Let's Tell This Story Properly

by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

  A few days later, when he’s alone with Bakka in the house—Dad’s working the night shift and Mum’s not yet back home—Luzinda picks up the phone and dials 999. A woman asks, ‘Which service do you require?’ a woman asks. Luzinda hesitates. ‘Do you need the police, fire brigade or an ambulance?’

  Stupid that those are the only options: what about Immigrations? What about Social Services? ‘Police,’ he says. It’s the closest to Immigrations. But when he explains that his family are illegal immigrants, the woman tells him to put the phone down.

  ‘This is for emergencies only.’

  How dumb! Apparently he could be arrested for wasting their time. He rang to tell the police that he and his brother were home alone. He had heard Ugandans say that in Britain fourteen years old is the youngest that children can be left alone in the house. He changed his mind at the last minute: his parents would guess that one of them had rung the police.

  • • •

  Finally, towards the end of November, Children’s Services arrive. Mum is out but unfortunately Dad is in. Luzinda had forgotten that he had rung the council a month earlier. At the time, he had given them all the family details, but they had not sounded convinced enough to come. In primary school, a teacher had told his class that it was child abuse for parents to smack their children and had made them write down the number for the NSPCC helpline. Luzinda had looked it up on the computer and found the number for the Manchester office.

  Children’s Services explain to Dad that they have come to check on the children, that they will talk to each child separately and without him. Two women talk to Bakka first. They take him to the sitting room. Two stay with Luzinda in his bedroom and another with Dad. But Luzinda can hear Dad pacing in the corridor. His voice is a whisper because he is close to tears. ‘How can anyone say that I abuse my children? I live for my children, they’re my world.’

  Then it is Luzinda’s turn. When the women ask him whether his parents have ever beaten him or his brother, he thinks Which Africans don’t smack their children? Arrest them and deport us, but the agony in his father’s voice in the other room makes him shake his head. Did his father hit his mother? Luzinda barely masks his disdain. They don’t ask whether his mum hit his dad. Had his father ever touched him sexually? What! These people! You mention the word abuse and the first thing they say is kiddy-diddler. And see how they are so quick to blame the dad! Why not the mum? The pain of Dad’s footsteps pacing up and down in the corridor, the guilt of hearing him say to with the woman, ‘But what did they say we do to our children?’ Good thing the social workers are all black. If they were white, Dad would ask So black people don’t know how to bring up their own children?

  When the interview ends one of the women smiles at Dad. ‘Sorry to put you through this, Mr Kisitu, but we have a call on our records’—she steals a glance at Luzinda—‘that children at this address were being neglected—’

  ‘How?’ Dad, now vindicated, interrupts. And when Dad is angry his Ugandan accent returns: ‘Hawoo, hawoo, tell me ekizakitly haw my children are nejilekited.’

  ‘We take such calls seriously. You agree that when it happens we should investigate.’

  Dad nodded, tears wetting his eyes.

  ‘You have beautiful children, Mr Kisitu’—the woman had touched Luzinda’s arm sympathetically—‘and you’re doing a good job of bringing them up.’

  After they left, Dad clapped and shook his head Ugandanly. ‘This is too much! Ugandans want Social Services to take away my children? Kdto!’

  Bakka keeps glancing at Luzinda but says nothing.

  If Luzinda thought that being thirteen was painful, this new guilt is in its own league. He gives up on outside intervention.

  • • •

  December is two weeks old. Luzinda has run out of options and Jesus does not care. Meanwhile, the days keep coming and falling away, coming and falling away. Christmas Day is heading straight for his house. On TV, the Coca-Cola advert enthuses that the holidays are coming, that holidays are coming, everywhere there are images of happy children and their wish lists, and the Coca-Cola advert, like a soundtrack, sings that the holidays are coming, Manchester city council has put up its decorations, it’s true they are coming, the weatherman speculates that it will be a white Christmas, yet outside Luzinda’s window the world is soulless. The wet street, the hunched lamp posts, cars parked half on the pavement half on the road, the drizzle only visible beneath the street light and the park now a shadow. What happened to the pigeons?

