34   

Olanna ran the wooden comb through Baby’s hair as gently as she could, and yet there was a large tuft left on the teeth. Ugwu was sitting on a bench writing. A week had passed and Kainene was not back. The harmattan winds were calmer today, they did not make the cashew trees swirl, but they blew sand everywhere and the air was thick with grit and with rumors that His Excellency had not gone in search of peace but had run away. Olanna knew it could not be. She believed, as firmly and as quietly as she believed that Kainene would come home soon, that His Excellency’s journey would be a success. He would come back with a signed document that would declare the war over, that would proclaim a free Biafra. He would come back with justice and with salt.

She combed Baby’s hair, and again some of it fell out. Olanna held the thin wisps in her hand, a sun-bleached yellow-brown that was nothing like Baby’s natural jet-black. It frightened her. Kainene had told her some weeks back that it was a sign of extreme wisdom, Baby’s hair falling off at only six years old, and afterward Kainene had gone out to look for more protein tablets for Baby.

Ugwu looked up from his writing. “Maybe you should not braid her hair, mah.”

“Yes. Maybe that’s why it’s falling out, too much braiding.”

“My hair is not falling out!” Baby said, and patted her head.

Olanna placed the comb down. “I keep thinking about the hair on that child’s head I saw on the train; it was very thick. It must have been work for her mother to plait it.”

“How was it plaited?” Ugwu asked.

Olanna was surprised, at first, by the question and then she realized that she clearly remembered how it was plaited and she began to describe the hairstyle, how some of the braids fell across the forehead. Then she described the head itself, the open eyes, the graying skin. Ugwu was writing as she spoke, and his writing, the earnestness of his interest, suddenly made her story important, made it serve a larger purpose that even she was not sure of, and so she told him all she remembered about the train full of people who had cried and shouted and urinated on themselves.

She was still speaking when Odenigbo and Richard came back. They were walking; they had left in the Peugeot early in the morning to go and search for Kainene in the hospital in Ahiara.

Olanna sprang up. “Did you?”

“No,” Richard said, and walked inside.

“Where is the car? Did the soldiers take it?”

“The fuel finished on the road. I will find fuel and go back and get it,” Odenigbo said. He hugged her. “We saw Madu. He said he is certain she is still on the other side. The vandals must have blocked the way she had gone in and she is waiting for a new route to open. It happens all the time.”

“Yes, of course.” Olanna picked up the comb and began to untangle her own matted hair. Odenigbo was reminding her that she should be grateful that they had not found Kainene in hospital. It meant Kainene was well, only on the Nigerian side. And yet she did not want him to remind her. Days later, when she insisted on searching the mortuary, he told her the same thing, that Kainene had to be safely on the other side.

“I will go,” she said. Madu had sent them some garri and sugar and a little fuel. She would drive herself.

“There’s no point,” Odenigbo said.

“No point? There is no point in looking for my sister’s body?”

“Your sister is alive. There is no body.”

“Yes, God.”

She turned to leave.

“Even if they shot her, Olanna, they would not take her to a mortuary inside Biafra,” Odenigbo said, and she knew he was right but she hated him for saying it and for calling her Olanna instead of nkem and she went anyway, to the foul-smelling mortuary building, where bodies from a recent bombing were piled up outside, swelling in the sun. A crowd of people was begging to be let in to search.

“Please, my father is missing since the bombing.”

“Please, I cannot find my small girl.”

Olanna’s note from Madu made the caretaker smile at her and let her in and she insisted on looking at the face of every female body, even those that the caretaker said were too old, and afterward she stopped on the road to vomit. If the sun refuses to rise, we will make it rise. The title of Okeoma’s poem came to her. She did not remember the rest of it, something about placing clay pot on top of clay pot to form a ladder to the sky. Back home, Odenigbo was talking to Baby. Richard sat staring at nothing. They did not ask her if she had found Kainene’s body. Ugwu told her that there was a large palm-oil-colored stain on her dress, his voice low, as if he knew it to be the remnants of her own vomit. Harrison told her there was nothing to eat and she stared at him blankly because it was Kainene who had been in charge of things, who knew what to do.

