Chapter 2
The Man Who Came After Him
For three months, the house in Kasaana was a place where people were very careful with each other.
They moved round the rooms like guests. They spoke in low voices. They said please and thank you to each other, which they had never done, and laid the table for three and then took the third plate away again, and nobody mentioned it. Her mother got up at five, as she always had, and swept the compound, and made tea, and dressed for the nursery school in her one good grey dress. She came home at five. She sat in the kitchen with a school exercise book on her knee, adding and re-adding the same column of figures in pencil, and when Sarah came in she closed the book and said, brightly, "Have you eaten?"
"Yes, Mama."
"What did you have?"
"Beans."
"Good. That is good." She would look at the wall for a moment. "Go and do your homework."
It was the question she asked every night. Sarah began to count them. Have you eaten. Have you done your homework. Do you have everything for school. They were questions with the answers built in. They were the questions of a woman who had put a fence round a small field and was walking along it, in the dusk, checking that every post still stood.
There was a great deal to check.
She learned it all in pieces, from overheard sentences and papers left on the table, and from the particular way her mother sat. Her father had earned four hundred and ten thousand shillings a month, which had paid the rent, the fees, the food, the paraffin, the taxis, the hospital bills for the malaria that Sarah had had at ten and the broken wrist that her mother had had at thirty-five. Her mother had earned a hundred and eighty thousand, at the nursery school, which she spent on clothes and small things. Now it was the only income. It was a hundred and eighty thousand, to be stretched, as one stretches a piece of elastic, over rent of a hundred and fifty, and fees of two hundred and ten a term, and everything else.
It did not stretch.
By April, they were eating one meal a day, and that a small one, beans and posho at four in the afternoon. By May, her mother had sold her sewing machine. It was a black Singer, a wedding gift, which she had kept under a cloth in the corner of the bedroom for sixteen years, and which she had used, on Sundays, to make school uniforms for the neighbours' children. A man came for it on a Tuesday, with a boda boda. He gave her eighty thousand. She stood on the veranda with the notes in her fist, and watched him strap it onto the back of the motorcycle, and did not say a word, and when it had gone, she went inside and sat for an hour in the dark.
Sarah did not go in.
She stood outside the door, with her back to the wall, listening. There was no sound. There was only the long dry silence of a woman holding something in, with her whole body, as one holds a door against a wind.
I could help, she thought. I could do something.
She had no idea what.
It was Aunt Specioza who said it, in the end, on a Sunday in the middle of May.
She had come from Masaka on the morning taxi, in a bright orange gomesi and a pair of enormous gold earrings, with a basket of passion fruit and a loud, affectionate, bossy voice that could be heard in the next compound. She was Grace's elder sister, a large handsome woman of forty-five, who had married a trader, and buried two children, and now ran a shop selling cosmetics and school uniforms from a stall in the market. She believed in God, in hard work, and in the importance of having a man in the house, in about equal proportions.
They sat on the veranda, the two sisters, with a basin of peeled passion fruit between them, in the heat of the early afternoon. Sarah, inside, behind the curtain, was supposed to be reading. She was listening.
"You look terrible," said Aunt Specioza.
"Thank you."
"You are thin. You are grey. Your hair has not been done in two months." A pause, and the sound of spitting seeds. "How long can you go on like this?"
"As long as I must."
"On a hundred and eighty thousand."
"I manage."
"You do not manage, Grace. I can see it. You have sold the machine. You have sold the television. You have even, I think," a sharp little silence, "sold the good blanket."
"It was an old one."
"It was a wedding present from my mother-in-law. Do not lie to me." The voice dropped. It was not unkind. It had a sort of weary gentleness. "I am not scolding. I am your sister. I only want to say it, because nobody else will. You are thirty-nine. You are a widow with a girl in S3. You have no land, no savings, a brother-in-law who is measuring your garden. You cannot do it alone."
"I have to."
"You don't. That's what I am telling you." The basin scraped. "There is a man."
"No."
"A very good one."
"Specioza."