  A car breaks the darkness. Its headlights flash past. Luzinda looks at his watch. It’s nine o’clock; he thought it was seven. The car stops outside his block. It is a taxi. The driver—same as usual—gets out, comes around and opens the rear door. Mum tumbles out. The driver goes to the boot, grabs Mum’s shopping bags and takes them to the doorstep. When he reappears, he closes the car boot, waves to Mum, gets into the car and drives away. Mum disappears under the canopy. Luzinda starts to count: ‘One, two, three four, five, si—’

  The door bursts open and Bakka pushes Dad into the room. ‘Get off that windowsill, Luz.’ He throws orders like he pays the mortgage. He pushes Dad further into the room and kicks the door shut. Dad wears this smile as though he’s only indulging in Bakka’s game. Luzinda starts to get off the windowsill.

  ‘Hurry up, Luz,’ Bakka hisses. ‘Get your homework book.’

  Luzinda picks up his maths homework book and sits at his study desk.

  ‘Dad, help Luz with his homework.’

  Once Dad has sat down with Luzinda, Bakka steps back, looks around the room to make certain that everything is in order. Then he steps out of the room and closes the door.

  Dad shakes his head in a let’s humour Bakka way but says nothing. Luzinda opens his homework book and places it on the desk between him and his dad. He has done the homework. As his dad checks the answers, Luzinda wonders whether sometimes his father regrets not having a no TV before you do your homework kind of son. Being rebellious would bring excitement to the house. The door opens.

  Mum stands at the door. She’s so tired she holds the door frame to lean in. Luzinda smiles and says, ‘Hi Mum,’ a little too cheerfully. Before she replies Dad says, ‘Welcome back, Sikola,’ and they both go back to homework. Mum tries to reply, but her voice is strangled. She stands there not moving, she stands, stands.

  Bakka appears. He holds a book as if he has been reading for hours. ‘Hi Mum.’ His smile is cherubic as he walks towards Luzinda’s study desk. ‘Dad, could you please help me with my homework when you’ve finished with Luz’s?’

  Dad caresses his hand. ‘I’ll be with you in a minute.’ Bakka turns with the smile of a homework enthusiast and as he walks past he says, ‘Hi Mum,’ again and Luzinda wants to scream You greeted her already, idiot. Mum stares at Bakka as he walks past, until he closes his bedroom door. Then she turns and stares at Luzinda and her husband. There is amused suspicion on her face today, as if she suspects the three of them are up to no good but she’s not sure why. Under her scrutiny Dad focuses on one answer and frowns:

  ‘Luzinda, how did you come to this figure?’

  Luzinda looks at his calculation, reaches for the calculator and starts to punch figures in. His mother sighs, turns and shuffles towards their bedroom. She does not close the door. Luzinda carries on until he comes to the same answer. He shows the screen to his dad.

  Dad speaks loudly enough for Mum to hear: ‘You know that showing how you arrived at this figure step by step—’

  ‘Is as important as the answer itself?’

  Dad stands up. ‘Get into your pyjamas.’

  Luzinda slips his homework book back into his rucksack and gets dressed. Dad tucks him in and says goodnight. At the door he asks, ‘Light on or off?’

  ‘Off.’

  Luzinda hears his father walk towards Bakka’s bedroom.

  • • •

  The Christmas tree arrived yesterday morning. Dad and Bakka dragged out old decorati
ons for the tree, a large red candle that has never been lit, old Christmas cards with stale messages and tired Christmas CDs with Jurassic-era music by Philly Lutaaya, Boney M and Jim Reeves. They decorated the house. Luzinda did not join in. Last night when he went to the fridge for drinking water, the Christmas tree sat in a corner of the sitting room blinking in the dark like a witch.

  Everyone is downstairs when Mum announces that they’ve been invited to a Christmas dinner. No surprise there. The whole Ugandan community will be there. Luzinda states that he’ll not be going. ‘Of course you will,’ his mother says. ‘Who eats Christmas on their own in this cold?’ She talks about Christmas as if it’s served on a plate.

  Luzinda glares at her. Is she really that oblivious? Maybe her tiredness is starting to affect her mind as well. Recently, because she’s on leave, Luzinda has taken to watching her face. He’s worried about the swelling.

  ‘And you need to stop following me around, Luzinda.’

