Chapter 9
The Break
"My mother would like to meet you," Eli said, in the second week of February, in the voice of a man announcing a minor earthquake.
They were on the Matatu. It was a hot, white morning with a high sky, and Mzee Kasozi was driving a little faster than usual, as he did on days when the heat made the engine cheerful. The road was dry. The old rumba was in its second tape. Nadia had her head against the window and her feet on her bag, and a plastic cup of tea balanced on her knee, and she was thinking about nothing at all.
"I'm sorry?"
"My mother. Florence. She has asked me eleven times. She says that if I do not bring you to lunch she will come to the Banda stage and find you herself."
"Does she know where I live?"
"She has an excellent network."
"Eli."
"I'm telling you. She is not subtle." He drew a small box, on the corner of his page, and shaded one side. "I did not want to ask. I thought you would say no. I thought, it is too soon, it is a lot, you are still..." He waved the pencil. "But she is very kind. I promise. She will give you too much rice and ask you if you are sleeping. She does it to everyone. And I told her about you."
"What did you tell her?"
"That you are the cleverest person I know. That you fixed my pitch in two minutes. That you can imitate the radio traffic man. That you eat all the fish." He did not look up. "And that you are angry with me, but you came anyway."
She was silent for a moment. In the window, a string of boys on bicycles, with sacks of charcoal tied to their backs, wobbled past in the dust.
"Will he be there?"
"My father?"
"Yes."
"He will be there." He made a face. "He is always there. He is part of the furniture. But he will be polite. I have told him that if he is not, I will move to Canada."
"And is that a threat?"
"It is the only one I have."
She laughed. She turned her head against the glass, and looked at him, at the long profile bent over the page, the line of the jaw and the dark brush of his hair, and she felt the small warm spreading thing that she had come to know. It had been a week since they had made up on the bench. It had not been simple. They had both been careful. They had both said, on three different evenings, I'm sorry, and Are you sure? and I'm not ready, and once, memorably, I would like to scream into a pillow, and each of them had listened. But it had been good. It was the best, and the most frightening, thing she had ever done.
He wants me to meet his mother.
She did not say it aloud. She was afraid that if she did, it would turn into something she could not hold.
"What do I wear?" she said.
"A dress."
"What dress?"
"I don't know. I'm a man. A nice one."
"That's no help."
"You look wonderful in every single one. It is annoying." He glanced up. "Please come."
"You said it's only lunch."
"It is only lunch."
"You said she will give me rice."
"It's very good rice."
"Fine." She sighed. "I'll come."
"Poa," said Eli, softly, and went back to his box.
She borrowed a dress from Sandra, because Sandra insisted.
"You cannot go to Kololo in that," said Sandra, with horror. "It is a sack. It is a very honest sack, but it is a sack." She dragged Nadia into the toilet at work, with a hanger, and put her into a yellow dress with a collar and a neat belt. It was a little loose at the waist, and it smelled of the perfume Sandra wore, and in the mirror, under the flickering strip light, it made her look like a person who had been invited somewhere.
"Better," said Sandra. "Now do not slouch."
"I'm not slouching."
"You are always slouching. It is the Matatu. It bends your back." She dusted a hand over Nadia's shoulders. "Remember, they are only people. They eat. They have to use the toilet. They have an uncle who is an embarrassment."
"Thank you."
"And do not tell her about the rent."
"I wasn't going to."
"Good." Sandra gave her a quick fierce hug that smelled of mango. "Go. Be good. Be yourself. Be a little bit less yourself, in the beginning."
She took a taxi to the bottom of the hill, and he met her at the corner, under the bare jacarandas, in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled. He did not look like the man in the black suit. He looked like her Eli, a little scrubbed.
"You look beautiful," he said.
"It's Sandra's."
"It's you."
They walked up the hill together, past the big white gates and the barking dogs and the guards on their stools. At number fourteen, a thin man in a peaked cap rose and saluted. "Good afternoon, Mr. Elijah."
"Peter. This is Nadia."
"Welcome, madam." Peter's face, under the cap, was perfectly neutral, but his eyes flicked to Eli's hand, which was holding hers, and then, briefly, to the sky, as if he had just remembered something that required his full attention. He pressed the button. The gates swung open with a long sigh.
The house looked, from the end of the white gravel drive, like a ship. It was cream and long and slow, with a double row of pillars and a flight of shallow steps, and a veranda along the front hung with baskets of orange flowers. A fountain played in the middle of a green circle. She stood and stared. She had known, since the gala, that it would be big. She had not understood that it would be calm.
