Up close Nnakku was mid-sized, no skinny legs, average height, round-bottomed—nothing like Kirabo had seen in her childhood dreams, nothing like the woman she had constructed. She smiled to herself. Tom’s chase after a certain kind of beauty had landed him on two sisters. Ganda men loved nothing like a light-skinned woman.
“You have visitors,” Luninze said.
“Have I?” But Nnakku did not turn to see the visitors. Silence held as they waited for her to react. Instead, Nnakku picked up a small paper punch from Mr. Luninze’s desk and pressed it between her hands. The lever arm folded and she held it down. But she let go and it sprung up. She pressed and held the lever down, but she could not sustain the force and it sprung back. Silence was tight now.
Nnakku put down the punch and smiled at her husband. He looked at her in suspense, waiting for her reaction. When she picked up the stapler, Mr. Luninze said, “The girl”—he pointed at Kirabo—“says you are her mother.” Again, Nnakku did not turn to look at Kirabo. Mr. Luninze added, “Her father died.”
“That I birthed her?” Nnakku finally asked, then shook her head. “No.” Still she did not turn to look at Kirabo. “Not me.”
Because Nnakku was blocking his line of sight, Mr. Luninze leaned sideways to look at Kirabo. “Who was your father, Kirabo?”
“Tom. Tomusange Piitu.”
Mr. Luninze sat back and looked at Nnakku. She picked up a Nile Special brochure from his desk and flicked through it. She put it down. She folded her arms across her chest, lifted her head, and sighed. She stared out of the window behind her husband. Kirabo pulled a She is unbelievable face at Sio. She had expected denial, but not this childishness.
Sio stood up and went to Nnakku. He spoke British English. “Excuse me, ma’am, could you look at her, please? At least have the decency to look at her while you deny it.” He pointed to Kirabo. “Your daughter’s sitting right there. She’s lost her father. She needs you.” Nnakku looked at him and then back through the window. Sio’s demeanour changed. “What kind of woman are you? Her dad is dead. For heaven’s sake, be a mother.” Nnakku did not turn. “You know what? You’re a monster, ma’am. A monster.” Now he turned to Mr. Luninze. “I’m sorry, sir, but you’re married to a monster. She doesn’t deserve to be anyone’s mother. Kirabo is beautiful, intelligent, and hard-working.” He pointed at Nnakku: “You don’t deserve her.” Sio was close to tears. Nnakku just stared ahead. “Come, Kirabo, let’s get out of here; she’s an animal.” He held Kirabo’s hand and led her towards the door.
But Mr. Luninze stood up faster and walked past them as if he did not want to be left alone with a monster. As he picked up a raincoat that was hanging by the door, he said apologetically, “Look, you are welcome to my house, Kirabo, if you ever want to meet …” He did not complete the sentence and turned to his wife. “Lovi, she is obviously your daughter. Why would your father lie?”
“I said, I did not birth her.”
“I have proof.” Kirabo withdrew from her pocket the medical chit Nsuuta had given her and handed it to Mr. Luninze. “The hospital chit. She gave it to Dad the day she abandoned me.”
Mr. Luninze read it and took it to his wife. Nnakku took it, looked at it, and tore it into pieces.
Her husband recovered first. He opened the door and said, “I am going to pick up the children from school.” He felt for his car keys in the jacket pocket, found them, and said, “Kirabo, as I said, you are welcome to our house if you ever want to.” He walked out of the office. Sio picked up the pieces of paper.
Now Nnakku turned to look at Kirabo. Kirabo braced herself for more spite, but instead tears streamed down Nnakku’s face. As Sio led Kirabo out of the office, Leeya rushed to Nnakku’s side, protesting, “I swear I did not know it was her.” She paused. “But I am also thinking, now he knows, you can move on with your life.”
Kirabo stopped in the corridor and stared at Nnakku through the door.
“How can a woman be so heartless?” Sio asked, as if heartlessness was a male preserve. He held Kirabo the way he used to when they were alone. At first, fighting the tears, Kirabo was rigid. But Sio did not let go. Eventually she gave in and held on to him. He repeatedly kissed her hair, her forehead, and squeezed her arms as if Kirabo was falling apart. Kirabo was aware of the people staring in the corridor but she did not care.
