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 down 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.”

“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.