“I will go,” she said. Madu had sent them some garri and sugar and a little fuel. She would drive herself.
“There’s no point,” Odenigbo said.
“No point? There is no point in looking for my sister’s body?”
“Your sister is alive. There is no body.”
“Yes, God.”
She turned to leave.
“Even if they shot her, Olanna, they would not take her to a mortuary inside Biafra,” Odenigbo said, and she knew he was right but she hated him for saying it and for calling her Olanna instead of nkem and she went anyway, to the foul-smelling mortuary building, where bodies from a recent bombing were piled up outside, swelling in the sun. A crowd of people was begging to be let in to search.
“Please, my father is missing since the bombing.”
“Please, I cannot find my small girl.”
Olanna’s note from Madu made the caretaker smile at her and let her in and she insisted on looking at the face of every female body, even those that the caretaker said were too old, and afterward she stopped on the road to vomit. If the sun refuses to rise, we will make it rise. The title of Okeoma’s poem came to her. She did not remember the rest of it, something about placing clay pot on top of clay pot
to form a ladder to the sky. Back home, Odenigbo was talking to Baby. Richard sat staring at nothing. They did not ask her if she had found Kainene’s body. Ugwu told her that there was a large palm-oil-colored stain on her dress, his voice low, as if he knew it to be the remnants of her own vomit. Harrison told her there was nothing to eat and she stared at him blankly because it was Kainene who had been in charge of things, who knew what to do.
“You should lie down, nkem,” Odenigbo said.
“Do you remember the words of Okeoma’s poem about making the sun rise if it refused to rise?” she asked.
“‘Clay pots fired in zeal, they will cool our feet as we climb,’” he said.
“Yes, yes.”
“It was my favorite line. I can’t remember the rest.”
A woman from the refugee camp dashed into the yard, shouting, waving a green branch. Such a brilliant wet-looking green. Olanna wondered where she got it; the plants and trees around were scorched, blown bare by the dusty winds. The earth was sallow.
“It is over!” the woman shouted. “It is over!”
Odenigbo quickly turned the radio on, as though he had been expecting the woman with this news. The male voice was unfamiliar.
Throughout history, injured people have had to resort to arms in their self-defense where peaceful negotiations fail. We are no exception. We took up arms because of the sense of insecurity generated in our people by the massacres. We have fought in defense of that cause.
Olanna sat down; she liked the honesty, the firm vowels, and the quiet assuredness of the voice on the radio. Baby was asking Odenigbo why the woman from the camp was shouting like that. Richard got up and came closer to the radio. Odenigbo increased the volume. The woman from the refugee camp said, “They said the vandals are coming with canes to flog the hell out of civilians. We are going into the bush,” and then turned and ran back to the camp.
I take this opportunity to congratulate officers and men of our armed forces for their gallantry and bravery, which have earned for them the admiration of the whole world. I thank the civil population for their steadfastness and courage in the face of overwhelming odds and starvation. I am convinced that the suffering of our people must be brought to an immediate end. I have, therefore, instructed an orderly disengagement of troops. I urge General Gowon, in the name of humanity, to order his troops to pause while an armistice is negotiated.
After the broadcast, Olanna felt dizzy with disbelief. She sat down.
“What now, mah?” Ugwu asked, expressionless.
She looked away, at the cashew trees covered in dust, at the sky that curved to the earth in a cloudless wall ahead.
“Now I can go and find my sister,” she said quietly.
A week passed. A Red Cross van arrived at the refugee camp and two women handed out cups of milk. Many families left the camp, to search for relatives or to hide in the bush from the Nigerian soldiers who were coming with whips. But the first time Olanna saw Nigerian soldiers, on the main road, they did not hold whips. They walked up and down and spoke loud Yoruba to one another and laughed and gestured to the village girls. “Come marry me now, I go give you rice and beans.”
Olanna joined the crowd that watched them. Their pressed smart-fitting uniforms, their polished black boots, their confident eyes filled her with that hollowness that came with having been robbed. They had blocked the road and turned cars back. No movement yet. No movement. Odenigbo wanted to go to Abba, to see where his mother lay, and each day he walked to the main road to find out whether the Nigerian soldiers were letting cars pass.
“We should pack,” he told Olanna. “The roads will open in a day or two. We will leave early so we can stop in Abba and then get to Nsukka before dark.”
Olanna did not want to pack—there was little to pack anyway—and did not want to go anywhere. “What if Kainene comes back?” she asked.