Страница 66 из 113
"We are leaving," Ola
"Go well," Amala said.
Ola
"Sorry," Odenigbo said, when he got in. He did not say anything about what he and his mother had talked about until they were driving past the campus gates in Nsukka, an hour later. "Mama doesn't want to keep the baby."
"She doesn't want to keep the baby?"
"No."
Ola
"Yes." Odenigbo removed a hand from the steering wheel to roll his window farther down. She found a guilty pleasure in the humility he had cloaked himself in since Amala gave birth. "We've agreed that the baby will stay with Amala's people. I'll go to Abba next week to see them and discuss-"
"We'll keep her," Ola
Odenigbo turned to her with eyes widened behind his glasses. He was driving so slowly over a speed bump that she feared the car would stall. "Our relationship is the most important thing to me, nkem," he said quietly. "We have to make the right decision for us."
"You were not thinking about us when you got her pregnant," Ola
Odenigbo parked the car in the garage. He looked tired. "Let's think about this."
"We'll keep her," Ola
She could raise a child, his child. She would buy books about motherhood and find a wet nurse and decorate the bedroom. She shifted this way and that in bed that night. She had not felt sorry for the child. Instead, holding that tiny warm body, she had felt a conscious serendipity, a sense that this may not have been pla
"Nne, you will have your own child soon. It is not right for you to raise the child he had with a village girl he impregnated as soon as you traveled. Raising a child is a very serious thing to undertake, my daughter, but in this case it is not the right thing."
Ola
"Her people will give you trouble," her mother said. "The woman herself will give you trouble."
"She doesn't want the child."
"Then leave it with her people. Send them what is needed but leave the child there."
Ola
She put the phone down and picked it up again and gave the operator Kainene's number in Port Harcourt. The woman sounded lazy, made her repeat the number a few times and giggled before co
"How noble of you," Kainene said when Ola
"I'm not being noble."
"Will you adopt her formally?"
"Yes. I think so."
"What will you tell her?"
"What will I tell her?"
"Yes, when she's older."
"The truth: that Amala is her mother. And I'll have her call me Mummy Ola
"You're doing this to please your revolutionary lover."
"I'm not."
"You're always pleasing other people."
"I'm not doing this for him. This is not his idea."
"Why are you doing it then?"
"She was so helpless. I felt as if I knew her."
Kainene said nothing for a while. Ola
"I think this is a very brave decision," Kainene said finally.
Although Ola
"It's very brave of you to do this."
Ola
"Will you come for her baptism?" Ola
"I still haven't visited that dusty hell, so yes, maybe I will."
Ola
Mama brought the baby, wrapped in a brown shawl that had the unpleasant smell of ogiri. She sat in the living room and cooed to the baby until Ola
"Ngwanu. I will visit again soon," she said. She seemed in an uncomfortable hurry, as if the whole business was one that she was quick to finish.
After she left, Ugwu examined the baby, his expression slightly worried. "Mama said the baby looks like her mother. It is her mother come back."
"People just look alike, Ugwu, it doesn't mean they reincarnate."
"But they do, mah. All of us, we will come back again."
Ola
The baby was crying. Ola
"She has so much hair, like you," Ola
"You'll look at her sometimes and hate me."
Ola
"Ugwu said your mother went to a dibia" she said.
"What?"
"Ugwu thinks all this happened because your mother went to a dibia and his medicine charmed you into sleeping with Amala."
Odenigbo was silent for a moment. "I suppose it's the only way he can make sense of it."
"The medicine should have produced the desired boy, shouldn't it?" she said. "It is all so irrational."
"No more irrational than belief in a Christian God you ca
She was used to his gentle jibes about her social-service faith and she would have responded to say that she was not even sure she believed in a Christian God that could not be seen. But now, with a helpless human being lying in the cot, one so dependent on others that her very existence had to be proof of a higher goodness, things had changed.
"I do believe," she said. "I believe in a good God."
"I don't believe in any gods at all."
"I know. You don't believe in anything."
"Love," he said, looking at her. "I believe in love."
She did not mean to laugh, but the laughter came out anyway. She wanted to say that love, too, was irrational. "We have to think of a name," she said.
"Mama named her Obiageli."
"We can't call her that." His mother had no right to name a child she had rejected. "We'll call her Baby for now until we find the perfect name. Kainene suggested Chiamaka. I've always loved that name: God is beautiful. Kainene will be her godmother. I have to go and see Father Damian about her baptism." She would go shopping at Kingsway. She would order a new wig from London. She felt giddy.
Baby stirred and a new wave of fear enveloped Ola