Kintu

by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

  And so Babirye did.

  When Suubi sat down on her bed, tiredness spread all over her body like a wave. She felt like lying down but instead picked up a magazine she had already read and flipped through the pages. In the end, she lay on top of her bed and felt pains in her neck. She remembered that she had felt similar pains earlier in the day. Perhaps her head had slipped off the pillow awkwardly the night before. She put down the magazine and closed her eyes.

  A wave of shivers hit her. They gripped her skin first and then exploded like fireworks of chilled tiny darts leaving a spread of goose pimples. She held her arms across her chest as if to trap the fleeing heat. She looked outside to see whether rain was coming. There were no clouds. She rocked her body to regenerate heat.

  She was leaving the toilet for the third time that evening—the problem with drinking a lot of water—when the shivers launched another attack. This time, they crept right through the skin, through the flesh, into the bones and froze the marrow. By the time she got to her room, her legs were numb and her teeth chattered. Curiously, the three steps to her room seemed higher. Her chest was hot. As she reached for the doorframe to steady herself, hot tears started to stream down her face, yet she was not crying.

  She got into bed and coiled tighter than a poked millipede. Still her body shuddered. Her breath was fiery so she breathed into her hands, which were icy. Then she grew hot and threw the blanket off. The T-shirt she wore was drenched in sweat. Her heart raced so fast she heard it pumping in her head. She tried to get up and take off her T-shirt but a new onslaught of chills overwhelmed her and she sank back into bed. It started all over again; the burning in her eyes, in her mouth, on her breath, and in her feet. Yet her skin was covered in goose pimples and her bed was icy. She stretched, pushing her legs as far away as they could go, arching her chest, and pulling her head up and away from her shoulders. As soon as she snapped back, she shivered again. Cold hands touched her and she jumped.

  “She is burning.”

  Naiti’s eyes were estranged from her face. At first they floated in the air. Then suddenly they darted here, there, like insects. Then they multiplied and grew bigger. They started to menace. They were coming for her, forming more eyes, growing larger. They dashed like millions of bats, screaming. Now the eyes surrounded her and then lost shape. They were a thing but were still eyes and millions of them but the thing was leaping.

  She sat up, gulping for air.

  All the servants were in her room. They stared. Their stares were worried. Naiti was talking.

  “What is it? Why did you scream?”

  “Your eyes; they are fine now but they tried to kill me.”

  She collapsed back in bed. She intended to keep her eyes open and look out for the eyes but then she was sitting up in bed. Naiti knelt beside her.

  “You screamed again.”

  “I did not. I was awake,” but she was breathless as if she had been running.

  She must have fallen asleep again, for next she felt a wet towel on her forehead and she winced.

  “Shhhh, you’re burning.” Naiti kept wetting the towel to keep it cold.

  Soon the pounding in her head ceased but then she shivered and turned on her side. Then she curled up and covered her head. At that point she felt layers and layers of blankets piling on top of her.

  “Aren’t you people supposed to be in the house?” she asked the servants. They looked at her.

  “It’s only me, Naiti.”

  “I thought I saw all of you.” There was silence and she added, “Thanks for staying with me, Naiti.”

  She was woken up. Mrs. Kiyaga was shaking her. The room was crowded with a lot of people but there were no screaming eyes. The sun had come down into her room: she shielded her eyes from it. Mrs. Kiyaga whispered something to Naiti. Then she bent down and smiled.

  “How are you, Suubi?”

  Suubi looked at the woman: it was the stupidest question.

  “You are Suubi, aren’t you?”

  Suubi nodded her head.

  “Who am I?” the woman asked.

  What’s wrong with her? But she said politely, “Mrs. Kiyaga.”

  “Right, let’s get you out of here.”

  She and Naiti held Suubi’s underarms and hoisted her up. When she stood up she tottered. Mrs. Kiyaga held her with both hands as Naiti put a thick jacket around her. Mrs. Kiyaga laughed, “You’re surprisingly heavy.”

  Suubi smiled at being called heavy. She held both Mrs. Kiyaga and Naiti around their shoulders and they held her around the waist.

