Chapter 20
I Can Speak Now
The examinations ended on a Friday in the middle of November, with a paper on the law of evidence, and nobody in the hall knew that the girl in the third row, who wrote steadily for three hours and then laid down her pen and sat looking at her hands, had just finished the hardest thing she had done since March.
It was not the exam. It was an ordinary exam. It was a three-hour paper on a hot afternoon, in a long hall, with a hundred girls in blue, and a fan going round, and an invigilator in the aisle with a squeaking shoe. She had known the answers. She had written them out in her small neat hand, in order, with the facts in a row. She had written about hearsay and corroboration and the burden of proof. She had written, in the last half hour, a short clear paragraph about the weight to be given to a complainant's earlier consistent statement, and had read it over, and thought, calmly, That is going to be useful.
It was only that it was the last.
It was the end of the long grey track that she had been walking since a Sunday in a bedroom, with a green book. It was the end of S6. It was the end of a school. She sat there, with the pen at rest, and the paper face down on the desk, and heard the bell begin to ring, and understood that the thing she had promised, in the dark, on a night in May, with a pencil, had come true. She had finished. She had sat the papers. She had not missed one. She had written every word.
I am alive, she thought. And I did it anyway.
"Pens down," said the invigilator.
She put hers down.
Her mother was waiting outside.
She had not been asked. She was standing at the foot of the steps, at the edge of the crowd, in her good grey dress, with a small cloth bundle in her hands, a little apart from the families, among the jacarandas, as a person stands who is not sure she is permitted. She was thinner. She had cut her hair. She looked, in the strong light, like a woman who has been ill, and has begun, very slowly, to get well. She did not wave. She stood still, with her eyes on the doors, and watched the girls come pouring out, shrieking, in blue, with their papers and their pens and their hats thrown in the air.
Sarah saw her from the top step.
She stopped.
She did not feel the old drop. That was the first thing she noticed. There was no clench in the stomach, no dive of the heart. There was only a quiet small ache, as at a place that has been bruised. She stood among the noise, with her bag on her shoulder, and her friends round her, and looked at the thin grey figure at the bottom of the steps, and thought: She came.
She came on her own.
"Do you want me to go?" said Miriam, at her elbow.
"No."
"I'll stay."
"Thank you." She drew a breath. "I think I will just say hello."
She went down.
"Mama."
"Sarah." Her mother's voice was low. "I do not want to disturb you. I know that it's the last day. I only... I heard it was today. I wanted to bring you something." She held out the cloth. "It's not much. It's only..."
"What is it?"
"It's bread. From the bakery." A faint flush came up her neck. "I work there. Mrs. Namubiru gave me a job. In September. I sell at the counter, and I wash the trays. I begin at five. It's... it's very hot." She tried to smile. "I am not good at it. I burn things. But she says that I'm improving."
Sarah looked at her.
She had known. Miriam had told her, in a whisper, on a Saturday in October, in the dormitory, with her eyes enormous. Your mother is at the bakery. I did not want to say. My mother did it. She went to the room that your mother was renting, behind the market, and said, "Come. There is work." She had said it was because. She had not said because of what.
"It is warm," said Sarah.
"Yes."
"You must have been up early."
"Four." A pause. "It is only a loaf. It's nothing special."
"Thank you."
She took it.
It was heavy, and still faintly warm, and it smelled of yeast and butter and woodsmoke. It lay in her hands like a small animal. She stood at the bottom of the steps in the sun, among the shouting crowd, holding a cloth bundle, and thought of a basket of rolls on her knee, in a car, in the dusk, and a girl in a bakery doorway. This is what a house should smell like.
"I've left him," said Grace.
She said it abruptly, to the ground.
"Not... I'd left him before. In April. I went to Specioza's. But I want you to know that it is final. I have signed a paper. I spoke to Ms. Nalwoga. I'm not going back to that house." She was twisting the strap of her bag. "I have given my statement. A full one. To the Detective Inspector. I said all of it. I said that you told me, and I did nothing."
"I know."
"You know?"
"Ms. Nalwoga told me."
"Ah." She nodded slowly. "Yes. Of course she did." She lifted her head. Her eyes, very large and dark in the thin face, were fixed on Sarah's. "I wanted to say it myself. I do not want you to think that I'm hiding behind a lawyer. I want to say it to your face."
"Say it."
"I chose him over you."
It was quiet.
