Chapter 17
Everyone Has a Story
By morning, the whole of Lwanda knew, and by noon, everybody had a version.
It went through the town as a smell goes through a house. It went by boda boda and by phone, by the women at the borehole and the men outside the barbershop, in the queue at the bank and the pews of three churches. It went in Luganda, in English, in a low murmur, in a delighted whisper, in a loud indignant roar. It was embroidered and polished and passed on. By ten o'clock it had reached Masaka. By twelve, the market at Kampala had it. And by the time that anyone thought to check what had actually happened, it had grown so large, and so many-coloured, that it could no longer be seen.
A girl has killed her stepfather.
A girl has stabbed a man in his own kitchen. He's in the hospital. They say he'll die.
It was a boyfriend.
It was a jealousy.
It was about money.
No, no. It was the other thing. You know. The one that nobody says.
Peter Ssemanda? The usher?
I do not believe it. Not that man.
Who is the girl?
The stepdaughter. The tall one. The clever one. With the long face.
Ah. Her. I always said.
She did not hear any of it. She was sitting on a hard wooden chair, in a small bright room, with a blanket round her shoulders and a mug of tea in her hands, and the first grey light was coming through a frosted window.
It was a plain room. It was at the back of the police station, in a low whitewashed annexe, with a sign on the door in blue paint. CHILD AND FAMILY PROTECTION UNIT. It had a desk, and a filing cabinet, and a rug, and on the wall, a poster of a smiling cartoon child holding hands with a policeman. There was a sofa, a battered brown one, with a crocheted cover. There was a kettle. There was a plastic toy telephone, bright yellow, on the windowsill, which somebody had forgotten to put away. She had looked at it for a long time.
She had been there for six hours.
She had been given tea. She had been given a bun, which she had not eaten. She had been given a pair of grey tracksuit trousers, and a clean T-shirt, from a cupboard, by a young woman officer with a gentle face, who had said nothing, but had stayed in the corridor, outside the door, all night, in case. She had been examined by a doctor. He had been a quiet man in his fifties, with grey hair and a tired voice, who had said, at every stage, May I? and had waited each time for her to nod. He had written things down. He had photographed her back, and her wrist, and the swelling, the size of an egg, on the back of her head. He had said, at the end, in the same low voice, "I am required to record these. They may matter. I'm very sorry that it was necessary."
She had said, "It's all right."
It was not. She had not been able to explain that. She had sat on the examination couch, in a paper gown, with the cold light overhead, and let a man she did not know look at the marks on her body, and had felt nothing. She had gone far away, to the high white room, behind the glass. She had looked down. She had thought, That is somebody's back.
Now she was back. She was sitting in a chair with a mug. Her body was her own, and it ached. Her head throbbed. Her eyes felt as though they had been scoured with sand. She had cried until there was nothing left, and was empty and light, as a sieve is empty, with a thin high ringing in her ears.
The door opened.
"Sarah," said Sergeant Akello.
She did not startle. She had thought that she would. She looked up, slowly, and saw a tall square woman in a dark uniform, with a folder under her arm, and a second person behind her.
"This is Ms. Nalwoga," said the Sergeant. "She's an advocate. From the Women's Legal Aid Centre in Masaka. Mr. Kato telephoned her at one o'clock this morning. She drove down. I think she has not slept either." She stood aside. "I'll leave you."
The second woman came in.
She was small. That was the first thing. She was no taller than Sarah's shoulder, and as thin as a bird, in a plain grey suit and flat black shoes, with a large leather briefcase held in both hands, as a child holds a school bag. She was about thirty-five. She had a round brown face, and large dark eyes, and a mass of short springy hair, held back with a clip. She looked very young, and very tired. There was a smear of lipstick on her teeth.
"Miss Nankya?" she said.
"Yes."
"Irene Nalwoga." She put down the case. "May I sit?"
"Please."
She sat. She did it quickly, on the very edge of the sofa, with her knees together and her hands on them. She looked at Sarah, steadily, for about five seconds, with her head a little on one side, and then, to Sarah's astonishment, she smiled. It was a quick, bright, rueful smile. It changed her whole face.
"I am sorry," she said. "I've been driving for two hours with a window that does not close. I've been rehearsing a speech. It was going to be very reassuring. And I've forgotten the whole thing." She spread her hands. "I think I shall simply say what I know."
"All right."
