After that revelation, Adah started nagging Miss Stirling to find a nursery place for her children. But, as every young mother who tried to place her child in a nursery could testify, there was no place for the children.
She had to make do with Trudy, aware all the time that the kids still played in the back yard and that Vicky’s nappies were never used, but soaked in water so that they looked used.
She prayed to God about it, and hoped nothing horrid would happen to the kids. God was either tired of answering her prayers, or wanted to teach Adah a lesson. For something horrid did happen, not to Titi, but to Vicky.
5
An Expensive Lesson
One beautiful morning in July, Adah woke up very tired. There were many possible reasons that could have accounted for her fatigue: their living conditions, cramped together in one half-room; her constant worry about the way Vicky and Titi were being treated; her pregnancy. To cap it all, she and Francis communicated only in monosyllables, and then only when the conversation was very necessary.
She started to lose faith in herself. Had her dream of coming to the United Kingdom been right after all, or was she simply an empty dreamer? But Francis had agreed to it in the first place. Where had she gone wrong? She wished the Presence was still with her to give her a clue but it seemed to have deserted her when she landed in England. Was the Presence her instinct? It had been very active in Nigeria. Was that because in Nigeria she was nearer Mother Nature? She only wished somebody would tell her where she had gone wrong.
With this heaviness which was like the heavy load of Christian in The Pilgrim’s Progress, she got up reluctantly She looked for a minute or two at her husband snoring away, his hairy chest going up and down like troubled waves. She felt like shaking him to tell him how tired she was feeling, and how reluctant she was to leave the house and the children that day but she knew that he would not listen in the first place, and that even if he listened, he would dismiss her feelings as mere superstition, just like Caesar dismissed his wife’s dream about the Ides of March.
She got herself dressed, washed the children and gave them breakfast. The clatter of the plates and Vicky’s crying woke Francis eventually.
“What’s all this noise about so early in the morning? Can’t I even have an eight hours’ sleep in peace?” Francis demanded angrily.
“Vicky won’t have his Rice Krispies. I don’t know what the matter is with him this morning. He isn’t hot or anything, just raging with temper at nothing,” Adah explained.
Francis looked at his son for a while. Vicky stood in the middle of the room with his mouth pouting in determined anger, and his bib dripping with milk. Francis sighed and was on the verge of turning over to face the other side of the bed when Adah said:
“I feel so heavy this morning, and have no appetite either. Could you please take the children to Trudy for me? I’m late as it is.”
“Oh, God,” groaned her husband.
“Will you take them for me?” Adah pleaded.
“Have I any choice?” Francis wanted to know.
Such questions did not need answers, Adah decided within herself, but she was annoyed nonetheless. Could Francis not have asked her how she was feeling or something? Would that be too much to ask? she wondered. She told herself to stop being over-romantic and soft. No husband would have time to ask his pregnant wife how she was feeling so early in the morning. That only happened in True Stories and True Romances, not in real life, particularly not with Francis for that matter. But despite the hard talking to herself, she still yearned to be loved, to feel really married, to be cared for. She was beginning to understand why some young wives went to the extent of being unfaithful, just to make themselves feel human, just to find another human being who would listen to their voices, who would tell them that it was going to be all right.
Francis was only good at giving her children, nothing else. She felt vengeful. She left the breakfast things uncleared, did not change Vicky’s dripping bib, did not wipe the milky mouth; she simply pulled out her bag from the jumble of children’s clothes and walked to the door, about to leave.
Then Vicky, seeing his mother was leaving him, started to cry. In his hurry to grab her skirt, he tipped more milk onto the carpetless floor. Adah smiled inwardly. Francis was going to have a busy day.
She picked Vicky up, cooed to him reassuringly and kissed him. But Vicky would not let her go. He held on to her tightly. That was odd, thought Adah. Vicky was a contented, fat baby, who normally just said “bye bye” to Adah most mornings. But not today. Adah sat down again and cuddled him, sang to him, and then the “bye bye” came. A tearful one, a reluctant one. He walked to the door, this time clutching at a teaspoon, still wearing the dripping bib. As for Titi, she was past caring. She seemed scarcely aware of all the goings-on around her. She seemed to have resigned herself to the inevitability of it all. She seemed to tell her little self that her crying would not change anything and she must accept things as they were.
Adah’s pay at work was just enough to pay the rent, pay for Francis’s course, his examination fees, buy his books and pay Trudy. They had little left after this, and so it was imposible for Adah to have lunch at work. She usually took a boiled egg with her, instead of having it in the mornings for breakfast. But sometimes she got bored with having just a boiled egg and the coffee provided in the library and she ate nothing. On those occasions, she felt that type of hunger which she thought she had outgrown. The hunger that held the two sides of one’s stomach and squeezed them so tightly that the owner of the stomach felt like passing out. Sometimes her stomach would whine and rumble in its agony. These mumbling sounds in Adah’s stomach used to embarrass her no end. It was all right in Nigeria when she was a servant and an orphan, but it was uncomfortable when she was a woman in her own right and a mother of two!