"It is only a house," said Eli, quietly, beside her.
"It's the biggest house I've ever seen."
"It's a big house with a lot of rooms in which nobody is doing anything." He squeezed her fingers. "Come on. Mama will be at the door."
She was. Florence Mugerwa came out onto the veranda as they climbed the steps, a small round woman in a lilac dress with her glasses on a chain, and held out both hands.
"Nadia."
"Mrs. Mugerwa."
"Florence. Please. Come here, child, let me see you." She took Nadia's face in her palms and looked at it for a good ten seconds, in the way a doctor looks at an X-ray, and then smiled with such frank, unhurried delight that Nadia nearly cried. "Yes. Yes, you are exactly as he said. You have the eyes of a woman who counts things. I like it. Come. Come in. You are far too thin and there is a great deal of rice."
"Mama," said Eli.
"I am only being welcoming."
"You are being terrifying."
"They are the same thing." She tucked her arm through Nadia's. "Come. Ignore him. He has been like this since he was four."
The hall was cool and polished, with a floor of black and white tiles and a curving staircase and, on the wall, a row of framed photographs: a young man with a stall of onions, a wedding, two small boys in school blazers, a graduation. There was a smell of beeswax and flowers and warm food. A girl in a black apron carried a tray past without a sound. Nadia thought, I should not touch anything. She held her bag in front of her with both hands.
At the end of the hall, a tall figure stood in a doorway with his hands behind his back.
"Papa," said Eli.
"Elijah."
"This is Nadia."
"Good afternoon, Miss Nadia."
"Good afternoon, sir."
Gerald Mugerwa looked at her. It was not rude. It was extremely courteous. It was the look of a man who had examined a great many documents and had learned to read them without appearing to. His eyes went over her yellow dress, her borrowed shoes, her cheap watch, her hands, and stopped for a moment on her face.
"You work for Brightside," he said.
"Yes, sir."
"Mr. Kiggundu's firm. We used it for the anniversary."
"I managed the account."
"Did you?" A slight lift of the eyebrows. "The programme was well done. The stage backdrop was a little pale, but it was the lighting. The place cards were exactly right." He inclined his head. "I wondered who was responsible."
She did not know what to say. She felt, absurdly, as if she had passed an exam without knowing it had begun.
"Thank you, sir."
"It is a small firm."
"It is."
"Under-capitalised."
"Papa," said Eli.
"I am only observing." He turned. "Please. Come to the table. The food is ready."
It was a good lunch, and she would remember it as one of the hardest.
The dining room was enormous, with a long polished table that could have seated twenty and today seated four. There was rice and matooke and beef stew, and a dish of greens with groundnut sauce, and a plate of fried tilapia, and a dessert of caramel and passion fruit in tall glasses. Florence heaped her plate. She asked about Nadia's parents, and the shop, and the town, and whether Walukuba still had the old cinema, and laughed, delighted, when Nadia described Racheal's theory of dolphins. She asked about the Matatu, and was told about Mzee Kasozi and the cassettes, and said, "That man has been driving that route since before the boy was born," with a fond, reminiscent look that Nadia did not at first understand.
"You know him?"
"I used to ride that route." Florence smiled into her glass. "Years ago. When Gerald had a stall in Nakawa and I had not yet decided whether to marry him. I used to take the old taxi from Kireka. It was a different vehicle. There was a different driver. But I remember the sound of the road."
"Mama," said Eli, with a sudden odd note in his voice.
"Yes?"
"I didn't know that."
"You never asked." She patted his hand. "I think it is why I was not afraid of you going."
He sat very still. Nadia saw his face change, a small bright startled thing, as if a window had opened in a wall he had always supposed was blank.
His father said nothing. He ate in measured, steady mouthfuls, with the silver moving evenly, and the cufflinks catching the light. Now and then he asked a question, politely, in a level voice, about her work or her family. What did her father do? Clerk at the municipal council. Thirty-four years. Admirable. How many children? Three. And you are the eldest. Yes. A great responsibility. Yes. Do you send money home?
"Papa," said Eli.
"It is a natural question."
"It is not."
"It is a perfectly ordinary question. In my experience the eldest child of a modest family usually supports the others." Gerald Mugerwa did not raise his voice. He turned his head, and looked at Nadia, steadily and without unkindness. "Do you?"
