"Odenigbo? He's inside, eating."
Her mother led the way to the veranda and leaned against a pillar. She opened her handbag, gestured for Olanna to look inside. It was full of the glitter and twinkle of jewelry, corals and metals and precious stones.
"Ah! Ah! Mom, what is all that for?"
"I carry them everywhere I go now. My diamonds are inside my bra." Her mother was whispering. "Nne, nobody knows what is going on. We are hearing that Umunnachi is about to fall and that the federals are very close by."
"The vandals are not close by. Our troops are driving them back around Nsukka."
"But how long is it taking to drive them back?"
Olanna disliked the petulant pout on her mother's face, the way her mother lowered her voice as if doing so would exclude Odenigbo. She would not tell her mother that they had decided to get married. Not yet.
"Anyway," her mother said, "your father and I have finalized our plans. We have paid somebody who will take us to Cameroon and get us on a flight from there to London. We will use our Nigerian passports; the Cameroonians will not give us trouble. It was not easy but it is done. We paid for four places." Her mother patted her headgear.
as if to ensure that it was still there. "Your father has gone to Port Harcourt to tell Kainene."
Olanna felt pity at the plea in her mother's eyes. Her mother knew she would not run away to England with them, and that Kainene would not either. But it was so like her to try, to make this doomed, grasping, well-meaning effort.
"You know I won't go," she said gently, wanting to reach out and touch her mother's perfect skin. "But you and Dad should go, if it will make you feel safer. I'll stay with Odenigbo and Baby. We'll be fine. We are going to Umuahia in a few weeks for Odenigbo to start work at the directorate." Olanna paused. She wanted to say that they would have their wedding in Umuahia but instead she said, "As soon as Nsukka is recovered, we'll go back."
"But what if Nsukka is not recovered? What if this war drags on and on?"
"It won't."
"How can I leave my children and run to safety?"
But Olanna knew she could and she would. "We'll be fine, Mom."
Her mother wiped her eyes with her palm, although there were no tears, before she brought out an airmail envelope from her handbag. "It's a letter from Mohammed. Somebody brought it to Umunnachi. Apparently he heard Nsukka was evacuated and he thought you had come to Umunnachi. Sorry; I had to open it, to make sure there was nothing dangerous in it."
"Nothing dangerous?" Olanna asked. "Gini? What are you talking about, Mom?"
"Who knows? Is he not the enemy now?"
Olanna shook her head. She was pleased her mother would be going abroad and she would not have to deal with her until this war was over. She wanted to wait until her mother left before she read the letter, so that her mother would not search her face for an expression, but she could not help pulling out the single sheet of paper right away. Mohammed's handwriting was like him-patrician and long, with elegant flourishes. He wanted to know if she was well. He gave her phone numbers to call if she needed help. He thought the war was senseless and hoped it would end soon. He loved her.
"Thank God you didn't marry him," her mother said, watching her fold the letter. "Can you imagine what a situation you would have been in now? O di egwu!"
Olanna said nothing. Her mother left soon afterward; she did not want to come inside and see Odenigbo. "You can still change your mind, nne, the four places are paid for," she said, climbing into the car, holding tight to her jewelry-filled bag. Olanna waved until the Land Rover drove past the compound gates.
It surprised her, how many men and women were in Abba, gathered at the square for the meeting, crowded around the ancient udala tree. Odenigbo had told her how, as children, he and the others, sent to sweep the village square in the mornings, would instead spend most of their time fighting over the fallen udala fruit. They could not climb the tree or pluck the fruit because it was taboo; udala belonged to the spirits. She looked up at the tree as the elders addressed the crowd and imagined Odenigbo here as a boy, looking up as she was doing, hoping to see the shadowy outline of a spirit. Had he been energetic like Baby? Probably, perhaps more so than Baby
"Abba, kwenu!" the dibia Nwafor Agbada said, the man whose medicine was said to be the strongest in these parts.
"Yaa!" everyone said.
"Abba, kwezuenu!"
"Yaa!"
