Throughout the four months of her holidays after her O-levels, Kirabo did not attempt to find her mother. She had abandoned the idea of putting special announcements on the radio, and she could not be bothered to put up more posters. It had dawned on her some time the previous year, when the new students were about to arrive, that she just did not care any more. That year, it was Atim who had put up the new Do You Know Lovinca Nnakku? posters. Since Nnakku had not come looking for her after the war, either she was dead or she was not interested. Either way, it was time to move on.
Kirabo worked at the Ministry of Finance as a clerical officer, which was a euphemism for legworker – filing away documents in cabinets, locating and taking files from office to office, including love notes, tea and lunch for officers. Sometimes she took files between ministries.
It was her last day at work. The following Monday, she was returning to St Theresa’s to start her A levels. She had not collected her salary in the four months she had worked at the ministry. The amount was not worth the long queues outside the cashier’s office on payday. In any case, Tom gave her pocket money every week and Aunt Abi dropped her at work in the morning. After work, Old Kampala was a forty-minute walk. But this being her last day, she was paid all of her four months’ salary. She planned to get Aunt Abi a bottle of perfume and the rest was to be saved for a trip to Dar es Salaam. Sio had one and a half years to finish his degree. He had promised to show her TZ, as he referred to Tanzania, especially the Serengeti National Park, Dodoma and Dar es Salaam.
It was one of those things that happen and people ask, You mean you didn’t see it coming? and look at you as if you are lying to yourself. But for you, it is not until it happens that you see its inevitability.
When Kirabo arrived home, Sio was sitting on the front steps, the ones no one used. She frowned. Sio never waited for her at home. For the past two weeks, ever since he had returned from TZ, he had rung her at work to say he was coming. Normally, he was waiting at the kiosk outside the treasury building when she finished work and they went to a restaurant or he walked her home. All this whizzed through her mind as she hurried towards him. When he saw her, Sio stood up and wiped his trousers where he had been sitting. Kirabo saw the shadows in his eyes and her mind flew to his father. Had they located Kabuye’s remains? She gave him a brief hug, and then said, ‘Wait here, I will drop these bags in the house. I have been paid. I will take you for chai and chapatti at the restaurant down the road.’ She was not going to ask him what was wrong until they sat down somewhere. But as she walked towards the alleyway, she heard him coming. She stopped, saw how miserable he looked and thought he might as well come in.
‘You know what, Sio, come to the house. Aunt Abi will not be home until six.’
Sio sped up. Yet by the time they got to the alleyway he was lagging behind again, as if he was coming but not coming. Before they got to the little gate, he stopped. It was there, under the mango tree that leaned in from the former Gurdwara Temple, now a mosque, that he dropped the boulder on Kirabo’s head.
‘Giibwa is pregnant.’
It was like eating too soon after a dentist has drilled your tooth. One half of your mouth is dead, the other half feels so swollen it is hard to move food around your mouth. Kirabo knew Sio was responsible, but her responses – speech, pain, anger – were delayed. She asked, ‘What has Giibwa’s pregnancy got to do with me?’
‘So you don’t hear it in rumours.’
‘I don’t care how I hear it.’
Sio kept quiet. He stood still. Finally, Kirabo asked, ‘Whose is it?’
‘Apparently it is mine.’
Only Kirabo’s legs reacted; they started to itch. She used a shopping bag to scratch at them, but it just slid over the itch ineffectively. She looked at Sio’s tears and thought How Zungu. You go and hurt someone, and then when it comes to apologising you help yourself to crying as well. She had seen it in films. Man cheats, man confesses to woman, man cries, and the betrayed woman is robbed of her right to tears.
‘I just found out and thought I should tell you first. I have not even told Mum. I thought I should tell you when you were at home, so you did not travel afterwards.’
Kirabo was still a spectator.
‘I only asked her in jest.’ Sio started towards her. Kirabo flinched. He stopped. ‘That Ntaate was spreading rumours that I am not…because I had never slept with any girl in the village. But then Giibwa said yes and I did not know what to do. I would have lost face. Giibwa would have confirmed Ntaate’s rumour. I wish I had a better explanation.’
Still Kirabo did not respond.
‘Say something, Kirabo. Say you are mad, hit me for heaven’s sake.’
Kirabo stared.
‘I know you will not believe me, but I don’t love her. It happened when I took a message to her from her parents. Oh God, this is a nightmare.’ He covered his face with both hands. ‘I cannot believe I did it.’
Kirabo wanted to ask Had Giibwa not got pregnant, would you have felt so much pain? Would you have felt any regret? But she just turned around and marched through the gate.
He did not come after her.
When she returned, Sio stood where she had left him. He saw her coming with a pail of water but like a Zungu chicken, he did not run. She stopped a few metres away. ‘I showed you my flower. You touched me there. Even after you touched her. You said men cheat because they spend money on us’ – she splashed him like a car being washed – ‘but how much have you spent on me?’
He caught his breath. Then as he wiped the water out of his face he replied, ‘Don’t say that, Kirabo. I was weak and stupid and I don’t even love her.’
Kirabo walked back to the house. Jumping over the shopping bags she had dropped on the kitchen floor, she went to the sink and filled the pail again.
Sio still stood on the same spot. As if he had come all the way to Old Kampala to commit suicide. Kirabo threw the water at him. Maddened at his lack of reaction, she ran back to the sink. She filled the pail and returned. As she soaked him in water yet again, Aunt Abi turned into the alleyway and saw her. She hurried over and took the empty pail from her.
‘What are you doing?’
‘He made Giibwa pregnant!’ Kirabo shrieked, as if Aunt Abi had already met Sio.
