Chapter 10
The Sack of Groundnuts
The house on the hill behind the hotel had a name, painted on the gatepost in white letters. It was called Mama Agnes, after the dead mother, and for the first month, whenever she passed it, Nabirye felt as if she were being watched by an old woman with kind eyes.
It was a pretty house, small and square, with a green roof and a veranda, and a garden of roses that the previous tenant, the dead woman, had planted. A path of white pebbles led to the front door. From the sitting-room window, you could see the lake. She woke in a bed with a carved headboard, under a mosquito net as fine as breath, and walked out onto the cool tiles of the veranda in her bare feet, and watched the first light come up over the water. A fishing boat. A line of white birds. A smoke from a village on the far shore.
It was very beautiful. She told herself so every morning.
Mr. Walusimbi came on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Saturdays.
He came in the evening, in a dark car with a driver, who waited at the gate and read a newspaper. He wore a suit, or a white kanzu, and he carried a bag of food from the hotel kitchen, and a small gift, a bottle of perfume, a silk scarf, a box of chocolates, laid on the table with a grave little nod. He sat in the armchair by the window and asked about her day. He listened. He had a deep, soothing, unhurried voice, and he told her stories about the early years of the hotel, when he had slept in the lobby on a mattress, and about the president, who had once eaten at his table and found fault with the fish. He was a good storyteller. She laughed, sometimes, in spite of herself.
He did not touch her at first. That was his way. He waited a week. He waited two. He was, in every respect, the most courteous of men. He called her Miss Kibirige. He opened doors. He praised her cooking, although she did not cook, and her intelligence, and her calm. And then, one Thursday night in the third week, in the soft yellow lamplight, when she had stopped expecting it, he put down his glass, and stood, and held out his hand.
She took it. She did not decide to. It was only that it was there.
It was not like Sam. It was not tender, or hurried, or wet with rain. It was slow and solemn and a little formal, like a ceremony, and it was over very quickly. He did not speak. Afterward he lay on his back with his hands folded on his chest, breathing through his nose, and looked at the ceiling, and she lay very still beside him and counted the roses on the wallpaper.
Twelve, she thought. Thirteen. Fourteen.
There was no warmth in it. She noticed that. She noticed, with a dull detached surprise, that she did not feel anything at all, not shame, not desire, not even revulsion. It was a transaction, and she was the currency, and the odd thing was how simple it was. She had imagined it would be a great black cliff. It was a very short step on a smooth tiled floor.
He got up at ten. He dressed, buttoning his shirt with exact attention, and stood by the bed.
"Thank you," said Mr. Walusimbi.
"You're welcome."
"I will see you on Saturday." He bent, and laid on the pillow an envelope. It was a long white one, thick, and unsealed. "For your expenses."
He went out. She heard his steps on the pebbles, and the car door, and the engine. She lay for a long time, in the lamplight, with the envelope beside her head.
It held two million, five hundred thousand shillings.
She did not stop to think about it. That was the secret. It was a trick one learned. You did not look at the thing directly. You looked at the corner of it, out of the side of your eye, as one looks at a bright light, and you did the arithmetic.
Two million, five hundred thousand.
She sent half to her mother.
It was not a decision, so much as a reflex. She did it at the mobile money agent in Entebbe, in a plain white blouse, with a scarf over her braids, so that nobody would know her. She stood at the counter and pressed the buttons and watched the number go. One million, two hundred and fifty thousand shillings, to NALUBEGA PENINAH. The man behind the glass looked at her, and at the number, and at her again. "A lot," he said.
"It's my mother."
"She is very lucky."
"I am a nurse," said Nabirye, quickly. "I have a good job. At a clinic."
"Ah." He smiled, courteously. "Then God bless you."
She called her mother that night. She could not wait. She sat on the veranda of Mama Agnes, in the dusk, with the lake going violet and a lamp lit behind her, and the phone pressed hard against her ear.
