut? Me, I have no time for that. Now, do you still want to see my flower or are you frightened it might swallow you?”
“Tsk.” Sio picked up the stick, whacked the ground decisively, and turned to her. “Stop talking to me like that.” Then he relented. “But you must accept, you have changed. That school has changed you. You are so … I don’t know.”
“I am so what?”
But he had gone back to poking the ground, his head down. Kirabo had to bend down low to look up in his face. “I am not shy any more: that is the problem.”
Sio threw the stick in a huff. “That is it. I’m four years older than you. You need to start trusting me. You think I don’t know what I’m doing? That grandmother of yours would castrate me if I made you pregnant.”
“Grandmother?” Kirabo went along with his change of subject.
“Every time she sees me, she glares.”
“Like how?”
“Like Touch her and I will cut off your aubergines. Even after you left.”
Kirabo fell back and laughed. “So she knew?”
“Of course she knew.”
“But she never said a word. No one did, not even Widow Diba.”
“Maybe they trusted me?”
“No, but I trust you.” She wove her hand into his. “I do.” She dropped her head on to his shoulder. “You know how those old women say all men are after one thing, that men will sleep with anything? You are not like that. Some men are, I am not going to lie, but not everyone. However, to take off my knickers, lie back on a bed, and peel my legs apart so you can peek is foolhardy. We both—not just you, but me as well—could do something we might regret.”
Sio gripped her in such a strangling hug she had to push him off to breathe.
“Sometimes, Kirabo, you are so mature I don’t even know. Women all over the world believe all men are pigs. In the end we gave up denying it.” Then he looked at her. “I promise, nothing will happen.”
The following Monday, they went back to school. Kirabo did not even get the chance to see Giibwa. Sio kept forgetting to go to Giibwa’s parents to ask where she lived in the city. In the end, he grew a little irritated. He said he did not risk coming to the city only to waste the few moments they had together looking for Giibwa. Kirabo thought that if Sio could get the address, she would look for her on the days he did not come, but Sio said it would be best for them to go together.
•
When rumours about the war coming from Tanzania started to arrive at St. Theresa’s, they sounded so mythical that they were dismissed out of hand. They were about the Saba-saba bomb which the Tanzanians had dropped in Masaka Town. Apparently, the town had been flattened. When the bomb was dropped it caused such devastation that a woman picked up a nearby puppy instead of her child, threw it on her back, and ran. But when the girls from Masaka were told they could not travel home for holidays, the war became real.
Then war crept towards St. Theresa’s and paralysed the school. The postman stopped coming, so Kirabo no longer had letters from Sio to look forward to. Then the phone in the students’ booth went down, and all communication between Kirabo and Sio ended. Not long after that, the electricity was cut off and there were no preps at night. To save fuel, the school generator was used only to pump water from the well. Girls could not go down to the river to fetch water because army men were rumoured to lurk in the forest below the school.
Aate started to cry. “I hope Dad”—he was no longer “that man”—“has left the country. He has tribal marks. People think all northerners are bad people.”
Mimi and other girls from abroad had stopped coming soon after Amin invaded Kagera. Then things got so bad that teachers who did not live in the staff quarters stopped coming. Nuns in retirement came out and started to teach. An English teacher turned up for chemistry. The threat of rape hung over the local village, and St. Theresa’s started to allow women and children to sleep in the classrooms at night. But then some men in Zigoti Town were killed and houses became death traps at night. For the first time, St. Theresa’s allowed men beyond the administration block. The main hall and the chapel were made available to all villagers at night. The button for the hooter was changed to a switch and Sister Ambrose announced, “If anyone sees an army man lurking about, run and switch on the hooter. You hear the non-stop hooter, run to assembly.” No parents had come to fetch their girls because nowhere was safer for them than boarding schools. Even Amin’s men would never attack a school.
The last time Kirabo was at home, before Christmas, she had slept on the roof with Aunt Abi and her next-door neighbours, because across the road the family who lived in the house with a green roof had been massacred.
It was the only bungalow on Rashid Khamis Road, the only house with an iron roof painted green. The front of the house was a large shop with living quarters at the back. That night, the shooting started early. Unlike the usual gunshots, known as popcorn, these bullets sounded like they were inside the house. Aunt Abi had pushed Kirabo on to the floor and they crawled out of the house. In the back yard, they climbed on to the roof of the kitchen and hid behind the water tank. They only went back inside at six in the morning.
