Half of a Yellow Sun (43 page)

“Of course,” Olanna repeated. “I have a friend, Mrs. Muokelu, who can help.”

“Very good.”

“You should come and visit us when you have time,” Olanna said, standing up.

“Yes.” He took her hand in his and held it for a little too long.

“Thank you, doctor.”

“For what? I can’t do much.” He gestured toward the door, and Olanna knew he meant the women who were waiting outside. As she left, she glanced at the near-empty cupboard of medicine.

Olanna ran past the town square on her way to Akwakuma Primary School in the morning. She always did that in open spaces, running until she got to the thick shade of trees that would give good cover in case of an air raid. Some children were standing under the mango tree in the school compound, throwing stones up at the fruit. She shouted, “Go to your classes,
osiso!”
and they scattered briefly before coming back to aim at the mangoes. She heard a cheer when one fell, and then the raised voices as they quarreled over whose throw had brought the fruit down.

Mrs. Muokelu was in front of her classroom fiddling with the bell. The thick black hair on her arms and legs, the fuzz on her upper lip, the curled strands on her chin, and the squat muscular limbs often made Olanna wonder if perhaps Mrs. Muokelu would have been better off being born a man.

“Do you know where I can buy antibiotics, my sister?” Olanna
asked, after they hugged. “Baby has a cough, and they did not have any at the hospital.”

Mrs. Muokelu hummed for a while to show that she was thinking. His Excellency’s face glared from the fabric of the boubou she wore every day; she often announced that she would wear nothing else until the state of Biafra was fully established.

“Anybody can sell medicine, but you don’t know who is mixing chalk in his backyard and calling it Nivaquine,” she said. “Give me the money and I will go to Mama Onitsha. She is authentic. She will sell you Gowon’s dirty pant if you pay the right price.”

“Let her keep the pant and just give us medicine.” Olanna was laughing.

Mrs. Muokelu smiled and picked up the bell. “I saw a vision yesterday,” she said. Her boubou was too long for her short body; it dragged along the ground and Olanna feared that she would trip on it and fall.

“What was the vision?” Olanna asked. Mrs. Muokelu always had visions. In the last one, she had seen Ojukwu personally leading the battle in the Ogoja sector, which meant that the enemy had been completely wiped out there.

“Traditional warriors from Abiriba used their bows and arrows and finished the vandals in the Calabar sector.
I makwa
, children were walking over their bones to go to the stream.”

“Really,” Olanna said, and kept her face serious.

“It means Calabar will never fall,” Mrs. Muokelu said, and began to ring the bell. Olanna watched the swift movements of the masculine arm. They really had nothing in common, herself and this barely educated primary-school teacher from Eziowelle who believed in visions. Yet Mrs. Muokelu had always seemed familiar. It was not because Mrs. Muokelu plaited her hair and went with her to the Women’s Voluntary Services meetings and taught her
how to preserve vegetables, but because Mrs. Muokelu exuded fearlessness, a fearlessness that reminded Olanna of Kainene.

That evening, when Mrs. Muokelu brought the antibiotic capsules wrapped in newspaper, Olanna asked her to come inside and showed her a photo of Kainene, sitting by the pool with a cigarette between her lips.

“This is my twin sister. She lives in Port Harcourt.”

“Your twin!” Mrs. Muokelu exclaimed, fingering the plastic half of a yellow sun that she wore on a string around her neck. “Wonders shall never end. I did not know you were a twin, and,
nekene
, she does not look like you at all.”

“We have the same mouth,” Olanna said.

Mrs. Muokelu glanced at the photo again and shook her head. “She does not look like you at all,” she repeated.

The antibiotics yellowed Baby’s eyes. Her coughing got better, less chesty and less whistling, but her appetite disappeared. She pushed her
garri
around her plate and left her pap uneaten until it congealed in a waxy lump. Olanna spent most of the cash in the envelope and bought biscuits and toffees in shiny wrappers from a woman who traded behind enemy lines, but Baby only nibbled at them. She placed Baby on her lap and forced bits of mashed yam into her mouth, and when Baby choked and started to cry, Olanna, too, fought tears. Her greatest fear was that Baby would die. It was there, the festering fear, underlying everything she thought and did. Odenigbo skipped the Agitator Corps activities and rushed home earlier, and Olanna knew he shared her fear. But they did not talk about it, as though verbalizing it would make Baby’s death imminent, until the morning she sat watching Baby sleep while Odenigbo got dressed for work. The resonating voice on Radio Biafra filled the room.

