Olanna made to hug her, the usual brief greeting hug, but Alice extended her hand for a formal shake as though they were not neighbors.
“I cannot find salt anywhere, no salt at all,” Alice said. “And the people who put us in this thing have all the salt they want.”
Olanna was surprised; of course she would not find salt here; there was hardly salt anywhere. Alice looked precise and petite in a neatly belted wool dress that Olanna imagined hanging in a London shop. Nothing like a Biafran woman in a forest market at dawn.
“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,” Olanna said. “Are you going home?”
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.” Olanna stood watching her, wondering what lay underneath her surface, before she headed home. She stopped by the relief center to see if there was any food, if a plane had finally managed to land. The compound was deserted and she peered through the locked gate for a while. A half-torn poster was nailed to the wall. Somebody had run charcoal over the WCC: WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES and scribbled WCC: WAR CAN CONTINUE.
She was close to the corn-grinding station when a woman ran out of a roadside house, crying, following two soldiers who were pulling a tall boy along with them. “I said you should take me!” she screamed. “Take me instead! Have we not sacrificed Abuchi to you people already?” The soldiers ignored her and the boy kept his posture straight-backed, as if he could not trust himself to look back at his mother.
Olanna stood aside as they passed and, back home, she was furious to see Ugwu standing in front of the yard, talking to some elderly neighbors. Any soldier on a conscripting mission could see him there.
“Bia nwoke m, is something wrong with your head? Haven’t I told you not to be out here?” she asked him in a hiss.
Ugwu took her basket and mumbled, “Sorry, mah.”
“Where is Baby?”
“In Adanna’s room.”
“Give me the key.”
“Master is inside, mah.”
Olanna glanced at her watch although she did not need to. It was too early for Odenigbo to be home. He was sitting on their bed, his back hunched, his shoulders heaving silently.
“O gini? What happened?” she asked.
“Nothing happened.”
She went to him. “Ebezi na, stop crying,” she murmured. But she did not want him to stop. She wanted him to cry and cry until he dislodged the pain that clogged his throat, until he rinsed away his sullen grief. She cradled him, wrapped her arms around him, and slowly he relaxed against her. His arms circled her. His sobs became audible. With each intake of breath, they reminded her of Baby; he cried like his daughter.
“I never did enough for Mama,” he said finally.
“It’s okay,” she murmured. She too wished she had tried harder with his mother before settling for easy resentment. There was so much she would take back if she could.
“We never actively remember death,” Odenigbo said. “The reason we live as we do is because we do not remember that we will die. We will all die.”
“Yes,” Olanna said; there was a slump to his shoulders.
“But perhaps it is the whole point of being alive? That life is a s
tate of death denial?” he asked.
Olanna cradled him closer.
“I’ve been thinking of the army, nkem,” he said. “Maybe I should join His Excellency’s new S-brigade.”
Olanna said nothing for a while. She felt the urge to yank at his new beard and pull out hair and draw blood. “You might as well find a sturdy tree and a rope, Odenigbo, because that’s an easier way to commit suicide,” she said.