Translation Tuesday: The Garden of Tomatoes by Esther Karin Mngodo

Tuntufye placed the index finger of his left hand on the table in front of him so it mimicked the second hand of the clock on the wall. Departing for her trip, Atuganile had promised that she’d be back by Saturday at nine. It was now eight minutes to 9am. He wasn’t worried that something bad had happened to her—not in the least. He was well aware that if there were some shrewd, intelligent women there in Isyesye, Atuganile was one of them. She was a known quantity, especially in Uyole, where she vended fruits and vegetables. But it wasn’t like her to be late.

When it reached nine on the dot, Tuntufye stood up and went outside through the door in the living room. He leaned against one of the white, exterior pillars, keeping his eyes peeled for Atuganile. When he saw her, he grinned. She was striding forward like a champion athlete, her kanga coming undone and starting to fall down as she ran. Colonnades of trees to Atuganile’s left and to her right framed the scene of her arrival. Their branches swayed in the wind like giant claws—as if to swipe at her and sneer, today, Atu, you’re going to get it.

Once she’d drawn close, Atuganile set down the load she’d been carrying on her head and began explaining the reasons for her delay. “Forgive me, my husband. Forgive me, Baba,” she gasped. “The bus broke down. I had to hop aboard a different one. You know how difficult transportation can be here in Mbeya. Forgive me, Baba, for being late.”

Her husband said nothing. He jutted his lip forward, returned to the kitchen, sat down at the table and poured himself another cup of tea. Then he took his Bible and began reading. Atuganile sat with him and started sorting kisamvu, separating the good greens from the bad. In the middle of sorting, she picked up a sheet of Isyesye Oye!, the newspaper that had been used to wrap the cassava leaves. Alert: Blood Drinker on the Loose in Isyeye, the headline warned. Atuganile read on:

An individual in Isyesye is being sought by police for abducting children younger than twelve. According to the information available, five children have now disappeared as a result of coming into contact with the suspect, who is said to be a drinker of blood. Parents are advised to keep close watch over their children, and see that they don’t roam about after dark.

The newspaper described the child of one woman, known as Mama Samweli, who’d been missing for five days. When Mama Samweli went for a consultation with a local healer, the mganga advised her not to bother searching—her child had already had the life sucked out of them. When news of the blood drinker reached the Regional Police Chief, he stated that the government does not officially recognize witchcraft, so he was unable to comment on the rumor any further. But he assured the citizenry that efforts were ongoing to locate Samweli, along with the other four children who had gone missing over the past five months.

A shiver ran through Atuganile’s body. Her eyes bulged. When she glanced up, her husband was still reading his Bible. Then and there she began calling the names of her children: “Neema.” Silence. “Gama.” Silence. “Amani.” Silence. She went into and inspected every room in the house. “Where are the children, Baba Neema?” she asked her husband, who didn’t respond. Atuganile tried again. “Maybe they’ve gone out to play?”

Tuntufye read aloud a passage from the Bible. “According to the scripture: And a man who commits adultery with another man’s wife—naam—a man who commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.”

“You’re saying this to me? What are you saying, exactly?” Atuganile was as angry as she was stunned.

Tuntufye looked his wife in the eye. “Leviticus 10:20. The word of the Lord,” he said. He got up, went to the living room and broke into a song of worship.

***

Tuntufye wasn’t always like this. In the beginning, he’d been much more playful, and in his younger days his charm had enabled him to attract a lot of women. He was well educated, a graduate of Sokoine University in Morogoro. After college he found employment as an agricultural officer. Even though he was desired by many, Tuntufye only had eyes for Atuganile. They courted while attending the same church. They decided to wait two years after they married before having children.

Tuntufye was completely devoted to Atuganile. She was his entire world. When she woke in the night, she sometimes found him gazing over at her. Caught staring, he’d explain, “I’m sorry, my wife, but it’s your fault for being so beautiful.” It made Atuganile both smile and blush.

All the time, Tuntufye could be heard boasting of what he was going to do on his wife’s behalf. He was going to build a new house for her, and he did. He wanted them to have a farm, and made it so. Not a small farm, either. Through his work as an agricultural officer, he put on training after training at their property, and was able to increase their income substantially. Theirs was the best-run agricultural facility in all of Isyesye. God had blessed their existence. And He had granted them three children: Neema, who was now ten; Gama, who was six; and Amani, who was four. Just outside their house was a small garden that the children helped to maintain, filled with fruits and vegetables.