'Abba has never been defeated by anyone. I said that Abba has never been defeated." His voice was strong. He had only a few cotton-ball tufts of hair on his head, and his staff shook as he plunged it into the ground. "We do not look for quarrels, but when your quarrel finds us, we will crush you. We fought Ukwulu and Ukpo and finished them. My father never told me about a war where we were defeated, and his father never told him either. We will never run from our homeland. Our fathers forbid it. We will never run from our own land!"
The crowd cheered. So did Olanna. She remembered the pro-Independence rallies at university; mass movements always made her feel empowered, the thought that for a thin slice of time all these people were united by a single possibility.
She told Odenigbo about Mohammed's letter as they walked back from the village square after the meeting. "He must be so upset about all of this. I can't imagine how he must be feeling."
"How can you say that?" Odenigbo said.
She slowed her pace and turned to him, startled. "What's the matter?"
"What's the matter is that you are saying that a bloody Muslim Hausa man is upset! He is complicit, absolutely complicit, in everything that happened to our people, so how can you say he is upset?"
'Are you joking?"
"Am I joking? How can you sound this way after seeing what they did in Kano? Can you imagine what must have happened to Arize? They raped pregnant women before they cut them up!"
Olanna recoiled. She tripped on a stone in her path. She could not believe he had brought Arize up like that, cheapened Arize's memory in order to make a point in a spurious argument. Anger froze her insides. She started to walk fast, past Odenigbo, and when she got home she lay down in the guest room and was not surprised when the Dark Swoop descended. She struggled to pull it off, to breathe, and finally lay in bed exhausted. She didn't speak to Odenigbo the next day. Or the next. And, when her mother's cousin, Uncle Osita, came from Umunnachi to tell her that she was being summoned to a meeting at her grandfather's compound, she did not tell Odenigbo about it. She simply asked Ugwu to get Baby ready and, after Odenigbo left for a meeting, she drove off with them in his car.
She thought of the way Odenigbo had said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," with an edge of impatience, as if he felt entitled to her forgiveness. He must think that if she could be forgiving of what happened around Baby's birth, she could be forgiving of anything. She resented that. Maybe it was why she didn't tell him she was going to Umunnachi. Or maybe it was because she knew why she was being summoned to Umunnachi and did not want to talk about it with Odenigbo.
She drove over the bumpy dirt roads lined by tall grasses and thought how interesting it was, that villagers could tell you something like Umunnachi summons you, as though Umunnachi were a person rather than a town. It was raining. The roads were marshy. She glanced at the looming three stories of her parents' country home as she drove past it; they would be in Cameroon by now, or perhaps already in London or in Paris, reading the newspapers to learn what was happening back home. She parked in front of her grandfather's house, near the thatch fence. Her tires skidded a little in the clumpy soil. After Ugwu and Baby had come out of the car, she sat still for a while, watching the raindrops slide down the windscreen. Her chest felt tight and she needed some time to breathe slowly to free it, to free herself so she could answer the questions the elders would present to her at the meeting. They would be gentle, formal, everyone gathered in the musty living room: her elderly uncles and granduncles, their wives, some cousins, and perhaps a baby tied on someone's back.
<
br /> She would speak in a clear voice and look down at the white chalk lines all over the floor, some faded from years, some simple straight lines, others elaborate curves, still others plain initials. As a child, she had watched her grandfather present the piece of nzu to his guests, and she would follow every movement of the men as they drew on the floor and the women as they smeared it on their faces and, sometimes, even nibbled it. Once, when her grandfather stepped out, Olanna had chewed the piece of chalk too and still remembered the dulling potash taste.
Her grandfather, Nweke Udene, would have led this meeting if he were alive. But Nwafor Isaiah would lead; he was now the oldest member of their umunna. He would say, "Others have come back and we have kept our eyes on the road for our son Mbaezi and our wife Ifeka and our daughter Arize as well as our in-law from Ogidi. We have waited and waited and we have not seen them. Many months have passed and our eyes ache from being focused on the road. We have asked you to come today and tell us what you know. Umunnachi is asking about all her children who did not return from the North. You were there, our daughter. What you tell us, we will tell Umunnachi."