  “When did you start feeling like this?” Mrs. Kiyaga asked as they walked out of the annex toward the large house. It was night. Suubi wondered where the sun in her room had gone. She looked back; her room was dark. “Suubi,” Mrs. Kiyaga spoke again. “When did the fever start?”

  “An hour ago. Where has the sun gone?”

  “It’s two in the morning.”

  “Oh. Around four or five or six.”

  “Have you eaten anything since?”

  Shook her head.

  “Would you like to eat something?”

  Shook her head.

  “Something to drink maybe?”

  God, keep quiet! The voice sliced through her head.

  Shook her head.

  “Can we rest awhile please?” Suubi asked. They were halfway to the house.

  “Come on. You’re a strong girl; I’ll let you rest when we get to the house.”

  They climbed the steps to the house into the kitchen. It was a long way to the bedrooms. When she finally got to bed, Mrs. Kiyaga told her not to lie down yet. She gave her two Panadols and water. Naiti brought a jar of juice, a glass, and a side table. Suubi shook her head.

  “You will drink a glass!” Mrs. Kiyaga was stern. “You are not going to lie down until you’ve drunk.”

  Tears came into Suubi’s eyes as she poured passionfruit juice mixed with pineapple down her throat. She was not sure why she was crying but she could not stop herself. Everyone around her was whispering.

  “Don’t fuss; I am supposed to be dying.”

  She fell back into bed and slept.

  She was woken up again. One of Kula’s dresses was laid out on the bed. Naiti was shaking her. Suubi had never seen Naiti being consistently nice to her.

  “Get dressed.”

  “That is Kulabako’s dress.”

  “She said you can wear it. Here, let me help you get dressed. They are taking you to hospital.”

  “What will they do when I die?” she whispered to Naiti.

  “Shhh, don’t say things like that!”

  “Everyone says,” her teeth were chattering again. “They say that I cannot live because I am too skinny.”

  “Stop talking: the fever has gone to your head.”

  When she was done, Suubi fell back into bed. Then Mr. and Mrs. Kiyaga were holding her—was she sure it was them, really? They were walking her to the Volvo. She fell asleep on the back seat. Next they were helping her out of the car. Next there were the blasted stairs again to climb. She sat on a bench but decided to lie down. Before she had caught her breath, a nurse came and helped her up. If only they would realize how tired I am!

  “Come with me,” the nurse says, and she holds her around the waist.

  They come to a large room divided into small cubicles using plasterboard. The first one has a microscope and a table lamp but they walk past it before she sees anything else. In the next one, the curtain is closed. They walk into the third one. It is cold in this one. The nurse turns on the light and it is too bright. There is a long narrow plastic bed propped high, right in the middle of the room. A sharp smell of aspirin mixed with other medicines pervades the air. The nurse shakes a thermometer violently, now peering at it intently, now shaking again. Finally, she sticks it under Suubi’s arm. A man comes in. He takes a needle out of a wrap and says, “I am going to take a drop of blood; just a prick.”

  But there is no time to negotiate with him, for
he grabs Suubi’s middle finger on the right hand. He presses the ball so hard that it has gone red and then he pricks, the monster! He has picked up a glass slide and is rubbing drops of blood on it. When he is done he presses a cotton swab on the finger and takes the slide to another room.

  “You can lie back on the bed now.” It is the nurse’s turn to do things.

  Suubi’s eyes are closed tight as the nurse pulls up her dress. The cold metal of the stethoscope darts then stops and she listens. Then it moves lower, listening and searching the chest and the stomach. Then the nurse taps her belly and listens as if searching for ripening jackfruit. Afterwards, she pulls the thermometer out from her underarm.

  “Forty degrees!” she says to Mrs. Kiyaga and walks out.

  Suubi falls asleep. Mrs. Kiyaga watches her.

  “It is the falciparum strain, Mrs. Kiyaga.” The nurse is back. “That is why it went to her head. Other than that there is nothing wrong with her. Of course we can do more tests if you want.”

