A Girl is a Body of Water

by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

  “Wait.” Nsuuta reached into the folds of the sash fastening her busuuti and retrieved a piece of paper. She folded it further, put it in Kirabo’s palm, and closed her hand over it. “Proof that she is your mother. Me, the moment Tom brought you, at six months old, to Nattetta, I went in search of Nnakku. I have been tracking her since, step by step.”

  Kirabo hugged Nsuuta again and whispered in her ear, “I am lucky you are my grandmother too.” And she thrust the piece of paper into her pocket without looking at it.

  “Don’t worry about things, Kirabo. Concentrate on your exams.”

  Kirabo forgot about the piece of paper until evening, when she counted the condolence money she had been given. When she unfolded the paper, she saw that it was discoloured with age. It had been filled out in ink: Place of Birth—MULAGO HOSPITAL. Date of Birth—01/05/63. Sex—F. Weight—8 lb. 16 oz. Time of Birth—9:27 AM. Mother—LOVINCA NNAKKU. Father—TOMUSANGE PIITU. Kirabo bit her lip at her father’s name. Such small things now triggered the tears. She scrutinised the chit. Nnakku once held this piece of paper in her hands. She once held me in her hands; how could she let me go? What she would not give to fly back to that May morning of 1963 and look at Nnakku and Tom and her newborn self and pretend death would never visit.

  7

  4 March 1983

  Nsuuta was right. Kirabo had been lying to herself. She woke up late the following day, and without thinking about it, got ready and set off for the taxi rank in Kampala. The sun was wicked. A part of her said it was unwise to find Nnakku when she was about to do her A-level exams; that Tom’s death was shock enough. But the other side said that it would be equally disruptive if she did not find her. Her mind would agonise over Nnakku and her family over and over. Best to see Nnakku and get her out of my system, she reasoned.

  •

  All Tom’s siblings and some cousins were still in Nattetta to make certain that Grandfather and Grandmother would cope. There were decisions to make as well. Firstly, there was no excluding Nsuuta from the family any more; she had cancer, and everyone knew Tom’s wishes. Then there was Nnambi, who had become a burden to the family. By the time Kirabo left Nattetta, rumour had it that if Nnambi wished to stay with her children they would move into Tom’s unfinished house. All the money coming from Tom’s job, the condolence money, and his working siblings’ contributions would be pooled to complete a wing of the house for them. But the money would not be given to her. Oh no. Beyond looking beautiful, Nnambi had only brains enough to cross the road without being hit by a car. What if she bought cosmetics with the money? If Nnambi was to find another man—after all, she was still young—she was welcome to leave. Of course, she would leave the children with their clan. Word had it that Aunt Abi would be the mukuza, the one to raise Tom’s children. She was already bringing up Kirabo, and she and Tom had been inseparable: she knew his wishes. If Widow Tom was not happy with that arrangement, she was welcome to leave. Everyone else was to check and keep an eye on the children, taking food or money whenever they could. However, not everyone would take their voice to Tom’s widow. If something was not right, Abi was to be contacted so Tom’s widow would listen to only one person. Tommy and Mwagale were going to boarding school. Miiro would pay their school fees. They would spend a part of their holidays in Nattetta with their grandparents and a part with their mother. Under no circumstances would Tom’s widow bring her “men” into Tom’s house and flaunt them in front of his children. She could love her men out of sight until she got married and left the family. Everyone agreed on one thing: Nnambi was lucky Miiro’s family was decent. Another family? With a wicked woman like Nnambi? As soon as Tom was put in the ground, ba ppa, they would have helped her pack her bags and shown her the way back to wherever she came from—Lilabe, don’t waste our time, kisirani. Kirabo had heard these things being discussed among family the night after Tom’s burial, but until Miiro stamped them, nothing was definite.

  •

  Kirabo arrived at the taxi rank and asked for the Jinja lane. Before she got to it, she heard a broker call, “Jinja, Iganga awo,” and she boarded.

  All the way to Jinja, she sat senseless, like a piece of luggage. Her heart refused to think about what she would do when she got there. But it did not stop her body from perspiring now and again. As the car sped through Mabira Forest and the fresh breath of the trees whipped her face, she wondered how often Nnakku travelled the same route. The forest gave way to the Kakira sugar-cane plantations. The cane was as skinny as reeds. Then tea estates, perfectly trimmed, rolled up and down the hills like a green carpet. Finally, they descended to Owen Falls and Kirabo felt lifted above the world. The Owen Falls Dam does that to you. The falls were far down below. She craned her neck, hoping that all the turbines were turned on. Finally, she was in Greater Jinja.

