Chapter 13
Eighteen
The cake had the wrong number on it.
It was a small round chocolate one, in a white box, with a plastic candle, and it had been carried up the hill to the school gate at seven o'clock on a Tuesday morning in January by a girl who had not slept. The icing, in thick pink letters, said HAPPY BIRTHDAY SARAH. Under that, in smaller, shakier writing, the baker's apprentice had added, with great care, a figure. It was a one, and a nine.
"Nineteen," said Sarah.
"It was a mistake."
"It says nineteen."
"My brother wrote it. He cannot count." Miriam was standing under the flame tree with the box held out in front of her like a tray of eggs, in her crumpled uniform, with her plaits coming undone and an expression of strained and desperate cheerfulness. "I told him. I said, eighteen. I said it three times. He said, I know. He said that he'd got it." She swallowed. "I did not look until we were halfway here. I could have killed him."
"It is lovely."
"It is wrong."
"It's lovely, Miriam."
"Oh, shut up." She thrust it at her. "Take it. Eat it. Pretend that you are nineteen. It will be good practice."
Sarah took the box.
It was surprisingly heavy. She carried it, in both hands, across the dusty yard, to the bench under the tree, and set it down, and lifted the lid. The smell came up, sweet and dark and cloying. She stood looking at it, at a smear of pink on a brown ground, in the early sun. She had never been given a cake, by a friend, at a school gate. She had not been given a cake at all, since the one with the crooked rose.
"Make a wish," said Miriam.
"I'm too old."
"You are eighteen. That is the exact age at which you start to need them."
"I have nothing to wish for."
"You always say that."
"It's always true."
"Then borrow one." Miriam had lit the candle, with a match from her pocket, cupped in her palm against the breeze. It was a small, thin, pink one, and it wavered. "Go on. I'll lend you mine. It's a good one. I've been saving it."
"What is it?"
"I'm not going to say. Then it will not work." She blew out the match. "Close your eyes."
She closed them.
It was dark behind her lids. She heard, a long way off, the thin roar of the morning, voices, a bell, the clatter of a bucket. She felt the sun on her eyelids, a red glow. And she stood for a moment, in the middle of it, with the smell of chocolate in her nose, and tried to think of something to ask for.
She did not know what.
That it would stop.
That I could go home.
That Taata would walk up the path.
They were not wishes. They were only facts, which had been lying in a pile for a long time, and which she took up, one at a time, and put down. And at the bottom of the pile, small and plain and unlooked-for, she found a thing she had not known was there.
That I'd be able to look at eighteen, and see something on the other side.
She opened her eyes. She blew.
The flame went out. A thread of grey smoke rose, and bent, and dissolved. And Miriam, beside her, drew a long shaky breath, and said, in a strange tight little voice, "There. It's done. Now you are officially a grown-up, and cannot be told what to do."
She looked at her.
It was a joke. It was said very lightly. But Miriam's round face, in the morning sun, was serious. Her eyes were shining. Her mouth was pressed tight. She did not look like a girl making a joke. She looked like a person who has been holding a very heavy door shut for a long time, and has just felt it give.
"What?" said Sarah.
"Nothing."
"Miriam."
"It's only that I've been counting." She laughed, with an effort. "Since August. I have been counting, in my head. It's five months and nine days. I knew exactly. I knew you would be eighteen on this one. I kept thinking, When she turns eighteen. When she's eighteen, it's different." She wiped her face with her wrist. "I do not know why. It isn't, really. He is just the same man."
"It is different," said Sarah.
"Is it?"
"I think so." She looked at the cake. "I do not know how yet. But I think it is."
It was the oddest day of her life.
It went by as any ordinary day goes by. She had Geography, and a double period of Literature, and a debate in the lunch hour on the motion that This house believes that the young should obey. She argued against, with great fire, for eleven minutes, and was awarded the point. She was given a card, signed by thirty girls. She was kissed on both cheeks, in a corridor, by a tall thin sixth-former from S6 who, as far as she knew, had never spoken to her in her life, and who said, with passion, "You are so brave," and rushed away, scarlet, before she could say anything.
What does she know?
