Chapter 13
Amara
She told her mother on a Sunday, under the mango tree.
It was the last week of July. The semester was over, and the hostel had emptied out. Brenda had gone to Mbarara. Peace was in Fort Portal. Shanice was in Entebbe, with her mother, who was in hospital again. Amara had packed one bag, the black one with the scuffed corners, and had left the tan one with the gold clasp at the bottom of the wardrobe, empty, with its mouth open.
She took the morning taxi to Kyotera. It was the same white Hiace, or its cousin, with a different sticker on the windscreen. Mercy Triumphs. She sat by the window with her bag on her lap and watched the road unspool. The swamp at Lukaya. The long climb after Masaka. She had made this trip four times in two years, and each time she had felt the same dull weight settle on her chest as the hills grew familiar.
This time she felt something else. Fear, still. But under it, a strange steadiness, like a rope tied to a post.
Her mother met her at the stage. She wore the old green dress with the yellow flowers, and she was thinner than Amara remembered. There were new lines at the corners of her mouth. She stood with her hands folded in front of her, as she always did, and when Amara got down she did not run, or call out. She just opened her arms.
"You're thin," she said into Amara's hair.
"So are you."
"I'm not thin. I'm slender." She held her at arm's length. "What is it? You look as if you've been ill."
"I'm fine."
"You are not fine. I'm your mother." But she did not press. "Come. Esther has made a cake. It's terrible. You must eat a big piece and say it's wonderful."
It was terrible. It was heavy and dry, and had a lump of salt in the middle, and Esther watched her with huge eyes while she chewed. Amara said it was the best cake she had ever tasted, and Esther said, "Really?" and Amara said, "Truly," and swallowed, and felt like a thief and a saint at the same time.
She waited until after supper.
The yard was dark and cool. The generator at the shop across the road had gone quiet, and the only light came from the kitchen window and a thin sliver of moon. Her mother sat on the low bench under the mango tree, shelling groundnuts into a basin. The shells cracked softly, one after another. Esther was asleep. Joel was out at a neighbour's, watching a match on a borrowed television.
Amara sat down next to her. For a while she shelled nuts too, without speaking. The work gave her hands something to do.
"Mama," she said.
"Mm."
"I have something to tell you."
"I thought you did." The shells went on cracking. "I've been waiting since you got off the taxi. Your face is like your father's when he had done something. He would stand in the doorway with his hands behind his back."
"Mama, it's serious."
"I know." Her mother put down a nut. "Say it, then. I'm listening."
She had practised it. She had said it to the mirror, and to the ceiling, and to Madam Okumu, who had listened and said only, "Slowly." She had imagined every kind of beginning. I have to confess something. I haven't been honest. She had thought of starting with the scholarship, with the lie that held up the rest.
What came out was: "There is no scholarship."
Her mother's hands went still.
"The business association. The group of businessmen. It doesn't exist. I made it up. The fees, the second semester, I told you it was paid by a scholarship. It wasn't."
"Then who paid it?"
"A man."
The word fell into the dark and lay there. Somewhere in the tree a gecko clicked.
Her mother did not look at her. She stared ahead, at the shape of the house, at the black square of the window. When she spoke, her voice was very low.
"What man?"
"His name is Ronald Kato. He is a businessman in Kampala. Forty-four. He is married." Amara's own voice shook, and she steadied it. "I met him through a friend. I did some work for him. And then he paid my fees. And then..."
She stopped.
"And then?"
"And then I was with him. For about a year. And later there was another one. A younger man. And then, for a while, others."
Her mother did not move. "Others."
"Four more. Maybe five. I don't want to say their names. They all promised me things."
She had thought that when she said it the world would end. It did not. A truck went by on the main road, its headlights sweeping across the leaves. The air smelled of woodsmoke and damp earth. In the basin, the groundnuts lay in their pale skins, small and wrinkled and patient.
Her mother put the basin down on the ground. She stood up. She did it slowly, one hand on the bench, like an old woman. She walked three steps away, and stopped with her back to Amara, and her shoulders rose, once, and fell.
"Mama?"
"Be quiet."
"I'm..."
"Be quiet, Amara."
She was quiet.
