Tropical fish.

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.

"So, do you go to school too?"

"Yes." Soft and shallow.

"Yes? And what do you study, Christine?" Like a kind uncle to a five-year-old.

"Sociology."

"Socioo-logy?" He stretched out the word, and couldn't hide his amusement. "That's quite impressive. You must be a very intelligent girl." His smile was kind in an evilish, shadowed-mouth way. I smiled back, showing him that I, at least, had big bright teeth. There. I don't think he noticed.

Luckily Zac came back at that moment. I quickly swallowed the rest of my drink and left. In the warm, justrained night, the wet grass and soaked ground smelt fertile. I dodged the puddles in the cracked pavement, which twinkled with reflected street-lamp light. Not that I really noticed, I was too busy beating myself inside. You smiling fool, why didn't you say something clever? Almost walking past my hall, I wondered why I was so unsettled, even intrigued.

That weekend Zac told me Peter wanted us to visit him at his house in Tank Hill.

"Me? Why?"

"The muzungu likes you." He chuckled shortly, dryly.

"Don't be silly. I'm not going."

"Come on, we'll have fun. There'll be lots to drink, eat, videos too. Bring Miriam if you want."

We went in the end, of course, because Peter lives on top of Tank Hill one of Kampala's seven hills, like Rome. Up there, diplomats' huge mansions hide behind high cement walls lined across the top with shards of cutting glass. Rent is paid in dollars only. Swimming pools, security guards. And he wanted me. Nothing would happen if I went with Zac and Miriam, my tall Tutsi friend, who Peter would prefer anyway, I told myself. She had the kind of looks whites like: very thin, with high angular cheekbones and jaw, large, slanting eyes. And she was so daring, did whatever she wanted with a bold stare and brash laugh. No simpering for her. She even smoked in public. So I was safe.

It was fun, sort of. Peter was overly attentive, serving drinks, plumping pillows, asking questions. We ate in courses, brought in by his houseboy Deogracias, an old man with crooked, spindly legs attached to big bare feet like boats. Black on bright pink. Deo spoke to us in Luganda, but not to Peter, of course. As if we were at his houseboy level. Later, I told Zac and Miriam I found Deo's familiarity vaguely offensive, as if he was saying, I've seen your kind pass through this house before. They both laughed it off, "Christine, you're too much. What's wrong with being friendly?"

Peter chose Karate Kid for us to watch, saying it was our type of movie. How would he know? I concentrated on gin-and-tonics. This was a whole world away from home, from school. The brightly painted, big-windowed house smelt of mosquito repellant from emerald rings smoking discreetly in every room. Bright batiks on clean white walls, shiny glass cupboards full of drinks and china. Everything worked: the phone, the hot water taps, a dustbin you clicked open with your foot. No need to touch. As soon as the power went off, a generator switched itself on automatically, with a reassuring low hum.

We turned off the lights to watch the movie, and Peter somehow snuggled up close to me. I pretended not to feel him, as I sank into the comfort of having all my needs satisfied. Nothing to worry about. The drinks eased me. When the movie was over, the lights stayed off. Peter prepared a joint and we all became giggly. Everything slowed down pleasantly. He moved back close to me and started stroking my trousered thigh up and down, up and down, gently, absentmindedly. It was soothing. I sat still. I didn't have to do anything.

Zac talked in a monotonous drone about the hidden treasures of Egypt, the esoteric wisdom that Aristotle stole, or was it Plato, and then the Egyptians forgot everything. Peter asked, "Why didn't they write it down?" and we all laughed for a very long time. Miriam got up and weaved around the room, holding her head, saying, "I feel mellow. Very very mellow." Over and over, giggling. Peter led her to his spare bedroom that was always ready, with clean sheets, soft lamps and its own multi-mirrored bathroom. He brought Zac a bed-cover for the sofa, then took me to his room as though it was the practical, natural thing to do. It felt sort of like a privilege. The Master Bedroom.

