Foreign Soil

by Maxine Beneba Clarke

  Millie snatched them from her angrily, sat down on the front step of the shop and ripped open the letter postmarked earliest. The young man sat down next to her, silent as she opened and read through each of the letters, removing the pound notes one by one until a pile of five or so were stacked under the heel of her right foot.

  “It gwan be our passage.” Winston smiled shyly at her. “Te bettah life fe woman like yeself. Fe Inglan. Mi send more. Every mont till wi depart. What ye seh, miss? Ye gwan come make a life fe yeself wid a young man dat love ye wild? Marry mi! Even though some will seh it is madness an ye don know mi well enough te be mi wife.”

  “Winston, mi gotta tell ye sometin’ true . . .” Fat tears streamed down Millie’s cheeks.

  Suddenly, he noticed the baby. How he’d not seen it till now he didn’t know. It was a tiny thing, couldn’t have been more than two months old, tied across the front of her white nightgown with a train of peach-colored linen. Winston’s heart stopped. He stared at it. Was it? Couldn’t be.

  “Who dat?” Winston’s eyes were wide. He sat rigid on the step, transfixed.

  “It Eddison,” Millie offered, tentatively. “Eddison William. But mi call im Sonny. Sonny fe short.”

  Foreign Soil

  THE DRIVER Mukasa had booked had gone to look for a luggage cart and Mukasa was busy speaking in Luganda to the woman behind the customs desk, so Ange decided to go and look for a toilet. As soon as she walked away from her boyfriend, a man dressed in the Entebbe International Airport uniform sidled up to her.

  “Gim sum din.”

  Ange stared at the man, petrified. This was it. She was being arrested. Somebody had somehow planted drugs on her, in her luggage. Images of a stricken Schapelle Corby being carted away by the Bali police flashed across her mind. She would be all over A Current Affair. There would be Woman’s Day covers. The man was speaking to her in Luganda, gesturing to her handbag and pockets.

  “I don’t speak . . . Let me go and get my . . .”

  Frustrated, the man rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “Money. Gim sum money. Or sum din else. You pay.”

  “Oh. Okay . . .” Ange wasn’t sure what the money was supposed to be for—maybe he was offering to carry their bags to the car. She and Mukasa already had the driver, but she didn’t think an extra pair of hands would do any harm. She only had Australian dollars on her but she opened her purse and gave him a five-dollar note. Glancing behind him to check whether anyone had seen the exchange, he quickly pocketed the note and vanished into the crowd.

  As Ange left the women’s toilet and started making her way back toward the customs area, a second uniformed man accosted her. He was short and dumpy, with what she thought might have been tribal scarring on his cheeks. His English was better than the first man’s.

  “My friend said you gave him something,” he said without blinking. “Now give me something too.”

  Ange stared at him, asked him to repeat himself.

  “Give me something, miss. Now, please. Right now.”

  Shit. Mukasa had warned her about beggars, but these men worked here, for Christ’s sake.

  “Miss. Miss! Your husband is wanting you.” The driver arrived then, shooing the man away.

  “He’s not my husband.” She wasn’t sure why she’d bothered to correct him.

  “Well,” the driver looked at her disapprovingly, “that man you came here with. The doctor. He is asking where you are. He is waiting on you.” He gestured back toward the customs area. “Miss, if anybody here see you handing out money for free, your purse is going to be very empty.”

  Ange felt the heat rising in her cheeks, knew she must be flushing red. “Please. Don’t tell my boyfriend.”

  * * *

  Mukasa Kiteki had walked into the George Street salon one morning, asking for a haircut. The senior stylist, Penelope, had agreed to the cut then left him standing at the front counter while she hurried out back.

  “There’s a guy out there,” she said, reaching for a cigarette, ignoring the no-smoking signs Dean had pointedly placed in the staff area. “He wants a haircut. I can’t do it.”

  “Why not? He an ex-boyfriend of yours or something?” Dean had quipped. “God knows, we must have styled hundreds of them.”

