red and green

Posted: February 27, 2010 | Author: lalisonstewart | Filed under: Uncategorized | 11 Comments »

I’m pretty sure Kate’s father put her up to it.  Sent his shy, quiet daughter to approach the mzungu [me] and ask her for money.  Since the time Kate made her bashful request, and I fumbled for the words to say no (just say NO, Laura —- you can do it!  you can do it!) we have become friends.  Whenever I round the last bend on my walk home, I find her waiting.  She stands and looks out over the hills, at the city blanketed in smog and the dust.    ”Kate,” I say, and she turns and smiles.  Looks at me with those quiet, warm, dark, beguiling eyes.  And we talk awhile, red mud sucking at our feet, wild dogs watching from a distance.

“How is today?”

“Today is fine.”

Last week, I found her trembling.  Her neighbors’ house had burned to the ground, and her now her little friends are left destitute.  They had to leave, move back to the village.

“You can cry,” I said.

“I cannot,” she said, swallowing sobs, drawing herself up.   “They told us not to talk about it.  They told us not to cry.”

While I talk to Kate, Judith, my second little friend, inevitably comes clattering down the hill.  When Judith sees me coming home after work, she flies down, shoelaces untied, making clicking sounds with her tongue.  If Kate is all eyes, Judith is all mouth.  You hear her before you see her.  As she talks, she chomps that formidable and beautiful set of white, straight teeth, her lips whirring like some unstoppable mechanical toy’s.

Judith’s hands, like her mouth, are always in motion.  Sometimes, her hands are like whizzing knives.  They slice the air.  Sometimes, they are like birds.  They flutter and swoop.   Anyway, Judith tires me out.  She makes me want to take a nap and not get up for a very long time.  Sometimes, when I’m with her, I feel breathless and compressed, like  I’ve been run over by a bus.   But oh, I love me some Judith.

Kirsten, my wonderful roommate, and I had Judith for tea last week.  Kate was supposed to come, too, but she got sick.

So just Judith came.  She arrived an hour late, plopped herself down on our lawn and proceeded to talk our ears off.  I have never known such a girl.  I could never dream her up.

“My heart was what, my heart was banging,” Judith said.  She smacks her chest with her palms.  Judith frequently employs this Ugandan storytelling device of asking questions mid-sentence.  This technique increases suspense, and compounds my confusion as I try to keep up with her mile-a-minute chatter.  ”My heart was what?  banging as I stood before your big, black gate.”

“Why?” I asked, puzzled.

“The children said what, the children said you would not really have me for tea.  And your dogs, your dogs, I feared.”

“Ah,” I said stupidly.  ”Well, you don’t have to fear.  and of course you can come for tea”

She smiled, charmingly, teeth flashing.  The first pause she’d allowed for a long time.  Then, all of a sudden, she darted forward.  I very nearly jumped, and then gaped at her in fascination.  Judith was  pouring sugar, straight-up from the sugar bowl, directly into her tea.   After having ignored the food in favor of talking for nearly an hour, Judith had quickly, almost violently, snatched up one of each cookie, then shoved one in her mouth.  Kirsten and I exchanged bemused glances.  Earlier, Judith had declared to us that she did not like sugar.

I felt quite guilty that I would be sending Judith home to her mother even more riled up than normal.

“My favorite color is green; why?” she went on between mouthfuls.  She did not wait for an answer.  ”Because green is everywhere, everywhere you see.  So much –” here now, her hands are wide, fingers taut.  The hands shake.  Jazz hands!  ”of Africa is what, is green.”  Apple juice glistened around her mouth; a small shower of crumbs fell on her lap.  ”Both boys and girls can what, they can like green.”  She took a swig of juice.  Bats her eyelashes.  ”Green is best.”

(You have to imagine a small girl saying ‘best’ the octave above ‘green is.’  Luganda is a tonal language, and speakers carry that dramatic inflection on over to English.’

The next day, I walk home after work.  I find Kate and Judith waiting for me.  Kate says she was sick and she’s sorry she couldn’t come.  I am curious about her favorite color, and ask her what it is.  Judith interrupts to tell me she likes green, because green is everywhere, how can you not like, what, how can you not like green, you would be what, a fool, to not like green.

Then Kate says that red is her favorite.”  ”When I wear red, you can see me from far away.  You can see me, among many, and you can find me.”  She looks down at the ground.   “There is not much red here.   I love some red in my life.”

I am touched by Kate’s eloquence, her love for what is rare and precious, as well as her longing to be seen.  She is so unlike friendly, loud, clumsy Judith, who dominates, and whose internal monologue comes bursting forward like a spilled purse.  Kate is quiet and has many, oh so many things, she could say.  [See Sonnet 23 by Shakespeare]

Just then, a large Ugandan man wearing very tight spandex comes huffing along the path.  He exhales mightily — woosh - and strains to push a bicycle up the steep hill where I live.  His large backside stretches and gleams in the bright sun.

Judith takes one look at this man, then erupts  with laughter.  She literally spins around in her glee.  She is howling.  She is rolling in the grass.  Kate giggles too, eyes squinched.

“Judith!  Kate!” I admonish, looking anxiously at the poor man who can certainly hear us mocking his choice of sportswear.  But then the girls’ delighted howls begin to work on me.  And I find myself laughing too, even wiping tears from my eyes.

“Those shorts, they do what?  They catch your bums,” Judith says.

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