Kintu

by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

  “But you . . . bastard.”

  “Eh? Did she call us bastard, soldier? Let’s kill her right now.”

  He thrust harder.

  “Say, Opolot, my sir. Say, Chief, please you’re killing me.”

  Suubi managed to ease her upper body up.

  “Ooh no, she is stubborn this one; she likes it when I rub my soldier on her butt and my soldier stands at atteeention!”

  Suubi bit back a moan as she manoeuvred herself upright. Finally, her feet were placed firmly on the floor. Opolot was forced to hold around her waist, his legs apart. By now, Suubi’s butt felt like a million fireflies all lit up. Each needed to be rubbed critically. She held onto the sides of the dressing table and eased herself into a position where she would anticipate Opolot’s thrusts and twist her butt to give every inch of it a feel of his groin. But then he pulled away.

  “What?” Suubi spun around. There was such a riot of sensation between her legs that she could feel the slipperiness between her thighs.

  “It’s a new belt and I—” Opolot fidgeted.

  Rather than help, Suubi spread her legs around Opolot’s and, using her pelvis and arms, forced him to walk backwards until he stumbled and fell back on the bed.

  “Suubi, bannange, wait. Let me get out of these trousers,” the chief was gone. “We’ll mess them up.” But Suubi had undone his fly, pulled him out, and she was helping herself to his soldier.

  “You started it,” she giggled evilly as she rubbed him on her every desperate inch.

  Opolot was pulling off his shirt, to feel her skin on his, when Suubi thrust herself onto him. She ripped his shirt open and lowered her breasts onto his chest. She nuzzled her head in the side of his neck and the chief was reduced to deathlike gurgling. She had intended to ask him to beg her to stop but she only remembered when she was done.

  “Don’t ever hump my butt when you are not ready,” she tapped his chest.

  Opolot opened his eyes weakly. She sat on him smiling with triumph. As she eased herself off him, she looked at the damage to his trousers. “Yroou, Opolot, you’re disgusting!”

  He raised his head, looked at the slime, sucked his teeth and fell back.

  As she stepped onto the floor Opolot saw the scar and reached to touch it. Suubi pulled away.

  “That must have been a nasty wound,” he said with concern. “What happened?”

  Suubi looked down at the scar and for a moment panic came to her eyes. “I don’t remember,” she turned away. “I was very young.”

  She picked up the towel and wrapped it around herself. She pulled out a drawer and took out one of the soft thin muslin cloths she had bought for this purpose. She took it to the bed and started to wipe Opolot. She smiled at his closed eyes, “If I twist like this, round and round and then again, the soldier could wake up again. Oh oh he heard me! He has heard right now! Tsk, tsk, tsk,” she shook her head in mock disapproval.

  Opolot lifted his head again, looked at his half-hearted hard-on with pride, but gave it up, fell back, and smiled through half-closed eyes. He loved being wiped like this. Sometimes, when Suubi was prepared, she boiled the kettle. When they were finished, she wetted the cloth with warm water and when she touched him with it he would lie back, stretch his arms and ahhh.

  Now Suubi tucked him back into his damp Y-fronts and zipped his wet trousers. She buttoned his shirt and pulled it down to hide the patch.

  “There, no one will see it as you get out of the car.”

  She went to the bathroom and threw the cloth in a basin. She examined the scar as she washed herself. It was good now that Opolot had seen it. She did not have anything to hide anymore. Maybe Ssanyu Babirye would leave her alone now.

  When she went back to the bedroom, Opolot was snoring. She carried on moisturizing her skin.

  10.

  Suubi felt beleaguered now that the toothaches had started. The aches were mild, only the crowns hurt—as if heavy metal objects were scratching each other—but the discomfort was mounting. Every time she connected Ssanyu Babirye’s return to dating Opolot the pain came, creeping to her front teeth. She had considered giving up Opolot for peace of mind but she knew that there would be no such thing. Theirs was a calm relationship—without the complication of the intense emotions she had seen other couples display. It was only when she considered terminating it that its intensity became aggressive. Suubi was now convinced that she was possessed by a jealous spirit that did not want to see her happy with a man.

