The whole family turned out to wish Francis a safe journey at the airport at Ikeja. When husbands left their wives for the UK the wives were all supposed to cry from love. Adah prayed to God the night before to send enough tears to impress her parents-in-law. Those tears of hers had a way of coming down at the wrong time. She wanted them to flow at the airport so that when Francis became an élite, he would remember that poor Adah wept for him even when he was a nobody. Well, those tears did come, but at the wrong time. She watched Francis bid everybody goodbye, dry-eyed. All his sisters were like that Alice in Lewis Carroll’s fantasy, weeping away like mad. He would remember them when he came back an élite, with strings and strings of qualifications. He will forget me and my child, and the other one I’m going to have in three weeks’ time, Adah thought as she stood there, away from the clan, just like an outcast. Francis was disappointed and showed it, but he gave her a pat on the shoulder. Poor Adah, her heart ached for the departure of the only human being she was just beginning to understand, just learning to care for. Maybe the separation was too early in their marriage, she did not know. But what she did know was that there was this ache inside her heart, too heavy for tears, too heavy for words. She simply stared at them all.
Everybody’s name was being called, and all the passengers stood one at a time, at the plane’s door, waved the final goodbye to their folks and then disappeared into the bowels of the whale-like monster they called the aeroplane. Adah had never seen an aeroplane at such a close range. Why, they were bigger than buses! she thought. The air hostess was smiling unnaturally and waving two hands instead of one like everybody else. Why was that? Adah wondered. Then the door was cruelly slammed shut. The slamming of that door, the finality of it all, reminded her of something she had seen before. She had seen it all before, this cruel finality. The other person who was shut away from her like that never came back. Where did it happen before? She searched her memory as she stood in that scorching Nigerian sun. Then her mother-in-law moved towards her. Adah did not know what it was that drew that woman towards her in that burning sun. She touched Adah’s unfeeling arm, and said in a choked voice: “It looks like a coffin.” Adah turned round, saw her, and started to howl.
It all came back to her now. It was Pa who was nailed down into the bowels of a smaller whale, because he was going to be the only inhabitant of that one. This one was bigger, but it had the same aura of finality. “Please God it won’t happen again. He is going to arrive there safely. Please God, let nothing bad happen to him,” she cried.
The relatives wiped their eyes and stared at Adah. What was the matter with her? Wives cried in the presence of their departing husbands, not when they had gone and could not see the tears! No one said anything. After all, she was going to provide the cash, so she was allowed a little eccentricity. The fact that someone so young could earn so much as Adah was enough to drive her to extremities, they said.
Francis wrote from Barcelona and then from London. “You did not cry for me,” he accused Adah in his letters. “You were very happy to see me go, were you not? Was that why you did not wish to appear in my send-off photograph? You did not care for me.”
Now, with what type of soap was Adah to wash herself clean of this dirty accusation? How was she to write to Francis and say, “I cried for you. No, I even howled like a mad Zulu woman at the airport because the door of the plane reminded me of my Pa’s coffin”? He would think she was mad. So Adah decided against it. She simply let sleeping dogs lie. She sent him money regularly, bore him another child, this time a son, went back to work twelve days afterwards, having had only three weeks’ annual leave. There was no provision for maternity leave at the American Consulate then. But the staff had a big party for her, all American, all very rich and very nice. They knew what Adah was going through, but they were diplomats, not missionaries or social workers.
A few months afterwards Francis sent his wife and parents the results of his Part I examination. He had passed. So, for Adah, it was time to act, or she never would go to the land of her dreams.
She was so happy about Francis’s success that she babbled about it to everybody. She was not too surprised about this early success, considering that he had taken this same exam four times in Lagos before going to the UK. There were still the second and third parts and, the way Adah calculated it, Francis would stay another four or even five years. In one of his letters, he even mentioned his wanting to be articled. That would take five years at least. What was she supposed to do in the meantime? She wrote and asked Francis this, and was shocked to read from him that he would like her to come, but from her behaviour at the airport he was sure she did not care. Well, that was all she needed.
She went to Francis’s mother, appealed to her to look at all the women who had been to England, pointing out the fact that they all drove their own cars.
“Think of it, Ma - Francis in his big American car and I in my small one, coming to visit you and Pa when you retire. You’ll be the envy of all your friends. Mind you, in England I’ll work and still send you money. All you have to do is to ask, and then you’ll get whatever you want. All the girls will go to secondary school. I’ve almost finished reading for librarianship. All I have to do is to work, look after Francis and attend classes in the evening. And when I come back, I shall earn more than double what I’m earning now.”