Her mother walked into the kitchen. Through the door Amara could see her moving, a dark shape against the glow of the paraffin lamp. A pot clanged. A lid was thrown down, and rolled, and spun to a stop on the cement. Something heavy was put on the table, hard. Then another. It went on for a long time, banging, scraping, dropping, a noise like a small war.
Amara sat on the bench and did not move. She had decided, on the taxi, that whatever happened, she would stay where she was. If her mother screamed, she would listen. If she struck her, she would take it. She would not run.
The noise stopped.
When her mother came back, her face was wet and set. She stood in front of the bench, with her arms down, and looked at Amara. It was the longest look Amara had ever received.
"I sold the land," her mother said.
"I know."
"I sold the land behind the church. Your father's land. The one he was going to build on. I sold your goat, and the pigs, and my sewing machine, and I went on my knees to the women at the market." Her voice did not rise. It was level, flat, terrible. "I did not sell it so that my daughter could sell herself."
Amara flinched as if she had been hit.
"Do you hear me?"
"Yes."
"I would have eaten dirt. I would have slept in the road. I would have begged outside the church. I would have done anything. But I would not have wanted that. Not for any university. Not for a thousand degrees."
"I know, Mama."
"Then why?"
"Because I didn't know how to tell you. Because I couldn't bear to say we couldn't pay. Because you'd given everything, and I was so afraid of wasting it." The words poured out. "Because I was stupid. Because I wanted things. Because I was ashamed to be poor. I don't have a good reason. I don't have a reason that makes it right. I'm only telling you the truth."
"A scholarship," her mother said.
"I'm sorry."
"I told the pastor. I told the whole church. I stood up on Sunday and I said, Praise God, my daughter has been blessed. They clapped." Her voice cracked. "They sang. Do you know what that is, to be clapped for, for a lie?"
"I'm so sorry."
"And you let me."
"Yes."
"Every Sunday. On the phone. Good, Mama. Very good." She raised her hand, and Amara thought she would be slapped, and did not lift her arm to defend her face. But her mother only pressed the hand against her own mouth, hard. A long sound came out from behind it, low, wounded, like an animal.
She sat down on the ground.
She simply sat, in the dust, in her good green dress, with her knees drawn up and her hand over her mouth. And she wept, with her whole body, in a way that Amara had seen only once before, at her father's funeral, when the coffin was lowered and her mother had walked to the edge of the grave and made a sound like that.
Amara slid down beside her. She did not touch her. She did not dare. She sat close enough to feel the warmth of her arm, and she wept too, quietly, with her face turned up to the dark leaves, and the two of them stayed like that for a very long time.
"There was a man," her mother said, a long while after.
They were still sitting on the ground. The moon had moved. The air had grown cold, and Amara had put the blue scarf around her mother's shoulders without being told. Her mother had not refused it.
"What man?"
"Not for me. Before." She stared at the dark. "I want to tell you something. And you must not interrupt."
"I won't."
"When your father lost his job. At the sugar works. You were small, you won't remember. You were four. Joel was a baby. We had nothing. For eight months he sat at home, and I sold what I could, and we ate cassava, and then we ate less." Her voice was steady, as if reciting a lesson. "There was a shopkeeper in Masaka. A big man. He used to give me credit. Flour. Oil. Sometimes he said I could pay later. And then one day he said, You don't have to pay at all."
Amara's skin prickled. She did not move.
"I knew what he meant. I'm not a fool. I stood in the shop with the baby on my back, and I looked at the bag of flour, and I thought, My children will eat tonight." She took a breath. "I said no."
"Mama."
"I said no. And I walked home with nothing. And your father came back that evening and found us hungry, and he did not ask why. And the next day I went to the market and begged a woman I barely knew to let me sell her tomatoes on commission."
"You never told me."
"Why would I? It was nothing. I said no." Her mother's mouth twisted. "But I want you to know, I almost didn't. I want you to know that I stood in that shop, and I did the sum. I did it very carefully. The flour against my pride. And I came very close. If the baby had cried, I think I would have said yes."
Amara did not breathe.
