Chapter 13
Words Like Stones
She took the first pill on a Wednesday evening, at eight o'clock, sitting on the edge of the narrow bed in Katwe, with a cup of tea and Shamim watching her from three feet away like a cat at a mousehole.
It was small and yellow and smooth. It lay in the middle of her palm. She turned it over. There was nothing on it, no mark, no letter, only a faint shine, like the inside of a shell. She had expected something with more ceremony. She had expected, perhaps, a flash of light.
"Go on," said Shamim.
"I'm going."
"You've been holding it for four minutes."
"I'm gathering myself."
"You are stalling."
"I'm saying a prayer."
"Say it faster. It's not a long pill."
Nabirye laughed. It was a small, wet laugh. She closed her fingers over the tablet, and shut her eyes, and said, in her head, in the voice of her mother, Go to class. Go to church. Go to the clinic if you are ill. She had done the last. She had come a very long way round. She put the pill on her tongue, and drank the tea, and swallowed.
It went down without any trouble. She sat waiting, with her eyes open, for something to happen.
Nothing did.
"Is that it?" said Shamim.
"That's it."
"I thought there would be fireworks."
"So did I."
"It's an anticlimax."
"It is the best anticlimax in the world," said Nabirye.
She did not know yet what she meant. She would know in a few weeks, when she woke one morning and found that her chest did not hurt, and that she had eaten two eggs, and that the sun on the wall of the little room was gold and not grey. But that evening, with the taste of sweet tea in her mouth, and a friend in a pink T-shirt sitting cross-legged on a mattress with her chin in her hands, she only felt, very dimly, the first small stirring of an unfamiliar thing. It was not hope. She would not have trusted hope. It was something plainer. It was the sense that the day was over, and she had done one thing, and it was done.
Tomorrow, again, she thought.
The first three weeks were hard in the way that the doctor had promised.
It was not the pill. It was the being. She woke on the second night in a sweat, from a dream so vivid that she thought it was real, in which she was walking down a long white corridor, in a hospital, toward a door, and behind every other door a woman was screaming. She woke on the fourth with a headache like a lid. She was giddy for ten days. She was queasy in the mornings, and the sight of a plate of eggs could send her running to the lane to retch. She was exhausted, stupidly, overwhelmingly, in the middle of the afternoon, so that she lay down on the narrow bed at three o'clock and slept like a person drugged.
"It is the body getting used to it," said Sister Agnes, when she came on the fifteenth, white-faced, for the first review. She sat in the whitewashed office with her hands clasped, and a cup of tea in front of her, and her eyes ringed. "Yes. It will pass. It does for everyone. It's the strangeness. A little patience."
"I feel as if I'm being taken apart."
"It's the other way. You are being put back." The older woman smiled. She laid a hand on her wrist. "Have you missed a day?"
"No."
"Not even one?"
"I take it at eight. With tea. Shamim sits on the bed."
"A good friend."
"She is the best."
"I'm glad." She wrote something in her ledger. "And your cough?"
"It's better."
"A little?"
"A lot." She was surprised, as she said it. "It's nearly gone. I slept the whole of Sunday night. And I have not had the fever in four days."
"There. You see." Sister Agnes sat back, with an air of quiet, deep satisfaction. "It is already working. The virus is going down, down, like a tide. Your body is getting a chance. Give it two months. Three. You will not know yourself."
"And my weight?"
"Forty-eight."
"It was forty-seven."
"A kilo, in a fortnight." She beamed. "That is a victory, my dear. That is a very small hill, but it is a hill."
It was a small, hot, ridiculous happiness, and Nabirye felt it all the way down the street. A kilo. She stood on the pavement outside the clinic, in the sun, among the boda bodas and the vendors and the smell of frying, and put her hand to her mouth. She had not wept at the news. She had not wept at the pills. But at a kilo, suddenly, at the corner of a dusty road in Kisenyi, in front of a man selling shoes, she began to cry.
She thought, Tomorrow, again.
It was Sister Agnes who raised the matter of the others.
She did it in the second month, in February, in the same small room, in a voice so gentle and so level that it was a moment before Nabirye understood.
"I want to talk about the people you have been with," she said.
"There's nobody now."
"Before. In the last two years. I'm not asking you to tell me their names. I'm only asking whether you've thought about it."
"About what?"
"That they will not know." She turned her pen in her fingers. "A person who has the virus and doesn't know it can pass it on. A person who has it, and does know, and takes the tablet, cannot. We have a thing now, a very good thing, it says undetectable equals untransmittable. It means that if the virus in your blood is down to nothing, and it stays there, you are not a danger to anyone." She spread her hands. "But the ones before. The ones who do not know."
