Kintu

by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

  “Go away.”

  It was then that he got an idea. “Look, Nnayiga, I’ll pay your fees if you want to re-sit your A-levels.”

  Nnayiga stopped to think. If she stormed out of the room, she would have to throw the money at him but she could not afford that. This could be all the money she would ever get out of the Isaac project. Yet she needed to keep contact in case she needed him later.

  Thinking that her silence meant that she was about to take up his offer, Isaac slipped his business card into her handbag.

  As if defeated, Nnayiga sighed, “Get out. I’ll call you when I’ve decided.” Isaac slunk out of the room, shrinking with shame.

  At home, Nnayiga counted the money. It was substantial.

  Then she waited.

  She did not call Isaac. She did not return to the discothèque. She worked at the takeaway during the day and carried a schoolbag in case she bumped into him. Every day, Nnayiga blew on her fingertips like a witch praying, “let it be, let it be.”

  Two months later, she turned up in Lumumba Hall hysterical. Her sister had thrown her out. She could not go back home to her parents in that state. No, she could not abort: girls die doing abortion. All her dreams of a bright future were shattered.

  The image of Nnayiga’s dream shattered was too much for Isaac to take. He was turning into his father. That day, Isaac took Nnayiga to the two-roomed house he rented in Banda and moved into Lumumba Hall at the university. He told her not to worry because she would go back to school after having the baby.

  As soon as he installed her in his two-roomed house, Nnayiga devised ways of not moving out. Men with an engineering degree and business acumen were not common on the street. Instinct told her that for a man like Isaac, guilt and shame were stronger emotions than love. With skill, she could turn them into affection and respect. When Isaac bought a plot of land in Banda and started building a modern house, Nnayiga dropped the childish demeanor and worked on looking like the madam of a big house. Luckily, pregnancy suited her, she put on weight and her skin glowed. Her clothes grew to maternal lengths. When she heard Isaac say on the phone, “I can’t come now, my madam is too close to—” she knew she had made it.

  In January 1991, after a long difficult labor, Nnayiga gave birth to identical girls. The twins did not cry when they came into the world. Nnayiga lay shivering and exhausted on the birth bed as the nurses ran up and down trying to encourage the babies to stay. Apart from the moment when each twin emerged and was put on her belly, Nnayiga did not hold her babies. They changed their minds about living and one after the other, they left.

  There was only silence as Nnayiga was discharged from hospital. She was too stunned to cry. With the loss of her babies, all earlier scheming and plotting seemed trivial. Her mother carried the bag with the children’s clothes. Isaac and his family had already buried the twins. He told Nnayiga that he had instructed the masons to put just the names, Babirye then Nnakato (19-1-91) on each tombstone. Nnayiga did not want to see the graves. Only her mother cried: something about carrying but not holding. Isaac was thankful for the woman’s noise. He did not know what to say to Nnayiga. They had gone to hospital to have a baby, then had two but came home empty-handed.

  Six months later, Isaac moved Nnayiga into the new house. The floor was still dusty, there was no ceiling, the walls were only plastered and there was no electricity but to Nnayiga it was a palace. Isaac told her that her presence in the house would make it feel like a home.

  Eventually, Isaac too moved into the new house. He had come to the conclusion that he might as well keep her as his madam because she was as good as any other woman. He felt as much affection for her as he would ever feel for a woman and he liked the respectability that came with saying that there was a woman at home. Everything else would work itself out.

  In the privacy of their home and in their unvoiced grieving, Isaac sometimes called Nnayiga Nnalongo. She started to call him Ssalongo, which brought a smile to his face. “Nnalongo” and “Ssalongo” made them feel like husband and wife. In the months following the twins’ deaths, he told Nnayiga that his deepest fear was the mother of his children abandoning them. He said that when she first told him that she was pregnant, he had started to drive carefully.

