Chapter 5
Mama, Please Believe Me
"Sarah? Is that you?"
Her mother's voice came through the door, small and puzzled, with the particular rising note of a woman who has heard a floorboard creak and does not yet know if she should be frightened. It was not a loud voice. It had no alarm in it. But it was awake, and it was listening, and Sarah, standing in the dark of the passage with her fist raised, understood that she had been heard.
She lowered her hand.
"Yes, Mama."
"What are you doing out of bed?"
"I... I need to talk to you."
"Now?" A pause. "It is late. Can it wait for the morning?"
"No."
It came out so flat and certain that she did not recognise it. It was the voice of somebody much older. There was another small silence, and then the sound of the blanket being put down, and a soft pad of feet on the floor, and the handle turned, and a slit of yellow light widened into a rectangle, and her mother stood in it, in a faded blue nightdress, with a shawl over her shoulders and her hair tied up in a scarf for the night.
She looked tired. She looked younger, without her day clothes, and thinner, and slightly absurd. There was a smear of cold cream on her chin. She held a small book in one hand, a Bible with a cracked cover, with her finger keeping the place.
"You are shaking," said Grace.
"I'm cold."
"It is not cold." She stepped forward and put the back of her hand against Sarah's forehead, quickly, with the practised reflex of every mother who has ever had a sick child. "You have no fever. What is it? Is it your stomach? Have you been sick?"
"No."
"A bad dream?"
"Mama," said Sarah. "Can I come in?"
It was a very pleasant room.
She had not been in it since the day they moved. It was at the front of the house, with two windows, and a floor of cream tile, and a carved bed with a candlewick cover. There was a dressing table, with a mirror, and a vase of plastic flowers. There was a wardrobe, with her mother's clothes hanging in it in a neat row, and, on the far side, with its door slightly open, another, a man's, full of dark suits. A pair of black shoes stood under the bed, side by side. On the bedside table, in a silver frame, was a photograph, new, in colour, of the wedding. Her mother, in the cream suit, laughing. Peter, with an arm round her, looking down at her with an expression of grave satisfaction.
Sarah did not look at it.
"Sit," said Grace.
She sat on the edge of the bed. It was soft. It sank. She had a feeling, absurdly, of being very small, like a child who has been sent for. Her mother sat down beside her, a little away, and laid the Bible on her knee, and turned the lamp so that it did not shine in her eyes.
"Well?"
"I do not know how to say it."
"Take your time."
"I don't want you to be angry."
"I am not angry. What have you done?"
"It's not what I've done."
Her mother's face changed. It was a very slight change, an alteration at the corners of the mouth, a tightening round the eyes, as though a hand had drawn a thread. She did not move. She sat still, looking at her daughter, with her fingers curled on the cover of the book.
"Then what is it?" she said, slowly.
Say it.
Say it now. Say it plainly. Say it the way Taata taught you. Facts, in order. Short sentences. No adjectives.
"It's Peter," said Sarah.
The lamp hummed.
"What about him?"
"He came into my room."
"When?"
"Last Thursday. When you were in Masaka."
"He came into your room."
"At night. He came in, and he shut the door, and..." Her voice cracked. She stopped. She put her hands between her knees, and pressed them together, hard, and began again. She had practised it, over and over, in the dark. She had it ready. It was a short, bare, accurate paragraph, with no softness in it. But the words, now, in this room, in this light, with her mother's face so close, turned to ash in her mouth. "He did something to me. He... he touched me. He did what a man does. And I did not want it. I said no. I said it, and he said to be quiet, and he... he did it anyway."
It was out.
It hung in the air between them. It was the plainest thing she had ever said. It was five sentences long. It had taken her a month of nights to build, and it had taken fifteen seconds to say, and when it was done, the room was exactly the same. The lamp burned. The plastic flowers stood in their vase. A moth was tapping at the window.
Her mother did not move.
She sat with her hands on the Bible and her head slightly bent. She did not say anything. She did not breathe. For a long time, so long that Sarah thought she must not have understood, she sat in perfect stillness, like a person who has been told her house is on fire and is deciding whether to believe it.
