Richard wanted to say something about her disloyalty to her friend and then realized how hypocritical it would sound, even if only to himself.
5. The Book: The World Was Silent When We Died
He writes about starvation. Starvation was a Nigerian weapon of war. Starvation broke Biafra and brought Biafra fame and made Biafra last as long as it did. Starvation made the people of the world take notice and sparked protests and demonstrations in London and Moscow and Czechoslovakia. Starvation made Zambia and Tanzania and Ivory Coast and Gabon recognize Biafra, starvation brought Africa into Nixon’s American campaign and made parents all over the world tell their children to eat up. Starvation propelled aid organizations to sneak-fly food into Biafra at night since both sides could not agree on routes. Starvation aided the careers of photographers. And starvation made the International Red Cross call Biafra its gravest emergency since the Second World War.
22
Ugwu’s diarrhea was cramping and painful. It did not get better when he chewed the bitter tablets in Master’s cabinet or the sour leaves Jomo gave him, and it had nothing to do with food because the sudden dashes to the Boys’ Quarters happened with whatever he ate. It was about his worry. Master’s fear worried him.
Since Mama brought the news of Amala’s pregnancy, Master half stumbled around as if his glasses were blurred, called for his tea in a subdued voice, and asked Ugwu to tell the guests he had gone out, even though his car was in the garage. He stared into space often. He listened to High Life often. He spoke of Olanna often. “We’ll leave that for when your madam moves back” or “Your madam would prefer it in the corridor,” he would say, and Ugwu would say, “Yes, sah,” although he knew Master would not bother saying any of that if Olanna were really coming back.
Ugwu’s diarrhea got worse when Mama visited with Amala. He watched Amala carefully; she did not look pregnant, still slender and flat-bellied, and he hoped that the medicine had not worked after all. But Mama told him, as she peeled hot cocoyams, “When this baby boy comes, I will have somebody to keep me company and my fellow women will no longer call me the mother of an impotent son.”
Amala sat in the living room. Her pregnancy had elevated her, so she could sit idly listening to the radiogram, no longer Mama’s help but now the woman who would give birth to Mama’s grandchild. Ugwu watched her from the kitchen door. It was a good thing she had not chosen Master’s armchair or Olanna’s favorite puff because he would have asked her to get up right away. She sat with her knees pressed together, her eyes focused on the pile of newspapers on the center table, her face blank. It was so wrong that such an ordinary person in a nondescript dress and a cotton scarf around her forehead was in the middle of all this. She was neither beautiful nor ugly; she was like the many young women he used to watch going to the stream in his village every morning. Nothing distinguished her. Watching her, Ugwu suddenly felt angry. His anger was not directed at Amala, though, but at Olanna. She should not have run away from her own house because Mama’s medicine had pushed Master into the arms of this common slip of a girl. She should have stayed and showed Amala and Mama who was truly mistress here.
The days were suffocating and repetitive, Mama cooking strong-smelling soups that she ate alone because Master stayed out late and Amala felt nauseated and Ugwu had diarrhea. But Mama did not seem to mind; she hummed and cooked and cleaned and praised herself when she finally learned to turn the stove on. “One day I will have my own stove; my grandson will buy one for me,” she said, and laughed.
She finally decided to go back to the village after more than a week and said she would leave Amala behind. “You see how ill she is?” she asked Master. “My enemies want to harm the pregnancy, they do not want somebody to carry on our family name, but we will defeat them.”
“You must take her with you,” Master said. It was past midnight. Mama had stayed up until Master came home and Ugwu was in the kitchen, half asleep, waiting to lock up.
“Did you not hear me say that she is ill?” Mama said. “It is better for her to stay here.”
“She will see a doctor, but you must take her with you.”
“You are refusing your child and not Amala,” Mama said.
“You must take her with you,” Master repeated. “Olanna may return soon, and things will not stand right if Amala is here.”
“Your own child,” Mama said, shaking her head mournfully, but she did not argue. “I will leave tomorrow because I must attend an umuada meeting. I will return at the end of the week to fetch her.”
The afternoon Mama left, Ugwu found Amala in the vegetable garden, crouched on the ground with her knees drawn up, arms around her legs. She was chewing peppers.
“Is it well?” Ugwu asked. Perhaps the woman was a spirit person and had come here to perform rituals with her fellow ogbanje.
Amala said nothing for a while; she spoke so seldom that her voice always surprised Ugwu by how childishly high it was. “Pepper can remove pregnancy,” she said.
“What?”
“If you eat plenty of hot peppers, they will remove pregnancy.” She was huddled in the mud like a pathetic animal, chewing slowly, tears streaming down her face.
“Peppers cannot do that,” Ugwu said. Yet he hoped that she was right, that peppers would indeed abort the pregnancy and his life would return to what it was before: Olanna and Master securely together.
“If you eat enough, they can,” she insisted, and reached out to pluck another one.
Ugwu did not want her to finish the peppers he so carefully cultivated for his stews, but if she was right about what the peppers could do, perhaps it was worth it to let her be. Her face was slick with the moisture of tears and mucus, and once in a while she opened her mouth and extended her pepper-burned tongue to pant like a dog. He wanted to ask why she had gone along with it if she did not want the baby. She had gone to Master’s room herself, after all, and she must have known about Mama’s plan. But he did not ask; he did not want her friendship. He turned and went back inside.
Days after Amala left, Olanna visited. She sat upright on the sofa, legs crossed like an unfamiliar guest, and refused the chin-chin Ugwu brought on a saucer.
“Take it back to the kitchen,” she said to Ugwu, at the same time as Master said, “Leave it on the table.”
Ugwu stood uncertainly, holding the saucer.
“Take it back to the kitchen, then!” Master snapped, as if Ugwu were somehow responsible for the tension that had settled in the room. Ugwu did not shut the kitchen door, so that he could stand by it and listen, but he might as well have clo
sed it because Olanna’s raised voice was audible enough. “It’s you and not your mother. It happened because you let it happen! You must take responsibility!”
It startled Ugwu, how that soft voice could change to something so fierce.