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Ola
"We should pack," he told Ola
Ola
"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. Ola
"What of Ekene?" she asked fearfully. "Ekene kwanu?"
"He is in Umu
Ola
"We did not die," he said.
Ola
"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 Ola
"No, no, Ola
Ola
Ola
"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."
Ola
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."
Ola
"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," Ola
Richard shook his head.
"Do you have fuel?" Odenigbo asked.
"Enough to get me to Ninth Mile if I roll down slopes."
Ola
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.
"Will Aunty Kainene come to Nsukka?" Baby asked.
Ola
"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?" Ola
"Yes." He glanced behind at Ugwu and Baby before easing the car out of the compound. They passed a few checkpoints ma
"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 Ola
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.