In the bathroom he got me a new toothbrush from a packet of about twenty, already opened. "You have many visitors?" I wondered out loud. He laughed and kissed me on the mouth. "Women?" I mumbled, as he ate up my lips. I thought about the wrapping: colored blue plastic over the cardboard box, each toothbrush wrapped again in its own plastic, and lying in its own little cardboard coffin. I wanted to keep the box, but didn't dare ask. He would have laughed at me again.

I lay on the bed in my clothes. Peter took off his clothes and draped them neatly folded over a chair, pointing two small pale buttocks toward me as he leaned over. Then he took my blouse and pants off methodically, gently, like it was the best thing to do, like I was sick and he was a nurse, and I just lay there. In the same practical way he lay down and stroked me for a few appropriate minutes, put on a condom, opened my legs and stuck his penis in. I couldn't bring myself to hold him in any convincing way. I thought I should moan and groan and act feverish, overcome by a wild rage of some sort, like white people in movies. But I was feeling well-fed and well taken care of, a child full of warm milk. One thought was constant in my head like a newspaper headline: I am having sex with a white man. It was strange because it wasn't strange. He was done in a few minutes. He tucked me under his arm like an old habit, and we sank into sleep.

Peter became my comfortable habit. On Friday evenings I escaped from the usual round of campus parties to go to my old white man; my snug, private life. No one scrutinized me, questioned my motives or made any judgments, up on Tank Hill, except Deo. He was a silent, knowing, irritating reminder of the real, ordinary world, my place in it. But when Deo had cleared up the supper things and left to go scrub his huge, bare boat-feet with a stone, I was free to walk around the large, airy house naked, a gin-and-tonic melting in my hand. This made me feel floaty, a clean open hanky wandering in the wind. I didn't have to squash myself into clothes, pull in my stomach, tie my breasts up in a bra, worry about anything, be anything. Who cared what Peter thought? He said nonsensical things like, "You're so many colors all over, how come?"

"What about your red neck?"

"That's 'coz I'm a redneck, luv."

"I thought so."

"Come here, you!" Our tussle ended up in bed.

My eldest sister, Dorothy, might have heard about Peter from someone. She was a born-again Christian, like I was once. "Saved," with too clear and rigid a sense of right and wrong. But she wouldn't say, "Stop seeing that white man." Instead, she told me of a dream she'd had: that I was being given drugs by some white people. "They only want to use you, she said. I didn't answer. What could I say, that it actually was okay? Her self-righteousness made me want to go right back to Peter's.

For some reason I told him Dorothy's dream. He laughed at me. I heard "superstitious, ignorant blacks!" in his laugh. Maybe not, but like with most things between us, I wasn't going to try to explain it, what one can see or read in dreams. I don't mean that they're true. But we couldn't climb over that laugh to some sort of understanding. Or didn't want to try.

One weekend, Zac told me they had gone to the Entebbe Sailing Club with another girl, some young ignorant waitress, or something. "Why are you telling me?" I scoffed. Didn't he think I knew Peter? I didn't like the sailing club anyway; it was practically white only because of the high membership fees and selective sponsorship rules. I became very black over there. Zac was surprised I didn't seem to care about the other girls. Why squander feelings, I told myself. What was more annoying was Peter's choice of those waitress types.

Deogracias called him Mr. Peter. I asked him, after two months or more, what his last name was. He said, "Call me Mr. Peter," and chuckled. He enjoyed the lavishing of respect I knew he didn't get from anyone back home. Mr. Smithson, I read on a letter of his. How ordinary. Whenever he whined about the insects everywhere, the terrible ice cream, and only one Chinese restaurant, I wanted to tell him I knew he was Lower-class, Cockney, and doing much better here, practically stealing our fish, than he ever would in Britain. So he should just shut up. But of course I didn't. Our Lady of the Smiles and Open Body.

