Second Class Citizen

by Buchi Emecheta

  It came to her turn to go and see the doctor and the midwife who fixed you up with your own special size of cap. It was a messy job. They kept trying this and that and kept scolding Adah to relax otherwise she would go home with the wrong cap that would not fit her properly and that would mean another child. The fear of what Francis would say and what he would write to his mother and her relations loomed, full of doom, in her subconscious. Only she could feel it. The other two females, who were now tut-tutting at her and growing impatient and telling her to relax her legs, could not see the same picture that Adah was seeing. It was the picture of her mother-in-law when she heard that Adah went behind her husband’s back to equip herself with something that would allow her to sleep around and not have any more children. She was sure they would interpret it that way, knowing the psychology of her people. The shame of it would kill her. Her children’s name would be smeared as well. God, don’t let Francis find out. In desperation, the two women, the doctor and the midwife gave her a size of cap that they thought should fit. If it did not fit, it was not their fault, because Adah did not help them at all because she was feeling so guilty of what she was doing. First she had forged her husband’s signature, now she had got a cap which she was sure was going to cause a row if he found out. But suppose he did not find out and suppose it worked? That would mean no children and she would keep her new job and finish her course in librarianship. With that happy thought, she put the new equipment in Bubu’s pram and went home.

  But when she got home, she was faced with another problem. How was she to know what was going to happen on a particular night? Must she then wear the cap every night? That was the safest thing, but the cap was not very comfortable and Adah knew that it wobbled and she had to walk funnily to keep it in. And of course Francis would know. Oh, God, if only they had an extra room, then Francis would not have to see and watch and to make irritating remarks about her every move!

  She ran down to their backyard toilet that had no electric light and fitted herself with her new cap. She could hear Titi and Vicky having their usual fight, and soon Francis would start calling for her to come and quieten her children. She fitted the cap in a hurry, almost going sick at the thought of it all. At that moment she felt really sorry for doctors and nurses. The amount of messing they have to do with people’s insides! She dashed up, for Francis was already calling her and asking her what the hell it was she was doing down there in the toilet. Was she having another baby in there? Adah looked blank and said nothing. The fact that she was quiet made Francis suspicious. He then asked her what the matter was. Adah said that nothing was the matter.

  He looked at her again and asked, “Have you got a boil or something?”

  Adah turned round from where she was tucking the kids into bed and asked, “What boil?”

  And Francis, still looking intensely at her, replied: “Boil in the leg. You walk funny.”

  Adah smiled, a wobbly, uncertain sort of smile, for her heart was beating so fast and so loudly, the noise was like a Nigerian housewife pounding yams in her Odo. Her heart was going “gbim, gbim, gbim,” just like that. She was surprised and shocked to realise that Francis could not hear the guilty beating of that heart of hers. She thought everybody could hear it because it was so loud to her that it hurt her chest, making it difficult to breathe. But she managed a smile, that sort of lying smile. And it worked wonders.

  Then she said, just to press home another point, “You were calling me so loudly when I was down there in the backyard, that I ran up the stairs, and I bumped my toe on one of them, and it hurts a bit.”

  Francis arched his brows but said nothing.

  Soon it was midnight, and the row which Adah had dreaded flared up. Francis got the whole truth out of her. So, she a married woman, married in the name of God and again married in the name of the Oboshi, the goddess of Ibuza, came to London and became clever enough within a year to go behind his back and equip herself with a cap which he, Francis, was sure had been invented for harlots and single women. Did Adah not know the gravity of what she had done? It meant she could take other men behind his back, because how was he to know that she was not going to do just that if she could go and get the gear behind his back? Francis called all the other tenants to come and see and hear about this great issue - how the innocent Adah who came to London only a year previously had become so clever. Adah was happy when Pa Noble came, because at least it made Francis stop hitting her. She was dizzy with pain and her head throbbed. Her mouth was bleeding. And once or twice during the proceedings she felt tempted to run out and call the police. But she thought better of it. Where would she go after that? She had no friends and she had no relations in London.