She sensed that the hunger-pangs were about to start, during her lunch break, so she decided to go for a walk instead. It was wet outside, and the staff-room was cosy and warm. The girls had already sat down and were talking of their conquests and, as usual, about marriage. She was beginning to agree with them that some marriages could lead to happiness, because the girls talked of nothing else but the happy ones. Well, hers was not happy, though she still believed that a happy marriage was an ideal life for a girl. One of the girls, Cynthia, was engaged to be married, and was sure hers was going to work. Adah had agreed with her so many times that she was no longer in the mood to listen to her happy chatter that day. Cynthia would notice her rumbling stomach and offer her some food, and ask her if she was all right and all that, so she would go for a walk.
She usually walked along Finchley Road, looking at all the restaurant windows she passed. She used to tell herself that, when Francis qualified and she had become a librarian, Francis would bring her to such places to eat. She sensed that, in her case, it was an empty dream. Even if Francis did qualify, he would never have the courage to bring her to a restaurant to eat, not in London anyway, because he firmly believed that such places were not for blacks. Adah knew that his blackness, his feeling of blackness, was firmly established in his mind. She knew that there was discrimination all over the place, but Francis’s mind was a fertile ground in which such attitudes could grow and thrive. Personally, if she had had the money, she would have walked straight into such places and was sure she would have been served. But what was the point of her dreaming about it, she had no money! So she feasted her eyes on the well-displayed food. One particular item attracted her that afternoon. It was a fishcake in a fish shop. The cake was yellowish brown all round and very appetising. Her mouth started to water like that of a starving dog, so she turned away. The uneasiness she had felt early in the morning seemed to descend on her again with so much force that she felt she was going to choke. For no reason whatsoever, she started to hurry back to the library. When she reached it, she would have a drink and a rest before going back to work. Thank goodness it was one of her early days. She would be finished by f
ive.
She met Cynthia at the front door of the library, struggling hurriedly into her light summer raincoat.
“Thank God, you are here. I was just going to look for you.”
“My children. What’s happened to them? Are they all right?”
“How did you know?” Cynthia asked, frightened. “Who told you?” she went on asking as she trotted behind Adah into the library.
Yes, how had she known? How could a mother tell another woman who had never given birth to a baby that sometimes she lived in her children? How could she explain that if her son underwent an operation her own body would ache, how could Adah tell Cynthia that when she was looking at the fishcake, she had seen Vicky’s wet face, twisting in pain, reflected in the window? There was too much to explain; too much about herself as a human being, that she did not know. She just felt these things.
Adah did not cry. Victor was in danger, but not dead, and as long as he was alive, God would help him.
“You haven’t heard the message?” the other assistant commented.
Then Adah got the message she had already sensed. Trudy had phoned, they said; Vicky was very ill and she couldn’t send him to a hospital because she was waiting for Adah to come home.
Mrs Konrad, God bless her, drove her to the station. Adah ran from Kentish Town station to Trudy’s house. There was an ambulance waiting outside the door. A small crowd had already gathered, talking, arguing and conjecturing. They all knew Adah, they’d seen her bring her children to Trudy’s many a time. Titi looked at her pathetically as she ran past into Trudy’s sitting-room.
Trudy was holding Vicky, wiping his face with a rag as filthy as an old mophead. She dipped the rag in a bowl of equally filthy water and rubbed it all over Vicky’s face. She said she was cooling his temperature. A big bald doctor stood there, his bag in his hand. The Indian doctor with whom Francis and Adah had registered was too busy to come and the big bald fellow in black three-piece suit was his locum. He stood there, this doctor looking at Trudy’s ministrations objectively, as if they were no concern of his.
When Adah came in, Vicky lifted a hand and called his mother. He still knows me, Adah thought, as she scooped him from Trudy. She held him tightly, as if by doing so she could breathe health into the sick boy.
“What is the matter with him?” she asked, first the doctor and then Trudy. Getting no answer, she turned to Miss Stirling, who just stood there wringing her hands. If they knew what the matter was, they were not going to say.
“The ambulance is waiting. You’ll find out in good time. Meanwhile we have to get him to hospital as quickly as possible,” the doctor ordered.
Though there was an urgent tinge in the doctor’s voice, by Adah’s calculation Vicky was not very ill. He was hot, running to a hundred and one in body temperature, yet Adah did not feel that there was any need to panic. She was thinking that Vicky probably had a bout of malaria, which to her was just like a common cold. Malaria would make a child’s temperature run high, and it would go down as soon as the child was given Nivaquine. In fact, if Vicky had had the attack at home, that was what she would have done. As far as she knew, judging from the experience she had with Titi, children suffered only from malaria. Why all the panic then? she wondered. Any mother could cure a child of malaria without phoning the ambulance men or calling the doctor, who simply stood there, ready as if for nothing but to sign a death certificate.
“Vicky, say ‘bye-bye’ to Trudy,” she said as they made their way to the door. Vicky waved bye-bye weakly, and also sang it, in his peculiar way.
They all - Trudy, Miss Stirling and the doctor - opened their mouths as if to tell her that the baby was too weak to talk. But they kept quiet when Vicky talked. Adah felt triumphant. Her son was simply running a high temperature, that was all. He was not dying, so they might as well get used to the idea. She felt like Jesus, who amazed His dumbfounded disciples when He said, “Lazarus is not dead, he sleepeth”.
