He picked up his exercise book while sucking the second bone. The cold marrow was tart on his tongue. He read the verse, which he had copied so carefully from the blackboard that it looked like Mrs. Oguike’s handwriting, and then closed his eyes and recited it.
I can’t forget that I’m bereft
Of all the pleasant sights they see,
Which the Piper also promised me.
For he led us, he said, to a joyous land,
Joining the town and just at hand,
Where waters gushed and fruit trees grew,
And flowers put forth a fairer hue,
And everything was strange and new.
He opened his eyes and scanned the verse to make sure he had missed nothing. He hoped Master would not remember to ask him to recite it because, although he had memorized the verse correctly, he would have no answer when Master asked, What does it mean? Or, What do you think it is really saying? The pictures in the book Mrs. Oguike gave out, of the long-haired man with happy rats following him, were incomprehensible, and the more Ugwu looked at them, the more certain he became that it was all some sort of senseless joke. Even Mrs. Oguike did not seem to know what it meant. Ugwu had come to like her—Mrs. Oguike—because she did not treat him with special concern, did not seem to notice that he sat alone in the classroom at break time. But she had noticed how fast he learned the very first day when she gave him oral and written tests while Master waited outside the airless room. “The boy will surely skip a class at some point, he has such an innate intelligence,” she had told Master afterward, as if Ugwu were not standing right beside them, and innate intelligence instantly became Ugwu’s favorite expression.
He closed the exercise book. He had sucked all the bones, and he imagined that the taste of Olanna’s mouth was in his as he started to wash the dishes. The first time he sucked her bones, weeks ago, it was after he saw her and Master kissing in the living room on a Saturday morning, their open mouths pressed together. The thought of her saliva in Master’s mouth had both repelled and excited him. It still did. It was the same way he felt about her moaning at night; he did not like to hear her and yet he often went to their door to press his ear against the cold wood and listen. Just as he examined the underwear she hung in the bathroom—black slips, slippery bras, white pants.
She had blended so easily into the house. In the evenings, when guests filled the living room, her voice stood out in its clear perfection, and he fantasized about sticking out his tongue at Miss Adebayo and saying, “You cannot speak English like my madam, so shut your dirty mouth.” It seemed as if her clothes had always been in the wardrobe, her High Life music always come from the radiogram, her coconut scent always wafted over every room, and her Impala always parked in the driveway. Still, he missed the old days with Master. He missed the evenings when he would sit on the floor of the living room while Master talked in his deep voice and the mornings when he served Master’s breakfast, knowing that the only voices that could be heard were theirs.
Master had changed; he looked at Olanna too often, touched her too much, and when Ugwu opened the front door for him, his eyes expectantly darted past into the living room to see if Olanna was there. Only yesterday, Master told Ugwu, “My mother will be visiting this weekend, so clean the guest room.” Before Ugwu could say Yes, sah, Olanna said, “I think Ugwu should move to the Boys’ Quarters. That way we’ll have a free guest room. Mama may stay a while.”
“Yes, of course,” Master said, so promptly that it annoyed Ugwu; it was as if Master would stick his head in a raging fire if Olanna asked him to. It was as if she had become the master. But Ugwu didn’t mind moving to the room in the Boys’ Quarters, which was empty except for some cobwebs and cartons. He could hide things he had saved there; he could make it fully his. He had never heard Master speak about his mother, and, as he cleaned the guest room later, he imagined what she would be like, this woman who had bathed Master as a baby, fed him, wiped his running nose. Ugwu was in awe of her already, for having produced Master.
