Hunger drove Francis to work as a clerical officer in the post office. Adah’s hopes rose. This might save the marriage after all. But she was disappointed. Francis would pay the rent and still gave her only two pounds for the six of them and nothing more. Adah did not know how much he was earning or when he was paid. She warned him, though, that she was going into the Civil Service herself, and that she was going to do the same thing. She would not pay the rent, because it was a man’s job to do that, she would not contribute to the food budget, because was she not his wife? She would only be responsible for her children, their clothes, the nursery fees and anything else the children needed. But Francis would not know how much she earned or on what date, because he had started it. He told her that she could not do that because she was his wife. He could refuse to allow her to go out to work. Then Adah retorted saying:
“This is England, not Nigeria. I don’t need your signature to secure a job for me.”
But Adah hoped and prayed that this new sense of awareness and of pride in himself would continue. He bought himself a suit and shirts, he bought a small transistor radio, which Adah and the children were not allowed to touch and which he carried with him wherever he went, to work and even to the toilet Adah laughed inside herself, and said how like a small boy Francis could be. She paid for her own food and the children’s from the little savings she had collected from her superannuation pay. For the roof over their heads, she paid by being a wife to Francis at night, and by washing his endless shirts.
Her baby grew stronger, and she paid off her conscience by breast-feeding her. She was not going to bottle-feed this one. She had read somewhere that breast-fed babies were more intelligent, and grew stronger, than those fed from the bottle. She learned, too, that there was less likelihood of the mother becoming pregnant again if she did that. So she breast-fed her child.
Things seemed to be working out well, but Adah’s money was running short, and the children needed new clothes. She worked out a timetable, and found that she could manage to have three hours of quiet each afternoon. Then her old dream came popping up. Why not attempt writing? She had always wanted to write. Why not? She ran to Foyle’s and bought herself a copy of Teach Yourself to Write and sat down throughout all those months when she was nursing Dada and wrote the manuscript of a book she was going to call The Bride Price.
13
The Ditch Pull
That year’s summer was glorious. Dada was born in May and since Adah had brought her home from the hospital the sun had never stopped shining. The English people say that, in England, long warm summers always follow cold and horrible winters, which may or may not be so, but for that year the saying was correct.
Adah enjoyed it all the more, because for the first time in her life she was a real housewife. It only lasted five months, but how she wished that her life pattern could have continued that way. She did not rush back to work after having Dada because she had told her husband that with four children all under five, she could not bear to leave them with another woman. Titi’s name had been put down for a nursery school attached to Carlton School, just off Queen’s Crescent. All Adah had to do every day was to take Titi to school, do her shopping at the Crescent, take the three babies to the park for an hour or two, come home, give them their lunch, tuck them up to rest, and write her The Bride Price.
If Francis had been an Englishman, or if Francis had not been Francis but somebody else, it would have worked and Adah would have willingly packed up her studies just to be a housewife. She had been reading a great number of women’s magazines, and was surprised to read of mothers saying that they were bored just being housewives. She was not that type of woman. There were so many things she planned to do, and she did them. She knitted endless jumpers and cardigans for everybody, including thick big ones for Francis. It was a way of telling him that that was all she asked of life. Just to be a mother and a wife.
But Francis was from another culture. There was a conflict going on in his head. What was the point of marrying an educated woman? Why had his parents been asked to pay a big price if all she was going to do was to come to England and start modelling her life on that of English women, not wanting to work, just sitting there doing nothing but washing the babies’ nappies? To him he was being cheated. He had to work, study in the evenings and on Saturdays whilst Adah sat there doing nothing. He started to stay away from work on any pretext. When it rained heavily, Francis was sure he would catch cold. He would not leave home until it was about ten minutes to nine, and he was supposed to be at work by nine. Adah pointed out to him over and over again that it would take him at least thirty minutes to get to his place of work. But Francis did not listen to her. The first glamour of his new power, the power gained by the knowledge that, for the first time in their married life, he was bringing in the money, had died. He saw that Adah was not moved by this new power because the money he gave her for housekeeping was just enough to buy his own food. Adah did not mind. When she had spent all her superannuation she was going to start taking in clothes to sew for the clothing factory off the Crescent. The man who owned the factory was pleased with the specimen she had shown him and promised to give her a part-time job when she was ready. Adah liked this because it meant she could work at home and look after the children, but the best reason was that Francis would be away from home, rubbing shoulders with other men. Just fancy her, being married at last in the real sense, just like any other woman.
It was in that happy mood that she went to the small branch of Woolworth’s off the Crescent and bought four school exercise books, and started to scribble down The Bride Price. The more she wrote, the more she knew she could write and the more she enjoyed writing. She was feeling this urge: Write; go on and do it, you can write. When she finished it and read it all through, she knew she had no message with a capital “M” to tell the world, because it was full of scenes with sickly adolescent love sentiments. A recent film which she had seen not long ago awoke the same feeling in her as that first literary attempt of hers did. The story was over-romanticised. Adah had put everything that was lacking in her marriage into it. During the time she was writing it, she was oblivious of everything except her children. Writing, to her, was like listening to good sentimental music. It mattered little to her whether it was published or not, all that mattered was that she had written a book.
