Paint it Black
By Majini Ya Mombasa
Photo by Kadesa
We were in the middle of our biology lesson when the school bell rang at 10.20 a.m., a few minutes before our usual tea break. When the first few bell peals echoed through the class corridors, we laughed thinking that the bell ringer had gotten her time mixed up.
But, as the bell continued to roll on, anxiety rose in our chests. The ringing was chaotic rather than melodic. There could only be one reason, and that Monday, we feared that an emergency assembly had befallen us.
Madam Akumu stared blankly at the doorway. Her face was awash with confusion, like ours. “Are we in trouble Madam?” A feeble voice came from the back of the class, causing Madam Akumu’s gaze to break.
“Close your books and head to the assembly ground. I guess we will all find out once we get there,” she said as she hurriedly walked out.
The assembly ground was an earth symphony of rich and sweet browns, expanding a few meters from the staffroom doorway. As we gathered, we talked, and in the vibrations of our voices were hushed tones woven together trying to figure out what was going on.
Suddenly, a silence fell when the headmistress appeared from around the corner of the staffroom. She was followed closely behind by the head girl who carried a small bundle of cypress canes in her small arms.
We saw as soon as she appeared, that she was boiling in anger. There was a tension in her manner, a tightness in her face and every step she made was as if she got some clock ticking in her head, perhaps the countdown to her next explosion.
“Good morning headmist…” we began to greet her, in barely audible voices, just as we had been taught during our school orientation.
She raised her hand and cut us short. “Tut-tut-tut!” she hissed. “There’s nothing good about this morning, nothing!” Her large marble-shaped eyes held an icy hostile stare that had the same affect on us as it did on teachers, constricted and shallow breathing.
“Two nights ago, the teacher on duty saw two students kissing behind the library,” she continued as saliva frothed at the corners of her mouth.
“I couldn’t believe my ears when he reported to me this morning. Lesbianism in Ugenya Girls Boarding School, God forbid! Some of you want to turn this godly school into Sodom and Gomorrah. Lesbianism is a sin, a grave sin punishable by death! The Bible in Leviticus Chapter…”
I did not hear the rest of the sermon as a silence fell on my soul. I felt the chill in my blood, the coldness bringing my brain to a stand still. This was it, I had been caught.
I lost my balance and stumbled on a huge rock behind me. I turned back and looked at it. If only the rock behind me could hide me. “Please hide me rock,” I silently whispered in my heart. But the rock sat there still and seemed to tell me like it told the sinnerman in the Bible, “I can’t hide you, I ain’t gonna hide you here.”
I held my hand to my burning forehead. Then like a slow falling hammer a new thought came. “My parents! What would they do if they found out I had kissed a girl?” There were so many ways my life would go awry.
When the images of my parents flooded my mind, I swallowed hard, trying to get my forehead to remain dry and my mind focused. I did not want anyone to see how shook I was and it was for me to keep my own thoughts and fears away from their prying eyes. Still I stood frozen.
“Beryl Adhiambo, come to the front immediately!” The headmistress’ voice snapped me back. Beryl stepped out of the small crowd and slowly walked close to where the headmistress stood.
“Kneel down!” The headmistress shouted angrily. She knelt upon the ground facing in our direction, with her head bowed. “Who is the other girl you were frolicking with?”
When she wouldn’t answer, the headmistress seethed, took a cane from the bundle and flogged Beryl across her back. When the fifth stick tore her blouse and cut into her skin, Beryl’s scream rented the air. The scream told of pain, an agony that seeped into my skin. I took it in, and when my face almost fell barely able to hold the tears threatening to burst forth, I held my head up and stayed right there to be with her.
Beryl’s chin rose and she looked directly at me. I thought it would be a matter of seconds before she was forced to confess my name. I took a step forward, but she shook her head signaling me to stop. Then she murmured something.
“Two nights ago, the teacher on duty saw two students kissing behind the library,”
“Speak up!” the headmistress roared.