  He hadn’t realised. He leans towards the cupboard where the microwave and the kitchen radio sit. She goes to the fridge and retrieves a bottle of Evian water. She drinks half of it in one go and sighs. Would the liquid burst out from underneath her skin like a blister if he pricked it? She walks past him. She takes the stairs, he takes them.

  Bakka grabs his hand and pulls him back, hissing, ‘She said don’t follow her!’

  Luzinda shakes him off. ‘My bedroom’s upstairs, idiot!’

  ‘Then wait for her to go first!’

  ‘Why?’

  Bakka has no answer. Luzinda walks up the stairs defiantly. Bakka remains at the landing looking up, anxious, until Luzinda opens the door to his bedroom and bangs it shut.

  Luzinda considers setting the house on fire—houses in Britain burn like paper. But British detectives will catch you no matter how clever you are. A few years ago, this dumb couple with a lot of children set their house on fire to frame someone else but six of their children died. Then they cried and cried on TV but the police sussed them out.

  • • •

  It’s Christmas Eve and the sun, the sly one that appears in winter to taunt Africans, has come out. You’ve just arrived from home and discovered that Britain is inside a fridge. The novelty of snow wears off and you beg the sun to come out. Who told you to leave Africa? it sneers. And then one morning it appears. You bolt outside to get some sunshine and whack, the winter cold wallops you. Luzinda is not interested in baking with Mum downstairs even though she has not been tired for three days. He stays on his windowsill looking out. Dad has locked himself in their bedroom wrapping presents as if he’s a proper father. These days he looks at Luzinda worriedly. The other day, as they drove home from the West Indian Saturday school, he asked, ‘You’re righ’?’ and laughed at his own Mancunian accent. When Luzinda did not respond Dad became more concerned. ‘Is everything alright at school?’

  Fancy him blaming school when the problem sleeps in his bedroom.

  ‘Cos as I said before, if any bully picks on you give him a proper thumping. You’ll get in trouble, the teachers will call me in—This is unacceptable, Mr Kisitu. In this country, we don’t encourage violence blah, blah, blah—and I’ll be suitably angry with you, but between you and the bully there’ll be a new understanding.’

  Luzinda shook his head. Somehow god picked the two most messed-up people in the world and made them his parents.

  ‘How many people would I beat up, Dad? Yesterday a Caribbean boy beat a white boy for calling him African. Then there was this boy from Year Seven who apologised to me for calling me African. I said, “Dude, I am African.”’ Luzinda looked at his father with a what do you do with that? expression. When his dad did not respond he added, ‘And by the way, when we first arrived, Lisa said right to my face, “I may not be white but at least I’m not African.”’

  ‘But Lisa is your best friend!’

  ‘Exactly; now tell me who I should bea—’

  ‘Dad.’ Bakka has a talent for interrupting. ‘I’ve promised to thump anyone who does clicks at me. You call me Spear Thrower, I thump you, no messing about.’

  Luzinda did not know whether to slap or hug his brother, because he had been about to say Sorry, Dad, you can’t blame Britain for this one.

  • • •

  Christmas Day arrives nice and early. It’s a crisp morning: frosty on the ground, sunny in the sky. Smells of bacon, eggs and sausage waft into Luzinda’s bedroom and, despite his apprehension, set him off stretching and yawning. In spite of his hunger, Luzinda stays on the windowsill. This must be how you feel on your execution morning.

  At nine Dad opens the door looking all cheery, Father Christmas’s red cap on his head, arms stretched out: ‘Merry Christmas, my big man Luz.’ He hugs and pulls Luzinda down from the windowsill and out of his bedroom to downstairs. He leads him to the Christmas tree and hands him his presents. He stands over him to make sure he opens them. Mum has bought him a pair of pyjamas, winter socks and underwear. Luzinda performs excitement. Dad has got him a PSP—the Vita console! He hurls himself at his father.

  From that point on, Luzinda is lost in checking the features on his console. He does not see what he eats for breakfast. He does not see midday arrive. All the way in the car—dinner is in Moston—he’s on the PSP.

  But when they arrive, Mum confiscates it. ‘It’s rude to play games on your own when we’ve come all this way to be with other people. Give it to me.’

  Luzinda hesitates.

