Adah wanted to know the truth from the doctor before she started looking for a room for herself and her children. Mr Noble was fed up with their fights and had asked them to move. To cap it all, the women in the house wrote Adah an open petition begging her to control her husband, because he was chasing them all The letter was posted unsealed, and sent to the wrong branch of the library. So other library assistants could read it if they liked. Adah was not worried, she was going anyway.
She waited patiently for her turn at the surgery, then went in. The doctor greeted her and asked her how she was and she said, “The child is sitting there pretty. It did not come out as you made me believe it was going to.” Her voice was low and panicky for the first time.
The look the doctor gave her was terrible. It seemed to chill her blood. His dark Indian skin seemed to have gone a shade darker. He was making an effort to speak but the anger inside him was choking him so that he gobbled feebly just like a kettle on the boil … then just like a kettle he spluttered: “I did not give you the pills to abort the child.”
Adah recoiled like a frightened snake, but again, like a snake, she was gathering all her inner energy ready to attack this frightened little man. What did he mean? Adah asked with a voice that had a tinge of brutal harshness in it. She felt like digging her teeth into those eyes that were popping out like a dead fish’s.
“All right, so I am having the baby. But I’ll tell you this, the pills you gave me were abortive and you know it and I know it, because I carry the child and know what happened the first few weeks you gave them to me. If my child is imperfect in any way, you are responsible. You know that.”
She walked out of the surgery, not to her own home, but to a park near Gospel Oak village and then sat down, thinking. She had suspected something like this would happen, but to have it confirmed this way made her feel a traitor. She cried for herself, she cried for her children, and she cried for the unborn child. Suppose the child was born imperfect, just like those unfortunate thalidomide babies, what was she going to do then? Her thoughts went to her brother. Boy, who had sent her all his savings, asking her to leave Francis and his children and come back to Nigeria where her work at the Consulate would be waiting for her. Boy, poor Boy, he was very much annoyed over the cap issue which Francis had written to his parents about. This child would give them another song to sing. They would ask why, if she was on birth-control, which she went and got herself, did she then become pregnant? They would say the child was not her husband’s, that it’d probably be a white child. You know, like the people who fitted the cap. And then everybody would laugh. Her own people would cover their faces in shame. She found herself being grateful that her parents were dead. This would have killed them. She had raised everybody’s hopes when she was at the Methodist Girls’ High School, she had raised their hopes higher when she got strings of “A” levels by taking correspondence courses, and the hopes were being realised when she was in a good job at the American Consulate. If only she had stopped then. She could have passed the rest of her examinations by correspondence. After all, was Ibadan University not a branch of the great London University she was so mad about?
But would her children have been in this kind of nursery school where they were then? She got confused. Had it all been worth it?
Then a hand touched her shoulder. The hand was a black man’s. Adah jumped. Sitting there, thinking and shedding silent tears, she had not heard the man cross the park. He was an African, a Nigerian. And when he spoke, Adah knew he was Ibo.
“You’ve had a fight with your husband?”
Adah did not answer. Then the man went on:
“My name is Okpara, and I know you are Ibo because of the marks on your face. I don’t want to hear anything. Let’s go and beg his forgiveness. He would let you in.” Typical Ibo psychology; men never do wrong, only the women; they have to beg for forgiveness, because they are bought, paid for and must remain like that, silent obedient slaves.
Adah showed him the way to her house. Had not the magic pass word “Ibo” been uttered? The man talked all the way about this and that. He had a wife, too, with a baby boy, and he had read Law. They had been here some time and were getting ready to go home in about four months. His wife was a secretary and he worked in the Civil Service here. He had now finished his studies. But, he told Adah, they still quarrelled, though he would never beat his wife. He had outgrown that, but they still quarrelled. These quarrels did not mean the end of marriage. He reminded Adah of an old Ibo saying.
“Don’t you remember, or have you forgotten, the saying of our people, that a husband and his wife always build their home for many things but particularly for quarrels? A home is where you quarrel in.” Adah nodded, she did remember.
She should have asked Mr Okpara whether the old people lived in one room, whether the men gave babies to their wives in such quick succession. Had not her Ma told her that during her time they used to nurse and breast-feed a child for at least three years? At least those men, the men of the time Mr Okpara was talking about, had other amusements. They had their tribal dances, they had their age-group meetings from which they arrived too drank with palm-wine to have the energy to ask for their wives. Superstition played a big role in the lives of those people; if you slept with your wife when she was nursing a child, the child would die, so husbands abstained from their nursing wives for a period of three years. Many men were polygamous for this reason. They would build a separate hut for the nursing wife, pension her off for that long period and take in a childless one. These people could afford to build a house in which to quarrel.
