Chapter 15
Mama Teddy
For six months she was the Prophet's best testimony.
They put her on the stage in July. Rukia had seen to it. She had gone to the ushers, and the ushers to the elders, and by the third Sunday Nabirye found herself standing in the wings of the great white shed, in a borrowed dress, with a number pinned to her collar, waiting to be called. Her palms were wet. Ten thousand people were singing. She could feel the music in the soles of her feet.
"And now," cried the Prophet, "a young woman who was bound by the spirit of death!"
The crowd roared.
She walked out into a blaze of light.
It was hotter than she had expected. It came from a bank of lamps, white and fierce, that turned the front rows into a pale blur. She could see only the faces nearest the stage, a ring of upturned, shining, hungry faces, mouths open, hands lifted. She could smell oil and sweat. A microphone was thrust into her hand. It was heavy and slightly damp.
"Tell them," said the Prophet, softly, at her ear. "Tell them what the Lord has done."
She opened her mouth.
She had rehearsed it. She had been through it with Rukia, on the crate behind the kitchen, with a spoon for a microphone. She had it by heart. I was a nurse. I was sick with the virus. I was told I would die. But on the night of the twelfth of June, in this place, the Lord laid his hand on me. She had said it aloud twenty times. It had sounded like a story about somebody else.
Now, in the lights, with the roar in her ears, the words went.
She stood there.
It was a very long silence. She felt the whole tabernacle lean toward her, like a field of grass before a wind. She saw, on the front bench, a woman with a baby who did not cry. She saw an old man, with a crutch, with his lips moving in prayer. She saw a boy, perhaps ten, with a white bandage round his head, looking up at her, with eyes so wide and so full of desperate trust that she had to look away.
They think I'm real.
"Daughter," said the Prophet. "Speak."
"I was sick," said Nabirye.
Her voice came out thin and hoarse, and was caught and flung back, huge and ragged, by the loudspeakers on their poles. She flinched. She went on.
"I was sick with the virus. HIV. I was told... I was told I would never be well." She drew a breath. "I took medicine. For four months. And then I came here. And on the twelfth of June, the Prophet prayed for me. And I..." She stopped.
She was looking at the boy.
"And I stopped," she said. "I put it down. And I am well."
It was done. She heard it go out, across the great hot shed, over ten thousand heads. For a second it hung in the air, a small thin lie, like a bird. Then the whole building went up in a single, thunderous, ecstatic howl.
"She is healed!" shouted the Prophet. He had snatched the microphone. He had flung up her arm, like a boxer's. "She is clean! The demon is cast out! Praise the Lord! Praise Him!" The band crashed. The crowd went mad. Women fell to their knees, shrieking. Men leapt in the aisles. A great wave of sound rolled up from the benches and broke over her like surf, and she stood in the middle of it, with her arm in the air, and the tears running down her face, and a terrible, sickening, lovely sense of having done something, for the first time in her life, that was wanted.
She did not look at the boy again.
They gave her a certificate.
It was a large stiff piece of card, printed in gold, with a drawing of a dove. THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT NABIRYE KIBIRIGE HAS BEEN DELIVERED FROM THE SPIRIT OF INFIRMITY, BY THE POWER OF THE LIVING GOD. SIGNED: PROPHET E. MULWANA. It was framed in cheap gilt. They hung it, for a week, on the wall of the tabernacle, among a hundred others, under a banner that said, TESTIMONIES. Then they gave it to her to take home.
She put it on the wall of the room in Wakiso, beside the nail, and looked at it every day.
She went back on every Sunday. She sat among the sick on a plastic chair. She sang, and wept, and clapped. She gave, in the offering, as she had been taught, a tenth of her wages, and then, when the Prophet announced from the stage that the Lord rewards the generous, a fifth. She bought a bottle of oil, and then a second, for protection, and a small white cloth, blessed, for her pillow, and a scrap of the Prophet's own shirt, in a silver locket. She paid forty thousand shillings for a three-day fast. She paid sixty for a night of prayer at his house in Kasangati. She was told that the demon was stubborn, and that it would take a long time to leave. She was told that she must be patient, that she must give, that she must keep her faith unbroken.
She did. She gave until there was nothing left.
She did not notice when it began to go wrong.
It began, as it had before, with a cough.
It was very slight. She was in the restaurant, in the afternoon, wiping a table, and it caught in her throat, a small dry rasp, and she cleared it. She took no notice. It came again the next day. By the end of the week it had settled, as a cat settles, into a warm place in her chest, and begun to purr.
It's the dust, she thought.