The big doctor saw through her agony, her fear, and touched her shoulder gently as she was about to step into the street. “Your little son is very ill. I don’t know what it is, but I am sure they will do their best for him at the Royal Free Hospital.”
Adah thanked him, but she was determined not to be made unhappy, not be talked into expecting the worst. “I think I know what the matter is,” she boasted. “I think it is malaria. Children do have it at home, you know, just as you have common colds.”
“This may not be malaria, you know,” the doctor cautioned as he and the ambulance men helped her into the ambulance.
In the ambulance, her thoughts were confused. Her brain worked tick-tock, as they say in Yoruba. Whenever anyone was thinking fast, he would say that his brain worked like a talking clock. She wondered what could be wrong with a child who had said. “goodbye” to her that morning. What could be so wrong as to merit an ambulance and a doctor? In Lagos, one had to be either a millionaire or a relative of the doctor’s to warrant his visit. He wouldn’t come just for a child running a high temperature. Now an ambulance was speeding her to Royal Free, just for that. Why was the name of the hospital Royal Free? Was it a hospital for poor people, for second-class people? Why did they put the word “free” in it? Fear started to shroud her then. Were they sending her Vicky to a second-class hospital, a free one, just because they were blacks? Oh, God, what had she let herself in for? They might even use her child’s organ to save the life of another child, who would probably be white, and rich and who would be admitted into a hospital that had no “free” in it. A paying hospital. Adah did not then believe in anything good coming from something you did not pay for. She viewed anything free with suspicion and reluctance. In Nigeria, you paid for your treatment. The fatter your purse, the more intensive your treatment. She had never seen or heard of a place where a child was given such close attention by adults, free. There must be a catch somewhere. By the time they arrived at the hospital she was convinced Vicky’s innards were going to be taken away from him.
The thought had got such a hold of her that she at first refused to let him go. Two nurses held her and took her into a small room with soft chairs lining the wall. They made her a cup of tea, with plenty of sugar in it. She drank it greedily with thanks, enjoying the taste of sugar which she hated normally. She had hardly ever had sugar because African mothers thought that sugar and meat caused worms. She had later come to like eating meat, but she never really acquired the taste for sugar. But on that day at the Royal Free, she was too hungry to care. She did enjoy the tea, and was told to wait while Vicky was being examined. She waited and waited, until she nearly fell asleep. Then she started to worry about Titi. She hoped Francis would remember to go for her. It was funny, really, she hadn’t thought of looking for Francis. She did not want him to be worried; it wasn’t anything serious. As far as Francis was concerned, she was still at work, and Vicky was at Trudy’s.
Something kept telling her that she should let her husband know. But how could she when she didn’t know where he would be at that time of the day? He had stopped attending regular lectures and just read on his own. That meant he could be in any library in London, or he could be with any one of his girl friends. Adah was the last person to disturb him if he were busy on any of these preoccupations. She would tell him everything when she got home.
The nurse and two young doctors came to her. They told her that Vicky was very ill, but they’d taken all sorts of samples from him, and, until they got the results, they could not treat him. They would keep him under observation in the hospital.
To Adah, hospital usually meant two things. Where you go for your baby to be born or where you go when you’re about to die. The first time she had been admitted to a hospital was when she was going to have Titi. The only other person in her family she knew had been in a hospital was Pa. He had gone for a check-up and never came back. These thoughts chased each other through her mind, as she tried to think of the right decision to make. She sensed, somehow, that she had li
ttle choice in the matter. Vicky had already been allocated a room, an isolated room, in case his illness was contagious.
She was allowed to go in and see him. He had been tucked in nicely, in a blue cot with blue fluffy blankets. He was not asleep, but stared at his mother as somebody having a bad migraine might. It seemed as if he found it difficult to move his eyes. Could they be right after all? Was Vicky very ill? She clutched the railings of the cot.
She was being watched through the glass partition. A nurse came to her and told her that it was time for her to go; Vicky needed rest and sleep. Adah nodded, and said goodbye to him, but Vicky did not answer; his tired eyes seemed to be gazing at something which only he could see. Adah was not allowed to linger, she had to go.
Why, she thought to herself, didn’t the authorities permit the mothers of young babies to stay with their sick offspring in hospital? In Nigeria, where the weather was warm enough, she could have stayed outside the hospital, under a big tree in the compound. Now she didn’t know what she was going to do. Wait in the corridor? They would shoo her off. But, until then, that was what she was going to do. Fancy admitting a year-old baby into a hospital and not giving him any treatment because they were still diagnosing the symptoms Suppose the child was seized by convulsions, as her children used to be when they ran a high temperature? The nurses would only pump injections into him, but she had seen babies suffer from these malaria seizures all through her life and knew all the first-aid cures. The hospital might not, so she would stay.
Adah dozed off on a wooden bench. When she opened her eyes, she was surprised to see the beautiful nurse with the soft voice who had told her previously that it was time to go.
She looked at Adah for a long time, and then smiled.
Second Class Citizen Page 7