"Mama?"
"Be quiet."
"I..."
"Be quiet, please. I am thinking."
She was staring at the wall. Her face had gone grey, a dull dry grey, as the face of a stone does when the sun goes. A muscle was moving in her jaw. Her lips were pressed so tight that they had disappeared.
"What do you mean," said Grace, at last, very low, "touched?"
"Mama."
"I need to understand what you mean."
"You know what I mean."
"I do not." The voice was thin and stiff and perfectly steady. "I want you to tell me. In words. What you are saying that he did."
Sarah looked at her.
She had not expected that. She had expected a cry, a gasp, a rush of arms. She had expected the smell of soap and woodsmoke, a hand on her head. She had expected, all her life, that if she ever said a thing like this to her mother, it would be caught. And here she sat, with her palms gripped between her knees, and her mother, three feet away, was asking her for a definition, as a teacher asks for the proof of a theorem.
"I don't want to say it," said Sarah.
"I cannot help you if you don't."
"Please."
"Sarah." The word cracked. "I am asking you to say it plainly. I am your mother. I need to know exactly what it is."
So she said it.
She said it in as few words as she could. She said it to the wall, to the wardrobe, to the black shoes under the bed. She did not look at her mother. She said it in a quick flat monotone, as one reads a report, and it took about a minute, and when she had finished she found that she was gripping her own wrists so hard that they ached.
There was a silence.
It was the longest of her life.
And in it, clearly, from the other end of the long dark house, from the gate, she heard a sound, a car, the crunch of tyres, the dying note of an engine. A door slammed. A key scraped in a lock.
He is back.
She felt her whole body turn to water.
"He's early," said Grace.
She had risen. She had risen so fast that the Bible slid to the floor. She stood in the middle of the room, in her blue nightdress, with her shawl clutched in both hands, looking at the door with an expression of naked panic. "He said eleven. It's not even half past ten."
"Mama."
"Go to your room."
"No."
"Sarah. Go. Now. Please." She was whispering. She had taken Sarah by the arm and was pulling her up, with surprising strength, her fingers digging into the flesh above the elbow. "Go, and shut the door, and get into bed. I do not want him to see you here."
"But I haven't..."
"Not now! Not now!"
"You haven't said anything!"
"I'll talk to you tomorrow."
"You said you would..."
"I will talk to you tomorrow!" It was a harsh, cracked, desperate hiss. Her eyes were enormous. "Please, Sarah. I'm asking you. Go. Just for tonight."
The front door opened.
They heard it. They both heard it. It was the soft, flat, familiar scrape of a heavy door, and the thud of a coat being hung on a hook. They heard a man's cough. They heard, in the passage, a pair of shoes being kicked off, and the rubber slap of slippers going on, one, and the other.
And over it, low, slow, flat, with a note missing in the middle, a man whistling.
Her mother had stopped.
She stood there, rigid, holding her daughter's arm, with her face turned to the door and her mouth slightly open. Sarah saw her listen. She saw her listen to the whistle as one listens to a thing one has heard a hundred times and has now, for the first time, been asked to hear. A shadow went across her face. It was not belief. It was not doubt. It was something more complex and more terrible, like the first white line of a crack running across a plate.
"Go," said Grace, very softly.
Sarah went.
She did not sleep.
She lay on the daisy cover with her shoes on, in the dark, listening to the house. She heard the slow slap of slippers go from the sitting room to the kitchen, and back. She heard a tap. She heard her mother's voice, low and bright, saying, How was the meeting? and his, deep and unhurried, saying, Long. The roof is a scandal. She heard a door shut. She heard, for what seemed hours, the faint creak of the bedsprings through the wall, and a murmur, and then nothing.
She lay with her eyes open until the window went grey.
She did not say it.
She did not say, I believe you.