"He is a member of St. Luke's. In Lwanda. Peter Ssemanda. He has a hardware shop on the main road, a big one, with a godown. He has a house. He's an usher. He was saying to my friend only last week that he is lonely. His wife died four years ago, no children. He has a good heart."
"Joseph has not been dead four months."
"I know."
"I'm still wearing black."
"I know, my dear. I know. And I am not saying you should rush. I am saying that a man like that does not wait for ever." A long breath. "Look. I am going to tell you something that I wish somebody had told me. There is a time, after a death, when you can still choose. It is short. After that, it is not a choice. It is a thing that happens to you." The chair creaked. "You are going to lose that house. You are going to lose your place at the school. And Sarah..."
"Do not bring Sarah into this."
"I'm only saying, what will become of her?"
There was a long silence.
Behind the curtain, Sarah had stopped breathing.
"She will go to a university," said her mother, at last. Her voice was steady. "She will be a lawyer. Joseph wanted it."
"With what?"
"I will find it."
"Where? In a hole?" It was said with a kind of pitying scorn. "Grace. You are not a stupid woman. You know what it costs. You know what happens to girls who leave school at fifteen without money. I have seen them. In the market. Selling, or worse." The voice rose, trembling. "I would die before I saw it happen to my niece."
"I will not let it."
"Then let somebody help you!"
"I do not want a stranger."
"He would not be a stranger. He would be a husband." The orange gomesi rustled. "Meet him. That is all. One lunch. At my house. Just to see. You do not have to say yes. If you do not like him, you can leave."
Sarah put her hands over her ears.
She did it without thinking. She stood in the corner of the room, behind the curtain, among the folded sheets, pressing her palms hard against the sides of her head, and listened to the blood in her ears, a low sea-roar, a whisper. She did not want to hear. She did not want it to be true. It seemed to her that the whole house was shrinking, round her, wall by wall, to the size of a single small dark room.
A husband.
But Taata is my father.
She did not know how to say it, even to herself. She only knew that she wanted her mother to say no, in the ringing, indignant voice of the old days, How dare you. She waited for it. She stood there, in the dim room, with her hands over her ears.
She heard, through them, in the heat, her mother's voice, very small and tired and clear.
"One lunch."
He came to the door of the house in Kasaana on the last Saturday of May, in a clean white shirt, with a sack of rice on his shoulder.
It was a fifty-kilogram sack, of the good kind, from a mill in Jinja. He carried it up the path as if it weighed nothing, with a small grunt, and set it down on the veranda with a bump, and straightened his back, and smiled. He was a big man. That was the first thing she noticed. He was not tall, but he was broad and heavy-set, with thick wrists and a deep chest and a round, smooth, handsome face, very dark, with a neat moustache and eyes that seemed to be smiling even when the rest of him was not. He wore a gold watch. He wore polished shoes, on a path where the dust lay an inch thick, and he did not appear to have a single speck on them.
"Good afternoon," he said. "I am Peter Ssemanda."
Her mother had gone white.
She was standing in the doorway, in her grey dress, with her hands clasped in front of her. She looked about nineteen. Behind her, Sarah, in the shadow of the passage, saw her take a breath, and lift her chin, and say, in a stiff small formal voice, "Mr. Ssemanda. You are welcome."
"Peter, please."
"This is... I did not expect you. My sister said Sunday."
"She did. But I was passing." A smile, rueful and warm. "I'm sorry. I was told you had a difficult time. I did not wish to arrive empty-handed, and I did not wish to wait." He nodded at the sack. "It is only rice. For the house. Please accept."
"We cannot take..."
"It is not charity. It is a greeting." His voice was deep and slow and kind. "Among my people, we do not come to a house of mourning without something to eat. It would be rude."
Grace hesitated.
Sarah watched her. She saw the long, tired, stern, pretty face fight with itself, pride and hunger, shame and relief. She saw her look at the sack, a great white cloth bag, with its mill's stamp in black, and her eyes, for a half-second, soften. It was a very small look. It was the look of a person who has not seen enough food in a month to feed a household for six weeks.
