Petals of Blood by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Moses Isegawa Page B

their anger. They were now beating to make me cry. At last I screamed for help. I cried: you are people of God: have you no mercy? They now stopped. I continued crying bitterly. I silently cursed at this world. I could not see that I had done anything wrong. I did not feel guilty. When they warned me never to be seen with pagan boys — I don’t know — I felt then that they were beating me not just because I was with a boy but because he came from a family even poorer than ours. I also felt that the way they beat me – it was as if they were working out something between them. I had known that my father and mother were drifting apart because of something else that had happened almost at the beginning of the emergency. I also knew that my father was facing hard times. But I resented that they should use me as a path for their coming together. That time, they whispered long into the night.
    ‘For days and weeks I planned vengeance. My parents had often beaten me, but it was the first time I was so rebellious in my thoughts. How could I get my own back? Was it a sin to be poor? We ourselveswere not rich: were we sinners? Was it a sin even not to be a Christian? At the same time I hated the young man who had been the cause of my suffering. I nursed the pain in my soul. I am a hard woman and I know I can carry things inside my heart for a long time. I wanted to find something that would really hurt them and humiliate them as they had done to me. But I was young, the pain faded and thoughts of vengeance were buried by the call of daily living. But I also knew that since that night I, my home, school, the world, nothing was any longer the same. I was aware of a growing impatience with the school and learning: it was as if these were keeping me from a world, a more interesting world beyond the school and the village. Out there, there was life. This was also the years preceding independence when there was a lot of talk of how different life would be . . . Aah, you see how I talk as if all this was ages ago. Yet only a few years . . . Yes, a few years.
    ‘At about this time a certain man came and bought a plot very near our home, and he put up a stone building with a huge iron tank for catching rainwater. He was married, with two girls. His example was soon followed by others, but his remained the best known for setting the trend. It was also seen as a sign of things to come. Maybe, soon, after independence, everyone would have at least a corrugated-iron roofed house and a tank in which they would catch rainwater. He was also the proud owner of a small lorry and a bus. We did not know where he had come from, but he was probably the first such big man in our village in the last years of the emergency, you know, when Africans started acquiring businesses. He was so different from my father: he was tall and strong and wealthy and envied and respected by every one. I was drawn to him from the very first time I saw him in his bus acting as a conductor. He did not charge me any fare the second time, saying you are the daughter of so and so, and of course I felt good that he knew me. He came home once or twice and my father, whose fortune had declined over the years, was so proud I felt ashamed. He became friends with my father and he soon became a frequent visitor at home. During Christmas he brought us all gifts. He gave me a floral dress and called me his daughter and I looked, or thought I looked, like a cousin of mine who had gone to the city along time back. Later he gave me a lift in his lorry and took me to an afternoon film show at the Royal Cinema in the city. School could never thereafter be the same. Whenever he came to visit us, I would deliberately go to bed early as if I was shy of company. But his visit was always a sign between us that he wanted to see me the following afternoon. I would put the floral dress into my bag with books on top. In the city I would go to a latrine and change into the floral dress and