She did not say, It's the demon. That was a curious thing. She had been told, by the Prophet, that any trouble, a cold, a headache, a sudden fear, was the spirit's last struggle, a sign that the work was nearly done. She had been told to rejoice. But when she coughed, in the night, in the little room, with a sound like tearing cloth, she did not feel joy. She felt the old chill. It crept up her spine like a cold hand.
She lay on her back in the dark, and listened to her own breath.
It is nothing.
It's a sign of healing.
It's nothing.
She said it in two voices, the Prophet's and her own, and she could no longer tell which was which.
By September, she had lost seven kilos.
She did not weigh herself. She had no scales. But the uniform she had been given at the restaurant, a blue apron with a white collar, which had fitted her in March, now hung from her like a flag from a pole. She had to pin it. She wore the pins in a row, down her side, and found that she could not sit on a chair with a hard back without bruising. Her wrists were thin. Her fingers were thin. Her father's watch, which she wore again now for company, slid up her forearm and stayed there, above the elbow, like a bangle.
The night sweats returned in October. She woke, at three, in a wet bed, shivering, with her teeth chattering and her heart going like a bird's. She dragged the sheet off. She lay on the cement floor, with a cloth under her cheek, in the cold. She thought, I will be better in the morning.
She was not.
Hajjat Zainab watched her.
She said nothing, at first. She sat behind the till with her eyes half shut and her hands folded on her stomach, as she did every day. But her eyes, under the lids, were open, and they followed Nabirye from table to table. They saw her stop, in the middle of a tray, with one hand on a chair-back, breathing. They saw her cough into her sleeve. They saw the way her apron hung.
"You are thin," said the old woman, one afternoon.
"I'm fine."
"You have been fine since March."
"It's the heat."
"It is October. The rains are coming."
"I've been fasting."
"For what?"
"For... a prayer."
"Hmm." Hajjat Zainab did not smile. She shifted her bulk, and settled. "I am an old woman. I have buried a husband and two sons. I do not tell people what to do. But I will say one thing. My brother's wife had a sister who went to a man in white, in Kasangati. And she stopped her tablets." She looked at the ceiling. "She died in a week."
Nabirye's hands stopped.
"I do not say it will be the same for you."
"No."
"I only say it."
"Thank you."
"A girl who is fasting," said Hajjat Zainab, "does not cough like that." She closed her eyes. "Go and see someone, child. Before it's too late."
She might have gone, in the end.
She would think so, afterward. She thought of it for a long time, lying awake. There was a moment, in the second week of November, when she stood in the rain at the stage in Wakiso, with the card from the Blue Door in her fist, and her cough tearing at her, and a taxi waiting. She put one foot on the step. She felt the whole of her body, in its weakness, ache toward that blue door, that bench, that round warm face.
She did not go because of the certificate.
It was absurd. It was a card, in a gilt frame, on a wall. But she thought of it, in the taxi park, in the rain, with the stripped gold dove. She thought of a woman in white, with a baby who did not cry, and a boy with a bandage. She thought of her own voice, flung out over ten thousand heads. And I am well.
I told them.
I told them, and they believed me.
She took her foot off the step.
It is a very particular kind of shame. It is not the shame of having sinned. It is the shame of having been seen as someone who had not. It is the terror of the false self, once built, and praised, and photographed, and hung on a wall, that cannot be lowered without a crash. She had become, in one night, in a hot white shed, a miracle. And a miracle, she found, cannot go to a clinic.
They will know I lied.
They will say I'm a fraud.
The boy will see.
She turned, and walked back to the restaurant in the rain.
Mama Teddy came in on the second of December.
She ordered a plate of beans and a cup of tea, and she sat at a table by the window, in the afternoon, when the place was nearly empty, and did not look at the menu.
She was a large woman. That was the first thing. She was large in every direction, tall and broad and soft, with a vast bosom and a vast lap and a face as round and brown and shining as a loaf. She wore a purple gomesi, a good one, with huge puffed sleeves, and a white head-tie, and a pair of gold earrings. She had a loud laugh, which she used at once, on the first man she saw, and a small, bright, shrewd, humorous eye. A handbag the size of a suitcase stood at her feet. She hummed.
Nabirye brought the tea.
"Thank you, my dear."
"You're welcome."
"Sit."
"I can't. I'm on duty."
"Sit for a minute. Nobody is here. Hajjat Zainab will not mind. I've known her for twenty years." The big woman patted the chair. "I'm Teddy. Teddy Nansubuga. Everyone calls me Mama Teddy. I have a house in Nsangi and eleven grandchildren and a very bad knee." She beamed. "And you are Nabirye."
She went cold.
"How do you...?"
"A little bird." Mama Teddy took a long, noisy sip of her tea. "Sit down, my love. I will not bite. I only came for the beans. They are famous."
