BROKEN CLAY: PART ONE
By Shanine L. Ahimbisibwe
***********************************************************
BIO
Shanine Ahimbisibwe is a Ugandan girl who is passionate about writing and story telling. She is a graduate of Organisational Psychology from Makerere University and a contributing writer to www.kweeta.com and co-founder of www.thisisUganda.org, a website dedicated to demystifying stereotypes about Uganda.
She enjoys reading, adventure, meeting new people and travelling.
************************************************************
It was Friday night in Kampala city and I was lying next to the best man in the world. I was truly happy. He had insisted I stay at his place for the night, a welcome suggestion since I did not have much to do the next morning. Here we were, lying hip to hip on his bed, a bed made for one, catching our breaths from the intensity of that last round. In that moment, I was complete.
“Can I ask you something?” he said as he propped himself up on his left hand.
“No,” I quickly answered. I knew this wouldn’t end well.
It never ended well with those kinds of questions. Questions whose answers bred more questions. It always irked me when he started all serious conversations with that opening line. I wished he could just come out with it without subjecting me to the anxiety. The burden of thinking up the right answer for his question. I hated it, but he did it anyway. And now in this moment, I resented him for taking away my happiness.
I got up from his bed and searched for the clothes I had hurriedly flung all over the room minutes before. I placed them in a neat pile in his closet, wrapped myself in his grey towel around and made for the bathroom. He grabbed me by the hand before I could completely disappear into the tiny corridor.
“Kentaro, I need to ask you something,” he said as he led me back to the bed. He sat down and motioned for me to sit too. I stood still.
Part of me was behaving stubbornly because I wanted him to know that “Can I ask you something” displeased me so much. But in truth I was scared. I was certain his questions would open a can of worms I had long closed and dropped to the ocean floor. The price I had to pay to be with him. I defiantly stood at the door trying my best not to make eye contact with him. I wasn’t going to get out of this. My best bet was to rip the band aid off and hope there would be some flesh left to grow new skin.
“Okay fine. What?”
***
Earlier that evening, I had left the pharmacy and gone to Steak Out to kill some time and outwit the demented public transport system. Between the potholes and dramatic driving of Ugandan road users, hanging out in the city was my best chance of getting from Mutungo to Kajjansi with minimal annoyance. But it was Friday evening. All roads were thick with cars and I had no desire to join that chaos. I texted Max and asked to join him.
“Yeah. Yeah. Sure. You come,” he had said.
“Okay. I am on my way. Get me a cold Guinness,” I responded as I dashed back into the pharmacy.
I quickly examined myself in the mirror at the back. Couldn’t be showing up looking like an over worked and negligent damsel. I dabbed some brown powder on my face, lined my eyes, pencilled my eyebrows in, used the pencil cover to dig the remnants of lipstick from the shell and applied it generously on my lips. I am always amazed at the power makeup has to transform ordinary women into supermodels. I made a mental note to buy lipstick and tried to style my hair too but no amount of bobby pins could save it. I said good bye to Anita again and stepped out to hail a Boda-Boda to Lumumba Avenue.
I looked around the bar and saw Max in the right corner, enthusiastically waving me over. He was surrounded by six men who like him, had their eyes fixed on the large screen ahead. It was not like I could have missed him anyway. He was light skinned, tall and skinny, with an exuberance that made him conspicuous. I still remember the first time my family met him. He towered over everyone and was happy to tell me that he loved looking into my dad’s head. I moved over to their table and hugged him. He motioned me to the seat by his left which I took after saying a quick hello to everyone. The one thing I detested about being short was the fact that I couldn’t comfortably sit on a bar stool. My feet always dangled and it drove me insane that I couldn’t find what to do with them.
“How was your day?” he asked as he signalled a waiter to come over. He sat back onto his stool and took my handbag from the table. He joked about its weight and asked if I had carried the water dispenser from the pharmacy before placing it gingerly on the one stool that remained under the table.
“It was okay. Nothing new,” I said. I shifted my weight on the stool, trying to find a comfortable position. “How was yours? Anything exciting?”
“Naaa. Just the usual. I need a new job,” he said as he sipped his beer and glanced back at the screen. There was a football game and judging from his restlessness, it wasn’t going well for him.
“Yes you do! Did the guys of Stanbic call you back?”
“Not yet. But I have another interview on Wednesday at Balton.” “Oh okay, that should be good. Which position?”
me.
“Finance,” he said as he poured the pitch black stout into a glass and placed it in front of
***
Now, I stood facing him, trying my hardest to avoid his eyes. The room was dark but the security light from the next building offered a little illumination. I felt a slight tremor in my left hand and quickly placed it behind my back.