"I know that you are eighteen. I know that you have been through something that I cannot imagine. I know that Mr. Kato believes you, and he is not a man who is easily wrong." She leaned forward. "And I know a great deal about the law, which I'm going to try to explain in plain words. It is going to be a long day. May I begin?"
"Yes."
"The first thing." She held up a finger. "You are not under arrest."
Sarah stared.
"You've been brought here for questioning. Because a man has been seriously injured, and you have admitted that you injured him. That is what the police must do. It's their duty. But you haven't been charged. You will not be, today." She said it carefully, like a person laying down stones. "They can hold you for up to forty-eight hours. They must then either charge you, or release you. I do not think they will charge you. I think Detective Inspector Wasswa is an honest man. But I'm not going to promise. I want you to be prepared."
"What happens if they charge me?"
"Then it'd be a charge of causing grievous harm. Or perhaps, if he dies, something worse." Her eyes did not leave Sarah's. "I will tell you the truth, because it is the only thing that is any use. It is a serious matter. A man has been stabbed. The law does not take that lightly. But the law also recognises a right to defend oneself. Against an attack. If you were in fear of your life, or of serious injury, and you used force that was reasonable in the circumstances to stop it..."
"It was a knife."
"Yes."
"I picked up a knife."
"I know." She did not flinch. "That is the thing that will be argued about. Whether it was reasonable. Whether you could have done anything else. Whether you were still in danger, when you did it." She leaned back. "I am not going to ask you what happened. Not yet. I'm going to ask you only one thing."
"What?"
"Are you telling the truth?"
It was a very quiet question.
It was asked without any edge. It was a matter-of-fact, level, kindly inquiry, as one asks a patient whether she has taken her tablets. But Sarah, looking into those large dark tired eyes, felt it go through her, as a thing goes through water, and settle.
She is asking if I am lying.
She doesn't know.
She has driven all night, to defend a girl she's never met, and she does not know.
She had a sudden strong absurd urge to laugh. It rose in her throat, bitter, and died. She thought, Of course she doesn't. Nobody does. They have all only been told. She thought of a small plain room, three weeks before, and a man in a brown cardigan saying, I believe you, and she understood, with a sort of startled gratitude, how rare it was. It was not a thing that people did. It was a thing that cost.
"Yes," said Sarah.
"All of it?"
"I will tell you all of it. Everything I know. I'll tell you the worst parts." She drew breath. "I do not have anything to hide. I have it written down."
"Written?"
"In a book."
The advocate's face changed.
It was very slight. It was a sharpening of the eyes, a sudden stillness, like a dog on point. She took a pen from her pocket. "Where is it?"
"Under the mattress. In my room. A green exercise book. And a... a list. In a shoebox. In the cupboard." She stopped. "And my father's... no, that's not... there is a book, a small one, on the Penal Code. It has a pencil in it. It's in the lining of my bag." She was speaking faster. "And there's a blue bag, behind the water tank. With my certificates. I packed it. For when I left. It has a date on a letter from Mr. Kato."
"A letter."
"From the school. To my Aunt Harriet. In Masaka."
"Dated?"
"The seventeenth of January."
Ms. Nalwoga was writing very rapidly. She did not look up. Her small round face had lit, from within, with a kind of fierce delight, like a girl on a netball court who has seen the ball come loose.
"Do you understand what you've just told me?" she said.
"No."
"You have told me that two months before this night, you had written down, with dates, a three-year record of abuse. That you had told a teacher, and a probation officer, and a friend. That you'd made a plan to leave. That you had packed a bag, and hidden it, and were three weeks from a bursary and a bed." She looked up. Her eyes were very bright. "Miss Nankya, you have just told me that this was not a sudden act of violence by a hysterical girl. You've told me that it was the last resort of a person who had done everything right."
"I did not do everything right."
"You did what you could."
"It wasn't enough."
"No," said Ms. Nalwoga, softly. "It almost never is. That's what the law is for."
Detective Inspector Wasswa was a short broad bald man of fifty-five, with a large moustache, a stiff leg, and the patient, unhurried, sceptical manner of a person who has heard every story that a human being can invent. He sat across a plain table from her, at about ten o'clock, in a bare interview room, with a tape recorder, and a steno pad, and Ms. Nalwoga at her elbow. He asked his questions slowly, in a deep gravelly voice, in Luganda and then in English, and he wrote down every word.
He did not hurry her.