“That’s right!” Odenigbo said, buttoning his shirt with quick movements.

On the bed, Baby stirred. Her face had lost its fat and was eerily adult, sunken and thin-skinned. Olanna watched her.

“Baby won’t make it,” she said quietly.

Odenigbo stopped and looked at her. He turned the radio off and came over and held her head against his belly. Because he said nothing at first, his silence became a confirmation that Baby would die. Olanna shifted away.

“It’s only normal that she doesn’t have an appetite,” he said finally. But his tone lacked the certitude she was used to.

“Look how much weight she’s lost!” Olanna said.

“Nkem
, her cough is getting better and her appetite will come back.” He began to comb his hair. She was angry with him for not saying what she wanted to hear, for not assuming the power of fate and telling her that Baby would be well, for being normal enough to continue to dress for work. His kiss before he left was quick, not the usual lingering press of lips, and that too she held against him. Tears filled her eyes. She thought about Amala. Amala had made no contact with them since the day at the hospital but she wondered now if she would be expected to tell Amala if Baby were to die.

Baby yawned and woke up. “Good morning, Mummy Ola.” Even her voice was thin.

“Baby,
ezigbo nwa
, how are you?” Olanna picked her up, hugged her, blew into her neck, and struggled with her tears. Baby felt
so slight, so light. “Will you eat some pap, my baby? Or some bread? What do you want?”

Baby shook her head. Olanna was trying to cajole Baby into drinking some Ovaltine when Mrs. Muokelu arrived with a knotted raffia bag and a self-satisfied smile.

“They have opened a relief center on Bishop Road and I went very early this morning,” she said. “Ask Ugwu to bring me a bowl.”

She poured some yellow powder into the bowl Ugwu brought.

“What is that?” Olanna asked.

“Dried egg yolk.” Mrs. Muokelu turned to Ugwu. “Fry it for Baby.”

“Fry it?”

“Is something wrong with your ears? Mix it with some water and fry it,
osiso!
They say children love the taste of this thing.”

Ugwu gave her a slow look before he went into the kitchen. The dried egg yolk, fried in red palm oil, looked soggy and unnervingly bright-colored on the plate. Baby ate all of it.

The relief center used to be a girls’ secondary school. Olanna imagined the grassy walled compound before the war, young women hurrying to classes in the morning and sneaking to the gate in the evening to meet young men from the government college down the road. Now it was dawn and the gate was locked. A large crowd had gathered outside. Olanna stood awkwardly among the men and women and children, who all seemed used to standing and waiting for a rusted iron gate to be opened so they could go in and be given food donated by foreign strangers. She felt discomfited. She felt as if she were doing something improper, unethical: expecting to get food in exchange for nothing. Inside the compound, she could see people
moving about, tables set out with sacks of food, a board that said
WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES
. Some of the women clutched their baskets and peered over the gate and muttered about these relief people wasting time. The men were talking among themselves; the oldest-looking man wore his red chieftaincy hat with a feather stuck in it. A young man’s voice stood out from the others, high-pitched, shouting gibberish, like a child learning to speak.

“He has serious shell shock,” Mrs. Muokelu whispered, as if Olanna did not know. It was the only time Mrs. Muokelu spoke. She had slowly edged her way to the front of the gate, nudging Olanna to follow her each time. Somebody behind had begun a story about a Biafran victory. “I am telling you, all of the Hausa soldiers turned and ran, they had seen what was bigger than them…” The voice trailed away as a man inside the compound strode toward the gate. His T-shirt,
LAND OF THE RISING SUN
written on it in black, was loose around his slim body and he carried a sheaf of papers. He walked with an air of importance, his shoulders held high. He was the supervisor.

“Order! Order!” he said, and opened the gate.