Leeya was aghast. “Eh, eh. Look at these children. Eh, you, kale vva.” She clapped at them and turned to Nnakku. “Do they think they are in New York?”
Kirabo pulled away from Sio and asked, “Where were you when she was getting pregnant at thirteen, hmm? Do you think she drank me in juice or caught me in bathwater as she washed her flower? At least we are not hypocrites.”
“Leave them, Kirabo, let’s get out of here,” said Sio, but Kirabo shrugged him off.
“Look at you, Nnakku. Why are you still alive? Why didn’t you die instead of my father?”
Sio grabbed her. “You can’t say that, Kirabo.”
“Why not? It is the truth.”
Sio hurried her through the corridor, past the people who had stepped out of their offices to stare, down the stairs, and out of the building. By then tears were flowing unhindered.
Later, as they made their way back to Kampala, Sio coaxed her into talking about her feelings. Kirabo insisted that if she had to choose between Nnakku alive and Nnakku dead, she would opt for a dead one: “A dead mother gives you options. You can imagine and create and give yourself the perfect mother.”
“Look, Kirabo, parents are designed to make us feel let down at some point, especially as we get older. That way we promise ourselves to be better parents. It is evolution. You are going to be the best mother ever.”
“And how did your parents disappoint you?”
“I will not die until my children are grown. But seriously, I will never have just one child; it is not fair. I will be friendlier to residents in the villages. Maybe stop, give them a lift or wave a hello. I know residents have this sense of entitlement that drove my dad mad, but I don’t want them to call me Zungu and isolate me.”
12
Kirabo had come to check on her grandparents. But when the taxi got to Miiro’s house in Nattetta, she did not call to alight. The car carried her down the road up to Kamuli. It was about ten when she arrived.
Kabuye’s compound was overgrown and unkempt, the hedge wild. Flower plants were indistinguishable from bush and weeds; the flower beds were gone. Even the solid ground on the driveway was soft like garden soil. The garage doors were open. Inside was Kabuye’s Mercedes. The Morris Minor was parked outside, covered with a grey tarpaulin. There were signs that Sio was awakening from his father’s death—drops and smudges of dark oil on the garage floor, tools, spanners, and an old tyre lying about—but the state of the compound said he would take time to be himself again. Kirabo walked to the porch and knocked. It was Sunday, almost two weeks since Tom’s last funeral rites, eleven days since the confrontation with Nnakku.
Sio opened the door. Before he could say anything, Kirabo pushed past him. “You know, Sio, you are going to die of a snake bite and we will bury you. Keep growing those bushes around the house and you will see.” She spoke as if bushes and snakes were the urgent reason she had come so early on a Sunday morning. Now she stopped and frowned. “Do you live alone?”
“Right now I am alone, but a young uncle—Dad’s cousin—is normally around. He will soon be back. And Batte. He is helping me with things. Sit down.” He motioned to a chair which was not covered.
Kirabo looked at the chair but was too restless to sit down. Sio explained, “The compound is overgrown because I decided to supervise its remodelling myself. I plan to get an old woman to look after the house, perhaps a gardener too.” He paused. “When did you arrive, why did you not call?”
“You know me.” Kirabo looked at how most of the furniture was covered in dust sheets. “Spur of the moment, to check on my grandparents.” Then she laughed. “So you Zungus actually do this.�
�� She waved her hand at everything covered with sheets.
“Do what? Don’t call me Zungu.”
“Waste cloth covering furniture. I have seen it in films.”
“The furniture is more valuable than the dust sheets. Mum bought them a long time ago in Europe. They are made to protect furniture when you are not using the house.”
“You are lucky no thieves have relieved you of some of this stuff. Anyway, what did you want to talk to me about last time?”
Sio sighed as if to slow down Kirabo’s manic pace. “Sit down.” He sat down and patted the space next to him for her. “Come on.” She sat down. “I just wanted us to talk without anger. I wanted to tell you that I am back from TZ for good.” He looked at her. “I should get you a cup of tea.”