  Francis made it clear that he was writing to his mother and father. Adah was not surprised at this. But she was frightened, for despite everything she still respected her mother-in-law. But her son Francis was severing the ties of friendship that existed between Adah and his family. She knew that, after that, things were not going to be the same any more. She cried then. She was lonely again, just as she was when Pa died and Ma married again and she had to live in a relative’s house.

  Her marriage with Francis? It was finished as soon as Francis called in the Nobles and the other tenants. She told herself that she could not live with such a man. Now everybody knew she was being knocked about, only a few weeks after she had come out of hospital. Everybody now knew that the man she was working for and supporting was not only a fool, but that he was too much of a fool to know that he was acting foolishly. Pa Noble reminded Francis of Adah’s health and God bless the old man, he sent all the inquisitive tenants away. There was nothing bad in Adah getting birth-control gear, Pa Noble said, but she should have told her husband.

  What was the point of Adah telling them that she had told her husband and he had said you could control children by pouring them on the floor? But it did not matter. She was almost twenty-one. And, among her people, a girl of twenty-one was no longer a girl, but a woman who could make decisions. Let Francis write to her people and his people. If she liked, she would read their letters, if she did not she could throw them into the fire. The only person that mattered was her brother. She would write and tell him the truth. Boy had never liked Francis anyway. He knew even before Adah found out that Francis looked like those men who could live off women because of his good looks. Adah had just left school and was full of the religious idea that you could change anybody by your own personal example and by prayers. She was wrong and Boy her brother was right.

  A few weeks later, Francis had his examination result, and it was another failure. Of course the fault was Adah’s, especially as she managed to scrape through a part of her library examination. To explain his failures Francis wrote to his parents about the cap. But by the time their reply came, Adah was being eaten up by another problem. She was pregnant again.

  12

  The Collapse

  Yes, Adah was pregnant again. This time she did not cry, she did not wring her hands, but behaved philosophically. If this pattern was going to be her lot in life she would do all she could to change it, but what was she going to do if all her efforts failed?

  She went to her Indian doctor. She told him her whole story and that she wanted the pregnancy terminated. The Indian doctor was not a young man at all, but he had a certain way of saying things and was so small that one could easily take him for a young man. He had made good in London and had two sons who were both up at Cambridge, he had married a woman doctor he met when he was a student himself. He was very popular among the blacks living in that part of Kentish Town at the time. Adah guessed that if she appealed to him, being Indian and once a student in London, he would understand her predicament.

  He understood, shook his head, sympathised and said, “You should have come to us for the cap. The ones sold at the clinic are cheap ones and they go loose quickly. You should have told me about it.”

  That was very nice. That was what Adah ought to have done if s
he had known. But how was she supposed to know? Smell it out like a witch doctor? Had he and his wife not put a notice in the waiting-room about the danger of smoking? Could they not have have had a similiar notice to say that birth control was available for the asking? It was too late now. She was pregnant, she knew it, but the doctor told her that it was too early for confirmation. He would give her some white pills. Adah was to take them and they would work.

  Adah wondered what those pills were meant to do for her. But in her state of apathetic resignation, she did not ask questions. The pills were going to terminate the pregnancy. If the pregnancy was going to be terminated, what was the point of telling Francis? How did she know he would not misunderstand? Even if he did understand, how could she be sure he was not going to repeat it to the Nobles, to his parents and to everybody? Could she tell Francis and say, “Look, I am telling you this under the seal of the confessional. You must not repeat it.” That would be impossible.

