A Girl is a Body of Water

by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

  When we arrived here, I thought I would see you, but nurses said you were on leave. I realised maybe you found a man for yourself and are planning to marry him and you go to him on leave. You city people are different from us rural folks. Are we still friends? My heart hurts that I offended you. I thought about the stupid pact as I lay here on the bed and I shook my head that being young is stupid. Why would you come back to a farmer when, with all your beauty and education, you can marry a doctor who can give you servants and drive you in a car?

  Maama, I lost that pregnancy I wrote to you about. I was washing clothes when blood poured down my legs. Luutu rushed me in his car with Miiro. Maama Luutu stayed at home with Y.A. and Abi. It was a boy. I cried a bit when I was on my own because you don’t cry for a pregnancy. I will not lie, losing a pregnancy leaves you very lonely and empty even with crowds around you, because you are the only one who felt it inside you. Then you wonder who he was, what would he look like, but there is nothing to show for your loss.

  This morning the doctor sat me and Miiro down and said I should rest my womb. He asked, How many children do you want? Miiro said five. I held my mouth. You and Miiro would have been perfect for each other. The doctor told us to rest since we already have two children and we are still young. I thought which being young when I have had two children and a miscarriage? From now on, he told us, we are to unite only in the first five days after my moon and the last five days before I start. To be safe, Miiro should not finish inside me. So, we are going to do this for two or three years and then have children again. But I was worried. I have had only girls so far. I said, Miiro, you need an heir. He said that in his clan they have more boys than girls, that we are lucky to have two girls already and I laughed, Haa, but you Miiro, you know how to make me feel good. But he said that a boy will come soon, let us wait. I said to myself, Alikisa, you are so lucky with your Miiro.

  Lastly, thank Nurse Nnannozi for me. She has looked after me very much. She gave me this paper and pen as well. I wish you were here. You would have nursed me even better. Now let me go home.

  Me, your very own,

  Muka Miiro

  Mmengo Hospital

  P.O. Box 7161

  Kampala

  Uganda

  15th Apuuli 1945

  Bannange Alikisa,

  Nga kitalo. And for it to happen when I was away. I have thanked Nurse Nnannozi for us because she did my job. The doctor was right. Rest your womb, otherwise it will learn to miscarry every time. How are our children? Truth? I should be mothering them. I have heard you are prospering very much. I saw how modern your house is. Everybody says you are a very good wife. That is why your home is prospering. Well done.

  I too laugh about the pact. We were stupid. And when you come out here in Kampala and meet new people and discover the wide world and Bugerere becomes narrow, you ask yourself, What in life do I want? You think of your grandmothers escaping from abduction and being sold in slavery, then you think of your mother having fifteen children until she has lost her urine brakes, then you ask, Do I want to get wet between the legs every time I cough, laugh, or sneeze? Then you realise that life is much shorter for you than other people, and marriage, a husband, and children are a small part of life, and you ask yourself, What should I do while I still can? And you answer yourself, Let me see life first.

  The doctor was right about your age: in Nattetta a woman walking her twentieth year is aged, but here in the city you are a toddler. Women of twenty-five are unmarried and unworried. So Miiro is yours alone. I have no claim on him.

  In the end, I will come back to Nattetta. I will not be able to start a dispensary myself as I thought, but Luutu can. All he should do is put up a modern building, perhaps on the slopes of the church grounds. Then ask at Mmengo Hospital to send nurses because it is a church dispensary. They will come, inspect the building, and send you facilities and two nurses. I will put my name up to be considered because I am Bugerere-born. Tell Miiro to ask his father. I will come and nurse the villages for a while.

  Let me tell you, Alikisa, Kampala is not immoral; it is the people. It is not the foreigners; it is Ugandans. I am your sister because I chose you and you chose me. One day I will see our children. Let’s give the villages and Miiro time to forget. Look after our children and our husband. Continue with your good ways and the villages will continue to give you respect. Don’t worry about me. I will come back to Nattetta and we shall be together again bringing up our children—that I swear to you.

