Chapter 2
Everyone Seems to Have More
In the second week of lectures, Amara learned that you could tell how much money a person had by looking at their feet.
She did not plan to learn it. It happened in Lecture Hall 4, on the first row of seats, while a lecturer named Mr. Tumusiime talked about the accounting equation and nobody was listening. She had come early to get a good seat. She always did. She sat with her notebook open, her pen ready, and her back straight, and while she waited she watched the others come in.
They came in groups of three and four, laughing, holding drinks in plastic cups. A tall boy in a white shirt walked past her with a pair of sneakers so clean they looked wet. Two girls behind him wore matching sandals with gold straps. A boy with a gold chain dropped his keys on the desk, and they were car keys, with a small leather tag, and everyone around him looked at them and then looked away, too carefully, the way people look away from something they want.
Amara looked down at her own shoes.
They were black school shoes. She had polished them that morning with a little oil from the kitchen, and they shone, and they had a crack along the left side that she could feel when she walked. Her mother had bought them in S5. They had been to every class she had taken in two years. She loved them, in the way you love a faithful dog.
She tucked her feet under the bench.
"Is this seat taken?"
A girl stood in the aisle with a thick file held to her chest. She was dark and thin, with her hair cut short and a plain brown blouse, and she looked at Amara with the direct, slightly tired look of someone who had already decided not to waste anybody's time.
"No. Please."
"Thanks." She sat. She unzipped her file and took out three pens, a ruler, and a highlighter, and laid them in a row. "I'm Peace."
"Amara."
"I know. You were the one who answered the question on Monday."
"It was a small question."
"Nobody else answered it." Peace uncapped her highlighter. "I was going to. But you were faster."
It was not exactly a compliment. It was not an insult, either. It was a fact, laid on the table between them, and Amara took it and put it in her pocket. She had the feeling that if she and this girl were ever going to be friends, it would be through competition, which was a language she understood.
Peace turned out to be from Fort Portal, the daughter of a headmaster and a nurse. She was in the top five of her A-level class. She was in a payment plan for her fees, but she was not ashamed of it, and she said so out loud when someone asked, which made Amara admire her at once.
"There is no shame in a payment plan," Peace said that first week in the library. "It is a plan. If you have a plan, you are better than most people."
"My mother paid in one go."
"Then your mother must have worked hard."
"She sold things."
Peace did not say she was sorry. She said, "Then you have to get a first." And that was exactly the right thing to say. Amara could have hugged her.
They became a pair for studying. Brenda joined them on Tuesday evenings, with her three-colour timetable, and the three of them spread their notes across the library tables and quizzed each other until the guards came round and switched off the lights. They were the kind of group that other students made jokes about. The Holy Trinity of Accounting, someone called them. Brenda took it as a compliment.
It was a good life. Amara knew that, even then. She woke at six, washed in a basin of cold water on the balcony, ate two slices of bread with a smear of margarine, and walked up the hill to a lecture hall with a notebook under her arm. She learned about debits and credits and how a business could be sick even when it looked healthy. She learned what a ledger was. She learned to say "depreciation" without laughing. In the evenings she cooked beans with Brenda in the corridor and listened to girls shouting about boys and exams and who had stolen whose sugar.
On Sundays she went to church with Brenda, because Brenda asked, and sat at the back, because Brenda's church had a very long sermon and the back was closer to the door. Then she called her mother from the balcony, and her mother asked, "Did you eat?" and Amara said yes.
It was a good life.
But there was another one, running alongside it, like a second road you only notice when you stop at the junction.
It started with small things. A phone, for example.
Amara's phone was a Tecno that Joel had helped her buy two years earlier, from a kiosk in Masaka, for sixty thousand shillings. The screen had a crack in one corner. It ran slowly when more than two apps were open. She loved it, because it was hers, and because her mother had said, "A girl should have a phone for emergencies," and had paid half.
In the second week, in the canteen, Shanice put her own phone on the table next to it.
It was not a deliberate thing. Shanice only wanted to check a message. But the two phones lay side by side, the gold-cased one and the cracked black one, and for a second Amara saw them as a stranger would. One looked like a jewel. The other looked like a stone.
"What's wrong?" Shanice said.
"Nothing."
"You went quiet."
"I'm thinking about the test."
