African Quilt : 24 Modern African Stories (9781101617441) (8 page)

“Where?”

“How about at Lake Vic? The school, not the hotel. In front of the Assembly Hall, okay? Around two?”

“Okay.”

So
that
was kissing. That was it? She couldn't decide if it was yucky or nice. She wiped her lips with the back of her hand. Would Lady Thomasina be this confused? Would Rosa? Christine had been kissed before Patti, she was sure. Her head felt foggy. Was it the whisky, Nicholas, or both? What if Maama smelt her breath? But
he
wanted to see her again. To kiss her some more!

 

* * *

So there was Christine the next morning daydreaming in bed, and panicking too. It was already eleven, but staying in bed was about the only way to be alone in the shared room. What would she wear? Should she put on lipstick again? Nicholas must have liked the red. Her lips' natural color was a pinkish brown, which just wouldn't do. And what if she looked completely different without her eyebrows drawn over? Should she wear her blue jean skirt, or the yellow lace dress? No, it was too frilly; she'd look like a baby. But she couldn't borrow clothes from Rosa or Patti without being asked a million questions. Imagine,
she
had a date, and with an older man! Well, okay, a boy, but still a date. Look at her fingernails, bitten short and ugly. Had he noticed them yesterday? She hoped not.

One could never tell what was going to happen. The future, the not-yet. It was like reading a book. But with a book, the delicious end was right there in your hands; all you had to do was read and not peek ahead, and you'd get to it. Of course, with romance novels you already knew that the Lord would get the Lady, or was it vice versa? How, was the question, the thrill. In real life, the future didn't exist. You could try and make it up as you went along, like how you put on makeup deliberately, but when other people were involved, there was no way you could tell what they would do. You couldn't control them. They might turn away, or prefer sad endings.

Luckily for Christine, Maama had gone to the neighbors; Mrs. Mukasa was sewing her a dress. Patti had been sent to line up for sugar. Rumor was that one store in Kitoro had some; the owner's son was in the army. Rosa had refused to go. She spent her afternoons “borrowing books,” which they all knew meant seeing Sam. That day, Christine was supposed to clean the living room, which she did quickly. She ate leftover cassava and beans for lunch, enjoying the rarely still, empty house, then bathed and dressed up, slowly, deliberately. She chose the blue jean skirt; it was casual but looked good. She wore a red top to match Patti's red shoes, which she borrowed again for good luck. There. Christine went out through the back door to the boys' quarters, where Akiki, the housegirl, was resting. Christine called out through her closed door, “Akiki, the house is empty. I'm off to Betty's,” and rushed away before Akiki could get up and see her all dressed up.

Christine slowed down once she got to the street. She was sweating already. Why did Nicholas choose the afternoon? It would have been cooler later on, and the evening light more romantic. Christine giggled and practiced a womanly sway. The high heels definitely made her more feminine, though unbalanced. She smoothed her jean skirt over her still small hips. Was it the heat or this escapade that was making her leak sweat like a broken tap? Under a jacaranda tree by the side of the road, she got a small mirror, Patti's, from her bag, rubbed on Patti's lipstick, then walked on.

Everything was asleep; the road was dead, even the flies were too lazy and drunk with heat to do more than flop around. The sun was Christine's relentless witness. She reached the huge roundabout in front of Lake Vic, but had to walk around it because the grass was overgrown. Back when she and her school friends passed by every day on their way to school, they would find groups of five or six women hired by the Entebbe Town Council cutting the grass with long thin slashers. The women were always busy because the grass grew back as fast as ever. Poor women; during Amin's “economic war” they were paid next to nothing. It now looked like the council had long given up the fight with nature. The grass, ignoring the emergency situation, kept on growing.

Christine could almost see those early morning scenes: most of the slasher women had babies tied onto their backs, who slept peacefully even as the women swung up and down, up and down with labor. The women wore old, faded
busutis
and head scarves wrapped shabbily over their hair. They were barefoot or wore thin rubber
sapatu.
They didn't speak English, of course. Christine and her friends didn't greet them, even though they looked just like their aunties back in the village, whose close, sticky hugs smelt of sweat and kitchen-fire smoke. They were comforting and discomforting all at the same time. But here in town, the lesson these women gave was so clear no one even said it: Study hard, speak English well, get into one of the few good high schools, go to college. Onward and upward. You are not these women. Do not become them.