It was mostly what happened. The only thing Olanna had not expected was the raised voice of Aunty Ifeka's sister, Mama Dozie. A fierce woman, she was said to have beat up Papa Dozie once, after he left their sick child and went off to visit his mistress. Mama Dozie herself had been away harvesting cocoyams in the agu. The child nearly died. Mama Dozie, it was said, had threatened to cut off Papa Dozie's penis first, before strangling him, if the child were to die.
"Do not lie, Olanna Ozobia, i sikwana asi!" Mama Dozie shouted. "May chicken pox afflict you if you lie. Who told you it was my sister's body that you saw? Who told you? Do not lie here. Cholera will strike you dead."
Her son Dozie led her away. He had grown so tall, Dozie, since the last time Olanna saw him a couple of years ago. He was holding his mother tight and she was trying to push him aside, as if to be allowed to pummel Olanna, and Olanna wished she could let her. She wanted Mama Dozie to hit her and slap her if it would make Mama Dozie feel better, if it would turn everything she had just told the members of her extended family gathered in this room into a lie. She wished that Odinchezo and Ekene would shout at her too, and question her for being alive, instead of dead like their sister and parents and brother-in-law She wished that they would not sit there, quiet, looking down as men in mourning often did and later tell her they were happy she did not see Arize's body; everyone knew what those monsters did to pregnant women.
Odinchezo broke off a large leaf from the ede plant and gave it to her to use as a makeshift umbrella. But Olanna didn't place it above her head as she hurried to her car. She took her time unlocking the door and let the rain run over her plaited hair and past her eyes and down her cheeks. It struck her how quickly the meeting had unfolded, how little time it took to confirm four of her family dead. She had given those left behind a right to mourn and wear black and receive visitors who would come in, saying "Ndo nu." She had given them a right to move on after the mourning and count Arize and her husband and parents as gone forever. The heavy weight of four muted funerals weighed on her head, funerals based not on physical bodies but on her words. And she wondered if she was mistaken, if she had perhaps imagined the bodies lying in the dust, so many bodies in the yard that recalling them made salt rush to her mouth. When she finally got the car open and Ugwu and Baby had dashed in, she sat motionless for a while, aware that Ugwu was watching her with concern and that Baby was almost falling asleep.
"Do you want me to get you water to drink?" Ugwu asked.
Olanna shook her head. Of course he knew she didn't want water. He wanted to get her out of her trance so she would start the car and drive them back to Abba.
18
Ugwu was the first to see people trooping on the dirt road that ran through Abba. They were dragging goats, carrying yams and boxes on their heads, chickens and rolled-up mats under their arms, kerosene lamps in their hands. The children carried small basins or pulled smaller children along. Ugwu watched them walk past, some silent, others talking loudly; many of them, he knew, did not know where they were going.
Master came home from a meeting early that evening. "We'll leave for Umuahia tomorrow," he said. "We would have gone to Umuahia anyway. We're just leaving a week or two sooner." He spoke too fast, looking at a point in the distance. Ugwu wondered if it was because he did not want to admit that his hometown was about to fall, or if it was because Olanna had not been speaking to him. Ugwu did not know what had happened between them but, whatever it was, it happened after the village square meeting. Olanna had come home in a strange silence. She spoke mechanically. She did not laugh. She let him make every decision about the food and about Baby, spending most of her time on the slanting wooden chair on the veranda. Once he saw her walk over to the guava tree and caress its trunk, and he told himself he would go and pull her away, after a minute, before the neighbors said she was going mad. But she didn't stay long. She turned quietly and went back and sat on the veranda.
She looked just as quiet now. "Please pack our clothes and food for tomorrow, Ugwu." "Yes, mah."
He packed their things quickly-they did not have that much anyway, it was not like Nsukka where he had been paralyzed with so many choices that he had taken very little. He put them in the car early the next morning and then went around the house to make sure he had missed nothing. Olanna had already packed the albums. She had bathed Baby. They stood waiting by the car while Master checked the oil and water. On the road, people were walking past in thick groups.
