Chapter 17
The Video
It was a girl in a red hat who destroyed her, in the end, and she never meant to.
Her name was Rukia. She was the plump merry niece of Hajjat Zainab, with the gap in her teeth, who had taken a ten-second clip on her phone, at the Overcomers' Healing Tabernacle on a Sunday in July of the previous year, of a thin young woman on a stage, with a microphone and a tear-stained face, saying, And I am well. She had sent it to her cousins. They had sent it to their friends. A boy in the church choir had set it to music. By the end of August it had been seen by six thousand people, and nobody remembered where it had come from.
In July, a man with a very large following put it on his page.
He was a gospel singer, rather famous, with a wide smile and a shaved head, and a habit of posting miracles. WATCH! A NURSE HEALED OF AIDS BY PROPHET MULWANA! GOD IS STILL ON THE THRONE! He attached a drawing of a dove. By the morning it had been viewed four hundred thousand times. By the evening, two million.
Nabirye did not see it. She did not have a phone with data. She was in the clinic, in a blue apron, weighing a woman called Mama Sarah and telling her a joke about a goat. It was Mama Teddy who came in with her phone clutched in her fist and a face the colour of wet ash.
"Come," she said. "Into the office."
"What is it?"
"Come."
She watched it standing, in the whitewashed room, with Sister Agnes's hand on her shoulder.
It was very short. It was nine seconds long. It began in the middle of a sentence, in a blaze of white light, with a roar behind it like surf. A thin figure in a borrowed dress. A hoarse young voice, flung back by loudspeakers. I was sick with the virus. HIV. I took medicine. And then I came here. And I put it down. And I am well.
Then the roar. Then a hand, flung up. Then the whole picture lurching, and the loop beginning again.
She watched it three times.
"How many have seen it?" she said.
"Two million."
"Two..."
"It is on every platform." Mama Teddy's voice was ragged. "It is everywhere. It's on the television. There is a man on the radio, discussing it. They are calling you the AIDS nurse."
"But I am not..."
"I know."
"I am not a nurse. I never was. I'm only..."
"My love."
"And I'm not well." She heard herself say it. It was a perfectly even voice. It was the voice of a woman reading a label. "I am on treatment. I'll be on it all my life. I said a thing that was not true, and it has gone round the world."
"You did not know."
"I knew."
Sister Agnes tightened her grip. "Nabirye. Look at me."
"I knew when I said it."
"Look at me."
She looked.
"It is a terrible thing," said Sister Agnes. "It is a very bad thing. And it is going to cause a great deal of trouble. But you are going to listen to me now. You are going to sit down. And we are going to think. We are not going to run."
"I can't..."
"We are not going to run."
It was too late. She had already begun.
The first message came at ten that night.
She had gone home to the little room in Kisenyi, and shut the door, and sat on the bed. She had turned off the lamp. The phone, an old one, bought for thirty thousand shillings at a stall, lay on the blanket beside her, a small black rectangle. She did not look at it. She sat with her arms round her knees in the dark and her eyes fixed on the window, which showed a square of sky and a single, steady, indifferent star.
Tomorrow they will all know.
Everyone.
The phone buzzed.
She did not move. It buzzed again. And again. And then it began to ring, a loud brisk tune, and she picked it up, because she could not bear it, and looked at the screen.
Unknown number.
She did not answer. It stopped. It rang again.
She turned it over. A message had come in, from a number she did not know, in green. It was short. Is this the nurse that was healed? I'm sick. Please pray for me. And another. Madam, God bless you. My mother has the virus. Can you help. And another, from a woman in Mbarara, a long one, that went on for a screen and a half, about a child.
She read them.
She read every one. They came in, one after another, fast, in the dark, glowing up out of the black. Two hundred. Four. A woman wanted her to visit. A pastor in Gulu wanted her to preach. A man in Jinja wanted to marry her. A mother in Lira said, I saw you on the TV. I knelt down. I stopped my son's medicine. He's breathing better.
She dropped the phone.
It lay on the blanket, lit, shuddering. She stared at it. A cold hand closed round the back of her neck.
I stopped my son's medicine.
She picked it up again. She read it three times. It was dated an hour ago. She could not tell if the child was dead or alive.
What have I done?