"HELLO? HELLO? NABIRYE?"
"Maama. It's me."
"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? I HAVE CALLED FOUR TIMES! THE BOY AT THE SHOP SAYS YOUR PHONE IS ALWAYS OFF! I WAS BEGINNING TO..."
"Maama, I'm sorry. It's the ward. We are not allowed phones." The words came easily. She was astonished. "I have been moved. To a new hospital. In Entebbe. It's a private one. They pay very well."
"ENTEBBE?"
"I have a position. A nursing position. I did not want to tell you till I was sure." She took a breath. "I got the money to you. Did it come?"
"WHAT MONEY?"
"On the phone. You will have a message."
There was a clatter. A rustle. The sound of her mother's sandals, running, on gravel, and her voice, receding, shouting to someone, Kizito! Kizito! The phone! Where is the thing? Then a long gasp. Then silence.
"Maama?"
"One million," said her mother, in a very small voice. "One million, two hundred and fifty thousand."
"It's for the loan. And Kizito's school. And the roof."
"Nabirye."
"I told you I'd pay it back. I said, I will come home and build the centre. I've begun."
"Nabirye." Her mother was crying. It came down the line in a long, shaky, broken breath, the way she cried at funerals. "You... you are only a student. How can you..."
"I'm not a student. I'm qualified. I finished early."
"Finished?"
"They let me sit the exams in advance. For the best of us."
She had not planned it. It simply came out of her, fully formed, like a coin from a sleeve. She sat with her eyes shut. It was so much easier than she had expected. It was easier than breathing.
"My God," said her mother. "My God. My God. Peninah, you fool, you're crying. Kizito! Your sister is a nurse! She is qualified! She has finished!"
"Maama..."
"I will kill a hen. I will call the pastor. I will tell the whole of Kisaana. They said I was mad, you know, when I sold the cow. Mama Juliet said, It's too much for a girl. Eh! I will go to her house, and I will say..."
"Maama, please. Don't tell everyone."
"Why not?"
"It's... it's a private hospital. They're strict. I haven't got the certificate yet. It's in the post."
"Ah." A pause. A sniff. "Then I will tell only some of them."
"Thank you."
"Come home."
"I can't. Not till Easter. I have a contract."
"A contract." Her mother said it like a word in a hymn. "Then I will wait. Oh, my child. My own child. I did not think I would live to see it. Your father would..." Her voice broke. "He would have wept like a baby."
"I know."
"God is good."
"Yes."
"Go and rest. You sound tired."
"I am."
"Eat meat."
"I will."
"Do not tell me you will and then buy cabbage," said her mother, laughing, through tears. "Oh, my girl. My girl. I am so proud."
She hung up. She sat, with the phone in her lap, on a cane chair in the dusk. The lake had gone from violet to black. A light came on, on the far shore, and then another. A cricket began.
She had never felt so clean, or so unclean.
It is only until I finish, she thought. I will really finish. I will pay it all back. It will not be a lie then.
She said it three times, as one says a prayer.
She saw her mother in the third week of March, through the window of a restaurant, and for the rest of her life she could not forget what she did.
It was a Saturday. She was at a table in the garden room of the Lake Victoria Palm Hotel, a bright glass-roofed place hung with ferns, at the end of a long lunch. It was hot. Rain had been promised, and not come. She was wearing a silk dress, in blue, and a pair of earrings that Mr. Walusimbi had given her, and a thin gold watch that was not her father's. Her father's, she kept in a drawer.
There were five of them at the table. Mr. Walusimbi sat at the head, in his white kanzu, with a cigar, in a posture of expansive benevolence. His wife was not there. On his right sat a business partner, a fat, jovial man called Hajji Mugisha, with a bald head and a laugh like a cough. Beside him was his wife, a soft, scented woman in purple, who had been looking at Nabirye for an hour with sweet, bland, calculating politeness. And on Nabirye's left, lounging in his chair, with an air of lazy insolence, sat a young man she had met on Thursday.