  If cities ailed, Jinja had sleeping sickness. Idi Amin’s sudden expulsion of whites and Asians back in 1972 had hit the city harder than anywhere else. In just over a decade, Jinja’s status as the country’s largest industrial city had become questionable. Buildings were crumbling. Boutiques sold bananas and fruit. Grocery stores had gossipy women twisting hair. Often, Kirabo peered inside a “supermarket” to find someone’s idea of a sitting room. She smiled to herself. Uganda was that woman who bleached just the face and imagined the rest of her body light-skinned too. Clearly, the government took care of Kampala, where foreigners stopped, and imagined away all the other towns. She walked towards a group of men wheeling bicycles with bright-coloured tasselled panniers. They saw her coming and rushed towards her—“Boda-boda yino … Most comfortable … Take mine, I am so strong you will not dismount on a hill”—some making a racket with the bells. Kirabo had thought the boda-boda bicycles were limited to the Busia–Malaba border. But now the phenomenon had crept as far inland as Jinja. She was certain they would never make it to Kampala. No one with self-respect would take a ride on them. But as she had no idea where Kisinja Road was, she got on the first bicycle and asked to be taken there. Especially as she did not know whether the road was called Kissinger or Kisinja.

  “I know everyone on Kisinja. Who are you going to see?”

  “A woman working for Save the Children.”

  “Oh, Muka Luninze? I know her. Have you been before?”

  “No.”

  “Are you her sister? You resemble.”

  Kirabo hesitated. “No, she is my aunt.”

  From Main Street, they joined Busoga Avenue, then Oboja Road. After a while, the man began to sweat from pedalling. Then he was steaming. Kirabo asked how far they had to go.

  “Almost there: a turn to the left and we are at her house.”

  “Tell you what, why not drop me here? I will pay the full fare.”

  Kirabo started walking. Kisinja Road was a bizarre place. Quiet and leafy, it had all the hallmarks of a former colonial residential area. All the houses were old European architecture with sprawling compounds. Some houses were abandoned, some were crumbling, some had been looted after the war, yet some had been renovated and were quite ostentatious. Kirabo had not decided what she would do when she got to Nnakku’s house; whether to peek and walk past or knock and introduce herself.

  She saw the eucalyptus tree first, and her heart raced. Then the huge ruin Jjajja Ssemwaka had described. Soon the black roof on Nnakku’s house appeared on the horizon. From the little she could see, Nnakku’s house had preserved the colonial facade.

  Kirabo slowed down. She had found the house too easily. Maybe it was not the one. Probably, she was on the wrong street. The house came closer. Her heart was loud. A neatly trimmed hedge. A porch painted in cream. The gate. She stopped, looked around, then tiptoed to the gate and peered through the grille. A car was parked on a ramp outside the garage doors. Plastic toys in the compound. No one outside. Should she knock? She stepped away from the gate and looked to the left, then to the right again; no one was walking down the road. Maybe Nnakku was not at home. Of course she was not at home—it was Friday. She co
uld knock, say she had been sent by her mother, and look around Nnakku’s house.

  A sound of a car ignition. A rod being wedged out. One side of the gate started to open. The other side of the gate opened too. For a suspended moment, Nnakku’s home stood wide open. Kirabo stood frozen. A car was coming, but her mind was far away. The car drove towards her. Then she realised and jumped out of the way. A woman was driving. She got to the road and stopped. She turned to look to her right and Kirabo stared into Nnambi’s snake eyes. A chill spread over her arms. Without a heartbeat of hesitation, the woman looked to her left. But Kirabo had seen it all: recognition, alarm, panic. Yet there was no pause in Nnakku’s looking to the right again and pulling on to the road. She turned in the direction Kirabo had come from.

  Kirabo turned and watched the car drive away. It got to the junction, took a right, and disappeared. Behind, she heard the gate close and the creaking of a rod being wedged in. Still she stood and stared at the empty road. Every part of her quivered. The sun beat so hard on the tarmac she smelled tar. Radiation danced off the road surface like a ghost.