She turned it over, uneasily. She did not like it. She had not told anyone but a few. But it was a small school, and a smaller town, and a secret that is held by five people is not a secret. She had felt it, since September, in a hundred small shifts, in the way the girls looked at her, in the sudden hush when she came into a room. Some of it was kind. Some of it was not. There was a girl in S5, a heavy sullen girl called Annet, who had said in the toilets, in a carrying voice, Of course it's true. She has been dressing like that for years. Miriam had slapped her. She had been given a week's detention. She had come out of it with a split lip and a look of the most profound satisfaction.
It is a small price, she had said. For a very good slap.
It was strange, to be talked about. It was like walking through a field, in the rain, and finding that each blade of grass has a small cold drop on it, which falls when one passes. She did not mind it as much as she had thought. She minded it less than the silence.
And all day, under the ordinary noise, in the back of her head, a second, quieter voice said, steadily: Eighteen.
You are eighteen.
Nobody can make you.
She did not believe it. She knew perfectly well that it was not true. She knew that the law had a line, and that she had stepped over it, that morning, as one steps over a crack in a pavement, and that nothing at all had changed. She was in the same body. She lived in the same house. She had the same mother, and the same lock-less door, and the same man with the same hands. A number was not a wall.
But it was a number. And it was hers. And there was, in it, something that she had not expected, something clean and hard and small, like a pebble in a shoe, that kept making itself felt. She was an adult. She was a person, in the eyes of the law, with a right to say no. She could walk out of any door she chose. She could go to a police post, and sit down, and say, I am Sarah Nankya, I am eighteen, and I wish to make a statement. She could say it without a guardian. She could say it with no one's permission.
She had never thought of it before.
Three years, she thought.
I have spent three years waiting to be old enough.
And I did not know what for.
She went home at five, in the dust, with a slice of cake wrapped in a paper napkin, and her heart in her throat.
It was a bright afternoon. The sky was high and clear. A row of boys were kicking a ball on a patch of waste ground, and a woman with a baby on her back was selling roasted maize on the corner. A boda boda went by, with a girl in a yellow dress perched sideways on the back, laughing, and holding her hat. It was a day for celebration. It was the kind of afternoon on which a person ought to be happy.
She turned into Kitende Close.
The gate was open.
It was never open. It was shut, always, by day, with the bolt drawn, and a small padlock. She stopped at the edge of the road. She stood, with the napkin in her fist, and looked at it. A wedge of dark shadow showed between the green iron leaves, and a glimpse of gravel, and a corner of the veranda. She could see the car. It was parked in the usual place. She could see the washing line, with her mother's blue dress on it, moving in the wind.
He is home early.
She stood so still that she could hear her own pulse.
It's the birthday.
He will say something.
She went in.
The table was laid.
There was a white cloth. There were the good plates, the ones with the gold rim, from the glass cabinet, and the good glasses, and a vase of red roses in the middle, cut from the garden. There was a roast chicken on a dish, brown and shining, and a bowl of rice, and a plate of fried plantain, and a jug of juice. There were candles. Her mother was standing at the head of the table, in her best blue dress, with her hair done, and her hands clasped in front of her, and a smile on her face that looked as though it had been put on with a very small brush.
"Surprise," said Grace.
It was said very softly, with a catch in it.
Sarah stood in the doorway.
She did not know what to do with her face. She stood with the napkin and her bag, and looked at the table, and the candles, and the red roses. She looked at the chicken, which her mother had been up since six to roast. She looked at the cloth, and the good china, and the little card at her place, in her mother's hand. Sarah. She looked at everything.
And then she looked at the man who had risen from his chair at the foot, and was coming round the table toward her, with both his arms held out, and his face split with a great warm smile.
"There she is!" said Peter. "There's the young lady. Eighteen! Eighteen years old! I do not believe it."
She stepped back.
She did not mean to. It was an involuntary thing. It was a single small movement of the foot, before her mind had caught it, like a deer in a field. But he saw. She saw him see. For a half-second the smile did not change, and then, behind it, quickly, something crossed the dark eyes and was gone.
"Ah," said Peter. "She is shy."
"I'm tired."
"Of course. A long day." He stopped, a yard away, and lowered his arms. His voice was perfectly mild. "I will not embrace you. I don't wish to embarrass you. I only wanted to say, happy birthday." He smiled. "You are a woman now. It's a milestone."
"Thank you."
"I have a little something."
"There's no need."