She put down her fork.
Be a little bit less yourself, said Sandra's voice in her head.
"Yes," said Nadia. "I do."
"How much?"
"Papa!"
"A hundred and fifty thousand a month," she said. She said it clearly, looking him in the eye, and felt her face go hot. "It is what I can. My brother is in S4, and there are fees."
"I see." A pause. "On what salary?"
"Gerald," said Florence quietly.
"I am asking out of interest."
"You are asking out of habit."
"They are the same thing, my dear." He picked up his glass. "Miss Nadia, you need not answer."
"It's four hundred and fifty thousand," said Nadia.
The silence in the room was very large.
She felt, at her side, Eli stiffen. She did not look at him. She was looking at the old man across the table, at the cold grey eyes under the thick brows, and she heard her own voice go on, level and low. "I'm not ashamed of it. It's a first job. It will be better. I have a plan." She did not know if she had one. She said it anyway. "I do not take money from anyone. I earn it. I work very hard."
"I'm sure you do."
"I wanted you to know."
"I appreciate it." He set the glass down. And now she saw something move in his face, a small brief flicker, not unkind, that she could not place. It might have been respect. It might have been something closer to pity. "Thank you for your frankness. It is rare."
"Papa," said Eli, in a low, hard voice. "That was a cruel thing to do."
"It was a question."
"It was a test."
"All questions are tests." He folded his napkin. "Elijah, you are being very sensitive. I merely wished to understand who my son was bringing to lunch."
"You know exactly who she is. You've had her file for a week."
Nadia went cold.
"A file?" she said.
There was a silence. Florence looked at her plate. Gerald Mugerwa, to his credit, did not look away.
"A short one," he said. "A two-page summary. I commissioned it from my head of security, as I do for anyone who associates closely with a member of my family. It is routine. It contained your employment, your address, your family's address, and your educational record. It did not contain anything private."
"You had me investigated."
"I had you checked."
"It's the same thing."
"It is a precaution. I am not ashamed of it. In my position, there are people who would..." He broke off, and did not finish, and looked, for the first time, faintly weary. "I assure you that I found nothing to your discredit. I found a hardworking, honest young woman, from a respectable family, with a good degree and an unfortunate salary."
"Papa, I swear to God..."
"Elijah. Enough."
"I'd like to leave," said Nadia.
She said it calmly. She stood. She laid her napkin beside her plate with exact care, and said, "Thank you, Mrs. Mugerwa. The rice was beautiful. I'm sorry."
"Nadia, please," said Florence, half rising.
"It was lovely to meet you."
"Don't go. Please. Gerald, tell her."
"Miss Nadia," said the old man. He had risen too. He did not seem angry. He seemed almost sad. "I would like to speak with you. For two minutes. Privately. On the veranda. And then you may go, and I will not prevent you."
She looked at Eli. He had gone the colour of paper.
"It's up to you," he said, in a whisper.
"Two minutes," said Nadia.
The veranda was warm and quiet, with a smell of cut grass and orange blossom. A sprinkler ticked on the lawn. In the distance, beyond the wall, she could hear the faint hum of Kampala, going about its business.
Gerald Mugerwa stood at the rail with his hands behind his back and looked at the garden.
"I want to apologise," he said, "for the file."
She said nothing.
"I did it to protect my family. That is true. But it was clumsy, and it was done without the courtesy of telling you." He did not turn. "I am not a man who apologises often. I wished to say it once, in case you did not return."
"I won't be returning."
"I understand."
"Is that what you wanted?"
"No." He seemed to consider it. "I do not know what I wanted. I think I wished to see what kind of person my son has chosen to hide from me."
"He wasn't hiding from you."
"Wasn't he?" A thin, dry smile. "He has been hiding from me for two years. It is the thing he does best. He is an excellent hider. I do not blame him. I was not an easy father." He took a breath. "I will tell you a thing. May I?"
"I can't stop you."
"My son has a habit, Miss Nadia." He turned, finally, and faced her. "He collects lost things. When he was six, it was a kitten. A half-dead kitten from the gutter, which he fed with a dropper. When he was twelve, a dog, with a broken leg. When he was twenty, a boy at the university who could not pay his fees, for whom he secretly paid. He is a kind young man. He is the kindest of us all. But he has never in his life been able to see a person in difficulty without wanting to repair it."
Nadia stood very still.
"I would prefer," said the old man, gently, "that you not be hurt."