  When she began to walk, she stepped into the depression of the driveway and almost lost her footing. Then she was up on the pavement again. She walked alongside Nnakku’s hedge, past another house and another. Her mind said, You came from the other direction, turn and walk back, but her legs refused. So, that was it, that was her. All her life, from the first time she asked about her mother, the first night she shot into the night sky and saw that light germinate, to consulting Nsuuta, to Tom’s house in Bugoloobi, to moving in with Aunt Abi, all those posters at St. Theresa’s, Tom dying, down to this moment, and that was her.

  Just then she saw Nnakku’s car coming towards her. She recognised the car—a Fiat Panda, white, UWP 939—immediately. Nnakku must have driven in a circle. She is coming for a second look, to make sure you have not gone into her house to disrupt her life. Look straight ahead, relax. You can even glance at her in a passing way, certainly no recognition. But then a wave of optimism swept over her. She did not believe her eyes before. She is going to stop and ask, “Are you Kirabo Nnamiiro?” As the car got closer, it slowed a little. Kirabo looked up, glanced at nothing, and walked on. The car went past. Kirabo heard it turn into the driveway behind her, a discreet horn. No voice calling, no footsteps running after her, just the wicked sun pounding the earth and the evil smell of hot tar. Kirabo turned the corner where the car had come from. She could see that Nnakku’s car was still at the gate. Ahead of her was the boda-boda rank. But Kirabo would not get angry at the fact that the boda-boda man had taken her the longer way.

  Just as she came to Bell Avenue, a car crept up behind her. Kirabo jumped. It was Nnakku’s car. She sprinted across the road. When she got to the other side, she turned and looked at Nnakku in an I know you would kill me way. But Nnakku wore sunglasses now. Kirabo kept staring, no longer pretending not to know her. Nnakku could not pull away because cars kept coming. She kept looking left and right, left and right, her car indicating that she was turning right. Then she noticed a space and stepped too hard on the accelerator. The car pulled away, jerky and loud.

  8

  “Thank God for Faaza Dewo’s generosity … we are so lucky to have him.”

  “Not just that, thank God Catholic priests don’t marry. If Faaza Dewo had had a family he would not have done all that for Widow Tom.”

  “Forget all that. Thank God the Catholic Church is rich. If he was one of our Potostante Anglicans, ho. Their priests eat the peels off their cracking lips like us.”

  That is how family talked. Since Tom’s passing, his siblings, cousins, and a few of the friends they had grown up with in Nattetta had begun to get together on Friday evenings, normally at Aunt Abi’s house, to drink and to keep an eye on each other. They talked about their childhoods, talked about Tom as if they dared not forget. They huddled together as if Tom had died because they had neglected each other. Kirabo, who by now was in her holidays after her A-level exams, learnt from their chatter that Father Dewo had not only smartened the annex of Tom’s new house, he had installed electricity, ready for Nnambi and the children to move in.

  After the three months’ notice Nnambi had been given to vacate the Coffee Marketing Board house ended, Aunt Abi told Kirabo to go to Bugoloobi and help Nnambi with the packing.

  •

  When Kirabo arrived, the lorry Father Dewo had sent to pick up Tom’s property was parked close to the porch. There was something washed-out about the house, the garden and everything. Inside, the house seemed bigger. It was dark, like a house that had lost electricity. Nnambi and her sisters were in the dining space wrapping china in newspaper. Kirabo greeted them, but they did not look at her as they answered. As an afterthought Kirabo added, “Nga kitalo ekya Daddy.” They glanced at each other. Perhaps they had not expected civility from her. One of them said, “Hmm, we should say that to you, Kirabo.”

  Nnambi had lost so much weight her neck was like a plucked chicken’s—long and thin. Her shoulder joints protruded. Nnaki the housemaid had left. Thank God Tommy and Mwagale were in boarding school: imagine losing their comforts, the heartbreak of walking away from their home. Kirabo asked Nnambi to point out the items that needed packing.

  •

  She started packing in the bedrooms. First, she packed Mwagale’s and Tommy’s things, then she went to the main bedroom and began with the bed. Folded the sheets and blanket, and piled the pillows on top. She unhooked the curtains, then the nettings, and folded them. For a while she was buried in the silence and coldness of the bedroom. But then she heard a car door bang outside. Moments later Kirabo heard the jingle of Tom’s car keys at the back of the house, then his footsteps in the corridor. She stopped and listened: nothing. She skulked to the door and peered into the corridor: nothing. She crossed into Mwagale’s room and peered through the window: there was no car parked outside. She crept back into the main bedroom, ashamed.

