A Girl is a Body of Water

by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

  But how were the rituals for you? Why are you not writing to tell me? What is going on? Please write soon. I feel left out. Now let me stop here. I am waiting for your next letter.

  Yours waitingly,

  Nsuuta

  Nattetta Parish

  P.O. Box 004

  Nazigo

  Bugerere

  2nd Febwari 1941

  Dear Nsuuta,

  Forgive me for not writing since last year. You must think I am a bad sister, but I am telling you, too much was going on, I could not steal a moment away to write. However, things have settled down now.

  After the introduction rites, everything ran too fast. Firstly, I stopped teaching. Then my parents sent me to Timiina to be prepared to be a bride, also so people in the villages do not see me for a while. Otherwise, I would not make a surprising bride on the wedding day. In Timiina, they have never heard of Posta.

  That time when my mother pulled me away from you, I had not seen you coming. I was not even aware you had come to church. When she pulled me, I jumped. After that, things went from bad to worse. I think it was because your mother had said those horrible things. Mother presumed you would be worse.

  That woman Nnaaba is a chameleon. She said to me, Beauty does not a marriage make, meaning you. And then she comes to you saying I stole Miiro? I agree we should stop listening to what people say and listen to ourselves only.

  About the introduction rites, yes, Luutu’s family brought a lot of presents. They came in their car like lords. But me, I was not seeing, I was not feeling, I was not even smelling in the moment. I don’t remember how the food tasted, all my senses were dead. I was thinking, this is too much, it is not supposed to happen to you. He is not your man, don’t enjoy it too much.

  Soon after the introduction rites, I went to Timiina, where they fed me, trying to put some flesh on my bones. My aunt said, Men don’t like holding skinny women: it feels like holding a little girl. Women taught me about marriage. They gave me presents for my home—mats, baskets, knives, cloth, pans, plates.

  Ha, my aunt taught me how to kuloola. On the wedding day, I had to kill the glare in my eyes like I had just woken up to look sexy. My aunt said, Alikisa, there is too much glare in your eyes: kill it. Men don’t like it. Apparently, it is like looking in the eyes of a fellow man. So I killed it. At the wedding, she kept narrowing her eyes and I would make bedroom eyes. She said that when Miiro comes to me in the night I should look at him like that. You know me, I have no patience with such pretences, but I said, if I don’t do these things and we lose our Miiro, Nsuuta will not forgive me.

  Can you imagine I had to decide whether to be a weeping bride or not? Women said I was an eager bride because there were no tears in my eyes. Some women were threatening to pinch me, so I cried a bit. Thankfully someone said that only girls who have been bleeding for one or two years cry on their wedding day. I was too old. But then my aunt took me to my bedroom and showed me my bed. They had broken it and pulled the stands out of the floor. She told me they were going to use it for firewood in case I imagined running away from marriage and going back home. Father then told me I now belonged to Miiro and his family, including my dead body when I die. That was when I remembered the real truth about marriage and cried. All the worry about not marrying, then the beautiful rituals can mask the truth and you forget that you are crossing into another clan, into another world, and you don’t own yourself. And then Luutu’s car came to take me to Jinja where the Indian would dress me in European “bridal sweet,” and I felt pride to wear kadaali.

  My pre-wedding was held in Timiina because most people in Nazigo, Nattetta, Bugiri, and Kamuli would go to Miiro’s anyway. My father wanted his people to have a celebration of their own in our home village where we come from. Then two weeks before the wedding, my father’s clan, my mother’s clan, trekked to Nattetta. You can imagine their backwardness when they saw Luutu’s car. I was dying of embarrassment. They told Luutu how they have more daughters for his other sons, can you imagine?

  I don’t know where to start telling you about the wedding. I need a whole exercise book to write about it. So much happened on that day that sometimes I feel like I was not there. So let us put that aside. When you come home, Nattetta will tell you all about it. All I can say is that it happened, Miiro is in my hands. If you want the details, ask Nnaaba, I mean Muka Diba, she will tell you everything. Me, I was not seeing because all eyes were on me.