At around seven, they heard noises below. Kirabo opened the front door and looked over the balcony. Across the road, a crowd surrounded the bungalow with a green roof. Kirabo ran out of the house to check it out. The first thing she saw was the child, no older than two, lying on her back on the steps with a bullet hole above her left ear. She clutched a half-eaten piece of sweet potato in her hand, her face turned away towards the wall as if she had fallen asleep while eating. The entry point of the bullet was so small it looked harmless. Kirabo stepped inside. On the left, a door opened into the living room. On the floor, corpses surrounded a mound of matooke. Bean stew had been served on a plate in front of each corpse. The corpses had fallen either forward or backward as if in morbid worship of the matooke. Someone in the crowd murmured that one of them was a visitor. She had missed the last Ganda bus home and had come to spend the night. “It is the visitor who brought death with her.” But someone else, who knew the history of the bungalow, said, “Wapi? This house cuts down tenants like you cut down reeds. This is not the first family to die in this house.”
Apparently, when its Asian owners were expelled from the country, the husband told his wife and children to get in the car, that they were driving to Nairobi. They took nothing with them, not even money. The new owners found it all in the till. When the Asian family got to the Owen Falls dam, the father drove the car over the bridge. Ever since then, no one had found peace in that bungalow. For the first time, Kirabo wondered about the expelled Asians who had owned Aunt Abi’s flat, whether their curse would only affect the landlord, or if it would fall on everyone who benefited from their pain.
•
When Zigoti villagers could no longer go back to their homes even during daytime, lunch was eliminated. Breakfast was at midday. Supper was at five. Luckily, maize flour larvae were white. Not so visible in posho, but porridge was so thin larvae floated on top. Bean stew was half weevils, half grains. Grown weevils floated on the gravy with their wings open, accompanied by their black-headed larvae. You did not eat with eyes open.
Then relief arrived in long articulated lorries with the Red Cross and Red Crescent symbols. The lorries were escorted by Amin’s army. Though girls were told to stay in their dorms as the lorries were unloaded, the sight of life from outside the school brought some excitement into the school. Now even teachers came to the school kitchen for rations. First, Yankee sardines were served with a curious kind of rice. The grains were short, fat, and yellow, flavourless and tasteless. However, mix it with the sardines and wow—God bless America. Sardines were too good to last long, especially as there were villagers to feed as well. The nuns unveiled corned beef. The first time each girl got a tin to herself, it was a marvel. Those tins, with an attached key and wrapped in an American flag. But the salt was so much it bruis
ed your tongue. Even on its own, corned beef kept hunger away. When beef ran out, tinned chicken was distributed. It came in big, tall, round tins, again wrapped in the Stars and Stripes. One tin between four girls. Spring chicken, the girls called it. Bones as soft as the flesh. The gravy tasted metallic, but the flesh tasted fine and the levels of salt were sane. Two weeks after the tinned chicken ran out, tinned pork was rolled out and the Muslims cursed.
As soon as Zigoti Town was captured, the wakomboozi came to St. Theresa’s. The hooter went off. Even the villagers ran to assembly. The school was surrounded by soldiers. When the girls realised they were the liberators, there was screaming, jumping up and down, “We have won the war,” as if they too had fought. “The reign of terror is over,” they shouted, even though Kampala had not fallen.
The commander assured the school that they were a disciplined army: “We are nothing like Amin’s thugs.” The school applauded every word. Who knew army men could be educated? “While we push on to the capital,” the commander continued, “we shall leave soldiers behind to protect you.” He promised that his officers were aware that if any of them was found “talking, and I mean just talking, to a girl, we shall deal with them the military way.”
Sister Ambrose was not happy. She did not hide it in assembly. Liberators or not, they were men. She insisted that the army protect the school off the premises. The soldiers said the country was still at war. The school grounds were so extensive they had to patrol them, even though all through the war Amin’s thugs had not disrupted the school. In the end, the army pitched their tents on the field below the staff quarters where athletics took place. The grounds were declared out of bounds for students.
A Girl is a Body of Water Page 20