“Do you have any painkillers?”
“On your period?”
“Last day.”
“Apparently, they improve when you have a child.”
“What are you saying?”
“That there is hope.”
He came back with two Panadol tablets. As Kirabo swallowed them he went to make tea. He came back without it. “Electricity has gone, just as I put the kettle on. It will not come back until after ten tonight.” He paused. “I’m so glad you have come.”
“No surprise there; you know how Aunt Abi is in love with you. At burial, she saw Ntaate standing next to me and later asked, ‘What was that kawawa fly doing around your ears?’”
“I saw him too, the leech.” Then he turned serious. “But what about you? It is your feelings that matter.”
“Me? I’m one of those women who live in denial about their men’s cheating.”
“Kdto, I’m not sure that is true, but—”
“By the way, what is your daughter’s name?”
“Abla, Abla Nnakabuye. My grandfather named her after Dad, so I gave her Mum’s first name.” Kirabo noted with satisfaction that Giibwa had not taken part in the naming.
“I don’t even know how I feel about you. My brain says one thing, my heart says another.” She paused. “It is silly because I’m only nineteen and you are what, twenty-three? And we will both meet new people and forget all of this.”
“I don’t want to meet new people. For me, once I’m focused on something, someone, that is it.”
“Aren’t you just.”
Sio smiled shamefacedly. “The Giibwa thing was out of character.”
“You are such a Muzungu.”
“I am not!”
“Hmm.” Kirabo stood up and walked to the end of the sitting room. She lifted a dust sheet and peered underneath. “What are you going to do with the cars? Do you drive them?”
He sighed as if he had failed to pin Kirabo down but had to play along. “I have not decided what to do with them. I would keep them for sentimental reasons, but I would need two more garages. For the farm I will need a truck. The Minor is too old to fetch a good price. And I like it. I grew up in that car.”
Kirabo stopped short of saying Yeah; you never walked on your two legs then.
“I might sell the Mercedes.”
“Hmm.”
“I have simple needs, me. I dream that one day, after a small wedding, we will settle down here, you a veterinary doctor, me a farmer, and raise a small family—three, four children? Oh, and buy a Land Rover. I love Land Rovers. We will grow old, die, and get buried in the plantation at the back of the house.”
Kirabo raised her eyebrows sarcastically. Then she agreed. “I guess it would be a good life, good for livestock in our villages, especially Grandfather’s. First, though, I’m going to university to be free. Free to do things I could not do at Aunt Abi’s—go out all night and dance myself dizzy, get drunk, get rid of this hymen before I get married.”
“No virgin goat for Aunt Abi?”
“Would you take home a car without a test drive?”
“Oh.” He looked down.
“Besides, marriage for us is migration.”
“Marriage is what?”
“You would never understand.” She turned away.
Sio kept quiet, like he had been patronised but was in no position to protest. When he recovered he offered, “Can I at least hold your hand through your ‘being free’?”
“You can walk with me. But first, what happens to Giibwa?”
“How does Giibwa come into it? She is not part of it.”
Kirabo shook her head to say that of course Giibwa was part of it since she was the mother of his child, that no matter what happened, Giibwa would always be accorded the respect, rituals, and customs of a mother in his house, but Sio was talking.
“Look, Kirabo, this is exactly what I had come to talk to you about the other day. I thought that maybe now I could apologise properly … I am sorry about Giibwa and—”
“Sio, it does not matter how many sorrys you say: sorry is not doing it again.”
“That is easy,” he smiled. “It is trusting me … like you did before that I worry about.”
“Trust will come on its own; I cannot force it. I don’t want to be insecure and suspicious about you because of it.”
“I know.” He kept quiet the way one does when contemplating a mountain. “Dad left some money in the bank in England because of a property in Sheffield. I have money to start farming and sustain it before I make a profit. I am thinking of starting with an acre of tomatoes, another of Irish potatoes, three acres of pineapples, two hundred chicks. Then I can see what works and what does not. Later, once I have the paddocks right, I will get a few heifers. I would like to show you all the land. So Giibwa is not part of my plans. Mum is looking after Abla because she has the facilities in her house, but also to give Giibwa back her youth. If you and I stay together, by the time Abla comes of school age, we will have settled down and she will come back to Uganda and live with us.”