His name was Brian Matovu. He was twenty-six, handsome in a slick, careless way, the son of a rich man who owned half of a trading centre in Mukono. He wore a white shirt unbuttoned halfway down, and a heavy watch, and sunglasses pushed up on his head. He had come to the hotel with a party of friends, and sat by the pool, and been introduced to Mr. Walusimbi's niece. That was how it was done. That was the word she had been given. It had been explained, kindly, in the bedroom, with a hand on her arm. It is simpler. It spares everyone embarrassment.
"Dubai," said Brian, for the third time. "You have not been?"
"No."
"But that is criminal. You are a woman who was made for Dubai." He leaned over. His breath smelled of wine. "I am going in June. My uncle has an apartment on the beach. We could go. The two of us. For a week. I would take you to the mall. And the desert. And the, what is it, the tallest building."
"I'm sure it's lovely."
"It's the best." He smiled. His eyes were slightly unfocused. "I would take care of you. You have no idea. I have a good life. I could give you a better one than..." He tilted his head, a very little, toward the head of the table, where Mr. Walusimbi was explaining something about taxes. "Than that."
"Brian."
"I'm only saying." He took her hand under the cloth. "A woman like you should not be a niece."
She drew it back. She said, in a low voice, "Please."
"Ah, you're afraid."
"I'm not."
"Of him?" His smile widened. "Don't be. He's an old man. He is married. He cannot keep you for ever." He drank his wine. "When he drops you, call me. I'll be waiting. I always keep a place."
She said nothing. She was looking, steadily, at the tablecloth. It was very white. It had been ironed with great care. There was a single, small red stain on the corner, where a drop of sauce had fallen.
When he drops you.
She heard it. She did not feel it. It was only a fact, noted, filed, and set aside, like a thing one reads in a newspaper about a stranger.
A man who promises you everything.
"Excuse me, Miss Kibirige," said Hajji Mugisha's wife. "I wonder whether you could tell me where you were educated?"
"At St. Veronica's."
"Ah! A good school. And your parents?"
"My mother is a nurse."
She did not know why she said it. It was the old line. It had been so long worn smooth that it slid off her tongue like a pebble.
"How nice. And your father?"
"He's dead."
"I'm so sorry."
"It was a long time ago."
"It's very sad." The woman's eyes moved, quickly, to Mr. Walusimbi, and away. "And you live in the village?"
"We have a place near Masaka."
"A place."
"A family home."
"How charming."
It was at that moment, as she raised her glass, that she looked up, and saw her through the window.
The window ran the whole length of the garden room, from floor to ceiling, in clear glass. Beyond it was the front lawn of the hotel, with its fountain and its palm trees, and the long white drive curving up from the road. It was a bright afternoon, full of hard sun. A white car was parked at the foot of the steps. A doorman in a red coat stood at attention.
A woman was coming up the drive.
She was walking slowly. She was a short, broad, strong woman in an old green gomesi, with a torn sash, and a faded scarf, and on her head, held steady with one hand, a large heavy sack. It was a sack of coarse brown cloth, tied at the top with banana fibre. It was nearly as big as she was. It rested on a coil of rag, on the crown of her head, and she carried it as one carries a thing one has carried all one's life, straight-backed, level-eyed, without effort. Her feet were bare. They left small clean prints in the dust, one after the other, up the long white drive.
Nabirye did not move.
She did not think. She did not breathe. For an instant, a single clear, bright, endless instant, she was not a girl in a silk dress at a table in a garden room. She was five years old, and standing in a doorway, and a woman was coming home.
Maama.
The glass in her hand began to shake.
She watched her mother reach the foot of the steps. She watched her stop. The doorman said something, bending, in a polite, stiff, appalled voice. Her mother put down her head, and answered. She said it slowly, in the thick Luganda of Kisaana. She was asking a question. She lifted one hand, in a small, patient, hopeful gesture, and Nabirye, through the glass, could see her face.