It was said very plainly, with no tremor, and no softening. It lay in the sun, between them, at the bottom of the steps. A girl went by, shrieking, with her hat on a stick. A bell was ringing. And Sarah stood still, with a loaf of bread in her arms, and heard it, and felt it settle, slowly, into the place where it belonged.
"I chose the roof," said her mother. "I chose the food. I chose not having to be afraid of the road. And I chose it over my own child. I knew what it cost you, and I paid with you. It was not a mistake. I'd like it to be one. I have tried to make it a mistake. But it was a choice." She swallowed. "I am so sorry. I am sorry for every night. I know that it is not enough. I know it is no use."
"It is not no use."
"It's not enough."
"No." Sarah looked at her. "It's not."
"I do not expect forgiveness."
"Good."
"I do not ask for it."
"Good. Because I don't have it." She said it gently. She said it as a fact. "I would like to tell you something, Mama. I want it to be very clear. I do not know if I will ever forgive you. I have thought about it a great deal. I've talked about it, with Sister Dorothy, for hours. And I think..." She stopped. She took her time. "I think that forgiveness is a thing that happens, or doesn't. I don't think that I can decide it. And I don't think that you can earn it."
"No."
"I think it might come. And it might not."
"I understand."
"And I think that if it does not, that is not a failure. It's not mine. It is not yours. It's only what is left, after what happened." She breathed. "I'm not going to pretend, to make you feel better. And I'm not going to hold it over you, to make you suffer. I only want to be honest."
"Thank you."
"I'm saying that I'll see you. If you want. I'll come to the bakery at Christmas. We can have tea. In the front, where there are people." She shifted the loaf. "I'll talk to you about the weather, and Miriam, and my exams. And I will tell you what I am studying. And if you ask me a thing that I do not want to answer, I'll say so. And you will not mind."
"I won't."
"And if I need to go, I'll go."
"Yes."
"And you must not come after me."
"No."
"Not this year. Perhaps not for a long time."
"No." Her mother's face was wet. She did not wipe it. She stood in the glare, with her hands pressed together, and her chin trembling, and said in a voice so low that it was barely a breath: "I will wait."
"It might be long."
"I've waited longer for less."
It was the first time that Sarah had heard her say a thing that was almost a joke. It was small, and dry, and bleak, and entirely sincere. She felt, behind her ribs, something move. It was not forgiveness. It was nothing so large. It was only a very small warm recognition, like the first drop of rain on a roof.
"Goodbye, Mama," she said.
"Goodbye, my child."
She turned. She went away across the grass, with the bread against her chest, and her friend at her side, toward the gate, and the road, and the tall figure of Aunt Harriet, waiting by the blue Toyota with the engine running. She did not look back. But she knew, certainly, as she walked, that a woman in a grey dress was standing at the foot of a flight of steps, still, in the crowd, with her hands pressed to her mouth, watching her go.
She will stand there until I am out of sight, thought Sarah.
And I will let her.
It was the most generous thing that she could do. It cost very little. It was a hundred and ten paces. She counted them.
She told Miriam on the roof of the bakery.
It was the night of the last day, in the warm dark, with the stars out, and the whole town spread below them like a handful of lit coals. They were sitting on the flat concrete, among the water tanks, with a blanket between them, and a flask of sweet tea, and two of Mama Miriam's cinnamon buns. It was the same place. It was the roof on which, two and a half years before, she had sat, in a school skirt, with a mug in her hands, and not said it.
She said it now.
It took a long time. It took the whole of the tea. She did not hurry. She told it as she had told it to nobody, from the beginning, in her own voice, without the dry clean order of a witness. She told it as a girl tells it to her friend. She said, I was frightened. She said, I hated myself. She said, I did not know that it was a thing that you could say. She told her about the crack in the ceiling, and the names of the towns on the river, and the high white room behind the glass. She told her what she had thought, in the bed, in the dark, with her face to the wall. She told her the thing she had never told Mr. Kato, or Sister Dorothy, or the police. She said, I counted. She said, I kept count, of the nights, in a book, and I thought that if I made a cross each time, it would be a way of saying that I had been there.
Miriam did not interrupt.
She sat still, with her knees drawn up, and her chin on them, and her round face turned toward Sarah's in the starlight. She did not say Oh. She did not gasp. She sat and listened, as she had in a chapel, with her whole body, and when it was over, and Sarah had come to the end, and stopped, and sat with her hands slack in her lap and her throat raw, she said nothing at all.
The wind moved.
