THE MIRACLE

She sat on the verandah outside their home, her legs crossed at her ankles. Tina knew what happened when someone died in the neighbourhood. People came in huddled groups, lowering their voices to a conspiratorial whisper when they entered the house that had been visited by Walumbe*. The people would mostly be women, and they would embed themselves into the home like leeches. Tina had always hated it, even when her mother explained that it was the culture, and it helped the bereaved family cope.

Bereaved family.

She hated that term too. The black gate to their home, usually safely locked was wide open to let people in. A few cars were parked in the driveway, including the family car. A new group approached and she had to make a conscious effort to prevent herself from screaming. The women were dressed like they had planned their outfits, in well worn gomesi‘s**. Many of them had wrapped lesu‘s*** around themselves, which would double as sheets for their makeshift beds if they decided to stay the night. She felt before she heard one of the women in the new group come to pay her condolences. This one, though dressed like the rest, had some aristocratic quality about her, like she was the leader of the group. She spoke to Tina in English rather than the commonly spoken Luganda.

“Have you eaten?”

Tina looked up at her, hearing the words but failing to focus long enough to respond.

“You should eat something.”

Tina mumbled something that sounded distant even to her, but it seemed to satisfy the woman. She ambled away, her large behind filling out her green gomesi.Tina’s last thought before she fell off the chair and fainted was that the women should not move around with those hideous coloured nets in their hair.

When she woke up, it was dark. Her mind seemed to close over, to shield her from some reality. She heard voices in the living room, filter through the walls. There was a wail coming from the outside that sounded like a sharp shriek. Tina remained perfectly still, suddenly afraid of reality. She could hear her heart’s pounding from a bad dream, threatening to beat out of her chest. Her skin was clammy with sweat as she reached for her phone to check the time. A dark cloud hovered over her, threatened to choke her through the tears that now flowed freely over her face until she could taste the saltiness on her lips.

“Omwaana wange!!!”****

The shrieking woman had now become coherent in her wailing and Tina recognised her voice.

Sheila’s mother.

The cloud moved back, and the light shining on the darkness within her almost blinded her with self loathing. Sheila was alive, waking her up to have supper because the father used the supper table to do a roll call for the large household. Then she was cold, lying on her bed with a half smile on her face, like she had heard a good joke and was still amused by it. Sheila was alive, peeling mangoes and dicing them for everyone to eat. Then she was being carried out of the room while Ritah, their 8 year old sister cried quietly in the corner. Sheila was alive, irritating her by refusing to leave the bathroom when everybody had places to get to. Then she was lying in the living room, her face pale, with cotton stuffed in her ears and nose.

“Tina! Tina!”

Her mother’s consistent urging voice nudged her back to reality. She was sleeping on the lower bunk of the only double-decker bed in the stuffy room so that her mother had to crouch to touch her arm.

“Tina”

She turned, climbed out of the bed when her mother tucked part of the mosquito net into the mattress on the upper bed.

“You should eat.”

She remained silent, wiped her running nose with the sleeve of her sweater. A brief spell of dizziness almost had her sit on the other bed, but she fought it off and dragged her stockinged feet along.

“Come. There’s food in the kitchen.”

She walked on, through the living room where all the mourners sat, huddled together in groups.

Mourners.

There was another word she hated. It occurred to her that they were still in the same groups they had arrived in. Cliques were not for high school alone, it seemed. She followed her mother soundlessly to the row of rooms built outside, including the kitchen. The kitchen was almost unrecognizable, with larger saucepans than she had seen in the house before. She wondered briefly if her father had had to buy more saucepans for the vigil. It was also full of people she vaguely recognized as neighbours, bustling around cooking. She finally understood why these people came, that their presence took your mind off the death. Her mother was talking to one, asking if everyone had eaten, and then requesting another plate.

“Sit here. Eat.”

Tina received the plate heaped with steaming matooke, pilau and large boiled pieces of meat. The stew was thin and watery, large globes of fat floating through it. She made the sign of the cross and started loading food into her mouth, barely tasting the food. Behind her, near the last room on the row, the few male mourners stood in a circle around a fire they had all helped to build. She idly wondered where they had found firewood in this suburb, so that some burned brightly while the rest was piled behind the kitchen.