In her happiness she forgot that Francis came from another culture, that he was not one of those men who would adapt to new demands with ease, that his ideas about women were still the same. To him, a woman was a second-class human, to be slept with at any time, even during the day, and, if she refused, to have sense beaten into her until she gave in; to be ordered out of bed after he had done with her; to make sure she washed his clothes and got his meals ready at the right time. There was no need to have an intelligent conversation with his wife because, you see, she might start getting ideas. Adah knew she was a thorn in his flesh. She understood what he was going through because he was suffering so. But although she was sorry for him, although she understood all that was happening to him, she was not going to be that kind of a wife. Francis could beat her to death but she was not going to stoop to that level. But all the time she kept hoping that his long stay in England would change him. Did they not come to England for further studies? Surely he would change somehow. Adah knew that she was changing herself. Many things that had mattered and had worried her before had become less important. For instance, it did not matter to her any more whether she became a librarian or a seamstress. What mattered was that she should not be bothered with unhappiness, because she wanted to radiate happiness to all those around her. And when she was happy, she noticed that her children were happy too. But when they saw their father slapping her or telling her off, they clung to her, afraid, their eyes roaming this way and that way in childish terror.
She was going to show The Bride Price to Francis, to show him that she could write and that she had not been wasting her time as he thought
. But first she must take the manuscript to her friends at the Chalk Farm Library.
Bill read it and so did Peggy and the others. She thought they would laugh and tell her that it was a good first attempt. But Bill took it quite seriously. She should show it to somebody in publishing! This scared Adah. She did not know anybody in publishing, she did not know whether she could type the whole lot. It was so enormous, that manuscript. The words, simple, not sophisticated at all, kept pouring from her mind. She had written it, as if it were someone talking, talking fast, who would never stop. Now Bill said it was good, she should get it typed out, and he was going to show it to somebody. It was imperative now that Adah should tell her Francis.
She renewed her books, tucked them all neatly in between Bubu and Dada in the pram, mopped Vicky’s running nose, and they all marched to Carlton School to collect Titi from the nursery. But Adah was deep in thought as they crossed Haverstock Hill into Prince of Wales Road, pushing the pram with Vicky trotting by her side, the sun shining in the sky, the day hot and merry like any day in Africa. People were passing her this way and that, all in colourful sleeveless summer dresses, one or two old dears sitting on the benches by the side of the Crescent in front of the pub smiling, showing their stiff dentures, their crooked hats pulled down to shade their tired heads from the unusual sun. She walked into the Crescent where the smell of ripe tomatoes mingled with the odour from the butcher’s. But she saw none of this, her mind was turning over so fast. Could Peggy and Bill be right? Could she be a writer, a real one? Did she not feel totally fulfilled when she had completed the manuscript, just as if it was another baby she had had? “I felt so fulfilled when I finished it, just as if I had just made another baby,” she had told Bill, and he had replied: “But that is how writers feel. Their work is their brainchild. This is your brainchild; you are the only one in this whole world who could have produced that particular work, no one else could. If they tried it would just be an imitation. Books tell a great deal about the writers. It is like your own particular child.”
The phrase kept coming and going through Adah’s mind. Brainchild, brainchild. Francis must see it. They might never publish it, she knew, but she was going to use that as a stepping stone. She had always dreamed of becoming a writer, but she had told herself that writers knew so much that before she made her first attempt at collecting her knowledge into a book she would be at least forty. But now she had done The Bride Price, as a joke at first, but realising that she was serious as she scribbled along. Now a few of her friends had read it and they said that it was good.
She would study harder, then, to be a writer. But where would she start? There was such a lot, and such a diverse lot, one had to know to be a writer. She could not write in any African language, so it must be English although English was not her mother tongue. Yes, it was the English language she was going to use. But she could not write those big long twisting words. Well, she might not be able to do those long difficult words, but she was going to do her own phrases her own way. Adah’s phrases, that’s what they were going to be. But first she would need guidance. The simplest books she could think of were the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. Her Pa had taught her how to read by the Bible, St Matthew in the Bible, that part which said that there were fourteen generations after David before the birth of Christ. She ended up knowing most of the words of that part of the Bible by heart. As for Shakespeare, she had never stopped being fascinated by him. It was going to be a lot of work but it could be done. Then she thought again. It was all right mastering the language; what of the subject matter? She could not just keep writing from memory, just like that, at random. There must be a purpose, there must be a pattern somewhere. She could not find the answers to these questions at the time, but she knew they must be answered before she could write anything publishable She was not just going to be a writer of ordinary novels. She would have too much competition in that line. She would have to specialise somehow, in some special thing. The only practical knowledge she had was connected with librarianship. You don’t go about writing about how to file orders or shelve books according to Dewey or the Library of Congress! She could write about the people who came to borrow books, but she had to know about them. What discipline teaches people about people? Psychology? Sociology? Anthropology or history? She knew about the others, but what does a sociologist study? She would ask Francis. He ought to know. She would let him read the manuscript first, then she would ask, “Where do you learn about people and what do they learn in sociology?”