Adah won over her mother-in-law. If going to England meant her earning more than she was earning now, and riding a car as well, than she was all for it. Pa was still doubtful. He had suffered from unemployment when he was a young man and knew that the type of job Adah had then did not grow on trees.
“My going to England would be regarded as leave without pay.”
That softened Pa.
The next problem was the children. Her mother-in-law sensed that if Adah took her two babies, she might never send the money she promised. Adah had a good solution for that. She was very fond of jewellery and had invested a small part of her income in this. She had several necklaces for her little girl and herself. She gave them all to her mother-in-law.
“You take them; in England we shan’t need them. And when I come back, I shan’t be wearing gold any more,” Adah boasted with a faked smile on her face, whilst her heart sent her mother-in-law to her Maker. She never asked Adah what she would be wearing when she came back from England. Diamonds maybe. Mother-in-law was shocked all right and, before she could recover, Adah had had her kids immunised and paid for a first-class passage by boat for the three of them. She was completely deaf to the warnings that she was paying over two hundred pounds more than was necessary for their passage to England. She was told to wait another six months and she would get cheaper accommodation in the cabin-class. Six months was too long a time to wait. Mother-in-law would change her mind.
She was still not completely sure that her dream was coming true until she was on the deck of the Oriel, Vicky in her arms and Titi holding onto her skirt. It was then she saw her brother, Boy, in a brown African robe that was too big for him, crying and wiping his eyes with a velvet hat. Adah did not cry for the in-laws, and funnily enough they did not cry for her. But all she needed to know was that a member of her own family was there, missing her. Boy was like Pa and Ma moulded all into one, standing there. She cried too, this time not a howl, not an empty show, but tears of real sorrow at the thought of leaving the land of her birth. The land where Pa was buried and where Ma lay, quiet forever. Only she and Boy remained of that life which she had known. It was never going to be the same again. Things were bound to change, for better or for worse, but they would never be the same.
Boy was now all alone. He had to work very hard to keep the family name going. Adah had dropped out of it. She had become an Obi instead of the Ofili she used to be. Boy had resented this, but his presence at the wharf showed that he had accepted the fact that in Africa, and among the Ibos in particular, a girl was little more than a piece of property. Adah had been bought, though on credit, and she would never
go back to being an Ofili any more. The tiny hands clutching her blouse were the hands of a big man in the making. Her duty was to them now. From now on her children came first. All she could do for Boy was to make him aware that he had a sister he had every reason to be proud of. She might not come back a millionaire, but she would come back with pride.
Adah wiped her eyes and waved to her brother, the distance between them lengthening so much that he soon became like a small black comma and then he was gone.
There was no time to wallow in self-pity. All around her were wives of diplomats and top white civil servants going home on leave. Life was changing fast. Being there, in that first-class section, seemed to give her a taste of what was to come. God would help Boy as He had helped her. She gave her children to the nurse, and relaxed. It’s nice to be treated like an élite, a status they were achieving. Had not Francis passed his first examination in Cost and Works accountancy, were not she and her children on their way to England? She knew she was determined that they would go to English schools and, if possible, English universities.
She remembered what she had told her mother-in-law the very night before. “We shall only stay a year and six months.” The poor woman had believed her. That was life, she said to herself. Be as cunning as a serpent and as harmless as a dove.
3
A Cold Welcome
There was a sudden burst of excitement on the deck of the ship. Adah could hear it from where she was sitting in her cabin, changing Vicky’s napkin. For a moment she stopped what she was doing, straining her ears to make out what the excitement was about, but she could hear nothing coherent. There were voices jabbering loudly, somebody laughed hysterically, and there were sounds of someone running as if chased by demons.
What could it be? wondered Adah, as she hurried through the diaper routine. Perhaps it was a fire, or an accident, or could it be that they were drowning? She knew they would be in Liverpool in a day or two, but what was the rushing for? She was unable to bear the suspense any longer so she quickly slipped a dress on and ran out onto the deck.
She had forgotten that they had passed the Bay of Biscay, she had forgotten that they were now in Europe and that it was March. The cold wind that blew on her face as she emerged on the deck was as heavy and hurtful as a blow from a boxer. She ran back, with her arms folded across her chest, to get more clothes. Then she ran to the ship’s nurse. The nurse had a fat face, small eyes and a fat body. She was all smiles when she saw Adah and her eyes were lost in creases.
“Have you seen it?” she burbled. “Have you seen Liverpool? It’s too early and a bit dark, but we are in Liverpool. We’ve arrived in England!”