She would remember that. She would remember that for the whole four hours he did not once raise his voice, or sigh, or glance at his watch. He began at the beginning. Where were you born? Who is your father? He took her through the funeral, and the move, and the wedding, with a face as blank and heavy as a stone. He wrote. He nodded. He said, Go on. And when she reached the first night, and stopped, he laid down his pen, and said, with a courtesy that she had not expected, "I do not need the details. I need only the fact. Did he do it? Did he continue to do it?"
"Yes."
"For how long?"
"Until the first week of January this year."
"And then?"
"He stopped touching me. Because of the visits. But he watched." She was staring at the table. "He kept watching. I could feel it. He was waiting."
"And last night?"
She told him.
She told it as she had told Mr. Kato, in a flat voice, in order, with the facts in a row. She told him about the gate, and the padlock, and the chain, and the glass on the wall. She told him about the bolt. She told him about the whistling, and the slippers, and the chair. She told him what he had said, through the door, in a soft calm voice. She said it word for word. She had it by heart.
The Detective Inspector's pen had stopped.
"He said this?"
"Yes."
"I have given you three years of food and fees and a roof. I do not think I am asking very much."
"Yes."
"And then?"
She told him the rest. She told him about the kitchen. She told it badly, in pieces. She heard her voice thicken, and go, and had to stop, and drink some water. But she told it. She said, I told him no. I said it clearly. I said, I'm eighteen, I do not consent. She said, He put his hand over my mouth. She said, I could not breathe. She said, I did not decide.
When she had finished, there was a long silence.
The tape recorder whirred. The Detective Inspector sat with his big hands folded on the pad, and his eyes on the wall. He did not seem to be looking at anything. A fly was crawling up the glass of the window. Ms. Nalwoga, at her side, sat perfectly still, with her pen lifted.
"Miss Nankya," he said, at last. "I'm going to say something to you now, and I want you to remember that I am a policeman. I'll say it once."
"Yes."
"I do not decide guilt. I do not decide innocence. I do not decide what is reasonable. I gather what there is. I put it in a file. And a lawyer in an office at the Directorate of Public Prosecutions reads it, and decides what to do." He paused. "I have been doing this for twenty-nine years."
"Yes, sir."
"In that time, I've heard a great many accounts of what happens in houses. Many are lies. Many are half-lies. A few are truth. And the thing that you learn, if you live long enough, is that it is almost never the loud ones that are true."
She did not understand.
"The ones who scream," said Wasswa, heavily. "The ones who cry, and rage, and call down God. They are usually the ones with something to sell. The true ones are quiet. They come in with their hands in their laps. They say it in order. They've written it down." He lifted his eyes. They were small and brown and weary, and very shrewd. "They do not ask me to believe them. They ask me to check."
"Then check."
"I'm going to." He took up the pen. "I am going to go to that house, this afternoon, with a team. I'll look at the gate, and the chain, and the bolt on the door. I'll measure the wall. I will take the green book, and the shoebox, and the bag. I will speak to Mr. Kato, and Ms. Namusoke, and the young lady Miriam. I shall speak to the neighbour with the dog." He made a note. "And I will speak to your mother."
She went cold.
"She is outside," said the Detective Inspector. "She came at nine. With a woman in an orange dress. They've been sitting on the bench in the corridor for an hour. I thought that I should tell you."
Mama.
It was like a hand closing round her heart.
"Do I have to see her?"
"No." It was Ms. Nalwoga. She had put her hand on Sarah's arm, lightly, and Sarah did not flinch. "You do not have to see anyone. You are the one who decides."
"I..." She swallowed. "I don't know what I want."
"That's all right."
"I want..."
"Take your time."
"I want her to have come for me," said Sarah.
She said it in a small, flat, strange voice. It was not a request. It was only a thing that was true, laid down on the table, for the tape.
Nobody answered.
The recorder whirred. The fly walked up the glass. And the old policeman, in his creased uniform, looked at her for a long moment, with his small tired shrewd brown eyes, and then, slowly, switched off the machine.
"I will find out," said Wasswa, gently.
He found out within the hour.
She heard it from Miriam, who had arrived at noon, in her school uniform, with her satchel on her back and her plaits half undone, and had been admitted to the CFPU room by a young constable with a very red face, who had said, She says she is a cousin. She had burst in like a small tornado, with her arms already out, and then, seeing Sarah, in a grey tracksuit, on a brown sofa, with a blanket and a mug, stopped dead. Her round face crumpled. She did not say a word. She came across the room, slowly, with her hands held out, and knelt, and put her head in Sarah's lap, and wept.
