“Oh, Kirabo”—Gayi’s crooning would melt a stone—“is sleep troubling you? Let me take you outside to relieve yourself.” She held Kirabo’s hand and led her into the diiro, the living and dining room, picked up the hurricane lamp on the coffee table, and stepped outside. Normally, Kirabo enjoyed their mawkish attention after she threatened the teenagers, but not this time. No one had answered her question about her mother. She slumped into self-pity.
“My mother does not want me.”
The teenagers stiffened.
“Because I am a witch.”
Kirabo did not see them relax. She had never confessed about her two selves, let alone flying, but that day the pain was intense.
“That is silly, Kirabo.” Gayi rubbed the back of her neck. “How can you be a witch?”
“Then where is she?”
“We don’t know. No one does.”
The other teenagers, who had also come out to use the toilet, remained quiet; a desperate quiet, as if Kirabo had opened the doorway to where a monster was chained.
“Don’t think about her.” Gayi pulled Kirabo close to herself. “Think about Tom and how he loves you.”
“Indeed,” the teenagers agreed.
“And you know your grandparents would give the world for you.”
“Too true,” a boy said. “I tell you, Kirabo, if you died today, those two would offer to be buried instead.”
Kirabo smiled despite her pain. It was true, although Grandmother loved her carefully because loving her too much could be tragic. But Grandfather was brazen. He did not care that she might get spoilt. And Kirabo wielded his love ruthlessly over the teenagers and the villages. As for Tom, her father, his love was in a hurry. He came briefly from the city and wrapped it around her for an hour or two. Nonetheless, that night Kirabo felt that once again the family had avoided telling her about her mother. Yet to ask her grandparents would be to say their love was not enough.
As she waited for the teenagers taking turns to use the toilet, she looked around. The night was solid. The moon was mean and remote, the stars thin and scanty. A shooting star fell out of the sky, but as Kirabo gasped, it vanished. My mother is somewhere under that sky. Perhaps she found out her baby had a split self and abandoned me. Perhaps I started flying out of my body as soon as I was born. Perhaps and perhaps swirled, stirring a pain she could not take to Grandfather or Grandmother and say Jjajja, it hurts here.
This is when Kirabo decided to consult Nsuuta, the blind witch down the road. Though Nsuuta was practically blind, behind her blindness she could see. But Nsuuta was not just a witch—she was Grandmother’s foe. Their feud was Mount Kilimanjaro. Apparently, Nsuuta had stolen love from the family. Tom, Kirabo’s father, loved Nsuuta as much as Grandmother, his own mother. Some said he loved Nsuuta more. If that is not witchery, then there is no witchery in the world. Thus Kirabo consulting Nsuuta meant betraying Grandmother in the most despicable way. But that night, with none of her family offering to help find her mother, Kirabo saw no other option.
2
“Sit properly!”
Kirabo snapped her legs closed.
“Hffm.” A boy turned his head away, fanning his scrunched-up nose as if the smell from between her legs was killing him.
“Thu,” another dry-spat. “She is twelve, but we still remind her.”
Kirabo tightened her legs.
“Kirabo”—Gayi’s voice was soft—“you cannot sit like men. Always kneel. You will not offend anyone that way.”
Kirabo got down on her knees and sat back on her heels in a feminine posture. But inside she was tremulous with palpitations. Revulsion, self-disgust, and anger tore at her; she never chose to be born with that thing.
“That is better,” Gayi was saying. “When you sit on a chair, cross your legs at the ankles to—”
Kirabo did not see it happen. She blinked once and next her evil self was out of her body and up the room. She flitted from wall to wall, like a newborn ghost lost. She flew with eyes closed because the emotion was too intense. For a long time, she swooped and darted, her mind raging over this foul body that made people spit. She swooped and darted, swooped and darted, a bat spooked in daytime.
But then, outside the house, it started to rain. The din on the iron roof was so harsh it muted everything. She stopped flying, hovered, and listened to the rain. There was something magical about rain pummelling iron sheets. It soothed, lulled. Her breathing slowed. Calm descended. She opened her eyes. The beams, big and black, were so close she could touch them. The walls seemed to have hemmed in. The rain stopped. It stopped suddenly. As if it too was listening. Matalisi, a radio programme, wafted like a whisper. When the voices of the teenagers drifted to her, Kirabo looked below.
In a corner, her body was fidgeting in the feminine posture. Kirabo had not learnt to sit like other women. Her legs hurt easily. Guilt set in about leaving her good self down there under the bullying eyes of the teenagers. The thought set her heart racing, emotion rising again. Luckily, the rain came back, this time wild, as if a giant in the sky was pouring pebbles on the roof. It drowned her racing heart and it slowed. Yet she could not find rest. She decided to fly out of the room.
On the right was Grandfather’s bedroom. If she flew in there, he was probably dyeing his hair with Kanta using a blackened toothbrush. Or he was screwing the segments of his Gillette razor together, readying himself to brush the soapy lather across his jaw and shave, making faces as he went. Grandfather’s bedroom smelt of Barbasol.
To the left was Grandmother’s bedroom. No chance of flying in there. It was the darkest and stuffiest room in the house. Its small window, which Grandmother opened grudgingly, never refreshed the room.
She flew through the third door into the diiro. She ignored the pictures on the walls—a blue-eyed Christ with peculiarly feminine hands on a calendar; Sir Edward Muteesa, whose handsomeness made women swoon; then her favourite picture, Grandmother and Grandfather on their wedding day. Instead, she soared to her favourite place, the ceiling. She turned, lay flat on her back, and stared at it. She counted the patterns of squares, deepening her solitude. There were smaller squares within the squares; she counted those too. But there were even littler ones in those, and then littler ones within them, until the ceiling was nothing but a swarm of squares. Tranquillity unfurled like a blanket of clouds. Her seclusion was complete. The rain was background noise. The anger, the revulsion, even the disgust at the foulness between her legs drained from her body and dripped to the floor. Lull.
She did not know how long she had been up on the ceiling when she heard someone calling.
“Kirabo?”
She plummeted …
“Your grandmother’s calling you.”
… and fell back into her body. A trembling feverishness gripped her. The walls of the back room were unsteady. She lifted her bottom off her heels. The left leg was dead, the right one hurt desperately. She closed her eyes to stop the dizziness and stretched out her legs to allow blood to flow into them.
“Kirabo, did I say your grandmother’s calling you?”
She opened her eyes. The world was steady now.
“Kirabo!”
“What? My legs are numb!”
“Don’t you snap at me.”