She went over it, in the dark, again and again, turning it like a coin. She had said it. She had done it. She had been brave, as brave as she knew how, and her mother had heard her. She had heard. She had sat on the bed, and listened, with her face gone grey, and asked, What do you mean, touched?
She was only shocked.
She needed to understand.
She will talk to me in the morning.
It was a thin hope, but it held. She clung to it as one clings to a branch over a river. She lay with her knees drawn up and her fingers locked, and told herself that in the morning, when it was light, when Peter had gone to the shop, her mother would come into her room, and sit on the end of the bed, and take her hand. She would say, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I should have said it. I believe you. She would say, We are leaving. She would pack a bag. She would take her to Aunt Harriet in Masaka, on the first taxi, in the dark, with the green book in her pocket. They would go. They would not look back.
She said it to herself until it was almost real.
The morning was ordinary.
She came out of her room at six, in her uniform, pale and stiff, with a bag over her shoulder and her heart in her throat. Her mother was in the kitchen. She was frying eggs. She had put on a clean dress, a green one, and tied her hair back, and she was standing at the stove, with a spatula, with her back to the door, upright, humming.
Sarah stopped on the threshold.
"Mama?"
"Good morning." She did not turn. "Sit. Eat. You'll be late."
"Mama, last night..."
"Your breakfast is on the table."
"I wanted to..."
"There's tea." The spatula scraped. "And a little bread. You must eat something. You're so thin."
"Mama."
"Sarah." Her mother turned.
She was smiling. It was a small, bright, tight, brittle smile, like a thing hung up in a window. Her eyes, over it, were red-rimmed and glassy and did not meet Sarah's. She held the spatula in front of her like a shield. "Not now. He is dressing. He'll come in a moment. We should not... it would be so unpleasant, to start the day with a..." She stopped. She swallowed. "We can talk this evening."
"You said this morning."
"I said tomorrow."
"It is tomorrow."
"I meant, later." Her voice rose, sharp, and fell. "Please. Sit down."
She sat.
She did not eat. She sat at the table, in front of a plate of fried eggs, and a slice of bread, and a cup of tea, and stared at them. She heard the bathroom door. She heard the slow flat tread of slippers, along the passage, and a cough, and a long, pleasant, hummed phrase of a hymn.
He came into the kitchen in his shirtsleeves, with a towel round his neck.
"Good morning, ladies."
"Good morning," said Grace.
"Good morning, Sarah."
She did not look up.
"Not hungry?" He had sat down opposite, and was reaching for the bread. His voice was warm, amused, paternal. "You look pale. Did you sleep badly?"
"She had a headache," said her mother, quickly.
"Ah. These growing girls." He tore the bread. "I had the same, at her age. You must drink water, Sarah. Plenty of it. It's very good for the head."
"Yes, Peter."
"And you will not stay up reading. It spoils the eyes."
"No."
"Good girl."
She raised her head.
He was looking at her across the table, over the edge of his cup, with an air of gentle, benevolent concern. His eyes were very dark. They did not blink. And in them, very far down, at the bottom of them, so quiet and so cool that she could not have said what it was, she saw something move. It was like a fish, turning, in a deep green pool. It was gone in an instant.
He knows.
He knows that I told.
It was not a thought. It was a certainty, like a hand on the back of the neck. She sat with her cup between her palms and the room swung round her, slowly, once, as a compass needle swings when a magnet comes near.
She told him.
She told him last night.
He was listening.
No. She would not. She'd never...
She looked at her mother.
Her mother was at the stove, with her back to them. She was scraping the pan. She had not turned. But the line of her shoulders, under the green dress, was rigid, and the spatula, in her hand, was trembling.
It was not that evening, in the end, or the next. It was Saturday.
She had waited. She had gone through two days like a person walking on a plank, with her eyes fixed ahead and her arms held out. She had gone to school. She had written down the dates of the Berlin Conference. She had not told Miriam. She had come home at five, on the dot, and washed, and sat at the kitchen table with her books, and spoken to nobody, and not once been alone with Peter, who had been, in those two days, so scrupulously kind that she had wanted to scream.
