But Charles is only on a journey. His chloroform dreams are vivid and joyful. He laughs and bounces on tree branches with boys his own age, carefree and weightless. No danger. No gravity. He floats on a beam of sunlight, high above the river that he sees right through to fish and frogs. Spies animals in their dens and birds in their high balanced nests. Visits and plays. Feels no fear. Excitement is in the very air he breathes as he floats this way through wavering treetops.
Kanyunya is very grateful to Dr. Scharf and, after two days, returns home without bravado, where he gradually loses all focus, becomes unkempt and uncaring, soon looking like a soft over-ripe fruit dropped from the lean limbs of his sturdy children. He stops riding both his bicycle and his motorcycle. Becomes increasingly sombre and taciturn. Wanting his son and his wife back. But they remain at the hospital for over a month.
Charles, on the other hand, enjoys the luxury of having his mother as a personal nurse, cook, and caregiver. He sleeps on a bed and she on a mattress on the floor next to him. What young boy wouldn’t enjoy this special status?
Mother has brought her sigiri, a portable oven, along with charcoal and kerosene. When lit, it produces hours of heat. Charles feels he can go anywhere. As long as he can bring Mother and the sigiri.
Kekinoni works her small oven tirelessly in the hospital, producing excellent meals both for Charles and many of the security people who take grateful advantage of her generous culinary presence. St. Jude’s — with its pristine staff, its manicured lawns and ornamental “rapids” and “falls” — has become host to an important man’s wife and son. And it is Charles’ own private amusement park. There are workers in the grounds and gardeners with huge mowers. The hospital’s many acres appear endless and open with no fences holding in or keeping out.
But the pain is real. Even in such a luxurious environment. Dizziness for a week after the chloroform, one hand stiffened by a metal plate, held in place with a sling. All the while, Dr. Scharf, the high priest of healing, remains vigilant and kind.
Dr. Scharf, Kekinoni learns to her delight, is also a religious man. He prays. And encourages his patients to do likewise.
“Why is the hospital called St. Jude’s?” Charles asks him one day when they are wandering in the little chapel together. The doctor does not hesitate in this still white place of high arches and tiny crosses.
“Because St. Jude is the patron saint of hopeless causes, my boy.”
Am I a hopeless cause? wonders Charles. Am I supposed to give up now? Is my life really over?
In the weeks that follow, Charles realizes he must somehow get home. Dance his way back. Sing it out, flash fire all the way home.
Find the flame tree inside. His deeper light.
2. MASKS
WHEN HE ARRIVES HOME, Charles finds the whole village alight with its own small fires. He feels their intensity. Bright and hot. A restless reckless burning all around him. Everything is unsure. Flammable. Dry tinder about to ignite.
Fierce little scrub fires of what people are calling “national independence” flicker everywhere. Smouldering sullenly. Flaring dangerously. Uganda, they say, is ready to burst into flame. And such talk. A federation of Britain’s three east African territories bringing Kenya, Tanganyika, and Uganda together under one flag. Even the racist whites in Kenya are being challenged by the Mau Mau under Jomo Kenyatta.
Everywhere villages tremble in anticipation. The Kabaka, however, keeps refusing to cooperate with the national independence movement, being more interested in a free and independent state. Other leaders watch Kabaka’s every move.
Kanyunya, like all colonial bureaucrats, supports Kabaka but sees trouble whichever way he turns. Suspicions grow daily. And at home, Kanyunya has also overstepped his borders announcing that he will take a second wife. Not a Christian thing to do but legal within traditional structures. Kekinoni knows of her. She has been his mistress for years. He had already set her up in her own house. It is an open secret and now — as unrest boils up all over the country — Kanyunya’s open secret festers inside the family. A new and younger woman.
Charles and Debra are torn and hate having to share Father this way. In the house, Kekinoni stays silent. But as the political debate roars on outside, Kanyunya finds his family unwilling to deal with a second wife. Nevertheless, he marries her, brings her home, gives her a room in their house, and insists the children call her Stepmother.
