“Nkem, Kainene will find us easily.”
She watched him leave. It was easy enough for him to say that Kainene would find them. How did he know? How did he know she had not been wounded, for example, and unable to travel long distances? She would stagger back, thinking they would be here to care for her, and find an empty house.
A man walked into the compound. Olanna stared at him for a while before she recognized her cousin Odinchezo, and then she shouted and ran to him and hugged him and moved back to look at him. She had last seen him at her wedding, him and his brother, in their militia uniforms.
“What of Ekene?” she asked fearfully. “Ekene kwanu?”
“He is in Umunnachi. I came immediately I heard where you were. I am on my way to Okija. They say that some of our mother’s people are there.”
Olanna led the way inside and brought him a cup of water. “How have you been, my brother?”
“We did not die,” he said.
Olanna sat down beside him and took his hand; there were bloated white calluses on his palms. “How did you manage on the road with the Nigerian soldiers?”
“They did not give me trouble. I spoke Hausa to them. One of them brought out a picture of Ojukwu and asked me to piss on it and I did.” Odinchezo smiled, a tired, gentle smile and looked so much like Aunty Ifeka that tears filled Olanna’s eyes.
“No, no, Olanna,” he said and held her. “Kainene will come back. One woman from Umudioka went on afia attack and the vandals occupied that sector so she was cut off for four months. She came back to her family yesterday.”
Olanna shook her head but she did not tell him that it was not Kainene, not just Kainene, that she was crying about. She wiped her eyes. He held her for a moment longer and, before he got up, he pressed a five-pound note into her hand. “Let me go,” he said. “The road is long.”
Olanna stared at the money. The magical red crispness startled her. “Odinchezo! This is too much!”
“Some of us in Biafra-Two had Nigerian money and we traded with them even though we were in the militia,” Odinchezo said, and shrugged. “And you don’t have Nigerian money, do you?”
She shook her head; she had never even seen the new Nigerian money.
“I hope it is not true what they are saying, that the government will take over all Biafran bank accounts.”
Olanna shrugged. She did not know. The news about everything was confusing and contradictory. They had first heard that all Biafran university staff was to report for military clearance at Enugu. Then they were to report at Lagos. Then only those involved in the Biafran military were to report.
Later, when she went to the market with Baby and Ugwu, she gaped at the rice and beans displayed in basins in the shape of mountains, the deliciously foul-smelling fish, the bloodied meat that drew flies. They seemed to have fallen from the sky, they seemed filled with a wonder that was almost perverse. She watched the women, Biafran women, haggling, giving out change in Nigerian pounds as if it was currency they had used all their lives. She bought a little rice and dried fish. She would not part with much of her money; she did not know what lay ahead.
Odenigbo came home to say the roads were open. “We’ll leave tomorrow.”
Olanna went into the bedroom and began to cry. Baby climbed onto the mattress beside her and hugged her.
“Mummy Ola, don’t cry; ebezi na,” Baby said, and the warm smallness of Baby’s arms around her made her sob louder. Baby stayed there, holding her, until she stopped crying and wiped her eyes.
Richard left that evening.
“I’m going to look for Kainene in the towns outside Ninth Mile,” he said.
“Wait until morning,” Olanna said.
Richard shook his head.
“Do you have fuel?” Odenigbo asked.
“Enough to get me to Ninth Mile if I roll down slopes.”
Olanna gave him some of her Nigerian money before he left with Harrison. And the next morning, with their things in the car, she wrote a hasty note and left it in the living room.
Ejima m, we are going to Abba and Nsukka. We will be back to check on the house in a week. O.
She wanted to add I’ve missed you or I hope you went well but decided not to. Kainene would laugh and say something like, I didn’t go on vacation, for goodness’ sake, I was cut off in enemy territory.
She climbed into the car and stared at the cashew trees.