After noon delight.(Written as I waited for a client-so shut up..22 minutes byatch)
The backseat was awfully quiet. Joseph just wasn’t talking anymore, which was strange because he almost never shut up. Now he was just staring out at the road and the old buildings that seemed emphasize just how sad he felt. Bombo road would forever be etched in his mind. He felt very sick, but he wasn’t sad because he felt ill. He was sad because of what had happened just a few minutes before.
His mother was rushing him home so she could get off back to work. Or at least that’s what he thought. She was in fact rushing him home but she wasn’t going to go to work; she had some other place to go that he always heard her mention before. The club. Joseph had always wanted to ask to be taken to the club, but he knew he’d never be taken there. He was lucky to get taken anywhere outside of home anyway. He’d managed to get a deal with his mother. She would come home at lunch time to eat and he’d have put on his shoes and his best socks, not caring if they belonged to the same pair, as long as they were clean. He’d be ready to go with her. He hated being at home. He hated being behind the high walls and high gate; Hated being the child in a house hold of adults.
He knew great things happened outside of the walls and he knew they happened in the afternoon. That’s why Mildred, the ogre of a housemaid always forced him to go to bed in the afternoon with some story about it being good for him and how it would help him grow. But it had been a whole month and he hadn’t grown an inch. This was just a lie. Like the one his father had told him about the rat that gave money to anyone that had lost a tooth. All he had now was mapengo and not a shilling to his name. The rat was as stingy as his dad for some reason. The rat paid the same for his brother’s one tooth as he had for Joseph’s two! The rat was also huge..and had a bald head much like his father’s. He had only seen the rat move in the dark , but he couldn’t help but wonder how his dad could be a rat.”Adults are silly”, he thought to himself.
He could feel that the afternoon was going to be another long one, glorious and bright with the Kampala sun shining down on everyone. This was the perfect time to go run around. He could hear the neighbors laughing. He had never seen the children next door but he envied them. They always seemed to be happy and laughing, and apparently they would never grow up because they never rested in the afternoon. Maybe they had the right idea.
Though he thought these things all the time, he knew he had no choice but to obey. Mildred had beaten him once before with her Umoja and when he went ot tell his father, he simply told him that if he just listened to what he was told he wouldn’t get beaten. No matter how much he tried to explain that he had been beaten just because he asked why Mildred had friends over , eating the left overs and drinking soda, his dad wouldn’t even look up from the newspaper. Dad never listened to Joseph.
One afternoon though Mum was in a good mood and saw joseph staring out of the window. “Bwojo,what are you looking at?” She asked him softly. He didn’t reply. He just picked up her keys and smiled. She laughed. “You want to drive? Eh, but at this age will you manage? Last week you fell off your bike four times. If you drove the car, you’d crash ten times I think”. His mum laughed loudly at her own joke and looked over at Mildred who was just clearing up the plates who feigned a smile.
“I want to go in the car. I want to go. “He pouted
“And where do you want to go?”
“With you mummy. Go and see a computer. “He always spoke babyish, a tad below his 7 years when he wanted something from his mother. “I’ll even wear shoes”
“Ah, but Mummy has to work Bwojo. I can’t take you to office. It’s for grown people. “
“I can do work” Joseph said in reply.
“You’re not big enough. That’s why you must sleep in the afternoon so one day you can be big enough to go to work.”
Joseph looked sad. Well, as sad as a face void of wrinkles could look. His face looking like he’d burst into tears at any moment.
“Come Jo. Time to sleep”, he heard Mildred say from the kitchen. She came and pulled his arm just slightly and directed him towards the bedroom. He tried to resist a little but he knew he’d be caned if he tried to put up too much of a fight.
“Okay Bwojo. Come and I take you at least to the gate. How’s that? You get to be in the car with mommy for a while. “. Joseph took the deal with a grin. It was a small consolation. But anything to put off that horrible nap time. He put on his slippers and walked with his mother out to the car and immediately sat in the back seat. The car engine started and they drove slowly up the long Murram drive way from the front of the house to the big gate. It lasted about a minute. It was glorious.
The one minute drives to the gate every after lunch had become a norm every holiday when Joseph was home from school. Joseph would lie on the back seat and look up at the roof of the car and then out the window and he’d see just the tops of trees, the water tank near the gate and the sky. He loved it.
Today was no exception. After eating his cassava, he quickly went and got his slippers and headed to the car. He waited for his mother to come and give him a ride. He lay down flat on the backseat and looked up out the window of the car. It was nice and bright outside. He was full and at least felt that this afternoon, with the heat and his now heavy eyes, he’d actually sleep.
To be continued
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