  Suubi does not open her eyes, but she can hear the punishment for being 40-degrees hot and having the falciparum strain of malaria prepared. First, there is the crinkling of polythene paper and then tearing. She is getting the needle. More tearing. She is getting the syringe. Something thin, metallic touches a metal bowl. Then the sucking sound: The needle is sucking medicine from the little bottle, then tapping on the syringe, to get rid of the bubbles. Suubi cannot bear the silent torture any longer and she opens her eyes. A long, thick needle, pointed in the air. The nurse pushes the medicine up the syringe to get rid of the bubbles; she squirts the excess in the air.

  “Can’t I have tablets instead?”

  “No, I am afraid not.”

  “Don’t get me wrong; it’s not that I fear injections. I hate them.” Tears are coming again.

  “I am glad to hear that because I am going to give you two.”

  “Oh, why?” Mrs. Kiyaga asks.

  “Her temperature is too high to leave it to tablets to bring it down in the case of cerebral malaria. The first injection will bring the temperature down and when it is low I will give her quinine. Chloroquine won’t work on this strain and it causes terrible itching.”

  The injection lies in a bean-shaped metallic bowl like a giant engorged mosquito. Suubi rolls over. She is weeping shamelessly. Mrs. Kiyaga holds her hand.

  “I’m allergic to quinine.” Suubi tries one last attempt. She had heard people say that at the Palace.

  “Everyone is allergic to quinine, child. Now, if you’ll turn around; we don’t have all day.”

  Suubi swears not to embarrass herself any further. But as the cold swab cleans that part of her buttock, she clenches the muscle. The nurse stops.

  “Relax the muscle. If you clench it will take longer and it will make it more painful.”

  A short, piercing pain is followed by an intense burning. Suubi squirms. The needle is out. The nurse massages the spot. She gives her two Panadols as well to swallow.

  Suubi was not sure what was worse: quinine or malaria. The shivers had ceased, so had the retching, but her head was spinning. Her tongue felt swollen and numb. She did not taste the juice she drank. Food was still out of the question. In any case, the fever had burned her lips so badly that they had burst into sores like blisters. The ringing in her ears was incessant and she was partially deaf in her right ear. Her stomach was an empty room and wind whirled from one end to another. She was still weak and stayed in bed for most of the time. In the evening, the children came in and said hallo and stared and smiled. And Mr. Kiyaga, in his gruff way, said she had to eat because she did not have any weight to lose. And put that cream on those lips! He put it on the table. And Kula gave her a lot of her clothes she did not wear anymore and Naiti helped her to the bathroom.

  When Suubi recovered and went back to eating at the table with the family, and everyone made sure she ate properly, and she was not sent back to the annex with the servants and she wore what used to be Kula’s dresses, she decided that her parents had returned from London. One morning, she woke up early and walked back to Old Kampala Primary. She told the headmistress that she had been unwell and joined the primary seven class. At the end of the term when she brought home a fantastic school report, her parents could not believe that a child could walk so many miles to school and still manage to study so well. “Katama, Kula, Katiiti, look at this report!” Mummy said to Suubi’s spoiled siblings.

  There is nothing that parents love more than a child who brings home a fantastic school report.

  9.

  MMENGO, KAMPALA

  Saturday, February 14, 2004

  Suubi finished bathing and reached for the towel. Instead of drying her body, she wiped away the steam on the mirror and looked at herself. Her collarbones were so prominent that water would collect in the dents. Her stomach curved in and the bones of her pelvis stuck out. She was twenty-nine years old but retained a childlike kind of thinness. It did not matter what she ate, her body was as indifferent as a pipe to water. She turned and looked at her backside. From this view, when she was naked, it looked shapely and respectable but one time a colleague she had fallen out with described her as that “I-sit-on-my-back-like-a-dog” woman. Of course Suubi waited and later as the colleague walked past her, she said, “You’ve dropped something, Katana.”

  The woman stopped, looked back, saw nothing and looked at Suubi questioningly.

  “Oops, sorry,” Suubi said, “I really thought I saw something fall; must have been your arse.”

  Sometimes Suubi felt that she was above the whole notion of “she does not fill the space she occupies” as people described skinny people but other times it hurt.

