Garden of the Lost and Abandoned

by Jessica Yu

  “I am not in school now.”

  “Eh?”

  “I dropped out when I heard my son was burned.”

  A dozen bystanders, many of them young, had collected in the compound. “Are your brothers and sisters here, Sylvia?” Gladys asked, scanning the group. “Let me get a photo of the family first, before it gets too dark.”

  Martin and Winnie perched on the two stools as Gladys tried to weed out the onlookers from the offspring. “This one is also your child? Okay, you come here. The little ones should get in the front. Are you Sylvia’s brother? No, I am pointing to that one . . .”

  In the end the photo contained the couple, Sylvia, and four of Sylvia’s siblings. “Are all of the children here?” Gladys asked, sizing them up in her viewfinder.

  “Some of the boys are not here,” replied Sylvia’s mother. “We have nine children.” Nine! No wonder they had so many sleeping huts.

  Gladys now had the full Who of the story: Martin and Winnie were the parents of nine children, of whom Sylvia was the oldest girl. Sylvia and the arrested Ivan were the parents of baby Benjamin, who had been abused by Ivan and Ivan’s first wife.

  The camera clicked away. No one smiled, nor did Gladys prompt them to.

  “Okay. Let us sit and have a talk.”

  AS THE NIGHT descended along with the mosquitoes, Gladys parsed out the tale of Sylvia and baby Benjamin, relying on the probation officer, Collins, and Mike, who also spoke the local dialect. Recounted at length, the What of the story was far more repellent than the case report had indicated. If God was in the details, so was the devil.

  Ivan Nabwami, a married father of four, was thirty-five when he set his sights on a pretty young girl in the village: Sylvia. When Martin and Winnie tried to chase him away from their home, he charged like a rutting buffalo. Brandishing a machete, Ivan hacked the family’s plastic kitchen basins to pieces and threatened to do the same to anyone standing in his way. The man’s behavior grew increasingly shocking. The family would find him in front of the house with his trousers down, shouting, “Don’t mess with me!” He would even shake his private parts at Sylvia’s mother.

  Soon Sylvia became pregnant by Ivan. She was fourteen.

  Contrary to the police report, Sylvia was hardly a “second wife,” and Ivan’s interest in her evaporated well before Benjamin was born. Martin went to him to demand money for his grandchild’s support: one million shillings to be paid within five months. While Ivan was not wealthy, he had employment as a brick loader for trucks. Even the magistrate insisted he must pay. But the man refused to produce even one shilling.

  Stymied by his defiance, Sylvia’s parents went to the police to try to get Ivan arrested for defiling their daughter. But they did not have her birth certificate, and the police said they could not prosecute.

  “They could not ascertain her age?” Gladys interjected. The girl was unmistakably a child. “But can’t you just look at her and see?”

  “You must prove it,” Mike said.

  Sylvia’s father played his last card. He went back to Ivan and insisted that if the man was unwilling to pay for Benjamin’s upkeep, Ivan would have to take the child into his own home.

  The bluff backfired. Ivan promptly snapped up the child. Now Sylvia’s family was left with no money and no baby.

  In his father’s home, Benjamin was left at the mercy of Ivan’s first wife, who had her own four children to take care of. The unwelcome stepchild was abused and neglected to the point where the authorities were alerted, bringing Collins into the case.

  “The police could not give the child back to Sylvia’s family because what? The matter was still before the court.” Collins had a way of turning a statement into a question, which he would immediately answer himself. Fearing that his listeners would lose interest, he rushed in like an actor meeting a perfunctory curtain call. “So what I did was withdraw the child from both parents. Because probation is given the power to remove the child from what? A place of danger.”

  “Tell us,” Gladys pressed, “what was the danger in the home where the baby was? What was really happening?”

  “The stepmom would go to do her work, locking the baby in the house. Likewise the father disappears. So Benjamin would be what? Left alone, helpless,” Collins explained. “I received reports that they would leave him in the kitchen, where he was defecating on himself.”