  Me, your loving sister,

  Nsuuta

  12

  When Nsuuta wrote that letter she had no idea that in a year’s time Luutu would take ill and be brought to Mmengo, that for three weeks while Miiro kept an eye on his father they would be thrown together. Whoever said that suppressed emotions are dangerous was right. Both Miiro and Nsuuta had been in relationships; all that time, they had imagined what being with each other would have been like. They now had a chance.

  When Miiro saw Nsuuta, smart in her nursing uniform, he failed to turn away. Nsuuta had never looked so beautiful. He claimed he had heard about her phenomenal nursing skills and insisted she was the right person to nurse his father. And when at the end of her shift he ran after her to say thank you, and she casually pointed out to him the door to her flat in the nurses’ quarters, they both knew they would be together that night. And when he managed to climb into her room like a testosterone-fuelled schoolboy, there was no time to talk. The nursing sister might catch them; Nsuuta would lose her job. Stolen sex every night while Luutu lay ill in hospital. Then the pretending during the daytime. The following week, as their desire became manageable, Miiro and Nsuuta sneaked off and went to nightclubs, to places he would never dream of taking his Alikisa. Alikisa would never know that Miiro loved to dance.

  A few months later, when Luutu was dead and buried and Miiro had become the head of his family, Nsuuta, who never fully lost her entitlement to Miiro, went to Alikisa and told her the good news: she was expecting Miiro’s child. Alikisa, whose heart had finally stopped swinging with guilt and settled into owning Miiro and her home, was taken by surprise. Thereafter, she hid her resentment at seeing how fired up Miiro was for Nsuuta. He had never burned so intensely for her. Worse was the shame and guilt for her envy. Had she not made a pact with Nsuuta? Had she not written to Nsuuta, after she married Miiro, that she was only keeping Nsuuta’s place? Luckily, not even Nsuuta’s entitlement would allow her to share their escapades in the city with Alikisa. Besides, Alikisa began to see the Nsuuta she used to love return once more. Thereafter she tried to rekindle the dream they had had as children, but everything was wrong. She had two children already. It was too late to tell them that Nsuuta was their mother too. Miiro had built a house for one wife; there was no other bedroom for another wife. But when Alikisa looked at her, the old Nsuuta was still there. And she loved her.

  WHY PENNED HENS PECK EACH OTHER

  1

  28 February 1983

  Tom died. He died without reason, without warning, without goodbyes—right in the middle of life.

  That morning, he rushed as usual. He showered, got dressed—“Where are my socks, I am late, where is my tie?”—and guzzled his tea cold. Then he ran out of the house as if he would be coming home. But in the evening, on his way to pick up the children from school—wuubi, gone. That is how Nnaki the maid told it.

  At first, perhaps because of shock, people blamed his new car, the Honda Accord. But as the facts became clearer—an army jeep had rammed into his car on that dangerous junction on Kitante Road—common sense set in. Attention turned to the usual suspect, the widow. Everyone knew Tom had wanted to finish building his house in Busega but Nnambi, keen to show they were wealthy, had nagged until Tom bought that car.

  And that was not all.

  Tom’s love for Nnambi had died; who didn’t know? Not after what she did to Kirabo. But Nnambi, ever the lukokobe, was not giving him up. Do you know what she did? She went home to her
people to fix it. And you know there is no witchery like witchery from Mityana—you marry there at your own peril.

  There was nothing new in Nnambi fixing things: women routinely fixed dying marriages with all sorts. But in this case, instead of a remedy, the diviner gave her evil spirits he needed to dispose of.

  Ways in which Nnambi had administered what she thought was a love remedy started to circulate. Some said she dropped the potion in the driveway; Tom drove over it and right into his grave. Others swore she hung it above the threshold, Tom walked underneath, and that was that. And others still claimed she put it beneath their mattress, Tom rolled over it and was finished.

  “I tell you, that woman came into this marriage determined to stay, come rain, come shine.”

  “And if Tom wished to extricate himself?”

  “Mulago Hospital.”

  “How?”

  “Either through surgery, like removing a tumour, or death do us part. Guess what happened?”