  Dating Opolot had not only conjured Ssanyu Babirye out of hell, it had also pressured Suubi into telling the story of her life. She had to have events and anecdotes at her fingertips to dispense in conversation with him and his friends. This is what brought on the pain in the teeth. It had always been like that with friends. They always wanted bits of her past: answers to tiny questions, musings, or wonderings. Suubi did not mind people talking about their lives or childhoods as long as they did not expect her to join in.

  “You don’t talk much about yourself, Suubi.”

  “I have lived an ordinary life,” she would say. Inside, she wanted to scream, “I am here. Let’s start here, now.”

  Most people, she presumed, grew up dispensing bits of their lives over and over. Eventually their stories flowed easily. However, she had never made friends as a child and so she had not had the chance to rehearse her stories.

  Suubi had known Opolot for more than two years but previously, when he probed, she distanced herself. However, nine months ago it became ridiculous to say: This won’t work, when he countered with: How can it work when you’ve not given it a chance? Perhaps this was why their relationship was quiet. They had been in a repressed love for two years, both knowing that the other felt it as keenly as they did. Neither had tried to date other people. When Suubi finally plunged herself into it, because she could not hold out much longer, it felt like they had been together all that time.

  Suubi wished she could say to Opolot that her memory was a scratched disc, that it jumped and skipped. Sometimes it didn’t play at all. Nevertheless, when questions about her past presented themselves she answered them as faithfully as she could. Little by little, a story of her life had taken form.

  “My full name is actually Suubi N. Kiyaga.

  “N is for Nnakintu but I don’t use it really. Nnakintu is the feminine version of Kintu. The name ‘Kintu’ is clanless, any clan can use it. Things like clans don’t matter to me really. Luckily, you’re Atesot: we can’t be related. Yes, clans are about identity, but essentially they’re a measure against inbreeding. Yes, Suubi means ‘hope’ but my parents never told me what they were hoping for. I have no attachment to names really.

  “Katama is the eldest. When we were young and got in trouble together, he always got blamed, ‘And you too, Katama, a big boy?’ He hates his name; it suggests that he is tiny. Yes, he’s quiet but I would not say haughty. It was easy for me being a middle child. Maybe I was a little neglected sometimes, like all middle children, but nothing to be traumatized about.

  “Kula is the second-born; her name is actually Kulabako which means ‘beautiful to look at.’ Kula is the hot-headed one of all of us. She makes up her mind fastest and loudest. She says it exactly as she sees it and can be offensive. But she’ll give you her last shilling and won’t remind you if you go back for more. She is generous in that way—just don’t start a fight with her.

  “Then there is me, the second last-born. At home they call me Kaama. I guess it’s all about the ‘K’ names: rather embarrassing really. Kaama is from a proverb. It says that a destitute child is like Kaama, a wild yam. Unlike other yams that are tended and nurtured in a garden because their stems are delicate, Kaama—just as delicate—must fight its way in the cruel jungle. But then I could be Kaama—a whisper. The difference is in intonation.

  “Katiiti is the last-born. She’s the pretty one: her name means ‘love-bead.’ I desperately wanted that name when we were young! Katiiti is oblivious: nothing bothers her;
nothing matters; she floats through life. She can be mean though. Daddy said we used to fight, me and her, when we were young. I guess because she comes after me.

  “I look different from my siblings? I guess it is because they look like Mum . . .”

  “Apparently, Dad was not my biological father after all. I only found out last year, after his death. You know the Ganda have a saying: Your father is never truly yours until your mother is dead. It came painfully true for me. When Dad died, we took pride in the fact that he didn’t saddle us with half-siblings. And then I find out that he’s not my real dad? It’s still hard for me.

  “I suspect Mum and Dad broke up at one point and in the gap Mum got pregnant with me but they made up regardless. I don’t know. Maybe Mum didn’t know that Daddy knew.

