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In the following weeks, Ola
There were days when she woke up from her naps feeling clearheaded, like today. Her bedroom door was open, and she could hear the rise and fall of voices from the living room. For a while Odenigbo had asked their friends not to visit. He had stopped playing te
Miss Adebayo was speaking in her loud voice. "I am saying that our students should stop making noise. Asking David Hunt to go does not make sense. Give the man a chance and see if peace will come."
"David Hunt thinks we are all mental children." It was Okeoma. "The man should go home. Why is he coming to tell us how to put out a fire, when it is he and his fellow British who collected the firewood for it in the first place?"
"They may have collected the firewood, but we lit the match," said somebody with an unfamiliar voice, perhaps it was Professor Achara, the new lecturer in physics, who had come back from Ibadan after the second coup.
"Firewood or no firewood, the important thing is to find a way to make peace before things explode," Miss Adebayo said.
"What peace are we looking for? Gowon himself has said that a basis for unity does not exist, so what peace are we looking for?" Odenigbo asked. Ola
"Didn't you hear what Zik said the other day? Eastern Nigeria seethes, seethes, and will continue to seethe until the federal government addresses the massacres," Professor Ezeka said, his hoarse voice quickly fading.
Ola
Then she heard Okeoma say "Aburi." It sounded lovely, the name of that Ghanaian town, and she imagined a sleepy cluster of homes on stretches of sweet-scented grasslands. Aburi came up often in their conversations: Okeoma would say that Gowon should have followed the agreement he and Ojukwu signed in Aburi, or Professor Ezeka would say that Gowon's reneging after Aburi meant that he did not wish the Igbo well, or Odenigbo would proclaim, "On Aburi we stand."
"But how can Gowon make such a turnaround?" Okeoma's voice was louder. "He agreed to confederation at Aburi, and now he wants one Nigeria with a unitary government, but a unitary government was the very reason that he and his people killed Igbo officers."
Ola
Later, Odenigbo came in and looked searchingly into her eyes in the way he often did, as if looking for proof of something. "You haven't rung in a while, nkem. Don't you have to urinate?"
"Have they all gone?"
"Yes. Don't you want to urinate?"
"I did already. I walked."
Odenigbo stared at her.
"I walked," Ola
There was something she had never seen on Odenigbo's face, something precious and frightened. She sat up and he immediately reached out to hold her, but she shrugged him off and walked a few steps to the wardrobe and then back to the bed. Odenigbo sat and looked at her.
She took his hand and touched it to her face, pressed it against her breast. "Touch me."
"I'm going to tell Patel. I want him to come in and take a look at you."
"Touch me." She knew he didn't want to, that he touched her breasts because he would do whatever she wanted, whatever would make her better. She caressed his neck, buried her fingers in his dense hair, and when he slid into her, she thought about Arize's pregnant belly, how easily it must have broken, skin stretched that taut. She started to cry.
"Nkem, don't cry." Odenigbo had stopped; he was lying next to her and smoothing her forehead. Later, when he gave her more pills and some water, she took them dutifully and then lay back and waited for the strange stillness they brought.
Ugwu's gentle knock woke her up; he would open the door and come in with a tray of food that he would place next to her packets of medicine, bottle of Lucozade, and tin of glucose. She remembered the first week she came back, the week that Odenigbo sprang up whenever she stirred. She had asked for water and Odenigbo opened the bedroom door to go to the kitchen and nearly tripped on Ugwu, curled on a mat right outside their door. "My good man, what are you doing here?" he asked, and Ugwu answered, "You don't know where anything is in the kitchen, sah."
She closed her eyes now and pretended she was asleep. He was standing close to her and watching her; she could hear his breathing.
"When you are ready, mah, the food is here," he said. Ola