"I am not telling you this to say you were right. You weren't. I am telling you because you think you are the only one." Her mother turned. In the dim light her face was swollen, and old, and absolutely clear. "You are not the first woman who has stood in a room and done that sum. Hundreds of us. Thousands. Some say no and starve. Some say yes and eat. Some say yes in small ways, over many years, and never tell anyone. Don't think I am clean. I have smiled at men I did not like, to get a better price. I have made myself small in rooms, for a few shillings. That's what a woman does, in this country, when she has children and no land."
"But I wasn't starving."
"No."
"I wasn't hungry. I just wanted..."
"I know what you wanted." Her mother touched her cheek, and her hand was rough and warm and shaking. "You wanted not to be afraid. That's all anyone wants. I forgave you the moment you said it. I forgave you on the bench. I was only angry that you didn't trust me with it."
"I was ashamed."
"Of course you were. So was I. But I would rather have been ashamed together." Her thumb moved, slowly, along the line of Amara's jaw. "We would have found a way. Or we would have failed. But it would have been ours. You took it from me. The failing, I mean. That was mine to share."
Amara bowed her head. She could not hold her face up any longer. It dropped against her mother's shoulder, and her mother's arms came around her, tight, almost hurting, and the smell of her was woodsmoke and groundnuts and a faint sweet trace of soap.
"My child," her mother said, over and over. "My child, my child."
It was not forgiveness, exactly. It was too big for that. It was only the sound of being held.
"There is more," Amara said, into her shoulder.
"I know."
"You don't."
"I know there is more." Her mother's hand moved on her back, slowly, round and round, as it had when she was small and feverish. "A mother knows when a child has walked out of a room and left a part of herself behind. Tell me. All of it. I am here."
So she told her. The July holiday. The test in the toilet of a small restaurant. The five names she could not tell apart, and the five voices that said not mine. The clinic in Kabalagala, with its green curtain. She said it plainly, in a low voice, staring at the dark leaves, and she did not leave anything out, because she had learned that the parts you leave out are the ones that come back at night.
Her mother had gone completely still.
"A child," she said.
"Yes."
"Mine would have been the grandchild."
"Yes, Mama."
"I would have held it." It was not an accusation. It came out of her as if from a long way down, in a voice Amara had never heard. "Whoever the father was. It would have had your face, or your father's. I would have held it, Amara. I would have carried it on my back to the market."
"I know."
"You thought I would not."
"I thought I would kill you."
"You thought you would kill me, so you killed..." Her mother stopped. She pressed the back of her wrist against her mouth, hard, and rocked once. When she spoke again, it was quieter. "No. I will not say that. I will not say that to you. You were twenty. You were alone. I was not there, and that is not your fault, it is mine, for not being someone you could tell."
"It was never you."
"It was a little me." She wiped her face with the end of the blue scarf. "A mother who makes herself too strong has a child who cannot be weak in front of her. I did that. I was proud of my pride. I will carry that."
They sat in the dark. The generator across the road coughed, and was silent. Amara drew a breath that went all the way down, and decided that she would say the last of it, and be done.
"There is one more thing, Mama. And it is the worst."
"Then say it."
"A few weeks after. I went up on the roof of the hostel. At night." She could hardly hear her own voice. "I was going to... I stood at the edge."
Her mother made a sound. It was not a word and it was not a cry. It was something older than both, a low, cracked breath, like the sound a person makes when a blow lands that they have been bracing for all their lives.
"I didn't," Amara said quickly. "I didn't, Mama. I came down. Because of you. I heard you. I heard what you always say. Don't forget who you are. It was so clear. I rang you. At five in the morning. Do you remember?"
Her mother stared at her.
"The bad dream," she whispered.
"There was no dream."
"I prayed with you." Her mother's whole face crumpled. "I sat on the stool and I prayed with you for an hour, and I did not know. I did not know. God, I did not know. Why did I not know?"
"You did what I needed."
"I did nothing."
"You answered the phone." Amara took her mother's hands, both of them, the cracked hard hands, and held them against her chest. "You said, I am here. That was everything. That was exactly everything."
Her mother bent forward until her forehead touched Amara's knees, and her whole body began to shake, and Amara wrapped both arms around her and held her. She was so small. She had always seemed to Amara as large as the house, and she was small, a little round-shouldered woman in a green dress with a blue scarf round her head, and she was weeping into her daughter's lap like a child.