"There is always a need." He put a hand into the pocket of his jacket, and drew out a small flat box, in white leather, with a gold clasp. "Here. For you. From your mother and myself. We chose it together."
"I don't want..."
"Sarah," said her mother, sharply. "Take it."
She took it.
It was warm, from his pocket. She held it in her palm, and looked at it, and a small cold silence went all the way through her. She did not open it. She knew what it was. She had seen the shape, in a hundred windows. It was a ring.
"Open it," said Peter.
"Not now."
"Why not?"
"I'd like to... later."
"I think you should open it now." He said it very kindly. "Your mother has been looking forward to it all day."
She looked at her mother.
Her mother was looking at the floor. She was standing still, with her hands clasped, and her face turned a little away, and a faint red flush up her neck. She did not meet Sarah's eyes. She stood very straight, in her good blue dress, like a person in a photograph, waiting for the click.
She knows what is in it.
She chose it with him.
Her thumb moved on the clasp. It sprang. The lid lifted. And there, on a bed of white satin, in the glow of the candles, lay a small gold ring with a single stone. It was a pale one, a pink one, set in a ring of tiny seed pearls. It was pretty. It was delicate. It was exactly the kind of ring that a man gives a girl who is of an age to be engaged.
"It is a very old design," said Peter. "It was my mother's. I thought it should be yours."
The room was very quiet.
She looked at it. She looked at it for a long time. And in the stillness she heard, clearly, distinctly, in the most reasonable voice, a sentence that he had said to her, in the dark, three years before, in a bed with a daisy cover, with his breath on her ear. You're not a child any more, are you?
Now you are a woman.
She understood.
She understood it all at once, with a slow, enormous, nauseating clarity. It was not a gift. It was a message. It was a very beautiful, very polite, perfectly deniable message, delivered in front of her mother, at a table with roses, in the full glare of a family birthday. It said: You have turned eighteen. I've been waiting. Nothing has changed. I own this.
And he wants me to put it on.
She closed the box.
She did it gently. She laid it on the table, beside her plate, among the roses, and squared it, with one finger, so that the edge was parallel to the edge of the cloth. She did not look at him.
"Thank you," said Sarah. "It's a lovely thing. But I can't take it."
"Why not?"
"Because it is a ring."
"It's a gift."
"It's a ring for a person who is engaged. I'm not." She raised her eyes. Her voice was low, and clear, and steady. "I'm eighteen. I think I should be allowed to choose who gives me one."
Nobody moved.
It was so quiet that she could hear the candles. They guttered. A drop of wax ran down and fell. Her mother had put a hand over her mouth. And Peter, at the foot of the table, stood perfectly still, with his smile unchanged, and his eyes, in the yellow light, as flat and dark and empty as the eyes of a fish.
"I see," he said.
"I'm sorry."
"You are not."
"No." She heard her own voice, with a kind of distant wonder. "I'm not."
"Sarah," whispered her mother. "Please."
"Mama, I'd like to have my dinner. I would like to eat the chicken you made." She drew out her chair. She sat down, with her back very straight. "It looks delicious. I'm very grateful. I only... I do not want the ring."
There was a long silence.
Then Peter laughed.
It was a soft, rich, genial chuckle. He shook his head, ruefully, and sat, and spread his napkin on his knee, and picked up the carving knife. "She has spirit," he said, to Grace. "I always said so. A girl with a mind of her own. I admire it." He sliced a piece of the breast. "We shall put it away, for now. For when she is ready."
"She won't be ready," said Sarah.
"Hm?"
"I said, I will not be ready."
"Of course, my dear." He laid the slice on her plate. His voice was warm, and indulgent, and empty. "Eat."
She ate.
She ate a whole plate of food, at a table with candles, with a man at the foot of it who smiled at her. She ate it slowly. She did not taste it. She chewed, and swallowed, and chewed. And under the cloth, where nobody could see, her hand was shaking so violently that she had to hold it down with the other.
I said it.
I said no.
I said it to his face. In front of her.
It was the thing she had spent three years learning how not to do. She sat in the glow of the candles, with her heart hammering like a frightened bird, and felt, rising through her, from the soles of her feet, a dreadful, giddy, glorious feeling. It was not triumph. She knew that. It was nearer to the sensation of stepping off a high wall. It was simply that she had said it, and the sky had not fallen. The roof had stayed on. The roses were still red.