She did not scream. She did not make a sound. She sat on the bed, in the thin light of the screen, and a terrible quiet descended on her, very deep, very still, like the bottom of a lake. In it she could hear, with perfect clarity, a woman in a restaurant saying, She died in a week. She could hear a short square nurse. The sickness is not the killer. The silence is. She heard her own voice, flat and hoarse, flung across a shed. And I am well.
She turned off the phone.
She took out the battery. She sat holding it in her fist, in the dark, until her hand went numb.
It got worse.
It always does. The story spread, as a story does, in the way of fire in dry grass, from the first flame outward. On the second day, a journalist from a newspaper rang the clinic. On the third, a woman in a green suit, from a television station, appeared at the gate, with a cameraman, asking for the nurse. On the fourth, a man in a dark car sat across the road for six hours. Sister Agnes sent them away. She stood at the blue door with her arms folded and said, in a voice like a closing gate, "There is no such person. This is a clinic. It is confidential. Leave."
On the fifth day, it turned.
It was a girl in a gold watch who did it. She was twenty-three now, tall and graceful, with a manicure, and a job in a private hospital in Kololo, and a great many friends. She saw the video at lunch, in the staff canteen, on her phone. She watched it twice. She frowned. She said, to the woman beside her, "I know her."
"Who?"
"The girl on the stage. It's a girl from my class. At nursing school." She put down her fork. "She dropped out in second year. She was always odd. She told everyone her mother was a nurse." A small, incredulous laugh. "She was living with that car dealer. And then someone said she moved in with an old man, a rich one, in Entebbe. We all knew."
"Really?"
"It's her." Veronica lifted the phone. "Kibirige. Nabirye Kibirige. The one from the village." She was already typing. "I have to tell the group."
She posted it in the class WhatsApp group, at 1.14 p.m., with a face with raised eyebrows. Isn't this Kibirige?? A moment later she added, She was our year!! A moment after that, with a certain grave, nervous relish, as of a person doing a public duty: I heard she has the virus. She told this whole crowd she was HEALED. She's a FRAUD. And she is supposed to be coming BACK to St. V's!!! Does Sister B know?
By three o'clock, there were two hundred and twelve messages.
Sister Benedicta's call came on Friday.
It was to the clinic. It was to Sister Agnes. Nabirye did not hear it. She stood in the yard, in the white light, with a basin of laundry in her arms, and watched through the open door of the office as the small round figure at the desk listened, and listened, with the receiver pressed to her ear. She saw her face. She saw it grow slowly older.
When she put down the phone, she did not move for a very long time.
"Sister?" said Nabirye.
"Come in."
"What is it?"
"Come in, my dear. Sit."
She sat. She put the basin on the floor, with great care, between her feet. Her mouth was dry.
"It was Sister Benedicta," said Sister Agnes.
"They've withdrawn it."
"They have not withdrawn it. They have..." She stopped. She took off her glasses, and rubbed her eyes, and put them back. "There was a meeting of the Board. Last night. There were complaints. A great many. From parents. From a group of the students. They said that a girl who had been publicly exposed as having publicly lied... They said it was a question of the school's reputation. They said it would be a scandal."
"And?"
"They have asked that the readmission be deferred."
"Deferred."
"Until the matter has settled."
"How long?"
"They did not say."
Nabirye sat very still. A fly was crawling on the window. In the next room, a baby began to cry.
"It's illegal," said Sister Agnes. "I want you to know that. I have said so. They cannot refuse a person on the grounds of her status. There are laws. I will fight it. I'll go to the Board. I will go to the newspaper. I will go to the President. But it will take time. Months. A year."
"I know."
"I'm so sorry."
"It's not your fault."
"It is the fault of a great many people." The grey curls trembled. "It's a very ugly thing. But we will fight."
"I can't fight."
"You will not have to. I will."
"No." She stood up. She felt very tall. Her voice, coming from somewhere high above her, was calm and even and utterly empty. "I do not want you to. You've done enough. You've given me a year. I have no right to ask for more."
"Nabirye..."
"I lied. It was my lie. They have a right to be angry."
"They have no right to..."