"Promise me," her mother said, into the cloth.
"What?"
"If it ever comes again. You will call me. Not a bad dream. The truth. You say, Mama, I am not well. And I will take the first taxi."
"I promise."
"Say it again."
"I promise, Mama."
The moon had gone behind the mango tree. A cock crowed somewhere, far off, and was answered, and then the yard was quiet. They stayed on the ground, the two of them, until the first light came grey over the hills and the first boda went by on the Masaka road, as it had every morning of Amara's life.
The next morning, Joel did not come to breakfast.
She found him behind the house, sitting on a log with his football boots in his hands. He had overheard. She knew it at once, from his face, the grey stiffness in it. He had been out at the neighbour's, and had come home early, and had stood in the dark behind the kitchen wall with his hand over his mouth.
"Joel."
"Don't."
"I want to explain."
"I heard everything."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"I don't want you to be sorry. I want..." He swallowed. He turned the boots over, one in each hand, studying the studs. "Is it from him? The man. Did you buy these with his money?"
She did not lie. "Yes."
His jaw moved. He put the boots down carefully, side by side, on the ground, as if they were something fragile. "I wore them in the final. Last term. I scored two goals. Everyone said they were the best boots in the school."
"They are good boots."
"I thought you earned them." His voice cracked. "I told everybody. My sister works in an accounting office. She bought me boots. I was so proud."
"You can still be proud of me."
"I don't know." He wiped his face on his arm, furiously, like a boy ashamed of being seen. "I want to find him. I want to go to Kampala and find him and hit him in the face."
"You'll do no such thing."
"I'm fifteen. I'm nearly sixteen. I can..."
"You will study." She sat down on the log beside him. "That's what you'll do. You will pass your O-levels with the best marks in the district, and you'll go to a good school, and you will become someone who never has to stand in front of a window and count. That's the best revenge there is. It's the only one I know."
He was silent. He kicked the ground with his heel.
"Does Mama know about the boots?"
"I'll tell her."
"She'll make me give them back."
"She won't."
"I don't want to wear them."
"Then don't. Not now. When you're ready." She laid a hand on his back. "Joel. I did something bad. I'm not asking you to say it was fine. I'm only asking you to let me be your sister while I fix it."
"How?"
"I don't know yet. Slowly."
He looked at her. He had their father's eyes, long and serious, and in the morning light she saw how much he had grown. He was nearly as tall as she was. He was a person, now, not a child, and he was looking at her with a person's judgment.
"Okay," he said. "Slowly."
He picked up one boot and put his hand inside it, as if testing the shape. Then he put it down again.
"They are really good boots, though," he whispered.
She laughed, and cried, and he did, too, a little, and neither of them mentioned it.
She went back to Kampala at the end of August with one thing on her mind.
She went on a Monday morning, alone, to the shop in Nakawa. The two boys in overalls had been replaced by three. A new sign hung over the door. Kato Auto Spares — Quality You Can Trust. Inside, the shelves were neatly labelled in her own handwriting, faded now but still legible. She could see her own stock codes on the boxes. It gave her an odd, stricken feeling, like finding her own name on a gravestone.
Sam, the quiet one, looked up from the counter. "Madam Amara," he said, with obvious warmth. "It has been long."
"Yes. Is Mr. Kato in?"
"In his office." Sam hesitated. "He was asking about you. Last week."
"Was he?"
"Many times." He looked at the counter. "Be well, madam."
She went through. The back room was the same, except for a new desk and a computer. The framed picture of his wife and children still hung on the wall. He sat behind the desk with his reading glasses pushed up, and when she came in he looked up, and stood.
It was automatic. It was the same movement, as though it had been rehearsed. He rose, buttoning his jacket, and his eyes went to her face, and he let a moment pass before he spoke. She noticed that. She noticed that he let it pass.
"Amara," he said, very softly.
"Ronald."
"You look well." He seemed to mean it. "Better than I'd feared."
"Thank you."
"Please. Sit. Can I get you tea?"
"No. I won't stay." She remained standing. She took the rose-gold phone out of her bag and put it on the desk, with its charger and its white box. "I brought this back."