She ate quickly, until she could not take the barely salted food anymore. She put her plate on the metallic sink, mumbled her thanks. Then, with her phone in her hands, she walked away, past the hot fire to the lower part of the compound where nobody would think to look for her. She sat on the large septic tank, the hard concrete harsh on her soft buttocks. She pulled out her phone, checked the time. The time glowed back at her.

20:01.

Below that, there was a banner notifying her of 70 messages from 10 conversations. There was no message from him. She knew that a message from him would not make anything better, but she craved it anyway. She opened up their last chat, and started to type.

“I miss you.”

She deleted that, knowing how much he hated cheesy stuff. She started again:

“The mornings are the hardest since we fought…”

That was worse. She deleted it, gave up on sending him a message. He would come back. Or maybe not.

She lay back on the hard concrete, looked up at the sky. It was starless, and seemed to echo the melancholic mood in the household. Sheila came back to mind, and she smiled wistfully. They would all miss that loud laughter. The laughter had started to fade in the last days, when she got weaker and weaker. Now, Tina could not remember if she had even moved her arms when she had placed the pillow over her face. She remembered a weak muffled sound and a slight vibration before she had gone still. Maybe she had saved her from the slow painful death that the doctors had said was inevitable. Tina’s mother had prayed over Sheila day and night, believing that a miracle would happen. When she found her cold that morning, she looked almost like she had got her miracle.

“Maybe I was her miracle.”

It occurred to her that she was relieved that she could go back to school, away from all the things that had to be done for Sheila. The self loathing returned, stronger, and she almost choked on a fresh bout of tears.

*Walumbe: the god of death. According to the Kiganda traditional religion, it is this god that takes life.

**Gomesi: the traditional dress of the Baganda (Uganda)

***Lesu: pieces of cloth that Baganda women often wrap around themselves as the equivalent of an apron.

****Omwaana wange: “My child” (Luganda)

This piece was entered in a short story writing competition and got second place. You can read it here and leave a comment.

PAIN

The bile rose in my throat, almost choking me. Outside, the sun glared angrily, so that the small clinic was strewn with shades and bright spots. My stomach churned, the contents of my breakfast threatening to return. I took a deep breath and put my head between my legs, hoping it would not. My mother had gone through so much trouble to get me to eat it, insisting the Malaria medicine would nit work if I did not eat. The sweet woman, God bless her, really had no idea what was going on. A cool hand touched my forehead, soothing.

“Marita!”

A nurse shouted my name, inviting me to the lab. I received the small white bottle, and soon brought it back with the dark yellow liquid. It occurred to me that I was dehydrated, and I should listen to my mother and drink more. The wait was arduous, even though I knew what the test results would say.  My body was confirming my fears: the nausea that would not abate, the constant exhaustion, and that sense of foreboding I had had for weeks. Yet, a part of me remained hopeful, that the results from the first test had been wrong, that this was all a huge mistake and I was not supposed to be here, that I was not just another teenage pregnancy statistic. It was a cruel irony, after all the education I had received from home and school about “sex education”

The results came back sooner than I expected and my worst fears were confirmed, my eyes blurring with tears over the page as I read the familiar medical jargon in a doctor’s careless scrawl. HCG: Positive. It had always been negative in the past. I remembered my laugh whenever the doctors would ask about that. I remembered my mother’s confidence whenever I would take that test, slightly tinged with irritation that they had even considered that her sweet child would be pregnant. My head swam, and this time I could not hold back my breakfast, barely making it to the nearby bathroom before I let it out.

I was stronger when I returned. As it had been for the past 2 weeks or so, vomiting had made me feel better. I came back to the waiting room, and sat, making peace with my newly confirmed fears. I trained my eyes on a large green fly on the windowsill, too lazy to move even when the nurses who passed by tried to wave it away. They chatted happily as they went about their work, while the fly and I just sat there, unmoving. Hope stayed next to me, her silence both welcome and comforting.