And across the table, her mother, with a face like paper, looked at her, and did not look away.
She did not sleep.
She lay on the daisy cover, in the dark, in her clothes, with her shoes on, and the tin tied to the door. She had her hand under the pillow. It held, not a stone, but something larger and colder, which she had taken from the kitchen, in the evening, with a pounding heart, while her mother was washing up, and which she had wrapped in a cloth. It was small. It had a black handle. It was the knife that her mother used for peeling.
She did not think that she would use it.
She told herself so. She told herself that it was only a thing to hold. It was a thing that said, Not tonight. But she lay there, in the long black hush, with her fingers closed on the handle, and the blade, in its cloth, cool against her wrist, and thought, with a dry, slow, terrifying calm: If he comes through that door, I do not know what I'll do.
I did not know that before.
I know it now.
He did not come.
She lay awake until the window turned grey, listening, with every nerve. She heard the house settle. She heard a toilet flush. She heard, at about two, in the passage, a pair of slippers go slowly past her door, and stop, and not move, and she lay with the knife in her fist and her teeth locked and did not breathe. It was a very long time. It might have been a minute. It might have been ten. And then, very softly, the slippers went on.
She let out a breath.
She took her hand out from under the pillow. It was wet. She wiped it on her skirt. She lay with the little wrapped weight beside her, and looked at the crack in the ceiling, and thought, coolly, in the thin grey light, as one reads a notice on a wall:
I have to leave.
And I have to do it soon.
"Tell me what you have," said Mr. Kato.
It was Thursday, at four, in the small office, with the door shut. He was sitting behind the desk, with the green exercise book open in front of him. She had brought it that morning, wrapped in a cloth, in the bottom of her bag. She had given it to him without a word, and he had received it, with both hands, like a thing that might spill, and read, with a pen in his fist, for forty minutes, without once looking up.
"What do you mean?"
"Resources. What is available to you. What you'd need." He turned a page. "I find it helps to put it down in columns."
"Like a ledger."
"Exactly like a ledger." A flicker of a smile. "I am a man of simple tastes."
She told him.
It was a short list. She had gone through it, again and again, in the hours of the night, and it was no longer than it had been. She had a school bag, with a few clothes in it, packed, hidden behind the water tank at the back of the compound, under a plastic sheet. She had her certificates, in an envelope, in the same place. She had her father's photograph. She had, in the lining of her school skirt, sewn in with a needle, forty-two thousand shillings, which she had saved over eleven months, in coins and small notes, from the pocket money that Peter gave her for lunch.
"That's good," said Mr. Kato.
"It's nothing."
"It is a great deal. It is a bag. It is documents. It's money. Most people who leave have nothing at all." He wrote it down. "What else?"
"Aunt Harriet."
"Your father's sister."
"She has a house in Masaka. She said, at the wedding, she looked at me. She has not said anything since. But I think..." She hesitated. "I think she knows. I think she knew from the first day."
"Would she take you?"
"I don't know."
"Would you like me to ask?"
She thought about it. She sat with her hands round her knees, and looked at the plant, with its two leaves.
"Yes," she said.
"Good. I'll write to her. Properly. A letter, from the school, with a signature." He made a note. "Anyone else?"
"Mama Betty. She has a kiosk. She says there's a mat."
"And the Namubirus."
"They have said so."
"Then you have three places." He looked up. "I'm going to say something. You will not like it."
"What?"
"You cannot go this week."
She stared.
"I want you to listen. It is not that I think you should stay." His voice was gentle. "It's that a girl who leaves in a panic, with no plan, in the middle of a term, is a girl who can be fetched back. By a policeman, with a paper. By an uncle. By her own mother. It has happened. I have seen it." He tapped the pad. "Peter is a patient man. He has money, and a name. He'll say that you are a runaway. That you have been led astray, by a teacher, by a friend. He will say, She is troubled. And a magistrate may very well believe him."
"But I'm eighteen."
"Yes. That helps. It helps a great deal. You are an adult. You have a right to live where you wish. But it does not make it simple." He took off his glasses. "I want you to leave in a way that cannot be undone. With a place to go, and a reason, and a record. I want it to be impossible to pretend that it was a tantrum."