On Saturday afternoon, he went out.
He had business at the shop. He put on his jacket, and combed his hair, and said, at the door, "I'll be back at six," and kissed her mother on the cheek. He gave Sarah a warm broad smile, and a pat on the arm, which she bore. And she stood in the hall, and heard the gate, and the car, and the engine, and knew that the house was empty, but for the two of them, for three hours.
She went to find her mother.
She was in the garden. She was on her knees among the roses, with a trowel, in an old brown dress, and a straw hat, with her back to the house. The sun was hot and white. Bees were working in the lavender. She was weeding, with fierce, small, quick movements, jabbing at the soil, and she did not look round when Sarah came up behind her.
"Mama."
"The aphids are a disaster," said Grace, to the roses.
"Mama, you said..."
"I know what I said."
"Then why..."
"Because I have been thinking." She sat back on her heels. She pulled off a glove. She did not turn, but her voice was low, and level, and it shook only a little. "I have thought about nothing else for two days. I have not slept. I've gone through it, over and over. And I think... I think there has been a misunderstanding."
The world went still.
"A what?"
"A misunderstanding. I think you were upset. It was a hard night. You'd had a bad dream, perhaps, about your father. And Peter, he heard you. He came in to see. He'd be worried. He is a very caring man." She was picking at the glove. "And you were half asleep. And it was dark. And you took it..."
"I wasn't asleep."
"You were frightened."
"I was not dreaming, Mama. He came in. He shut the door. He told me that nobody would believe me. He told me to be quiet. He said that if I told you, he would stop paying for..." She could not go on. It was a rising white noise in her head. "He said it, Mama. He said it in words."
"I'm sure that he did not mean it as it sounded."
"He meant it."
"People say things. In the dark. In a moment. They don't..."
"Mama."
Grace turned.
She was crying. That was what Sarah saw. Her face under the straw hat was wet. It was a thin, quiet, shamed weeping, without a sound, and the tears ran down her cheeks and into the corners of her mouth, and she did not wipe them. She looked at her daughter with a face of such naked, hopeless, helpless misery that Sarah, in spite of everything, took half a step toward her.
"Don't," said her mother.
"Mama."
"Don't look at me like that. Please. I can't." She pressed her wrist against her eyes. "I do not know what you want me to do."
"I want you to believe me."
"I'm trying!"
"No you're not."
"I am trying so hard." It was a raw broken cry. "Do you think I want this? Do you think I wish to stand in a garden and be told that my husband, my husband of four weeks, the man who has given me back..." She stopped. She gulped. "I cannot breathe, Sarah. When I think of it. I cannot breathe."
"Then think of me!"
"I do. I think of nothing else."
"Then do something."
"What?" It was an agonised whisper. "What would you have me do? Tell me. Go to the police? Tell them what? That a man has... that my husband... In front of the whole town? With his name? He is an usher! He's on the committee!" She was shaking her head, wildly, from side to side. "They would not believe it. They'd say I was mad. They would say you were wicked. And we'd have nothing. Nothing. Do you understand? We would be back in that house, with the leaking roof, and the landlord, and..."
"I don't care about the roof."
"You do. You do not know what it is. You've never had to know." She had caught Sarah by the arm, and her fingers were hot and damp and clinging. "You were fifteen, you were a child, you ate what was put on the table. You went to school. You had a father who... who kept it all away from you. He took it all on himself. And I let him, God forgive me, I let him, and I never learned. And now he is dead, and I have found out what it is." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "It is a cliff. It is a cliff, Sarah. And I am standing on the edge of it with you on my back."
"Mama..."
"We depend on him," said Grace.
She said it very quietly. She said it as one says the name of a thing that has been in the room all along. Her eyes, swimming, pleading, clear as water, held her daughter's, and did not let go.
"We depend on him. For everything. For the school. For the food. For this house. If we lose him, we lose all of it. I cannot... I do not have another way. I have looked. I've looked for months." She drew a shuddering breath. "So please. I am asking you. As your mother. Please do not fight with him. Do not make him angry. Do not make it worse. Think about how we are going to survive without him."
