Half of a Yellow Sun (41 page)

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,” Olanna said, before she could help herself; she hated the malice in her tone, the renewed resentment she felt.

Odenigbo parked the car in the garage. He looked tired. “Let’s think about this.”

“We’ll keep her,” Olanna said firmly.

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 planned but had become, the minute it happened, what was meant to be. Her mother did not think so; her mother’s voice
over the phone line the next day was grave, the solemn tone that would be used to talk about somebody who had died.

“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.”

Olanna held the phone and stared at the flowers on the center table. One of them had fallen off; it was surprising that Ugwu had forgotten to remove it. There was truth in her mother’s words, she knew, and yet she knew, also, that the baby had looked like she had always imagined her and Odenigbo’s child would, with the lush hair and widely spaced eyes and pink gums.

“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.”

Olanna sighed.
“Anugo m
, I’ll give this more thought.”

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 connecting her.

“How noble of you,” Kainene said when Olanna told her.

“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 Olanna or something, so that if Amala ever comes back, she can be Mummy.”

“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. Olanna pulled at the phone wire.

“I think this is a very brave decision,” Kainene said finally.

Although Olanna heard her clearly, she asked, “What did you say?”

“It’s very brave of you to do this.”

Olanna leaned back on the seat. Kainene’s approval, something she had never felt before, was like a sweetness on her tongue, a surge of ability, a good omen. Suddenly her decision became final; she would bring the baby home.

“Will you come for her baptism?” Olanna asked.

“I still haven’t visited that dusty hell, so yes, maybe I will.”

Olanna hung up, smiling.

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 Olanna came out. Mama got up and handed the baby over.

“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.”

Olanna waved him away. “Go and throw this shawl into the dustbin. It smells terrible.”

The baby was crying. Olanna hushed her and bathed her in a small basin and glanced at the clock and worried that the wet nurse, a large woman that Ugwu’s aunty had found, would be late. Later, after the nurse arrived and the baby fed at her breast and fell asleep, Olanna and Odenigbo looked down at her, lying face up in the cot near their bed. Her skin was a radiant brown.

“She has so much hair, like you,” Olanna said.

“You’ll look at her sometimes and hate me.”

Olanna shrugged. She did not want him to think she was doing this for him, as a favor to him, because it was more about herself than it was about him.

“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 cannot see.”

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 Olanna. She looked at the hair shining with Pears oil and wondered if she could really do it, if she could raise a child. She knew it was normal, the way the baby was breathing too fast, as if panting in her sleep, and yet even that worried her.

The first few times she called Kainene that evening, there was no answer. Perhaps Kainene was in Lagos. She called again at night and when Kainene said, “Hello,” she sounded hoarse.

“Ejima m,”
Olanna said. “Do you have a cold?”

“You fucked Richard.”

Olanna stood up.

“You’re the good one.” Kainene’s voice was controlled. “The good one shouldn’t fuck her sister’s lover.”

Olanna sank back down on the puff and realized that what she felt was relief. Kainene knew. She would no longer have to worry about Kainene’s finding out. She was free to feel real remorse.

“I should have told you, Kainene,” she said. “It meant nothing.”

“Of course it meant nothing. It was just fucking my lover, after all.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.” Olanna felt the tears in her eyes. “Kainene, I’m so sorry.”

“Why did you do it?” Kainene sounded frighteningly calm. “You’re the good one and the favorite and the beauty and the Africanist revolutionary who doesn’t like white men, and you simply did not need to fuck him. So why did you?”

Olanna was breathing slowly. “I don’t know, Kainene, it wasn’t something I planned. I am so sorry. It was unforgivable.”

“It
was
unforgivable,” Kainene said and hung up.

Olanna put down the phone and felt a sharp cracking inside her. She knew her twin well, knew how tightly Kainene held on to hurt.

   24   

R
ichard wanted to cane Harrison
. It had always appalled him, the thought that some colonial Englishmen flogged elderly black servants. Now, though, he felt like doing just as they had done. He longed to make Harrison lie down on his belly and flog, flog, flog him until the man learned to keep his mouth shut. If only he had not brought Harrison with him to Port Harcourt. But he was spending a whole week and did not want to leave him alone in Nsukka. The first day they arrived, Harrison, as if to justify his visit, cooked a complicated meal: a bean and mushroom soup, a pawpaw medley, chicken in a cream sauce speckled with greens, and a lemon tart as pudding.

“This is excellent, Harrison,” Kainene said, with a teasing sparkle in her eyes. She was in a good mood; she had pulled Richard into her arms after he arrived and mock-danced with him over the polished floor of the living room.

“Thank you, madam.” Harrison bowed.

“And do you cook this in your home?”

Harrison looked wounded. “I am not cooking in my home, madam. My wife is cooking native food.”

“Of course.”

“I am cooking any type of European food, anything my master is eating in his country.”

“You must have difficulty eating
native
food when you go home then.” Kainene stressed the word
native
, and Richard held back his laughter.

“Yes, madam.” Harrison bowed again. “But I must manage.”

“This tart tastes better than one I had the last time I was in London.”

“Thank you, madam.” Harrison beamed. “My master is telling me that everybody in Mr. Odenigbo’s house is saying the same thing. I used to make it for my master to take there, but I am not making anything again for Mr. Odenigbo’s house since that time he is shouting on my master. Shouting like madman and the whole street is hearing. The man’s head is not correct.”

Kainene turned to Richard and raised her eyebrows. Richard knocked his glass of water over.

“I will get rag, sah,” Harrison said, and Richard restrained himself from leaping across to strangle him.

“Whatever is Harrison talking about?” Kainene asked, after the water had been wiped up. “The revolutionary shouted at you?”

He could have lied. Even Harrison himself did not know exactly why Odenigbo had driven into the compound that evening and shouted at him. But he did not lie, because he was scared that he would fail at lying and would eventually have to tell her the truth and that way make it all doubly damaging. So he told her everything. He told her about the good white Burgundy he and Olanna drank and how, afterward, he was overwhelmed with regret.

Kainene pushed away her plate and sat with her elbows on the table, her chin lightly supported on her clasped hands. She said nothing for many long minutes. He could not read the expression on her face.

“I hope you won’t say
forgive me,”
she said, finally. “There is nothing more trite.”

“Please don’t ask me to leave.”

She looked surprised. “Leave? That would be too easy, wouldn’t it?”

“I’m sorry, Kainene.”

Richard felt transparent; she was looking at him but he felt as if she could see the wood carving that hung on the wall behind him. “So you have been lusting after my sister. How unoriginal,” she said.

“Kainene,” he said.

She stood up. “Ikejide!” she called. “Come and clear this place.”

They were leaving the dining room when the phone rang. She ignored it. It rang again and again and finally she went to it. She came back into the bedroom and said, “That was Olanna.”

Richard looked at her, pleaded with his eyes.

“It would be forgivable if it were somebody else. Not my sister,” she said.

“I am so sorry.”

“You should sleep in the guest room.”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

He did not know what she was thinking. It was what frightened him the most, that he had no idea what she was thinking. He patted his pillow and rearranged his blanket and sat up in bed and tried to read. But his mind was too active for his body to be still. He worried that Kainene would call Madu and tell him what had happened, and Madu would laugh and say, “He was a mistake from the beginning, leave him, leave him, leave him.” Finally, before he fell asleep, Molière’s words came to him, strangely comforting:
Unbroken happiness is a bore; it should have ups and downs
.