Kekinoni suggests to Charles and Debra that this new woman is a witch casting spells under their roof. Her chanting in the shower rattles their nerves. It is part of a curse that could kill them all or make the family’s next generation infertile. She suggests that items Stepmother leaves around the house possess an evil spell: beads, small calabashes, coins. She cautions Charles not to touch these things: “A witch can transfer her power to objects.”
“Do you really think Stepmother is a witch?” Charles asks Debra one day. “She can’t be a real mother,” he reasons. “Father quarrels with her all the time. I’ve also seen the shrine she brought with her, the black pot with bloodstains. And the staff she carries is magic. I’ve seen her shake it.”
And so the children secretly but regularly burn or bury a constantly replenished collection of tainted, harmful objects that represent the animist world they also believe in. A non-human world that they are convinced Stepmother inhabits. A monstrous unnatural place of uprooted trees and disfiguring disease. Their own world turned terrible by the witch who anwers Father’s needs.
Even the priest wags a finger at Kanyunya, saying he is being un-Christian. After eighteen months of internal warfare, Kekinoni finally challenges him directly.
Stepmother must go.
In front of the whole family, the woman is told. Kanyunya can no longer fight the opposition. Stepmother, too, threatens. Then cajoles. Then bargains with Father. Finally begs.
Driven to the limit, Kanyunya grabs her by the shoulders, shoves her towards the door and literally throws her out. The children toss her possessions into the dust after her: keys, clothes, the dreaded black bowl.
Mother sits down quietly and prays. Sings a hymn.
Charles watches Stepmother on the road. She is pounding a stick on the ground. Calling down curses. What surprises him now is her appearance. Suddenly she bears no resemblance to the witches of his nightmares. He sees defiance and strength in this real woman with her head flung back and arms stretched wide. He watches Stepmother move slowly away, wrapping her glittering garments around her and striding off, staring straight ahead. Like an offended queen.
But if she is not a witch, who is she?
National chaos crackles dangerously inside and outside their village. Independence is the cry everywhere. Religion, politics, and economics fuse and contest fiercely. Protestant parties emerge. Catholic parties. Islamic parties. Marxists. Capitalists. Some blame merchants from India for Uganda’s economic troubles. Some blame Kabaka. Others attempt to raise Kabaka to national power but are met with hostility in several parts of the country.
For Charles, however, the most important thing is graduation from junior school. Nearly fourteen, tall and handsome, still the best dancer around, he has completed his coursework and is almost ready for middle school. Proudly he attends his graduation ceremony, with Kekinoni and Kanyunya present.
Next morning, before the sun has fully risen, he walks slowly back to the school for the last time to collect his diploma. Facing the building that has held him captive since he came to the village, he studies the hot concrete box with metal shutters, still baking under a tin roof. He cannot make sense any longer of this space that held him sweltering over numbers and names. The dates of important events. The dilemmas of Hamlet.
The air is damp with morning mist. Far off trees wave like clouds, lifting early walkers lightly along with their bundles at the edge of this vast dusty patch. It is hazy, the light soft and grey. Under a huge fanning tree, Charles’ reverie
is broken by a woman’s gentle voice. Very close.
“Kiti. Why are you back? You have graduated. There is nothing more to learn here.”
He turns, sees a woman’s shape in the shadows and sun. Tall, shimmering with colour. A dark purple skirt rustling jaggedly against indigo. Etched contours of moon and stars hover like dimmed ghosts of some long past night. Her shoulders shine in bright yellow. She is the sun before it rises. The sky after storm.
Stepmother.
Months have passed since her leaving. Now with her gleaming hair and firm round face, she is looking at him anew with sad eyes and questions. Who has she become? This tall woman whose ancestors walked with the same herds his did. Had she followed him this morning? Does she live beneath a tree? At the school?
“Come and sit, Kiti,” she says to him softly. “We haven’t spoken in such a long time.”