When Peter called one Friday evening, I was having my period. I felt I shouldn't go. What for? But I couldn't tell him that, not so bluntly. How could we openly admit that he wanted me for sex, and I knew it, and agreed? Over the phone, moreover? It was easier for me to say nothing, as usual. I took a taxi to his house, and he paid for it. Peter had already started on the evening's drinks with muchomo, roasted meat, on his verandah. A Danish man was visiting, one of the usual aid types, whom Peter had just met. These ex-pats quickly made friends with each other; being white was enough. They grouped together at Half-London, a collection of little shops lined along a dusty road at the bottom of Tank Hill. At each storefront, melting in the hazy heat, plastic chairs sat under gaudy red-and-white umbrellas advertising Coca Cola and Sportsman cigarettes. Ye, Ssebo! There was lots of beer-drinking and prostitute-hunting. A let's-pretend-we're-local hangout I avoided.

I put off telling Peter about my period, but felt guilty, for some reason. Finally, in bed with the lights off, he reached for me as usual, but I moved away a little. "I'm having my period."

"What?" I had never said no to him.

"You know ... my period. I'm bleed--"

"Oh, I see. Well--" He lay back on the bed, a little put out. But he fell asleep pretty soon all the same. Instead of relief, I felt empty, a box of air.

That Christmas, Peter went off to Nairobi. He left very cheerfully, wearing a brightly flowered shirt, the sun glinting off his sparse white hair and pink baldness. The perfect picture of a retiree set for a cruise. He was off to enjoy the relative comforts of Kenya, the movie theaters, safari lodges, maybe Mombasa's beach resorts. He had sent off a good number of rare fish; it was time for a holiday.

In town, as Peter dropped me off, he kissed me on the mouth in the middle of Luwum Street, in front of the crowds, before breezing away. I was left in the bustling, dusty street, feeling the people's stares like the sun burning. Who was this girl being kissed in broad daylight by some old muzungu? Aa-haa, these malayas are becoming too bold. Couldn't she find a younger one at the Sheraton? One man shouted to Peter, for the crowd, in Luganda, "She's going to give you AIDS. Look how thin she is!" Everyone laughed. Another one answered, "It's their fault, these bazungu, they like their women thin. Let them fall sick." General laughter.

I walked down to the taxi park, ignoring them. A girl like me didn't spend her time in the streets arguing with bayaye. I had better things to do. Over Christmas I didn't, but he would come back. Call me when he needed me, and I would escape to the big white house, the gin-and-tonic life, my holiday. Well, campus too was a kind of holiday before real life ahead of me: work, if I could get it, at a government job that didn't pay, in a dusty old colonial-style office, shoes with fish soles, a roasted maize cob for lunch, debts, kids, becoming my parents. One option was marriage to someone from the right family, the right tribe, right pocket-book and pot-belly, to have him pay the bills. With my degree I would be worth exotic cows, Friesians or Jerseys, not the common long-horned Ankole cattle. But I didn't have to think about that for two more years. For now, I had my game: being someone else, or no one, for a few hours.

Peter brought me bubble-bath soap from Nairobi because I said I'd never used it before. He prepared the bath for me. Water gushed out of both taps forever. Abundance, the luxury of wasting. If you've never fetched water, known how heavy the jerrycans can be, how each drop is precious, you can't really enjoy a bubble-bath. To luxuriate in a whole bathtub of water, just for you. The lovely, warm green froth a caress all over.

Peter undressed and joined me, his penis curled up shyly in his red pubic hair. He spread my thighs gently and played with my lips. I closed my eyes, shutting out everything but his careful, practiced touch. Sank, sank, into the pleasure of it. The warm water flopped around, splashing out onto the white bath mat and shiny mirrors. Peter crept up over me and entered slowly, and I thought, maybe I do care for him, maybe this is all that love is. A tender, comfortable, easing into me.

