by Jessica Yu
“I am not the one who is supposed to make the charcoal,” Zam said. “There is a man who is supposed to do it.”
“Last time the excuse was that it was the rainy season, so we should wait till it’s dry. Now it’s the dry season and the wood is still just sitting there.”
“The man is somebody that Kiviri knows. I don’t know him personally.”
Looking around, Gladys saw tangled branches that had been hacked away to make room for planting, tossed here and there like dirty laundry. “And that loose wood. You have not collected it yet?”
“If we are burning all this for charcoal, I need to collect everything at one time,” Zam said, shifting Maria from her left hip to her right. The excuse was halfhearted, and they both knew it.
“When you told me, ‘Mommy, I haven’t got any money,’ I said, ‘Get the money by selling the charcoal.’”
Zam did not reply. Gladys sighed. She had expected the girl to follow up on such matters, to take charge and get things done. But Kiviri’s help was again required.
“Where are my avocados?” Gladys continued.
“You mean those things that you gave me? They’re down over there. Near the potatoes.”
“Did you plant them?”
“Not yet,” Zam replied. “I’m just keeping them moist for the time being.”
“Other people around here are digging, but you are not digging at all.”
“The sun is too hot,” Zam protested. “It is not good to plant trees in this heat.”
Gladys informed her that there was a costly load of additional saplings in the boot of Mike’s car. “They must not go to waste. You must plant them and water them every day. If I come and I find these trees dried out and dead, I’ll eat you up!”
Zam mumbled assent. The sun was high and hot, but the baby’s whimpering elicited only a perfunctory jostle from her mother.
AFTER THE UNSATISFACTORY evaluation of Gladys’s gardens, the party drove to Esther’s plot, where they took some bread, sugar, and soap out of the boot for Zam to take to her room. As they handed her the goods, Gladys glanced around. She was looking for someone, and there he was.
That man. The one she had seen here before. The one Zam called her brother.
“Come over here,” she called, waving to him.
The man approached, head slightly lowered, eyes hooded and cautious. He was a slight fellow, no taller than Esther, with small features. Even his teeth were small, like kernels of corn at the thin end of the ear. He wore a brown striped shirt and jeans that pooled around his ankles.
Gladys asked his name.
“Robert.”
“What relationship do you have with this one?” She pointed at Zam, standing a few feet away, with bags of provisions dangling from each hand. “How do you address her?”
“That is Zam,” Robert answered.
“I know her name,” Gladys said impatiently. “I want to know her relationship to you.”
The man’s eyes darted toward Zam, but the big woman blocked his view. He blurted, “She’s my wife.”
Gladys swiveled around to face Zam. “That is not what you told me before.”
Zam did not reply.
Esther’s lips pursed in satisfaction. At last it would all come out.
IT HAD BEEN over a year ago now since Zam had called Gladys to plead for assistance, claiming that the man who had gotten her pregnant had abandoned her. As the young mother had had no other means of support, Gladys had helped her with the startup money for the food kiosk business and then with the job at the gardens.
After some months in Luwero, Zam had mentioned that she had run into a brother who happened to be working nearby. It was a happy coincidence that the siblings found themselves living in the same village.
Strange, then, when Gladys had received a phone call a few weeks ago. A man introduced himself as “the husband of your daughter.” Had Gladys seen Zam? She had been absent from the gardens for several days, and he could not reach her.
On Gladys’s next visit to Luwero, she had noticed a man—this man—outside Zam’s place, roasting corn over a small fire. “Is that your husband, Zam?” she had asked.
“No, that is my brother.”
“So it is not true you have a husband here?”
“No, Mommy!” Zam had laughed prettily. “By the way, I love you, Mommy!”
Gladys may have been willing to wait and watch, but Esther had seen enough. Too many signals had tweaked her antennas: Zam’s constant excuses for unfinished work, her quickness to blame Kiviri, the way she flitted around Gladys with her complaints like a nightjar feigning a broken wing. Once Zam claimed that the landlord had planted only forty-six banana plants instead of the seventy Gladys had paid for. Esther went to the garden to count the plants for herself and discovered that there were actually seventy-two!
It was high time this shifty girl answered for her deceptions.
Fortunately, this Robert fellow seemed incapable of deception, not out of principle but out of slow-wittedness. Stunned by his own confession, he followed the trio of visitors to the side of the building where Zam stayed, where he could be interrogated separately from his wife. The precaution proved unnecessary, as Zam had retreated out of sight the moment Robert uttered the word wife.
Standing before Gladys, Esther, and Mike, Robert winced like a child listening for the crack of the switch. But the big woman spoke calmly.
“Zam told me that you were her brother. Now that I know you are her husband, I feel really insulted. She tells me a man has made her pregnant and then abandoned her. Then she brings the man back here. I find that a problem. Why should I pay your rent? Why should I bring fuel, food, a mattress, and supplies like that? When the child was sick, I paid the hospital bills. While you are just sitting here eating samosas. That is not fair.”
