Anna Grace Awilli
Suppose for a moment that you were a cold corpse, with your mastectomy chest flat against an even colder post mortem table.
You are yellowish, bluish, grey – your dead skin, a multicolour pallette much like your world’s miserable own, from which your ex-husband, Richard, picked his numerous side chicks.
Let me tell you the story of how your beautiful yellow body came to be at my table in the mortuary of Nsambya Hospital.
On Monday 1st September 2025, you were in the kitchen of your Kisaasi rental, boiling the basmati rice your mother sent you, and scrolling through Richard’s Facebook profile on your phone, when you saw something that ground your beating heart to a stinging halt.
You thought at first it was phantom pain that seared through your chest. Your surgeon had told you that you might feel the occasional chest pain even when the scars had visibly healed -but this was not it. Your heart was bleeding.
The rice hissed on the stove and its steam curled into your nose as you scrutinised the picture: Richard, a wide smile across his face, and a younger woman who looked almost too beautiful to be real leaning against his chest. Her breasts jutted forth through her white cotton top, in a way that bored deep shame into your soul.
With no further hesitation, you walked out, leaving everything as it was on the gas stove; but not before picking the knife that you would use to stab Richard’s new girlfriend. Right in the flesh of her disgusting, perfectly shaped breasts, is where you would drive in the steel with the full force of your fulminating jealousy.
Your walk from Kisaasi to Nsambya began in a haze, but with each step, the fog of shock cleared, replaced by a cold, hard focus. The familiar route, once a path of shared memories with Richard, became a march of vengeance. You passed the roadside vendor where you had once bought him roasted maize, the memory of his laughter a bitter taste in your mouth. You walked past the small shop where he had first blocked your path and started the conversation that began his wooing of you.
The sun beat down on you, and the rhythm of your frantic steps was a drumbeat in your ears. Each footfall was a step closer to the reckoning. You remembered the day Richard had told you to move out of his home, his words cutting deeper than any scalpel, and you felt a cold, determined rage stir in your gut. This walk was not a plea for a second chance; it was a final, terrible act of reclaiming your dignity.
You barged in through the gate, to the consternation of the youthful security guard who, when he saw the knife gripped tight in your right hand, did not know whether to stop you or run away. Before he could even utter a word, you paralysed him with a bloodshot stare and taut, broken laugh. You brushed past him amidst his protests, and picked up a brisk step towards Richard’s unit, bellowing his name.
The security guard’s voice behind you asking “Madam, who are you, and where are you going?” was of no consequence against your morbid advance. “Richard! Richard! Richard!” you shouted, and followed it with a slew of profanities. “Richard, come out of that house and tell me if I ceased to be a woman when cancer caused me to lose my breasts!”
The neighbourhood was roused- door bolts unlatched, lights came on, windows flung open. Faces lined the balconies, as one by one the neighbors stepped out to watch the unravelling spectacle. The sight of an older woman in her nightdress triggered you to curse Richard’s mother.
He came outside, his body a rattling motor of fear and regret. He was hurriedly tying a navy blue towel around his promiscuous waist. His eyes fleeted between the knife in your hand and the unnerving look in your face. Yours was a countenance of many emotions, none of them good.
That sight of him -weak, and helpless- was a sharp contrast to the cheating, manipulative partner he had been to you during the 15 years of your marriage. You were 19 when you married him, staying with him even when he was a philanderer and an impotent who could not make you pregnant. Yet the moment you got the breast cancer diagnosis he had not hesitated to throw you out of his house.
Then you saw her- the woman in the picture. She came up behind Richard, looking very much as beautiful as she was in that photograph. Her flummoxed face gave you a hollow satisfaction, and you smirked as the next moments played out exactly as you had imagined it when you left the rice on the stove.
You lunged forward at her, pushing Richard out of the way, and you did it. You pierced the knife through her soft flesh once, twice, thrice, and she collapsed to the ground. Pandemonium broke out. You heard a woman scream, then another and another. People ran towards you, but you did not see them as your eyes took in the sight of wet crimson spreading under her white cotton top. Richard’s cry was guttural, raw as he fell to his knees and gathered her into his arms.
The sound of gunfire interrupted the commotion. Two sharp shots rang through the air. You felt a pain in your chest that you reached out to feel with your free hand. It felt wet, warm and thick against your fingers. When you raised your hand to look at it, you saw blood. As you lowered it, you saw the security guard standing a few metres from you, also lowering a gun that had been aimed at you. He had shot you. Strength oozed out of your body and you collapsed in a heap beside Richard and the body of his new woman.
That is how your beautiful yellow body -for you were lightskinned- came to be at my table in the mortuary of Nsambya Hospital.
But wait -all of this is supposing.
None of this has happened.
Today is the night before September 1st 2025, and your mother has just sent you basmati rice. Tomorrow, you will cook it. You have not yet scrolled through your ex-husband’s Facebook profile. You have not yet seen his new girlfriend. You have not yet picked the knife.
And you will not.
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