A radio, somewhere, was playing a slow, sweet song. A dog barked. In the street below, a taxi hooted. And on the roof of a bakery, under the stars, two girls sat still, and the silence between them was warm and wide and entirely without fear.
"That's the whole thing," said Sarah.
"Yes."
"I have never said it all at once."
"I know."
"It's awfully long."
"It's not long enough." Miriam's voice was thick. "I have been waiting, you know. For two and a half years. I thought that you were never going to. I'd sit here, on this roof, and think, She'll tell me tonight. And you didn't. And I thought, All right. Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow."
"I'm sorry. I know it is a dangerous word."
"It's a good word," said Sarah, "when someone else says it."
Miriam laughed. It was wet, and broken, and delighted. She put out her arm, and Sarah slid into it, and put her head down on her friend's shoulder, and felt the warm hard round solid weight of it, and the hand coming up, very lightly, to rest on her hair. She did not stiffen. She lay there, among the water tanks, under the huge slow wheeling stars, and breathed.
"I can speak now," she said.
It was a murmur. It was only to the dark.
"I did not know that it was going to be like this. I thought that if I spoke it would be a... a bang. A thing like the end of the world. And it's only..." She searched for it. "It's only words. They come out. They stand there. And then you take the next breath."
"It is a very ordinary thing, speaking."
"Yes."
"Everyone does it."
"Yes." She laughed, with a sob in it. "And I couldn't. For three and a half years. It was the one thing I couldn't do."
"You can do it now."
"I'm doing it."
"You are doing it beautifully."
"Stop."
"I mean it." Miriam's arm tightened. "I think that you are the best talker that I have ever met. I think you could talk the hind leg off the Detective Inspector. I think that you'll make a wonderful lawyer."
"If I get the points."
"You'll get the points."
"And if I do not?"
"Then you will go another way. And you'll be wonderful at that." She pressed her cheek against Sarah's hair. "It isn't the points, Sarah. It never was. It is the thing you do with your mouth when somebody needs it."
"That's very profound."
"I've been practising. For the newspaper."
"It's good."
"I know." A pause. "I'm going to print it."
"Don't."
"Under a pseudonym."
"You are impossible."
"I'm a journalist," said Miriam, with dignity, and Sarah laughed so hard that a pigeon, on a water tank, rose in alarm, and clattered away into the dark.
She cried that night in a safe room.
It was Aunt Harriet's spare room, in Masaka, at the back of the house, with a window onto the pawpaw tree. She had come back to it for the holidays. It was a small clean plain place, with two beds, a wardrobe, a chair, a lamp, and a faded rug. The walls were painted pale green. There was a calendar with a picture of a waterfall. There was a door, of solid wood, with a bolt, a large new one, of black iron, which Aunt Harriet's neighbour, a carpenter, had fitted on the inside, one Saturday in April, without charge, saying only, I have daughters.
She had slid it across. She did it every night. It made a soft heavy iron sound, a small deep click, like the closing of a safe. She stood with her hand on it for a moment, in the lamplight, feeling the cold smooth metal under her palm. It was hers. Nobody could open it from the other side.
I am in a room, and I can lock it.
It still seemed like a miracle.
She put the bag of the day, her pens, her paper, her school tie, on the chair. She took off her shoes. She sat down on the bed, with her back against the wall, and drew up her knees, and for a long time she did not do anything. The lamp hissed softly. The window was open a crack, and a moth came in, and went round and round the bulb. Far off, somewhere on the road, a lorry changed gear.
On the shelf above her head stood a small framed photograph.
It was in a tin frame. It was the one that she had taken from a white room in Kitende Close, on the night of the twentieth of March, in the bag that was behind the water tank, and which Mr. Kato, with the Detective Inspector's leave, had carried to the police station in his own two hands, and brought back to her, wrapped in his handkerchief, a week later, without a word. It was a little faded. There was a small crack in one corner of the glass. A thin tall man in a crooked tie looked out of it, with his head a little to one side, laughing at something that was not in the picture.
She took it down.
She held it on her knees. She looked at it, in the lamplight, for a long time, at the large ears, and the gap between the teeth, and the bald patch he thought that nobody had noticed. She looked at the small fine lines at the corners of his eyes. She looked at the way that his mouth was lifted, a little crooked, on one side, as if on the very edge of a joke that he was too shy to tell.
"Hello, Taata," she said.
Her voice was very small.