It was tired. It was older. There were deep lines at the mouth, and a grey, dusty shine to the skin, and the eyes were red-rimmed with the long dust of the road. She had come a long way. Nabirye could see that. She had come, perhaps, on two taxis and a boda and her own two feet, with a hen, no doubt, in the sack, and a bag of groundnuts, and a small bundle of dried fish. She had come without telling anyone. She had come, because her daughter had a position, and a contract, and had not been home since last Easter, and because there was a mother's fear that does not go away with a million shillings.
The doorman pointed. He was pointing at the side entrance. The kitchen door. The one for deliveries. He did it with a gesture of exquisite politeness, an arm held out, like a man directing a lorry.
Her mother nodded.
She turned to go.
And then, slowly, as though a hand had touched her shoulder, she lifted her head and looked at the building.
It was a vague look. It travelled along the long wall of glass, over the ferns and the white cloths and the glittering heads. It had no particular object. She was only gazing at it, as a person does who has never been inside a place like that, with a faint, humble, wondering incomprehension.
Her eyes reached the garden room.
They passed over the table. They passed over the bald man and the woman in purple. They passed over Mr. Walusimbi, with his cigar. They stopped on a young woman in a blue silk dress with gold braids and a gold watch, who was sitting very straight, with a glass in her hand, and a face the colour of paper.
For a moment, nothing at all happened.
Her mother did not wave. She did not smile. She did not call out. She stood on the white gravel, in the hard bright sun, with the sack on her head and her feet in the dust, and looked at her daughter through a pane of glass. And Nabirye, who had meant to stand, who had meant to run out, who had meant, in the last half-second of her life as a person she could respect, to throw down her napkin and cry Maama!, did the thing that she had never in her life imagined she could do.
She turned away.
She turned her head, calmly, to the woman in purple, and smiled.
"I'm sorry," she said. "What were you saying?"
"I asked," said the woman, "whether you took sugar."
"No. Thank you."
"A pity. It's very good."
"I'm sure."
"Is something the matter? You look pale."
"It's the heat."
She felt it. She felt, on the back of her neck, as a person feels a drop of cold water, the weight of a look. It did not go away. It lay there, on her skin, steady and still and without reproach, for the length of a long, long breath. And then, slowly, it lifted.
She did not look round.
When, after what seemed a very great while, she lifted her eyes, the lawn was empty.
The doorman was standing alone by the steps, in his red coat. The white car shone in the sun. A small gust of wind lifted the dust on the drive and laid it down. Of the woman in the green gomesi there was nothing at all, not a footprint, not a shadow, not a trace.
"Excuse me," said Nabirye.
She stood up. She did not know that she had. She walked, very upright, across the garden room, between the tables, past the ferns, and out through a door at the side, into a corridor that smelled of floor polish and cooking oil. She walked down it. She turned a corner. She opened a door, marked STAFF, and found herself in a small bare passage by the kitchen, with a concrete floor and a row of aprons on hooks.
On the floor, beside the door, lay a sack.
It was a coarse brown sack, tied with banana fibre. It had been set down very carefully, with its mouth uppermost, as one lays down a child. A small piece of paper had been pinned to the front with a thorn. A boy in a kitchen apron was standing over it, with a puzzled face.
"A woman left it," he said. "For a Miss... Kibirige. She said, give it to the girl in the blue. She did not want to disturb."
"Where is she?"
"She went."
"Which way?"
"Down the road." He shrugged. "She said she had a taxi to catch."
Nabirye knelt.
She did not know why her knees gave way. She knelt on the cold concrete in her silk dress with her hands in her lap. She took the paper, and unpinned it, and unfolded it. It was a page torn from an exercise book, the lines faint and blue, the handwriting large and round and childlike, in pencil. It was not her mother's. Her mother could barely write. It was Kizito's.
