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It was 11.00am when Mama Nulu finished the housework. The little house at the back of her plot was dusted, swept and mopped. The clothes were washed and hanging on the wire just behind the house. She herself was bathed, and dressed for the day in bell bottom jeans and a loose flowered blouse. Her hair was due for a retouch so she’d pulled it back into a neat puff. She wore no makeup, not even Vaseline on her lips but she didn’t need it. Mama Nulu’s age would be anyone’s guess. She was petite with mahogany dark skin that seemed untouched by time. Only John knew of the fine sprinkle of lines at her eyes, and the stretched out wrinkling of her stomach. For some reason, he loved these parts of her as much as he loved the way her brown eyes caught and held the light or the way her mouth tilted up in a permanent smile. Her hands spoke of age too but they were the hands of someone who had worked since she was 13 years old. Mama Nulu loved her hands with their hard callouses and extra sun darkened skin.
She rose from the bed where she’d sat to put on her jewelry, a thin gold chain and simple hoop earrings, and crossed the room, her slippers silent against the terrazzo. She reached up above the neatly folded and hanging clothes to where she hid her handbag behind her two suitcases. She pulled the bag out and quickly went through it. Satisfied with its contents, she pulled her kabiriti out and turned it on. As the old little Tecno phone shuddered to life she swung her handbag over one arm and shut the wardrobe, locking it. She moved fluidly out of the room with one swift glance to make sure everything was arranged, it was, and then locked her bedroom behind her. Mama Nulu moved towards the front of the house but, as always she stopped by the bedroom directly opposite hers.
Unable to help herself she pushed the door gently. It didn’t creak because Mama Nulu oiled all her hinges religiously. It opened up to a simple bedroom painted all in light blue. It had a queen size mattress, neatly laid with a duvet that complimented the colours of the wall in a plain white. Every wood fixture was painted white, the bedframe, side table, the closet doors, the little desk and chair. An empty vase sat upon the side table, reflecting the untouched loneliness of the room. Mama Nulu sighed and shut the door, then locked it and headed out to the kitchen. She didn’t stop, it was already clean, just walked across to the open door, pushed it open and then latched it firmly behind her, taking her time to make sure all three padlocks were secure before she turned to the compound.
The compound served as a small beer gardens for what Derrick had once called her retirement plan. Now it was littered with empty bottles, straw wrappers, straws and whatever her clients had dropped as they sat at the plastic tables scattered across the grass. Her grass thrived in part because she had taken steps to protect it, making little pathways to and from the tables from the front building. Now Helen, and Robert worked across the tiny lawn, each of them with a local broom and dustpan in hand. The straw of the broom was an almost silent susurrus against the wet grass.
“Madam moningi,” The two of them chorused straightening up to greet her as she walked by.
“Morning,” Mama Nulu replied but she did not smile and they did not smile back. Smiles were for customers.
The morning was for general peace. Well, for everybody except Nantume. Nantume was the kafunda’s cook. The kitchen, a small simple affair to the side of the front house was her domain and Mama Nulu, had a learned respect for kitchens and those who ran them. You could just hear the tinny sound of Nantume’s radio as she sang, loudly and more than a little bit off tune, along to whatever were Kampala’s latest hits. She would do this until 3pm when Mama Nulu turned on her sound system for the clients. She sang as she peeled, as she chopped and as she fried. She sang as she measured charcoal, cleaned and wiped the small countertop. The only time she stopped singing was when she was talking to her workmates or arguing with Daudi, the boda man who delivered the food she cooked each day and the charcoal she cooked on it.
The front was basic. It was rectangular and split into two parts. One part was split unequally and made for the kitchen and a small toilet. The other was a smaller dark little sitting space that some people preferred over the airy garden. Mama Nulu crossed to the kitchen and entered.
“Banange Nantume, bulilunaku ne Goodlyf Crew?” She teased the fat woman perched atop a little wooden stool who peeled a huge bunch of matooke.
Nantume’s laugh boomed against the concrete walls. “Ndeka Mama Nantume, banyumisa”
Mama Nulu laughed as she crossed to the big fridges and began to count. Both women fell in to companionable silence as Mama Nulu began counting the stock. She had two fridges, the freezers used for storing the meat if they didn’t get any customers for food that day. She reached above the the fridge where a rickety little shelf sat and got a neat large ledger book, a Nataraj pen tucked in the page she needed. She began the most boring part of her day walking round, going through crates, fridges and the store. The counting was routine and allowed her mind to wander whether she wanted it to or not.
“Mummy! Mummy! Did you know that Prossy cannot count?!” Derrick shouted across the open space of the living area to his mother who sat watching Friends on TV.
He was seated at the dining table doing his homework and the offender in question was trying to lay the table for dinner. His older siblings, Matthew and Gina, lay sprawled in the sitting room with their mother, their homework completed an hour earlier.
“That’s why if you don’t want to be a houseboy the way she is a housegirl, you should do well in school so that you don’t end up like her,” His mother replied without even glancing away from the TV. The older children snickered. Prossy didn’t even blink at the jab. Silently she continued to lay the table. Derrick lay his pen down and looked up at her then back over at his mother.