"I did it. I finished. It is over. I wrote the last paper today. It was Evidence." She smiled. "I wrote about corroboration. I think that I have passed. It's an odd thing. I think that I might have passed very well." She laughed, softly. "I am going to be rather unbearable."
The moth went round the bulb.
"I've been talking all day," said Sarah. "To Mama. To Miriam. I said it all. I told Miriam the whole thing, on the roof. It took three hours. I was very good. I did not stammer."
She stopped.
She sat looking at him. She looked at the photograph, and the lamp, and the green wall, and felt, rising from a place under her ribs where there was nothing in the way, a thing that she knew. She had felt it once before, on a kitchen floor. She had been afraid of it for eight months. She had put it off, and put it off. She had thought, Not yet. She had thought, When I am stronger. She had thought, When it is quiet.
It is quiet, she thought.
It's just me. And you. And a door.
It came very slowly.
It was not at all like the first time. It did not break in a flood, or a howl. It came up quietly, from far down, like water rising in a well. It began as a tightness in her chest. It moved to her throat. It filled her eyes. She did not fight it. She sat with her back against the green wall, and the photograph in her hands, and let it come.
I was fifteen.
She did not say it aloud. She did not need to. It was there, in the room, as plain as the lamp.
She saw her. She saw her as she had been, standing at the foot of the stairs in Kasaana, in the sun, in her school uniform, with a basin of beans in her lap. She was laughing. She was fifteen years old, and had a cake with a crooked pink rose, and a father who hummed. She had her whole face turned up. She had not a single shadow on her. She was a girl who believed, entirely and without reservation, that the world was a place where a person who spoke the truth in a clear voice would be heard.
You did not know, thought Sarah.
You were so sure.
She wept for her.
She wept for the girl in the yellow dress, at a wedding, with her hands hanging. She wept for the girl at a door in a dark passage, with a fist raised. She wept for the girl in a daisy bed, looking at a crack in the plaster. Jinja. Kamuli. Namasagali. She wept for the girl at the school gate, with the blind coming down. She wept for the one who had put a tin of gravel against a door, and for the one who had written, I promise myself, in pencil, in a green book, with a small shy defiant word underneath.
I'm sorry, she said, to all of them.
I am so sorry that nobody came.
She did it loudly.
That was what she would remember. She did not smother it. She did not pull the cover over her mouth. She did not count, or breathe in through her nose, or lock her jaw. She sat on a bed in a lit room, with a door that was bolted, and cried aloud, in great ragged open sobs, with her head thrown back and her mouth wide, as a child cries, who has been hurt and wants the world to know. It echoed off the green walls. It went out through the window into the garden. It was a loud, ugly, shameless, glorious noise. She did not care who heard.
Let them hear.
Let them hear me.
She was a long time at it. She cried until her chest ached. She cried until her face was a ruin, and her nose ran, and the front of her dress was soaked. And somewhere in the middle of it, in the dark of her own wet eyes, she became aware that she was not alone.
There was a knock on the door.
It was very soft. It was a single, light, careful tap, with a knuckle. It did not repeat. It was followed by a silence, in which she could hear, on the other side of the wood, somebody standing still.
"Sarah?"
It was Aunt Harriet's voice. It was low and level and unhurried. It did not ask her to stop.
"I am here," said the voice. "I'm in the passage. I will not come in. You are all right. You don't have to answer." A pause. "I only wanted you to know that somebody can hear."
She did not speak.
She sat with her mouth open and her hands round the photograph, and the tears pouring down, and looked at the door. It was solid wood. It was painted white. It had a black iron bolt, on the inside, which was shut. And on the other side of it, in a cold stone passage, in a nightdress, a tall grave woman was standing in the dark, with her hand flat against the panel, listening to a girl cry.
She's not going to come in.
She will not open it.
She's waiting for me to say.
It was the strangest sensation. It went through her like a warm wind. She sat there, and understood, for the first time, with her whole body, what it was to be heard and not pursued. It was a thing that she had not known existed. It was to cry, and have someone stand outside the door, and not try the handle.
"I'm all right," said Sarah.
It came out thick and cracked and wet.
"I'm all right, Auntie. I am just... I'm crying."
"I know."
"It's all right."
"I know it is."
"I do not need anything."
"Then I'll stay."
"Please."
"I'll sit here." There was the soft rustle of a nightdress on a stone floor, and a grunt, and a slow settling, as of a heavy woman lowering herself onto the boards. "I'll sit with my back against the wall. I will be here. And if you want to open the door, you may. And if not, not."