  Their intimate encounters did not change though. They did not share a bedroom. Mostly, Nnayiga woke up in the depth of the night to find Isaac on top of her. In the darkness, she would try to fight him off to give herself time to get ready. Only once did she mention that if Isaac intended to keep “pouncing” on her then he had better use a condom on other women. She had hoped that he would deny other women but he had only kept quiet. She often smiled to herself thinking that if she ever wanted to get rid of him she would turn into a wanton wife.

  In the following six years, Nnayiga had three miscarriages but Isaac did not get rid of her. Doctors said there was nothing wrong with her but Nnayiga was anxious. She was not going to throw away a life of luxury and respectability just because her womb was playing about. To live in such a large house devoid of children made her feel useless. Thankfully, Isaac got the job with MTN and traveled to South Africa for six months’ training. When he returned, he traveled across the country helping to install telephone masts. Just as Nnayiga went back to do her A-levels, she got pregnant again. This time it stayed. In 2000, Kizza arrived.

  9.

  It was as if Mr. Puti Kintu had been alerted that Nnamata was coming to Masaka to find him. He stood, as if posed, near the garbage heap, a few meters away from where the taxi stopped. Nnamata recognized him immediately. He had the kind of face she would never forget. She stepped out of the taxi, stood, and stared. Mr. Kintu had a receding hairline, and what hair remained was cut short. His two-day-old stubble was totally gray. His shirt and trousers were grimy as if he slept on the pile of garbage next to him. Three pens—red, blue, and black—their tops clipped to his breast pocket, were neatly arranged as if he were a professional going to work. He carried a filthy satchel on his shoulders but held a pile of exercise books in his hands. Still Nnamata stared. He turned his head slightly to the right and a smile started to form. Nnamata almost choked; Isaac turns his head and smiles just like that. Mr. Kintu was listening. He replied something and picked his nose unconsciously as he listened again, nodding all the time. Then he burst out laughing.

  Nnamata looked for some place to sit down. Across the road was a restaurant. She walked toward it. Inside, there were no other customers. The woman behind the counter smiled her relief when Nnamata walked in.

  “We make our tea with fresh milk,” the woman smiled.

  Nnamata stared.

  “What will you have, nyabo?”

  She ordered a Fanta and paid. She did not see the surprise on the woman’s face at someone ordering a cold drink so early in the morning. Nnamata sat down on the bench. The woman brought a bottle sweating with condensation, she placed it in front of Nnamata, picked an opener off a bunch of keys around her waist and opened it. The bottle hissed and the woman passed her a pack of straws. Namata picked one, tossed it into the bottle, but did not lift the bottle to drink.

  “Would you like something to eat with that?”

  Nnamata shook her head and the woman walked away disappointed. When Nnamata saw the woman step outside the shop, she allowed her tears to flow silently. She took a handkerchief out of her handbag, opened it, and covered her face. In the tears flowed many things—the past, Isaac, madness, guilt, pain—but they all rushed at once, not giving her time to work out what hurt most. Then one thing became clearer. She was to blame for Isaac having a mentally ill father. Isaac would hate her more. It was not like Mr. Kintu had killed her: was she the first woman to be forced? Mr. Kintu’s family would be hostile after what she did to him. Nnamata did not understand why life would not cease flogging her son. She left Masaka without drinking the Fanta.

  Nnamata had been putting off finding Mr. Kintu for a long time. When she returned from Kisumu, where she had lived all that time, an
d found Isaac struggling on his own to make himself better, she had thought of ways to make amends. Finding his father would show how ashamed she was. But when she got to Luzira Prison, she was told that Mr. Kintu had been transferred to Butabika Hospital in 1970. Nnamata did not know what to feel about the news that Mr. Kintu was mentally unwell. She had not fully decided who Mr. Kintu was to her now—the man who destroyed her future or Isaac’s father. That day she went home and refused to think about Mr. Kintu again.

  Then Isaac opened that shop, fully stocked, and told her how much to spend and what to put away in the bank and she stopped hassling in the market. Guilt propelled her again. She would find Mr. Kintu, insane or not, with all the pride and confidence that comes from having a son who was not only studying for his A-levels but who had set up his mother with a grocery shop and had a booming disco business. However, Isaac was not yet talking to her. This made it difficult to enjoy his success, knowing that he had scraped that achievement from the depths to which she had flung him. Why add to his struggles by bringing a mentally ill father into it? Nnamata gave up her quest.

