“Today, we will go to my house,” Kirabo said.
“What do you mean, ‘your house’?”
“You mean I have never told you? I have a house. It is big, huge, with a lot of land. My grandfather gave it to me. Come, I will show you.”
Giibwa followed Kirabo reluctantly. “Why would he give you a house?”
“To belong to me.”
“But you are just a girl.”
“My grandfather says I am special. It belonged to Great-Grand Luutu.”
Giibwa kept quiet. They turned into a trail going southward, which avoided the crossing at the Nnankya. They walked between sweet potato gardens, cassava, beans, and maize. And when they reached the swamp it was gardens of sugar cane and yams. Finally, they joined the main road and walked towards the border between Nattetta and Bugiri, where Kirabo’s great-grandfather Luutu’s house was located.
The house was huge. Bigger than Miiro’s. A mansion compared to Giibwa’s home. It had a large stoep surrounded by mosquito mesh, which must have been the fashion back in Great-Grand Luutu’s time. The rest of the house was skirted by a wide, elevated verandah. A shell of a car, a Zephyr, perfect greenish skin, sat on the ground overgrown with weeds. A woman vaguely related to Miiro lived there.
Kirabo, hands on hips, shook her head at the unkempt state of the property. “This is unacceptable. Look at the state of the compound.” She waved a hand like a seasoned landlady. “I am going to have a word with Grandfather; these are breeding grounds for snakes.”
“Why can’t we play at our usual place?”
“You don’t like my house: are you jealous?”
Giibwa did not reply.
•
Their playhouse was a space under a canopy of three young trees. The girls started by sweeping out the dry leaves. Then they tied the flowers they had picked on to the tree trunks, spread a sackcloth on the floor, and laid down their babies to sleep. Kirabo had made her baby out of banana fibre, while Giibwa had moulded hers out of mud. Kirabo also laid out her white plastic doll, although she rarely played with it. She was outside peeling “food” when Giibwa gasped, “Kirabo, Kirabo, my cores have come.” Kirabo placed the matooke in a Blue Band tin on the fire and hurried “inside” to Giibwa.
Giibwa had been attempting to nurse her clay baby when she made the discovery. She pulled down the neckline of her dress, but because of the buttons at the back, it came down only a fraction. As she tried to lay the baby back on the sackcloth, its head rolled off. Giibwa put the rest of her baby down and poured water in the dust to make mud, which she used to reinforce the baby’s neck and reattach the head. She laid her baby out for the neck to heal. Then she turned around and asked Kirabo to undo the buttons at the back of her dress. She pulled it down and revealed a paler chest. Both Giibwa’s breasts pouted. She felt the areola of her right breast. “This one.” She shoved it at Kirabo. “Feel it.”
Kirabo pinched and felt a lump the size of a lozenge. She gasped. “It is real.” Then she felt the one on the left. “This one is lagging behind: it is a pea.”
“First, the one on the right comes”—Giibwa had the impatience of a breast specialist—“and then the one on the left.”
Kirabo pulled down her own neckline and pinched her areolas, from one to another. Wa, just empty skin which gathered as she pinched but on release spread flat across her chest. She was reaching to feel Giibwa’s miracle again when Giibwa snapped her chest out of reach.
“Don’t.”
“Eh?”
“Young breasts are shy: they could go back.”
Kirabo was alarmed.
“If you tamper with them, touch-touching, when they have just arrived, they disappear.” But her face said You have a house, I have breasts; who is happier?
“Okay.” Kirabo swallowed the snub. “Squeeze them yourself; squeeze and see if there is milk.”
Giibwa pressed the areola hard. A tear peered from the teat and Kirabo shrieked, “Maama!” and held both cheeks in frozen awe. Giibwa sighed and stretched out her legs like a grown-up preparing to breastfeed. Kirabo sat back, dejected. To lift her spirits, she took her banana-fibre doll and tried to nurse it, but without a face the doll was not appealing to nurse. Giibwa lifted her baby to breastfeed. The neck had not healed and the head rolled off again.
Kirabo laughed. “Someone’s baby has lost its head.”
“At least it has a face, but someone’s—you cannot tell the face from the back of the head.”
“At least I have a proper doll.”
Kirabo lifted her plastic doll, a present from Aunt Abi who lived in the city. The doll rolled its eyes up-down, up-down like a bulb flickering. When she turned it, a cry emanated from the back, under a lid labelled MADE IN CHINA. Kirabo caressed the long yellow hair.
“Put it on your breast then,” Giibwa challenged. “Why don’t you ever nurse it if it is your child?”
Kirabo rose to the challenge. She pulled down the top of her dress and put the doll on an indifferent nipple. The contrast between the white doll and Kirabo’s black chest was so stark Giibwa burst out laughing. She hooted, pointing, unable to speak, until she paused to catch her breath. “That charcoally breast feeding that Zungu baby. Talk about baby snatchers.” She convulsed again.
For a moment, Kirabo could not find words. Giibwa snubbing her house was one thing, the arrival of Giibwa’s cores before hers was another, but this “charcoally” jibe was more than Kirabo could take in a day. She grabbed Giibwa’s baby and flung the torso outside. It shattered and the pieces scattered across the ground.
Giibwa stared at her, stunned. Then she screamed, “You evil goat!” and grabbed Kirabo’s Zungu doll. She skipped outside with it. There, she plucked off a chubby hand and threw it on the ground. Kirabo ran out and chased after her. Off came the second hand, and Kirabo stopped to pick up the doll’s limbs.
Kirabo gave chase again. “If I catch you—”
“What will you do, Charcoally? Oh-oh, there goes a leg.”
Kirabo picked up a clod and hurled it at Giibwa. Giibwa, knowing Kirabo would not dare hit her with a clod, made a show of dodging it.
“Don’t ever come back to play with me, cow-udder.”
Giibwa laughed. She did not mind being cow-udder light-skinned. And that was the problem. While Giibwa had an arsenal of names emanating from Kirabo’s apparent physical defects, Kirabo had none. Giibwa went for Kirabo’s eyes.
“Panda eyes has no breasts, so she tells lies—I have a house. My grandfather gave me land.” She tossed her tail this way and that.
“It is my house; my grandfather gave it to me.”
“Women do not own land, jacana legs.”
“In my family we do.”
“That is because you stole us.”
“Stole you?” This was a new insult.
“You Baganda raided us and brought us here from our homes. My mother says you stole women and property. You stole women to improve your looks. Everywhere you went, devastation.”
“What are you bleating about, stinky goat?” Kirabo was confused. Apart from her mother, Giibwa was Ganda too.
“Now you are rich from selling us, you show off. My mother says Ganda women were so ugly your men turned to abducting women from other tribes.”