She studies him. Vulnerable but almost a real man.
“You are so much like your father,” she says. Her smile is smooth as ivory, soaring high into the complicated weave of her eyes. She is amazed at the long legs on this slender stem. She touches him and he is spellbound.
“Where… ?”
“I live nearby,” she says. “Beyond.”
He has no idea what she means by “beyond,” but she has mesmerized him, and when she begins to walk in that direction, he wants to go where she is taking him. Birds chirp around them. A dog barks somewhere near. The morning is a soft cottony curtain. Together they walk into a small shack, her place beyond what he knows.
She sits on her bed, her long legs uncovered as her skirts part casually, caressing him now as she did his father. Springing him awake. He comes alive.
He has touched himself there before but nothing like this. His body feels like water. He is scared. Has she bewitched him after all? He cannot think clearly. He cannot think at all. He is flooded with feeling and fear.
“Kiti, don’t be afraid. I will not hurt you.”
“But you are a witch,” he says
“No,” she responds. “I am a woman.”
She puts his hand on her breast. Pulls his lips down to her as she would a nursing infant. He suckles while her hand rubs him into hardness. Rubs him and pulls him gently. Changing him. Then he explodes. There is a fountain in the middle of him.
“It’s okay. Yes. It’s good. You are singing now like your father,” she says. “You are bursting open like a flower for the sun. Always remember it was I who set you free.”
Charles is wet. He is terrified. He pushes her away. He doesn’t know if he can stand. Or should.
She smiles, waving before his eyes glistening hands, hands that have just squeezed his own juices out of him. “Yes, Kiti. Just like your father.”
He leaps up and runs. He hears her laugh. “I have your soul, now, Kiti,” he hears her say. “I have your soul.”
He feels suddenly invisible. Is it really his own feet ripping through the undergrowth, tearing vines and creepers? Is this really his heart pounding? Where has she taken him? Where has he been with her?
Wherever it is, he senses there is no turning back. He stops. Smiles. Likes this new sensation. Wants to know this experience. To wake up again. And again.
Independence comes to Uganda with Kabaka as the new national ruler. The Baganda have taken ultimate power. Is that better than the British? he wonders. He reads of Milton Obote, independent Uganda’s first Prime Minister. What will they do with the big portrait of the Queen of England at primary school? Will they still have to sing “God Save the Queen”?
Life is changing more than he knows. When he thinks of middle school, a door opens in his mind through which he is more than ready to walk.
Since he will have to travel a distance now, why not go all the way to the best middle school in Masaka, a large city over twenty miles away, just across the equator. He could eventually live in his own half of the globe far from the family. But the Masaka School is full.
Charles’ next choice is the even more famous Mengo Collegiate in Kampala, the far away capital. Built on the edge of Kabaka’s own territory in the Mengo district, begun by the British as a mission school and therefore attached to the Protestant Church of Uganda, it is old and impressive and equated with the success of its graduates, from Kabakas to film stars, from politicians to international football heroes. Even dancers. Could he really get in? After all, his own father went there. When things were very different.
Charles has seen pictures of the main building at Mengo surrounded with graceful date palms, a swimming pool, many white teachers — all bald with spectacles and trim moustaches — their Ugandan assistants in handsome hats with tassels and school crests looking serious and satisfied. He applies on his own. Father grudgingly agrees to sign the forms.
In midsummer, the news comes. Mengo will take him.
“Impossible,” roars Kanyunya. “I cannot afford that boarding school. I went along with the application because I believed you wouldn’t get in. If your grades were not good enough for Masaka, how could it be!”
For the first time, he realizes Father has alternate plans for him — to take up the paternal torch, work for the government, be transferred from small village to small village. Care for the people under his control. Bear responsibility and worry. He no longer needs the very British Mengo.
Uganda is independent now.
But Kampala is too exciting a possibility for Charles. With its huge population. With its big cars and lights and roads. Life is fast and dangerous in Kampala. There are even grand restaurants. And people from everywhere in the world.