  When Isaac brought a pregnant woman to his house, Nnamata realized that whatever the circumstances of Mr. Kintu, Isaac needed to know his roots as he was starting a family. She went to Butabika Psychiatric Hospital. There, all the administrators could find were notes that Mr. Kintu had been in and out of the hospital until 1985. His sister who lived in Masaka had looked after him whenever he was released. Nnamata asked for the name and address of the sister. All she had to do was go and find her because, as the nurses told her, “A home with a mentally insane person is not hard to find.”

  Still Nnamata procrastinated. Part of her hoped that Mr. Kintu was dead so that Isaac did not have to meet him. It would be a neat ending—Isaac not meeting him and she not meeting his family. When Isaac’s twins died, she decided there was no rush. Recently she had decided to put herself out of her misery. This time there was no specific reason. She had been lying in bed when the thought came to her. She would face the situation the way a woman faces childbirth. She would wake up early, not open the shop, go to town, catch a taxi to Masaka, and look for Mr. Puti Kintu.

  She had not expected to find him standing at a garbage heap, in the middle of Masaka Town, as if he had been tipped off that she was coming so that he could confound any sense of achievement she felt.

  Nnamata decided to write a letter first. She did not post it—letters had a way of getting lost on the way. She got in a taxi, went back to the restaurant in Masaka, and asked the woman whether she knew Mr. Puti Kintu’s family.

  “Who doesn’t? He is a son of the village that one. He was born here and when his head muddled up, he returned.”

  Nnamata noted that the woman had left Mr. Kintu’s incarceration out of the story and was glad she had chosen to write rather than meet the family. The woman gave the letter to a boy of six or seven, who sprinted out of the restaurant to deliver it. Nnamata guessed that Mr. Kintu’s family was not far from the town center if the child ran that fast. She said to the woman that she would have her drink outside but instead caught a taxi out of Masaka in case the child came back with Mr. Kintu’s family asking about who had brought the letter.

  Two days later, an elder from Mr. Kintu’s family arrived at her shop. There were no questions of how, when, or but—not in the elder’s demeanor, not in his words. Everything was about “the child” as if Isaac was a toddler, as if the presence of “a child” had atoned everything. When Nnamata realized that there was no accusation in the elder’s attitude, she got the courage to ask, “What is your relation to Mr. Kintu?”

  That was the only time a shadow crossed the man’s eyes. He pointed at himself: “Me?” as if Nnamata could be possibly talking to anyone else. “We are his parents.”

  As the elder had used the plural “we,” it meant that he was an uncle. The real parent would have used the singular in spite of the shame that comes with acknowledging that a rapist is your own.

  Even after all the trouble she had taken to find Mr. Kintu, Nnamata had not plucked up the courage to tell Isaac that she had found his father and that he was mentally ill and that he lived in Masaka and that he was filthy. Nnamata told the elder that Isaac, who worked for a telephone company, had traveled upcountry for mast maintenance. He could not meet him yet. The elder told her to bring Isaac “home” to Masaka as soon as he returned.

  A lot of family members were waiting at the family home, where Mr. Puti Kintu was born. When Isaac entered they all stood up, the women ululating, the men’s relief clear on their faces, the stares, the yiiyii and ehe eh bannange, isn’t this real blood? Isn’t this child Puti himself? And Mr. Puti Kintu’s mother broke down and cried. And she took the first turn to hold Isaac. And she made Isaac sit on the floor so she could sit him on her lap and hold his head into her bosom as if making up for the lost childhood she did not have with him. Then she apologized for the tears because it was a happy day. Then all the elders took their turns saying, You call me Jjaja because when your grandfather Puti’s father let go of our mother’s breast, I grabbed it. Puti is our eldest in this house. Sometimes it would be, Puti’s father came right after me, right on my back, or, this is our very eldest sister, look at her properly, when she speaks up the rest of us shut up; even your grandfather Puti’s father who is already asleep, even when he was still with us he never talked back to her, and it went on until it was Puti’s siblings’ and cousins’ turn, until it was Isaac’s brothers and sisters, born to Mr. Puti Kintu’s brothers. Then the: Thank you for bringing him up properly, to Nnamata began, and He loves mathematics just like Puti! Oh, ohhhhhh, who has ever seen that? And, Thank you for having the heart to bring him home to us munnaffe, and, Did you hear he has had twins as well? Do you see the nature of blood? And everyone was happy because Isaac was Mr. Puti Kintu’s real child.

