Chapter 6
The Price of Silence
Nothing happened.
That was the thing she could not get over, in the weeks that followed. She had thought that after such a conversation the house would be changed. She had thought the walls would crack, or the furniture shift, or the very air take on a different weight. She had thought that her mother's face, at breakfast, would be a closed door, and that Peter would stop humming. She had thought there would be a reckoning, of some kind, a storm.
There was no storm. There was breakfast.
It was served at seven, every day, on the same blue plates. There was tea in the same chipped pot, and a loaf of bread, and a bowl of fried eggs. There was the newspaper, folded, beside Peter's cup, and the radio on the shelf, murmuring the news. There was the morning light, coming in at the east window, gilding the china in the cabinet. Her mother, in a clean dress, with her hair tied back, moved round the table with the teapot, saying, "Sugar? Milk?" in a bright thin voice, and nobody spoke of anything that mattered.
It was the most frightening thing that she had ever seen.
She did not know how they did it. She sat in her place, with her bag at her feet, and watched them, over her plate, with a kind of numb, astonished admiration. Her mother, who could not tell a lie without blushing, laughed at Peter's jokes. Peter, who had stood in her room in the dark and spoken of what would happen to a woman who lost everything twice, asked for the salt. He was gentle. He was kind. He was exactly what he had always been. And not once, in three weeks, in a house of four rooms, did either of them let the smallest look pass between them that might have said, We know.
It was as though it had been swallowed.
It was as though she had said it, in a garden, to a rose bush, and the rose bush had said nothing, and the sun had gone on shining.
She began to learn the house.
She learned it the way an animal learns a field with a hawk in it. She learned which boards creaked, in the passage, and which did not, and how to step on the edges. She learned the hours. Peter was at the shop from eight to six, except on Wednesdays, when he came home for lunch. He went to the church hall on Tuesday evenings. He drank two bottles of beer on Fridays, sitting in front of the news, and became slow and heavy and warm, and wanted to talk. On Sunday afternoons he slept.
She learned the sounds.
There was the sound of the gate, which had a particular rusty note, and which could be heard from anywhere in the house. There was the sound of his car, which came up the hill in second gear, with a small cough at the top. There was the sound of his slippers. She could tell them from her mother's. Her mother's were light and quick. His were flat, and slow, and came a little apart, as though he were not in a hurry and did not need to be.
She learned the sound of his whistle.
She did not like to admit it, even to herself. But she lay awake at night, with her hands folded on her stomach, and listened for it. It had become a kind of weather. When it was near, she knew. When it was far, she could breathe. He whistled in the bathroom, and in the garden, and when he came up the hill, and when he was pleased. And he whistled, with a particular lazy, contented, rising note, when he was about to come down the passage.
She never knew if he would stop at her door.
That was the whole of it. That was what it did to her. It was not what happened. It was the not knowing. It was lying on the daisy cover in a dark white room, with a chair under the handle that was no use at all, listening to a man in the passage, and not knowing if tonight was the night.
It was not every night. She would say that, later, to a woman in a plain room. It was not every night, and not every week. It was a thing that came and went, like a fever. There would be a fortnight when nothing happened, and she would begin, helplessly, to hope. She would sit in class and feel her shoulders drop. And then, on a Wednesday, or a Friday, or a quiet Sunday, when her mother had gone to a prayer meeting or to the market or to a neighbour's, the slippers would stop outside her door.
She wrote it down.
She did not know why. She kept the green exercise book under the mattress, and in the back of it, on a clean page, in pencil, in a small tight neat hand, she began to make a list. She did not write what happened. She could not have. She wrote only the dates. 3 Oct. 19 Oct. 4 Nov. 17 Nov. 2 Dec. And next to each, a small mark, a short firm cross. She made it with the point of her pencil, pressing, so that it went into the paper.
She did not think of it as evidence. She did not think of it as anything at all. It was only that if she wrote it, it existed. It was somewhere. It was in a place that was not her head, a place where it could be looked at, later, by a different person.
If I forget, she thought, I'll have it.
If I die, someone will find it.
She was not afraid of dying. It was only that, at night, in the dark, in the small white room, it was easier to think about than the alternative.
"You are not paying attention," said Mr. Mugisha.
It was the third week of October. History, first period. The sun came in through the high windows in long dusty bars. Forty girls in blue uniforms sat in rows, with their pens, in the heat, and Sarah, at the back, with her chin on her hand, looked at the blackboard, which was covered in a chalk drawing of the Nile, and did not see it.
"Nankya."
She started.
"I asked you a question."
"Sorry, sir."
"What was the cause of the Mutiny of nineteen-oh-seven?"
"The..." She looked at the board. The words were a long grey smear. She heard, from some distance, a sound like a rushing in a pipe. "I do not know, sir."
"You do not know."
"No, sir."
A small ripple went round the room. It was a silence of surprise. It was a thing that did not happen. Sarah Nankya, who had been first in History for two years, who had once corrected the teacher on the date of the Berlin Conference, who had a habit of raising her hand before the question had been finished, sat with her mouth slightly open and her fingers curled on the desk, and said that she did not know.