“You cannot own what you cannot touch or see, and none can see the soul. Whilst you can break this skin, cut until blood runs thick, I am not yours. Do you think the wind only blows for you? That the sun shines only for you? All you are is a bigot, a tyrant under the eyes of God and I’d rather be me than you – a human snake with narrowed eyes and forked tongue. The bitter irony is that you will have to make amends and your sins are many. So, do your worst. I will not tell you her name.”
“Sasa,” Beryl greeted me when we first met in the dining hall, three months ago. It’s the first word I remember about her, and I can still hear it today. Sasa
As Beryl continued to cry from the beating, I shut my eyes, said the word and I was back to that sunny Tuesday afternoon when she walked up to me.
That afternoon, I was trying to balance a tray filled with nyoyo, a pile of plates, a serving spoon and a jug of water in my arms. Beryl came out of the kitchen laughing loudly with one of the cooks and almost bumped into me. “Sorry,” she said and walked hurriedly past me as if she had somewhere urgent to be.
I watched as she strutted across the tables headed towards the door. She slipped her hands into the pockets of her skirt, and then shortly after, stopped. She seemed to have misplaced something important from the way she frantically searched all the pockets in her skirt and the one on her blouse.
She turned, walked a few steps back and picked a five hundred shilling note from the ground, a stone throw distance from where I stood. She looked up and saw me staring at her, and it was at that moment that she walked up to me.
“Sasa” she said, stretched out her hands and took the tray of food from my hands. “My name is Beryl…Beryl Adhiambo. I am the dining hall prefect. You?”
“Sasa“. The word, the voice, the smile.
Such a common word, but I’d never heard anyone say it the way she did. The spark may have lit right there and then. It felt as if space and time became the finest point imaginable, as if time collapsed into one tiny speck and exploded at light speed.
“Cynthia,” I softly stammered.
A soft giggle escaped her lips. It was more delicate than a wind-chime but just as chaotic and melodic. “Nice to meet you Cynthia with one name,” she teased. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to help you. Where’s your table?”
Maybe the spark lit over the next few days when she’d pass by my table during lunch time and ask how I was doing.
“You cannot own what you cannot touch or see, and none can see the soul. Whilst you can break this skin, cut until blood runs thick, I am not yours. Do you think the wind only blows for you? That the sun shines only for you? All you are is a bigot, a tyrant under the eyes of God and I’d rather be me than you – a human snake with narrowed eyes and forked tongue.”
Or perhaps it lit that Friday evening when I found her waiting for me in front of my cubicle. When it dawned on me that I was drawn to her mahogany-brown eyes that shone brightly.
The day Mr. Odhiambo, the teacher on duty, saw us kissing was a Saturday. We had just resumed our seven to nine evening preps when I found a lime green sticky note on my desk. It read:
My lovely Cynthia with one name, I passed by your table today at lunch and didn’t see you. And although it shouldn’t have, I found my mind aching for you, for the rest of the afternoon. Please come and meet me tonight when the preps end. Everyone will be hurrying for entertainment night and the teacher on duty will already have left by then. I overheard the teachers talking about a football match in the staffroom.
I’ll be waiting for you behind the library.
~Beryl
Beryl was expelled from school that Monday morning after calling the headmistress a forked-tongue human snake. Two days later, her parents came to pick her up from school.
During the two days, she was forbidden from speaking to anyone. The headmistress ordered that she be isolated at the old sanatorium building that had been vacated a few months ago due to an infestation of rats. No one was allowed to see her except for the school matron who brought her food.
The day she left school, I excused myself from class and lied that I wasn’t feeling well. I hoped to see her one last time before she left. But, by the time Madam Akumu let me go, Beryl and her parents had already left. The only thing left of her was the scent of her perfume still lingering in the air.
Later that day, when dusk fell, Madam Akumu came to see me in the dormitory. I pretended to be heavily asleep under the bed covers when I heard her calling my name.