The swift scrambling rush of the crowd surprised Olanna. She felt jostled; she swayed. It was as if they all shoved her aside in one calculated move since she was not one of them. The firm elbow of the elderly man beside her landed painfully on her side as he launched his run into the compound. Mrs. Muokelu was ahead, dashing toward one of the tables. The old man in the feathered hat fell down, promptly picked himself up, and continued his lopsided run to the queue. Olanna was surprised, too, by the militia members flogging with long whips and shouting “Order! Order!” and by the stern faces of the women at the tables, who bent and scooped into the bags held out before them and then said, “Yes! Next!”

“Join that one!” Mrs. Muokelu said, when Olanna moved to
stand some way behind her. “That is the egg-yolk line! Join it! This one is stockfish.”

Olanna joined the queue and held herself from pushing back at the woman who tried to nudge her out. She let the woman stand in front of her. The incongruity of queuing to beg for food made her feel uncomfortable, blemished. She folded her arms, then let them lie by her sides, and then folded them again. She was close to the front when she noticed that the powder being scooped into bags and bowls was not yellow but white. Not egg yolk but cornmeal. The egg-yolk line was the next one. Olanna hurried over to join it, but the woman who was dishing out the yolk stood up and said, “Egg yolk is finished!
O gwula!
”

Panic rose in Olanna’s chest. She ran after the woman. “Please,” she said.

“What is it?” the woman asked. The supervisor, standing close by, turned to stare at Olanna.

“My little child is sick—” Olanna said.

The woman cut her short. “Join that line for milk.”

“No, no, she has not been eating anything, but she ate egg yolk.” Olanna held the woman’s arm.
“Biko
, please; I need the egg yolk.”

The woman pulled her arm away and hurried into the building and slammed the door. Olanna stood there. The supervisor, still staring, fanned himself with his sheaf of papers and said,
“Ehe!
I know you.”

His bald head and bearded face did not look familiar at all. Olanna turned to walk away because she was sure he was one of those men who claimed to have met her before only to have a chance to make a pass.

“I have seen you before,” he said. He moved closer, smiling now, but without the leer she expected; his face was frank and delighted. “Some years ago at Enugu Airport when I went to meet my brother who was returning from overseas. You talked
to my mother.
I kasiri ya obi
. You calmed her down when the plane landed and did not stop right away.”

That day at the airport came back to Olanna hazily. It had to be about seven years ago. She remembered his bush accent and his nervous excitement and that he had seemed older than he looked now.

“Is it you?” she asked. “But how did you recognize me?”

“How can anybody forget a face like your own? My mother has always told the story of a beautiful woman who held her hand. All the members of my family know the story. Every time somebody talks about my brother’s return, she will tell it.”

“And how is your brother?”

Pride lit up his face. “He is a senior man in the directorate. He is the one who gave me this job with relief.”

Olanna immediately wondered whether he could help her get some egg yolk. But what she asked was, “And your mother is well?”

“Very well. She is at Orlu in my brother’s house. She was very ill when my elder sister did not return from Zaria at first; we all thought those animals had done to her what they did to the others, but my sister returned—she had Hausa friends who helped her—so my mother got better. She will be happy when I tell her that I saw you.”

He paused to glance at one of the food tables where two young girls were fighting, one saying, “I am telling you that this stockfish is mine,” and the other saying,
“Ngwanu
, both of us will die today.”

He turned back to her. “Let me go and see what is going on there. But wait by the gate. I will send somebody to you with egg yolk.”

“Thank you.” Olanna was relieved that he had offered and yet felt awkward at the exchange. At the gate, she skulked; she felt like a thief.

“Okoromadu sent me to you,” a young woman said beside her, and Olanna almost jumped. The woman slid a bag into her hand and walked back into the compound. “Thank him for me,” Olanna called out. If the woman heard, she did not turn. The weight of the bag felt reassuring as she waited for Mrs. Muokelu; later, as she watched Baby eat until only the palm oil grease was left on the plate, she wondered how Baby could stand the awful plastic taste of the dried egg yolk.

The next time Olanna went to the relief center, Okoromadu was talking to the crowd at the gate. Some women held rolled-up mats under their arms; they had spent the night outside the gates.