Chapter 7
The First Promise
He was patient, and that was the thing that undid her.
She would try to explain it afterward, to herself, in the long white nights of a ward, and she could never make it sound like anything. A man had been kind. That was all. A man with a dimple and a silver car had taken a village girl to tea and asked her what she thought. There was no violence in it. There was no trick, or none that she could see. There was only a series of small, warm, perfectly reasonable gestures, each of which would have been foolish to refuse.
He called on Sundays. Not on Saturdays, when a girl might be expected to be free, but on Sundays, after church, in the late afternoon, when she was alone in the room in Katwe with a book on her knee. He did not ask her for anything. He asked about her day. He told her funny stories about his customers, a bishop who had tried to bargain a Land Cruiser down to the price of a bicycle, a minister who had demanded that his car be blessed before he drove it away, and she laughed until she had to hold her sides. Shamim, on the other side of the curtain, would pretend to be asleep and would be very obviously listening.
He took her out on Thursdays. He never took her anywhere grand. A small restaurant in Bugolobi, with checked cloths and a smell of garlic. A garden bar in Kabalagala where a man played a guitar. A quiet place by the lake at Ggaba, on a flat green lawn, where they sat on plastic chairs and ate grilled tilapia with their fingers and watched the sun go down in a long, slow, unmoving flare over the water. He drove her home at nine. He did not touch her. He opened the car door for her and stood at a respectful distance, and said, "Goodnight, Nabirye," in the low voice, and watched her go in.
"He is so in love," said Shamim. "It is disgusting."
"He is not."
"He has not even tried to kiss you!"
"That is why he is not."
"That is exactly why he is." Shamim threw a cushion at her. "Do you know how many men I have had who did not try? None. Not one. A man who does not try is either gay, or a priest, or in love. And he is not gay, and he is certainly not a priest."
"Maybe he is just polite."
"Nobody is that polite. It is unnatural." But Shamim's face, over the curtain, was suddenly thoughtful. She had a way, now and then, of dropping the clown, and for a moment she looked tired and clear-eyed and older than twenty-two. "Be careful, my friend."
"Of what?"
"Of being treated well."
"That's a strange thing to say."
"Is it?" She shrugged. "It's only that, in my experience, the ones who are very good at it have had a lot of practice."
On the fourth Thursday, he gave her a phone.
He did it at the restaurant by the lake, over the fish, in the soft violet light. He slid it across the table in a small white box, with an apologetic expression, as if it were a bill. "I know," he said. "I know. I'm sorry. You will say no. But I was calling you on Sunday and the line kept breaking up, and I thought, she can't have her mother shouting on a phone from nineteen ninety-nine."
"How do you know about my mother's phone?"
"You told me. You said it was held together with a rubber band."
"I was joking."
"I know. But I thought, I could fix that." He pushed the box an inch closer. "It's only a phone. It's not even a good one. It's a small thing with a camera and a lot of storage. I'd like you to have a way to be reached. In case of emergency."
"What emergency?"
"Any." He did not smile. "I've lost someone suddenly, you know. You don't get a warning. I'd like to think that if something happened, you'd be able to call. That is all. It is not... it's not an obligation."
She looked at it. It was a white box, with the picture of a phone on the lid. It was a thing she could not afford. It was worth, she thought, about eight hundred thousand shillings. It was nearly the sum of the cow.
I can't.
"Thank you," she said.
She said it before she had decided. It was the old reflex, the one her mother had drilled into her, when a gift is given, you receive it. But it was also something else. She had been looking, for a month, at the screens of other girls. She had been hiding her own, the cracked grey Nokia, in her pocket, with a bag over it. She had imagined, at night, what it would feel like to hold a thing that did not shame her.
She took it out of the box. It was cold and smooth and perfect. The screen lit up and showed her face, a little startled, with the lake in the background. She heard herself laugh.
"I'll pay you back."
"You will not."
"Sam."
"If you try, I'll be very hurt." He had put his hand over his heart, and his eyes, in the dusk, were warm and soft. "It is the pleasure of my week. Let me have it. When you are a matron, you can buy me a very small gift. A pen."
"A pen."
"A cheap one. With your name on."
She laughed again. It was a quick bright sound, and it rang out over the lawn, and a couple at the next table turned to look. She was happy. She had not known she could be. She sat on a plastic chair with a stranger's phone in her hand and the sun going down on a lake, and felt, for an instant, entirely at home in the world.
It's only a phone.
It was always only a phone. It was only a dinner, and a wedding, and a lift. The things came one by one, and each was small, and each, taken alone, could be forgiven. It was only afterward, when you laid them in a row, that you saw the road.
In February, he paid for the practical kit.
She had not asked. She had mentioned it, once, in passing, over tea, that the school wanted two hundred thousand by Friday and she had forty. She had said it lightly, with a laugh, as a joke about nuns. He had not said anything. He had gone on drinking his tea. But on Friday morning a young man in a cap had appeared at the gate of St. Veronica's with a brown envelope, and said, "For Miss Kibirige. From Mr. Kigozi. With his compliments." Inside were two hundred thousand shillings in crisp new notes, and a card. For the thermometer. S.