  His mother anticipates his reaction and warns, ‘And don’t you try that British brat behaviour kicking things because you can’t have your way—we don’t behave like that.’

  Luzinda drops the console on top of the handbrake and looks at his feet. He’s sitting right behind his mother, who is in the passenger seat. Her words echo in his head. We don’t behave like that, the superiority of it. We don’t behave like that, the hypocrisy. He lifts his feet and puts them on the back of his mother’s seat. His knees are so bent they almost touch his chin. As he contemplates kicking the seat into the dashboard, Bakka holds his breath. Luzinda looks at his brother. You didn’t really think I was gonna do it! he smiles. He puts his feet down. They’ve arrived.

  Dad steps out of the car and goes round to the boot. Someone has come out of the house. Grown-ups start making Ugandan noises at each other. Dad lifts the food out of the boot and carries it to the house. Luzinda storms out of the car and bangs the door. Without his PSP, apprehension has returned, especially as he realises that this is Tushabe’s home. Tushabe goes to the same Saturday school.

  Loud Ugandan music greets them. Chameleone is wale-waleing, imploring each of the African leaders—Kaguta, Kikwete, Kenyatta, Kabila, Kagame—as if they dance to his music. The house is packed. Smells of Ugandan food. As people see them, the greetings continue:

  – Bwana Kisitu, my Ffumbe brother; we’re lost to each other.

  – It’s work, work, work; this British pound’s going to kill us.

  – The boys have grown, Sikola.

  – Especially the younger one: he’s already as tall as his older brother.

  – Do these children of yours speak any Luganda?

  – Do you know what we do in my house? As soon as we close the door we lock English outside.

  – Very true, you take your children back home and they can’t even talk to your parents.

  – Leave them behind; wait until they are grounded in who they are first.

  – Customs tried to confiscate my grasshoppers at the airport. I said, Border Control my foot; you won’t control me. I sat down and started eating—

  – You ate grasshoppers in Customs?

  – You should have seen the disgust on the officers’ faces but I said, you eat prawns and mussels.

  Mum and Dad join the older men in the lounge, more greeting, then catching up on what is happening back home:

  – This man will steal the votes again.

  – Not this time; it will be too shameful after Nigeria, Kenya an
d Tanzania have had peaceful transitions.

  ‘Cameron is onto immigration again.’ Dad, who believes that there are government spies in the Ugandan community, steers the conversation away from Ugandan to British politics. ‘Every time he gets in trouble with his policies, he ups his ante on immigration.’

  – Police caught me walking on the motorway. The M60. How was I supposed to know you don’t walk on the motorway? They put me in their car and I thought, I am finished. Instead, they drove me all the way to my house. They asked, where are you from originally, I said, not originally from; I am Ugandan. Does that mean you’re going back? I said, of course. They were so polite; I couldn’t believe it!

  – Motorists in Britain are very polite, eh!

  – Limes Nursing Home pays double time on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s.

  – They call me Poonah Overtime at the airport, I always volunteer to work on these days, but this time I said, ah ah! Even the rich die.

  – I’ve just come back from home but customer services in Uganda—yii? Especially in banks!

  As a small child, Luzinda had loved to sit and listen to their conversation. Not any more. Grown-ups imagine themselves intelligent and children essentially dumb. But by eleven he had started to see holes in things they said. By twelve he had decided that most grown-ups were dumb, especially his parents. It led to premature pubescent ire—temper flare-ups, followed by prolonged silences. Then came this obsessive need to look after his parents.

  Now he gives his parents a once-over and decides that it’s safe to leave them for the time being. He takes the stairs to Tushabe’s bedroom, where all the teenagers are congregating. When he comes back downstairs to check on them—you can’t leave parents too long to their own devices—Dad is in the kitchen helping the women with the food the family brought while Mum sits in the lounge, everything is alright, he goes back upstairs.

  Next time he checks on them, his parents have started drinking. Dad holds a can of Stella, Mum a Carling. Sweat breaks out all over his head. But he has worried too soon: in half an hour dinner is served and the grown-ups stop drinking. He even enjoys dinner. Tushabe is making fun of her dad’s accent. Recently, her dad threatened to send her back to Uganda because she hangs out with the wrong crowd, talks back, has started smoking and her skirts are the width of a belt.