  You know how aunts prepare you in the bridal sessions? Nothing can prepare you. Luckily, I married Miiro who I like very much, but imagine marrying someone you don’t know and you have seen your moon for a year or two. By the time my aunt came to take me out of the honeymoon bedroom, it was time for Miiro to go back to Bukalasa. My aunt will stay with me while Miiro is away until I get used to being on my own. Can you imagine I miss him? Up to now people call me Mugole Miiro. But I say, how long will I be called Bride? They say, until I have a baby, then they will call me Nnakawele.

  You are lucky; as I wrote this letter the picture man had finished washing our wedding pictures and brought them. I have slipped our wedding into the envelope to see for yourself. That is us on our wedding. I never dreamt it would be so good. Sometimes I pinch myself. If I, plain Alikisa, was such a beautiful bride, Nsuuta, you would look like a malaika. When I arrived at church, I saw excitement in Miiro’s eyes for the first time. He said, You look beautiful: what has Timiina been feeding you?

  Ha ha, I laughed, You are lying me, Toofa, and dimmed my eyes more.

  Nsuuta, I like Miiro very much. I am very lucky to marry him, but he does not love me the way he loves you. So don’t worry. However, it is going to be hard writing letters now that I am married. Already people say, You are married; stay away from unmarried friends, they don’t have useful counsel for you. But I will write any time I steal a moment. Let me stop here now.

  Me, your very own,

  Muka Miiro

  Nattetta Parish

  P.O. Box 004

  Bugerere

  23rd Febwari 1942

  Dear Nsuuta,

  Did you get the letter I wrote in Febwari last year? Are you still angry with me for not writing? Forgive me please, Nsuuta. Just forgive me. I know I did wrong.

  Nsuuta, thank you for praying. I gave birth. A girl. She looks like Miiro himself. Luutu, Maama Luutu, even Nsangi, they will not put her down. Nsangi brought so many things (baby soap and powder and oil and clothes and playthings from the city) that I regretted saying nasty things about her. Apparently, having a girl first brings blessings to a marriage. Luutu named my child Yagala Akuliko—what kind of name is that for a girl? Is it an order for Miiro to love me? If so, then Luutu knows that Miiro still loves you. So hurry up and come back so our Miiro stops suffering. Nsangi cut the name to Y.A. I have insisted that she gets baptised Kotilida. If I get a boy, I will name him Kristoofa—I pray I get a boy next, so I can mix boy-girl, boy-girl until I have done all my six. You must come to church and see the baby at least. There is no way you will not see her. I could not write about being pregnant. It is private apparently: between you and your husband. What if it comes out after you have told everyone?

  Nsuuta, I think Miiro has not forgiven you yet. Last time I said we should invite you to visit, he told me to stay away from you, said you are a bad influence. So I am glad you are still studying. Let us give him more time. He is finishing at Bukalasa in Desemba this year and we shall celebrate. Dewo still has another year in seminary. Then there will be another celebration. Levi is in Buddo. He is planning to be a doctor. I have married big. Of course, you shall also marry big when you join us.

  Guess the new rumour about us: apparently, you caught me and Miiro being immoral. Apparently, you were so hurt you left Miiro. Then we found out I was pregnant and Luutu forced us to marry. When I had the baby, Muka Diba arrived with her rumours and asked why the baby was late. That perhaps your mother had done something evil to me. When I said that no such thing happened, she asked why our
wedding was rushed. Why the secrecy? I am not going to lie, Nsuuta, these lies hurt me so deeply, especially when they saw my aunt receive a virgin goat. This time I told Miiro. He talked to Luutu and Luutu is going to call a meeting, call Muka Diba, your mother, and ask them to explain when and where they saw us being immoral. Last Sunday, Father’s sermon was about how rumour-mongers are like swordfish. Every fish they prick with their long mouths rots and dies. Eventually the whole church is poisoned because of swordfish mouths. Eh, listen to that: Y.A. has woken up, I must stop writing and put her on the breast. I tell you Nsuuta, this being a mother is too much. It will not even let me finish my letter to my sister who is also her mother. Let me pen off for now.