“I need to know, Are you going to have kids, will you give me children?” he asked with so
much seriousness that it doubled my anxiety.
This was the kind of question that was going to break this relationship. Saying yes implied a much bigger commitment than occasionally sleeping in his bed. I was not sure I wanted that. Saying no showed a lack of one thereof which made the relationship futile. This moment scared me.
I had been with Max so long I often wondered what being single again would feel like. Sometimes I felt the desire to be single. To entertain men’s advances without feeling guilty, to go off the grid without having to explain my whereabouts, to not have to worry about birth control and ultimately, to not have to be accountable for another person’s happiness. When Max said those words, a perfect opportunity for this life flashed in front of my eyes. It was serendipity. But what frightened me most was the fear that I would never find anybody in this world who would love me as much he did.
“You know…” I said after much hesitation. I thought of rehashing all the conversations we had had on this topic over the years. I didn’t have the mental and physical energy for this. “I don’t know… I don’t think so,” I said and escaped to the bathroom, only to find no relief in the biting of the ice cold water.
As the water drenched me, I thought about the first time he took me on a date. I didn’t know it was a date back then. I only thought he needed company to the first screening of a very noisy movie whose title I can never remember. The time he told me he was falling in love with me. How his sincerity and truth had affirmed my resolve to stop seeing him. I thought about that time two years ago, I had decided to give this relationship a real shot. To throw caution to the wind and let him love me, who knew, maybe I could fall madly in love with him too. A selfish decision, because I knew this would not be something that would end well.
I did not want children. That is a decision I made a long time ago and nothing could change my mind.
I stepped out of the bathroom and found Max lying on the bed, reading something off his phone. Without saying much more, we both made a decision that night.
The sound of my ringtone woke me up early the next morning. I wished I had slept with it under my pillow, like I did before reading that article on Huffington post, on how sleeping next a phone could cause brain cancer. Now it was all the way across the room on his dresser. I tried to ignore it, whoever was calling this early on a Saturday could wait. Only they couldn’t. Max eventually got irritated too and asked me to pick it up. Fred! Seeing his name flash on the screen could only mean one thing. I didn’t get to sleep in that morning.
“Hi Fred, good morning,” I said wishing he was, by some miracle, calling a wrong number instead. There was only one reason Fred would be calling me on a Saturday morning.
“Kentaro! Good morning,” he said cheerily. “How are you this morning?”
“Sleepy. Really sleepy.” I wanted to say, but instead I said, “Fine… Fine. What’s up?”
“Yes… Kati, sorry to take you away from your weekend soirees. But Ranesh just called me and he wants us to pick the non-drugs this morning cause they will be so busy all through the day,” he said.
I tuned out mid-sentence.
“Okay,” I said when I felt a pause from his side.
“Yeah, so I have asked Brian to go pick them up,”
Max stirred a little under the sheets. I was so envious of him. That was all I wanted. To sleep until my head felt empty from all the nothing it had done all morning. To feel the scent of these sheets that smelt like both Max and me. To lie around next to him like the rest of the world outside these four walls did not matter. Like we did not need to have that conversation.
“Kentaro…” Fred said. ”So, it’d be great if you can get there now because Brian is waiting
for you.”
“Okay. But I’m in Kajjansi now so It’ll take some time,” I said. I wouldn’t give up my
Saturday bliss so easily.
“Haaaa,” he said thoughtfully. “Kale. Let me ask Brian to hang on a bit. But hurry,” He
said and hang up. More a command than a request. Typical Fred style.
I moved swiftly back into the bed and pulled the covers over my head. It was a chilly morning in Kireka. I moved closer into Max to share his warmth. I placed my hands in his because his palms were always warm. All this activity woke him up too eventually.
“Should I get you the black duvet?” he asked as he shifted towards me so I was in his full embrace. He stroked my arm slowly with his hand and stimulated a little heat within my body.
“No… No it’s okay,” I replied as I found a comfortable spot in his arms.
“Ha-ha okay,” he said. “So you’re going to the pharmacy?”
“Yup,” I said with my eyes closed, willing my mind to continue the dream that had been rudely interrupted earlier.
He stroked my hand more deliberately in slow circular motions. I was desperate for thirty more minutes of sleep but at this point I was certain I wouldn’t any. I could as well make good use of the extra time. I took my left hand from across his waist to his crotch and stroked him too. He responded instantly and placed his lips on mine. I quickly forgot about the cold and the pharmacy and climbed on top of him, kissing his lips and his neck with purpose. In one swift motion he rolled on top of me and I knotted my legs around his back. It wasn’t long before he was inside me and we were moving to the same rhythm. I held onto him and we stayed this way, breathing, sweating, thinking or not thinking, together. Still. Perfection. We both said nothing, but our silence was loud. I eventually let him out of my chokehold and got out of bed.