  “Kitalo.”

  By the time Tom was buried, there was no doubt who had done it. It was the classic case of fenna tumufiirwe—If I cannot have him, no one will.

  2

  1 March 1983

  News of Tom’s passing arrived in Nattetta at dawn, as people made their way to their gardens to dig. At Miiro’s house, everyone who heard ran wild. No one thought of holding the other until Widow Diba arrived with her common sense. First, she rounded up everyone and put them in the diiro. Then she told Miiro, who was falling apart as if he was a woman, to hold himself together. She put him into the car of Aunt YA’s husband, who had driven over to break the news. She put Ssozi in the car as well. “Your job is to fortify Miiro,” she told him, and sent them off to the city to take care of the official processes following Tom’s death.

  When they drove away, she sent a lad down the road to fetch Nsuuta. Unfortunately, the idiot blurted the news to Nsuuta without preparing her. Nsuuta marched to Miiro’s house, refusing to be held as if she did not have cancer, as if she was not blind. When she got to the walkway she called, “Alikisa, what have we done?”

  Muka Miiro came out, stood at the threshold, and put her arms on top of her head. “I thought it was a childish pact.” Then she walked across the courtyard and stood in front of Nsuuta. “Tell me we did not kill our child.”

  Nsuuta held her by the shoulders as if they were little girls again. As she walked Muka Miiro back to the house, she whispered, “It is nothing to do with the silly pact.”

  “But we broke it.”

  “Accidents happen. If you don’t know how to cry, let me do it.”

  At first, when residents saw Muka Miiro and Nsuuta holding each other, they were shocked. Then they sucked their teeth in cynical irritation:

  “They’ve wasted the larger part of Tom’s life strifing; now he is dead they are so close they are whispering?”

  “You joke with women. You think they are this but they are that. You think they are here but they are …”

  Widow Diba shut them up. “Hold your gossip: no one can reach Muka Miiro right now apart from Nsuuta. Not even Miiro. If you have nothing good to say, keep quiet.”

  Muka Miiro did not cry like a grown woman. Just tears streaming down her face. But Nsuuta performed. She punctuated her tears with stories from Tom’s childhood, repeating words he used to say, telling of things he had done, jokes he had cracked, times he got in trouble, times he was angry with her. It was lucky she was dying; Tom had been the pole on which she tied the rope that kept her from blowing away.

  Then Batte arrived: “Is it true what I heard?”

  “Come here, child.” Muka Miiro hugged him—dirty clothes, stale alcohol and all. He stepped out of the house and sat quietly on the verandah. All his nonsense of being hung-over during daytime, of being a recluse, fled.

  At around nine o’clock, another car, a pick-up truck, came to take Muka Miiro and Nsuuta to Tom’s house in Bugoloobi so that when mourners arrived, there would be familiar faces to receive them. Tom’s widow could not be trusted to receive Tom’s people.

  Batte was the first to climb into the back of the truck. When Widow Diba ordered him to get down—“There are useful people to transport”—he asked her, “Have I ever bothered you before?”

  Diba shook her head.

  “Then leave me alone.”

  Diba did not say another word to him. She filled the truck with women who Muka Miiro would need. She reminded them to take large pans, baskets, knives, and work clothes—“Who do you think is going to feed the mourners; that woman Tom married?” She gave them half an hour to harvest the food they were taking, and banana leaves to cook it in.

  Then Muka Miiro refused to get in the truck: “I want my child to be brought back here, where he grew up. We shall hold his vigil here with the people who loved him.” Diba was firm: Tom had a home and a family; he would be mourned in his house. Eventually, Muka Miiro got in the truck, but she was less mournful and more peeved.

  •

  When the women arrived at Tom’s house, his coffin had not arrived. The first things Muka Miiro saw were the little kuule shrubs edging the paved walkways. They had grown higher than the kerb, covering it entirely. She pounced on the shrubs and began uprooting them: “Which woman allows kuule to grow in her compound? If I had not missed them last time I came, this would never have happened.” All the Nattetta women, apart from Nsuuta, descended on the garden like it was a murderer and uprooted all the plants lest someone else died. Tom’s wife was in the sitting room crying with her sisters when the women arrived. She saw them go mad on her plants and said, “Only the bewitched waits for those women to come in here.” She, her family and friends hurried and locked themselves in the main bedroom.