  “No more than yours,” Penelope replied matter-of-factly. “He’s a black guy. I’ve never cut an Afro before. We never did that at college either.”

  “Don’t look at me!” said Dean, looking over at Ange. “Go on, Angie. It’s just hair, right? How hard can it be?”

  The man was around six foot, with chocolate-brown skin and a wide white smile. Ange ushered him to a seat and he lowered himself into it slowly, watching her in the mirror as she nervously set out an array of hairdressing tools. He seemed quietly amused. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to eat you. Just use the clippers. All over on a three blade, then tidy up the edges with the scissors or that razor thing.”

  His English was perfect. Ange felt silly for being surprised about this. There was a gentle accent wound around his soft, rumbling vowels. The way he spoke took Ange back to year nine choir practice at Mount Druitt High School. It was as if each word had a pitch, was notated somewhere in his brain for length, feel, tone. Ordinarily, Ange hated the obligatory chitchat that accompanied her job. She didn’t give a fuck who thought their husband was having an affair, or whether red or burgundy was going to be this winter’s must-have coat color. But she wanted to hear Mukasa speak again, so she racked her brain for suitable questions.

  “So, where are you from?” Fucking stupid. She might as well have just pointed out that he was black. It had just kind of slipped out.

  Mukasa had rolled his eyes slightly, looked down at the salon floor. Not in a mean way, but in a way that told her that question was probably the standard opening to most of his conversations.

  “You know what?” she said quickly. “Seriously, I have no idea why I even said that. You must get so many dopes asking you where you’re from. As if you want to be recounting your life story every five fucking minutes.”

  Mukasa looked up at her in the mirror. His mouth hung open for a while. “No, umm . . . it’s okay. I’m actually from . . . You know what?” He laughed, his cheeks swelling against the pull of his smile. “You’re absolutely right. Ask me something else. Let’s start properly.”

  Ange liked the way he said that, start properly. As if it wasn’t just a haircut. As if this were the beginning of the rest of their lives.

  “Well. I don’t know. The pressure’s on now!” She slotted the blade-three attachment into the clippers and plugged them into the outlet. She could see Penelope in the background, raising an eyebrow at her flirting. “I guess . . . why this hair salon?”

  He laughed again, and she was surprised at how giggly it was—shoulders trembling into his chin. “Oh, so profound.” He nodded his head in mock seriousness.

  “Okay. You’re taking the piss out of me now.” She smacked at his shoulder.

  “If you really want to know, I tried every salon between here and Chinatown. You are the only person who agreed to tame this mane.”

  “Oh.” Ange looked over at Penelope, but her manager had suddenly become intensely interested in sterilizing a set of combs.

  By the end of the buzz cut, each of them had come away with the skeleton of the other’s story. He’d said to her that she didn’t seem to belong in a place like this. Quietly, as if the fancy salon was some kind of low-class brothel.

  “Yet here I am, belonging,” she’d laughed.

  Mukasa’s hair hadn’t felt at all like Ange thought it would. It was cotton-wool soft, with a lot of give: an easy trim that had taken only fifteen minutes.

  “Any chance you’re free for dinner this evening?” he’d asked, after settling the bill.

  Ange wasn’t free. She was supposed to be meeting some of the girls at Bondi Icebergs for Penelope’s birthday drinks, but Penelope was out of earshot, and something in Mukasa’s face had made her say sh
e was. All her life, Ange had felt she didn’t belong to the drudgery around her, to her ordinary world. But here, right in front of her, was a chance at something remarkable.

  * * *

  It was stifling in the airport. The air-conditioning was apparently on the blink. The carefully sculpted haircut the Toni & Guy’s staff had given Ange as a farewell present had flopped. The feathered chestnut ends stuck limp and sweaty to her neck as the driver walked with her back to the customs desk. She’d have been better off leaving her hair long—at least then she could have tied it back. The line behind Mukasa had grown to wind right round the back of the large room in a mazelike coil. He looked up, annoyed, as Ange joined him.