  Goodbye,

  Me, Muka Miiro

  10

  By the time Nsuuta joined nursing in 1943, the surprising pain at Alikisa marrying Miiro had settled into acceptance. There are plans you make in life which then hurt when they actually happen. At first, pain came in Alikisa’s updates. Then the huge silence when Alikisa did not write for months. At times she was sure Alikisa had coveted Miiro all along. Then she doubted Alikisa’s proclamations of not owning Miiro; then Alikisa’s letters became poisoned darts. The biggest pain was the wedding photo, a neat stab. But other times, childhood memories returned. The way they had loved each other. Then she reread Alikisa’s letters and there were no barbs and she was reassured. Unfortunately, whenever she went home for holidays, she could not see Alikisa: their presumed enmity stood between them. Gradually, like married and unmarried friends, they drifted apart.

  Alikisa was not without guilt. She had married a man she did not deserve. She had started to feel Nsuuta’s resentment in the unreplied-to letters. However, when Maama Luutu called her Muka Mwana and Miiro called her Wife, when residents referred to her as Muka Miiro and she had two daughters who called her Mother, Alikisa forgot the guilt. To her the villages which expected them to feud were to blame. It did not help that when Nsuuta came home, she no longer came to church. For both of them, the less they wrote, the harder it became to put pen to paper, thought into words. Eventually, the letters ceased. Thus, when Nsuuta found out that she was losing her sight she did not rush home to cry to Alikisa. She presumed Alikisa would only say I told you—reading too much was killing your eyes.

  •

  Four years after her first pair of glasses, Nsuuta noticed the crispness of images starting to fade. She went to an optician and reported that her lenses were losing strength. The doctor said there was no such thing. It was her eyes; they were getting worse. He gave her stronger lenses but said it would only be a temporary respite. Nsuuta did not believe him.

  In 1944, American eye missionaries came to Lubaga Hospital to treat river blindness. Nsuuta went for a second opinion. They diagnosed degenerative myopia. At that moment the first part of Nsuuta’s life, that with sight, came to an end. A new one of blindness began, even though she could still see. That day she decided that the world existed only in sight. And to lose sight was to die. On her days off she spent hours with her eyes closed doing chores around her house to taste her future. Life was a house. One room was beauty: once she lost her sight, that door would close. How she had counted on her beauty. Another room was marriage: with beauty gone, she would never walk into that one. The door to nursing was still open, but it would close too. The only option was to collapse where she stood and die. Except that she had to work the following morning and not be found out.

  She looked back on how she had chased the future, longing to write on a slate, to write with a pencil in a book, upper primary, scholarship to Gayaza, the nursing uniform, heal the sick, marry a rich handsome man, have two children. Now she who used to crave silence and solitude felt lonely and abandoned in her room.

  From then on, decisions forced themselves on her. Like staying in the city until she had had all the fun Kampala had to offer—who was she saving her body for? Like working until she qualified for a pension.

  She was haunted by memories of the first time she went home wearing the glasses. The world had been vivid then. Everyone looked through the lenses bringing objects close and back, close and back, marvelling at the way they changed. Some wore them and staggered. Some said they gave them a headache. No one knew then that galibindi were not a sign of cleverness but of loss. Supposing she had married him? She would have had one or two children by now. What would Miiro do with a blind wife? Now Alikisa could keep him.

  That was the day she allowed Kakande to walk with her. Unlike other men, Kakande was not coy about Nsuuta’s beauty. He sang it: “Nsuuta, you are living proof that there is an artist in the sky.” Kakande was Yoruba. His name was Akande, but Ugandans called him Kakande. He brought her presents of food, household items, even magazines. He would knock on her door, put down a parcel, step back, and say, “Are you going to allow that meat to rot? Is it not a taboo in our cultures to waste food?” Nsuuta would accept the presents but insist she could only be with a husband. At which Akande said he understood. He was married too. In fact, had she accepted his advances he would have been disappointed. “But Nsuuta, who said eyes cannot feed too: mine feast on you.”