Before having children, it was nothing unusual for Tuntufye to spend a full hour pleasuring his wife before he headed off to work in the morning. Not only that— Atuganile knew her husband had to come home in the middle of each workday, for his “lunch.”

“I’m here for my chakula cha mchana,” he would announce with glee.

“My husband,” Atuganile would laugh. “You’re going to get yourself fired. Shut the door.”

“Don’t jinx me!” Tuntufye would respond. “You know how jealous my coworkers are of the meal I get here at home. Your ugali is so delicious—different than the same old succotash they eat day after day.”

“Come and get your ugali,” Atuganile would instruct, throwing herself into her husband’s arms while laughing bashfully but freely—like an msichana whose body had just ripened to maturity.

***

Things began to change when Tuntufye’s mother—Bibi Mwasakyeni—came for a long visit. Two years had passed since Tuntufye and Atuganile had married, and the moment Tuntufye’s mother arrived, the trouble began. Nothing her daughter-in-law did was without errors, be it in the kitchen, with her laundry or in the realm of personal hygiene. She even commented on their sex life. “When are you going to give me some grandchildren?” she pressed Atuganile.

The way she ruled over the domestic affairs, you would’ve thought she was the woman of the house. The afternoon “chakula” shared by Tuntufye and his wife came to an abrupt end.

One day, Atuganile returned from her errands and found a female visitor seated out on the verandah with her mother-in-law. Atuganile greeted them then went inside without being introduced. That evening, her mother-in-law summoned her son and urged him to separate from the woman who had failed to bear him children. Atuganile could hear them talking from the kitchen. She expected her husband to defend their marriage, but Tuntufye kept mum. Atuganile was stung by his silence, shocked by her mother-in-law’s behavior. It was unconscionable, in violation of all possible boundaries.

When her mama mkwe finally left, Atuganile was grateful that the harassment would now come to an end. But her relief was short-lived. While washing her husband’s clothes the next day, she found red lipstick on one of his shirt collars. Atuganile didn’t wear that color. Her marriage had an interloper; the time to fight for its survival had arrived.

***

Before leaving for Chunya, Atuganile had told her housegirl, Evelina, not to come at all while she was away. Evelina returned around two hours after Atuganile, at 11:30am, dressed in a green oversized sweater and black jeans. Her hair was twisted into little Maasai-style braids.

“Ugonile dada,” she greeted Atuganile in a mix of Swahili and Nyakyusa.

“Ugonile,” Atuganile replied.

Tuntufye had gone out.

Together, Atuganile and Evelina tackled the cooking and cleaning. Atuganile spiced and stewed a chicken, accompanying it with ugali and the kisamvu she’d sorted, her husband’s favorite foods. The beans they prepared were for that evening. While laying the table, Atuganile brought up something she’d noticed earlier, before Evelina returned, when she’d been outside doing the dishes. The ground had been dug up, turned over, and there were some tomato starts that hadn’t been there when she’d left for Chunya.

“Who planted the tomatoes in the garden?” she asked Evelina.

“It was me, dada. I did a good job, no?” she answered, eager to be complimented.

Atuganlie shot her a look. “You weren’t at home studying?”

“I just came for a few hours on Thursday afternoon.” Evelina was prepping for her national Form Four exams as a private candidate.

“And kaka?”—your brother—Atuganile asked. “Was he here then, too?”

“Yes,” Evelina said quietly. She noticed the change in Atuganile’s expression and tried to minimize the damage. “I needed his help with my biology review. That’s why I came over,” she said, starting to chuckle as she said it.

For Atuganile, it wasn’t a laughing matter. “You found time to work in the garden and get tutored by kaka? What else did you do with my husband while I was away?” she inquired, voice raised and hands on her hips.

“No, dada, it wasn’t like that,” Evelina groveled. “Please forgive me.”

“Why would you wait until I wasn’t here? That’s what I’m having trouble getting my mind around,” Atuganile yelled.

“It wasn’t like that,” Evelina said again.

“What was it like then? Let me ask you that—what was it like?” Atuganile followed the question with an open-palmed slap. Evelina yelped, a mixture of shock and pain, and stood there rubbing her left cheek.

Just then Tuntufye returned from his work in the fields. “What’s going on? What’s all this ruckus?” he demanded, still dressed in his muck boots. “Why are you crying, Evelina? Mama Neema,” he addressed Atuganile, “for what reason have you hit this child? What is the matter with you?”

“Is she your child?” Atuganile shouted back at her husband. “Let me rephrase—is she your child or is she your woman?”