"I told you to keep it."
"I know. But I have my own." She held up the old Tecno, which Nathan had mended on a Sunday in a single hour. "It works. It's slow. But it's mine."
He looked at the phone on the desk. Then at the old one in her hand. Something moved in his face. It might have been hurt. It looked very real.
"Please," he said. "Before you go. I have been wanting to say something to you for months. I have practised it. It is not easy for a man like me." He came round the desk, and stopped a respectful distance away, with his hands folded in front of him like a man in church. "May I?"
She said nothing, and he took that for a yes.
"I owe you an apology." His voice was low and a little unsteady. "More than one. I have been thinking about that July. When you came to me, in the apartment, and told me you were pregnant. I gave you an envelope and told you not to come for a while, as if you had a cold." He lowered his eyes. "I have thought of nothing else. You were twenty. You were frightened. You stood in front of me and I counted my own risk. I am ashamed of it. I want you to know that I am."
It was beautifully said. It was said slowly, with pauses in the right places, with the eyes lowered and then raised at exactly the moment when they would meet hers. A year ago, it would have undone her. She felt, standing there, a small distant flicker of the old response, the loosening in the chest, the urge to say It's all right.
She waited.
"And before that," he said. "I should have told you to go back to your books. That is what a decent man would have done. I wasn't that man. I took what I was offered and I called it kindness." He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes with a knuckle. "My wife knows, Amara. We have been to a priest. It has been a hard year. I am not a perfect man, I never claimed to be. But I have changed. I truly have."
"I'm glad you're getting help."
"I am not asking for anything." He put the glasses on the desk. "I want to be very clear about that. I only wish to make it right."
There it was.
She had heard it before. She could not have said where, at first, and then she could. A car outside a hostel, a plastic bead swinging from a mirror. I would never insult you by pretending. The same low voice. The same gentle, grave, unhurried phrase. He had said it to her at nineteen, and it had worked, and he had kept it, as a man keeps a good tool.
"How?" she said.
"Pardon?"
"How do you wish to make it right?"
"Well." He seemed to have been waiting for the question. A little light came into his face, and he spoke more quickly. "First, the job. It is still yours. Saturdays, as before, but more. We could expand. Training, a position, a proper salary, a title. Finance Manager. I have spoken to my partners. And your graduation, Amara, I hear it is in January. The gown, the party, your family coming from Kyotera. Let me pay for it. Let me arrange a hall. They should have a place to stay. And your mother's loan, the savings group, it is a burden, I know. I can clear it, quietly, tomorrow."
"I've cleared it."
"Then something else. Anything." His eyes were bright. "A flat. In your own name this time. Not mine. Nothing in my name. You could live there, or not. I would never come unless you asked. I only want to know that you are comfortable. That you are safe. After everything." He lowered his voice. "I think about you in that hostel, with that boy, in a room with no running water, and it keeps me awake."
"Nathan."
"Is that his name?" He gave a small, sad smile. "I'm sure he is a good young man. But what can he give you? You are going to be a remarkable woman. You deserve more than a boy who fixes phones. I don't say it to hurt him. I say it because I have been where he is, and I know how it ends. He will love you, and he will be proud, and then one day he will not be able to pay for something, and he will look at you with that face. Men like that always do." He spread his hands. "And on that day, you will have nowhere to go."
"I'd have my mother."
"Of course." He nodded, gently. "But a mother cannot do what I can."
She looked at him for a long moment. He stood very still, the picture of patient concern, in his good jacket, with his hands open. The sunlight from the dusty window made a pale square on the floor between them.
"That is not an apology," she said.
"I beg your pardon?"
"You said you were sorry. That was the first minute. The rest was an offer." Her voice was quiet and clear. "A job, a flat, a hall. My mother's loan. You told me you wanted to make it right, and then you listed everything you could buy me, and at the end you told me my boyfriend would fail me."
"I was only concerned..."
"I know what you were." She was not angry. That was the strange thing. She waited for the anger and it did not come. What came was a long cool feeling, like water on a burn. "You said it all so well. The pauses, the eyes. I almost believed you. I think a year ago I would have. But I've been listening to a man tell me the truth for three months, and he does it badly, and slowly, and with his hands shaking. And when you do it, it's very smooth."