It was now half past one. Christine was rarely early for anything, but this time she was almost at the school. Past the roundabout was a giant tree that seemed to have retained its immensity even as the school buildings ahead shrank as she grew older. It was an olive tree, though she didn't know that when she was at Lake Vic. The fruit,
empafu,
were green, hard, and bitter, or black, a little softer, but just as bitter. Christine grew to like their chewy texture; it was like an interesting thought to be turned over and over. The fruit left her tongue and inner cheeks rough, as though her mouth had become someone else's. That was the taste and feel of walking home from school all those years ago. The sound of the past was of the small hard fruit falling. They would drop on her head, plop! or just miss her, startling her out of her daydreams of being first in class; of how she would show them, whoever they were, after whatever slight; dreams of visiting an aunt in Kampala; of going somewhere even farther away, England perhaps. America! As her mind roved, she climbed on the curb, carefully balancing, her arms stretched out wide like wings, one foot straight in front of the other. She was a ballerina, a flying airplane, then plop! The hard nut's sudden fall surprised her into tripping. On other days, when she walked home with her friends Carol and Karen, they would playfully push each other off the black and white curb. Christine could almost hear the laughter, the running, the joking shouts of abuse. All those days merged into one carefree moment in her mind.

Now, the curb's paint had faded to gray and its edges crumbled to dust. All the same, Christine stepped up onto it, stifling a giggle. In Patti's red high heels, she felt like a chicken clumsily trying to fly. Her laughter rang out in the silent hot afternoon, making her catch herself. Nicholas would think she was crazy!

Here was the Upper School Assembly, another faded apology of its former imposing blue and white state. It was now ten to two. Christine was early, oh no, a sign of desperation. Coming on time was bad enough. This was a date, not a school appointment. She wished she had asked Patti or Rosa for advice. No, not Patti, she didn't go out with boys; she would have stopped her from going, called up the Bajomboras or something! Rosa wouldn't be much help either; she would have laughed at her and kept bringing it up forever to embarrass her. So much for big sisters. Well, she had the time to cool down, wipe off the sweat, check her lipstick.

Christine sat in the shade on the cement ledge in front of the Assembly Hall. She doubted the toilets were open or clean. She wouldn't look at her watch again. The Assembly had long glass doors all along one side to keep it cool, and long windows on the other. Some of the panes were cracked or empty. She looked into the darkness of the hall. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, the forms inside took on recognizable shape. What a mess. The curtain on the stage was torn; a piano's dark bulk squatted awkwardly to one side on only two feet, its lid broken and askew. A few small chairs were scattered around the huge dusty floor, and on one of them was a pile of neglected, ragged-looking exercise books. It was hard to believe this was the same school that had performed so well once that even Amin's children had joined it for two terms when they lived in Entebbe State House. It was only three years since Christine had left P.7; how come she hadn't noticed this mess? This
we-have-given-up-why-bother
state. Things must have started falling apart years ago. She hadn't noticed it then, probably because she was here every day. The change was gradual and the result normal, like many other things about Amin's time, including the everyday fear in the air. She remembered how everyone had laughed in astonishment, then got used to it, when Amin by decree banned minis and wigs. He made Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, a day off and Saturday a workday. Everyone adjusted to the upside-down week, the upside-down life, including other unbelievable and ugly things she didn't want to think about. The bad smell became familiar.