  “No, Dad was good to me. I don’t have a bad word to say about him. People say I was his favorite. I mean, that could be the reason why Katiiti and I don’t get on. I brought home the best school reports. Katiiti struggled in school. I was the one who was never sent to boarding school because I could pass in any school. They envied me for staying close to our parents. At sixteen I was given my own room in the annex because I was so responsible while they slept close to Mum and Dad.

  “No, I never suspected anything at all. On school forms, I filled in his name as my father. You’ve seen my graduation pictures: he stood beside me with Mum. He threw a great graduation party for me. Actually, people say I looked more like him than anyone else in the family. I still use their family name though.

  “Of course anyone would want to know their biological father but it is no big deal for me . . .

  “When Mum was diagnosed with cancer, my sisters would not leave her side. But I was always with Dad because he also needed someone. He was the one who was going to stay behind on his own. Someone had to be there for him too. When she died, I checked on him every day. Even when I discovered, two months after Mum’s death, that he was seeing someone else, it didn’t matter. The others were incensed that he had been seeing the woman behind Mummy’s back while she was ill. It could have been true, but you know, the relationship between Mum and Dad had nothing to do with me. That, I think, led to a rift between us.

  “Dad had a stroke two years after Mummy’s death. When he died, we mourned together as a family. At his burial, the number of his children was not mentioned, I thought, hmm, that’s strange: we are only four.

  “Now that you mention it, the number of children was not mentioned at Mum’s burial either. Then the clan meetings for Daddy’s last funeral rites started.

  “Anyway, one day, Kula rang to ask me to drop her home for the clan meetings to arrange for Dad’s last funeral rites. I thought, drop her: why not go with her? Why wasn’t I told about the meetings? When we arrived, the uncles and aunts, Dad’s siblings, were not only surprised to see me, but frowned at Kula for bringing me along. They would not look at me throughout the meeting. You could see they resented my presence.

  “We set a tentative budget for the rites. Some clan elders wanted us children to contribute equal amounts of money but I suggested that we should contribute according to our means. However, while everyone else’s contribution was met with approval, mine was met with a stony silence, yet it was quite substantial compared to everyone else’s. You see, Kula, a teacher, is a single mother, and Katiiti didn’t have a man at the time, which meant she was broke. Katama doesn’t part with money easily, even though he is the eldest, the heir, and the only son.

  “I found out during the rites. The family was invited to the reading of the will. But the elders insisted that only the children from Kiyaga’s ‘leg,’ as they put it, should attend. I didn’t realize what was going on until Kula whispered: That coward’s talking about you, Suubi. As if you don’t know that you’re not Daddy’s child.

  “Can you imagine? I turned to stone. Why didn’t Mum tell me? How come everyone else knew? From then on, a gap opened between my siblings and me. They’ve avoided me since.

  “Yes, they can be haughty as you say, but they’re fine when you get used to them.

  “Finding my father? It’s kind of you to offer to look for him but you don’t have to.

  “I would like to know him but I won’t have sleepless nights over it. Why hasn’t he tried to find me?”

  11.

  BULANGE VILLAGE

  Saturday, March 13, 2004

  Bulange was built up. The houses along Nabulagala Road, designed in the 90s style of crannied tile roofs called the French Cut, made it look like a new village. But the main road through the village was covered with murram. Suubi looked at the house that Opolot had brought her to see. Its 70s extended porch made it stand out from the rest. From across the road, the building looked similar to her home in Makindye. The fencing around it was a redbrick wall at the bottom with metallic bars on top of the wall. She walked close to the gate and looked through the bars. The house was beautiful and neat with a whitewashed porch and pebble-dashed walls. Suubi looked to the left. A narrow drive led further along to the neighboring houses. On the other side of the feeder road was a hedge. Suubi took the road, walking along the fencing, toward the back of the house. Opolot followed from behind.

