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That evening, when Red Devil came, Ma told him it had gone very well.
    ‘You really have good ideas,’ Ma said. ‘You should have been a lawyer.’
    ‘Ah, Sister, I can still be a lawyer. With God, nothing is impossible.’
    Chei , I thought. Such nonsense.
    That evening there were fewer silences between Ma and Red Devil at the dinner table. The two of them talked adult things, reckless, as if I was too stupid to understand. They talked about God and his plans for the future. It was God who had widowed both of them, they said. It was God who knew what tomorrow looked like.
    ‘You know, Sister, the book of Song of Solomon might be about God’s relationship with the church, but it has also taught me many things. Very many,’ Red Devil said. Ma laughed. She laughed so much she almost choked on her saliva.
    ‘Amito, maybe it is time for you to sleep now.’
    In my bed that night, I thought I ought to pray for Ma. It was true what they said about some diseases being contagious. Red Devil had infected Ma with his. Now the wires in Ma’s head were not working properly either.
     
    The next day, I waited at the window for Ma’s return from work. I saw her making her way through the market joyful and excited, holding a pineapple in her hand. When she reached our back yard, she looked stunned. There were at least twenty vendors, some of them sleeping on the grass, others on the stairs. The paspalum grass was scattered with flower petals, as if someone was trying to decorate the yard. Papers and polythene bags from the market were everywhere.
    Instead of threatening the vendors with eviction, Ma went directly into the house and stayed in the bedroom for a while. When she finally came out, she had changed into a black dress. She was wearing boots and carrying a spade. In the back yard, Ma found the vendors laughing and talking, happy, as if all was well. She tried to speak to them. They did not pay her any attention – not until she started to yell at them, her small arms shaking and her wig unstable on her scalp.
    ‘Leave. I want all of you to leave my compound now,’ Ma said.
    ‘Your compound?’ one vendor said. The rest joined in, and they did not allow Ma to speak again. If she wanted to live like the rich, she was on the wrong estate. She should hire a truck, load her household items on it, and head for Kampala’s hills, where the houses were large and double-storied and there were dogs and long fences to keep people away.
    ‘I am not going anywhere. I am not. This is my house,’ Ma said, repeating herself until she started pointing to the ground, claiming her back yard for her own, refusing to be defeated in this fight.
    ‘Your house? You think this is your house?’
    The vendors were undeterred in their efforts to make Ma shut up. They told her that no one came into the estates with any piece of land on their heads. They called my mother a whore. They said she was a husbandless slut, a fanatic Christian, a sex-starved bitch who should migrate back to the north of the country where people were unciv­ilised and lacked manners.
    I hoped Red Devil would walk up. If he did, and if he tried to come to Ma’s defence, the vendors would beat him until all his teeth fell out. Maybe if he stayed in Mulago Hospital long enough, Ma would forget him. But he was lucky, that Red Devil. He only heard about these exchanges from Ma. And being the Red Devil he was, he just said, ‘Um, um, if I was you, I would really make sure those men leave for good. This is your house, they need to know that.’
    On the third day of the confrontations, Ma decided to return late from the office, when day would be giving way to night. The day vendors would have left, and in their place would be the night vendors, who were not troublesome. The night vendors kept away from people’s back yards. They spread themselves around the market and along Estate Close with their tables full of bread and milk for sale, tomatoes heaped on sisal sacks,