Why were you born, you devil?” my mother would shout whenever I would annoy her and I annoyed her often.

If I were within reach, she would grab one of my ears and twist it hard, shouting, “Can you hear me now? Try talking back... You will listen to your mother.”

I did not like crying when she beat me and especially when my father was sleeping during the day. I did not want him to wake up and bark, “What sort of man are you going to come to crying like a woman?”

Sometimes she would beat me so badly that my screams would wake all the neighbours at night. Many times the neighbours would come to my rescue. The women would shout at her, while the men would restrain her and carry me away.

My father would fume with anger after coming home to learn that villagers had been inside his compound. My mother would try her best to calm him down because she was scared of him, which thrilled me. He would sit outside our house on a three-legged stool gulping a bottle of Uganda Waragi, shouting out profanities at those who dared come into his compound.

Everyone was afraid of my father and I did not know why, but I liked it. I could tell that my father was not a big man. My friends’ fathers were all taller and bigger, yet they feared him.

Whenever he was spoiling for a fight, people would avoid walking past our compound. Pastor Paulo Byona would stand outside his Katondamurungi kiosk with his smudged Good News Bible. Chairman Ssegane would come and sit with my father.

My mother would constantly flutter around them, ignoring my father’s irritation. This was the only time I ever saw her unafraid of him and nice to me. She would send me to Mama Josephine’s to buy a half litre of bushera for Chairman Ssegane to drink and add, “Buy yourself some pancakes with the change but don’t dawdle.”

I was their only child. I had stopped asking for a baby brother when turning from a charcoal stove that would not light up and made her sneeze, she had barked, “You will never have a baby brother because you blocked the way. Giving birth to you closed my womb.”

I was about five years old when she told me that.

When I was seven, my father was shot dead on Kampala Road, near Bank of Uganda on a Monday in October. His photo was on the front page of the Tuesday newspapers, head bowed, arms hanging, like he had been trying to scramble through the window of the car they had been driving.

The photos were in black and white but you could see his shirt was soaked in blood.

The headline that stuck in my mind was by The Weekly Topic and it read: Violent end for notorious gangster. My father died with three of his friends.

I did not know that my father had a father and mother, brothers and sisters until we went to bury him in Buddu, Masaka. I would not see them again until I became a man. In the bus, on our way back, my mother told me: “No one wants you. You’re my burden alone now.”

Chairman Ssegane started to visit our one-room home more often after my father’s death. My mother would make me sit outside our house until after 10pm on the nights when he was coming over. Sometimes she would be nice and give me five hundred shillings to go and play pool.

Pastor Paulo would sometimes invite me to come in and help him since his shop was busy at night. I liked helping him mainly because mosquitoes couldn’t bite my feet behind his high wooden counter.

Pastor Paulo would give his wife a two hundred shilling coin, take an aromatic doughnut from the kavera and give it to me saying, “Remember, you’re a child of God.”

Chairman Ssegane started occasionally paying my school fees. He would help me fill out the bank slips, which I would take to the bank. I was eight years old when I started queuing in banks.

Whenever my mother would find Chairman Ssegane and me hunched over the table filling out bank slips by candlelight, she would say, “I hope you make sure that he doesn’t eat the money. Do you check the slips to make sure they are authentic? Nasser Road is not far from Wandegeya, you know.”

Six years after my father’s death was featured in the local newspapers, my family made the headlines again. Poor boy emerges top PLE candidate. Kings College Buddo offered me a full scholarship for my secondary school education, which I was grateful for.

I was excited about going to boarding school. Pastor Paulo closed his shop early on my last Saturday, before leaving for school so we that could pray.

More people than he expected turned up and we could not all fit in the little backyard he shared with my mother. We had to go to the front of the compound and many people spilled out onto the road.

To Pastor Paulo’s dismay, the prayers ended up becoming a party. Chairman Ssegane came with his wife and children. Everyone wanted to lay hands on my head to bestow blessings. Even my mother.

I had already decided that I would never come back to her house after I left for boarding school — I have not.