  But Mr. Kintu burst into tears when Isaac was introduced to him.

  “He’s mine, you say?” and he got agitated refusing to sit down, clutching his books as if someone was trying to take them from him. “I swear I’ve got no child.”

  There was uncomfortable silence as Mr. Kintu cried.

  “Do you remember Nnamata?” a relative asked.

  Mr. Kintu stopped crying. He went to a desk, sat down, and picked up a book.

  “Silence. I am marking homework,” he said. But a mischievous child was not put off by the stern voice.

  “What time’s your first lesson, Uncle Puti?”

  “I’ve told you—math is the first lesson in the morning, double period. Always.” Then he turned to Isaac and asked, “Is Nnamata all right? She has problems with fractions, but I think she’ll pass.”

  “I agree,” Isaac nodded.

  Mr. Kintu was quiet for a while. Then he turned his head, contemplating.

  “She’s in trouble. Have you heard?” He pulled his chair nearer to Isaac and looked at him earnestly.

  “Is she?” Isaac whispered.

  “Yes, but don’t tell anyone.”

  “What sort of trouble?”

  “You know, with girls.”

  “Hmm?”

  Mr. Kintu looked at Isaac like he was seeing him for the first time. “You haven’t heard, have you?”

  “Heard what?”

  “You won’t set the police on me?”

  “I am not that kind of person.”

  “She’s pregnant.”

  Isaac nodded then asked, “Do you know who the father is?”

  Mr. Kintu sprung up as if suddenly alert. He peered through the windows fearfully as if he had heard someone coming to take his life. Then he bolted through the back door leaving his satchel and books behind.

  “That’s it! We’re not going to see him again for at least three days.” Mr. Kintu’s sister said. “He will be hiding in the bushes around the house watching for the police.”

  Silence fell after those words. It was as if the word “rape” had fallen large and loud in the center of the room.


  Isaac looked at the chair where his father had sat. He had only seen such an old man sprint like a young man once during the war. Army men were chasing the man when he had whizzed past Isaac as if his gray hair was a wig. Now a thick anger gripped him. What was the use of imprisoning a man who was going to be a father? Did they think about the child? But then shame overcame him and he blinked the tears back. He decided that no human being should ever be as torn between right and wrong, fair and unfair as he was at that moment. He needed someone, some object, something to blame but all he could find in that room was sadness.

  10.

  March 2004

  Kizza started falling sick slowly. It was just a runny nose at first. Nonetheless, Isaac withdrew him from school. Then a cough started but Kizza woke up strong and ate and played. Then the cough grew. At night, Isaac heard it boom-booming like a drum. When it gripped, Kizza coughed relentlessly until Isaac brought him to his own bed. He noticed that Kizza sweated in his sleep. It was now a month since they had taken the HIV test but Isaac had not collected the results.

  Isaac took Kizza to Dr. Tembo who said it was just a bad cough and gave him an antibiotic jab. After a week, the cough stopped. But then Isaac noticed that Kizza’s hair had lost some of its luster. It was a subtle change, the black had a brown tint and the curls were not as tight. It was a clear sign that Kizza was unwell. Isaac asked his mother, “Have you noticed the change in Kizza?”

  “No, what sort of change?”

  “He doesn’t look right, that hair.”

  His mother scrutinized the hair, turning Kizza’s head this way and that way but she shook her head. “I don’t see anything. Children are children: today they’re this, tomorrow they’re that. Kizza has had a bad cough, that is all.”