Kirabo contemplated how well thought out, how extremely grown up the things he said were, but … Sio saw her uncertainty and asked, “What do you think?”
“It is a good plan.” She scratched the back of her neck. “It sounds grown up, but”—she hesitated—“to be a stepmother before I have even had my own children?”
“What are you saying, Kirabo?” He crossed the room and sat with her in earnest. “Abla will not come to live with us immediately. Do you mean you don’t want my child?”
“No. I would be the last person to do that.”
“Because you would be punishing her for my mistake,” he paused, overwhelmed by Kirabo’s apparent blindness to irony.
“It is just that … Sio, would you still want me if I had a child in school?”
“That is why I never had real sex with you. And I swear, it was not easy with your flirting, but I kept my promise. The world is harsh to a girl who has had a child.”
Kirabo kept quiet because Sio, despite his mwenkanonkano sensibilities, was still blind.
“But for you to reject my child, Kirabo, would you not be turning into your stepmother?”
“What did you say? For your information, my father did not have a child with my mother’s best friend.”
“No, just her sister.”
“Ekiki—”
“I am sorry, I am so sorry—”
“You say that again, Sio, and I will walk out of here.”
“I should not have said that. They are totally different circumstances.”
Kirabo swallowed her outrage. She was determined to be reasonable. Sio was too deep in her blood to walk away from. Perhaps too deep to see that while he had protected her from getting pregnant, Giibwa had been disposable. Perhaps all the properties at his disposal were helping to make her blind.
“I would never come between you and your child, but there is something presumptuous about you coming up with a plan involving a child, making us an instant family without talking to me.”
“But I am talking to you; we are discussing it. Maybe it is because you are young, maybe you are still angry. Maybe we should discuss it after you finis
h university.”
But both knew it had nothing to do with age. Girls younger than Kirabo, most of whom she had grown up with in Nattetta, had one, two children and were running homes.
“Ever thought that perhaps I would like to be the one to say I am ready, let’s bring Abla home? Or I think I will never be ready, I am leaving so you can bring Abla home, or I will visit her a few times in Dar and bring her to visit us a few times, a month at a time, before it becomes permanent? If you still don’t see what I am saying, Sio, then I don’t know.”
Sio was quiet for a moment. Then softly, “I am sorry my actions have put you in this position, Kirabo. But I don’t know how else to do it. I want to bring Abla up myself and I would love that to be with you. I don’t know how to say this, but Abla did not choose to come.”
“I would put my child first too, but don’t hide behind her so you don’t see what I am saying.”
That was when tears overwhelmed her—him making her feel like a wicked stepmother already. “You know, Sio.” She stood up. “Let me talk to Giibwa first. It is her child, after all.” Instinct told her that if she did not diffuse this situation, she, Giibwa, Abla, and perhaps his mother would turn Sio into a god, the way Tom had been by the women in his life, and start swiping at each other.
As she left, Sio did not stand up as he usually did. He did not say Wait. He did not call her back. Outside, Kirabo felt alone. As she walked to Kisoga, she pondered how her blood would not let go of Sio. She wished she had met him after she finished studying at university, after a few disastrous relationships, when a stepchild would seem trivial.
She decided to take the southern path she and Giibwa had used when they were young, the one that did not cross Nnankya the stream, to avoid being seen in Nattetta. As she turned into the trail, a sound of drums, faint, floated above her head. Her heart leaped and at once she was with Giibwa, barefoot, coming home from Wafula’s kadodi, half walking, half running, Sio walking them. It was a speck of sound, but it hauled her back to a time when life was careless, when her deepest fear was flying out of her body. The drums bobbed again, but they were not kadodi. A Muslim wedding, perhaps. They dissolved into the valleys beyond the hills.
A Girl is a Body of Water Page 39
