Half of a Yellow Sun

The days were suffocating and repetitive, Mama cooking strong-smelling soups that she ate alone because Master stayed out late and Amala felt nauseated and Ugwu had diarrhea. But Mama did not seem to mind; she hummed and cooked and cleaned and praised herself when she finally learned to turn the stove on. "One day I will have my own stove; my grandson will buy one for me," she said, and laughed.

She finally decided to go back to the village after more than a week and said she would leave Amala behind. "You see how ill she is?" she asked Master. "My enemies want to harm the pregnancy, they do not want somebody to carry on our family name, but we will defeat them."

"You must take her with you," Master said. It was past midnight. Mama had stayed up until Master came home and Ugwu was in the kitchen, half asleep, waiting to lock up.

"Did you not hear me say that she is ill?" Mama said. "It is better for her to stay here."

"She will see a doctor, but you must take her with you."

"You are refusing your child and not Amala," Mama said.

"You must take her with you," Master repeated. "Ola

"Your own child," Mama said, shaking her head mournfully, but she did not argue. "I will leave tomorrow because I must attend an umuada meeting. I will return at the end of the week to fetch her."

The afternoon Mama left, Ugwu found Amala in the vegetable garden, crouched on the ground with her knees drawn up, arms around her legs. She was chewing peppers.

"Is it well?" Ugwu asked. Perhaps the woman was a spirit person and had come here to perform rituals with her fellow ogbanje.

Amala said nothing for a while; she spoke so seldom that her voice always surprised Ugwu by how childishly high it was. "Pepper can remove pregnancy," she said.

"What?"

"If you eat plenty of hot peppers, they will remove pregnancy." She was huddled in the mud like a pathetic animal, chewing slowly, tears streaming down her face.

"Peppers ca

"If you eat enough, they can," she insisted, and reached out to pluck another one.

Ugwu did not want her to finish the peppers he so carefully cultivated for his stews, but if she was right about what the peppers could do, perhaps it was worth it to let her be. Her face was slick with the moisture of tears and mucus, and once in a while she opened her mouth and extended her pepper-burned tongue to pant like a dog. He wanted to ask why she had gone along with it if she did not want the baby. She had gone to Master's room herself, after all, and she must have known about Mama's plan. But he did not ask; he did not want her friendship. He turned and went back inside.

Days after Amala left, Ola

"Take it back to the kitchen," she said to Ugwu, at the same time as Master said, "Leave it on the table."

Ugwu stood uncertainly, holding the saucer.

"Take it back to the kitchen, then!" Master snapped, as if Ugwu were somehow responsible for the tension that had settled in the room. Ugwu did not shut the kitchen door, so that he could stand by it and listen, but he might as well have closed it because Ola

It startled Ugwu, how that soft voice could change to something so fierce.

"I am not a philandering man, and you know that. This would not have happened if my mother didn't have a hand!" Master should have lowered his voice; he should know very well that a beggar did not shout.

"Did your mother pull out your penis and insert it into Amala as well?" Ola

Ugwu felt the sudden rumbling rush in his stomach and he ran out to the toilet in the Boys' Quarters. When he came out, he saw Ola

"You want anything, mah?" he asked.

She walked over to look at the anara plants. "These look very well. Did you use fertilizer?"

"Yes, mah. From Jomo."

"And on the peppers?"

"Yes, mah."

She turned to walk away. It was incongruous to see her there in her black shoes and her knee-length dress. She, who was always in a wrapper or a housedress in the garden.

"Mah?"

She turned.

"I have one uncle who is trading in the North. People have been jealous of him because he is doing well. One day he washed his clothes, and when he brought them in from the sun, he saw that somebody had cut off a piece of his shirtsleeve."

Ola

"The person who cut it used it for bad medicine, but it did not work because my uncle burned the shirt immediately. That day, there were many flies near his hut."

"What are you talking about, for heaven's sake?" Ola

"Mama used bad medicine on my master, mah. I saw flies in the kitchen. I saw her putting something in his food. Then I saw her rubbing something on Amala's body, and I know it is the medicine that she used to tempt my master."

"Rubbish," Ola

Later, when he heard her car start and saw the glaring headlights near the bush with the white flowers, he thought she was going to collect a few things from her flat. He set two places for di

Master came into the kitchen. "Do you intend to eat alone today, my good man?"

"I am waiting for madam."

"Serve my food, osiso!"

"Yes, sah," Ugwu said. "Will madam come again soon, sah?"

"Serve my food!" Master repeated.