She sat on the steps of the chapel with the envelope in her hand, and wept.
It was not gratitude, entirely. It was relief. It was a flood of it, huge and warm and shaming, that went through her like a wave. She had been so tired. She had been so frightened of the shortfall that she had not slept for two nights. She had been calculating, in the dark, how much she could borrow from Shamim, and how much she could skip, and how she would explain it all to her mother. And now it was gone. It was lifted from her like a stone. It was gone, because a man had paid, and had not even asked to be thanked.
He is good, she thought. He is truly good.
She called him that night, from the lane, under the streetlight, with the new phone pressed to her ear.
"I got it," she said.
"I know. The boy told me."
"You should not have."
"I know."
"Why did you?"
There was a long pause. She could hear a car go by, on his side, and a radio. When he spoke it was very low.
"Because I could not bear it," said Sam. "To know that you were worrying. It was an unfamiliar thing. I'm not a man who worries about other people. But I thought of you on the ward, with a stethoscope, doing a hard job, and I thought, I can take this one weight. So I did."
"It's a lot of money."
"It is a very small amount. To me." He said it gently. "I want you to understand, Nabirye. I'm not buying anything. I'm not that kind of man. I don't expect... I don't want you to think..."
"I don't think that."
"Good." A breath. "But I'll tell you something true. I have been alone for a very long time. I have a house, and a showroom, and a lot of cars. And at the end of every day I come home to a table with one plate. I did not know I minded. And then I met a girl at a wedding who ate her rice as if it were a sacrament, and I thought, oh."
"Oh?"
"Oh. That is what I've been missing." He gave a short, embarrassed laugh. "I'm sorry. I'm saying too much. It is the hour."
She stood under the lamp with her heart doing a strange, heavy, joyful thing in her chest. Moths were flying round the bulb. Across the lane, a woman was calling her children in. A thin yellow dog trotted past.
"Sam."
"Yes?"
"I think I..." She stopped. She did not know the word. She did not know if it was the right one. She tried again. "I like talking to you."
"I like it too."
"It's the best part of my week."
"And mine," said Sam, softly. "Goodnight, Nabirye."
It was in March that she said yes.
She never could say, afterward, to herself or anybody, exactly what had made her. It was not that he asked. He did not. He had never asked for anything. It was only that on a Saturday afternoon, in the room in Katwe, with the rain hammering on the iron roof and Shamim away at a salon, he had come to pick her up for a late lunch, and been caught in the shower, and stood in the doorway of the little room, dripping, with his shirt stuck to his shoulders, laughing, and she had looked at him.
She had looked, and seen it. The wet shirt, the broad shoulders, the line of his throat. The eyes, which had stopped laughing. And in the instant before either of them spoke, she knew that she was not going to be able to go back.
"I am sorry," he said. "I'll go."
"It's raining."
"I can wait in the car."
"It's raining hard."
"I've been wet before."
"Sam."
"Yes?"
"Stay."
He did not move. He stood still in the doorway, with rain running off his hair and down his neck, and she saw his hands, those large clean square hands, close once, very slowly, at his sides.
"Are you sure?" he said.
"No."
"Then I'll go."
"I'm not sure of anything." She heard her own voice, thin and strange. "I only know that I don't want you to."
He crossed the room in three steps.
It was not like she had imagined. She had read about it, in biology textbooks, in diagrams and numbered arrows. She had been told about it by Ssenga, in a taxi, with a great deal of laughter. She had thought she was prepared for it, like an exam. But it was not an exam. It was a flood. It was a warm, slow, terrifying, tender wave, and she went down under it with her eyes shut and her hands in his wet hair and the rain thundering on the roof, and for a long time she was not a nurse, or a student, or a village girl. She was only a body, being held.
He was gentle. That was what she would remember. He was very gentle, and very slow, and he said her name, over and over, in the dark of the little room, as though it were a thing that might break. The bed creaked. The curtain, the pink one, swung. Somewhere in the lane a child was laughing, and the sound seemed to come from a long way off.
It was only afterward, lying on the narrow bed with her head on his shoulder and the wet sheet round them both, that she remembered.
Protection.
The thought came calmly. It sat down on her chest. She had a stack of condoms in the drawer of the table, a gift from Sister Agatha, in a bag, with a pamphlet. She had given a lecture on them in the second week. Every time. No exceptions. No matter how well you know him. She had written it in her notes in a bold hand.
She had not said a word.
Neither had he.
She lay very still. The rain was easing. She could hear it pattering on the iron, and her own breath, and his, slow and deep, and she thought, with the cold clear voice that was her training, You know what you've done.
I know.
It's one time.
It's one time is how it works.
She turned her head. He was lying with his eyes open, looking at the ceiling, and his face was tender and sleepy and young. She felt a pang of such sudden, enormous, helpless love that it silenced her.
"Sam," she said.
"Mm."
"We did not..."