  “I’d hate to be working in there right now.” Ange gestured toward where the customs staff were busily opening cases and handing out forms.

  “Oh, they do all right. Don’t they, my friend?” Mukasa looked pointedly into the face of the man behind the desk in front of them. Her boyfriend had that impatient look on his face, the one he got at the grocery checkout, or in theater queues way back in the beginning when he used to take her out on dates at every opportunity. He jiggled his right leg, flexed his fingers. He didn’t like it when things took too long. Mukasa never liked waiting, for anything.

  * * *

  The evening they left Australia, Mukasa and Ange had stopped off in Mount Druitt, to say one last good-bye to Ange’s dad and mum. Mukasa had insisted on staying in the car with the engine running. There had been more tears, of course. Ange’s mother was distraught, shaking as she held on to her daughter.

  “Come on, Mum. I’ll be back to visit by the end of the year. Kasa will look after me.”

  “Yes.” Her mother had taken a deep breath, stepped back and wiped her eyes with her sleeves. “I guess he will.”

  As they pulled out of the driveway, thunder had rolled across Mukasa’s face. “Thirty-five minutes,” he’d said. “Thirty-five minutes I’ve been waiting out here by myself, Angela.”

  “I was saying good-bye. You could have come in.” Ange sniffed, wiping at her eyes with a tissue. The drive would take fifty minutes at most, and there were still two hours till check-in.

  Mukasa’s hands were gripped tight around the steering wheel, his thin brown fingers turning almost tan as the blood drained out of them. “What for? So I could listen to your parents weep about me abducting you to the end of civilization?”

  Ange had stared at him, shocked. This person wasn’t Mukasa. He was always so gentle, respectful even. He was stressed out, that was the problem. He hadn’t been back home for almost four years and had been busy frantically organizing things so the new hospital could open on time. Besides, she could hardly blame him for not wanting to witness her parents’ grief at her leaving the country for a year. His own parents had died in a car crash in Kampala when he was just fifteen.

  * * *

  The customs officer stared back at Mukasa, unblinkingly.

  “Can you check your suitcase, Angela?” Mukasa snapped, turning the open bag around to face her.

  Ange lifted up a few T-shirts. The suitcase was less full than she remembered. Her jewelry box and the souvenirs she’d brought for his family were missing. After conferring with her, Mukasa listed the items. The man looked blankly at them and shook his head.

  Mukasa cleared his throat angrily and pulled out his wallet. After counting through with his fingers, he slapped a wad of money down on the desk.

  “How much is there?” the man asked quietly without looking up from his paperwork.

  “One hundred thousand shilling,” Mukasa said through clenched teeth.

  Forty dollars. Ange guessed it was probably worth it.

  In one quick movement, the man slid the money over the desk and into his pocket. He rose, taking the suitcase with him into the back room.

  “This fucking piece-of-shit country,” Mukasa raged under his breath. “No wonder it’s going to the dogs. No wonder no one can get anything decent happening here!”

  Guilty as it made her feel, hope turned over in Ange’s stomach. In the three years she’d known him, Mukasa had never criticized his own country before. Much as she loved him and wanted to be part of his world, at the back of her mind she had worried that once they arrived he’d never want to leave this place. She feared that to be with him, she’d have to forgo everything that was hers. Ange felt ridiculous whenever these fears niggled at her. Mukasa had hardly given her any reason to believe he’d ever do anything other than try to please her.

  After a few minutes, the customs officer returned with the case.

  “Can you check the suitcase, please, Angela?” Mukasa undid the zip.

  The case was fully packed again, including the missing items. Mukasa looked at her, one eyebrow raised. “Welcome to Uganda,” he said.

  * * *

  For the first two years that Ange was dating Mukasa, it had all been a bit too Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner for Ange’s liking. Not that she blamed her parents; they weren’t racist by any stretch, but Mukasa certainly wasn’t what they would have expected for their only daughter—their only child. From the moment they realized he was African, her mum and dad hadn’t wanted to know anything about him. For almost two years, they’d closed their ears to their daughter’s happiness. Ange had learned not to even mention Mukasa when she visited them. Then, out of the blue, her father rang and invited Mukasa and her over for Friday dinner.