I heard my name again, followed the nurse through the ply wood-lined corridors to another room. I was numb with apprehension, and sick to my stomach with fear. A few minutes later, I was lying on a high rickety bed with an old white bed sheet that was frayed at the edges. I closed my eyes and tried to think about school, about the exams I had missed and how hard I would study for them. Instead, his face came to mind, contorted with pleasure.

The nurse started to work, never bothering to warn me about how cold the metal was. I gripped the sides of the bed, tried to push away the guilt of ending what could have been a human life. The cold metal was pushed inside me, and the pain began, shooting from my center to every part of my body, so that I could not even cry. My raised legs started to cramp, and I realized I was crying because now I had a headache. Time seemed to stand still as she continued to work efficiently, saying mundane things that sounded like they were meant to be soothing. She pushed the metal again, and the suction resumed, the pain making me feel silly for complaining about menstrual cramps.

The pain was between my spread legs, in my lower abdomen, and even in my chest from the reality of what was happening. Suddenly, I was back in the dark classroom where this had started. I could hear the fabric of my flimsy blouse tearing, the harsh sound of my choked gasps as he mauled my bra-covered breasts. I could smell his cologne like he was here. Oppressive. Like his body against mine, like his lips against my neck as I said his name again and again, begging him to stop. I knew he heard the desperation in my voice not from arousal but fear. Yet he held me tighter, put his hands around my neck and dared me to scream. The strength of his grip made me realise that his slim form was deceptive, and there was little I could do.

 “Don’t scream. You know you’ve wanted this since we met.”

I gasped and choked on my tears, my voice suddenly useless when I needed it to save me.

“Almost done,” the nurse said

“No one will hear you anyway.”

“Please,” I heard a soft whimper, in my memory and in my present.

“Almost done dear.”

“You girls these days claim you like it rough.”

“Okay. I’m going to do this one more time, and then we can go.”

Through the haze of my tears, I saw the white syringe, filled with dark red blood. The nurse started over, pushed the metal in again. I steeled myself but once again, the pain knocked the breath out of my lungs. It felt like my insides were being ripped out, sucked into the large white syringe. His face came to mind again. For the first time, I wondered about forgiveness. How it really worked. If it really worked towards anything. If I had to "let go". For the first time, I had trouble thinking of myself as "forgiving". Suddenly, my penchant for "letting go" didn't seem like an asset. I closed my eyes and the pain washed over me like rain.

Friend zoned: the girl edition.

"...She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek. She pined in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?"

William Shakespeare - Twelfth Night; Act II, Scene 4

You knew, the moment you saw him that you wanted him. He was everything your imagination conjures up in your bed late at night, and more. More than that, he was attentive and witty. You argued about soccer, girls, boys, make-up, the economy, politics, everything. He made you smile, made you laugh, and even made you contemplate killing him sometimes. He dragged you to nights out to keep him from drinking too much. It was a good friendship, uncomplicated and fun. You eventually told yourself that you were so grateful for this that you did not need to know what was beneath his shirt.

It was a humid Friday night when you found out that you really liked him. He called you to his room, to talk. Another stupid girl was giving him the runaround, and he needed your advice. You wondered silently if he sees what you see when he walks past the full-length mirrors in the hostel. You wondered if he too noticed that he was near perfect.You gave the advice of course, but what you really wanted to say was the truth.You wanted to fling yourself at him, while at it, like those girls in movies.You wanted to have him against the wall, panting with excitement, letting you take control. Yet you just sat there, gave advice, and headed back to your room.

Frustrated, you responded to the messages of a few admirers. You woke up the next day in a strange bed, with a strange body against yours. The way you had ended up in his bed was a blur. The name came back in a haze….Martin. You hate cuddling, so you extricated yourself from his tight embrace and took a shower.You picked up the trail of clothes in Martin’s living room, put your shorts back on without the ruined panties. He found you watching some show, asked if you were alright. You responded yes, with a smile you didn’t feel because he could not understand. Only Elijah got you, knew that you couldn’t have breakfast till about 10, and it was Elijah you wanted to be spending theSaturday morning with. Martin, or was it Mark, moved to kiss you again, but you stopped him, asking if he has a boda* guy who can take you back to hostel. He took it in stride, to his credit, or maybe it was relief that you were not one of those clingy females.