His face changed.
It was not dramatic. A small thing. The warmth did not so much go out of it as become visible, like a lamp being turned down, and behind it she saw a man she had never quite looked at: tired, and watchful, and calculating, and very sure of his own charm. It was only for a moment. Then he smiled again, but the smile was thinner.
"You are being unfair," he said.
"Maybe."
"I paid your fees. Thirteen million shillings. Not once did I ask you to return it. I was patient. I was kind. I never forced you, never raised my voice. And now you stand in my office and call me a liar."
"I'm not calling you anything. I'm telling you what I heard." She picked up her bag. "And you're right about the fees. You never asked for it back. I wrote it all down, and I've decided I'm not going to repay it, because you told me you would throw it in the lake. But I'm also not going to thank you for it. It wasn't free. We both know what it cost."
"Amara."
"I came to give back a phone. That's all." She put the Tecno in her pocket. "I'm not angry with you, Ronald. I used to think I should be. But I'm not. I think I was a girl you found, and you used what you had, and I used what I had, and we both called it something else. I'm going to stop calling it that."
"You will be back."
He said it softly, almost kindly, with his head a little to one side. It was the same voice. It had a tone in it she remembered, from the car, in the dusk, the first night: a quiet certainty, the voice of a man who knows how the story goes.
"One day," he said, "when he leaves, or when the money runs out, or when you are tired. And you will come through that door, and I will be here. I will not even say I told you." He smiled. "I will make you tea."
She almost laughed. It rose in her, and it was not bitter. It was light, and strange, and free.
"I won't," she said.
"We'll see."
"No." She shook her head, slowly, quite gently. "You see, that's what I finally understood. I used to think you were the one who could let me go. As if I was something you held, and you opened your hand. But it was never your hand. It was a door, and I was standing on the wrong side, and I thought I needed your permission to walk through." She looked at him for the last time, at the grey in his beard, and the gold glasses on the desk, and the small tired man in the good jacket. "I don't need it. I never did."
He did not answer. For the first time since she had known him, Ronald Kato had nothing prepared.
She walked out through the shop, past the shelves and the boys and the quiet Sam, who nodded as she went by. At the door she paused and looked back. The sun was coming in through the dusty glass, and Mr. Kato stood in the frame of the back doorway, small and heavy and still, watching her go. He did not wave. He lifted one hand, just a little, and then let it fall, as if he had forgotten what it had been for.
She went out into the street. It was hot. A lorry roared by, trailing diesel. A woman selling roasted maize called, "Sister, buy, buy!" and Amara stopped, and bought two cobs, and ate one standing on the pavement.
It was a very small thing. But she noticed that she did not look around to see who was watching.
That term, she began to live in one bag.
It was the black one. She carried it everywhere, to lectures, to the SACCO, to the library, to the small rented room in Wandegeya that she shared, from September, with Brenda, after they moved out of Lucky Star together. It had a broken zip that Nathan had fixed with a safety pin.
She had given the tan bag to Shanice, with the clothes. Shanice had sold them on a resale page, quickly, to girls who did not ask where they came from, and had brought her an envelope of money without being asked. It was two million, one hundred and eighty thousand shillings. Amara had stared at it. She had thought of burning it, or giving it to the church. Then she had thought of her mother.
She sent it to Kyotera, all of it, with a note. This is to clear the loan at the savings group. Don't argue. I'll explain when I come.
Her mother had telephoned within the hour. "I cannot take this."
"You must."
"It is from him."
"It's from me. It's from my clothes, which I sold. They were mine. I'm allowed to sell them."
"Amara."
"Mama." She spoke gently. "You sold the land. I'm paying back one small piece. Let me. It's the only thing I can do that fits."
There was a long silence. Then her mother said, in a different voice, almost a whisper, "Your father would have said the same thing."
"Would he?"
"He would have argued first. And then he would have said it."
Amara laughed. She held the phone against her ear and laughed until she had to sit down.
Brenda forgave her on a Tuesday in September, in the dark.
They were in their new room, a bare place with two beds and a window onto a yard full of washing, and Amara had thought her friend was asleep. Brenda's voice came out of the dark, small and clear.
