Half of a Yellow Sun

"I was talking to my mother or I would have come earlier," he said. He pressed his lips to hers and gestured to the old boubou she was wearing. "Aren't you coming to the club?"

"I was cooking."

"Ugwu told me what happened. I'm so sorry my mother acted that way."

"I just had to leave… your house." Ola

"You didn't have to, nkem. You should have ignored her, really." He placed a copy of Drum magazine down on the table and began pacing the room. "I've decided to talk to Dr. Okoro about the Labor Strike. It's unacceptable that Balewa and his cronies should completely reject their demands. Just unacceptable. We have to show support. We can't allow ourselves to become disco

"Your mother made a scene."

"You're angry" Odenigbo looked puzzled. He sat down in the armchair, and for the first time she noticed how much space there was between the furniture, how sparse her flat was, how unlived in. Her things were in his house; her favorite books were in the shelves in his study. "Nkem, I didn't know you'd take this so seriously. You can see that my mother doesn't know what she's doing. She's just a village woman. She's trying to make her way in a new world with skills that are better suited for the old one." Odenigbo got up and moved closer to take her in his arms, but Ola

"You never talk about your mother," she said. "You've never asked me to come to Abba with you to visit her."

"Oh, stop it, nkem. It's not as if I go that often to see her, and I did ask you the last time but you were going to Lagos."

She walked over to the stove and ran a sponge on the warm surface, over and over, her back to Odenigbo. She felt as if she had somehow failed him and herself by allowing his mother's behavior to upset her. She should be above it; she should shrug it off as the ranting of a village woman; she should not keep thinking of all the retorts she could have made instead of just standing mutely in that kitchen. But she was upset, and made even more so by Odenigbo's expression, as if he could not believe she was not quite as high-minded as he had thought. He was making her feel small and absurdly petulant and, worse yet, she suspected he was right. She always suspected he was right. For a brief irrational moment, she wished she could walk away from him. Then she wished, more rationally, that she could love him without needing him. Need gave him power without his trying; need was the choicelessness she often felt around him.

"What did you cook?" Odenigbo asked.

"Rice." She rinsed the sponge and put it away. "Aren't you going to play te

"I thought you would come."

"I don't feel up to it." Ola

"Nkem, my mother's entire life is in Abba. Do you know what a small bush village that is? Of course she will feel threatened by an educated woman living with her son. Of course you have to be a witch. That is the only way she can understand it. The real tragedy of our postcolonial world is not that the majority of people had no say in whether or not they wanted this new world; rather, it is that the majority have not been given the tools to negotiate this new world."

"Did you talk to her about this?"

"I didn't see the point. Look, I want to catch Dr. Okoro at the club. Let's discuss this when I get back. I'll stay here tonight."

She paused as she washed her hands. She wanted him to ask her to come back with him to the house, wanted him to say he would tell his mother off in front of her, for her. But here he was deciding to stay at her flat, like a frightened little boy hiding from his mother.

"No," she said.

"What?"

"I said no." She walked into the living room without drying her hands. The flat seemed too small.

"What is wrong with you, Ola

She shook her head. She would not let him make her feel that there was something wrong with her. It was her right to be upset, her right to choose not to brush her humiliation aside in the name of an overexalted intellectualism, and she would claim that right. "Go." She gestured toward the door. "Go and play your te

She watched him get up and leave. He banged the door. They had never had a quarrel; he had never been impatient with dissent from her as he was with others. Or it may simply be that he humored her and did not think much of her opinions in the first place. She felt dizzy. She sat alone at her bare dining table-even her table mats were in his house-and ate the rice. It tasted bland, nothing like Ugwu's. She turned the radio on. She thought she heard rustles in the ceiling. She got up to go visit her neighbor Edna Whaler; she had always wanted to get to know the pretty black American woman who sometimes brought her cloth-covered plates of American biscuits. But she changed her mind at the door and didn't step out. After she left the half-eaten rice in the kitchen, she walked around the flat, picking up old newspapers and then putting them down. Finally, she went to the phone and waited for the operator.

"Give me the number quick, I have other things to do," the lazy nasal voice said.

Ola

"Haba, I will cut this line if you keep wasting my time," the operator said.

Ola

Kainene sounded sleepy when she picked up the phone. "Ola

Ola

"How shocking." Kainene yawned. "How's Nsukka? How's your revolutionary lover?"

"Odenigbo is fine. Nsukka is fine."

"Richard seems taken by it. He even seems taken by your revolutionary."

"You should come and visit."

"Richard and I prefer to meet here in Port Harcourt. That tiny box they gave him for a house is not exactly suitable."

Ola

"I'm going to London next month," she said instead. "Maybe we could go together."

"I have too much to do here. No holiday for me yet."

"Why don't we talk anymore, Kainene?"

"What a question." Kainene sounded amused and Ola

"I just want to know why we don't talk anymore," Ola

"Are you coming to Daddy's di

"No."

"I should have guessed. Too opulent for your abstemious revolutionary and yourself, I take it?"

"I shouldn't keep you," Ola