So here you were, back in hostel, back to the cluttered room that was now a second home, watching a movie that was mostly watching you doze. He always teased you about it, the fact that your attention span for movies was about 20 minutes. You thought about pulling out that red dress at the bottom of your suitcase, wearing it and seducing him.You knew what he liked from the numerous stories you had shared. At the time he told you about his weakness for girls in red, it was light banter. When you started wanting him, that information became like food for your soul.

The red dress idea was discarded though, when you remembered the bar incident. You remembered thinking that maybe if you held on to that moment, it wouldn't pass so fast. You remembered him, touching you, his intense gaze boring into your very soul. For almost a month, the moment had replayed in your mind, perfect in every way. The atmosphere was wrong: the bar reeked of smoke, alcohol, desperation, superficiality, and a hint of loneliness. The nearest thing to good looking was the pretty drink he had insisted you try; a spark of colour on the table that was filled with brown bottles and cigarettes. Like the drink, you must have stood out like a sore thumb, the only girl amongst a bunch of guys. Worse still, you had chosen a bright red dress that clung and accentuated the curves because he claimed you made him look good. Like he needed any help. You remembered getting in a quip about not being paid enough for this, and yet you wore the dress.

You remembered feeling silly,wearing a dress that short and worse, pairing it with high heels he had bought you on a whim. You also remembered feeling a little light headed with excitement,somehow aware that this night would be different.

The moment had been perfect,despite the circumstances. He had pulled you close, surprisingly gently for a person of his size and strength. It was the closest you had ever been, apart from the times you lingered in the hugs. You remembered him looking into your eyes and saying, almost reverently,

"God, you are gorgeous!"

You remembered, like it was happening now, moving forward in response to kiss those lips. The contact was like you had dreamed, his lips softer than you thought possible. And then, he had said

“Honey, you’re drunk. Let’s go back to hostel.”

The embarrassment flooded you again, like it had then. You could almost picture what you must have looked like, flushed from the alcohol, a little sweaty from dancing, but mostly desperate. You must have been the very picture of desperation, and it must have been obvious to just about everyone. In retrospect, you realised it was possible that perhaps the look in his eyes had been cheeky and not intense, and he had been holding you like that because you were drunk and had almost fallen.

“Let me guess. You’re asleep.”

His deep voice jarred you from your little flashback.

“Useless. Your movies are just boring.”

P.S: This was inspired by someone in that abhorred place called the friend zone. So for all those living there, be strong - you'll find someone. Or be brave and say something, damn it!

The High Heels Experiment

I had an interesting conversation with a person we can call X about high heels once. I’ll spare you the details but the bottom line is, I said (according to X), that I only wear heels if I’m getting…err…. laid. I remember saying something about getting something in return, but that’s a pointless argument. Let’s focus on the fact that I generally don’t wear high heels often. Until recently, I had one black pair that served all high heel purposes. I would not wear them to club because I like to dance without the possibility of an ankle injury. I would not wear them to work because…well…. no reason actually. I just believed that high heels (like mini skirts) are inventions by men to slow us down (another argument for another time).

I know you’re wondering about the experiment. Patience!

So. Miss No Heels Ophelia had one pair of heels, stowed away because she never wore them ever (except weddings. I love weddings…*sigh*) yet, last week, she decided to wear heels everyday for 5 days. Yes. Me. If you met me looking like a giant, saw me almost tipping over in them (although they aren’t that high), or something like that, now you know the reason. I recently acquired a diary, so I decided to jot down the experience.

Day 1

I want to start on a high note so the heels are worn with a short dress and more make up than usual. I get comments ranging from: “What’s wrong???” (With concerned look) to “Wow! You look…. *confused look*…. gorgeous!” (I was hurt by the surprise in some people’s voices). In the evening, I had to go to town, and I finally appreciated the role of pavements. There were some moments when I was strutting like I owned the whole town, but mostly, I had to try not to fall, while still holding my head up the way I was taught. Suffice to say it was no easy feat.