Saturday mornings were always a good time to sell medicine. Many people used this time to fill out prescriptions and seek redemption from the activities of the previous night. Brian was already agitated by the wait when I got to the pharmacy. I barely had both feet in the door when he sped past me.
“Hi,” he said. “So, there’s 34k so far, it’s in the book. Rose has gone to get breakfast. I’ll be back around one.”
“Wait…” I called out as he moved past me “Fred said eleven. I have things to do.”
“Yeah, but you know Ranesh. Guy is slow,” he said as he sat on the Boda-boda that was waiting for him.
I moved to the cashier’s desk and skimmed through the sales book to catch up on that morning’s activities. Almost all the sales were of Postinor 2, typical of a Saturday morning. I checked through the previous evening’s sales and comments. Everything was in place. That made me happy. I liked working with Brian because I knew he appreciated orderliness and proper bookkeeping as much as I did. And I appreciated proper book keeping as much as Fred did. That is what kept the engine oiled. We all appreciated each other.
Brian was in his second year of Pharmacy at Makerere University when I first met him. He had an eagerness about him that made me like him instantly. When he spoke, his deep voice caught me off guard as it contrasted his short and small frame. He couldn’t have been more than five feet four inches tall. He was enrolled in the day programme and as a personal rule, did not attend to lectures on Friday. This worked perfectly for me. I wanted a working arrangement where I could
leave at five p.m. every day and not have to work weekends. He and I became fast friends. I taught him about our bookkeeping system, which involved a book, pen and drawer keys. Soon, I learnt all about his desire to be a general surgeon but circumstances had forced him to pursue a diploma in Nursing and Midwifery from the Hoima School of Nursing, immediately after his O’level education, a profession he considered ill-fitting for a man. He had worked as a Nursing Assistant for a project by the World Food Programme in the Bidi-Bidi refugee settlement for seven months before being accepted into Makerere University to pursue Pharmacy, on a district Quota scholarship. He intended to read medicine after getting his degree in Pharmacy in three years. For now, he saved all his money stringently so he could raise tuition in the event that he couldn’t get a scholarship for medical school.
Brain’s tenacity and hard work endeared me to him and often led me to question my purpose in life. Here was a man who knew exactly what he wanted and he was going to get it despite the many limitations. Here I was, two degrees after my name with no sense of direction whatsoever. I knew my ideal job but it just wasn’t showing up, despite the applications that I had sent all over Kampala. Desperation had once sent me to an audit firm, whose pre-entry aptitude interview I failed so miserably, like the seven others before it. The Public Service Commission could attract one million applications, mine inclusive, only for the job to be handed over to the son of a Member of Parliament for a district that hasn’t been around long enough for everyone to remember its name. That’s just how the system worked and if I had hoped to drive the Lexus or dine at the Seven Hills before heading back to my fully furnished apartment I would own in Naalya, I had to work the system. I was having tough luck though and my ego was still recovering from the last interview I had failed. Now I’d been working a dead end job with no prospects for eight months.
Rose cut through my thoughts when she walked in with that infuriating drag of her shoes.
“Kenny, you’re here!” she said.
“Yeah. Brian had to go to Kikuubo,” I said.
“Yeah, he told me. Kyoka Fred. Bambi he called you all the way from Kajjansi… I could have kept the money for Brian,” she said with a thick accent that was associated with people from Masaka.
I ignored her. Rose didn’t stop talking once anyone paid her any attention and she was a notorious gossip. We all agreed that she wasn’t one to have a private conversation with, it was bound to be recounted to whomever cared to listen.
“Kati, what were you going to do today?” she asked, placing her chapatti and omelette roll
– rolex — on the counter and filing her mug with hot water from the dispenser.
Brian had once joked that she ate more than she sold medicine at Rubbies. She had once heard Fred call me “Kenny”, a name few close friends called me. She took to calling me Kenny too, which irked me so much. She was taking my moniker into the mainstream. Besides, it just sounded off when she said it. Not even Max called me Kenny.
“I don’t know,” I answered. I honestly did not. If it’d been an ordinary Saturday, I would have stayed in with Max till late in the evening. We would go for a run and come back home to catch up on a series. But now that we had pending conversations, being here was probably more entertaining.
“Hmmm Kyoka Kenny…” she said as she slurped her tea and sat back behind the counter.
I was saved from the impending one sided conversation by the customer that walked in at that exact moment.
***Please come back to read PART TWO***
And remember to click the ❤ if you liked this story!