"I'm not a kitten."
"Of course not."
"I'm not lost."
"I did not say you were."
"You said he collects them."
"Forgive me. It was clumsy. I have a gift for clumsiness this afternoon." He shook his head. "I will say it plainly. If you are in need, if there is anything, a loan, assistance with your brother's tuition, a position in one of my companies, a better one than you have now, I will arrange it. Without conditions. Without his knowing. You need only say."
It was the same word.
Help. It was the one she had been dodging for a year. It stood in front of her now in a calm, handsome, well-meant voice on the veranda of a cream house in Kololo, with its hand held out, and she felt it close round her ribs like a vice.
"No," she said.
"You have not heard the figure."
"I don't want to hear it."
"It would change a great deal."
"I know." She heard her own voice shake, and did not care. "That's why. I will not be changed by it. Do you understand? I will do it myself, or I'll do without. I've done without before. I'm good at it."
He looked at her. She thought, for an instant, that she saw him smile, a small startled twist at the corner of the mouth, so like his son's that it hurt.
"A pity," said Gerald Mugerwa. "Pride is very expensive."
"I'm aware."
"Not many people can afford it."
"Then I'll be the one who can't," said Nadia, and walked down the veranda steps into the sun.
She did not tell Eli what his father had said. She told him, in the taxi, in the hot dark vinyl hush of the afternoon, only that she was tired. He did not press. He sat beside her with his hands between his knees and his face turned toward the glass, and when they reached Banda, he said, "I'm so sorry, Nadia," and she said, "It's not your fault," and meant it, and also did not.
He collects lost things.
She could not shake it. It came back at night, and in the toilet at work, and in the lull between phone calls. She thought of the cold box, the plastic bag, the cup of tea. She thought of the tilapia head put silently on her plate, week after week, and the way he had said Let me in that low, careful voice. She thought of a kitten in a gutter.
Am I the kitten?
She told herself it was ridiculous. She told herself it was just a cold old man with a gift for the knife. But it lodged in her like a splinter, and all that week, whenever Eli reached for her hand or said something kind, she heard it, faintly, at the back of her mind, in a dry, measured, civilised voice. He has never been able to see a person in difficulty without wanting to repair it.
On Thursday, Mama Sauda cornered her at the tap.
It was seven in the evening, and the compound was loud with cooking. Smoke drifted from every doorway. Somebody's radio was playing a hymn, and a child was crying, and a woman at the next tap was scolding a goat. Nadia was filling a basin. Mama Sauda, in her flowered dress, sidled up beside her with a bucket and a rather elaborate air of nonchalance.
"Your young man is very generous."
"He isn't mine."
"He is yours. He is as yours as a hen is a chicken." She set down the bucket. "I like him. He has manners. Nobody in this compound has manners. They throw their rubbish over the wall."
"Thank you."
"He came on Monday."
Nadia looked up. "Came where?"
"Here. In the day. You were at work." Mama Sauda examined her fingernails. "He had a very serious face. He asked for Mr. Bbosa. They went in the room together, and talked for twenty minutes."
"What about?"
"I do not know." A pause. "I was in the doorway. I did not hear a word."
"Mama Sauda."
"It was a lot of money," said Mama Sauda, in a rush. "That is all I know. I'm not saying a thing. It was seven hundred and fifty thousand. In cash. In an envelope. He counted it into the old man's hand. Three months, he said. January, February, March. He said, Please do not tell her." She stopped. She bit her lip, and, with an air of terrible despair, said, "I am a woman who can keep a secret for about eleven minutes, and it has been four days."
The tap ran on. Water spilled over the edge of the basin and puddled round Nadia's feet, a thin cold stream. She did not move.
"Three months," she said.
"I think the old man was going to put you out on the first." Mama Sauda's voice had dropped, anxious, and kind. "He said so to me. He said, The girl is behind and I have tenants waiting. He is not a bad man. He is a man with a cough and a budget. I did not tell you because I did not want to shame you. But the young man..."
"Paid it."
"Yes."
"Without asking."
"Yes. But Nadia, listen, it was out of love."
"I know it was."
"You are not angry?"
She stood with her hands under the tap. She felt something very cold and clear and strange begin in her stomach and spread, slowly, outward, along her arms. It was not anger. It was larger than anger. It was the sensation of a floor being quietly removed.
"I'm going to go and see him," she said.
He was in the shed.