  Before she removed Tom’s clothes from the wardrobe, she asked Nnambi whether there were any she did not wish to keep. They could be taken to Batte. As Nnambi sifted through shirts and trousers, tears ran down her face. She put a pile on the bed. “Batte can have those.” Kirabo did not bother to hide her tears either. Yet they carried on sorting Tom’s clothes as if they did not hear each other’s pain, as if they were not weeping for the same person. Nnambi knelt on the floor and looked under the bed. She pulled out a few pairs of shoes and blew the dust off them. “I think they wore the same size. Take those as well.” She gave Kirabo three pairs and wiped the tears with the back of her hand. As she left the room, she glanced at Kirabo. “Thank you for coming to help.”

  “You don’t need to thank me for that.” Kirabo smiled, but she remained standing in the same place long after Nnambi had gone. Nnambi’s sheer loss of weight; you had to search for her beauty now. What did that mean for her future? Would she pull herself together and start working? Kirabo sighed and went back to packing. When she lifted the mattress from the bed, she saw, on the floor, a red can of Old Spice. She pushed the bed away, picked it up, and shook it. It was empty. She pressed the nozzle and it sprayed air. She smelt the nozzle and it was the scent of her father as she walked behind him. She searched the room and found more Old Spice tins and bottles, some blue, some white, of deodorant, aftershave, shaving lotion, shaving powder. It was not just the scent, it was the image on the bottle of the ship sailing away. She would keep those for herself.

  •

  When everything the family owned was on the lorry, Kirabo looked at it in disbelief. Apart from the unfinished house in Busega, Tom’s wealth did not amount to much. The fact that it could be packed in boxes, loaded on to a lorry, and driven away was disconcerting. You would never wrap up Grandfather’s wealth that way. Yet people in Nattetta who lived in houses they owned, built on their own land, who produced their own food, had envied Tom because he spoke English, drove a car, lived in the city, and drank Cinzano. Kirabo’s eyes began to open to th
e fact that poverty and wealth were constructs after all. Rural poverty was different from urban poverty. To city people, if you did not wear shoes and change clothes twice a day, you were poor. But in the rural, that was silly. Wearing a different dress every day meant doing a lot of laundry on Saturday, which meant fetching a lot of water. Yet here was Tom’s family with all the shoes and clothes, electric gadgets, expensive stuff, falling back on Grandfather, who neither had electricity in his house nor drove a car. But the way the world was going, people in the rural were beginning to see poverty from the city’s perspective, while city people were starting to see poverty through Western lenses.

  Kirabo and Nnambi’s sisters climbed into the back of the lorry and sat on the furniture. Nnambi got into the cabin with the driver and they drove out. The gate closed and the chain clinked as if they were coming back. Kirabo looked away. The clink of the chain hurt. She did not see the bungalows, the flats, or Bugoloobi Town. She could not bear to look at the Coffee Marketing Board building. The driver avoided the city and drove via the Kampala bypass, Nsambya, and Queen’s Way until they joined Masaka Road. In Ndeeba, plots narrowed, houses shrivelled, yet the population had tripled. Evening markets, toninyira, were laid down on the hard shoulder. They sold fresh produce and cooked foods, second-hand clothes and shoes, everything. In Nateete, the streets swarmed as if people had just poured out of a stadium. Hawkers sang their wares. The world here was squeezed.

  Kirabo looked away from the road and contemplated life. Since Tom’s passing, life spoke in a clear language. The imagery was brutal. Tom had been a god, like Buddha, huge and golden. Aunt Abi, Nnambi, Grandmother, Nsuuta, Mwagale, and Kirabo had sat around him in worship. Occasionally they had snapped at each other, wrangled, formed enmities, and built alliances around him. Now that the god had been pulled down, they were starting to see each other. Nnambi was no longer the evil stepmother but Kirabo’s siblings’ mother. Mwagale was not Tom’s brat but her sister. Nsuuta and Grandmother were two mothers who had lost a son. Even Aunt Abi was beginning to see Nnambi as a broken widow rather than a mujinni. Yet Tom had been a loving father, a caring brother, a good son, and even Nnambi could not say that he had been the worst husband. He had not made himself a god. They, the women, had.