To Nabirye. From Maama.
We heard you are a Nurse now. The whole of Kisaana is so proud. Maama is standing next to me while I write this and she said to tell you she is not cross that you did not come home. She is only happy. These are the good groundnuts, the new ones, roasted on the Sunday. There is also a hen, alive. She says to eat well. She says to wash your feet. She says she will not disturb you, you are busy, she only wanted to see the place where you work.
She says God bless you.
She says do not forget who you are.
The paper began to shake. It shook so violently that the words ran together, a grey blur, a blue blur. A drop fell on it, and spread.
Behind her, in the sack, something stirred.
It was a small, dry, rustling movement, a flutter of feathers. A low querulous clucking began, from inside the folds. She put out her hand. She loosened the banana fibre. And through the mouth of the sack, a red head came out, with a bright, outraged eye, and looked at her.
It was a brown hen. It was the one she had named, at six, with a fierce, solemn, tender seriousness, Nurse.
"Oh," said Nabirye.
She put her face against the coarse cloth, and wept.
She did not tell anyone. She did not tell the woman in purple, or Brian, or Hajji Mugisha, or the man at the head of the table. She went back, twenty minutes later, with a washed face and a fresh coat of lipstick, and sat down at her place, and said, "I am so sorry. A migraine." And Mr. Walusimbi said, in his deep, kind voice, "You must rest, my dear," and patted her hand.
She did not tell him that her mother had stood on his lawn.
She did not tell Shamim, when she phoned, that night, from the veranda of Mama Agnes. She said she was well. She said she was busy. She said the house was lovely. And Shamim, at the other end, after a pause, said quietly, "You sound like you are in a box."
"I'm fine."
"Come and see me."
"I'll come soon."
"You said that in January."
"I know."
"I love you."
"I love you too." She was crying. She hoped Shamim could not hear. "I have to go."
She did not call her mother. For nine days she did not call. When she finally did, in a great rush of cold terror, one night after a bottle of wine, the line rang and rang. It was answered at last by Kizito, in a thin, shy, flat voice, who said, "Maama is at the garden." And Nabirye said, "Tell her I called," and he said, "She said, if you phoned, to say she's well. And that she's not cross."
"Did she say anything else?"
"No."
"Did she... did she say she'd come to Entebbe?"
"She said," said Kizito, slowly, with a child's blunt exactness, "that she went to see your hospital. And that it is a very big one. And that you looked well."
There was a very long silence.
"She said I looked well?"
"She said she saw you through the window. And you were very beautiful. And she did not want to make you ashamed." His voice wavered. "Nabirye? Are you there? She said you would know what it meant."
She put the phone down.
She sat on the edge of the bed, in the dark, in the house called Mama Agnes, with her father's watch in the drawer and a hen in a cardboard box in the kitchen, and a sentence in her ears, small and level, in a child's careful voice. She did not want to make you ashamed.
It was the most terrible sentence she had ever heard. It had no anger in it. It had no reproach. It was only a plain, loving, devastating statement, said in the manner of her mother, who had travelled a hundred and sixty kilometres, and walked the last long road barefoot, with a sack on her head, to see a place, and had stood on a lawn, and looked through a window, and seen her child turn away.
And she did not make a scene. She did not weep. She laid the sack down, and left.
To spare me.
She had been spared. That was the thing. She had been spared by the very person she had betrayed.
In the drawer, her father's watch ticked on. She did not take it out. She did not dare. She sat on the bed with her arms round her knees, in the quiet, and rocked, once, like a child, and said to the empty room, in a voice she did not recognise, the only prayer she could think of.
Do not forget who you are.
It was the thing that her mother had said, and her mother's mother, and the nuns, and the old woman with a lamp. It was the whole of her inheritance. She had it in her mouth like a stone.
She did not know how to swallow it.
She did not know how to spit it out.