In this very hall, Christine had been through five years of morning hymns, prayers, and announcements. She remembered the cheerful routine of singing “We Wish You Many Happy Returns of the Day” for different students every week. The word “returns” had puzzled her; it still did. The headmaster, fat round Mr. Mubozi, had led assembly since Christine's first year in the Upper School, when she was eight. He looked kind and jolly, like Father Christmas, but he wasn't, oh no! She remembered him shouting at a kid once, “Wipe that grin off your face!” Everyone looked around in astonishment for a green face. Christine had gone to his wife's nursery school. She was white. She too was fat and round, but kind, giving them homemade toffee every week. The nursery school was a room at her house, with children's colorful drawings up on every wall. Most of the other kids were Indian. The lasting impression of that year was of their heavy black hair and spicy smell, and how they jostled up to the front, not afraid to seek the teacher's attention, while Christine hung back, waiting, as she had been taught to do. But in one week that year, 1972, the Indian kids disappeared; Idi Amin sent them all away. Christine remembered busloads of frightened faces heading down Circular Road past Saint John's Church to the International Airport, and the piles of comics and all sorts of toys she, Rosa, Patti, and so many others got for almost nothing. Those Indians were rich! Where were all those kids now? Christine wondered.

 

* * *

It was now ten past two.
Okay, calm down,
Christine told herself. At least she was in the shade. Out in the sun, two yellow butterflies chased each other round and round. At the corner of the school building was a huge flower bed with three plants. Someone had planted only three of them. Strange, this neat flower bed next to the dilapidated hall. God, it was quiet. Well, private too, which was good. How come there was a cooling wind in the shade and none in the sun? she wondered distractedly. She should have brought a book. She remembered the dirty book she had seen peeking out of Rosa's suitcase, about a year ago. There was a naked woman on the cover, her body twisted in a weird position. Christine's face went hot as she peeked through the pages. How could Rosa read this? People didn't really do these things! But Maama and Taata must have, at least three times! Christine now giggled at the thought, then guiltily murmured, “Taata, rest in peace.”

Goodness, two thirty. Should she leave? Christine heard a clamor of voices and froze. A group of rough-looking kids came running by, boys chasing girls, dark round heads bobbing, all of them screeching and yelling as they ran past, wove round the corner, and, just as suddenly, went out of sight. Silence rose up and took over again. What was she doing there? Christine decided to walk around the school once. Nicholas would have to wait. She would not think past that.

Christine peeked into the P.3 classroom. The chairs were so tiny. Innocent looking. This was where her class had done experiments with beans, to see what made plants grow. They tried to grow one plant without light, one without water, one without soil, and one that got everything. It was science in a bean shell. A guided experiment about life that you could control and be sure of the results. How simple. A few years later in P.7, as a prefect, Christine had stood sternly like a policeman in this very class, tapping the end of a stick on one of her palms slowly, threateningly, barking
silence!
at the smaller kids. It had been a serious game.

Here was the P.4 classroom, where one of the Bajombora boys, not Nicholas, had jumped through a window because of a fire. It wasn't a real fire; someone had shouted
Fire!
as a joke, and he got scared. He jumped and broke his leg and became a mini-hero, even though the whole incident was laughed at. Girls didn't talk to boys, oh no, but they gossiped about boys all the time. How stupid he was, they said, as they secretly admired him. Christine would never have dreamt she'd be here waiting for his big brother.

Christine came to the steps where she had fought with Karen and Carol, her two best friends. It was a game at first: the person in between the other two was the queen. They playfully pushed at one another to get into the center, but gradually the game turned from playful to rough to mean. Before long Christine, the smallest, was pushed to the ground crying, while the other two ran home separately. She was left there sniffling, wiping off the mud. The next day they pretended nothing had happened, but were shamefaced and awkward with one another. They didn't speak about it ever, but now they knew that friendship was envy, admiration, anger, and longing all mixed together. Three years later, Carol's parents retired and the family moved to their village in Toro. Karen went to a different high school. The flow of letters between them gradually dried up. Had all that emotion been for nothing after all? Time passed by and stole it away.

And now, now, time was moving too slowly. Christine circled back to the huge silent Assembly. No Nicholas. A part of her couldn't believe it. So he actually wasn't going to show up. Had he even planned to? Anyhow, had she really, really expected
him
to come and see
her
?
That would have been the shock. She should leave. But she wanted to sit there and wait. Just sit there. Not go on. Tear out the end of this book.