  She now saw this situation as a challenge, a new challenge. When she was little and alone, the challenge had been that of educating herself, existing through it all, alone, all by herself. She had hoped that in marriage she could get herself involved in her man’s life and he would share the same involvement in hers. She had gambled with marriage, just like most people, but she had gambled unluckily and had lost. Now she was alone again with this new challenge that included her children as well. She was going to live, to survive to exist through it all. Some day, help would come from somewhere. She had been groping for that help as if she were in the dark. Some day her fingers would touch something solid that would help her pull herself out. She was becoming aware of that Presence again - the Presence that had directed her through childhood. She went nearer to It in her prayers. She never knelt down to pray in the orthodox way. But she talked to Him while stirring peppery African soup on her cooker; she talked to Him when she woke up in the morning; she talked to Him all the time, and Adah felt that He was always there.

  There was no time to go to church and pray. Not in England. It took her years to erase the image of the Nigerian church which usually had a festive air. In England, especially in London, “church” was a big grey building with stained-glass windows, high ornamental ceilings, very cold, full of rows and rows of empty chairs, with the voice of the vicar droning from the distant pulpit, crying like the voice of John the Baptist lost in the wilderness. In London, churches were cheerless.

  She could not then go to any of them because it made her cry to see such beautiful places of worship empty when, in Nigeria, you could hardly get a seat if you came in late. You had to stand outside and follow the service through a microphone. But you were happy through it all, you were encouraged to bellow out the songs - that bellowing took away some of your sorrows Because most of the hymns seem to be written by psychologists. One was always sure of singing or hearing something that would come near to the problem you had in mind before coming to church. In England you were robbed of such comfort.

  London, having thus killed Adah’s congregational God, created instead a personal God who loomed large and really alive. She did not have to go to church to see this One. He was always there, when she was shelving books in the library, when she was tucking her babies up to sleep, when she was doing anything. She grew nearer to Him, to the people with whom she worked, but away from Francis. The gulf between them which had grown with her stay in the hospital had been made deeper by the cap incident, and now this new child would make it greater still. But she was not going to tell Francis and she did not feel guilty about it. Francis would not be of any help.

  She concentrated on working and enjoying her new job. It was at the Chalk Farm Library that she met Peggy, the Irish girl with a funny hair style, who was heartbroken because her Italian summer-holiday boy friend did not fulfil his promises. Peggy had gone on holiday the summer before, just to enjoy the Italian sun and the Roman scenery. She got involved with this handsome Italian youth, surprisingly tall for an Italian, but Peggy said he was Italian. It was love at first sight, and many promises were made. Peggy was a library assistant and the young man was reading Engineering in a university, the name of which Adah had forgotten. The young man seemed to have forgotten the promises he had made Peggy, and she was threatening to go to the address he gave her to find him and give him a piece of her mind. The talk was always of this young man and what Peggy was going to do to him, and how she was going to get her own back. Peggy never really told Adah what it was she had given him that pained her so much. But she let Adah know that she gave so much that she would regret it all her life. She was twenty-three, not very beautiful but small and fun to be with.

  Then there was the big boss, Mr Barking. He was thin and bad-tempered, but without a touch of malice. His daughter had married a worthless fellow and he was determined to squash that marriage if it cost him his life. That daughter was ill because of the mental cruelty being inflicted on her by this no-good husband. Mr Barking never talked about his wife; he had got so used to her being there, in his home, that she was never discussed. That wife of his made good chicken sandwiches. Adah had seen Mr Barking munching and munching away at lots of chicken sandwiches in the staff room, and sometimes they made her feel like having one.