Adah opened her eyes wide and closed them again, still shivering. So they had arrived. She had arrived in the United Kingdom. Pa, I’m in the United Kingdom, her heart sang to her dead father.
The nurse stared at her for a second, then dashed past her, anxious to spread the good news.
Adah put on the woollies which she bought at Las Palmas. Then she ran out on to the deck.
England gave Adah a cold welcome. The welcome was particularly cold because only a few days previously they had been enjoying bright and cheerful welcomes from ports like Takoradi, Freetown and Las Palmas. If Adah had been Jesus, she would have passed England by. Liverpool was grey, smoky and looked uninhabited by humans. It reminded Adah of the loco-yard where they told her Pa had once worked as a moulder. In fact the architectural designs were the same. But if, as people said, there was plenty of money in England, why then did the natives give their visitors this poor cold welcome? Well, it was too late to moan, it was too late to change her mind. She could not have changed it even if she had wanted to. Her children must have an English education and, for that reason, she was prepared to bear the coldest welcome, even if it came from the land of her dreams. She was a little bit disappointed, but she told herself not to worry. If people like Lawyer Nweze and others could survive it, so could she.
The Francis that came to meet them was a new Francis. There was something very, very different about him. Adah was stunned when he kissed her in public, with everybody looking. Oh, my God, she thought; if her mother-in-law could see them, she would go and make sacrifices to Oboshi for forgiveness. Francis was delighted with Vicky.
“Just my image, I can now die in peace!”
“What do you mean, die in peace?” Adah challenged.
Francis laughed. “In England, people make jokes of everything, even things as serious as death. People still laugh about them.”
“Yes?” Adah was beginning to be scared. She looked round her wildly.
There were hundreds of people rushing around clutching their luggage, and pulling their children, but it was not as noisy as it would have been had they been in Lagos. The whites she saw did not look like people who could make jokes about things like death. They looked remote, happy in an aloof way, but determined to keep their distance.
“These people don’t look as if they know how to joke. You’re lying, Francis. You’re making it all up. English people don’t joke about death.”
“This separation of ours has made you bold. You’ve never in your life told me that I was lying before,” Francis accused.
Adah was quietened by the sharpness in his voice. The sharpness seemed to say to her: “It is allowed for African males to come and get civilised in England. But that privilege has not been extended to females yet.” She would have liked to protest about it from the very beginning, but what was the point of their quarrelling on the very first day of their meeting after such a long separation? It was a sad indication, though, of what was coming, but she prayed that the two of them would be strong enough to accept civilisation into their relationship. Because if they did not, their coming would have been a very big mistake.
After the tedious check by the immigration officers, they shivered themselves into the train. It sped on and on for hours. For the first time Adah saw real snow. It all looked so beautiful after the greyness of Liverpool. It was as if there were beautiful white clouds on the ground. She saw the factory where Ovaltine was made. Somehow that factory, standing there isolated, clean and red against the snowy background, lightened her spirit. She was in England at last. She was beginning to feel like Dick Whittington!
Francis had told her in his letter that he had accommodation for them in London. He did not warn Adah what it was like. The shock of it all nearly drove her crazy.
The house was grey with green windows. She could not tell where the house began and where it ended, because it was joined to other houses in the street. She had never seen houses like that before, joined together like that. In Lagos houses were usually completely detached with the yards on both sides, the compound at the back and verandas in front. These ones had none of those things. They were long solid blocks, with doors opening into the street. The windows were arranged in straight rows along the streets. On looking round, Adah noticed that one could tell which windows belonged to which door by the colour the frames were painted. Most of the houses seemed to have the same curtains for their windows.
“They all look like churches, you know; monasteries,” Adah remarked.
“They build their houses like that here because land is not as plentiful as it is in Lagos. I am sure that builders of the future will start building our houses like that when Nigeria is fully industrialised. At the moment we can afford to waste land in building spacious verandas and back yards.”
“We may never be as bad as this. Jammed against each other.”
Francis did not make any comment. There was no need. He opened the door into what looked to Adah like a tunnel. But it was a hall; a hall with flowered walls! It was narrow and it seemed at first as if there were no windows. Adah clutched at Titi, and she in turn held her mother in fear. They climbed stairs upon stairs until they seemed to be approaching the roof of the house. Then Francis opened one door and showed them into a room, or a half-room. It was very small, with a single bed at one end and a
new settee which Francis had bought with the money Adah sent him to buy her a top coat with. The space between the settee and the bed was just enough for a formica-topped table, the type she had had in the kitchen in Lagos.
Second Class Citizen Page 4