Charles is obsessed with his own vision of future now. He thinks of it day and night, filling his fantasies with what facts he can glean from teachers and visitors, from pictures.
The great city of Kampala flung out over fifty red hills. Curving summits twisting and swerving with churches, mosques, and cathedrals. Makerere University spreading across graceful grounds and colleges of learning, its sculpture gardens designed in fantastic forms, its exhibition gallery filled with vases that almost hum to the painted rhythm of dancing bodies twirling tirelessly around them.
He studies every aspect of the capital.
Kampala, glowing prosperously through electric nights, buzzing with light. Kampala billowing down to its elegant and charming bay, its botanical gardens and its glorious parks and lily ponds. Kampala, its handsome crowned head held high over dense rain forests that heave and sigh around its many-coloured feet.
Charles and Kanyunya use the whole summer to fight it out.
One day, Kanyunya announces that he and Charles will visit Mengo but only after he also visits Masaka where he has some government business. Charles is sceptical but has no choice. The next day, since Kanyunya’s official car has been forfeited to independence, they walk in silence as far as the bus stop on the main road. Father and son have lost their ease with one another. Kanyunya is no longer his son’s only link to the world. Charles has his own ideas now. He knows what Stepmother gave Father. And what she took from him. There are no secrets left. Kanyunya’s star has shifted in his son’s heaven.
Once on board the bus, they sway and doze to the incessant snorting and lurching of the awkward rusting conveyance. Charles thinks of Suna and how it would be to sit on her back all the way to Kampala if Father won’t pay for transportation. He wonders if he could ride her. She could be no more reluctant than this bus.
After a long silence, Charles looks up at Kanyunya and suddenly sees an old man. For a moment, he feels guilty for quarrelling about schools. He misses the Father who parted dust with his motorbike and hailed everyone in sight, who made and gave gladness. But this is the same Father who now stands in his way. Suddenly weary and disappointed and angry. And disinterested in his British alma mater. Still the master of his own strong will.
It is the rainy season. The bus drops them on the outskirts o
f Masaka, just as big drops begin to spot the red murram of the road. Broad green leaves shake and shine with the rain. It drums on the tin roof of a small bar, a plaster shell of pale yellow with a blue awning, open to the street. Father and son duck in quickly and seat themselves on stools. Kanyunya orders beer for himself and a Coke for Charles. There is no one else in the place as the rain pounds down. Chickens squawk and wander through.
“Can you imagine this boy not wanting to go to school here? Masaka is a great town,” says Father to the bartender.
“It certainly has schools,” the man agrees, glad of the business. “Four collegiates and one technical institute. Which one will you attend?” he asks Charles.
“None,” comes the flat reply.
They walk a little further along the Masaka Road, pause at the Uganda Company Limited Store with its broad wooden verandah and tiled roof whose wrought iron filigree curls fancifully into the sky. The rain has stopped. As the door squeaks open, they are almost blinded by the sun bouncing off polished wooden floors. There is a sharp smell in the air.
“I know the manager here,” says Kanyunya. “He is a very smart man. He has made a lot of money from dry goods.”
Charles stares amazed at the rows of bottles and jars, tall cans and flat tins. There is a ladder on wheels that climbs the walls up to the roof. He is fascinated by the many spools of coloured thread — every shade imaginable — arranged like stars shining from their deep dark shelves. Now he knows where the rainbow women of his childhood come from, moving in their bright robes. And Stepmother’s vibrant cottons. Maybe Father is right. A man who sells such things should be listened to.
They talk with Father’s friend about football for a short time. Then father asks the question. “Amoti, what do you think? Kiti wants to go to school in Kampala. Wouldn’t Masaka be better?”
“I’m sure it would be cheaper,” says Amoti. “But Kampala is special. My son went to Kampala. Did it against my better judgement. And he has a very good government job now. Unfortunately, I never see him anymore. Didn’t you also go to school there?”
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