  When Nsuuta told him about her eyes he asked, “How much does the doctor need?” He forgot to be disappointed when Nsuuta allowed herself to have a relationship with him. Akande treated her as if she was the first beautiful woman to drop on earth. He took her everywhere an African could go in Kampala and Entebbe. He gave her everything she needed. Akande loved Nsuuta like a man about to lose the love of his life: “Why did I not meet you earlier? I love my parents very much, but I will never forgive them.” But when he finished his course at Makerere, Akande put a lot of money into Nsuuta’s post office account, packed his bags, and went back to Nigeria. Although he had been honest with her, although he never pretended that he would be able to stay with her for long, Akande’s departure hurt Nsuuta deeply. Then, out of the blue, she received a panicked letter from Alikisa.

  Nattetta Parish

  P.O. Box 004

  Nazigo

  Bugerere

  10th Desemba 1944

  Dear Nsuuta,

  Forgive this hurried letter, especially when I have not written in a long time.

  But Nsangi brought bad rumours about you to the villages. Apparently, you have become immoral, cavorting with foreigners. Apparently, they are rich and you are money-minded. You spend every night in nightclubs, mu bidongo, with irresponsible people. Do you know what I did? I called Muka Diba. If you have a rumour to spread in the villages, give it to Muka Diba: she will see to it.

  I said, Nnaaba, you know how Nsuuta and I are not friends any more? She said yes. I said, but my sister-in-law Nsangi lies a lot. She does not like Nsuuta because she embarrassed Miiro. I said you are not with foreigners because you are still pining for Miiro. I hope Nnaaba is spreading that one. But I think you should come home and clear your name. Oh, this is a whisper. I am with a package. Two months old. I hope this one is a boy so Miiro can have his heir. I hope I have not jinxed it by disclosing. Y.A. is a big girl. Abisaagi has started walking. They spend most of their time with their grandparents in their car. Maama, they are spoiling the children so much I am worried. I even think Nsangi will make a good aunt for our girls when the time comes.

  But Nsuuta, I am worried. I have not gained any flesh at all. Even when I am pregnant and I eat and eat, I am still skinny. Despite all the peace Miiro has given me, despite eating well—it does not show. When I give birth, two weeks and my body is back to teenage. People say Yii, but Muka Miiro, eat and gather a body. Men don’t like dry bones. I am worried I am naturally skinny, no matter what I do. You should see Nnaaba, I mean Muka Diba, maama she is so big she reaches those ends. As if her husband were rich. The way she walks down the road, waddling, and her mosquito of a husband prouding himself, kdto. Maama, let me stop here. But please come and let us bring this rumour to a stop.

  Goodbye for now,

  Me, Muka Miiro

  11

 
; Nsuuta did not reply. To her the villages, their gossip, were now too far away to matter. So what if Miiro despised her? She was glad she had not told Alikisa about her sight problems. Look at the judgemental tone of her letter. As if being a foreigner was immoral, when actually it was the Ganda who were most immoral in Kampala and Entebbe. She put the letter away.

  Three months later, as she was on the ward, she saw Luutu’s car in the car park. She asked a friend to find out what was going on. The friend told her that Luutu had brought a daughter-in-law, a miscarriage. Nsuuta’s first instinct was to run to Alikisa, but she stopped. Luutu would be nosy—We have heard about the Munnaigeria. When are you bringing him home so we meet him? …What do I tell your parents when I return home? She could already picture the gloating on his face when she said there was no wedding on the horizon with the Nigerian man. And what would she say to Alikisa about the letters she had not answered? She swapped wards with another nurse and told all nurses to say that she was on leave. Because Alikisa was to be kept in hospital for a few days, Nsuuta took two days of leave. When Alikisa was discharged, she left a letter behind for Nsuuta.

  Mmengo Hospital

  2nd Apuri 1945

  Dear Nsuuta,

  You will not believe where I am writing this letter. On a bed in your hospital. Don’t worry, I am better. Let me start from the beginning.

  How are you, how is nursing? Nsuuta, who knew your nursing and my marrying would separate us like this? I have written some letters, but I think they got lost in Posta. Please come and say hello so we are reassured. I have two daughters but, mazima, they don’t even know you, their other mother.