“You should lie down, nkem,” Odenigbo said.

“Do you remember the words of Okeoma’s poem about making the sun rise if it refused to rise?” she asked.

“‘Clay pots fired in zeal, they will cool our feet as we climb,’” he said.

“Yes, yes.”

“It was my favorite line. I can’t remember the rest.”

A woman from the refugee camp dashed into the yard, shouting, waving a green branch. Such a brilliant wet-looking green. Olanna wondered where she got it; the plants and trees around were scorched, blown bare by the dusty winds. The earth was sallow.

“It is over!” the woman shouted. “It is over!”

Odenigbo quickly turned the radio on, as though he had been expecting the woman with this news. The male voice was unfamiliar.

Olanna sat down; she liked the honesty, the firm vowels, and the quiet assuredness of the voice on the radio. Baby was asking Odenigbo why the woman from the camp was shouting like that. Richard got up and came closer to the radio. Odenigbo increased the volume. The woman from the refugee camp said, “They said the vandals are coming with canes to flog the hell out of civilians. We are going into the bush,” and then turned and ran back to the camp.

After the broadcast, Olanna felt dizzy with disbelief. She sat down.

“What now, mah?” Ugwu asked, expressionless.

She looked away, at the cashew trees covered in dust, at the sky that curved to the earth in a cloudless wall ahead.

“Now I can go and find my sister,” she said quietly.

A week passed. A Red Cross van arrived at the refugee camp and two women handed out cups of milk. Many families left the camp, to search for relatives or to hide in the bush from the Nigerian soldiers who were coming with whips. But the first time Olanna saw Nigerian soldiers, on the main road, they did not hold whips. They walked up and down and spoke loud Yoruba to one another and laughed and gestured to the village girls. “Come marry me now, I go give you rice and beans.”

Olanna joined the crowd that watched them. Their pressed smart-fitting uniforms, their polished black boots, their confident eyes filled her with that hollowness that came with having been robbed. They had blocked the road and turned cars back. No movement yet. No movement. Odenigbo wanted to go to Abba, to see where his mother lay, and each day he walked to the main road to find out whether the Nigerian soldiers were letting cars pass.

“We should pack,” he told Olanna. “The roads will open in a day or two. We will leave early so we can stop in Abba and then get to Nsukka before dark.”

Olanna did not want to pack—there was little to pack anyway—and did not want to go anywhere. “What if Kainene comes back?” she asked.

“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.

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.

“Will Aunty Kainene come to Nsukka?” Baby asked.

Olanna turned and looked carefully at Baby’s face, to search for clairvoyance, a sign that Baby knew Kainene was coming back. At first she thought she saw it, and then she was not sure she did.

“Yes, my baby,” she said. “Aunty Kainene will come to Nsukka.”

“Is she still trading at afia attack?”

“Yes.”

Odenigbo started the car. He took off his glasses and wrapped them in a piece of cloth. Nigerian soldiers, they had heard, did not like people who looked like intellectuals.

“Can you see well enough to drive?” Olanna asked.

“Yes.” He glanced behind at Ugwu and Baby before easing the car out of the compound. They passed a few checkpoints manned by Nigerian soldiers, and Odenigbo muttered something under his breath each time they were waved past. At Abagana, they drove past the destroyed Nigerian fleet, a long, long column of burned and blackened vehicles. Olanna stared. We did this. She reached out and held Odenigbo’s hand.

“They won but we did this,” she said, and realized how odd it felt to say they won, to voice a defeat she did not believe. Hers was not a feeling of having been defeated; it was one of having been cheated. Odenigbo squeezed her hand. She sensed his nervousness in the tense set of his jaw as they approached Abba.

“I wonder if my house is still standing,” he said.