"Liar." But Shanice smiled, and gave her a chip from her plate, and did not push.
That was Shanice's way. She did not push. She noticed everything, and said nothing, and then did something small and kind that you could not refuse. She bought the juice. She shared the sweets. She told Amara which lecturers were fair and which ones took notes from the girls with the best lipstick. She introduced her to other students, one by one, as if she were handing over presents. "This is Amara. She's very smart. Be nice to her."
The students she introduced did not look like Amara's friends from home. They looked like the people on the advertisements. A boy named Collins who had studied abroad for a year and said "back in Dubai" as if it were a village. A girl called Tracy who came to class in a fresh outfit every day, and whom nobody had ever seen carry a book. A pair of brothers who ran a clothing business and sold shirts out of the boot of a car.
They were not unkind. That was what surprised her. They asked Amara where she was from, and when she said Kyotera, they said, "Oh, nice," and it was clear they did not know where it was. Tracy complimented her skin. Collins offered her a lift to the hostel and was only mildly offended when she said she preferred walking.
But the lifts were part of it. So was the way they talked. They talked about holidays in Mombasa and weekends at a hotel in Jinja and a friend whose father had bought him a car for his birthday, as casually as other people talked about weather. They used words she did not use: brunch, vibes, content. They took photographs of their food before they ate it. They knew which restaurant in Kololo had the good steak and which club in Bugolobi had the good music, and they said it as if everyone knew.
Amara learned to nod. She learned to say, "I've heard it's nice."
She did not say, "I have never eaten in a restaurant where the menu has no prices."
The second Friday of October, there was a party.
It was in a hall at the edge of campus, with lights borrowed from a wedding company and a DJ from Ntinda who had once been on the radio. Shanice had been talking about it for a week. "It's the Freshers' Night," she said. "Everyone will be there. You can't miss your first Freshers' Night. It's like missing your own wedding."
"I have a test on Monday."
"It's on Monday, not Friday. We go at nine, we leave at midnight. You are an adult. You can allow yourself four hours."
"Brenda says it's not for people like us."
"Brenda says everything is not for people like her." Shanice softened. "I don't mean it badly. I like Brenda. But she will tell you for three years not to do things, and then you will graduate, and you will have no stories."
Amara laughed. She had not meant to. It was a very good line.
She went.
She wore the only nice thing she owned, a long blue dress that her aunt had sent for her S6 graduation. It was clean, and ironed, and it fitted her well. She did her hair herself, in two puffs held with a ribbon. When Brenda saw her she was quiet for a moment, and then said, "You look lovely," and her voice was a little sad, and Amara pretended not to notice.
The entrance was twenty thousand shillings.
She had not known. She had assumed it would be five, or free. She stood at the door with ten thousand in her bag, the whole week's budget for transport and food, and she felt her face grow hot.
"I'll pay," Shanice said at once.
"No, no."
"Amara."
"I can't take it."
"You can pay me back." Shanice was already handing over a red note to the boy at the gate. "By being in the pictures. I need people who look good in pictures. That is a fair trade."
"That is not a trade."
"It is in my world." She took Amara's arm. "Come. Don't make a scene at the door. They will think you are poor."
She said it lightly. She meant nothing by it. But the word sat in Amara's ear like a small stone, and she carried it inside with her.
The hall was very loud. The lights moved across the ceiling in blue and pink, and the floor shook with the speakers. There were hundreds of them, boys and girls, dancing, shouting, drinking from plastic cups, holding up their phones. Amara had been to weddings and school discos and once to a dance at the church, but nothing like this. Nobody here was dancing the way you danced at home, with your family watching. They were dancing as though no one was there at all.
For the first hour she stood by the wall with a soda. Shanice dragged her to the middle and showed her how to move her hips, and she tried, and was bad at it, and Shanice shrieked with laughter and said, "No, not like a chicken!" and Amara laughed too, and for a while she forgot to be afraid.
A boy asked her to dance. He was nice, shy, a second-year from Engineering with a wide forehead. He asked where she was from and what she was studying and whether she liked the music, and she said yes to everything, and when the song ended he said, "Can I have your number?" and she said, "Sorry, I don't give it out," and he nodded and said, "That's fine," and went away looking cheerful. She was a little disappointed that he left so easily.
At eleven o'clock a man came in.
