She kicked off her slippers and walked barefoot across the front yard and over to Baby’s sand hut. ‘Very nice, Baby. Maybe it will still be standing tomorrow, if the goats don’t come in the yard in the morning. Now, time for a bath.’
‘No, Mummy Ola!’
‘I think Ugwu is going to carry you off right now.’ Olanna glanced at Ugwu.
‘No!’
Ugwu picked Baby up and ran off towards the house. Baby’s slipper fell off and they stopped to pick it up, Baby saying ‘No!’ and laughing at the same time. Olanna wondered how Baby would take their leaving the following week for Umuahia, three hours away, where Odenigbo had been deployed to the Manpower Directorate. He had hoped to work at the Research and Production Directorate, but there were too many overqualified people and too few jobs; even she had been told there was no vacancy for her at any of the directorates. She would teach at the primary school, her own win-the-war effort. It did have a certain melody to it: win-the-war, win-the-war, win-the-war. She hoped Professor Achara had found them accommodation close to other university people so that Baby would have the right kind of children to play with.
She sat down on one of the low wooden chairs that slanted so that she had to recline in them in order to rest her back. They were chairs she saw only in the village, made by village carpenters who set up dusty signs by the corners of the dirt roads, often with carpenter misspelt: capinter, capinta, carpentar. You could not sit up on such chairs; they assumed a life of hard-earned rest, of evenings reclining in fresh air after a day of farmwork. Perhaps they assumed, also, a life of ennui.
It was dark and the bats were flying noisily above when Odenigbo came home. He was always out during the day, attending meeting after meeting, all of them on how Abba would contribute to the win-the-war effort, how Abba would play a major role in establishing the state of Biafra; sometimes she saw men returning from the meetings, holding mock guns carved from wood. She watched Odenigbo walk across the veranda, aggressive confidence in his stride. Her man. Sometimes when she looked at him she felt gripped by proud possession.
‘Kedu?’ he asked, bending to kiss her lips. He examined her face carefully, as if he had to do so to make sure she was well. He had been doing that since she returned from Kano. He told her often that the experience had changed her and made her so much more inward. He used massacre when he spoke to his friends, but never with her. It was as if what had happened in Kano was a massacre but what she had seen was an experience.
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you a little early?’
‘We finished early because there’s going to be a general meeting in the square tomorrow.’
‘Why?’ Olanna asked.
‘The elders decided it was time. There are all kinds of silly rumours about Abba evacuating soon. Some ignoramuses even say the federal troops have entered Awka!’ Odenigbo laughed and sat down next to Olanna. ‘Will you come?’
‘To the meeting?’ She had not even considered it. ‘I’m not from Abba.’
‘You could be, if you married me. You should be.’
She looked at him. ‘We are fine as we are.’
‘We are at war and my mother would have to decide what will be done with my body if anything happened to me. You should decide that.’
‘Stop it, nothing will happen to you.’
‘Of course nothing will happen to me. I just want you to marry me. We really should marry. It no longer makes sense. It never made sense.’
Olanna watched a wasp flit around the spongy nest lodged in the wall corner. It had made sense to her, the decision not to marry, the need to preserve what they had by wrapping it in a shawl of difference. But the old framework that fit her ideals was gone now that Arize and Aunty Ifeka and Uncle Mbaezi would always be frozen faces in her album. Now that bullets were falling in Nsukka. ‘You have to take wine to my father, then,’ she said.
‘Is that a yes?’
A bat swooped down and Olanna lowered her head. ‘Yes. It is a yes,’ she said.
In the morning, she heard the town crier walking past the house, beating a loud ogene. ‘There will be a meeting of all Abba tomorrow at four p.m. in Amaeze Square!’ Gom-gom-gom. ‘There will be a meeting of all Abba tomorrow at four p.m. in Amaeze Square!’ Gom-gom-gom. ‘Abba has said that every man and every woman must attend!’ Gom-gom-gom. ‘If you do not attend, Abba will fine you!’
‘I wonder how steep the fines are,’ Olanna said, watching Odenigbo dress. He shrugged. He had only the two shirts and pairs of trousers that Ugwu had hurriedly packed, and she smiled, thinking of how she knew what he would wear each morning before he dressed.
They had sat down to have breakfast when her parents’ Land Rover drove into the compound.
‘How fortuitous,’ Odenigbo said. ‘I’ll tell your dad right away. We can have the wedding here next week.’ He was smiling. There was something boyish about him since she’d said yes on the veranda, something naively gleeful that she wished she felt too.
‘You know it’s not done that way,’ she said. ‘You have to go to Umunnachi with your people and do it properly.’
‘Of course I know. I was only joking.’
Olanna walked to the door, wondering why her parents had come. They had visited only a week ago, after all, and she was not quite ready for another monologue from her jittery mother while her father stood by and nodded his agreement: Please come and stay with us in Umunnachi; Kainene should leave Port Harcourt until we know whether this war is coming or going; that Yoruba caretaker we left in Lagos will loot the house; I am telling you, we really should have arranged to bring all the cars back.
The Land Rover parked under the kola nut tree, and her mother climbed out. She was alone. Olanna felt slight relief that her father had not come. It was easier to deal with one at a time.
‘Welcome, Mom, nno,’ Olanna said, hugging her. ‘Is it well?’
Her mother shrugged in the way that was meant to say so-so. She was wearing a red george wrapper and pink blouse and her shoes were flat, a shiny black. ‘It is well.’ Her mother looked around, the same way she had looked around, furtively, the last time before pushing an envelope of money into Olanna’s hand. ‘Where is he?’
‘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 jewellery, corals and metals and precious stones.
‘Ah! Ah! Mum, 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