"I see."
"I'm not suggesting you carry that. It is not yours to carry. But it is also a kindness, and a safety, to let them know. So they can be tested. So they can be well." She spoke carefully, looking at the blotter. "I can help. We have a system, a note, a slip, with a number. It does not say who sent it. It only says, Please go to a clinic. We can do it for you. Or we can do it together."
Nabirye was silent.
There were three. She counted them, as she sat in the hard chair, with the rose-pink light of a February afternoon on the wall. Sam. A man with a green stone and a house on a hill. A boy with a watch and a glass of wine, who had said I say lots of things. And perhaps others, a blur, a dim row of faces, from the weeks after Sam, when she had stopped counting.
Did I give it to them?
Or did one of them give it to me?
It was a question that had no bottom. She had thought about it, in the long nights. She had gone down into it, like a diver, and come up gasping. It was possible that she had had it from the first, from the wet afternoon in Katwe, with the rain on the roof. It was possible she had not. It was possible that Sam, with his paper from January, had told the truth, and that the virus had come from a man in a kanzu, in a quiet house, with a gold ring. It was possible that none of them had known. It was possible that all of them had.
There was no way to tell. She understood that. Sister Agnes had said it, plainly, in the first week. You will never know. And it does not matter. It is not a thing that can be won. She had nodded. She had thought that she understood.
She had not understood at all.
"I'll tell Sam," she said.
"You don't have to."
"I want to."
"It may not go well."
"I know." She looked at her hands. "I want to hear him say it."
She called him on a Sunday night, from the lane, under the streetlight, where she had once stood with a white phone pressed to her cheek and said I like talking to you.
It rang for a long time.
She nearly hung up. She had her thumb on the button. But then there was a click, and a rustle, and his voice, low, wary, a little hoarse, said, "Hello?"
"Sam. It's me."
A very long pause.
"Nabirye."
"I'm sorry to ring."
"No. No. It's..." He cleared his throat. "It is good to hear you. I've thought about you. I wondered how you were. I'm so sorry about how... I should not have..." He stopped. "How are you?"
"I'm well. I'm better."
"Better?"
"I've been ill." She drew breath. She looked at the moths round the lamp. "Sam, I'm going to tell you something. I'd like you not to say anything until I've finished. Can you do that?"
"Of course."
"I went for a test. In December. At a clinic."
Silence.
"I'm HIV positive."
She heard it. It went out of her mouth in a small clean voice, and landed in the dark, and lay there. She had not known what it would sound like. It sounded like a stone dropped into a pool. It sounded very small.
"I'm on treatment," she said. "I'm doing well. I'm not dying. But I thought you should know. Because you... because we... it was..." She faltered. "Because it would be right for you to be tested."
She waited.
It was a very long silence. She could hear him breathing. She could hear, behind him, a television, and a woman's voice, saying something, and his own, muffled, answering. A door shut. When he spoke again, it was in a voice she had never heard.
"What did you say?"
"I'm positive."
"No."
"Sam."
"No. You're... that is not..." He was breathing very fast. "That's not possible."
"It is."
"I had a test. I had it in January. I showed you. I..."
"I know."
"You are lying."
"I'm not."
"You are lying. You're trying to... you want money. Is that it? You've found out I'm going to get the deal, and you are trying to..." His voice rose, cracking. "How dare you."
"I'm not asking for anything."
"You were with that old man! You were with Walusimbi! Everyone knows. It's all over Ggaba. You went from my house into his bed in a week. You whore. You go and sleep with every man in..."
"Sam."
"Don't you say my name! Don't you dare!" He was shouting now. It came down the line in a harsh, high, frightened roar, a voice she did not know, stripped of the soft warm music. "It's you! You gave it to me! You've... you are trying to put it on me! I am clean! I'm a clean man!"
"I'm only asking you to go to a clinic."
"I am not sick!"
"Then you have nothing to fear."
"Don't tell me what I fear!" A crash, as of something thrown. "Do not ever call me again. Do you hear? Do not call, do not message, do not come near my house. I will have you arrested. I'll tell them you are a thief. I'll say you stole my..."
She hung up.
She did not do it deliberately. Her hand simply closed, and the screen went dark. She stood still in the lane, with the phone in her hand, and her heart going in her ears, and a taste like metal in her mouth. A moth was beating itself against the lamp. Somewhere a dog barked. A very long way off, on another street, a woman was calling a child's name, over and over, in the dusk.