Tuntufye started to soothe Evelina. “Shush. Don’t cry, Eve.” He offered her a white handkerchief from his pocket.

Atuganile was outraged. “How dare you console her like that right in front of me! Have we truly stooped to this, Baba Neema? I want Evelina gone, this minute.”

Caught in the middle, her husband was pulled toward defending Evelina. “I’m the one who told her to come,” he said. “So there’s no reason for her to leave.”

“What’s that you say? Seriously?” Atuganile was now screaming.

“I was just helping her with some math lessons. Nothing happened,” he said with a little too much confidence.

“Then why did she say you were helping her with biology? Do you dare to deceive me?” Atuganile didn’t stop. “You want to run off with this msichana, is that it?” she said. “Where are my children? Where are my children, Baba Neema? If they’re out playing, why haven’t they come home for lunch?” she pressed. “Or did you send them to their grandmother’s house, like you threatened?”

After Tuntufye denied having sent the children anywhere, a possibility occurred to Evelina. “Dada,” she began, “what about those blood drinkers we keep hearing about? Could they have come for Neema and the others? Maybe we should go to the police and file a report,” Evelina said in the quietest of voices.

No one said anything.

Tuntufye had already made clear that he didn’t believe in such nonsense. Blood drinkers didn’t exist. He was a churchgoer, not someone who put stock in the superstitious. Atuganile didn’t ponder whether something terrible had befallen her children, either. She was convinced Tuntufye had sent them to their grandmother’s house; he had said he was going to do this, even though she’d never agreed to it.

Without warning, Tuntufye turned to another matter altogether. “Maybe your lover came and took our children,” he said. “Is that something that’s occurred to you?”

Atuganile’s voice quaked on the verge of rapture. “Baba Neema,” she began. “Are these really matters to discuss in front of Evelina? It’s been three years since I cut off communication with that man. I’ve begged for your forgiveness. I’ve been to church to confess and repent. But you still go on breaking my heart, don’t you?”

Tuntufye’s response was just as unflinching: “Who, among the two of us, is breaking the other’s heart?” he said, his voice harsh. “Or do you think I’m not aware that you saw him just two weeks ago, in his car?”

Atuganile was stunned. She asked herself how her husband knew she’d met with her former lover again. Stupefied, she sat herself down and played back the conversation she’d had that day in her lover’s car. First, he assured her he hadn’t forgotten her, that he deeply regretted marrying another woman. He proposed they get back together again, but she refused. I can’t, my husband will take away my children, she said while inside the vehicle, wrapped in her lover’s arms. He wanted them to run away together. I’m willing to do anything, he cooed in her ear.

As Atuganile mulled over the conversation, she acknowledged to herself that her former lover could have identified her children as an impediment, then come and snatched them. She recalled the way he became angry, telling her they need not communicate again if they weren’t going to get back together.

***

Tuntufye made a point to let his wife know he’d gotten wind of her rendezvous by way of their son, Amani, who had seen her and her lover, Tuntufye informed her, then came and reported the news to him. Atuganile felt as if something were tightening around her throat. Her mouth was parched. She picked up the bottle of water on the table and drank from it in hurried sips. Then she commanded Evelina to go to her room so she could be alone with her husband.

“She’s fine where she is,” Tuntufye objected. “Leave Evelina be.”

Atuganile bowed her head and drooped down in her chair. She was tired of living like a prisoner in her own home. She was without happiness, without peace. Her husband went and sat across from her, and ordered her to pull off his muck boots. She told Evelina to do it instead, but Tuntufye insisted. He wanted his wife to remove his boots for him.

“My adoring wife, the woman I married, the one who promised she’d stick with me through thick and thin, till death do us part—that’s who I want to remove my boots,” Tuntufye said as he stared at Atuganile. Atuganile stood up slowly and went toward her husband. She got down on her knees and began to remove his rubber boots. Then she retrieved a basin of water and washed his feet. Tuntufye started to sing a song of worship.

Each waited for the other to ask for forgiveness, but neither was brave enough to be the first to apologize. Until stubbornness and arrogance took their leave, both their hearts would go on hurting. Love is neither overconfident nor a braggart. Love knows when to retreat.

Just then, there was a knock at the door. Tuntufye stopped singing and Evelina went and opened it. Before them stood three children. They smelled awful—their bodies were covered in filth and their hands were caked in blood.

Evelina let out a scream.