"How long?"
"The school's bursary committee meets in the first week of March. I've put your name forward. The Old Girls' Fund. It would cover your fees, and a place in the boarding house, from the Easter break. It is not certain. But I think it is likely." He paused. "That is the first of April. Nine weeks."
"Nine weeks."
"Can you bear it?"
She did not answer.
She sat there, in the chair, with her hands round her knees, and looked at the window. A square of white sky, in a frame of grey wall. A single bird crossed it, a small brown one, in a hurry. She watched it out of sight.
Nine weeks.
It was sixty-three nights.
She had lived, she thought, a thousand. She had lived them in a room with no bolt, with a tin on the floor, and a pencil under her pillow. She had survived them. She knew that she had. She could do it again, if she must, on her teeth. But she sat there, in a small cold office, with a kind man across the desk, and thought of a kitchen knife in a cloth, under a pillow, and understood that it was not the same.
It is not the same.
Before, I had nothing to lose.
Now I do. Now there is an end.
It is a strange fact, about hope. It does not make the endurance easier. It makes it harder. A person in a dark room, with no door, can lie still. A person who has seen a crack of light, under the wall, cannot. She tosses. She listens. She counts. She thinks, If I can only hold on. If I could only just. And every hour in the dark becomes a thing that can be lost.
"I can try," said Sarah.
"I know." He put on his glasses. "I will help. I have spoken to Ms. Namusoke. She'll be doing her visits, every two weeks, unannounced. It won't make you safe. But it will make him careful. He does not like a record." A small grim smile. "He is a man who cares very much about his name."
"What if he is not careful?"
"Then you ring the number."
"I have it."
"And you go to the police. Not to the front desk. To the CFPU. To Sergeant Akello. I have her phone." He wrote it, in a clear square hand, on a slip of paper, and tore it off. "She is a good officer. She was a nurse before. She doesn't ask stupid questions."
She took it.
It was a small damp scrap, with ten digits. She folded it, very carefully, and put it in the lining of her skirt, beside the money.
"And if... if I have to... if there is no time," she said.
He looked at her.
It was a long look. It was quiet, and level, and grave. He did not say anything for a moment. He seemed to be choosing, with great care, what to say, as a man picks his way across a river.
"Then you do what you must," said Mr. Kato. "To stay alive. To stop him. I am not going to tell you what that is. I am not your lawyer. I am a teacher of English." He leaned forward. "But I will say this. The law is not as foolish as people think. It does not require a girl to lie still. It recognises a right to defend herself. If a person is attacked, and fears for her safety, she may use what force is reasonable to make it stop." He paused. "I do not say it to encourage you. I say it so that, if ever you're alone, in a room, and there is no one, you will know. You'll not be a criminal. You'll be a person who was attacked."
"I would never..."
"I know."
"I could not."
"I know you could not. That is why I am telling you." His voice was very low. "There are people who think that the good ones are the ones who do nothing. I do not. I think the good ones are the ones who do what they have to, and grieve it after."
She sat very still.
She did not know what to say. She felt the weight of it settle in her, quietly, like a stone dropped in a pool. It was not an instruction. He had been very careful about that. It was only a fact, set down, between them, on the desk, among the pens. It was the kind of fact that one picks up, later, in the dark, and turns over, and knows the weight of.
Not a criminal.
A person who was attacked.
"Thank you," she said.
"Do not thank me. Just be alive, in April."
"I will."
"Say it."
"I'll be alive in April."
"Good." He leaned back. He had gone rather pale. He ran a hand through his untidy hair. "Now. Go home. Eat something. And tomorrow, bring me the other pages."
She sat that night in her room, with the lamp turned low, and took out the box.
It was the other one. It was not the ring. That was in a drawer, in the sitting room, under a pile of table napkins, where her mother had put it, without a word. This was a plainer thing, a cardboard shoebox, with a lid, in which she had been keeping, for three years, a small collection of things. She did not often open it. She took it out on certain nights, when the house was quiet, and sat with it on her knee, as other people take out a prayer book.
She lifted the lid.
There was a photograph. She took it out first. It was a school one, from S1, in a stiff card frame, in black and white. A small thin serious girl, of twelve, in a white blouse, with two plaits tied with ribbon, looking straight at the camera with her chin raised. She had a gap in her teeth. She was not smiling. She looked like somebody who had been told to say cheese, and had decided, on principle, to do nothing of the sort.
