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Ugwu cleaned the bookshelves first. He had removed the papers from the center table and was bent over dusting it when Master's bedroom door opened. He glanced at the corridor, surprised that Master was up so early. But it was Amala who walked out of the room. The corridor was dim and her startled eyes met Ugwu's more startled eyes and she stopped for a moment before she hurried on to the guest room. Her wrapper was loose around her chest. She held on to it with one hand and bumped against the door of the guest room, pushing it as if she had forgotten how to open it, before she went in. Amala, common quiet ordinary Amala, had slept in Master's bedroom! Ugwu stood still and tried to get his whirling head to become steady so that he could think. Mama's medicine had done this, he was sure, but his worry was not what had happened between Master and Amala. His worry was what would happen if Ola
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Ola
"He has bought her a house in Ikeja," her mother said. "My friend lives on the same street."
Ola
"Have you talked to him?" Ola
"What am I to say to him? Gwa ya gini?" Her mother placed the glass down. She had not sipped from it since one of the maids brought it in on a silver tray. "There is nothing I can say to him. I just wanted to let you know what is happening so that they will not say I did not tell somebody."
"I'll talk to him," Ola
"The worst part of it is that the woman is common riffraff," her mother said, twisting the handkerchief. "A Yoruba goat from the bush with two children from two different men. I hear she is old and ugly."
Ola
"Maybe we should wait for Kainene to visit so she can talk to your father instead,
"I said I would talk to him, Mom," Ola
But that evening, as she walked into her father's room, she realized that her mother was right. Kainene was the best person for this. Kainene would know exactly what to say and would not feel the awkward ineptness that she did now, Kainene with her sharp edges and her bitter tongue and her supreme confidence.
"Dad," she said, closing the door behind her. He was at his desk, sitting on the straight-backed chair made of dark wood. She couldn't ask him if it was true, because he had to know that her mother knew it to be true and so did she. She wondered, for a moment, about this other woman, what she looked like, what she and her father talked about.
"Dad," she said again. She would speak mostly in English. It was easy to be formal and cold in English. "I wish you had some respect for my mother." That was not what she had intended to say. My mother, instead of Mom, made it seem as if she had decided to exclude him, as if he had become a stranger who could not possibly be addressed on the same terms, could not be my father.
He leaned back in his chair.
"It's disrespectful that you have a relationship with this woman and that you have bought her a house where my mother's friends live," Ola
Her father's eyes were downcast now, the eyes of a man groping in his mind.
"I am not going to tell you what to do about it, but you have to do something. My mother isn't happy." Ola
"Anugo m, I have heard you," he said. His Igbo was low, conspiratorial, as if she had asked him to go ahead and cheat on her mother but to do it considerately. It angered her. Perhaps it was, in effect, what she had asked him to do but still she was a
"Is that all you have to say, that you've heard me?" Ola
"What do you want me to say?"
Ola
"I will do something about it," he added. He stood up and came toward her. "Thank you, ola m," he said.
She was not sure what to make of his thanking her, or of his calling her my gold, something he had not done since she was a child and which now had a contrived solemnity to it. She turned and left the room.
When Ola
"Madam, please; madam, please."
Her mother turned to the steward, Maxwell, who stood aside watching. "I fugo? Does he think we employed him to steal us blind, Maxwell?"
"No, mah," Maxwell said.
Her mother turned back to the man kneeling on the floor. "So this is what you have been doing since you came here, you useless man? You came here to steal from me?"
"Madam, please; madam, please. I am using God to beg you."
"Mom, what is it?" Ola
Her mother turned. "Oh,
"What is it?"
"It's this wild animal here. We employed him only last month, and he already wants to steal everything in my house." She turned back to the kneeling man. "This is how you repay people for giving you a job? Stupid man!"
"What did he do?" Ola
"Come and see." Her mother led her out to the backyard where a bicycle leaned against the mango tree. A woven bag had fallen from the backseat, spilling rice onto the ground.
"He stole my rice and was about to go home. It was only by God's grace that the bag fell. Who knows what else he has stolen from me in the past? No wonder I have been looking for some of my necklaces." Her mother was breathing quickly.