They stayed like that for some time.
It was a very quiet thing. It was a girl in a school uniform, kneeling on a rug, with her face in a borrowed T-shirt, and another girl, above her, with a hand laid lightly on her hair. Neither spoke. The kettle clicked as it cooled. Outside, in the corridor, someone laughed. The sunlight moved from the window to the wall.
"I heard at six," said Miriam, at last, into her lap. "My father told me. He'd been to the market. He came in and said, Have you heard? And I said, What? And he said, The Ssemanda man. He's been stabbed. In the night. And I knew." She sniffed. "I knew at once. I did not wait for him to say who. I just ran."
"You ran?"
"I ran the whole way. In my slippers."
"Where are they?"
"I lost one at the market." She laughed, wetly. She lifted her face. It was swollen and shining and without shame. "I'm so glad that you're alive."
"I'm all right."
"You are not all right. You look terrible. You look like a boiled egg." She wiped her eyes on her wrist. "But I am so glad. I was so frightened. I thought, he's done it. He's finally done it. He's killed her. I thought I'd get there and there would be a... a sheet." Her voice cracked. "And it's him in the hospital. It's him. And you are on a sofa."
"They say he might die."
"I hope he does."
"Miriam."
"I do! I do. I'm sorry. I know it's wicked." She sat back on her heels. "I hope he lingers. I hope it hurts. I hope he... I hope that every minute..."
"Stop."
"Why?"
"Because I don't." It came out quietly. "I do not hope that he dies. I've thought about it. I sat in that kitchen and I watched him bleed, and I held a cloth on him. And I wanted... I wanted him to be sorry. I wanted him to say it. I wanted him in a court, in front of everyone, to say what he did." She looked down at her own hands. "If he dies, then it's only a thing that happened. It is a stabbing. It's a girl with a knife. And nobody ever has to hear."
Miriam stared at her.
"That's the cleverest thing," she said slowly, "that I have ever heard you say."
"It's just true."
"It is a lot of true."
"I think I'm very tired."
"I should think so." Miriam took her hand. "I'm going to tell you a lot of things, now. And you aren't to react. You're to sit there and drink your tea and take it in, like a... like a dignified invalid."
"All right."
"First. Mr. Kato is here. He's been here since five. He has not been home. He's sitting on the bench in the yard, in his cardigan, with a very large flask. He wouldn't let anyone make him go. He's given a statement for two hours. He has given them the school file, and his notes, and the date that you came in. He cried, I think. He said he was allergic to something." A pause. "He told me to tell you that you're to do exactly what Ms. Nalwoga says."
Sarah closed her eyes.
"Second. Mama Betty has been interviewed. She went with Brian. She said that she heard you from the road. She said it was the most terrible sound that she has ever heard in her life. She said that if the police do not believe a girl who cries like that, they are not fit to be police." Her mouth trembled. "She said it to the Detective Inspector. In those words."
"What did he say?"
"He said, Thank you, Madam."
"Oh."
"And third." Miriam hesitated. She looked at the floor. When she spoke again, her voice was very careful. "I wanted to say. People are talking."
"I know."
"They're saying things."
"I thought that they would."
"Some of them are... some are nasty." She bit her lip. "There's a woman at the church. And Annet, from school, she's been on the phone to everyone. She says that you led him on. She says that you're a... that you wanted... that it was a lovers' quarrel." She almost choked on it. "I slapped her again. In the market. I'm sorry. It's the second time. I think I am going to be expelled."
"Miriam."
"I'm not sorry."
"I know."
"She is a pig."
"She's frightened."
"She's a pig, Sarah."
"She's seventeen." She said it slowly. "She's seventeen, and she lives in a town where this happens, in houses, behind gates, and nobody says. She has to believe it is my fault. If it's my fault, then it can't happen to her." She turned her head, and looked out of the window. A bar of sun lay on the floor. "I used to think that way. A bit. About other girls. When I read about it. I thought, she must have..."
"You didn't."
"I did, for a second. Just once. A girl in the newspaper. I thought, What was she doing out so late?" Her voice shook. "And then I remembered that she was a child. And I was ashamed. But I did think it. It's what we are all taught. We are taught to look for the thing she did wrong."