Aunt Abi looked at him, then cocked her head as if to retrieve a memory. Sio, dripping, his shirt clinging to his skin so you could see his pale skin through the white shirt, turned slightly towards the tree. ‘I am sorry, ma’am.’ He spoke English.
‘Are you not Kabuye’s son?’
Sio nodded.
‘Kabuye the feminist!’
‘Yii yii.’ Aunt Abi threw a look at Kirabo which said What are you doing washing silk in dirty water? ‘My child,’ she said smiling at Sio, ‘do you think you will manage our girl? The way she treats visitors. Now I know why her friends in Nattetta call her Mohammed Alice.’ She laughed at her own humour.
‘Didn’t you hear what I said, Aunt Abi? He made Giibwa pregnant.’
‘You mean this Giibwa, the daughter of Mwesigwa, our labourer?’
‘And he came to tell me, so I clap. I bet Nattetta is marvelling: Oh, that Sio, he does not just shoot, he scores too. I bet Ntaate pumped your hand.’
‘Kirabo, you twist things. I came to apologise. I came to tell you what I had done. I did not want you to think I love her.’
Have you ever seen a cockerel caught in the rain? That is what Sio looked like in that moment. Way skinnier; an embarrassed skinny.
‘Listen to me, Kirabo,’ he implored. ‘Listen. You said once that not all men cheat. That meant a lot to me. I don’t deserve you, but please don’t…just don’t lose your trust in men because of me.’
‘Gods, oh my good ancestors protect me from this guy. Did you hear him? Did you hear the sweetness of his words? He hits you, whack, across the cheek, and then begs Please, please, don’t feel the pain.’
‘But you know me, Kirabo; you know I am not like that. All this time I have treated you with respect. But now—’
‘I know you? Me? Since when? I have no idea who you are. I doubt you know yourself.’
‘I know I am a coward but please, I am begging you—’
Aunt Abi stepped in. ‘But that girl, Giibwa; me, I saw it in her all along. The way she hung about you, Kirabo. Just to see what she could get out of you.’
‘He is the one who made her pregnant. And then he claims to be one of us, believes in mwenkanonkano.’
‘We are not perfect: we make mistakes,’ he protested. Then he began to shiver.
‘Come out of the cold, child,’ Aunt Abi said. ‘I have some clothes you can change into while you iron your clothes.’ Aunt Abi held Sio’s hand and led him towards the house. She turned to Kirabo. ‘You wait there.’ She led Sio through the tiny gate, under the clothes lines. She pulled a dry towel off the line and wrapped it around his shoulders. When they got to the foyer, she said, ‘Wait here a minute. Let me talk to Kirabo.’ When she got back to where Kirabo stood she whispered, ‘Listen, Kirabo. All my life, I have never seen a man come to you before you find out that he has cheated and say I am sorry I have erred.’
‘So?’
‘Which clouds are you sailing on?’
‘Giibwa is still pregnant, is she not?’ Kirabo started to walk away.
‘Stop. You don’t walk away when I am talking to you.’ Now she softened her voice. ‘Let me handle this; anger has blinded you. Besides, this boy has suffered a lot because of his father.’
‘That is no excuse.’
‘Listen, I will not let a tiny little thing like a boy having a child in his impetuous youth rob us of a potentially fantastic opportunity with a fine young man from an excellent stalk. You are throwing him right back into the arms of that dung-roller – why? Because she is cheap? Let me handle this. One day you might thank me.’
‘Aunt Abi, he made Giibwa pregnant.’ The tears had started to flow.
‘I know, I know. The girl is a slut. But do you know the courage it took him to come here to confess?’
‘How could he sleep with her? He has never slept with me.’
‘Child, that is why; it makes perfect sense, don’t you see it?’ Aunt Abi pulled away and looked in Kirabo’s eyes. ‘He slept with Giibwa for relief. You are decent. He respects you. That is what respecting men do. They go with the cheap girls while they wait for the right girl to get ready.’ She rummaged through her handbag and retrieved a hankie and gave it to Kirabo.
Kirabo’s mind was too congested to process the implications of Sio using Giibwa for sexual relief. Or to see that Aunt Abi was demonstrating a form of kweluma by diminishing Sio’s cheating while escalating Giibwa’s role. Kirabo was focused on the fact that if Giibwa had the baby, she would be inextricably related to Sio forever. The problem was that when it came to Sio, Kirabo had ignored the age-old wisdom that a woman never gives away her whole self to a man. To think she had lied to Aunt Abi and her father that part of the A-level study would be a trip to the Serengeti National Park and they had promised to pay for her trip. To think that she had taken Sio’s suggestion and elected to do physics, chemistry and biology at A level in the hope of doing veterinary medicine at university so they could farm together. She was the most guileless woman who had ever lived.
That night in bed Kirabo clawed the flesh off her bones. You knew he would do it; you knew. Telling him you trusted him, tsk, a naked plea if there ever was one. Then images and smells and sounds of him reeled through her mind – the chink of the Bob Marley buckle on his belt, the Brut scent of him, the way his T-shirt always seemed tucked in at the front but hung out at the back. Him smelling her hair, neck, shoulders, eyes half-closed, then frenzied, greedily, demanding ‘Touch me’ while he tugged at the elastic of her knickers because there was hardly any space to snake his hand through, she keeping her knees tight just to hear his frustration – ‘Touch me, Makula, please touch me.’ That Sio, the Sio who had made her so lose herself she did not realise she had parted her knees, the Sio who had made her tug at his Bob Marley buckle to touch him, that Sio had not only touched Giibwa with those same hands, he had inserted himself so deep into her he had made her pregnant.
As a child, when she hurt a finger or a toe, she ran to her grandfather crying and he took it and blew on it until the pain ebbed. But this pain she did not know what to do with.