Nabirye sat.
She did it slowly, on the edge of the chair, with her hands in her lap. Her heart was going. The big woman watched her, over the rim of the cup, with that bright small eye, and the humming stopped.
"You are very thin," said Mama Teddy.
"I'm fine."
"I know that sentence. I've said it myself. I said it for three years." She put down the cup. "I am going to tell you who I am. And then you can tell me to go away, and I will, and I will pay for the beans. Is that fair?"
"I... yes."
"I am a peer educator at the Blue Door Clinic. In Kisenyi. I volunteer on Tuesdays and Saturdays. I sit in a room, and I talk to women." She said it plainly. "Sister Agnes asked me to find you. You did not come on the fifteenth of April. Or the fifteenth of May. She was worried. She has a list. It's a very long list. She has called you forty-three times."
"I changed my phone."
"I know. I found you through Shamim."
Nabirye's breath stopped.
"Don't be cross. She was frantic. She did not know where you were. She went to the clinic in tears and Sister Agnes said, Wait. And Shamim said, She went to Wakiso. She is working in a restaurant. It's a small world, Wakiso." She smiled. "I went to eleven. This was the tenth."
"I'm not sick."
"No?"
"I was cured."
"Ah."
Mama Teddy did not blink. She did not look surprised, or shocked, or pitying. She sat with her large hands folded on the cloth, and her round face open, and nodded, slowly, as if she had been told the time.
"By Prophet Mulwana," she said.
"How do you know?"
"I know a great many things." She lifted her handbag onto the table, with an effort, and opened it. "Did he tell you to stop your tablets?"
"I stopped myself."
"Did he tell you to?"
She did not answer.
"I see." Mama Teddy took out a photograph. It was a small, glossy colour print, curled at the corners, and she laid it on the cloth between them, and smoothed it flat with one thumb. "This is my son. Moses. He is twenty. He is studying engineering at Makerere. He is going to build bridges."
Nabirye looked at it. A tall, laughing, handsome boy, in a graduation gown, with a roll of paper in his fist.
"And this is my daughter. Hadijah. She is sixteen. She wants to be a lawyer." Another photograph. A girl in a school uniform, with braids, scowling at the camera. "And these are the babies." A third, with half a dozen small children in a heap on a sofa, all grinning, all with their mother's chin.
"They are beautiful."
"They are the whole of my life." She put them in a row. "I found out in two thousand and four. I was thirty-one. I had a husband who died, and two small children, and a cough. I went to a man in white." She smiled, a little. "A different man. But a very similar suit."
Nabirye stared at her.
"I stopped my medicine too. I'd just started it. A month. I thought, I am a woman of faith. I do not need it. And I felt fine. For a time." She put one finger on the photograph. "That is the part they do not tell you. You feel wonderful. For three months. Six. It is the medicine you have already taken, still in your blood. It holds the thing down. And you think, I am healed. And you go and tell everyone." Her voice was gentle. "I told the whole of my church."
"What happened?"
"I nearly died." She said it flatly. "I was on a ward for five weeks. I could not feed myself. I had TB, and a thing in my brain, and a sore on my..." She waved a hand. "It does not matter. They saved me. A nurse who sat by my bed for three nights. A very small, cross nurse. She said, You are not going to die on my ward. I have not the paperwork." She laughed. "Sister Agnes."
The restaurant was very quiet. A fly was crawling up the window. Somewhere in the kitchen, a radio was playing.
"I am fifty-one," said Mama Teddy. "I have taken one tablet every night for twenty years. I am as strong as an ox. I carry my own sacks. I dance at weddings." She leaned forward. "I'm not telling you what to do. I'm not here to nag. I only wanted you to see a person who did the same thing, and is sitting in front of you, eating beans."
"I'm not like you."
"No?"
"I wasn't... I'm not..."
"What?"
"I wasn't a good person." The words came out of her in a rush. She had not meant them. "I did things. I was with men. For money. For a house. I am the kind of girl they say... I deserve..."
"Stop."
"You don't know."
"I know exactly." Mama Teddy put out a large soft hand. She laid it over Nabirye's, on the table, and held it. It was warm, and heavy, and dry, and perfectly steady. "I know what you did, because I did it. Not in your way. In mine. I married a man because he had a bicycle. I was seventeen. I did not love him. He gave me two children and a disease." She smiled. "We are all of us bought, my dear. One way or another. By a bicycle, or a Land Cruiser, or a good character. It is only a question of the price."
"It's different."
"It is not different. It is a virus. It does not read." Her grip tightened. "You know that. You know it as a nurse. Do not let a man in a white suit tell you otherwise."