  •

  Meanwhile, Batte had jumped off the truck when it first arrived and had run to the house. He asked Nnambi whether it was true, but she just cried. He asked for a glass of water and downed it. Then another and another. In the end, Nnaki brought him a whole jug. He asked her to drop in ice cubes because he was sweating so much. He took the tray outside and sat on the porch alone, drinking water and sweating. He alone talked to Nnambi before she disappeared into her bedroom. But because he was a drunk with neither a wife nor children, he did not have a voice within Miiro’s family.

  For the Nattetta women, walking into Tom’s house for the first time to be received by Nnaki the maid, because the widow had locked herself in her bedroom, was a positive sign. A widow, even the wickedest, would receive mourners and cry for her husband. But to not even say a word of comfort to her mother-in-law? Heads were shaken, hands were clapped, tongues clicked, “Kdto! Wombs bring forth all sorts.” Mourners just arriving would ask, “Where is the widow?” and the Nattetta women would click noises, like cutlery in their throats. “Apparently, she is in her bedroom.” The new arrival would open her eyes wide. “But why?” The women would shrug. “Hmm, who knows? Maybe she is too good for us.” Then they would lean in: “Truth does not conceal itself. She knows what she has done.” And the new mourner would pull her ugliest face and exclaim, “A demon came unto us,” because Tom, who had brought the demon into the clan, had left her to them. As more women arrived, there was more whispering than crying, and they gorged themselves on anger and disbelief.

  3

  2 March 1983

  Kirabo was in the biology lab. It was one of those cold morning classes when everyone worked in silence. Outside the lab, the world was soggy from non-stop drizzle. She was startled by the teacher’s voice. “Kirabo?” Everyone looked up. “Sister Ambrose wants a word with you.” Eyes turned to Kirabo. She frowned. Me? Because she was not the kind of girl the HM would have a word with. Her eyes travelled to the door. The Angel of Doom stood below the steps under an umbrella. Kirabo knew right away. During Amin’s regime, when girls were collected from class by the AOD it had always been the dad. Kirabo’s eyes travelled back to the teacher, pleading: You know what the presence of that woman means. The teacher’s stare said W
e are waiting. Kirabo slipped down from the stool. Her senses were so heightened that she was aware of each girl’s eyes as she left the room. Some held their breath, some avoided looking at her altogether, and others stared like cows in a herd trying not to think about their turn to be someone’s feast.

  At the doorstep, she glared at Nunciata. “Who died?”

  “What?”

  “My father has died.”

  “Because I am a kisirani. You think I do not know what you girls call me?”

  There was something heartening about Nunciata snapping at her. Who snaps at a bereaved girl? Still, Kirabo walked apart from her, even though she was getting wet without an umbrella, until she got to the office block. She knocked on Sister Ambrose’s office and opened the door. Sister Ambrose wore a sombre mask. “Sit down, Kirabo,” she said. When Kirabo had sat down, Sister Ambrose started, “I am sorry, child, but news from home is not goo—”

  “I know my father is dead.”

  Sister Ambrose looked surprised but relieved. Kirabo looked about the room. Three filing cabinets against the wall. Folders piled on top as well—blue, mauve, and green. Shelves heaving with trophies. Pictures on the walls, some black and white, recent ones in colour. The floor was red cement. Sister Ambrose’s desk was very smooth. The chair Kirabo sat on did not care. The thing about objects is they don’t realise how lucky they are. Sometimes life was not worth the pain.

  “And your mother, did you find her?”

  Kirabo looked at Sister Ambrose a little too long, then shook her head.

  “Why don’t you go and pack a few things? I will write your gate pass.”

  “He was alive,” Kirabo exploded. “He was not sick when I left home. People don’t just die.”