"That's why it keeps working," said Miriam, quietly.
"What?"
"For men like him." She was staring at the rug. "It works because everyone helps. The pastor. The aunts. The neighbours. They don't plan it. They just all quietly look for a reason why it isn't what it is." She raised her head. "He did not have to be clever. He only had to be respectable. The rest, we did for him."
They sat in silence.
It was a clear, plain, terrible thing to have said. It stood in the warm bright room between them, like an object on a table. Sarah looked at it. She thought of a hundred kind faces, in a hundred pews. She thought of a woman in a purple dress, on a lawn, with a cup of tea. You are so fortunate, Grace. Such a good man.
We did it for him.
All of us.
And she did, most of all.
They came at one.
She heard them in the corridor, before she saw them. She heard the voices, first, one loud and one low, a high warm bossy rush of Luganda, rising, falling, interrupted by a gruff male growl. She heard the tap of heels. She heard a chair scrape. She heard, distinctly, a woman say, in a trembling, outraged, penetrating whisper: I do not care what the policeman said, she is my niece, and I shall see her.
The door opened.
It was Aunt Specioza.
She stood on the threshold, in her orange gomesi, with her sleeves puffed to the shoulder, and her huge gold earrings swinging, and her arms folded across her chest. She was breathing hard. Her large handsome face was blotched and red, with the swollen look of one who has wept, and been angry, and had no sleep. She looked at Sarah. She looked at the sofa, the tracksuit, the blanket, the girl on the rug. And her nostrils flared.
"Well," she said.
Nobody spoke.
"Well. Here we are." Her voice shook. "I never thought that I should see the day. A child of my sister's. In a police station. In those." She flapped a hand at the grey trousers. "Whatever were you thinking?"
"Aunt..."
"You have shamed us. Do you know that? You've shamed the whole family. The whole clan. I had to walk past the pastor this morning, in the street, with my head down." Her voice cracked and rose. "And Peter! That good man! Who's been so kind! Who paid your school fees, and bought you a chain, and... and stabbed! In his own kitchen! With a kitchen knife!"
"Specioza," said a quiet voice behind her.
"He is lying in a hospital bed with a tube in his arm! He might die! And you have... what is it that you want? Do you want to see your mother a widow twice?"
"Specioza."
The big woman turned.
There was somebody in the corridor behind her. A tall, heavy, upright woman, in a plain navy dress, with her handbag clasped on her stomach, and a face like carved wood. She had been standing still, in the shadow, with her feet together. She had grey in her hair. She had large, steady, deep-set eyes, and a thin mouth, and the look of a person who has made a decision some time ago and is only waiting to be asked to carry it out.
"That is enough," said Aunt Harriet.
"I'm only saying..."
"You are saying a great deal." She stepped forward. She did not hurry. She walked into the room, past her astonished sister-in-law, slowly, and stopped in front of the sofa. She looked down at Sarah, and at Miriam, and at the blanket. She was a head taller than anyone in the room. She had her brother's long forehead.
She did not say anything for a moment.
Then, with the deliberate unhurried grace of a woman lowering herself into a chair at a funeral, she bent, and knelt on the rug, in her good navy dress, on the dusty floor of a police station. She put out her hand. It was big, and dry, and rough, with a plain gold ring. It lay, very lightly, on the top of Sarah's head.
"I knew," said Aunt Harriet.
It was barely a breath.
"I knew. At the wedding. When you stood up there, in the yellow dress. I looked at your face. I thought, There is something wrong with that child. I thought, She is afraid. I thought it for a whole hour." Her voice was very low and very even. "And I did nothing. I told myself it was grief. I told myself that it was none of my business. I said, Joseph's wife has made her choice. I went home to Masaka. I left you."
"Auntie..."
"I have been ashamed of it for three and a half years." Her hand moved, once, on Sarah's hair. "I'm going to be ashamed of it for the rest of my life. I want you to know that. I'm not asking you to say anything. I only wanted you to hear, from somebody, that it was seen. That it was not that you hid it well. It's that we looked away."
Sarah could not speak.
She sat still, with the blanket round her, and the big dry hand on her head, and a small hard feeling in her throat. She looked at the long grave plain face above her, at the thin mouth, and the steady eyes, and thought of a woman in the third row of a church, in a navy hat, giving a short tight nod. She was the one.
She was the only one who did not smile.
