Half of a Yellow Sun

"Be very careful," she said. "And lock your door even when you are just going to urinate."

Ola

The first day Ola

"No, we don't have enough," Ola

"Stop giving her your food!" Mama Oji screamed. "This is what she does with every new tenant. She should go and farm cassava and feed her family and stop disturbing people! After all, she is an indigene of Umuahia! She is not a refugee like us! How can she be begging a refugee for food?" Mama Oji hissed loudly and then continued to pound palm fruit in her mortar. The efficient set to her fleshless face fascinated Ola

"But is it not you refugees who have finished all our food?" Mama Ada

"Shut up your stinking mouth!" Mama Oji said. And Mama Ada

In the evenings, when Mama Oji fought with her husband, her voice tore across the yard. "You castrated sheep! You call yourself a man, and yet you deserted the army! Let me just hear you tell anybody again that you were wounded in battle! Just open that dirty mouth one more time, and I will go and call the soldiers and show them where you have been hiding!"

Her tirade was a staple of the yard. So was Pastor Ambrose's loud praying as he walked up and down. So was the piano playing from the room right next to the kitchen. Ola

"That is Alice," Mama Oji said. "She came here when Enugu fell. She was not even talking to anybody before. At least now she responds to greetings. She lives alone in that room. She never comes out and she never cooks. Nobody knows what she eats. The other time when we went combing, she felt too big to join us. Everybody else in the compound came out and went into the bushes and looked for vandals hiding there, but she did not come out. Some of the women even said they would report her to the militia."

The music still floated out. It sounded like Beethoven, but Ola

"Good evening," Ola

"Welcome. I've seen your daughter." Alice 's handshake was a weak clasp, as if she handled herself with much care, as if she would never scrub herself too vigorously.

"You play so well," Ola

"Oh, no, I'm no good." Alice shook her head. "Where did you come from?"

" Nsukka University. And you?"

Alice hesitated. "I came from Enugu."

"We had friends there. Did you know anybody in the Nigerian College of Arts?"

"Oh, the bathroom is free." She turned and hurried away. Her abruptness surprised Ola

She thought often about Alice, the delicate quality to her smallness and fairness, the incredible strength of her piano playing. When she gathered Baby and Ada

Finally, they met again in the market. It was just after dawn and the air was heavy with dew and Ola

"Good morning, Alice," she said.

"Good morning," Alice said.

Ola

"I ca

Ola

"They said the Nigerians have been bombing and bombing Uli and no relief plane has been able to land in a week," Alice said.

"Yes, I heard," Ola

Alice looked away, toward the thick wood. "Not right away."

"I'll wait for you so we can walk back together."

"No, don't bother," Alice said. "Bye-bye."

Alice turned and walked back to the cluster of stalls, her gait dainty and contrived, as though a misguided person had taught her how to walk "like a lady." Ola