"I know." He turned. He took her hand, and lifted it, and kissed the palm. "I know. I'm sorry. I should have said. I should have thought." His eyes were serious. "I'll tell you something. I got a test, in January. A full one. I do it every year. It's a thing I do, after my mother. I had it all done, the whole panel, and it was clear. I have the paper. I can show you."
"Oh."
"I'm not saying it so you will... I only want you to know I would never put you at risk. Never. I would cut off my hand." He said it simply, with perfect sincerity. "I have not been with anyone since. Not for a long time. I do not do it lightly. I wanted it to be... you."
She did not breathe.
He had a test. He has the paper. He would never.
It was a great flood of reassurance. It was all she wanted. It was the thing she had been waiting for. And a small cold part of her mind, a part that was a nurse, and a daughter, and the owner of a green tin, said very softly: A paper from January is not a paper from today.
A test is a moment. It does not stop time.
You do not know where he has been.
But he told me. He said.
And you believed.
She looked at him. He was smiling at her, in the dim grey light, with his hand on her hair. His face was so open. His eyes were full of love. She thought: It is only once. I will go to the clinic next week. I will have a test myself. We will do it together. It will be fine.
It will be fine.
It was the word. It had been waiting. She felt it enter her, smoothly, like a key into a lock, and turn.
"Okay," she said.
"Okay?"
"Okay. I trust you."
"Thank you." He kissed her forehead. "I won't let you down."
She laid her head on his chest. She listened to the slow beat of his body, under her ear. She did not hear what it was saying.
She did not go to the clinic the next week. Or the next month. She meant to. She wrote it in the green exercise book, on the first page, in her small slanting hand: Test. Blue Door, Kisenyi. Friday. And on Friday there was an exam, and on the next Friday it rained, and on the third she woke with a smile on her face and a warm, lazy, sweet sleepiness in her bones, and thought, Next week.
Next week.
It is the most dangerous phrase in the language. It is a beautiful, lilting little promise. It makes everything seem to be still on its way.
"I want to marry you," said Sam, in April.
They were at the lake, at their table, in the dusk. It was nearly dark. A pale moon had come up over the water, and a string of tiny lights was lit along the edge of the lawn, and a man at the far end of the garden was playing a slow song on a guitar. She had eaten almost nothing. She was looking at him across the cloth, in the soft yellow light, and he was looking at her.
"What?"
"I want to marry you." He said it quietly, with no fuss. "I've wanted to say it for weeks. It's only that I did not want to rush. You are very young. You have your studies. You have a dream, a good one. I would never stand in its way." He took her hand. "But I want you to know. I mean it. I have never meant anything so much."
"Sam..."
"Hear me out." He turned her hand over, and put his thumb in the middle of her palm. "I've been thinking. About how hard it is. You, on the ward, fourteen hours a day, hungry. Your mother, in the village, selling her cow. You told me. You told me she borrowed from the savings group. And I thought: why? Why should a girl like you have to do that, when I have more than I need?"
"It's not your problem."
"It is. It will be." His voice was steady. "I would like to pay your fees. All of them. The rest of the course. I want you to finish. I want you to be a matron, and build your centre, and put a sign over the door. I'd like to help build it. A man should help his wife."
"I'm not your wife."
"Not yet."
She sat very still. The guitar was playing. A breeze moved the string of lights, and they swung, gold and blue and gold.
"There is something else," said Sam. "I think you should not live in that room."
"It's my home."
"It's a cell. With a roof that leaks. And a girl with a lot of wigs." He smiled, tenderly. "I have a house. In Munyonyo. Four bedrooms. Nobody lives in it but me. I'd like you to come. Not as... not because of anything. Only so you can study. In quiet. With a proper desk. And a kitchen with a fridge." He lifted her hand to his mouth. "And so I can come home to someone."
"I can't leave Shamim."
"She can visit. Every day, if she likes."
"I can't tell my mother."
"Then do not. Not until it's right. I'll go to her myself, in the village, with the proper people, with my aunt, when the time comes. I'll bring the gifts. I will kneel on the ground." His eyes were very bright. "I will do it properly, Nabirye. The kwanjula, the introduction. The whole clan. I'd like her to be proud."
She felt her throat close.
"That is a promise?"
"It is." He did not hesitate. "I promise you. I'll give you a good life. A very good one. You will not know what it was like to be hungry."
A man who promises you everything, said Ssenga's voice, from very far away, has usually not got a thing.
She heard it. She did. She heard it as one hears a clock in another room.
But the lights were swinging, and the guitar was playing, and the man across the table had tears in his eyes. And the thing he had said, the good life, the you will not know, was the thing she had wanted since she could remember. It was the dream, but plainer, and closer, with the corners rounded off. It was warm. It had a roof. It said: You can stop counting.
She closed her eyes.
"Yes," said Nabirye.
She did not say it to the marriage. She did not know what she was agreeing to. She said it to the roof, and the fridge, and the desk. She said it to the end of the hunger.
He lifted her hand, and kissed it, and she felt his breath, and the wet of his tears. Out on the lake, a fisherman's lamp bobbed, a small yellow flame on the wide dusk of the water, and went out.
Nobody would see it go.