The wooden gate in the mud wall behind the house creaked open and Aniekwena came into the compound. He was Master's cousin. Ugwu disliked the sly twist of his lips; he always visited at mealtimes and then said "Oh! Oh!" in exaggerated surprise when Olanna asked him to join them in "touching their hands to their mouths." He looked grim now. Behind him was Master's mother.
"We are ready to go, Odenigbo, and your mother has refused to pack her things and come," Aniekwena said.
Master closed the bonnet. "Mama, I thought we agreed that you would go to Uke."
"Ekwuzikwananu nofu! Don't say that! You told me that we have to run and that it is better that I go to Uke. But did you hear me agree? Did I say 'oh' to you?"
"Do you want to come with us to Umuahia, then?" Master asked.
Mama looked at the car, packed full. "But why are you running? Where are you running to? Can you hear any guns?"
"People are fleeing Abagana and Ukpo, which means the Hausa soldiers are close and will soon enter Abba."
"Did you not hear our dibia tell us that Abba has never been conquered? Who am I running away from my own house for? Alu melu! Do you know that your father will be cursing us now?"
"Mama, you cannot stay here. Nobody will be left in Abba."
She looked up and squinted in concentration as though looking for a ripening pod on the kola nut tree was more important than what Master was saying.
Olanna opened the car door and asked Baby to get in the back.
"The news is not good. The Hausa soldiers are close," Aniekwena said. "I am leaving for Uke. Send word to us when you get to Umuahia." He turned and started to walk away.
"Mama!" Master shouted. "Go and bring your things now!"
His mother kept looking up the kola nut tree. "I will stay and watch over the house. After you all have run, you will come back. I will be here waiting. Who am I running away from my own house for, gbo?"
"Perhaps it would be a better idea to speak to her gently instead of raising your voice," Olanna said in English. She sounded very formal, clipped. Ugwu had not heard her speak to Master like that, except during the months before Baby was born.
Master's mother was looking at them suspiciously, as if she was sure that Olanna had just insulted her in English.
"Mama, will you not come with us?" Master asked. "Biko. Please come with us."
"Give me the key to your house. I might need something
there."
"Please come with us."
"Give me the key."
Master stared at her silently and then handed her a bunch of keys. "Please come with us," he said again, but she said nothing and tied the keys into one edge of her wrapper.
Master climbed into the car. As he drove out, he kept turning back to see his mother, perhaps to see if she would change her mind and dash after Aniekwena or wave to him to stop. But she didn't. She stood there, not waving. Ugwu watched her too, until they turned into the dirt road. How could she stay there all alone, not surrounded by relatives? If everybody in Abba was leaving, how would she eat since there would be no market?
Olanna touched Master's shoulder. "She will be all right. The federal troops won't stay in Abba if they pass through."
"Yes," Master said. He leaned over and kissed her lips, and Ugwu felt a buoyant relief that they were speaking normally again. The stream of refugees filing past was thinning.
"Professor Achara has found us a house in Umuahia," Master said, his voice too loud, too cheerful. "Some old friends are already there, and everything will soon be back to normal. Everything will be perfectly normal!"
Because Olanna remained silent, Ugwu said, "Yes, sah."
There was nothing normal about the house. The thatch roof and cracked unpainted walls bothered Ugwu, but not as much as the cavernous pit latrine in the outhouse with a rusting zinc sheet drawn across it to keep flies out. It terrified Baby. The first time she used it, Ugwu held her steady while Olanna cajoled her. Baby cried and cried. She cried often the following days, as if she too realized that the house was unworthy of Master, that the compound was ugly with its stubby grass and cement blocks piled in corners, that the neighbors' houses were too close, so close one smelled their greasy cooking and heard their crying children. Ugwu was certain that Professor Achara had fooled Master into renting the house; there was something wily in the man's bulging eyes. Besides, his own house down the road was large and painted a dazzling white.
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