But not in London, where her Francis sat all week in the same room by the same kitchen table turning the pages of this book and that book, getting up only to eat or go down to the Nobles to watch their television. Francis could never have a mind as healthy as those men. Again it struck her that their plan had failed, and that it had all been her fault. She should not have agreed to work all the time. She should have encouraged Francis to work, just like this man’s wife, whom she had not seen, had encouraged her husband to work. Francis would have met other men, like this one, and he would have copied them. It was not too late, she consoled herself. That was what she was going to try to do. It might even still save the marriage. After all had not Mr Okpara studied privately in the evenings and still gained a certificate instead of going to watch the television from six o’clock to closedown?
To Mr Okpara she said nothing because she still maintained to herself that failure to make her marriage work was her own affair. She did not mind listening to the story of a successful one, and maybe getting some tips on how to make hers work, but she was not letting this stranger know. Why did she allow Mr Okpara to come home with her? Adah herself did not know the answer. She did not tell the man anything, even though her mind was crying for someone to listen to her, to understand her. Yet she felt that by talking to this stranger, although he was kind and an Ibo like herself, she would be betraying her husband, her family, her children. You don’t tell people your troubles when you are still in the midst of them, otherwise it makes them bigger, more insoluble. You tell people when it’s all over, then others can learn from your mistakes, and then you can afford to laugh over it. Because by then they have stopped hurting, you have passed them all, have graduated from them.
They got into their room. The scene that met their eyes was comical, and that was an understatement. Vicky was sitting on the settee, waving his wet nappy in the air like a flag. Titi was perched on the bed, looking thoughtfully at Vicky and their father. Bubu was lying flat on his back in the cot, listening to the songs Francis was singing to his children from the Jehovah’s Witnesses handbook, looking as untidy as ever. His unshaved face became more noticeable now that Mr Okpara was in the room. The latter was darker than Francis; he was not tall, about five foot eight, the same height as Francis, but he was immaculate. His white shirt was dazzling, and the fact that he was very black pronounced the whiteness still further. He wa
s wearing a black three-piece suit, and his black shoes shone. His black briefcase added to his dignity somehow and the black rolled umbrella he was carrying completed the image - a black clerk in Britain coming home from the city.
As for Francis, to Adah he did not look like the image of anything. He was just himself, just Francis Obi, and Adah saw then that if she was going to model him on the image of this Mr Okpara, she was going to have a big fight ahead of her. Francis was Francis, not ashamed of being Francis, and was not going to change, even if Adah brought two hundred successful Ibo students to show him. He was proud to be what he was and Adah had better start getting used to him that way or move out.
Francis swore to Mr Okpara that he did not touch Adah. “She simply went out. I did not know where, but I knew she would come back because she can’t bear to leave her children for long. I did not beat her. Did she say that?”
Okpara was not daunted. They were not happy, Adah was not happy and this country was a dangerous place to be unhappy in, because you have nobody to pour out your troubles to, so that was why most lonely African students usually had emotional break-downs because they had no one to share their troubles with. Did Francis want his wife to have such a breakdown? Okpara asked. Would that not be a drain on his purse?
This startled Francis and Adah. She did not know that people still lived like that, the husband paying for the doctor’s bills. Even in Nigeria, whenever it was necessary for a private doctor to be called, she had always paid. She could not remember Francis ever paying for anything like that. Okpara was out of touch with the problem at hand, and Francis, now confused with anger, shame and disappointment, resented this intrusion into his family life. Adah hurried to make coffee.
She did not know that Francis had come to such a situation that he had told himself subconsciously that he would never pass his examinations. He had as it were told himself that his ever becoming a Cost and Works accountant in this world was a dream. She did not know that for this reason he would do everything to make Adah a failure like himself. He could not help it, it was human nature. He was not a bitter man.
He lashed his tongue at Okpara, told him to go back home and mind his own business. It was then that Adah realised that Okpara was English only on the surface. An English person would have felt insulted and would leave. But not Okpara. He was Ibo, and this was an Ibo family in trouble, and he was not going to leave until he had made them promise to pay a visit, so that they would see how the Okparas lived. He asked Adah if she had relations in London. Could they not intervene for her?
Adah thought this over. She had no close relatives in London, and the few distant ones would simply laugh. They would say: “We thought she was the educated lady who knew all the answers. Did we not warn her against marrying that man? Did she not make her own bed? Well, let her sleep in it!” So Adah shook her head and said she had nobody.
After coffee, Okpara talked and advised Francis to be a man. Staying at home, and singing to his children from the hymn book of the Jehovah’s Witnesses would not feed and clothe his family, to say nothing of his old parents at home. So he must get a job and study in the evenings. After all, the subjects were not completely new to him any more. Otherwise he would lose his manhood, and these children that he was singing to would soon realise that it was their mother that bought them clothes and food.
Francis stared at him as he said this, because it was a great humiliation to an African not to be respected by his own children. Okpara noticed that he had touched a soft spot for he then banged at the kitchen table, just to emphasise his point. He went on and said did Francis not know that the children born in this country get clever right from their mother’s stomach? They know and they can remember what goes on around them. So if Francis wanted to hold the respect of his two sons, he’d better know what he was doing. Okpara did not mention Titi, she was only a girl, a second-class human being; it did not matter whether she respected her father or not. She was going to grow into an ordinary woman not a complete human like a man.