Mr. Mugisha looked at her.
He was a middle-aged, rumpled, absent-minded man, with ink on his sleeves, who spent most of his lessons staring out of the window. He had never been known to be unkind. He looked at her now, for rather a long time, over his glasses, with his head on one side. Something that was not sternness softened his face.
"Sit down, Nankya," he said. "You may not have slept."
"I'm sorry."
"It is not a crime." He turned back to the board. "Murungi. Perhaps you can enlighten us."
She sat, in a hot red wave of shame.
I know it.
I know that. I know it. It's the Mutiny of the Sudanese soldiers. Because of the pay. I read it last term.
She could not make her mouth say it. It was in her head, in a long clear line, with the dates, and the names, and the causes. But it had gone behind glass. She could see it, through the pane, and when she put out her hand it was not there.
What is wrong with me?
What is wrong?
"You're doing it again," whispered Miriam.
"What?"
"Going away."
"I'm not."
"You are. Your eyes go. It's like someone has switched you off." Miriam was drawing in the margin of her exercise book, a small fat cat, with whiskers. She did not look up. "You've done it all month."
"I am tired."
"You're always tired."
"Leave me."
"I'm only saying."
"Well, don't."
It came out so sharp, so cold, that Miriam looked up. She had a round smooth face, and big brown eyes, and a trick of looking wounded that she had perfected at the age of six. But she did not look wounded now. She looked at Sarah, steadily, with the pen held motionless above the page. There was a small line between her brows.
"Okay," she said.
"I didn't mean..."
"I know."
"I just can't..."
"I know. It's fine." She put down the pen. "I won't say anything else."
She did not. She went back to the cat. But she drew it, after that, in a different way, slowly, not smiling, with a thin hand, and when the bell rang, she gathered her books, and waited, at the door, with her satchel on her arm.
"Come to my house on Saturday," she said.
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"I'm not allowed."
"Who says?"
"Peter."
"Who is Peter?"
"My..." She stopped. The word stepfather had a taste in her mouth, like metal. "My mother's husband."
"Ah." Miriam's face did something complicated. "The usher."
"Yes."
"My mother knows him. He buys bread. He's very nice, she says." A pause. She was looking at her feet. "She says he gives a lot to the church."
"Yes."
"Is he not nice?"
The question dropped into the middle of the corridor like a stone. It was an innocent one. It was the question of an ordinary schoolgirl, in an ordinary hall, among a hundred others, who did not know that she had asked it.
Tell her.
Say, no. Say, not at all.
"He is very nice," said Sarah.
"Okay." Miriam looked at her. She looked for a moment longer than she needed to, with her round honest face tilted, and her eyes, which were big and brown and not at all stupid, travelling over Sarah's own as one reads a line of small print. "Okay," she said again.
She went.
Sarah stood alone in the corridor, among the crowd, and the noise, and the thump of a ball on a concrete court. She did not move. She stood with her books against her chest, and thought, with a kind of faint, cold, distant wonder, She almost knew.
She nearly saw it.
I will have to be more careful.
The end-of-term results came on the fourteenth of December.
They were pinned on the notice board outside the staff room, in a long typed list, and a crowd had gathered round them, jostling, shrieking, with fingers pointing and pencils scribbling down numbers. Sarah stood at the back. She did not push. She had always gone straight to the front, with her elbows out, and found her name at once, at the top of the sheet, in the first three. She had never had to look.
She looked now.
She went down the page, with her eyes, slowly. She went past the first line, and the fifth, and the tenth. She went down through the teens. She felt the crowd round her thin out and go quiet. She felt a hand on her sleeve, and heard Miriam say something, low, and did not turn.
Nineteenth.
Nankya, S. — 19th of 52.
It was a very clear black line. It was typed in capital letters. She looked at it for a long time, and it did not change.
She had been second in S2. She had been first the term before that. She had stood at the front of the hall, in her pressed uniform, with her mouth set, and received a certificate from the headmistress, and her father, in the third row, in his one good jacket, had put two fingers in his mouth and whistled, so loudly that the whole assembly had turned. That is my daughter, he had said, to a woman he did not know. Counsel Nankya. She had wanted to die.
She stood there with her mouth full of dust.
"It's fine," said Miriam, at her elbow. "It's only one term. You were ill. Everyone knows."
"It is nineteenth."
"It's one term."
"I have never been below fifth."
"So? You will go up again."
"Will I?" She turned. She heard her own voice, from a long way off, thin and high and calm. "Will I? How? You don't know. You don't know anything. You think it's a... a dip. You think it is a thing you recover from." She laughed. It was a horrible little cracked sound. "You think it will all just... go back."
"Sarah."
"It won't."
"What won't?"
"Nothing," said Sarah.
She walked away. She walked down the corridor, and out of the door, and across the dusty yard, and Miriam, behind her, said her name, once, loudly, and did not follow.
Peter was in the sitting room when she came home.
It was a warm bright afternoon, with the first small rain of the season coming up out of the east, and he was in his armchair, with his feet on a stool, in his vest, reading a newspaper. A glass of beer stood at his elbow. The television was on, with the sound off. He looked up when she came in, and the corners of his mouth lifted.
