Moses Isegawa - Abyssinian Chronicles

“Wh-what things?” he stammered, as he used to when he was sent to the shops and could not find anybody willing to go there in his stead.

“Compliments. He admires the way I handle material and turn plain strips of cotton into beautiful dresses.”

I steadied myself against the door as my knees almost gave way. Padlock, a woman from whose vocabulary the word “compliment” had been expunged in infancy and replaced with “threat,” craved compliments! And was desperate enough to lap them from the purulent platter that was Loverboy’s mouth! Loverboy, the only creature, bipedal or quadrupedal, to oppose, reject and compliment Padlock and her views and get away with it! I was struck by the way I had misread Padlock, but I felt my chest swell with gratification: despite her indifference to hemorrhage and her quickness to strike with guava switches, she was not impervious to pain. I could hurt her!

“Ah! So, I don’t make you laugh! I don’t appreciate what you do despite the freedom I give you!”

“It is not the same,” she replied, her voice thick with impatience, her tone loaded with a patronizing edge. What she did not put in words was the idea of purity and innocence which nullified the usual man-woman devilry when she was with Loverboy. Loverboy sought only the healing power of words from her. The flattery she got from him was the nearest thing to calf-love and adoration she had ever experienced.

“What do you mean by that?” Serenity asked, an edge of anger to his diction.

“If there are women who can make you laugh, there are also young men who can make a married woman laugh. I know there are many women waiting for something to happen to me so that they can rush over here to occupy my place. But I tell you this: breed your bastards as you like, as long as you know that they will never be allowed a place in this house.”

Serenity did not like the matter of his daughter brought into discussion. He did not like being on the defensive all the time. Earlier on he had made it clear that he was too busy worrying about money to go chasing other women. Why was she going back to the old topic?

What she did not tell him was that she kept having nasty dreams about her wedding day, with images of children with outstretched hands, waiting for a piece of wedding cake. The cake crumbled into stones, which the children used to hit her because she had supplanted their mother. She now doubted that Kasiko’s child was a girl. In the dream, Padlock was always surrounded by boys who vowed to succeed their father because they were the true firstborns in Serenity’s house. She craved reassurance that Kasiko’s child was a girl, but she could not find a way to get it without betraying herself.

“What has brought all this on?”

Faced with an educated man who she knew would scoff at the idea of dreams in which a girl became a horde of rock-throwing boys, she felt embarrassed, and so she resorted to what came easily to her: tough talk and threats. “Hajj Gimbi must be arming you with the skills of a polygamist. But that disease will never contaminate this house.”

“Leave Hajj out of this. He is my friend, not yours.”

“I will never share a roof with another woman.”

“I am getting very fed up with all this nonsense. If this is your way of voiding guilt over what you do with that boy, say it and keep quiet. I am not going to listen to this nonsense all night. I have to wake up early to go to work.”

“How can you trust those Muslims? Are they now talking you into converting to Islam or Aminism?”

“I told you to stop this rubbish. Hajj is my friend. Take your paranoia elsewhere. Saddle Boy with it, and tell him to drown it in a well. People are talking about you and me and are calling me a cuckold. They think the boy is all over you, like yaws.”

“I never want to hear that from your mouth again. Never!” she barked. The bedsprings groaned as she shifted her weight angrily.

“I don’t want people talking about us negatively. We are an exemplary family. Don’t ruin in minutes a reputation built in years.”

“He only flirts, but if those people out there are rotten enough to believe what they think, why should I care?”

“Flirting! In my house! Over my sewing machine! What does he do, sing you songs? Tell him to stop it. Let him find himself another tailor. I don’t want to see him here again.”

All this was very raw information; I was yet to digest it and find out what a godsend it really was. I was starting to get bored. I even thought of returning to bed because I had gotten more than enough for one night.

“You are not holy yourself. Why did you accuse me of jealousy when I sent the housegirl away?”

“I never said any such thing,” he replied sleepily.

“She was staring at you.”

“She was just trying to stop you from bullying her. I never noticed her.”

“I could not trust her around Mugezi,” Padlock put in.

“What is going on between you two?”

“Children have to be obedient; he is not. He thinks he is the man in the house. You let him get away with anything. Don’t you worry, I am going to break him myself. I am determined to stop him from turning into one of those people robbing, torturing and killing people. His grandmother spoiled him rotten, but I am going to undo all the damage, whatever it takes. I never trusted that woman.”

My legs buckled, and I almost fell against the door.

“You’ve gone too far. Stop it, stop it!” Serenity’s voice was a piercing whine.

Robber! Killer! Torturer! Who was robbing, torturing and killing my spirit every day? Who tortured me with terrible words, with the smell of shit and the fire of guava switches? Who corroded and robbed my spiritual goods in a bid to file me down to the conventionality of a cog in a wheel? A war had just been declared. I had no illusions of winning this trench warfare, but I was determined to become a very costly, very destructive victim. The enormity of the task of controlling myself, and using this new knowledge sparingly for maximum effect, made me tremble and break into a chilly sweat. How was I going to look at my parents, greet them and obey them, as if I knew nothing?

“I want a promise from you that you are not going to leave the job of breaking this boy all to me,” she said. “We have to claim him before the evil of this world does.”

“I am helping. Who pays his school fees?”

“I mean physically, in a disciplinary manner.”

“I will help, and I will also make sure that Boy does not come back here.”

“I told you there is nothing between us.” Padlock was angry that Serenity was trying to link two separate issues.

“Flirting in my house is nothing?”

“That boy walks miles looking for customers for me, free of charge. Without him I would be redundant most of the time. What could I do without his help and his connections? It is not in anybody’s interest to discourage him.”

“If you do not stop him, I will do it myself.”

“You have made your point.”

“It is an order.”

By now I could not take in anything more. The voices seemed to echo from a faraway cave. I did not care what happened afterward. I did not care whether he broke her leg or her arm or whether she crushed his kneecaps or caressed them.

My stay in this city had, so far, been a calculated attempt to reduce my stature, to prune my idea of myself and to crush my personality in the mortar of conventionality. I was being ordered to do things without being told the reasons or the purpose. I was being beaten and lathered in contempt. I was only good for washing nappies, cooking, fetching water — for doing all the things that Padlock did not want to do. In other words, the torture rack was grinding and spinning, slowly doing its job of breaking body and will.