“Prossy, I am sorry that sometimes Mummy is mean,” he said and lay his small hand over hers. She spared him a smile, a wan one that didn’t reach her eyes then pulled away.
“Madam, supper is ready,” She said softly.
The woman in the tv glanced down at her wrist, then up, at the clock above the TV. “What time is it?”
“It’s 7.30, mum” Matthew replied without looking up from his handheld game. Gina looking over his shoulder, nodded.
“Prossy, I’m tired of telling you over and over again. The children need to eat at 7. I don’t like waking up and fighting with people to do their homework,”
I also don’t like serving late because I still have to clean up, iron uniforms and your clothes and then polish shoes. Also, I’m the one who wakes them up, not you. I wake them up, make sure they are bathed and ready and seated in the car. All you do is turn the car on and go. And I wouldn’t even have cooked late if you brought the food early but you are waiting for Taata to give you kumeza and he didn’t. So you sent me to the market at 3pm and expect me to buy food, come home, cook it and serve it after serving your evening tea before 7. Oba who do you think I am?
“I am very sorry, madam,” Prossy murmured as Madam, stood up to face her.
“Well, I am very tired of you,”
In the distance, a baby began to wail. Prossy did wince this time. Madam sucked her teeth. “Go, go go! I don’t want to see you again tonight,”
Mama Nulu pushed the memory aside and went back to her stock, this time focusing the sound of the music so she wouldn’t get sucked back into times she’d rather forget. She was just reaching up to place the ledger in its place when Robert came running into the kitchen.
“Mama, there’s someone standing outside by the gate,”
“What do they want?” Nulu asked patting her head to see if her puff was still neat.
“It’s a young woman. She just said to call you,”
Mama Nulu walked slowly, wondering who it was. She was behind on the Water bill but John had said he would sort it. No, Robert would have said if it was water. she slowed even further as she realised it might be those people who walk around selling things. She didn’t have time for that nonsense. What about a jehovah’s witness? No, those were only men.
Too soon she was outside and she squinted across the small front space to where a young woman stood by the gate. The two of them stared at each other. Robert must have told Nantume and Helen because all three of them perched at the kitchen by the window looking out at the women who stood, two cowboys at sunset waiting to see draw their pistol first.
“Even me, I don’t know,” Robert replied.
“Who is that?” Helen asked.
Nantume remained silent looking down at the two women.
“Mama I hate you!” Nulu cried, lying on the floor of her bedroom.Prossy knelt down and reached to cradle her daughter but Nulu pushed away, sobbing hard.
“Nulu, try and understand,”
“NO! no, I cannot understand it, I will never understand it! Why did you tell me now? Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“There was no right time for it,”
“That is a stupid excuse!”
“Nulu! Do you dare call me stupid,”
“I call you unfair! I call you unkind! and yes, maybe stupid!”
“I thought Madam would never allow it. I …”
“Oh so you’re a coward?”
“Nulu, don’t be like this. It’s just that I didn’t think,”
Eyes red and brimming, nose dripping, Nulu choked down a sob and scoffed. “Of course you didn’t. That is always your problem it seems. You don’t think. You don’t choose. You just allow life to just happen. I’m not going to be like you Mama,”
Nulu jumped up from the ground, up to her bed and grabbed the bag she’d begun emptying. Out went the school books and pens, covering the wrinkled graduation gown that lay on the bed. In went the nearest clothes she could reach.
“Nulu what are you doing?”
“I’m leaving. I refuse to live your life,”
With the bag half zipped, she turned and stormed for the door. Prossy stepped in her path and held out her hands.
“Nulu, wait please. Maybe one night. When you have relaxed…”
“I am leaving tonight Mama. Please move,”
“Where will you go? be sensible,”
Nulu laughed. A hard bitter thing that broke something inside Prossy.
“If you had been sensible we would not be here today Mama,” She pushed past Prossy and stormed out of the house, across the yard where revellers stopped to stare at the scene. Prossy followed but she kept stumbling, the blisters that had built up losing to the soft soil of the compound. Nulu, more limber, and barefoot to boot, was at and out the gate before Prossy could catch up. As Prossy stumbled towards her daughter, she saw her hop on the back of a boda.
Gone.
Prossy fell to the ground and let the tears she’d been holding in fall. A warm hand, a gentle touch on her shoulder. She looked up to find Nantume.
“Come inside Mama Nulu,”
The sun was blistering hot already. Bodas zipped by the road and a sleek fat car sat in-front of her gate. The hard glint in her eyes from that night remained. She stood, as slim as her mother, a little boy leaning curiously from behind her hip. Prossy wanted to run and hug her daughter but knew in her gut that if she did, Nulu would turn around, get in her car and never come back. She opened her mouth to say something and then closed it.
“Mummy who is that?” the little boy asked.
Nulu ignored him, her eyes pinned to her mother like Prossy might attack her with a knife.
A car honked and everyone, even the peeping toms in the window, looked to the gate. The old Prado shuddered to a stop and an old man stepped out.
“Jjaaja!” the little boy broke from his mother and barrelled into the old man’s legs.
“Hello Junior!” the old man said and they smiled at each other with the same gap toothed smile.
Nulu cleared her throat but when they turned to look at her she turned up, as if speaking to the sky.
“I have come to tell you and Taata that Derrick is dead,”
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