***

The following day, the papers were plastered with eye-grabbing headlines about what had transpired at the home of the Tuntufye and Atuganile.

Three Specters Spotted in Isyesye

Parents of Missing Children Visited by Poltergeists

Ghosts Get Lost on Way Back to Underworld

All the papers had something to say about these shadow-world counterparts of the living—misukule as they’re called in Kiswahili.

The three misukule were the only story in town. According to the newspapers, they were ashen, disheveled and horribly dispirited. Atuganile spent the night wailing and vomiting, worried sick by the claims she read in the newspapers—all three of her children had vanished and turned into misukule.

***

As evening fell over Isyesye, Inspector Mwaikambo and Inspector Mwaipopo still had nothing to share with the Mwasakyeni family. Tuntufye told them the children had gone out to play on Saturday morning. Three days had now passed since they’d gone missing, making their case all the more pressing.

Atuganile posed her question to the detectives. “Excuse me,” she said. “Is it possible the blood drinker has something to do with this?” Her eyes were swollen from constant crying. Inspector Mwaipopo answered that their investigation was ongoing. Before leaving, he said, they wanted to have a look in the children’s bedrooms. Atuganile couldn’t understand what the detectives were looking for. Did they think they’d find them tied up with socks stuffed in their mouths? Or did they expect to rescue them barely alive, deprived of food and water for three days, hanging on by only a thread?

“Why don’t you go look for them out in the streets?” she said to the detectives, angry. “You’re standing around inside while my babies are out there, in the arms of the blood drinker!”

Tuntufye moved toward his wife and took hold of her hand. “Let them do their job,” he said in a slow, careful voice. He pulled her close and let her rest her head on his chest. It had been a long time since anything tender had passed between them, any gesture suggesting concern. Atuganile began to cry, anguished.

It wasn’t long before Evelina entered the room. She gave a passing, not very polite greeting to the inspectors, without making eye contact. Then she peered out at the garden she’d worked in while Atuganile was away. Inspector Mwaikambo sensed something and didn’t delay. “What’s out there?” he inquired.

“Evelina planted some tomatoes while I was in Chunya,” Atuganile said, still in her husband’s embrace. Inspector Mwaikambo asked Evelina if that was true. She didn’t answer.

“Evelina, don’t be rude,” Atuganile said as she turned her head toward her. “You were asked a question. You can respond, can’t you?”

“Yes, dada.”

“What, now you’ve forgotten how to talk?” Tuntufye added.

Evelina answered in the faintest of voices. “No. It wasn’t me who was out in the garden.”

“If it wasn’t you, who was it?” Inspector Mwaikombo asked.

“If it wasn’t you,” Atuganile said as she stepped away from her husband, “then why did you tell me you had worked in the garden?”

“Forgive me, dada, but it wasn’t me.”

“You deceived me?” Atuganile said before shifting her gaze to her husband. She needed to know what the two of them had done while she was in Chunya.

Tuntufye couldn’t take it anymore. Then and there, he snapped. “It was me in the garden,” he blurted out, followed by a strange laugh.

“Tuntufye!” Atuganile admonished him.

But Tuntufye was already like a possessed person. He spoke without pause, his eyes nearly popping out of his head. “It was like I was sinking, Atu. I was drowning in my own thoughts. Every day when I looked at you, when I looked at them, it was like I was drowning. There was nothing I could do, Atu.”

Atuganile felt the last of her strength melt away. “Tuntufye, I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“I begged for this child; the Lord has granted me what I asked of Him.” As he said it aloud, Tuntufye threw both his hands in the air.

“My husband,” Atuganile said. “What is the meaning of all this?”

Tuntufye paid her no heed and continued to quote from the Bible. “1 Samuel 1:27 says, the word of the Lord: ‘I begged for this child; the Lord has granted me what I asked of Him.’ Oh Lord,” Tuntufye added.

“Tuntufye, my husband, when are you going to stop reciting scripture like a crazy person? Are you okay?” Tuntufye slowly headed into the kitchen. He squeezed past Evelina in the doorway and sat down at the table.

“I’m sterile,” he said as he started to weep.

“Tuntufye?” his wife called to him.

“I’m sterile,” he said again. “Infertile. Barren!” Tuntufye screamed, seated there at the table as he was accustomed.

“Tuntufye!” Atuganile shouted. “What have you done to our children?” she asked as she ran away while the others moved to restrain her.

“Evelina,” Inspector Mwaikambo said. He was already in the garden, standing among the tomato plants. “Bring the shovel.”

The mourning had just begun.