Her mother turned. “Oh, nne, I didn’t know you were up.”
“What is it?”
“It’s this wild animal here. We employed him only last month, and he already wants to steal everything in my house.” She turned back to the kneeling man. “This is how you repay people for giving you a job? Stupid man!”
“What did he do?” Olanna asked.
“Come and see.” Her mother led her out to the backyard where a bicycle leaned against the mango tree. A woven bag had fallen from the backseat, spilling rice onto the ground.
“He stole my rice and was about to go home. It was only by God’s grace that the bag fell. Who knows what else he has stolen from me in the past? No wonder I have been looking for some of my necklaces.” Her mother was breathing quickly.
Olanna stared at the rice grains on the ground and wondered how her mother could have worked herself up like this over them and if her mother really believed her own outrage.
“Aunty, please beg Madam. It is the devil that made me do it.” The driver’s pleading hands faced Olanna now. “Please beg madam.”
Olanna looked away from the man’s lined face and yellowed eyes; he was older than she had first thought, certainly above sixty. “Get up,” she said.
He looked uncertain, glancing at her mother.
“I said get up!” Olanna had not intended to raise her voice, but it had come out sharp. The man stood up awkwardly, eyes downcast.
“Mom, if you’re going to sack him, then sack him and have him go right away,” Olanna said.
The man gasped, as if he had not expected her to say that. Her mother looked surprised too and glanced at Olanna, at the man, at Maxwell, before she put down the hand placed on her hip. “I will give you one more chance, but don’t ever touch anything in this house unless you are permitted. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, madam. Thank you, madam. God bless you, madam.”
The man was still singing his thanks as Olanna took a banana from the table and left the kitchen.
She told Odenigbo about it on the phone, how it repulsed her to see that elderly man abase himself so, how she was certain her mother would have fired him but only after an hour of reveling in his groveling and in her own self-righteous outrage. “It could not have been more than four cups of rice,” she said.
“It was still stealing, nkem.”
“My father and his politician friends steal money with their contracts, but nobody makes them kneel to beg for forgiveness. And they build houses with their stolen money and rent them out to people like this man and charge inflated rents that make it impossible to buy food.”
“You can’t right theft with theft.” Odenigbo sounded strangely somber; she had expected an outburst from him about the injustice of it all.
“Does inequality have to mean indignity?” she asked.
“It often does.”
“Are you all right?”
“My mother is here. I had no idea she was coming.”
No wonder he sounded that way. “Will she be gone before Tuesday?”
“I don’t know. I wish you were here.”
“I’m glad I’m not. Have you had a conversation about breaking the spell of the educated witch?”
“I’ll tell her before she says anything that there’s nothing to be discussed.”
“You might pacify her by telling her that we are trying to have a child. Or will she be horrified at the thought of my having a child? Some of those witchcraft genes may be passed along to her grandchild after all.”
She hoped Odenigbo would laugh, but he didn’t. “I can’t wait for Tuesday,” he said, after a while.
“I can’t wait either,” she said. “Tell Ugwu to air the rug in the bedroom.”