"You can come to me," said Aunt Harriet. "When they let you go. I have a room. It has two beds. I will make it up. You can stay as long as you like. A week. A year." Her mouth tightened. "I'm not rich. I haven't got a hundred and eighty thousand. But I've got a door, and it locks."
"Thank you."
"Do not thank me."
"I do."
"You are Joseph's child," said Aunt Harriet. She said it very simply. "That's all. He would have been here at six o'clock this morning, in his bare feet. I am only doing what he would have done. Late."
"You are not late."
"Yes. I am." She took her hand away. She rose, stiffly, and brushed her skirt. She did not look at her sister-in-law. She looked at the door.
"Where is Grace?" she said.
She was sitting on the bench in the corridor.
She had been sitting there for four hours. She had not moved. She sat very straight, with her handbag on her lap and her hands folded on it, and her feet side by side on the dusty concrete, in her good grey dress. She had not eaten. She had not drunk. A cup of tea, brought by a constable, stood cold and filmed on the bench beside her. She was looking at the opposite wall, at a notice about the reporting of lost property, and her face was perfectly blank.
She looked up when the door opened.
She did not seem to see. She looked, with her eyes wide and dark and fixed, at the group in the doorway, the big woman in orange, the tall woman in navy, the small advocate with her briefcase. Then, slowly, past them, to the girl.
Sarah stood in the doorway of a bare room, in a grey tracksuit, with her hands at her sides.
They looked at one another.
It was silent. A telephone rang, down the passage, and stopped. Somebody walked by with a file. And at the end of that bare corridor, in the thin white light from a high window, a woman on a bench and a girl in a door looked at each other, across ten feet of concrete, and neither of them moved.
She came, thought Sarah.
She came. She's here.
It was a thing she had wanted so badly, an hour ago, that she had said it aloud. She had sat in a room with a tape recorder and said, I want her to have come for me. And here she was, a small stiff grey woman on a hard bench, with a handbag. She had come. She had sat there for four hours. She had not gone home.
But who has she come for?
She did not know. She stood with her heart going slow and heavy, like a hand knocking, and looked at her mother's face, and tried to read it. It was closed. It had the shut, patient, polished blankness of a window with the curtains drawn. There was no light in it. There was no flicker of the woman who had stood at a stove with a spatula, or knelt in a garden, in a straw hat, weeping. There was only a face, pale and fine and waxen, with the dark smudges under the eyes, looking at her as one looks at a person in a photograph.
"Sarah," said Grace.
Her voice was dry and quiet, and without expression.
"Mama."
"You are not hurt."
"No."
"They say..." She stopped. She swallowed. "They say that there was a... that he... Peter is in the theatre. They've taken out a... there was a great deal of..." She pressed her lips together. "The doctor says that he will live. If there is no infection."
"I'm glad," said Sarah.
She was surprised to find that it was true.
"Are you?"
"Yes."
"Then why did you...?" Her mother's voice cracked. It broke, suddenly, on the last word, into something thin and high and quivering. She put the back of her hand against her mouth. "Why did you do it?"
The corridor was very still.
"Mama," said Sarah, quietly.
"I do not understand. I do not... He's a good man. He has been so... I came home, from Masaka, on the first taxi, at six. I came in at the gate. And there were people. And the door was open. And there was blood on the floor of the kitchen." She was shaking her head, slowly, from side to side. "I thought that it was... I thought that somebody had broken in. And then they said it was you."
"It was me."
"But why?"
She is asking me why.
She is sitting there, with her handbag, and she is asking.
She does not know.
She truly doesn't know. She has not let herself.
It was the most extraordinary thing. Sarah stood in the doorway, in a tracksuit, and looked at her mother's face, wet, bewildered, and entirely sincere, and a great cold wave of something very like vertigo went through her. She had never thought of this. She had thought of a hundred possibilities. She had thought that her mother would curse her, or weep, or fall on her neck. She had not thought of the one that was before her. She had not thought that, after three and a half years, a woman could sit on a hard bench in a police station, and look at her daughter, and ask.
It is a kind of genius, she thought. It's a gift.
She can un-know anything.
"Mama," she said, "I told you."
"What?"
"I told you. In the bedroom. In the garden. In the kitchen. I told you three times."
"I never..."
"You did."
"Sarah." The voice was very low, and very rapid, and very careful. "You must not say such things. Not here. Not in a place like this. People will hear. They'll write it down. It is..." She glanced, quickly, at the constable by the door, and at the woman in the orange gomesi, and at the small advocate with her briefcase. "You have been under a great strain. You are not well. You do not know what you are saying."