Day 2

I don’t usually wear dresses (there’s another experiment I should try), so Day 2 took me back to my pants. I got lifts and took bodas all day so I didn’t go through the pavement suffering. Just when I was thanking the heavens for the gift of bodas, it happened. The rain. Have you ever been hit by the rain on a boda? More importantly, have you ever tried running to a dry spot in heels? That was not a good day. No, I don’t want to talk about it.

Day 3:

I was traumatised by the rain experience. I cleaned the heels, but passed them up for comfortable shoes when it was time to leave the room.

Day 4:

I wore the heels again.

(The contents of this entry are censored)

Day 5:

Today is my version of Monday. I wore the crisp white shirt and short black skirt with the heels. I have not felt more like a lawyer. And this includes the few times I have submitted cases authoritatively at the front in class. I had a birthday thing with the girls and got all the “How come you’re dressed like this on a Friday???” questions. Smiled sweetly and said I had nothing else to wear.

Lessons learnt?

Heels are good for confidence but bad for rain. And it’s good to get something in return for the effort (this includes, but is not limited to a couple of pleasantly surprised looks.) I am stowing them away again, but they will reappear every once in a while. I am a pro at walking in them now.

Letter to my Valentine

My Valentine, 

February isn't just the month of love for us. It's OUR month. It's the month I was born. It's the month you were born. It's the month I asked you out. It's a month of hope, of beauty, of dreams coming true. 

Our love never came easy. Maybe that's why we cherished and nourished it while we had it. We marvelled at the fact that we were lucky enough to be able to hold on to each other, while others fell apart. I remember telling you fervently one night:

"I'm afraid. I fear that like them, we'll stumble and fall, and never get up again. But that's okay too. I am grateful just to have made you happy, to have brought you laughter."

I believed it then. Yet living like this, has made me realise I was wrong.

I remember how we met. I remember the blouse you wore. Scarlet. How can I forget? You named me Scarlet when I told you I had no middle name. Scarlet. Like Scarlett Johansson, our joint celebrity crush. 

I remember your eyes that day. Sad. 

I remember the book you were reading. Khalid Hossini's "A Thousand Splendid Suns". 

I remember the confusion, the stress it put on both of us, just to be together. I remember being unsure, and then more certain than I had been in my entire life.

I remember your anger at all the ones who had hurt you before. I remember slowly replacing it with jokes about their flaws, so that they faded in comparison to us. 

I remember asking you: 

"Can't you see??? Can't you see that I won't go away? Don't you know that I can't stay away??" 

I remember you in my bed. So beautiful, it made my heart ache. I remember you opening up like a flower. I remember when your kisses turned desperate. I can still see your bosom rising and falling with your satisfied sighs afterwards. I remember every inch of your body. The dimple hiding somewhere on your thigh instead of being on your cheek. The smooth skin. Your intoxicating scent. I remember worshipping your body for hours, drunk on you. 

Again this February, I have to ask. Can't you see? Can't you see that we have to be together? Can't you see that your boyfriend doesn't know how you like your chicken, but I do? Can't you see that you were made to be cherished and teased...not mauled by rough impatient hands? Can't you see? Can't you see that and come back to me? 

Come back. You know I will never do you no wrong. And if ever I do, I'll go to the US and get you Scarlett Johansson, just so you can forgive me. You know I'll never stop loving you. And if I ever do, it will be because I'm an idiot. You know I'll do anything you ask, if you say it will make you happy. Come back. Let's go make memories to recount in bed on lazy Sunday mornings, laughing until we cry.

Let me cook for you every weekend. Let me bring you a new book every week to keep you awake at night while I sleep off my long days' stress. Let me look up jokes on the internet that I think you will like. Let me make your large bright eyes sparkle with laughter every morning. Let me read you cheesy poetry at night while you laugh from my melodramatic actions. Let me fall asleep knowing you're safe. 

Come back. 

Me.