  “What I want to know is, didn’t they have some other children in the home?” asked Gladys. “Why was Benjamin being isolated in that kitchen?”

  “They always segregated him from the other children,” Martin answered. Even when the adults were home, they would sometimes tie the infant’s hands or pen him in the chicken house. “When they were taking porridge, they would leave him on the side. If he tried to get food, they would beat him. He would be beaten all the time.”

  “When we rescued the boy,” Collins confirmed, “the child was wanting in feeding.”

  “Malnourished,” said Gladys.

  “Malnourished. Bony. And he was burned. The whole of the buttocks, and this part.” He leaned forward, gesturing toward his lower back. At this, Sylvia turned her face away.

  “And how old was he? By then?”

  “About one year.”

  “Who burned him?”

  Sylvia’s mother, Winnie, spoke up. “The other children told us that the first wife burned Benjamin because he stole from her. He tried to take some of her food.”

  “A one-year-old baby? Can he steal food? He’s just hungry! How do you accuse a one-year-old child of stealing?” Indignation amplified Gladys’s words. She was attacking the messenger, but she could not help it. “That is wrong! Even a child of three years cannot be said to be a thief. If a child takes food, it is only because he’s hungry.”

  “We were told,” said Winnie, “that the baby would eat his own feces.”

  HOW COULD THESE adults starve a baby in their own home, let alone a baby who was the man’s son? A man who had employment and a chicken coop and a roof over his family’s heads? This was no consequence of poverty. Nor was it the neglect so common with an unwanted child. This was cruelty.

  Cruelty required an expenditure of effort. Cruelty was willful. It was not a lightning strike but a struck match.

  No matter how many times Gladys encountered such cases, she felt the shock of the offense. The breakdown of culture, the disregard for humanity—each was a crisp, stinging slap. While such behavior was not inconceivable, it was unacceptable. It affronted not her sense of piety but her sense of decency. Every collision with an Ivan sent a shudder through her foundation.

  But that foundation always held—cemented, as it was, in the childhood her grandparents had provided during those golden years before everything fell apart. It was through them that she knew how life should be. How life could be.

  Even with fourteen children under her grandparents’ roof, every mouth was fed. And at dinnertime, others often joined in. The long dining table had simple benches on both sides, so the family could always squeeze. Friends were excited to visit the reverend’s house, as they knew they would be invited to stay and eat. And how good it had felt to be able to invite them.

  To her grandy, feeding well had been a priority. That did not mean meat every day; it meant variety. Whatever was in season—maize, sweet bananas, pawpaws, mangoes, so many fruits and vegetables!—she would bring to the table. On special occasions she might serve a chicken.

  Gladys’s grandparents expected the children to heed and respect their elders, but they did not place the needs of the young below those of the old. In many rural homes, children ate last, on leftover scraps that gave them swollen bellies. Gladys hated to see that, especially when those young ones would be sent for water in the morning without food. Growing up, she and her siblings and cousins fetched water, but they always ate breakfast.

  Many homes raised poultry only to sell the eggs, but her grandy wanted her family to have that good food too. Whichever child collected the
eggs would keep his or her eye out for the ones that the chickens had pecked. The intact eggs Grandfather would take to Kampala, but the imperfect ones Grandy would serve for breakfast. Oh, the grandchildren ate well. Their grandy would not even allow the herdsman to dilute the milk.

  For all this apparent abundance, though, her grandparents had not been rich. They did not live a posh life. There was no treasure tucked away. Everything they harvested and earned was folded back into the welfare of those who depended on them, and the children in turn practiced the basic decency of sharing their better fortune. One measured one’s wealth not against the negative balance of others but by how far it could be spread. How could one enjoy filling one’s belly if a hungry baby sat crying in the kitchen?

  SADLY, IT SEEMED these days that Gladys’s grandparents, not the Ivans, were the anomalies of the world. What was surprising about the case of baby Benjamin was not the abuse but the arrest.