"Amara?"
"Yes?"
"I forgive you."
She lay very still.
"It took a month and a half," Brenda said. "I wasn't sure it would. I prayed, and I was very angry, and I cried a lot in the bathroom. But last night I was reading the story of the woman at the well, and I thought, Jesus never made her tell him first. He just said, Give me a drink." She sniffed. "I thought, that is a very good way to begin."
"Brenda..."
"I'm not saying it's finished. I'll still be cross sometimes. But I forgive you. I wanted you to know. I thought I'd say it in the dark, so I didn't have to look at your face."
"Thank you."
"You don't have to say anything."
"I want to." Amara's voice was thick. "I love you. You're my best friend. You always were."
"I know," said Brenda. "That's why it hurt."
They lay in silence for a while. A mosquito whined. Outside, a radio was playing a hymn, faint and tinny, from a window far across the yard.
"Can I ask something?" Brenda said.
"Yes."
"Is Nathan good to you?"
"He's trying."
"That's the right answer." The bed creaked as Brenda turned over. "Tell him if he's not, I'll pray very loudly outside his house."
Amara laughed into her pillow.
Peace came back the following week. She appeared at the library table in the afternoon, set her file down, took out three pens and a ruler and a highlighter, and began to read, as if nothing had happened. She did not say anything. She did not look up. After twenty minutes, without lifting her eyes, she pushed her notebook toward Amara.
"Question four," she said. "I think the answer is wrong."
"Which one?"
"The depreciation."
They looked at it together. It was wrong. They fixed it. That was all. It was, Amara thought, the most generous thing anyone had ever done for her, and neither of them mentioned it.
She and Nathan did not go back to the beginning. That was the thing she learned about love, that year: there was no beginning to go back to. There was only the next day.
He was not easy. She had known he would not be. In October, he saw a message on her phone, an unknown number, a single line. Hope you are well. I am thinking of you. It was from a girl she had known at school, who had heard about her scholarship. But Nathan saw the number, and went still, and said, in a very careful voice, "Who is that?"
"A friend."
"What friend?"
"Her name is Doreen. I haven't spoken to her since S6."
"Why is she messaging at eleven at night?"
"I don't know, Nathan. Ask her."
He stood up. She saw the muscle in his jaw move. He went to the window of the small canteen where they had been eating, and stared out at the dark road, with his back to her, and she thought, Here it is. She waited. She did not defend herself. She did not apologise. She let the quiet sit.
After a minute he said, without turning, "I'm doing it again."
"What?"
"The thing. The fist." He pressed a hand to his chest. "I'm sorry. I know it's Doreen. I know it's nothing. I can feel it, though. It comes before the thought. It comes before I can stop it."
"What do you need?"
"I don't know." He turned. His face was open and miserable. "I think I need you to say that it's nothing, and I need to believe you, and neither of those is going to work right now. I think I just need to say it. Out loud. Instead of going to my room and brooding."
"Then say it."
"I'm jealous. I'm jealous of Doreen. I'm jealous of a man I've never seen. I'm jealous of January, and the apartment, and a pair of heels you wore." He laughed, harshly. "It's insane. I know. I'm ashamed."
"Don't be."
"Why not?"
"Because you told me." She crossed to him, and took his hands. "That's all I asked for. Say it. Don't go quiet. If you say it, we can look at it together. If you keep it, it grows."
"That's exactly what my mother used to say. About seams."
"Then she was wise."
He pressed his forehead against hers. "I'm going to be bad at this for a long time."
"Me too."
"We're a mess."
"We're a very organised mess," she said. "I have a spreadsheet."
He laughed properly then, shakily, with his forehead still against hers. They stood in the dim canteen with the rain beginning to fall outside and a tired woman wiping tables behind them, and for a moment it was possible to believe that they could do this. Not perfectly. Not forever, without cost. But on a Tuesday, in October, with a shared plate of chips going cold.
They made rules. They were silly rules, and they wrote them on a napkin. One. If you are upset, say so before you go quiet. Two. If you are late, send a message. Three. If one of us asks a hard question, the other will answer, and not be offended. Four. We eat together at least four times a week.