  Bill was a big handsome Canadian; Adah did not know why he had come, to England in the first place, because he looked down on anything English. He used the word “Britisher” for the English, just like the Americans do. Even his Christmas cake was flown out from Canada. His mother sent him clothes, food, everything. He would not study for the British Library Association Examinations because he did not trust the British system of education. He had married the children’s librarian the year before. Her name was Eileen and she was tall and beautiful, a more perfect match you could never imagine. But Bill knew a little about everything. He liked black writers. Adah did not know any black writers apart from the few Nigerian ones, like Chinua Achebe and Flora Nwapa, and she did not know that there were any other black writers. Bill tut-tutted at her and told her what a shame it was that an intelligent black girl like her should know so little about her own black people. Adah thought about it and realised that Bill was right. He was an intelligent man, that Canadian, and Adah liked him a lot. During the staff break he would talk and expand about authors and their new books. He would then request it and the Camden Borough would buy it, and he would read it first; then he would pass it on to Adah and she would pass it to Peggy. Peggy would pass it to any other members of the staff who were in the mood to read books. It was through Bill that Adah knew of James Baldwin. She came to believe, through reading Baldwin, that black was beautiful. She asked Bill about it and he said, did she not know that black was beautiful.

  Bill was the first real friend she had had outside her family. She had a tendency to trust men more because her Pa never let her down. She had already cultivated the taste for wide reading, and Bill, whose wife was expecting a second child within two years of their marriage, was always in the mood for literary talk. Adah was fascinated. She even started reading Marx and was often quoting to herself that if the worst came to the very worst she would leave Francis with her children since she had nothing to lose but her chains.

  She got into the light-hearted atmosphere in which the library staff did their work. There was another girl, a half-caste West Indian, one of the people who found it difficult to claim to be black. She liked Adah because Adah was at that stage forcing everybody to like her. The people at that library made her forget her troubles. Everybody seemed to have troubles then. Bill’s wife was having another baby and their flat was very small. He was toying with the idea of going back to his old job, for he had been a radio news-caster in Canada. Why did he come here in the first place? Adah had wondered. He gave the hint, very tentatively, that he was running away from his mother who seemed to have organised a girl she wanted him to marry. He came to England to escape, but then he had met Eileen. Poor man, he was too handsome to be left alone. He was a six footer. Peggy�
�s problem was money to take her to Italy, where she hoped to get a working holiday in order to look for the young Italian who had lied to her. Mr Barking seldom joined in their light-hearted talk, but they all knew he was thinking of his daughter. Fay did not like to associate herself with the black people because she was too white, a mulatto. So, to press home this point, when she qualified as a librarian, she got engaged to this English man who was away in Cambridge reading Law. Adah never saw this man, but she saw Fay’s car which was so smashed that it was going to cost Fay a fortune to repair. Fay said her boy friend had smashed it. Adah was sorry for her, particularly as, although she was very beautiful in a film-star type of way with smooth, glossy skin, a perfect figure and thick beautiful hair, she was at least thirty. And thirty seemed an enormous age to Adah at the time. A woman of thirty and not married was to her an outrage then.

  When everybody started talking about their problems, Adah would start laughing.

  Peggy would say, “What the bloody hell are you laughing for?”

  Then Bill would reply for her: “She has no problems. She’s happily married to a brilliant husband who is reading to be a Cost and Works accountant, and she is already going through all her library examinations….”

  Adah would not contradict him. Was the world not too full of sadness? What was the point of telling them all her woes. Yes, they all believed she had no problems because she wanted them all to believe that.

  Three months passed speedily in this way and she knew that the pills the doctor had given her had not worked. She told herself not to panic. Women had been caught in worse situations before. Francis would only laugh and say: “I thought you were being clever, getting the cap behind my back.” She had been through the worst. Even his beatings and slappings did not move her any more. She did not know where she got her courage from, but she was beginning to hit him back, even biting him when need be. If that was the language he wanted, well, she would use it. Was she not the greatest biter in her school? Francis threatened to break all her teeth for her, and grew his nails as long as those of a tiger, so whenever Adah opened her mouth to bite, Francis would dig his tiger nails into her flesh, almost choking her. Then the thought struck her that she could be killed and the world would think it was an accident. Just a husband and wife fighting. She still hit back occasionally when she knew she was near the door or out of danger, but she gave in to his demands for the sake of peace. They were like the demands of a wicked child who enjoys torturing a live animal given to him as a pet.