"They do." She smiled. It was a very small, strange, faraway smile. "I stood on a stage and told ten thousand people it was gone. A woman in Lira stopped her son's tablets. Do you know that? I got a message. I don't know if he is alive." She drew a long breath. "If I were the Board, I would not let me in either."
"That is not the same."
"It is the same."
"My dear..."
"I'm going to go home," said Nabirye. "I'm tired."
She picked up the basin. She carried it out to the yard, and set it down on the bench, and stood looking at the washing, the small sheets and aprons, hanging in the sun. A hen was pecking in the dust. The sky was very high and very blue, and a single white cloud hung over the roofs, motionless, like a thing pinned to a wall.
Behind her, in the doorway, she heard Sister Agnes say softly, "Please. Don't."
She did not turn.
There was one more thing, and it came on the Sunday.
It was a call, on the old phone, which she had turned on that morning for the first time in a week, with her thumb over the button and her whole body braced. She had had nine hundred messages. She had deleted them without opening. She had put the phone in her pocket. She was sitting on the step of the room in Kisenyi, in the sun, drinking tea, when it began to ring.
MAAMA.
She stared at it.
She had not seen those letters in nine months. She had not rung. She had had a hundred reasons, a thousand, a whole fortress of them, built brick by brick. I'm busy. I've no airtime. She'll ask. But the letters glowed on the screen, white and square, in the capitals she had typed herself at nineteen, under a streetlamp, in Katwe. And the phone shook, in her hand, with a small insistent buzz, like a heart.
She answered.
"Hello?"
"NABIRYE!"
It was her mother's voice. It was exactly the same. It was loud and rough and cracked, a voice that had shouted across a hundred valleys, and it hit her like a wall of warm air.
"Maama," she whispered.
"I CANNOT HEAR YOU!"
"I'm here."
"IS THAT YOU?"
"Yes. It's me. I can hear you."
"Ah. Wait. Let me go to the road." A rustle. The slap of sandals. The sound of a hen. "It is better by the mango tree. Are you eating?"
She put her hand over her mouth.
It was the oldest sentence in the world. It was the first thing her mother had ever said to her on the phone. It had been said so many times, in so many different voices, from so many different distances, that it had lost all meaning. But it came down the line now, in the thick sweet Luganda of Kisaana, and it was so utterly, ridiculously ordinary that she could not answer.
"Nabirye?"
"Yes, Maama."
"Are you eating?"
"Yes."
"Good. I have not heard from you. I have been very worried. I thought, the phone is dead. Or the hospital is busy. Or..." Her voice wavered. "It does not matter. I'm only calling because I have heard something. And I want you to tell me that it's not true."
Her heart stopped.
"What have you heard?"
"A woman came to the village. On Friday. From Masaka." Her mother spoke slowly, in the flat careful voice she used for bad news. "She has a phone. A big one. She showed it to Mama Juliet's grandson. She said it was a girl from Kisaana. A nurse. On the television. She said the girl was..." She stopped. "She used a word."
"What word?"
"I do not want to say it."
"Maama."
"I told her it was not true. I said, That is not my daughter. My daughter is a nurse in a private hospital. She is clever. She is careful. She has a contract." Her voice was shaking. "I told her to leave my compound. I said, Do not come here with your lies. But Mama Juliet's grandson showed me the thing. On the phone. And the girl, Nabirye, the girl, she looked..."
"What did she look like?"
"She looked like you."
The silence was enormous.
Nabirye sat on the step in the sun. A boy went by, with a bundle of sugarcane. A dog lay in the dust, with its tongue out. Down the lane, a woman was frying dough, and the smell, hot and sweet, came up on the wind.
Tell her.
It was a clear voice. It was the clearest she had heard in a year. It was her own, and Sister Agnes's, and the voice of a small proud woman in a green gomesi. You will tell one person. You will tell her. It is the carrying that kills.
She opened her mouth.
Tell her. Tell her now. Say, I am sick. Say, I was afraid. Say, I'm sorry. Say, come and get me.
"It's not me," said Nabirye.
She heard it. It came out of her in a high, light, rapid voice, natural, a voice she had not used since the day of the results.
"It's a mistake. It's a girl who looks like me. There are lots of them. It is a common face." She was laughing. It was a bright thin laugh. "Maama, honestly. You know how it is. People see what they want."