In the weeks and months that followed Okpara and his pretty little wife did their best but Francis would always be Francis. He had been used to being worked for, by a woman whom he knew belonged to him by right. Adah could not escape because of the children or so Francis thought.
When she told him she was expecting another child, the laughter that greeted this announcement was like a mad monkey’s in the zoo. It was so animal-like, so inhuman, so mirthless, and yet so brutal. Adah was sure she was five months gone before she told him. She had first got over the pain in her own mind, but was still anxious about the perfection of the baby. She worried about that sometimes, but one thing she had learnt from Bubu’s confinement was that she was not going to that hospital as a poor nigger woman. Her baby was going to arrive in style. She knitted and sewed, and this time her maternity grant was not going to Francis. She was buying a brand-new pram, a new shawl and a new outfit for herself for when she came out of the hospital. She met a West Indian girl who had had a baby girl by a Nigerian, but the man had not married her because, according to him, the child was not his. It was this girl who showed Adah that you could live on what was called the Assistance until your children grew up and you could get a job. Adah had heard of this Assistance before, in Nigeria; she learnt about it in her Social History lessons. She did not know that she could still claim it. If only she had known, she would have left Francis earlier. But she did not know.
She addressed twenty greeting cards to herself, gave three pounds to Irene, the girl, and told her to post three cards a day after the baby was born. Two big bunches of flowers were to be sent to her, one on her arrival, with Francis’s name attached to it with sentimental words. The other one was to arrive at the hospital after her safe delivery. But if she did not survive the birth, Irene was to put Adah’s children’s names on it and make it into a wreath. Irene got sentimental and started to cry; Adah told her not to, because we all have to die some time. She was sure that if she was going to be operated upon like before, she did not have much chance. But the Indian doctor, now sorry for what he had done, had become Adah’s strongest ally. The chances of her not being operated upon were fifty-fifty. Adah knew that if there was one single chance of her not being cut up, she was going to take that one chance. Her body had a way of rejecting anything foreign, she had known that too. So instead of handing over her pay packet to Francis to dole out the two pounds for housekeeping to her she would buy everything the doctors and the midwives told her to eat. Francis raised many rows, but Adah had a more important thing to worry about - her unborn child. It was so small she could hardly feel it. Her figure did not get big like it did when she was having the others. But she kept strictly to the diet prescribed.
It was then that she was introduced to the modern way of relaxation birth. Adah attended all the classes. It all seemed so easy that she regretted the unnecessary pain she had experienced with the other children. She did not lie about the date of her confinement and she was determined to have her four weeks’ rest before going into hospital.
The money was not enough to go round and she told Francis, “From now on, fend for yourself. I know the children are mine, because they need to be fed. You must go out and work. If not, I shall only cater for my children.”
Francis told her that she could not do it. Adah said nothing, but carried out her plans. He must go out to work. She cared about his studies and all that, but the children were growing both in size and in number. They came first. They had a right to happiness as well, not just Francis. He told her to write down the statement that she would not feed him any more. Adah wrote it without any hesitation. If the world was going to blame her for not feeding her able-bodied husband, let it go ahead. She did not care any more. She had three children to think about and soon there would be four.
They were sorry at the Chalk Farm Library that she was going. She was sorry too, but there, in that library, she discovered a hidden talent which she did not know she had before - the unin
hibited ability to make friends easily. People had a way of trusting her easily because she was always trying to laugh however bad the situation. She learned to avoid gloomy people; they made her unhappy. So, since she could not avoid seeing Francis and his sad face, she shut him off from her mind’s eye. She saw him but her mind did not register him any more. She heard him say that he had reported her to a Ministry or Board or something because she had signed that she would not feed him any more. Adah waited for the Law to come for her, but the Law did not.
He came with her to the hospital in the ambulance, though. On the second morning of her stay, her big bunch of flowers arrived. Her table was gay with cards even before Dada arrived. She came that night, small, but painless, and perfect. Adah was sure that the child arrived in the world smiling and laughing. She was so small, less than five pounds in weight, but beautiful, just like a black doll - and a girl. Adah was thankful for this child, so perfect and so beautiful that she nicknamed her “Sunshine”.
She came home by herself in a taxi, and did it in style. She made everybody believe that she had wanted it so, to surprise her husband. She did not tell them that Francis had refused to come for her. They would start to pity her, and she could do without that. She tipped the nurses generously and they all laughed and thanked her. When she got home, she wrote a very nice letter to them all thanking them and she could hear them in her mind’s ear saying what a nice happy African woman she was. She had no troubles in the world. Because of this attitude her problems became insignificant. They were all part of her life.
Second Class Citizen Page 19