"Thank you," said Grace.
"It is nothing."
"Come in. Please. I will make tea."
He came in.
He stooped under the lintel, and looked round the main room with an air of courteous, attentive interest, as one looks round a church. He saw the bare table. The one chair. The place by the wall where the television had been, a pale square on the red cement. He saw the law books on the shelf. And he saw, in the doorway to the passage, a tall thin girl in a school uniform, with her hands behind her.
"And this must be Sarah," said Peter Ssemanda.
She did not move.
"Your aunt told me about you. She says you are the best in your class."
"No."
"She says you are going to be a lawyer."
"Yes."
"A very fine thing." He smiled. It was a broad, open, kindly smile, and it reached all the way to his eyes. "I wanted to be a lawyer, you know. When I was a boy. But my father had a shop, and the shop needed a son, and that was that." He shook his head. "Life gives us what we need, not always what we want. But I'm glad. Because I think now that I was meant to help someone else become one."
"Mr. Ssemanda..." said Grace.
"I am saying nothing. I only mean that I admire a girl who knows what she wants." He held out a hand. It was large and dry and warm. "I am very happy to meet you, Sarah."
She looked at it.
She did not know why she did not take it. It was a good hand. It was a clean hand, with square nails, and a gold ring on the little finger. It was held out in simple friendliness. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to put her own in it, and say Good afternoon, as she had been taught to do with every adult who ever came to the door. She felt her mother's eyes on her. She felt the room hold its breath.
She took it.
His fingers closed round hers, firmly, and held. They were dry. They did not squeeze. They were only there, for slightly longer than a handshake needed, a second or two, and in that second she felt, running up her arm from her palm to her shoulder, a small cold prickle, like the touch of an insect.
She drew her hand back.
"There," said Peter. "That was not so bad."
He laughed. It was a warm laugh, a kind one. Her mother laughed too, with relief, and the thing went out of the air, as a dark cloud goes off the sun. And Sarah stood in the passage and rubbed her palm, slowly, against the side of her skirt.
It's nothing, she told herself.
He is only a man who brought rice.
It was a quick courtship, and it was beautifully done.
She would try, afterward, to see it clearly, and would find that it would not hold still. It was like trying to remember how a magician did a trick. Every single thing that he did was good. That was the horror of it. He never put a foot wrong. He came on Sundays, after church, in the white shirt, and sat on the veranda and talked to her mother about the weather and the price of cement and the state of the roads. He was never loud. He was never pushing. He asked about Joseph. He said, with gravity, "I did not know your husband, but I've heard he was a good man. An honest one. It's rare." And her mother, who had not spoken Joseph's name aloud in a month, had looked at him with her eyes filling.
He brought food. Always food. A bunch of matooke. A crate of tomatoes. A live hen, which he said was a gift from his farm, and which Sarah, who knew a bought bird when she saw one, did not contradict. He fixed the leaking tap in the kitchen. He mended the hen house, with a hammer, in his Sunday trousers, saying nothing, and when he had finished it stood straight, for the first time since the day the hen house had been built.
And he paid.
It was done in a way that was not like paying. It was an envelope, left on the table, folded small, with no note. It was a quiet word to Mzee Lukwago, on the first of June, after which the landlord did not come for his rent, and when Grace asked, said, with embarrassment, that it had been seen to. It was a receipt, from the school bursar, for the whole of the second term's fees, two hundred and ten thousand shillings, which her mother found in her bag one morning, and stared at for a long time, and then sat down on the bed with, and wept.
"Who?" said Sarah.
"I don't know."
"Mama."
"It is a mistake. It must be a mistake."
"It's him."
"He would not."
"He did."
Her mother did not answer. She held the little white slip of paper in both hands, and looked at it, and her whole face was working. And Sarah, standing in the doorway, saw an expression there that she had never seen before and did not understand. It was not gratitude. It was something more complicated. It was the look of a person who has been drowning for a very long time and has just been handed a rope, and has felt it, in her hands, and is deciding whether she is allowed to hold on.