A clean man.
She stood there, under the streetlight, and she thought, with a kind of cold, remote, fascinated horror: That is what they think I am.
That is what the world will think.
It was so simple. It was so plain. She had been dirty all her life, in the eyes of a man at a petrol station, a woman at a wedding, a girl in a good dress, who had looked at her mother's feet. And now there was a word for it. There was a name. And it had come out of the mouth of a man she had loved, in a voice of such raw and instinctive terror that she knew, in her body, that it was the real thing. It was not what he thought. It was what everybody thought, under the manners and the tea.
I am the thing they are afraid of.
She put the phone in her pocket. She walked slowly back down the lane, under the sullen sky, to the blue door. She felt the pills, in the other pocket, like a small warm weight. It was ten to eight.
Tonight, again.
It began with the bottle.
It was a very small thing. It was a white plastic bottle with a screw top, standing on the shelf in the room in Katwe, beside the hair oil and the thread. It had a label. It said, in black letters, TLD. 1 tab daily. BLUE DOOR COMMUNITY CLINIC. She had meant to decant it into an old vitamin jar. She had meant to scratch off the writing. She had a hundred little plans for it, and had not done any, because she had been so tired.
The landlady, Mrs. Nakimuli, was a large, shrewd, pious woman with a swollen foot and a deep and abiding interest in the private affairs of her tenants. She lived in the big house at the front of the compound, behind a high wall, and spent most of her day on a plastic chair in the doorway, with a basin of sorting beans and an unobstructed view of the lane. She knew who came and went. She knew whose husband had a second family. She knew, to the shilling, what each of her eleven tenants paid for water.
She came on a Tuesday, in the second week of March, to collect the rent.
Shamim was out. Nabirye was alone, lying on the bed, in the afternoon heat, with a damp cloth on her forehead and the door ajar for the air. She heard the heavy slap of a sandal on the step, and a cough, and, without waiting for an answer, the door was pushed wide.
"Rent," said Mrs. Nakimuli.
"Good afternoon, Mama."
"I said, rent."
"Shamim has it. She'll be back at five."
"I do not want Shamim's. I want yours." The landlady stood in the doorway, a vast figure in a flowered dress, with a plastic bag on her arm and a pair of reading glasses on a string. "You've been here fourteen months and I have seen your money twice."
"Shamim has been paying for me."
"Then Shamim can pay for the rest." Her little eyes moved round the room, taking inventory. The wigs. The mattress. The cracked mirror. They fell on the shelf. They stopped.
Nabirye saw it.
She saw it a half-second too late. She saw the eyes go, over the oil and the thread, to the white bottle, standing in a square of sun. She saw the glasses lifted. She saw the thick lips move, silently, as they spelled out the words. Blue Door. And the other word, the one that had been printed on the cap in small red capitals, and that every woman in Katwe could read in her sleep.
ARV.
"What is this?" said Mrs. Nakimuli.
"It's a... a vitamin."
"It says Blue Door."
"It's from the clinic."
"For what?" The landlady crossed the floor, with astonishing speed for a woman of her size. She snatched up the bottle. She held it at arm's length, in the sunlight, and read the label again, slowly, while the whole room seemed to hold its breath.
She put it down.
She did it with great care. She put it back on the shelf, exactly where it had been, and wiped her fingers on her dress, twice, as one wipes away something that has stuck. Then she took two steps backward, toward the door. She stood very upright. Her face had changed. All the shrewdness, the good-humoured greed, the bright small-eyed curiosity, had been wiped off, and what remained was a stiff, shuttered mask, in which only the nostrils moved.
"You are sick," said Mrs. Nakimuli.
"It's all right."
"You have the thing."
"I'm on treatment. I'm well. It's... you cannot catch it. Not like this. Not from a room."
"I have children in this compound!"
"Mama, please. It is not like that. You can't..."
"I have a daughter who sleeps in the next room!" She was backing away, very fast. She was already on the step. She had drawn her shawl across her mouth, as a person does in a smoke. "You have been using my tap! My latrine! You have been... you have cooked in my..."
"I washed everything."
"God forgive me!" She crossed herself. Her eyes were rolling. "I have let a carrier into this house! In the very room next to my own!" She pointed, with a shaking finger, at the shelf. "Take that thing! Take it out! Take your things and leave! By tonight!"
"It's not..."
"By tonight!"