"You are sure?"
"Of course I'm sure."
"It is not you?"
"It is not me."
There was a long, long pause.
She sat with her eyes shut. She could hear, down the phone, the faint sound of a breath. It was slow. It was very steady. It was the breath of a woman standing under a mango tree, with a battered grey phone in her hand, in the late sun, with a green dress, and a sack, and a daughter.
"Good," said her mother.
"Yes."
"Good. Thank you."
"I have to go. I'm at the ward. We're short-staffed."
"Of course. Go and work." Her voice had changed. It was lower, and gentler, and strangely tired. "I only wanted to be certain. You understand."
"I understand."
"Eat meat."
"I will."
"I love you, my child."
"I love you too."
She cut the call.
She sat on the step, with the phone in her lap. She did not move. She could not. The sun was warm on her face. The woman down the lane was still frying dough. And in her head, a voice that was not her own, calm, clear, in a kitchen that smelled of woodsmoke, said: She did not believe you.
She knew.
She knew, and she let you say it.
To spare you.
She put both hands over her face. She did not weep. There was nothing left for that. She rocked, once, back and forth, on the hard step, like a child.
Why did I do that?
Why did I do that?
But she knew. She knew exactly. It had been so easy. It had been the work of a second. It was the thing that had been waiting in her, for years, since a taxi, and a wedding, and a sack of groundnuts on a hotel floor. She had said it, as one steps back from the edge of a cliff.
I cannot let her see.
I can't let her see what I have become.
She took the last pill on Tuesday.
She had not decided it. There was no decision. It was only that, on the Monday, the clinic's supply of the tablet had run out. A shipment had been delayed at the port. It had happened before. A notice had gone up on the wall, in black marker, STOCK-OUT. ONE-WEEK SUPPLY ONLY. PLEASE RETURN ON THE 25TH. She had been given seven. She had stood in the queue, on the bench, with the other patients, in the heat, and heard the whispers. Is that her? The one on the video? No, she's too thin. She had taken the little paper packet, and put it in her bag, and gone home.
She had taken one on Monday night, at eight.
On Tuesday, she took the last but one.
On Wednesday, she opened the packet, and looked at it, for a very long time, in the thin light of the room, with the shuttered window, and the single bulb. There were two left. She shook them out, onto her palm. They lay there, small, round, pale yellow. They looked like the seeds of something.
I can go back on the twenty-fifth, she thought.
It's only a few days.
And I cannot go. I can't walk past that bench. I can't be looked at.
She sat down on the bed.
She thought of Ibra. She thought of the bench in the white laboratory, and the cheese sandwich, and the hands held out like a bowl. She thought, I should call him. She thought, He'd come. He would sit with me. She thought of Mama Teddy's knitting, and Shamim's pink T-shirt, and a woman in purple with a plastic flower. Each of them was a small bright window, in a long dark wall. She could see the light. She could not find the door.
If I go, I'll have to say it.
I'll have to say, I lied to my mother.
I'll have to say, I stood on a stage.
I'll have to be that girl.
She closed her fingers over the pills.
The room was very still. A mosquito was whining somewhere, high and thin. Outside, the evening was coming down, with its smell of charcoal, and a radio playing a slow, sweet song about a girl who left a village. She sat with her fist closed, and listened.
One more night, she thought.
She opened her hand, and took one.
She took it at eight, with a cup of water, as she had taken it for eight months, and she lay down. She did not take the last. She put it in the drawer, in the sock, in the plastic bag, in the dark, and shut it.
Tomorrow, again, she thought.
She did not take it tomorrow.
It would have been the last one in the world, had she known. She would not have known what to do with it. She lay in the narrow bed in the dark, in the sound of the radio, and did not sleep, and in the sleepless hours between midnight and dawn, with her eyes open on the ceiling, she did a very small, quiet, terrible sum.
If I stop, I'll be thin again in a month.
If I'm thin, nobody will look at me.
If nobody looks, nobody will know.
And if nobody knows...
It was the old arithmetic. It was her father's. It was a thing that could be done in the head, in the dark, by anyone, at any time, with the lights off.
I would rather go quiet.
She said it aloud, in the empty room, in a small clear voice.
And the room, which had heard it before, said nothing.