Bushes had sprung up everywhere; small huts were completely swallowed in browned grass. A shrub was growing at the gate of their compound and he parked near it, his chest rising and falling, his breathing loud. The house still stood. They waded through thick drying grass to get to it and Olanna looked around, half fearing she would see Mama’s skeleton lying somewhere. But his cousin had buried her; near the guava tree there was a slight elevation of earth and a cross roughly made from two branches. Odenigbo knelt down there and pulled out a tuft of grass and held it in his hand.

They drove to Nsukka on roads pockmarked with bullets and bomb craters; Odenigbo swerved often. The buildings were blackened, roofs blown off, walls half standing. Here and there were black carcasses of burned cars. An eerie quiet reigned. Curved profiles of flying vultures filled the horizon. They came to a checkpoint. Some men were cutting the tall grass on the roadside, their cutlasses swinging up and down; others were carrying thick wood planks up to a house with walls that looked like Swiss cheese, riddled with bullet holes, some large, others small.

Odenigbo stopped beside the Nigerian officer. His belt buckle gleamed and he bent to peer into the car, a dark face with very white teeth.

“Why do you still have Biafran number plates? Are you supporters of the defeated rebels?” His voice was loud, contrived; it was as if he was acting and very aware of himself in the role of the bully. Behind him, one of his boys was shouting at the laboring men. A dead male body lay by the bush.

“We will change it when we get to Nsukka,” Odenigbo said.

“Nsukka?” The officer straightened up and laughed. “Ah, Nsukka University. You are the ones who planned the rebellion with Ojukwu, you book people.”

Odenigbo said nothing, looking straight ahead. The officer yanked his door open with a sudden movement. “Oya! Come out and carry some wood for us. Let’s see how you can help a united Nigeria.”

Odenigbo looked at him. “What is this for?”

“You are asking me? I said you should come on come out!”

A soldier stood behind the officer and cocked his gun.

“This is a joke,” Odenigbo muttered. “O na-egwu egwu.”

“Come out!” the officer said.

Olanna opened her door. “Come out, Odenigbo and Ugwu. Baby, sit in the car.”

When Odenigbo climbed out, the officer slapped his face, so violently, so unexpectedly, that Odenigbo fell against the car. Baby was crying.

“You are not grateful that we didn’t kill all of you? Come on carry those wood planks quickly, two at a time!”

“Let my wife stay with our daughter, please,” Odenigbo said.

The sound of the second slap from the officer was not as loud as the first. Olanna did not look at Odenigbo; she carefully focused on one of the men carrying a pile of cement blocks, his thin naked back coated in sweat. Then she walked to the pile of wood planks and picked two up. At first she staggered under the weight—she had not expected that they would be so heavy—then she steadied herself and began to walk up to the house. She was sweating when she came down. She noticed the hard eyes of a soldier following her, burning through her clothes. On her second trip up, he had come closer to stand by the pile.

Olanna looked at him and then called, “Officer!”

The officer had just waved a car on. He turned. “What is it?”

“You had better tell your boy here that it will be better for him not to even think about touching me,” Olanna said.

Ugwu was behind her, and she sensed his intake of breath, his panic at her boldness. But the officer was laughing; he looked both surprised and impressed. “Nobody will touch you,” he said. “My boys are well trained. We are not like those dirty rebels you people called an army.”

He stopped another car, a Peugeot 403. “Come out right now!”

The smallish man came out and stood by his car. The officer reached out and pulled his glasses from his face and flung them into the bush. “Ah, now you cannot see? But you could see enough to write propaganda for Ojukwu? Is that not what all of you civil servants did?”

The man squinted and rubbed his eyes.

“Lie down,” the officer said. The man lay down on the coal tar. The officer took a long cane and began to flog the man across his back and buttocks, ta-wai, ta-wai, ta-wai, and the man cried out something Olanna did not understand.

“Say Thank you, sah!” the officer said.

The man said, “Thank you, sir!”

“Say it again!”

“Thank you, sir!”

The officer stopped and gestured to Odenigbo. “Oya, book people, go. Make sure you change those number plates.”

They hurried silently to the car. Olanna’s palms ached. As they drove away, the officer was still flogging the man.