She ran. It was an extraordinary sight, a very large woman in a flowered dress, panting down the lane, with her sandals slapping, shouting. "Mama Hadija! Mama Hadija! Come! Come and hear! There is a... there's a..." The words were lost. A door banged. A head appeared at a window, and another. A child's voice said, "What?" And in the blazing light, between the washing lines, a murmur began to spread.
Nabirye stood in the doorway of the little room.
She did not move. She did not cry. She stood with her hand on the frame and the cloth still in her fingers, watching it go, the whole slow dark wave, like a ripple across a pond, through the doors and the windows and the shaded steps of the compound where she had lived. She saw a woman at a tap look up. She saw her turn to her neighbour. She saw the neighbour's mouth move. She saw both of them, very slowly, draw their children closer.
She was not angry. That astonished her. She felt only a vast, flat, silent, ringing emptiness, as if someone had cut the cord of a bell.
I know this, she thought.
She had been five. She had stood on a red path, behind a cart. Four men had helped to carry the coffin, and not one of them had stood near.
So it is true.
It is exactly as she said.
Shamim came home at five, in a rage.
She had been told on the road. She had been told, in a rush of whispers and sidelong glances, by a woman at a stall, a man on a bicycle, three small boys. She came in through the blue door like a storm, in her pink T-shirt, with her braids flying, and slammed it behind her.
"The cow," she said.
"Shamim..."
"The fat, stupid, God-fearing cow. I am going to take that woman and tie her to a chair and make her read a pamphlet." She threw down her bag. "I told her. I told her, a year ago. I said, Mama Nakimuli, I will pay on time. I have paid on time for six years! I have done her sister's wedding hair for nothing!"
"It's fine."
"It is not fine."
"It's what happens." She was sitting on the edge of the bed, with her hands in her lap, calm. "I knew it would. It is only a matter of when."
"Don't say that."
"It's true."
"It is not true. We are going to talk to her. We are going to go to the clinic and get a leaflet, and Sister Agnes will come and explain, and..." She broke off. Her mouth was trembling. "Nabirye. Why are you so calm?"
"I'm not."
"You're sitting like a stone."
"I'm tired."
"I'm so sorry."
"For what?"
"For all of it." Shamim crossed the room. She dropped to her knees. "I should have thought. I should have bought you a different bottle. A jar. I should have..."
"It's not your fault."
"I know that."
"Then don't say sorry." She took Shamim's hand. It was hot and damp. "I'll go tonight. I don't want to make trouble. Your clients. Your salon. If they hear... if it goes round that you live with..."
"I do not care."
"You do. You must." She said it quietly. "Shamim, listen. You told me, in November. You said, a woman with a skill is a woman with a roof. You have a salon. You have eleven heads a week. If they stop coming, you have nothing. I'm not worth that."
"You are worth the whole thing."
"I'm not asking you to prove it."
"Nabirye!"
"I mean it." She smiled. It was a ghost of a smile. "I have been a burden to you since I was nineteen. I have eaten your fish. I've slept on your bed. I have taken, and taken, and given nothing. I'm not going to take your living, too."
"You gave me a friend."
"You gave me a friend. I just..." She could not finish. She put her head on Shamim's shoulder. "I don't know what to do."
"Stay."
"I can't."
"Then I'll come."
"No."
"Then..." Shamim was crying, silently, fiercely, with her chin up. "Then you go somewhere, and you take your pills, and you tell me where. And I'll bring you fish. And I'll sit on the bed. And nobody, nobody, is going to take that away from me." She gripped her hard. "Promise."
"I promise."
"Say where."
"I'll tell you."
"Promise."
"I promise," said Nabirye.
She meant it. She truly meant it. She had every intention, on that hot red afternoon in Katwe, of keeping it. She packed the same suitcase that she had packed in Munyonyo, and the same one she had carried, once, on a boda boda, with a stethoscope round her neck. She put in her father's watch, and the green book, and the brown paper bag with the white bottle. She left the blue door at dusk, with Shamim on the step, a small fierce figure in pink, crying and waving, and the curtains twitching in every window of the lane.
She did not look back.
She had meant to keep her promise. She had meant to write.
But there are things, as she would learn, that are easier to do in a person's company than alone. A pill is one. It is a very small thing. It weighs nothing. It takes four seconds. But it must be taken every night, at eight o'clock, in every kind of weather, for ever, in every room, among strangers, in the long loneliness of a city where nobody knows your name and everyone, you are certain, has read it on your face.
It is not the swallowing that is hard.
It is the being seen.