It was eight o'clock and getting dark. A bulb hung over the bench, throwing a cone of yellow light, and in it he stood with a hand drill and a half-built frame, his sleeves rolled, whistling something tuneless. A radio on the shelf was playing low. Tina had gone home. A smell of hot plastic filled the room.
"Nadia!" He put down the drill. His whole face lit up. "I was about to call. I've made progress. Look, I've changed the hinge, it's..."
"Did you pay my rent?"
His face stopped.
It did not change at once. The smile simply remained, for a second or two, slightly stranded, as if it did not know where to go. Then something behind his eyes closed, and the whole expression slid slowly, helplessly, into fear.
"Who told you?"
"Does it matter?"
"No. Of course not." He put his hands flat on the bench. "Nadia, let me explain."
"Did you or did you not?"
"I did."
"Seven hundred and fifty thousand."
"Yes."
"For three months."
"Yes. But it was..." He stopped. "I only meant..."
"You promised." It came out low and rough. She was shaking. "On the bench. At the stage. You said you wouldn't. You said, I'll sit next to you while you look at the bill. You said you'd heard me. I said I did not want your money, and you said you heard."
"I did hear."
"Then what is this?"
"It is..." He shook his head, quickly, as if to clear it. "Nadia, Mr. Bbosa was going to evict you. On the first of March. He told me himself. He had a tenant ready. You had been to him twice to beg for time. You were behind by two months and about to be three. You hadn't told me. You had not said a word."
"It was none of your business."
"You would have been on the street."
"Then I would have been on the street!"
"With nowhere to go!"
"With my pride," cried Nadia.
She had not known she would say it. It rang off the iron roof and hung there, absurd and terrible. She stood in the cone of light with her fists clenched, and he stared at her.
"I would have found something," she said. "I'd have gone to Sandra. Or Auntie Prossy. Or I would have slept at the office. I would have worked it out. It was my problem."
"It wasn't a problem. It was a bill."
"It was mine."
"You'd rather lose your room than say I need help."
"Yes!" Her voice cracked. "Yes, I would. Don't you see that? It's the one thing I have. It's all I've got. I have no money and no job worth having, and a mother who thinks I'm a success, and the only thing left is that I did it myself. If I let you, if I let anyone, then I'm just..."
"What?"
"A girl who was rescued."
"Is that so terrible?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because it's what your father said!"
It was out. She had not meant it to be. She pressed her hand to her mouth. He had gone completely still.
"My father," he said slowly.
"He said it on the veranda. After the lunch." She forced it out. "He said you collect lost things. That it's what you do. A kitten. A dog. A boy who couldn't pay his fees. He said you can't see a person in difficulty without wanting to repair it."
"That's not..."
"And he was right." She was crying now, openly, with her fists at her sides. "He was right. Because the first moment I told you the truth, the very first, you went and paid my landlord. You fixed it. You did the thing you do. And you did not tell me. Again."
"I was going to tell you."
"When?"
"Soon."
"Soon." She laughed, a high, terrible, broken sound. "That's my word, Eli. That's what I say to my mother. I know what it means. It means never. It means I'm hoping you won't notice."
"That's not fair."
"You promised me a rule. I will not hide anything. If I'm not ready, I will say. And a week later you hid a thing and did not say."
"I wasn't hiding. I was..." He stopped. He pressed the heel of his hand against his eye. When he spoke again his voice was low and shaking. "I could not watch it, Nadia. I'm sorry. I couldn't. I saw you on that bench, in the cold, telling me you hadn't eaten since August. And I thought, I'll say nothing, I'll respect it, I'll sit there. And then the next day I was in the street and I saw the old man go into your gate with a face like a funeral, and I knew. And I thought, if I do nothing, she'll lose it. And I have the money. I have so much money. It means nothing to me. It's paper. And I could not understand why the one person in the world whom I..." He swallowed. "Why I would stand and watch."
"Because I asked you to."
"You asked me not to give you money."
"Same thing."
"It's not. I gave it to Bbosa."
"Oh, don't," said Nadia. "Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Hide in the grammar. You did it in the garden. It was not true then. It is not true now." She wiped her face with her wrist. "You gave me money. You just did not hand it over."
He closed his mouth. After a moment, wearily, he said, "Yes."
"Say it."
"I gave you money."
"And you thought I would be grateful."
"I thought..." He looked at her helplessly. "I thought you'd be relieved."
The shed went very quiet.
"Relieved," said Nadia.