That is me.
She looked at her. She looked at the straight chin, the level brows, the unflinching eyes. It was a very peculiar sensation. It was like looking at a person she had known well, a long time ago, and lost touch with, and had now met again, unexpectedly, in a crowd. She felt a rush of tenderness so sharp that it was almost anger.
Oh, you poor thing.
You did not know.
There were others. A programme from a debate. A school report, with Excellent written on it in red. A small pressed flower, a yellow one, from a bush in the old garden. A strip of paper from a fortune cookie, which her father had once brought home from a Chinese restaurant in Kampala. You will go far. A folded sheet of lined paper, in his hand. It was a list. It was a list that he had made, in the evening, on the veranda, with a pencil, in the week that she turned thirteen. Things Counsel Should Know By The Time She Is Eighteen. There were nine items. She had never looked at it again.
She unfolded it.
The paper was soft, and a little torn. The pencil was fading. She held it close to the lamp. The writing was small and slanting and humorous, with the crooked loops of a man who wrote quickly, and often, and with pleasure.
1. How to boil an egg. (A ridiculous thing to be ignorant of.)
2. How to read a contract. (Slowly. Twice. With a pencil.)
3. That most people are not as clever as they appear, and most people are not as stupid.
4. That a good friend is worth more than a good salary.
5. How to say no. (This is harder than it sounds. Practise in the mirror. Start with small things.)
6. That no one, not an uncle, not a priest, not a teacher, not your own father, has the right to touch you if you don't want it. (I'll say it again when you're older. It's too early to say it now. But I'd like it on the record.)
7. How to drive. (I will teach you. It is a disaster.)
8. That you are loved. Always. Without conditions. Even when I am cross.
9. That you are allowed to leave any room in which you are not safe. Anyone's. Anywhere. At any time. And that you may never, ever, be required to apologise for it.
She read it to the end.
She read it again.
She was crying. She had not noticed. It was running down her face, without a sound, in the lamplight, and falling on the paper. She wiped it away, quickly, with the back of her hand, so as not to blot the ink. She sat on the daisy cover, with the old list on her knee, and the lamp hissing, and her shoulders heaving, and laid her other hand flat over the sixth line.
I would like it on the record.
I will say it again when she is older.
I'd like it on the record.
He had known.
He had not known, of course. He could not have. He had been a gentle, dry, anxious man, who had sat on a veranda, in the dusk, with a pencil, and thought about what a girl of thirteen would one day need. He had thought of an uncle, and a priest, and a teacher. He had thought of the dark side of the world, as a careful parent does, in the quiet part of the night. He had written it down. He had put it away, in a box, in case. And he had died, before he could say it again.
So I'll say it, thought Sarah.
I will say it to myself.
She looked at the line. She read it, slowly, aloud, in a whisper, in the quiet of the little room. "No one has the right. Not an uncle. Not a priest. Not a teacher. Not your own father." Her voice shook. She went on. "And you are allowed to leave. Any room. In which you are not safe." She drew a breath. "And you may never be required to apologise."
It was only paper. It was only a list.
But she sat there, in the lamplight, with her father's handwriting in front of her, and felt it go through her like warmth through a cold hand. It was the first time that anybody had said it, in so many words, in a voice she trusted. You are allowed to leave. It was not a command. It was a permission. It was a very small door, held open, from a long way off, by a hand that was not there.
She folded the list. She laid it, with great gentleness, back in the box, on top of the photograph of the small stern girl in plaits. She put on the lid.
Eighteen, she thought.
It does not mean I'm older.
It means I can walk out.
She turned off the lamp. She lay down, on the bed, in the dark, and drew her knees up, and closed her hand on a thing under her pillow. It was small, and cold, and black-handled. It was a thing for peeling fruit.
It means I'm the one who decides.
She lay and listened to the house. It was very still. A tap dripped. A board creaked. In the passage, far off, in the dark, a pair of slippers went slowly by, and she did not hold her breath. She lay with her eyes open, and her hand on the handle, and her father's voice, in her head, very clear and mild and amused, saying, Counsel, the court is in session.
Yes, Taata, she thought.
I'm listening.