"I know exactly."
"You had a bad dream."
"I did not."
"You were very upset. Because of your father. It's natural. It was a hard time. And you said... you said something. Once. In the night. A confused thing. About a... a misunderstanding." Her eyes were enormous. They flickered. "I thought it was a dream. I thought you were overwrought. I told you, I said, We shall talk about it later. And we never did, because you were so..."
"Mama."
"... because you are so stubborn. You never will talk. You shut yourself up. And now... now this..."
"Mrs. Nankya," said Ms. Nalwoga.
Her voice was very quiet and very clear.
"I think that it might be best," said the advocate, "if you did not say anything further. At this point. Without a lawyer of your own present. Anything you say in this building may be recorded."
"I have nothing to hide."
"I'm sure that you haven't."
"I'm only speaking to my daughter."
"Of course." She smiled. It was pleasant, and tired, and without give. "But the Detective Inspector would like very much to speak to you. In a few minutes. He's reviewing some statements. I think that you might find it easier if you had thought, first, very carefully, about what you wish to say."
There was a long pause.
Grace looked at her. She looked at the briefcase, and the small bright eyes, and the smudge of lipstick, and a muscle moved in her cheek. Her fingers had tightened on the clasp of the handbag, so that the knuckles shone. And Sarah, watching, saw the thing happen in her face again. It was slow. It was the same as in the dining room. It was the shutter. But this time there was a new thing in it, that she had never seen. It came up behind the grey blank patient eyes, very faintly, very far down, like a drowned thing coming to the surface. It was a flicker. It was a quick wild scared flash, as of a woman at the edge of a pit.
She has heard it.
She has heard herself.
She heard the word dream.
It was only a moment. It was gone almost before Sarah saw it. Her mother had turned her face away, and was looking at the wall again, with her mouth shut tight, and her hands rigid on her bag. She did not speak.
But the corridor had heard.
It was a small place. It had a constable, and a sergeant, and an advocate, and a girl on the rug, and two women in the doorway, and a bench. And each of them, in a different way, had heard it. They stood in the white light, in the silence, and not one of them looked at another. It was the silence of a room in which something has been said that cannot be unsaid. A bad dream. A confused thing. A misunderstanding.
She has told it. She's told it in her own words.
She has told them that I told her.
Sarah did not move.
She stood still, in the doorway, with her hands at her sides, and felt it settle. It did not feel like victory. It felt, if anything, like grief. She looked at her mother's profile, at the thin straight nose, and the pressed mouth, and the small tremor in the chin. She thought, She has just said, in front of a police officer, that I did tell her. She thought, And she does not know that she has said it.
She will not forgive me for this.
And I do not know if I can forgive her.
"Mama," she said.
Grace did not turn.
"I am not angry."
The long grey neck went rigid.
"I do not want you to think that. I'm not here to... I don't know what I am here to do." She drew breath. "I only want you to know that I told the truth. I will keep telling it. To everyone. As often as it's asked." Her voice was very small. "I'd like it very much if you did, too."
There was no answer.
Her mother sat on the bench, with her handbag, and looked at the wall. The sun came through the high window, in a long yellow bar. It lay on her hands. They were folded, very quietly, one over the other, and they were shaking.
They let her go on Sunday evening, on police bond.
She would not afterward remember the details. She remembered a form, and a pen. She remembered a desk sergeant with a cold, who sneezed, and apologised, and sneezed again. She remembered the sound of her own name read out, flatly, in a clerk's drone, and the long scratch of a signature, and the way that the room seemed to hold its breath. Nankya, Sarah. Released on police bond pending the advice of the Directorate of Public Prosecutions. She remembered Ms. Nalwoga's hand on her arm. She remembered the heat of the evening, the long gold light on the gravel, and a small black motorcycle, waiting at the gate, with a young man in a helmet who said, Mama Betty says to come to the kiosk.
She remembered the smell of rain.
It was coming up the valley, from the east, with a low rumble, and a wind that smelled of wet earth and woodsmoke and dust. A line of dark cloud lay along the hills. The air was thick. She stood on the steps of the police station, in a borrowed tracksuit, with a plastic bag containing her school uniform, and Miriam on one side of her, and Aunt Harriet on the other, and looked down at the town.
It was very small.