"I'm sorry. I mean, I thought, it was a weight, and I took it off, and..." He stopped. He had seen her face. "That's the wrong word."
"Yes."
"I didn't mean..."
"You did." She felt the tears drying on her cheeks. A great calm had come over her, a strange, cold, tired lucidity. "You really did. That's the thing. You thought, She'll be relieved. As if my pride was a headache. As if all I needed was for somebody to tell me it was allowed to stop."
"That's not what I..."
"I am not your project, Eli."
He flinched.
"I'm not a kitten. I'm not a lost thing. I am a person with a salary and a mother and a landlord, and I'm in it. I'm in it, and it's hard, and it's mine." She drew a breath. "And you looked at it, from the other side of a very big hill, and you decided I was a problem to solve."
"Nadia. Please."
"I thought you were different."
"I am different."
"Are you?" She looked round the shed, at the foam and the drums and the stacked white boxes, the thing he had built with his own hands that was so very good. "You are exactly your father's son."
She heard it as she said it. It was not true, quite. It was a terrible thing to say, and she knew it was, and she saw it land. He went white. He stood with his hand on the bench, looking at her, and for a long moment neither of them moved. A moth flew into the bulb with a small dry tick.
"That," said Eli, very quietly, "is not fair."
"I know."
"I have spent my whole life trying not to be."
"I know."
"And you say it. Like that. To hurt me."
"Yes."
"Well." He let out a breath. His mouth shook. "It worked."
She turned and went to the door. She stopped with her hand on the frame, with her back to him, and the night wind on her face.
"I need time," she said.
"How long?"
"I don't know."
"Do you want me to stop coming on the Matatu?"
"I don't want you to do anything." Her voice was almost a whisper. "I want to be a person who doesn't have to be fixed. For a bit. I want to find out if I'm one."
"And me?"
"I don't know that either."
She went out. She walked down the yard in the dark, under the eucalyptus, with the sound of the radio fading behind her, and at the gate she stopped, and heard, from the open door of the shed, a single noise. It was not a cry. It was a low dry sound, like a man setting down something very heavy on a concrete floor.
She kept walking.
On Friday, he was not on the Matatu.
She had known he would not be. She told herself that. She had not asked him to stay away, and he had not said that he would, but she had seen his face in the cone of yellow light, and she knew. She climbed in at Banda, at a quarter to seven, and sat in the third row on the left, and looked at the fourth row.
A woman with a baby was sitting by the window.
The Matatu lurched forward. Rumba played. Tosh, hanging out of the door, called, "Banda! Move in, move in!" He looked down the aisle, once, with his head on one side, the way he looked at the road when something had changed. He did not say a word.
At Kyambogo, a man got on with a goat.
It was a grey goat with a black stripe down its nose, tied to a rope. It stood in the aisle, calm and enormous, and looked round at the passengers with the weary dignity of a minister, and the whole vehicle began to laugh. A schoolboy shrieked. An old woman in a church hat said Jesus in a voice of deep satisfaction. Somebody shouted, "A political goat!" and the laughter swelled and rolled, and Nadia sat with her bag on her knees and her hand over her mouth, and thought, Eli would have loved this.
She turned her head to say it.
The seat was occupied by a stranger.
She sat with her mouth open. She had nothing in it. It was only a sentence, ready, with the little joke on the end, and nobody to give it to. Beside her, the old woman was still laughing. The goat chewed the strap of a bag. The rumba went on, bright and rippling, and the sun was coming up gold on the long dull road.
It was the same journey. It was exactly the same. The same stages, the same dust, the same Canyon. But she could not find the place in it where she used to fit.
She looked out of the window. After a while she took out her phone, and opened her mobile money, and found his number. She looked at it for a long time. Then she sent fifty thousand shillings, with the note Rent, 1 of 15. It was nearly a third of what remained of her month.
The little tick turned from grey to blue within seconds. He had seen it.
There was no reply. She held the phone in both hands until her fingers ached.
At Nakawa, the Matatu went over the Canyon with a crash that shook every window. Everybody in the vehicle said, in the same flat voice, "Kasozi's Canyon," and then looked at each other, startled, as people do who have said a private thing out loud.
Nobody in the Matatu knew who had started it.
But Tosh, at the door, glanced down the aisle toward the empty seat, and then back at Nadia. And with no cap on his face to hide it, no grin, no joke, he mouthed, very slowly, so that she could see: Where is he?
She turned her face to the window, and did not answer.