Five, Nathan wrote at the bottom. No more white cars.
"That's not a rule," said Amara.
"It's my favourite."
She kept the napkin. It is in the green book still, between two pages, a little stained with chilli sauce.
In November, a first-year came to her for tutoring.
Her name was Mercy. She was eighteen, from Mbale, round-faced and sweet, with a nervous laugh and a very new phone. She had failed her first Accounting test, and she sat across from Amara in the canteen with her hands wrapped around a cup of tea and said, "I'm so stupid. I'm going to fail."
"You're not stupid. You're scared."
"It's the same thing."
"It isn't." Amara spread out the paper. "Look. You got the first four questions right. You only went wrong when you panicked. Let's go through it slowly."
They worked for an hour. At the end, Mercy sat back and said, "Thank you. You're so kind. I wish I'd met you in the first week." And then, a little shyly, after a pause, "Can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"There's a man. A friend of my cousin's. He said he could help with my fees. He's... older. He has a business. He says it's only a loan. He took me to lunch yesterday, in a really nice place, and he was so good, and he said I was very clever." She twisted her cup. "I don't know. Is it okay? Is that normal?"
Amara went very still.
It would have been easy to say a great many things. She could have said, No. Never. Stay away. She could have told her the whole story, with the gold clasp and the green book, and put it on the table like a warning sign. She had thought about it a hundred times. If only someone had told me.
But she remembered something. She remembered a girl in a queue, and a friend with sweets, and a voice that said, Be careful, and how little it had meant. Advice did not work. It was too far away. It sounded like a lecture.
"What did he ask for?" she said.
"Nothing. Not yet."
"What do you think he'll ask for?"
Mercy's cheeks went pink. "I don't know."
"I think you do." Amara said it kindly. "Mercy, I'm not going to tell you what to do. I don't have the right. But I'll tell you one thing. Take a piece of paper. Write down everything he gives you. Every shilling, every dinner. Write it in a column. Then write down, in the next column, what you'd have to say to your mother, if she asked where it came from."
"My mother?"
"Or whoever you love most." She paused. "If you can write that second column without feeling sick, then do what you like. And if you can't..."
"Then?"
"Then you'll know."
Mercy stared at her. Slowly, her eyes widened. "That sounds like you've done it."
"I have."
"Oh." She looked down. "Did it...?"
"It's a long story. I'll tell you when you're older." Amara smiled. "Do you have your fees?"
"I'm two hundred thousand short."
"Come to my SACCO tomorrow. There's a student emergency fund. I helped set it up. It takes a form and a witness, and you won't have to say a word to a man in a nice restaurant."
"There is a fund?"
"There is now." She got up. "I'll write it down for you."
Mercy was crying a little, and laughing, and wiping her eyes. "Thank you," she said. "Thank you. Thank you."
"Eat your tea. It's getting cold."
When she had gone, Amara sat for a long time at the table, with the empty cups. Through the window she could see the lawn, and the statue, and a long line of students waiting in the sun at the finance office. She could have been looking at herself, two years ago, in the queue.
She is not me, she thought. She is only someone else who will have to find her own way.
But she knew, in a small stubborn place, that she had put something into the world that had not been there. A piece of paper. A column. A door the size of a window, and a hand on the frame.
It was not much. It was what she had.
By the end of the year, she was no longer afraid of the mirror.
She looked into it on a morning in December, the first day of her semester exams, in the room in Wandegeya. She had washed her face and tied her hair in a plain scarf. She wore a white blouse and a grey skirt, and no make-up at all. There was a small cut on her chin, from where she had bitten it in the night.
She looked at the girl in the glass.
It was not the girl with the sack of matooke, who had believed that work would be enough. It was not the girl in the silver dress, either, with the red mouth and the borrowed laugh. This one was in between. She was a little tired. She had a mark under one eye, and a steadiness in her mouth that had not been there before. She was twenty-one years old.
I do not know you yet, she thought. But I think I'm going to.
Behind her, in the bedroom, Brenda called, "Amara! You'll be late!"
"Coming!"
She picked up the black bag. She put on her old school shoes, the cracked ones, which she had mended with glue. She went out through the door into the bright cool morning, and walked up the hill.