Robert found it hard to meet her gaze. His eyes floated from face to face, searching for a soft place to land and finding only stone. Behind Mike and Esther, two kids yanked on the branch of a tree, trying to shake out some fruit that was not ready to fall.
“I don’t object to you and your wife being together. I object to you asking me to provide for you.”
“I would like to say something,” Robert interjected. As he spoke, his hands formed a cage, the fingertips pressing together as if to keep a bird inside. “With everything you’ve said, I agree. You are our elder, our mother. But if you come here in the morning, you will see that I don’t do anything but get up and go digging on your land. I have told my wife that I will not work anywhere else unless our mother tells us to go away. Because she buys us fuel, she buys us—”
“I’ve never been your mother,” Gladys interrupted calmly, daubing at her face with her handkerchief square. “You’ve never come to properly introduce yourself to me. Your wife let me think you were her brother.”
“This is where the problem comes in,” Robert said, nodding, grasping for some point of agreement. “Because there is a misconception somewhere here. Your daughter made a mistake, because she did not tell you the truth.”
Gladys chuckled dryly, noting that Zam was no longer his wife but rather her daughter.
“Today’s my first day to stand before you and speak to you,” Robert went on, no doubt emboldened by Zam’s absence. “Your daughter did not tell you the truth, and I ask for your forgiveness.”
“My forgiveness is no guarantee that I will continue to look after your family for you. You cannot get up in the morning and tell me that your child is sick and ask me for money for upkeep. I won’t allow that.”
“I would just ask you to help us with small, small things,” Robert proposed, as though this were a significant concession on his part.
“I will no longer bring things like rice and food, because you are the man of the home. You should provide for your own family instead of waiting for me. It is very silly.”
“Old woman, we are very grateful, but—”
“How old are you?”
“I am
thirty-four years old.”
Gladys gave him a withering look. “No man of thirty-four can sit there and ask another person to look after his wife and his child.”
Robert’s mouth slackened, tightening on one side and drooping on the other, as though he were about to be sick.
“Me, I hate when people lie to me.” Gladys turned to Mike and Esther, speaking of the man before them as a hypothesis, an abstraction. “And when you are a man of thirty-four and you can’t mind your own life? You are not a boy at thirty-four years. Boys of twenty years are paying their own rent.”
She listed off all the ways she had provided for Robert’s family, from the salt in their food to the lamp on their wall, still without raising her voice. Robert’s expression suggested that it would have been easier for him if she had screamed in his face and stormed away—anything but this meticulous dissection: slow and painful, like plucking a live chicken, one feather at a time.
Gladys finished, turning her gaze back to Robert. “I don’t see how you can expect me to be funding your lives. As a man.”
Denuded now, he shriveled. Nearby there was a small snap as the kids broke a branch of an orange tree. Green fruit pelted the ground.
“You should find other work for your income. You must not just sit there with your woman and wait to be fed. It’s like you marry a girl and your mother-in-law buys you fuel!” This drew peals of laughter from the two women. For the first time in the conversation, Gladys’s voice grew loud. “Ehhhh! Shame on you!”
“That’s not the way, Madam,” Robert managed.
Esther asked dryly, “What plan do you have, as a man?”
Robert’s mouth opened a half inch and froze, like one of the stuck windows on the Volvo. Gladys was quite certain that this fellow had never had a plan. Zam had her hands on the wheel of this scheme; Robert was just the manual labor, loading the goods in the back.
“Get out of your box,” Gladys advised, throwing metaphors his way. “You’re packed in such a small box. Your brain is iced up. Your woman has put you in a bottle. You’re just locked up in a bottle. That’s how you are existing right now. Wrapped up on her hip.” She spoke in a child’s voice. “‘Zam, has Mommy has brought sugar? Has Mommy brought rice? Tell Mommy we don’t have fuel.’ A man of more than thirty years?”
Robert hung his head. “Old woman, I ask for your forgive-ness.”
Gladys sighed. Was this one incapable of any response except to ask for things? “We are forgiving, but we are telling you to grow up. Don’t just depend on me. You seem to think I’m made of money. Most months I earn only three hundred thousand shillings. Don’t you think I would love to dress up and look smart like other women? I don’t buy clothes because I’ve got so many obligations and people to take care of. It is not just Zam I am helping.”
“Thank you so much for your advice. You’re my mom.”
“You’re joking with me, calling me your mother. As if I have not had kids whom I’ve mothered?” Gladys shook her head, dismissing him. “If you don’t start being creative, you will be in problems. Sort your brain out.”
“Mom—”
But Gladys was already walking away.
NOW IT WAS Zam’s turn.
The girl was watching her from the veranda, rubbing a knuckle absently back and forth across her mouth as though trying to erase it. On the mat behind her, baby Maria slept sprawled like a spilled load of firewood.
Gladys headed for the car, opened the door, and stood with one hand on the frame, signaling her eagerness to leave this place. “Come here.”
Zam approached.