I found out I was pregnant. We used condoms most of the time. I didn't say anything when we didn't. My breasts started to swell, and my heart grew suspicious, as though my belly had secretly passed on the message. When my period was more than twelve days late, I told Miriam. I couldn't tell Peter. It didn't seem to be his problem, not a part of our silent sex-pact. This was personal. Miriam's sister Margaret, a nurse, worked at a private clinic in the city. Nobody stopped me, they all knew it had to be done. I tried not to think about it. At the clinic, the anesthetist droned at me in a deep kind voice as he injected me. When I wouldn't go under quickly, he asked, with a knowing half-smile, if I drank a lot. I was going to remain conscious but wouldn't feel anything, he said. Just like real life. The doctor was cream-gloved, efficient, and kind, like Peter. I fell into pleasant dreaminess. Why did I always seem to have my legs spread open before kind men poking things into me? I let them.

At the clinic, I read an article about all the species of fish that are disappearing from our fresh water lakes and rivers because of the Nile Perch. It was introduced by the colonial government Fisheries Development Department in the fifties. The Nile Perch is ugly and tasteless, but it's huge, and provides a lot more food for the populace. It was eating up all the smaller, rarer, gloriously-colored tropical fish. Many of these rare species were not named, let alone discovered, before they disappeared. Everyday, somewhere deep and blue, it was too late.

Margaret gave me antibiotics and about two years' supply of the pill, saying curtly, "I hope we don't see you here again." I was rather worried, though, because the doctor said I shouldn't have sex for at least two weeks. What would I tell Peter when he called? Maybe I should say what happened. Now that I had dealt with the problem, I wasn't bothering him with it. I just wanted to tell him.

I went to Peter's office without calling, not knowing what to say. It was on Barclay Street, where all the major airline and cargo offices were, convenient for his business. It was surprising how different Peter was at work: his serious twin, totally sober, a rare sight for me. He got authority from somewhere and turned into the boss, no longer the drunken lover. Once, at night, he told me how worried he was because all the workers depended on him--what if he failed? This talk, the concern, made me uncomfortable. This wasn't my picture of him.

The first time Peter took me to his office, on my way back to school, an Indian businessman came in to see him. The Asians were coming back, fifteen years after Amin gave them seventy-two hours to pack up and leave the country. They were tentatively reestablishing themselves, which didn't please the Ugandan business class too much.

Peter led the short, bustling, black-turbaned man into his back office, where I was sitting. The Indian glanced my way and back at Peter, summing up the situation. After a curt, "How are you?" he dismissed me and turned to business. Jagjit had come to sell Peter dollars, which was illegal except through the Bank of Uganda, but everyone did it anyway, by magendo. He produced a thick envelope and drew out old, tattered green notes. Peter checked each one carefully, rubbed it between his palms, held it up under the light, turned it over, and scrutinized it again until he was satisfied. There was one note he put aside, then went back to after checking them all. He said, "Sorry, Jagjit, this one's no good." It was a $100 bill. That was about 1,000,000 shillings.

"No, no that can't be. I got this from Sunjab Patel--you know him--over in Industrial Area." Very fast, impatient.

"Yeah, but I'm telling you it's not worth anything. Look here--" and they compared it to another, straining their necks from note to note. Finally, Peter picked up the false note, and with his usual smirk, slowly tore it in two, his eyes steadily watching Jagjit's face. He was too shocked to protest, his large brown eyes fixed on the half-notes in each of Peter's raised hands. Peter held the torn pieces over the dustbin and let them float down slowly into it. All of us watching. "You've got to be careful. Anyone can cheat you around here," he said, and shrugged.

Peter turned to his safe, snug in a corner, and pulled out a canvas bag, which he emptied onto the table. Jagjit counted the many bundles of weary-looking notes. He was flustered; whether embarrassed or annoyed, I couldn't tell. Out he rushed, after one last look at the torn note, as if he wanted to grab it from the rubbish. Poor him, I thought, but then again, he deserved it for giving me the once over and deciding I didn't count.