She did not see him arrive. She only noticed the way the crowd rearranged itself, as water does around a rock. A tall man in a black shirt with the sleeves rolled, a watch on his wrist that caught the light. Two other men behind him. A table near the stage was suddenly empty, and a waiter rushed over with a bottle in a bucket.
"Who's that?" Amara said.
"Don't look," said Shanice, and looked. "That is Pato. Patrick. He does events. He's the one who organised this."
"He's old."
"He is twenty-seven. That is not old, that is mature." She grinned. "He is also very rich. Or he looks it. Same thing, in this city."
Amara watched the man for a minute. He was handsome, in a polished way. He moved slowly, with a kind of ease, shaking hands with the people who came to greet him, laughing at something, taking a phone from a girl and looking at the screen and handing it back. There was a girl on his arm. Another one stood close behind. Neither of them seemed to mind.
"Does he know everyone?"
"He knows everyone who matters," Shanice said. Her voice was light, but her eyes stayed on him a beat too long. "Come on. Let's dance."
At midnight, as promised, they left. Shanice's ride was a white car with tinted windows, and the driver was a middle-aged man who held the door for her and called her Madam. She did not seem to find it strange.
"Do you want a lift?" Shanice asked. "We can drop you."
"No, I'll walk. It's close."
"At night?"
"It's ten minutes."
"Then I'll send a boda." Shanice was already tapping on her phone. "No, don't argue, it's three thousand, I've paid. Safe boda, so they record the trip. Text me when you get home."
"Shanice."
"Text me." She squeezed her hand. "I mean it. I like you. I don't want to hear that you've been hurt."
The boda came. Amara rode home through the dark streets of Kikoni with her dress tucked under her knees and the wind in her face. She was happy, and ashamed of being happy, and underneath it was a small cold feeling she could not name. A boy from Engineering had asked for her number, and she had said no. A man in a black shirt had lit up a whole room by walking into it. A friend she had known for three weeks had paid for her to be there, and she had let her.
It had cost her nothing, and it had cost her something. She could not say what.
At the hostel gate she paid three thousand to the boda man out of her own pocket, which was ridiculous, because Shanice had already paid. But she did it anyway. The man looked at the money and then at her and said, "Sister, it's paid," and she said, "Then keep it," and went up the stairs feeling like a person who had made a very small point to no one.
The next Monday she got eighty-two in the Accounting test.
She came out of the lecture hall holding the paper in both hands, and she laughed out loud in the corridor. Eighty-two. The highest in the class, according to Mr. Tumusiime, who had written Excellent in red at the top and drawn a small star. She showed it to Peace, who said "Hmm," and checked it, and then said, "Well done," with the sort of reluctance that was itself a compliment. She showed it to Brenda, who screamed and hugged her and said they had to thank God.
She wanted to show it to her mother, but her mother could not read English well, and anyway she would only say, "Eighty-two out of what?" Amara decided she would send a photo to Joel.
She showed it to Shanice last, in the canteen.
"Eighty-two! Oh, you clever girl." Shanice kissed the air next to her cheek. "I got forty-one."
"Forty-one?"
"I know. A disaster. I'll pass the semester anyway." She said it casually, stirring her tea. "Mr. Tumusiime likes me. He knows I try."
"Do you study?"
"A little." Shanice smiled. "It's not that I am lazy. It's just that I cannot see the point of working that hard. Everybody does the same thing, you know. Work, work, work. And then at the end, who gets the good job? The one with the best marks? Of course not. It's the one who knows someone."
"That's not true. Not always."
"It's true more than it isn't." She said it without bitterness. "I'm not saying don't try. You should. You are brilliant. But also, keep your eyes open. That's all."
Amara looked at her test paper, the red ink and the small gold star. She had been so happy a minute ago, and now the happiness had a crack in it. It was not Shanice's fault. Shanice had only said out loud what Amara had been avoiding thinking.
Later, in the hall, she walked past the cafeteria on the way to the library. A table of students sat by the window, laughing. She saw that Collins was there, and Tracy, and the brothers with the shirts. She saw that Shanice had joined them, and a new boy had sat down beside her and slipped an arm over her shoulders. They were all bright and cheerful, a table of people with nothing to worry about. A waiter was bringing them a tray of drinks. Nobody asked who would pay.