She walked up to my bed and lifted the covers. “I know you are not asleep,” she whispered. “Come with me,” she said but this time a bit louder.
She took me to the staffroom. It was empty. The other teachers must have left early. “Have a seat,” she said pointing to a wooden chair that was near her station. She handed me a plate of ugali and meat and sat across from me.
We sat knee deep in silence. I was unable to look at her, my foot tapping up and down like some dumb wind up toy. I took a bite of a piece of meat she served me but it tasted like cardboard. My mouth felt dryer than a sandbox and no amount of chewing made it possible to swallow.
“How long have you two been together?”
I kept my head down and watched as the meat on the plate before me floated in a lake of soup. I ran my finger around the edges of the plate as I thought of whether to answer her or not.
The air in the room was so brittle it could snap, and if it didn’t, I suspected I would. “This is a safe space,” she coaxed. “I was once where you are. When I was in form four, I fell in love with a young Kikuyu girl in form three. She was my Beryl.”
Madam Akumu shifted in her seat and took a sip of the water in the glass in her right hand. She cleared her throat and said, “tell me more about your Beryl.”
“How did you know?”
“First, at the assembly ground when Beryl was being beaten. I saw you trying not to fall apart as she cried.”
A short pause ensued before she continued. “Then, in class today, when you claimed to be sick with cramps. You couldn’t fight the tears anymore when I wouldn’t let you out of class because you were yearning to see her. The tears of an aching heart barely holding on. The tears cried beneath what the rest of the world can see, what the eyes miss yet love renders visible.”
I looked up at her. “They locked her inside that terrible place. I can’t imagine what she went through. She is afraid of rats. She must have been scared to death and I couldn’t be there.”
“I would never let that happen to her,” she interjected. “I arranged with the matron to take food to her, sneak her out and bring her to my house. Beryl has been staying there with me until early this morning when I sneaked her back.”
“I don’t understand. Why would the matron do that?”
Clearing her throat for the second time, she said, “remember the girl I told you about, it’s the matron. We went to the same boarding high school. When our relationship was discovered, we were both expelled. My parents transferred me to a local school close to home. I enrolled in a teaching college and when I was there, I searched for her. When I found out she was working here, I knew I had to see her. So, I applied to be posted to this school seven years ago, and we’ve been together since then.”
I pictured her and the matron back in high school. I wondered what they looked like in uniform. As I smiled at the thought of them, I reached out for something in the left pocket of my skirt. It was a photograph of Beryl and me.
“This is a safe space,” she coaxed. “I was once where you are. When I was in form four, I fell in love with a young Kikuyu girl in form three. She was my Beryl.”
“We took that when we went to the National Music Festivals last month,” I said as I showed her the picture. “She told me I’d be taken care of if something ever happened. I guess she was talking about you.”
Madam Akumu stared at the picture and a smile pursed her lips. “You both look beautiful,” she said and gave me back the photograph.
“It’s not just me. There are people I want you to meet,” she continued and stood up from her table. She called out, “come in girls.”
A group of around twenty girls walked in led by the head girl. A few faces were familiar but most of them were girls I had never talked to. Each of them introduced themselves and then stood in pairs.
“I don’t understand,” I stammered. That is when the head girl explained. She, Beryl and Madam Akumu had created a small circle of lesbians who knew each other and kept in touch. They wrote to each other via discreet letters and often met at the staffroom when other teachers were not around.
“Beryl taught us to paint our little pinky fingers black and that’s how we’ve been able to know each other,” she further elaborated.
Her girlfriend took over from her. “We take care and watch out for each other. Personally, I deliver love notes and letters, like I did yours. You can call me the post woman,” she smiled and everyone laughed.
“Keep it down,” Madam Akumu warned and stepped out of the door to see if anyone was coming.
The tears in my soul flowed to my eyes and the other girls rushed forward to embrace me. “We got you, you’re home,” Mercy, the head girl said.
