Tropical fish

African American Review, Winter, 2003 by Doreen Baingana

Peter always plopped down heavily on top of me after he came, breathing short and fast, as if he had just swum across Lake Victoria. My worry that he was dying was quickly dispelled by his deep snores, moments after he rolled off me. I was left wondering exactly what I was doing there, in the middle of the night, next to a snoring white man. And why was it that men fell asleep so easily, so deeply, after huffing and puffing over you? There I was, awake, alone with my thoughts, loud-in-my-head and never ending, like a ghost train. Sex was like school, something I just did. I mean, of course I wanted to. I took myself there, no one forced me.

Peter was pink actually, not white, except for his hair, what was left of it. It had suddenly turned color from the stress of his first rough years in Uganda trying to start his fish-export business. He was only thirty-five, but to me at twenty, that was ancient. When naked, though, he looked fourteen. He had an adolescent plumpness, a soft body, almost effeminate, with pale saggy legs. His skin felt just like mine. We met through Zac, a campus friend who also worked for Peter's company. Peter exported tropical fish bought from all over the country: Lake Victoria, Albert, Kyoga, and River Nile. He paid next to nothing to the local fishermen, then sent the fish in tank loads to Britain for pet shops. Very good profits.

Zac and I were both at Makerere University, what used to be called "the Harvard of Africa," south of the Sahara, not counting South Africa, which didn't leave much else. But that was back in the Sixties, before Big Daddy, Idi Amin, tried to kill off as many professors as he could. Most ran into exile, and the "economic war" did the rest of the damage. But we didn't complain, we were lucky to be there.

I was drinking Waragi in Zac's room when Peter came in one evening. I liked Zac because he knew he wasn't going to become some big shot in life and so didn't even try. Apparently he supplied Peter with ganja. Because of my lifelong training to catch a suitable mate, when Peter walked in I found myself immediately turning on the sweet, simpering self I preserve for men. I recede into myself, behind an automatic, plastic-doll smile. Peter looked amused by the crabby room. He looked around like a wide-eyed tourist at the cracked and peeling paint, the single bare bulb, a tattered poster of Bob Marley on the wall, the long line of dogearred Penguin Classics leaning sideways on Zac's desk, the untidy piles of handwritten class notes. Zac was finishing his B.A. in literature.

Zac got off his chair quickly and offered it to Peter. "Hey, man." Zac had convinced himself he was black American. We laughed at the nasal way he talked, the slang from videos, his crippled-leopard swagger, especially for someone so short. I kept telling him, "Give up, Zac, no one's impressed," but that was his way.

Peter refused the chair and gingerly settled onto Zac's single bed, which was covered with a thin brown blanket. The muzungu wanted to do the slumming right. I was sitting at the other end of the bed. Its tired springs creaked and created a deep hole in the middle as he sat down. I felt myself leaning over as if to fall into the hole, too close to Peter, into his warm personal space. I shifted away and sat up on the pillow, pulling my legs up into me. Did he think I didn't want to sit too close to him, a white man? There was a short, uncomfortable silence. But with the two men there, I didn't have to start the conversation.

Zac said, "How about a drink, man? Peter, meet Christine, the beautifulest chick on campus." He was trying to be suave, but it sounded more like mockery. I smiled like a fool.

Peter turned and smiled back at me. "Nice to meet you, Christine." No teeth showed, only the small, gray shadow of his mouth. I put a limp hand into his outstretched one. He squeezed it hard, like a punishment. His skin was hot. I murmured something back, still smiling about nothing, then took a large swallow from my drink, keeping my face in the glass.

Zac reached into a small dark cupboard. Inside were two red, oily-looking plastic plates, a green plastic mug, a dusty glass with two or three spoons and forks in it, a tin of salt, and another of Kimbo cooking fat. He took out the glass, removed the spoons and blew into it. With his finger, he rubbed off a dead insect's wing stuck to the inside. "I've got to wash this. I'll be right back," and he left me alone in the tiny, shadowless room, with Peter. It was my first time alone with a white person. There was a nervous, bare-bulbed silence.

With an obvious smirk, Peter turned to look around the shabby one-desk, one-chair, one-bed room. I wished I could open the window and let in the coolness of the night. But I didn't want to move, and mosquitoes would quickly drone in. It was raining lightly outside, pitter-patter on the glass, which made the small square lights of the next hall shimmer like a black and yellow curtain, far away and inaccessible. Whisks of white hair at the back of Peter's head stuck out unevenly over his collar. The light's shine moved over the bare, pink hilltop of his head as he turned to me.