"Thank you."
"Do not thank me. Cry."
She did.
It was nearly dawn when she stopped.
It happened quietly. It was not an ending. It was only that, at some point, in the grey hour before the cocks, she found that she was breathing slowly, and that the shaking had gone out of her, and that she was lying on her side on the bed, with the photograph on her chest and the lamp burned low. Her eyes were swollen. Her head ached. She felt entirely empty. She felt as one feels after a long illness, light, and hollow, and very clean.
The window had gone grey.
She lay and looked at it. A square of pearl, in a green wall. A line of black leaves, against it. She could hear, a long way off, the first thin note of a bird. It was not testing a pen. It had found its tune. It sang it, over and over, a small bright liquid phrase, rising at the end, as if in a question.
It's morning.
She had not been awake to see one, like it, in years.
She got up. She did it slowly, like a very old woman. She went to the door, and put her hand on the bolt, and stood there for a moment, in her bare feet, with the cold of the iron under her palm. She did not have to. She knew that. It was an entirely free thing. She could have gone back to bed.
She slid it back.
It made its soft heavy iron sound. She opened the door.
There was a light in the passage. It was a small oil lamp, set on the floor, turned low. And beside it, against the whitewashed wall, in a faded blue nightdress, with a shawl round her shoulders and her grey hair down, sat Aunt Harriet, with her legs stretched out, and her head fallen back, and her mouth a little open. She was fast asleep.
Sarah stood and looked at her.
She looked at the big plain face, in the lamplight, with the thin mouth slackened, and the lines drawn deep from nose to chin. She looked at the strong hands, folded on her stomach. She looked at the bare feet, with their knuckled toes, on the cold stone. She had sat there all night. She had not moved. She had sat on a stone floor, for five hours, outside a locked door, so that a girl would not be alone.
Joseph's sister.
She has his forehead.
She bent. She did not wake her. She drew the shawl up, a little, over the shoulder, and tucked it, as one tucks a blanket round a child, and stayed there a moment, with her hand resting lightly on the old grey head. And then she straightened, and stood in the doorway of a green room, in the grey morning light, with the door standing open behind her, and looked out of the window at the end of the passage, at the garden.
It was beginning to be day.
The pawpaw tree was black against a sky of pale gold. The grass was silver with dew. A cock crowed, and was answered. Somewhere in the house, in the kitchen, a pot clanked. A thin blue thread of smoke went up, straight, from the neighbour's roof, into the stillness.
She stood there, with her hands at her sides.
She thought of a great many things. She thought of a veranda, and a cake. She thought of a man who had hummed, and a woman who had put in the sugar, and a small hard hand closing on a black handle. She thought of a plain room with a plant that had two leaves. She thought of three girls in a dormitory, and a boy, a long way off, who whistled, in a cell, at night, to nobody. She thought of a hill with a white cross, and a bunch of yellow flowers, and a trial in the spring.
It was all hers.
It was a heavy thing to be handed. It was not a gift. She had not asked for a single piece of it. But she stood at the end of a passage, at dawn, with the dew on the grass and a sleeping woman at her feet, and took it up, as one takes up a basket that has been set down at one's door, and found that she could carry it.
I was not silent, thought Sarah.
I want that to be known.
They say, why did she not speak? They say, why did she wait? As if the silence were a thing that I did. As if I had chosen it, like a dress.
I spoke.
I spoke in a garden, and a kitchen, and an office. I spoke to a teacher, and a friend, and a woman with a notebook. I told, and told, and told. It was not that I did not use my voice.
It was that somebody was standing on it.
She drew a long breath.
The air was cool. It smelled of earth, and smoke, and the faint sweetness of pawpaw flowers. It went all the way down.
I was silenced.
That is a different word.
It is not a thing that I did. It's a thing that was done. And I am going to spend the rest of my life explaining the difference. To a court, if it will listen. To a class of girls. To a woman on a bench. To anybody who asks me why.
It's going to be a long sentence.
But I have a good deal of breath.
She smiled.
It was a small one. It was still wet. It did not know what to do with itself, and wavered at the corners. But it was a smile, in the thin gold light of a morning in December, on the face of a girl of eighteen, with swollen eyes, who stood in a doorway, in bare feet, and for the first time in her life was not afraid of the sound of her own voice.
"Good morning," said Sarah, quietly, to the garden, to the cock, to the old woman sleeping at her feet.
It was not loud. It did not need to be.
It carried.