There was a long, absolute silence.
A bee went past. A cock crowed, far off. The sun beat down on the roses, and the neat dark soil, and the straw hat, and the pale wet beseeching face beneath it. It was a perfectly ordinary afternoon.
And Sarah understood.
It did not come as a blow. It came very slowly, as a stain comes through a cloth. She stood in the garden, in the sun, in her old school shoes, with her mother's hand on her arm, and she looked at her mother's face, and she saw that it was true. She saw that her mother had heard her. She had heard every word. She had understood it, on the bed, in the lamplight, the moment it was said. She had understood it in the doorway, listening to the whistle. She had understood it in the kitchen, with the spatula.
She knows.
She believes me.
She has always believed me.
It was so much worse.
It was a thousand times worse than if she had not. For if she had not believed, there would have been room. There would have been something to prove, a way to turn, a door left ajar. There would have been a chance. But she did. She knew. She had looked at the whole thing, clearly, from the top of the cliff, and chosen.
"I see," said Sarah.
Her voice was flat.
"Sarah..."
"I understand."
"Please don't..."
"No. I do understand, Mama." She took her mother's hand, gently, with two fingers, and lifted it off her arm, and set it down, as one sets down something that is not hers. "You've said it very clearly. Thank you."
"I love you," said Grace. "You know I love you."
"Yes."
"I would die for you."
"I know."
"Then you must know that I'm doing this for you."
She did not answer.
She looked, for a moment, at her mother, kneeling in the dirt, in a straw hat, with her face wet, and her hands, which were brown and rough and still held the trowel. She looked at the roses. She looked at the high green wall, and the iron gate, and the mango tree, and the sky, which was enormous, and pale, and cloudless.
Then she turned, and walked back to the house.
She sat on the bed in the small white room.
It was dark now. She had not put on the lamp. She sat on the daisy cover with her hands in her lap and her back against the wall, and did not move. A little light came through the window, from the yard, a thin grey light, and in it the room had no colour. The wardrobe was a black shape. The shelf was a line. On the shelf, small and still, a framed photograph looked down at her with a laughing face.
She did not look at it.
She could not. She felt that if she looked at it she would break. She sat very straight, with her chin up, and her eyes on the opposite wall, and thought, with a cold, steady, enormous calm:
I have lost it.
I have lost the one thing.
It was not Peter. She had known, for a week, that she had lost something there. It was a smaller loss, a kind of theft, like the loss of a shoe, or a purse, and she had held it at arm's length and looked at it and refused to weep. It was the other thing. It was the thing she had not known she was carrying until it was gone. It was the whole large simple warm unthinking certainty, that she had walked on every day of her life, that somewhere in the world there was a person who would not let her fall.
It was the floor. It was the ground. It had simply ceased to be there.
She heard me.
She heard, and she said, Think about how we are going to survive.
She did not cry. She was past that. She sat on the bed with her hands open on her knees, and felt the thing sink through her, slowly, like a stone through water, and come to rest, at the very bottom, in the dark, where it would stay.
Then, in the passage, she heard a step.
It was slow and flat. It stopped outside her door. She heard it not move.
She did not breathe.
After a very long time, a voice said, gently, through the wood, "I hear you had a talk with your mother."
She did not answer.
"I am glad," said Peter. "It is good for a family to be honest. I hope we can put it behind us."
The slippers moved off.
Sarah sat very still. She sat in the dark, with her hands on her knees and her eyes wide open, and understood that she was alone. It was not a feeling. It was a fact, like a wall. It was the plain, clear, solid shape of her situation, and for the first time, she saw all of it, from end to end.
There is nobody.
I have a mother, and she has chosen.
I have a house, and it has no bolt.
I have a father, and he is in the ground.
She turned her head. She looked, at last, at the photograph on the shelf.
Taata, she thought. What do I do?
The man in the tin frame laughed, at something a long way outside the picture, and did not answer.