It lay in the hollow of the hills, in the long yellow light, with its tin roofs and its jacaranda and its one tall white church, and the thin blue smoke of the evening fires going up from a thousand yards. A boda boda went by, with a woman on the back, laughing, holding a basin. A boy drove a goat. Somebody, somewhere, was playing a radio. It was the most ordinary evening in the world.
They all know, she thought.
Every one of them. Behind every door.
They'll look at me in the street.
It should have frightened her. She stood on the step, and waited for it. She waited for the old familiar chill, the tightening of the stomach, the lowering of the blind. But it did not come. There was only a great clean tiredness, and a faint odd lightness in her chest, like the feeling after a fever has broken. She breathed it in. The air was cool. It tasted of rain.
"What will they say?" she said.
"They'll say what they like," said Aunt Harriet.
"They are going to say I wanted it."
"Some will."
"And that I lied."
"Some of them."
"And that I'm a murderer."
"He is not dead."
"But they will say it."
"People say things, my child." The tall woman was looking out at the sky. "They always have. I think it is how they stay warm." She turned her head. "But there will be others. You'll see. They do not shout. They'll come to the door, with a basin of something, and not say a word."
"How do you know?"
"Because I've been one." A short dry smile. "Come. It's going to rain."
They went down the steps.
At the bottom, on the gravel, among the parked vans, in a creased white shirt and a brown cardigan with a button missing, a thin man with rimless glasses was waiting. He had a flask under his arm. He had not shaved. He looked as if he had been up for three days. He stood very straight, with his free hand at his side, and watched her come toward him, with an expression of such grave, tender, helpless attention that she stopped.
"Mr. Kato."
"Sarah."
"You have not gone home."
"No." He cleared his throat. "I thought I would wait. I did not want you to come out and... and have nobody."
"I have a great many people."
"Good." A faint dry smile. "I am rather superfluous, then."
"You aren't."
"I'm very glad to hear it."
She did not know what to say. She stood in front of him, in the gravel, with the first heavy drops of rain beginning to fall, one by one, on the dust, and thought of a small bare office, and a plant with two leaves. She thought of a man who had said, I'll tell you before. She thought of all the things she might say. Thank you. I'm sorry. I did not wait for April.
"I did not wait," she said.
It came out of her very small.
"I know."
"You told me to wait. You said it was nine weeks. And I... it was only three. I could not..."
"Sarah." He said it gently. He stepped nearer. The rain was falling now in a thick soft veil, and it beaded on his glasses, and ran down his face, and he did not seem to notice. "Listen to me. I'm going to say this once."
"Yes."
"You did not fail." He said it slowly, with his eyes on hers. "You did not fail, and you didn't fall short, and you did not do the wrong thing. You did what you had to do, at the moment that it had to be done. And it was not your fault that nobody else did it first."
She could not answer.
"I'd have given a great deal to have been in that house," said Mr. Kato. His voice shook, very slightly. "I would have given my whole salary. I would have stood in that passage. I wish I had. But I wasn't. And you were. And you were alone. And you got out." He took off his glasses, and wiped them on his sleeve, and put them on. "That is the only thing I know about it. That you got out."
The rain was falling hard.
It came down on the gravel, and the vans, and the long grey roof of the police station, in a roar, and she stood in it, in her tracksuit, with a plastic bag, and her hair plastered to her forehead, and her face turned up. It was cold. It ran down her cheeks. It ran into her mouth. She did not know any longer which of it was water, and which was not.
Telling the truth is going to hurt, she thought.
It has already.
It will go on hurting. For a long time. There are going to be days in court, and men in wigs, and a hundred questions. There will be people who look at me and say, liar. There will be a woman on a bench who will not meet my eye.
It's going to be much harder than hiding it.
She stood there, with her face to the sky, and the rain pouring down.
But I tried hiding it.
I did it for three and a half years.
And look what it cost.
She lowered her head.
She looked at the three faces round her, Miriam, wet and shining, grinning like a fool; Aunt Harriet, upright and grim, with a hand on her arm; Mr. Kato, bareheaded, blinking, and she felt something rise in her chest, slow and warm and enormous, like a bubble coming up through water. It was not happiness. She did not think that she would ever feel that again. It was something plainer and stronger. It was the sense of standing on a floor.
It is going to be terrible, she thought.
And I'm going to do it.
Because I am not alone.
"Let's go," said Sarah. "I'm cold."