"Ah. The scholar."
"Good afternoon."
"You have your report."
"Yes."
"Let me see."
She did not want to. She stood in the doorway, with the paper in her hand. But he held out his palm, and waited, with a mild, expectant, pleasant look, and she crossed the floor, and put it in it.
He read.
He read slowly, with his lips slightly moving, holding the page at arm's length, as a man does who needs glasses and will not wear them. The room was very quiet. A fly crawled up the window. She stood, with her hands behind her back, and her eyes on the floor.
"Nineteenth," said Peter.
"Yes."
"Out of fifty-two."
"Yes."
"Last term you were fifth."
"Yes."
"I see." He laid the paper on his knee. "And what do you think that is?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know." He sighed. He took off his imaginary glasses, and rubbed the bridge of his nose, with an air of wearied patience. "Sarah. I'm going to be honest with you. I am very disappointed. I have paid for this school. Two hundred and ten thousand shillings a term. I have bought your books. I've given you a room, and a lamp, and a desk. I am not a rich man. But I did it, gladly, because your mother told me you were a clever girl. And now I am told that you have fallen."
"I'm sorry."
"It is not me you should apologise to. It's your mother." He leaned back. "She is working so hard. She is so proud of you. What do you think she'll say?"
She said nothing.
"I will tell you what she'll say. She will say, Oh, Sarah. She'll say, Where have we gone wrong? She will lie awake, all night. And I will have to comfort her." A faint, grave smile. "I would rather not. I think we can spare her."
She looked up.
"I think," said Peter, softly, "that this can be our little arrangement. You and me. I'll say nothing. I shall not mention it to your mother. I'm a man who understands that a young girl can have a bad term. We have all had them." He lifted the glass, and drank. "And in return, you will be more... cooperative."
"I don't..."
"With the house. With the rules. With me." He set it down. "I am a patient man. But I like to feel that I am appreciated."
The rain began.
It came in a long soft rush, on the iron roof, a drumming that rose and spread, until it filled the whole house. The room went dim. The television flickered. She stood in the middle of the cream tile, in her school shoes, with her hands clenched behind her, and looked at a man in a vest, in an armchair, with a glass of beer, smiling at her kindly.
He is doing it again.
He is turning it round.
It was not a thought so much as a dim, slow, growing recognition, like a picture coming up in a tray. She saw the whole shape of it. She saw him hold up the report, a piece of paper, a number, and say, This is your failing. She saw him take her pain, the very thing he had made, and hand it back to her, in a different shape, as a debt. She saw that every single thing, every fall, every silence, every night without sleep, would be turned by him, in the end, into a reason. A reason why she owed him. A reason why she must be good.
You cannot win, said a small voice, in her head.
He will always have something.
"May I go?" said Sarah.
"Of course." He smiled. "I only wanted a little chat."
She went.
She wrote it in the green book that night, by the light of the lamp.
She sat on the bed, with her knees drawn up, and the exercise book on her lap, and wrote slowly, in a small tight hand, in pencil. She did not write about the report. She wrote only a line. She looked at it for a long while, in the dim yellow light, while the rain drummed on the roof.
I told. And nothing changed.
I told, and I am more alone than before.
She read it over. It was true. It was the truest thing she had written, and it frightened her. She had thought that if she spoke, it would stop. It was what everybody said. It was what they said in assemblies, and on posters, in bright cheerful colours, with the picture of a child holding out her hand. Tell someone. Tell a trusted adult. Speak out. She had believed it as she believed in gravity.
She had told. She had told the trusted adult. And the adult had said, Please don't make it worse.
So who is there?
Who is left?
She thought of Miriam, in the corridor, with her satchel on her arm, saying, Is he not nice? She thought of Mr. Mugisha, looking at her over his glasses. She thought of a hundred faces in a church, nodding and smiling, in their best clothes. She thought of an uncle with a tape measure, and an aunt with passion fruit, and a pastor with a collection plate. She went down them, one by one, as one goes down a list, and at every name she met the same small dry shutting of a door.
Nobody.
There is nobody.
It was the end of the list.
She put down the pencil. She sat with her hands round her knees, and the book open on the cover beside her, and looked at her own small neat row of crosses. There were nine now. They ran down the page, in a line, like the marks on a wall in a prison.
Silence has not stopped it.
She had thought it would. She had thought, in a dim child's logic, that if she was good, and quiet, and did not make trouble, it would all go away, like a storm that tires of a house. She had made herself small. She had made herself invisible. She had stopped talking, and stopped laughing, and stopped, in the end, almost, being there.
And it had not made the smallest difference.
It had only made her alone.
She turned off the lamp. She lay down on the daisies, in the dark, with the rain on the roof, and listened for slippers. She did not hear them. She lay with her eyes open, looking at a crack in the ceiling shaped like a river, and thought, clearly, in the voice of a girl at a netball match, with a hard ball coming at her face:
So I will have to do it myself.
I do not know how.
But I will have to.