  Suubi’s mind was focused on the house when a woman wearing a busuuti with a headscarf on her head came toward them. She was either in her forties or fifties. She looked at Suubi intently. There was a hint of hesitation on her face, then she smiled broadly. Suubi smiled back politely but there was no recognition in her eyes. The woman’s smile turned to apologetic embarrassment, as if she had mistakenly smiled at a stranger, and she walked past them.

  “Do you know her?” Opolot whispered.

  Suubi shook her head, her face screwed up in a scowl.

  “She seemed to know you.”

  Suubi shrugged her shoulders.

  She had been reluctant to come to see the house but Opolot had insisted. He held the traditional view that everyone must know where they come from, no matter where it was, that to know where one comes from was to know one’s full self and where that self was going.

  Suubi was skeptical. To her, it was a worn-out view passed down through generations by people who could not be bothered to question things readily embraced. What difference would a good or bad past make? Everyone wants a bright future regardless of their past. But she would not say to Opolot that he was better off coming up with his own views than slotting into the lazy and tired views of the past. What she told him of was the foreboding she felt about going back to look for her past. If her family had wanted her they would have found her.

  “To go looking for them is to go looking for heartbreak.”

  “They don’t have to love you, Suubi, and you don’t have to love them. All we need is to know. It will give you peace in your heart. Get rid of this, ‘I am Nnakintu, ati, I am Kayiga, ati, I don’t know who I am.’ It’s not good for your well-being.”

  “You are so traditional for someone whose first language is English.”

  “I speak English on principle. Otherwise, Luganda would be my first language. There are those that imagine that Uganda is synonymous with Luganda and that, to us non-Gandas, is infuriating.”

  “Except in the markets and shops.”

  “English is costly in markets.”

  They came to a side entrance to the house. It led straight to the garage. While there was a lawn in the front yard, the rest of the compound was covered in concrete slabs. The annex was at the back. Suubi stopped and turned to Opolot.

  “You are sure this was once my home?”

  “Apparently.”

  Suubi stared at the house again. There was nothing familiar about it.

  “Keep looking,” Opolot encouraged. “You might recognize something.”

  Suubi shook her head apologetically.

  “I don’t remember living here at all.”

  Opolot was disappointed that nothing had jolted Suubi’s memory. It was such a beautiful house to forget. He had seen nothing in her body
language to suggest that she was hiding anything. Now Suubi stopped and said,

  “Maybe we should go inside. I might recognize something.”

  “We can’t,” Opolot explained as they made their way back to the car. “The widow who owned the house died and her sons sold it to an army general.”

  “I must’ve been very young, no more than four or five perhaps,” she said casting a final look at the house.

  “According to the couple I talked to, it was a long time ago. The village has changed since.”

  Just then, someone tapped Opolot’s shoulder. He looked back. The old woman who had smiled at them beckoned him quietly and slipped back into the hedge. Suubi did not see her and carried on walking. Opolot said to her, “Just a moment, Suubi,” and ran back.

  Suubi stopped to wait. She stared at the hedge where Opolot had disappeared.

  “Sorry to disturb you, son,” the woman said as soon as Opolot arrived. “Is that Suubi you are with?”

  “Yes, do you know her?”

  “Oh, Katonda watu!” she clapped her hands.

  “Wait here,” Opolot said. “I’ll go and call her.”

  “No, wait, maybe we should talk first.”

  “Then I’ll go and open the car for her, she’s waiting by the roadside. I’ll be back.”

  Opolot ran back to Suubi.

  “I’ve just seen the couple I talked to over there,” he pointed beyond the hedge. Why don’t you wait in the car while I go back and ask them some more questions?”

  Thankfully Suubi did not suggest coming along with him.

  “I won’t be long,” he said as he clicked open the central lock.

  The woman stepped out from behind the hedge as soon as she saw Opolot coming and led him down the road to a small unpretentious house tucked behind its more affluent neighbors. The house was new. The burned mud bricks used to build it were bare. It had small glass windows and a corrugated iron roof. The woman was tall and might have been very light-skinned had she led a comfortable life but right now she was sunburned. When they turned into her walkway, she stopped and looked at Opolot.