Amara stood in the corridor with her eighty-two in her hand and watched them through the glass.
She did not hate them. That was the strange part. She would have liked to hate them. It would have been simpler.
She only wanted to know what they knew.
In the first week of November, her mother's money was late.
It was not a large amount. Fifty thousand shillings, by mobile money, on the first of the month, every month. It was what her mother could manage. It was supposed to cover food, transport and anything else that came up, and Amara had made it last by buying maize flour in bulk and eating beans on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
On the first, nothing came. On the second, nothing. On the third, she called.
"I sent it," her mother said. "On the first. Did it not come?"
"No, Mama."
"Then it is the network. Wait. I will call the agent." There was a pause, and the sound of her mother putting her hand over the phone to speak to somebody. "He says it is in the system. It will come. Be patient."
It came on the fifth. By then Amara had spent the last of her emergency money on a pack of bread and a bag of sugar, and had told Brenda she was not hungry twice. Brenda had pretended to believe her. On the third night she had set a plate of rice in front of Amara without a word and said, "I cooked too much."
"You always cook too much."
"God provides."
"God does not provide at this price," Amara said, and then was sorry, because Brenda flinched, only slightly. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it."
"It's okay."
"I'm tired."
"I know." Brenda sat on the end of her own bed and folded her hands. "You don't have to pretend with me, Amara. If you need something, ask. I'm not rich. But I'm not a stranger."
Amara ate the rice. It was warm, and it had a little onion, and she wanted to cry, so she kept her head down and chewed.
When the money did arrive, forty-seven thousand after the withdrawal fee, she stood at the agent's kiosk counting the notes. Forty-seven thousand shillings. Her mother had sent it, and her mother had gone without something to send it, and Amara knew this the way she knew the weight of her own hand.
She put thirty thousand in an envelope for rent in the next month. She put ten in her pocket for transport. She put the last seven in her bra, for emergencies, and walked back to the hostel past a boutique with a window full of clothes.
The mannequin in the window wore a red dress. It was a plain red dress, knee-length, with a small belt. It was priced at one hundred and eighty thousand shillings. Amara stood in front of it for a long time.
She was not going to buy it. She could not, and she did not even want it, exactly. She only wanted to know what it felt like to want something and have it.
That is how it starts, she thought, much later, when she looked back. Not with a man. Not with money. It starts when you stand in front of a window and begin to count.
The week before exams, Amara sat in the library until closing, as usual, and then walked home alone. The hill was quiet. A few boda men dozed on their seats. A group of students were sitting on the steps of the bank, drinking tea from plastic cups and arguing about football.
At the corner a white car pulled up and stopped.
It was the same car Shanice had gone home in. The window slid down, and Shanice looked out, bright and sleepy, with her braids tied up in a scarf.
"Amara! What are you doing out so late?"
"Studying."
"Of course you are. Come, get in. We'll drop you."
Amara hesitated, and then got in. The seat was cool leather. The car smelled of vanilla, and a soft radio was playing. In the front, the driver said, "Good evening, madam," without looking back.
"Where are you coming from?" Amara asked.
"Oh. Dinner."
"With who?"
"A friend." Shanice yawned. She laid her head against the window, and in the passing streetlights her face looked tired, and younger than usual, and a little lost. "Don't ask, Amara. Not tonight. I'm too tired to lie, and too tired to tell the truth."
She said it almost tenderly. Amara did not ask again.
At the hostel gate Shanice squeezed her hand. "You are so good," she said. "You know that? You are so good, and so disciplined, and I hope it works for you. Truly. I hope you get everything."
"You will also get everything."
"Will I?" Shanice laughed, softly. "I don't know. I don't think anyone gets everything."
She said goodnight and rolled up the window, and the car slid away, red tail lights shrinking down the road.
Amara stood at the gate for a long time. The guard glanced at her but said nothing.
She was nineteen years old, and she had eighty-two percent in Accounting, and in the whole of Kampala she did not have a hundred and eighty thousand shillings for a red dress. She had never thought of herself as a person who wanted things. She had thought of herself as a person who worked.
But she was beginning to wonder, as she stood there in her cracked school shoes with the night air on her face, whether work was the whole answer, or only the part of it they told you at school.
And whether somebody, somewhere, had been keeping the rest of it from her.