  “What I really wanted to know,” Gladys asked Collins, “I rarely hear about fathers being put in prison like this one—what was so special about this case?”

  “The father of the child is a bit arrogant, I could say. He doesn’t care, even if he is talking to a police officer,” the probation officer replied. “He was taken to court first for torturing the child. The court warned, ‘We are giving you back your child. But don’t repeat this.’” But then Benjamin was burned, and the court did not take kindly to Ivan’s disregard. “The magistrate said, ‘Oh! You are again back in court. After we warned you.’ So that is the reason why he is in what? Prison.”

  “For not obeying the court’s order.”

  “Yes.”

  So. The defilement, the harassment, the nonpayment of support, even the abuse of the child—these alone could not send a man like Ivan to remand. It was not enough to prey on the powerless. One had to annoy the powerful.

  THE THICKENING SKY was proving moonless, and Gladys strained to see the writing in her notebook. She still had questions, ones which she felt Sylvia could answer more fully in her own tongue. “Collins—sorry to bother you, as we came late, but there’s some things I really want to know. Sorry about the time.”

  The probation officer dipped his head graciously. In his profession, one counted days rather than hours.

  “In this case, okay, it was defilement,” Gladys began. “But did Sylvia go into this relationship with Ivan willingly? As someone in love? Or was she forced?”

  Collins addressed his translation to the girl’s mother, Winnie, but Gladys redirected his attention toward the girl.

  “Please, I want you to ask her the questions. What promises did that man give? Did he say, ‘I will marry you’? Did he say, ‘I will be catering for your needs’?”

  Collins translated. Sylvia listened, her eyes cast downward. Fireflies circled her head like embers stirred up by a breath.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “Like what? What did he promise?”

  “He said he was going to buy me shoes.”

  They waited for more, Collins leaning in to catch the girl’s soft voice. The crickets’ chorus was almost deafening now. Why are you people still out here? they seemed to shout. At least give us small things the night.

  “What else?” Gladys prodded gently.

  “He said he was also going to rent for me a place.”

  “Anything more?”

  “That is all. He would buy me shoes and rent for me a room.”

  “So when he said those things, that’s when you accepted to be with him?”

  Sylvia shook her head slowly. “I had refused, but he bought me a chapati and put some spells on it. After I ate it, I followed him.”

  In the pause that followed, the visitors exchanged looks. They could not easily see each other’s faces, but Mike’s expression was clear: Are you kidding me?

  People in these rural areas believed in charms and spells and curses and possession. Illness, infidelity, accidents, all could be traced to witchcraft. Even the jiggers infesting their children’s feet were sent by spirits. Medical doctors were less trusted than witch doctors. After all, could a physician restore health, enact revenge, or make a person rich?

  To Gladys, it made no sense. If a witch doctor could make someone rich, why was he living in a hut? Why did he require money to help people? And why were his children not in school? Still, belief in such magic had deep roots. As the granddaughter of an Anglican reverend, Gladys was raised with different beliefs, but she kept her opinions to herself.

  “How did you get to know that the chapati had charms on it?”

  The relayed question evoked no audible response. Sylvia’s silence spoke to her conviction that the man had cast spells on her food. Like her baby, Benjamin, she had eaten because she was hungry. And like Benjamin, she had gotten burned.

  “That Ivan. Did he even buy for you those shoes?” Gladys asked.

  The girl did not meet her eyes. “No.”

  Gladys turned to Collins, addressing him in reporter mode. “What comment do you have about such men who defile young girls? This situation, and what brings it up?”

  “In this community we have what? Poverty. Poverty has eaten up the communities. And you find that because of poverty, a girl is interested in someone who can provide, if her father cannot provide certain things. And what happens is even the father might say, ‘You go with him, he looks after you.’”

  “Eh! So the parents accept.”