  Her olds had been courteous, as they were with all their visitors, but every time Mukasa turned his back they’d both sneaked furtive glances at him, as if they couldn’t quite believe what they were looking at. Ange couldn’t remember any other person with brown skin ever having been in their family home. When Mukasa excused himself to use the bathroom, her mother’s shoulders had slumped, deflating with the effort of it all. In the end it was too much for her father. He worked his way through half a case of beer and started banging on about how beautiful Ange was, how she looked just like her mother had when he had first met her.

  “I guess that’s not strange, is it?” he’d slurred. “I mean, really everybody wants to have children—a family—that look like them. Don’t you think, Cash?”

  “It’s not Cash, it’s Kasa.” Ange had been mortified.

  “I told you it wouldn’t go well.” Mukasa had shrugged as she walked him out to his car.

  “I’m really sorry about that,” she said. She wished they hadn’t come separately, that she could climb in the passenger side and drive away with him in solidarity.

  “Don’t be,” he said. “It’s the first time they’ve met me. All I am right now is a big black penis that’s boning their precious white princess.”

  He was laughing when he said it, but Ange could hear the bitterness behind his words. She’d kissed him through the driver’s-side window. When the car pulled away, she noticed her parents’ neighbor staring open-mouthed across the lawn, a look of revulsion distorting her face.

  “What does he do, anyway, to be able to afford a car like that?” Her mum was still staring through the lounge-room curtains after Mukasa when Ange came back inside.

  “He’s a doctor,” Ange snapped as she gathered her coat and bag.

  Her mother and father had looked at each other in disbelief. She’d promised she would stay the night, spend some quality time with them, but she couldn’t. She just couldn’t.

  * * *

  Kasubi, Mengo, Nsambya, Nakasero . . . No matter how many times Ange repeated their names to herself, she could only ever remember three or four of the Ugandan hills at any one time. The entire first month in Uganda she spent in front of a map book. She had no need to leave the house on Makerere Hill, and didn’t really want to. The house was a six-bedroom walled compound that had been in Mukasa’s family for generations. He had grown up there, until his parents’ accident, when he’d gone to live in Nairobi with his mother’s sister and her children.

  Though Mukasa scoffed at her fear, Ange felt safe at the compound in comparison t
o the Kampala streets. On the outskirts of the city, beggars and hawkers confronted her at almost every turn. They leered through the windows of the car, skin thick with the sweat and dust of not having washed for weeks, black dirt visible between their outstretched fingers. Ange knew they couldn’t help it, and felt bad that they disgusted her so much. She just wasn’t used to seeing people like that.

  “That’s what actual poor people look like, Ange. That is called poverty. Real poverty is not welfare cheats in hundred-dollar jeans and cozy housing-commission flats.”

  She hated the way Mukasa said it, laughing at her as if she’d been born sucking on a silver spoon. What had happened to his parents was a tragedy, but he was the one who’d been born into wealth.

  At the house in Makerere there was a housekeeper, a driver, and a gardener to cater to just the two of them.

  “This is ridiculous,” Ange guffawed when Mukasa had introduced her to the staff the first morning. “I have two hands of my own, and there’s nothing else for me to do here but housework.”

  “People will talk if we don’t have enough help,” Mukasa said.

  Ange laughed again, thinking he was joking, but Mukasa looked at her with pity, as if she wasn’t capable of understanding.

  “One day, you will realize what it’s like here,” he’d said, closing the door softly behind him as he left for work. The staff had just stood there, staring expectantly at her.

  Since the second day they’d been in Uganda, Mukasa had left for work at six in the morning, and returned at around eight at night. “Things, they will get easier,” he assured her, “when the hospital is up and running.”

  But three months later he still rose at dawn and headed off to work, leaving her in the house with the help. Ange spent hours on the phone with her mother, and Penelope and Dean back at the salon, lying through her teeth about how well things were working out.