He finished the lunch dishes quickly. If he was as quick in preparing the greens for the dinner pottage, he could go down to Mr. Richard’s house and talk to Harrison for a little while before Master and Olanna came back. These days, he shredded the greens with his hands instead of slicing them. Olanna liked them that way; she said they retained more of their vitamins. He, too, had started to like them, just as he liked the way she taught him to fry eggs with a little milk, to cut fried plantains in da
inty circles rather than ungainly ovals, to steam moi-moi in aluminum cups rather than banana leaves. Now that she left most of the cooking to him, he liked to look through the kitchen door from time to time, to see who murmured the most compliments, who liked what, who took second helpings. Dr. Patel liked the chicken boiled with uziza. So did Mr. Richard, although he never ate the chicken skin. Perhaps the pale chicken skin reminded Mr. Richard of his own skin. There was no other reason Ugwu could think of; the skin was, after all, the tastiest part. Mr. Richard always said, “Fantastic chicken, Ugwu, thank you,” when Ugwu came out to bring more water or to clear something away. Sometimes, while the other guests retired to the living room, Mr. Richard would come into the kitchen to ask Ugwu questions. They were laughable questions. Did his people have carvings or sculptures of gods? Had he ever been inside the shrine by the river? Ugwu was even more amused that Mr. Richard wrote his answers down in a small book with a leather cover. Some days ago, when Ugwu offhandedly mentioned the ori-okpa festival, Mr. Richard’s eyes turned a brighter blue and he said he wanted to see the festival; he would ask Master if he and Ugwu could drive to his hometown.
Ugwu laughed as he brought the greens out of the refrigerator. He could not imagine Mr. Richard during the ori-okpa festival, where the mmuo (Mr. Richard said they were masquerades, weren’t they, and Ugwu agreed, as long as masquerades meant spirits) paraded the village, flogged young men, and chased after young women. The mmuo themselves might even laugh at the sight of a pale stranger scribbling in a notebook. But he was pleased that he had mentioned the festival to Mr. Richard, because it meant an opportunity to see Nnesinachi before she left for the North. To think how impressed she would be when he arrived in a white man’s car, driven by the white man himself! She would certainly notice him this time, he was sure, and he could not wait to impress Anulika and his cousins and relatives with his English, his new shirt, his knowledge of sandwiches and running tap water, his scented powder.
Ugwu had just washed the shredded greens when he heard the doorbell. It was too early for Master’s friends. He went to the door, wiping his hands on his apron. For a moment, he wondered if his aunty was really standing there or if he was seeing an image of her only because he had been thinking about home.
“Aunty?”
“Ugwuanyi,” she said, “you have to come home. Oga gi kwanu? Where is your master?”
“Come home?”
“Your mother is very sick.”
Ugwu examined the scarf tied round his aunty’s head. He could see where it was threadbare, the fabric stretched thin. He remembered that when his cousin’s father died, the family had sent word to her in Lagos, telling her to come home because her father was very sick. If you were far from home, they told you the dead person was very sick.
“Your mother is sick,” his aunty repeated. “She is asking for you. I will tell Master that you will be back tomorrow, so he will not think we are asking for too much. Many houseboys do not even get to go home in years, you know that.”
Ugwu did not move, rolling the edge of the apron around his finger. He wanted to ask his aunt to tell him the truth, to say so if his mother was dead. But his mouth would not form the words. Remembering his mother’s last illness, when she had coughed and coughed until his father left before dawn to get the dibia while the junior wife, Chioke, rubbed her back, frightened him.
“Master is not in,” he said finally. “But he will be back soon.”
“I will wait and plead with him to let you come home.”
He led the way to the kitchen, where his aunty sat down and watched him slice a yam and then cut the slices into cubes. He worked fast, feverishly. The sunlight that came in through the window seemed too bright for late afternoon, too full of an ominous radiance.
“Is my father well?” Ugwu asked.
“He is well.” His aunty’s face was opaque, her tone flat: the demeanor of a person who carried more bad news than she had delivered. She must be hiding something. Perhaps his mother really was dead; perhaps both his parents had fallen down dead that morning. Ugwu continued to slice, in a turgid silence, until Master came home, tennis whites plastered to his back with sweat. He was alone. Ugwu wished that Olanna had come home as well so that he could look at her face as he spoke.