  “Uh-huh. So you will find that they will not report a situation like this. This father might say to the man, ‘Okay, bring me one million shillings, and I will leave you alone.’ But if the man does not bring the money, that’s when they involve the police.”

  Collins spoke of poverty, but this family was not starving. Sylvia’s father was not grasping for a lifeline, he was trying to reap a harvest. A million shillings was a large sum, enough to buy a couple of cows.

  “So what you’re saying is, if Ivan had given Sylvia’s parents that one million, they wouldn’t have gone back to court. And we wouldn’t have heard of this story.”

  “Most likely.”

  Here now was the Why. Gladys had wondered why a mother would dump her baby of five months with a cowife. The decision had rested not with Sylvia but with Sylvia’s father. He had gambled with his grandchild and lost.

  IT WAS FULL night now, the sky illuminated sporadically by distant lightning and the blinking trails of fireflies. She knew that Collins should be headed home, that all the kids should be preparing for sleep, and that she should escape the mosquitoes attacking her arms and legs with carnivorous abandon. But she could not leave without giving a few minutes to Sylvia’s mother, who was not well.

  Out of earshot of the group, Winnie had confided that she had been having complications after surgery—a hysterectomy had not properly healed. Having written often about women’s health issues, Gladys thought she might be able to offer some advice.

  “When your uterus comes out, it can be from too many births,” she commented, hearing that the difficulties had started during Winnie’s pregnancies. “You have nine children. Why did you keep on producing when you were already having these problems?”

  “The trouble is, when I was delivering these children, my husband was not pleased. Because we were producing mostly boys. He doesn’t like boys.”

  “Your husband wanted girls.”

  “Yes, so I kept trying to produce girls. I had three boys, then I finally got this girl here. Now I have six boys and three girls.”

  The picture was becoming clear. Most men wanted boys, to continue the family and leave a legacy. But this father wanted girls. Why? For dowry. In marriage, girls could bring a price; boys had to pay that price. In an effort to balance profits and expenditures, this woman had pushed out baby after baby until her insides collapsed.

  “When this man showed up for Sylvia, I really cried,” Winnie said, her eyes shining in the dark. “We tried to get her away from him, but she couldn’t listen. It was because of tho
se charms on the chapati. When the man came to the house, the girl would follow him, because of those charms.”

  Gladys, keeping both hands firmly on the lid of her incredulity, asked softly, “Is your daughter safe? When Ivan gets out, can he come for her again?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You are the mother. What is your plan?” Gladys continued, more sternly now. If she did not say these things to this woman, perhaps no one else would. “That this girl will just be here to produce more children? Instead of studying?”

  “I would try to encourage her to study,” Winnie offered meekly. “But she is just sitting here now. She just sits.”

  “As her parent, can’t you at least take her to some people who can talk to her about family planning? Even if she gets another boyfriend, she does not have to get pregnant. She must control it.”

  “She doesn’t want a man. She says she hates men.”

  It was not a real answer, and they both knew it. The girl was only sixteen. Why pretend that she would never want a man? What other route of escape did Sylvia have?

  The crickets were in full force, their trill urgent and metallic, the ticking of an overwound clock. Gladys encouraged another visit to the doctor and slipped what little money she had into Winnie’s hand. The woman thanked her effusively but quietly, so as not to draw attention to the exchange.

  Martin approached, offering his hand in farewell. Behind him, his daughter sat on a stool, just as her mother had described. Wilted and inert.

  Gladys pressed: “Tell me, why is your daughter still not back in school?”

  “Right now she is not really understanding much of her education,” Martin said with a shrug. “She does not feel very clever. She can’t pick studies.”

  “Maybe she can learn some tailoring, or how to plait hair,” Gladys suggested. “It’s very, very wrong to keep her sitting here.” Sooner or later baby Benjamin would need to be resettled with family. How could his teenage mother provide for him, with her limited schooling and no skills?

  It seemed that Mike had had the same thought. He stood over the girl, counseling her with the intensity of a coach sending a player into a crucial match.