She told Francis about The Bride Price in the evening. But he replied that he would rather watch The Saint on the new television which they had hired. Adah pleaded, and wailed at him that it was good, that her friends at the library said so. He should please read it. She said that Bill thought it should be typed out, because it was good.
Then Francis said, “You keep forgetting that you are a woman and that you are black. The white man can barely tolerate us men, to say nothing of brainless females like you who could think of nothing except how to breast-feed her baby.”
“That may be so,” cried Adah, “but people have read it. And they say that it is good. Just read it, I want your opinion. Don’t you know what it means to us if in the future I could be a writer?”
Francis laughed. What ever was he going to hear next? A woman writer in his own house, in a white man’s country?
“Well, Flora Nwapa is black and she writes,” Adah challenged.
“Flora Nwapa writes her stuff in Nigeria,” Francis rejoined.
“I have seen her books in all the libraries where I worked.”
Francis did not reply to this. He was not going to read Adah’s rubbish and that was that. Adah was hurt badly, but she said nothing. She simply took her notebooks of “rubbish” and placed them neatly where she kept the books she had borrowed from the library that week. She would save up somehow and buy herself a typewriter, a second-hand one, one of those sold at the Crescent, and then she would type it all out. Meanwhile, she would keep them there and go on reading.
The thought of all this haunted her like a bad dream. That Francis would not read her book was bad enough but that he had called it rubbish without doing so was a deeper hurt, and that he had said that she would never be a writer because she was black and because she was a woman was like killing her spirit. She felt empty. What else was there for her to do now? It was plain to her that Francis could never tolerate an intelligent woman. She blamed herself again. They ought not to have come, then she would not have had this urge to write now; her marriage would have been saved, at least for the time being, because she knew that some time later she was going to write. Librarianship was to her simply a stepping stone to bring her nearer to the books which she dreamt she was going to write in the future, when she was forty.
But in England, she had been made to start almost twenty years before her time. Her books might not be published until she was forty, but her story had been completed. She could not go back now. She had known the feeling she had when she finished the story, she had tasted the fulfilment of seeing others read her work, and had felt an inner glow that was indescribable when other people said how much they had enjoyed reading it. Peggy had said, “It was so funny, I could not put it down. It was so comical.” Bill had said, “You only, and nobody else, could have written that.” Well, there was no going back now. She must go forward.
The following Saturday she left the children with Francis and dashed to the Crescent to do her weekend shopping. They were all sleeping, Francis and the children, and she did not bother to wake them up. The day was wet. The queues at the Crescent were endless. Adah had to queue for meat, for ground rice, for semolina, and even okra had to be queued for. She had to stand, here and there, all over the place in the dripping rain. In the end, she was happy to rush home, all wet but with the sense of relief that her shopping had all been done very early in the morning before the children were awake.
As she approached their land
ing she could smell the odour of burning paper. She ran inside quickly, hoping and praying that Vicky had not set their room on fire. But inside, she saw that Vicky and the others were still asleep. It was Francis standing there by the stove, burning the paper. He saw her come in, her wet face demanding an explanation. But Francis went on burning the paper. They seldom talked to each other, the two of them. Not being able to bear the smell any longer, Adah had to speak.
She said, “But, Francis, could you not have thrown all those papers you are burning into the dustbin, instead of creating this awful smell in the room?”
“I was afraid you’d dig them out of the bin. So I had to burn them,” was the prompt reply.
Adah became curious, suspicious, her heart beating faster.
“What are they, Francis? What are you burning? Letters? Who wrote them? Francis, what are you burning?”
Francis did not reply for a while, but went on feeding crumpled sheets into the stove and watching the burnt papers flying lifelessly about the room like black birds. He blocked Adah’s view on purpose with his broad back.
Adah knew that posture of Francis’s, standing there, challenging her. When he turned his face round, she knew she had seen that triumphant smile on his face before. Now she remembered. She had seen him smile like that when he was telling her how successful he had been in killing a monkey belonging to his friend. The friend had kept this monkey as a pet, to the annoyance of everybody. Francis had bought rat poison, smeared it on a piece of bread and given it to the monkey. The monkey had died, but the agony it went through, twisting in pain, the mournful cry of the unfortunate animal, had never ceased to delight Francis. He had told this story to Adah so many times, garnished with gruesome demonstrations, that Adah never forgot the way he smiled when telling it. There was another terrible story he had told Adah, smiling just like he was doing now. It was the story of a goat which his father had bought for Christmas. The goat was tied up in the backyard, and Francis had got the strongest horse-whip he could find, and started to lash this goat, telling it to tell him what two times two was. Adah had asked him whether it did not bother him, whipping some animal that could neither talk nor know what two times two was. Francis would then smile and smack his little lips, his bright eyes glistening behind his spectacles, and tell her that it did not matter at all, what mattered was that the goat would not answer his questions, so he had to be whipped for it. Adah remembered the whipping she got from her Cousin Vincent, and she would remember how each stroke went burning into her skin, and would shudder and tell Francis she did not want to listen to stories about his “heroic conquests”.
Second Class Citizen Page 20