Peter shook his head slowly. "The bastard."

"I don't think he knew."

Peter reached over and took the half notes from the dustbin, patted them off, and laid them together on the table.

"Peter!"

He smiled to himself, then looked up. "What if I gave it to you?"

"What!? What would I do with it?"

"My little Christian Christine," and he chuckled some more.

This time, Peter was busy with a group of men who were loading a pickup parked on the street. I was startled again by the way he was at work: stern and controlling, giving directions in a loud voice, striding up and down. Then he saw me.

"What are you doing here?" Brusque and impatient.

"I was just passing by." I felt horribly in the way.

"I'm busy."

"But--I--I have something to tell you."

"Okay, okay. Wait."

He waved me on into his back office. After a short while he followed. But, somehow, I couldn't say it, so I asked him for a piece of paper and biro, which made him even more exasperated. I wrote down, "I have just had an abortion."

Peter took the paper, smiling impatiently, thinking I was playing a childish game. His usual smile got stuck for an instant. A hint of what looked like anger flickered across his boyish face. He didn't look up at me. He took the biro from me, wrote something down, and passed the note back across the table. It read, "Do you want some money?"

I read it, glanced up at him quickly, then away, embarrassed. Back to his five little words. I shook my head no, my face lowered away from him. No, not money. I had nothing to say, and he said nothing back. After a bleak silence, like the silence while we made love, far away from each other, I got up to leave.

"I'll call you, okay?" Always kind.

"Okay." Always agreeing. Yes, okay, yes.

The men working for him moved out of my way in that over-respectful way they treat whites, but with a mocking exaggeration acted out for their black women. As usual, I ignored them, but shrank inside as Peter kissed me dryly on the lips, in front of them all, before I left.

The street was hard and hot. Filled with people walking through their lives so purposefully, up and down the street, so in control. But they seemed to be backing away from me. Did I look strange? Was there blood on my dress? The hot, dusty air blown up by the noisy, rushing traffic filled my head like thunder.

Did I want money? What did I want? Bubble baths, gin-and-tonics, ganja sex, the clean, airy white house where I could forget the hot dust outside, school, my all-too-ordinary life, the bleak future? A few hours free from myself. Was that so bad? Had I wanted him to care, of all people? He was trying to be kind, I supposed. I'm sure the only Africans he knew needed money. Six months of sex, and did I want money? What did we want from each other? Not a baby, obviously. Nothing that permanent. Our baby. What a joke. I discarded my baby like I did my body, down a pit latrine crawling with cockroaches.

I waded through the taxi-park bedlam into a matatu, and was squashed up on all sides by strangely comforting fat hips, warm arms, moist breaths. The old engine roared to a start, blocking out the radio's loud wail of Soukous. The driver revved the engine repeatedly to get passengers to come running, as if we were leaving right away, only to sit for another fifteen minutes. The conductor screamed for more people, ordering us to move over, squash up. We all wanted to get home, didn't we? Hawkers pushed cheap plastic into our faces through the windows, their spit landing on our cheeks. The voice of one of them pierced through the noise, pleading insistently for me, me, to buy some Orbit chewing gum for my young children at home. "Aunty, remember the children, be nice to the children!"

We finally moved away, swaying and bumping up and down together with each dive in and out of pot holes, each swerve to avoid the oncoming cars that headed straight toward us like life. I closed my eyes, willing the noise and heat and sweat to recede to the very back of my mind. The glaring sun hit us all.

Doreen Baingana is from Uganda and has made the United States her home for twelve years now. She has an M.F.A. from University of Maryland, College Park, and received an Artist's Fellowship from the District of Columbia Commission of the Arts and Humanities in 2002. Baingana won the 2003 AWP Award in Short Fiction, and she has a collection of short stories forthcoming from the University of Massachusetts Press.