"I can't go back."
"Why not?"
"I told them I was healed." She was crying now, openly, with her mouth shaking. "Ten thousand people. I stood up on a stage. There was a boy. With a bandage. He... he looked at me. I can't. They'll see. They will know I lied. I'll be a..."
"A what?"
"A fraud."
"You are not a fraud." Mama Teddy said it very quietly. "You are a frightened girl who told a lie to people who wanted to be lied to. It's the oldest thing in the world. They will survive. And if they do not..." She shrugged, enormously. "They are not your responsibility. You are."
"I don't know how."
"I know."
"I don't know how to start."
"Then I will show you." She took her hand away. She stood up, with a grunt, bracing herself on the table, and gathered her handbag, and her tea, and her great purple self. "Hajjat Zainab!"
The old woman's eyes opened.
"I am borrowing your girl."
"Take her."
"She will not be back."
"I know." Hajjat Zainab regarded them with an expression of solemn, wise satisfaction. "I have been waiting for this for two months. Go, child. I will keep your wages." She closed her eyes. "I will pray."
"I... I'm not..." said Nabirye. "I haven't said..."
"You haven't said no."
"I can't walk. I'm..."
"Then I will carry you."
"You can't."
"I carried eleven grandchildren," said Mama Teddy. "I can carry one nurse."
She did not, in the end. Nabirye walked. She did it with the big woman's arm round her waist, step by step, out into the white afternoon, across the car park, to a taxi, with her cough tearing at her, and her knees going, and a feeling in her chest of such vast and simple relief that she thought she must be dying.
In the taxi, she put her head on a large warm shoulder. It smelled of cloves, and soap, and cooking oil.
"Mama Teddy," she said.
"Mm?"
"I'm so afraid."
"I know, my love."
"I think I've left it too late."
"Well." The big woman patted her head, and the taxi lurched into the traffic. "We shall see. But I will tell you a thing for free. Nobody is too late until they are gone. And you are not gone. You are on my lap. And I am extremely stubborn."
The Blue Door was exactly as she had left it.
It was five o'clock. The line of women on the bench had gone. The yard was empty, but for a hen, and the evening light lay long and gold on the yellow wall. The door, chipped and cheerful and blue, stood open. Inside, at the desk, in a purple dress and a white coat, with her grey curls on end, Sister Agnes was writing something in a ledger.
She looked up.
She did not say anything. She put down the pen. She took off her glasses, and set them on the blotter, and stood, and came round the desk, and for a long moment she simply looked.
Nabirye was in the doorway, leaning on Mama Teddy's arm. She was shaking. She could feel her whole body shaking, from the roots of her hair. She had meant to say something. I am sorry. I should have come. I lied. But she looked at the round, kind, tired, grey-haired face, and every word dissolved.
"Sister," she said.
"My dear."
"I stopped."
"I know."
"I was... I was so..."
"I know." Sister Agnes had crossed the floor. She took her in both arms, as she had the first time, and held her. She was crying. Nabirye could feel it, in the shaking of the small solid body. "I've been so frightened. I did not know where you were. I said a prayer every night."
"I'm sorry."
"No. No. Don't."
"I've wasted so much time."
"You have not wasted a thing." The old woman drew back, and took her face between her hands, and looked at it. Her eyes went over the cheeks, the hollows, the dry cracked lips. Something moved in her own, a flicker of dread, and was gone. "You've come. That is all. You are here." She laid a hand on her cheek. "We shall start again. Today. This minute. We will do the tests, and the sputum, and we will find out what is happening. And whatever it is, we'll deal with it."
"I might die."
"You might not."
"I might."
"Then you will die with a very large number of people trying to stop you." The warm mouth twisted. "Mama Teddy. Fetch the doctor. And a wheelchair. And a pot of tea. And the good biscuits."
"The good ones?" said Mama Teddy.
"Yes."
"I knew it was serious."
They put her in a chair. They wheeled her down the corridor, past the whitewashed rooms, with the voices and the smell of disinfectant and the little yellow poster of a woman with a pill. They laid her on a high bed. A nurse in a blue apron, a thin young man with kind eyes, came with a tray, and said, "Just a little pinch."
She looked at him.
"I remember you," she said.
"You came in December."
"You said that."
"I say it to everyone." He smiled. His eyes, over the mask, were gentle. "Welcome back."
She lay with her eyes shut, and her arm out, and the needle going in, and the bright thin line of her own blood running down the tube. She could hear, from somewhere beyond the wall, in the yard, a woman singing. A hymn. A high, sweet, cracked voice.
Tomorrow, again, she thought.
For the first time in six months, she meant it.