"He is a good man," said Grace, at last, very low.
"Is he?"
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know." She did not. She could not have said what she meant. She only knew that something had gone wrong in the room, and she could not find it. "I just... it's too fast, Mama. Taata has only been... it's only been four months."
"I know how long it has been."
"We don't know him."
"I know him well enough."
"He calls me my daughter."
"He is being kind."
"He is not my father."
"No." Her mother's voice cracked, and straightened. "No, he is not. Nobody is. Your father is dead, Sarah. He is dead, and he's not coming back, and there is nothing, nothing I can do about that." She was crying, now, with her hands pressed to her mouth. "I cannot bring him back. I would give my own life. I'd give my eyes. But I can do this. I can make sure that you eat. That you go to school. That you do not grow up without." She wiped her face with the heel of her hand. "Do you think I like it? Do you think it is what I wanted? I am doing it for you."
"I didn't ask you to."
"You didn't have to."
"Mama..."
"Go and wash your face. We have visitors on Sunday."
She went.
She stood at the basin in the yard, with the cold water running over her hands, and looked at herself in the cracked piece of mirror nailed to the post. A tall thin girl with her father's long forehead. Her eyes were red. Her mouth was shut hard.
She is only trying to help.
She is only afraid.
It was true. She could see it. She could see it as clearly as she could see the hen house, standing straight in the evening light. She was fifteen years old, and she was not stupid, and she could see what it cost her mother, and what it saved. She could see the fees, and the rent, and the food. She could see a hundred and eighty thousand shillings and a landlord in a white shirt.
Who am I to say no?
She could not answer it. She put her face in the water.
He moved in on the second Saturday of July.
It was not discussed. It was simply done, with the soft, easy, inevitable movement of a thing that has been coming for a long time. A pick-up arrived at nine in the morning, with two men in overalls, and unloaded a bed. A large one, with a carved headboard, and a mattress in plastic, and a wardrobe with a mirror. A television. A cooker. A box of tools. A large brown suitcase, which Peter carried himself, up the path, with a faint smile.
"I hope you do not mind," he said, to Grace. "I thought it would be easier. I will bring the rest tomorrow."
"It is... of course. It's..." Her mother was standing in the middle of the main room with her hands wrapped in her wrapper. She had put on her good blue dress. She had done her hair. She looked, Sarah thought, like a bride at a funeral. "Where shall we put it?"
"Wherever you like."
"There's only the one room. Our room. I'll have to..."
"It is a good room." He set down the suitcase. "I will not be any trouble. I only want to be of use." He looked round, at the cracked walls and the leaning shelves and the old law books, and his face, for a moment, was grave and gentle. "This is a good house. It has love in it. I can feel it. I wish only to add to it."
Her mother smiled. She was crying a little.
"There are things to move," said Peter. "I'll see to it. Sarah?"
She had been standing in the passage, with her arms folded. She did not move.
"Would you help me carry this?"
It was a small thing. It was a lamp, a standing one, brass, that had been in the pick-up. He held it out. He said it with a smile.
She did not want to go near him. She did not know why. She stood in the doorway, with the sun coming through the window behind her, and looked at him, a large, kind, smiling, patient man in a white shirt, holding out a lamp, and everything in her said, no. It said it clearly. It was not a thought. It was a thing in her stomach, a small cold knot, like a stone dropped into a well and still falling.
Why?
He has done nothing.
He has done nothing at all.
She took the lamp.
It was heavy. Their hands touched, at the base. She felt it again, the small cold prickle, travelling up her wrist, as though a very fine thread had been laid across her skin. She looked up. He was smiling at her, with perfect friendliness. His eyes, very dark, very warm, were on her face.
"Thank you, my daughter," said Peter Ssemanda.
He said it softly. He said it so that only she could hear. And in the high bright July noon, in the sound of the men unloading, in the smell of hot iron and cut grass, with her mother's laugh coming through the open window like a bird, she stood holding the lamp, and thought, with a clearness that she did not understand and would remember for the rest of her life:
I am never going to be able to call him that.