  It was Saturday midday. The previous night, as usual on Friday evening, she and Opolot had gone out with his friends in search of a kafunda, watering holes in Kansanga that hosted live bands, but had ended up in Bbunga. At around three in the morning all the friends had squeezed into Opolot’s Prado and Suubi, who did not drink, dropped each friend back home. It was coming to five when they got home. Opolot was still sleeping when Suubi came to the bathroom.

  She dried her face first, then her arms. She flipped the towel onto her shoulders and, tugging at it, dried her back. She was wiping her right leg when a nail clipped the scar on the thigh. The pain was so dramatic that she clenched her teeth. As the pain ebbed into itching, she passed a finger around the scar. The finger caressed round and round. At the edge of the pain was a fragile pleasure. Suubi bent over to look. The scar was a dent in her thigh as if flesh had been scooped out with a tablespoon. The skin on top was as thin as on cooling milk—soft, smooth, and wrinkled. She blew on the scar for as long as she could sustain her breath. She blew repeatedly until the pain faded. Then she fastened the towel above her breasts and stepped out of the bathroom.

  Opolot lay reclined on the bed when Suubi walked in and she smiled at him. He was already dressed and was reading the previous day’s paper. Normally, Suubi would make something to eat, either breakfast or lunch, then at around four they would go to his house where he would change clothes, and at around seven they would go out again. Now she asked, “Should I cook?” but before Opolot answered she added, “Do you have a program for today?” Suubi walked around the bed to the dressing table.

  Opolot put the paper away and yawned.

  “No, no proggie,” and he stretched. “Perhaps Half-London. Kijjo and the others will be there.” Kijjo and others were friends with him when he had attended St Mary’s.

  “I’ll make chai—got some fresh milk yesterday and there is half a loaf of yellow bread.”

  “That’ll do for me.”

  Opolot liked his milk straight from the cow—pasteurizing kills both the taste and the flavor, he claimed—and hardly diluted. Since meeting him, Suubi had acquired a taste for fresh milk, conc, especially when spiced with tangawuuzi, ginger. Omujaaja weed would be best but it was rare to find anymore and so she settled for cinnamon.

  Suubi did not sit dow
n at the dressing table. She picked up a bottle of lotion, opened the lid, and squirted some in her palm. She rubbed it between her hands, applied some on her face and then on her arms. She squirted some more and lifted her right foot and placed it onto the lower shelf of her dressing table. She had started to rub lotion into it when the towel fell off her back. A strangled cry escaped her. Opolot, who had been watching her rub lotion on her legs, whistled and crossed his own, “Now the proper show begins.”

  But Suubi sank onto the floor and buried her face into her lap to hide the scar. She remained on the floor, her head curled into her lap.

  “Eh?” She heard Opolot sit up, perhaps beginning to realize that she was not fooling around. “Now what?”

  She did not reply. The air in the room bristled. Opolot sucked his teeth.

  She heard him get off the bed and his feet walked around, coming to where she knelt. He stopped behind her, picked up the towel, and she felt it spread over her back. But then he hesitated. Then he squatted and she felt her butt exposed—the towel had been lifted.

  “Hmm, is this what you are hiding?” his voice was cheeky.

  The next thing she felt was her butt being raised off the floor.

  What are you doing?” Her arms reached for the floor to steady herself.

  “Just checking what you’re hiding. Is it down here?”

  He lifted her buttocks so high that her head touched the floor like a Muslim praying.

  “Opo— Wha— Sto—”

  He rubbed his crotch into her butt, one cheek first, “Is it here?” then on the other, “Here?” then in the middle, “Maybe here?” then all around, “Or everywhere?” the way she liked him rubbing himself on her. Suubi clenched her teeth but between her legs she was swelling with sensations. She felt him starting to coil in his pants and she clawed at the floor looking for something firm to hold on to and lift her head off the floor. Luckily, with his every thrust, her head got closer and closer to the dressing table. Then she saw its legs, pawed at them but only managed to place her hands onto them.

  “Tell me to stop, Suubi,” Opolot taunted. “Beg your man to stop right now. Eh? This woman wants me to kill her dala-dala.”