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.