“You must stop this low-class behavior,” Gladys said, steadfastly refusing to look at her. “You are telling me you are going to the garden, but you are not digging. When Ezra and the other boys were here, they said, ‘Zam never goes to the garden. And sometimes she would not cook for us. We just ate jackfruit.’”
“I was cooking for them,” Zam insisted, without conviction. The lack of eye contact seemed to unsettle her; she could not get a clear view of her target. “But sometimes they would refuse to eat.”
“I’ve told you, change your ways.”
The confrontation was shorter than the one with Robert, but the points were the same. The sister-and-brother charade had been uncovered. “Mommy” could no longer be manipulated. Zam must reform or face drastic, albeit unspecified, consequences. The young woman was standing barefoot on some cold, cold ice. But her feet were also ice. She did not flee, she did not fight back, she did not cry. And unlike her husband, she did not apologize. She withstood Gladys’s castigation, not stepping back until the car pulled away.
“I AM VERY pleased with the progress on the building,” Gladys announced as they headed back toward the main road. “I did not expect the walls to be that high already!”
It was like that for Gladys. Her temper might burn as hot as a string of firecrackers, but it was just as quickly spent. Anger was a purgative, not a fuel.
Esther, however, was not so eager to move onto sunnier topics. “Zam and Robert have been together, you know,” she said. “All along. For five years.”
“That’s what Robert said?”
“Yes. When I remained there talking with him, that is what he said.”
“So he never abandoned her.”
“He never abandoned her. They have never been separated.” He had even been living with Zam in Kampala, Robert claimed, when Gladys had met her.
“What I really feel,” Gladys said, sighing, “is that I would have been happy if Zam had said, ‘You see, Mommy? The dad of my girl is finally here.’ I mean, if I’m helping you, why would you hide that from me? That annoys me.”
“For me, I’m not annoyed. I’m disappointed. It’s deeper than annoying,” said Mike. It was rare for him to be deceived by a person’s nature, and he was rattled. “I’ve just been shocked out of my skin,” he confessed. “The girl disappointed me. So disappointed me. I want to take the bread and sugar back!”
“Hah!” Gladys’s laugh was sharp, a stone pinging off the windshield. “Do you remember, I was so happy when Zam came here!”
What should be the consequences of such a betrayal? Most people would label Zam’s actions inexcusable. Dump her on the side of the road! they would shout. But Gladys could not kick Zam out. She knew this. She knew Zam’s family, knew where she came from. She had called the girl daughter; the girl had called her mother. It was not easy for Gladys to break the relationship. She had invested something of herself in this bond, even if the girl’s reciprocity was insincere.
And of course there was an innocent bystander at this traffic wreck: baby Maria. Gladys would be doing the child no favors if she threw Zam out. Zam was the mother and Robert was the father. They needed to stay together.
Even Esther, satisfied as she was to have her suspicions validated, was inclined to mercy. “You give her a second chance.”
“I want to keep her,” Gladys agreed. “But I am now concluding that she may be a person who cannot reform.”
She would not banish Zam, but from now on she would pay the salary to the husband, not the wife. If Robert had truly performed the work—as inadequate as it was—while Zam collected the salary, he had earned an opportunity to prove himself. Through him they would get their second chance.
They had lost one chance forever, though, this unreliable couple: they would never live in the house at the gardens. After all that had transpired, it would be folly to let them sleep there when it was finished, even for one night. Gladys knew those two would burrow in like porcupines, ready to flare their quills when roused.
AS THE VOLVO rolled down Masindi-Kampala Road, it began to chug.
The engine’s hesitation was subtle, but Mike knew his vehicle well. He pulled over to check under the hood. Esther, who worked with engines at the airport, joined him. Soon they were scowling at the air filter, which was caked in what looked like red powder. For drivers in Uganda, dust proved an inescapable nuisance, clogging filters a
nd valves, obscuring mirrors, and seeping into window seals and upholstery seams.
While she waited, Gladys tucked her well-used handkerchief into her purse and came upon a note. It was from some of her girls at Early Learning School. Sometimes the children slipped her little messages, enjoying the fuss she made over their writing. This one was a folded piece of lined notebook paper, on one side of which was written “From your girls to you.” Three stick figures with triangle skirts, labeled “Faith,” “Esther,” and “Rose,” were drawn in descending size. On the other side, the words “We love you” were surrounded by colorful stars, hearts, and trees.
Her sweet girls. It was just like them to give her a thank-you note just when she needed it. Unfolding the paper, she discovered three neat columns running down the length of the page.
Shopping List
Evelyn
Rose
Faith
soap
socks
Bags
Bag
Backets
soap
Shoes
Pencils
Backets
nickers
container
Pencils
colours
bottle
Pens
Backets
Net
Books
Pencils
bathing soap
note book
Socks
washing soap
Shoes (sundles)
books
Eats
Eats.
Eats
Thank you for caring for us.
“A shopping list! Oh my Godddd . . .” Gladys laughed and laughed.
It was not solace her girls had sent her way but motivation. They had their needs. Her boys had their needs. Douglas needed secondary-school tuition. Ezra needed money for exams and for transport to visit his village.
