“Odenigbo?” she was whispering. “Odenigbo?”
Ugwu understood right away that it was all she could say, that perhaps she had not even recognized him and could not get herself to ask the full question: Is Odenigbo alive?
“My master is well,” Ugwu said. “He is inside.”
She was staring at him. “Oh, Ugwu! Look how grown you are.” She came inside. “Where is he? How is he?”
“I will call him, mah.”
Master was standing by his study door. “What is going on, my good man?” he asked.
“It is Miss Adebayo, sah.”
“You asked me to hide under a table because of Miss Adebayo?”
“I thought it was the soldiers, sah.”
Miss Adebayo hugged Master and held on for too long. “They told me that either you or Okeoma didn’t make it back—”
“Okeoma didn’t make it back.” Master repeated her expression as if he somehow disapproved of it.
Miss Adebayo sat down and began to sob. “You know, we didn’t really understand what was happening in Biafra. Life went on and women were wearing the latest lace in Lagos. It was not until I went to London for a conference and read a report about the starvation.” She paused. “Once it ended, I joined the Mayflower volunteers and crossed the Niger with food …”
Ugwu disliked her. He disliked her Nigerianness. Yet a part of him was prepared to forgive it if that would bring back those evenings of long ago, when she argued with Master in a living room that smelled of brandy and beer. Now, nobody visited, except for Mr. Richard. There was a new familiarity to his presence. It was as if he was more like family, the way he would sit reading in the living room while Olanna went about her business and Master was in the study.
The banging on the door some evening later, when Mr. Richard was visiting, annoyed Ugwu. He put his sheets of paper down in the kitchen. Couldn’t Miss Adebayo understand that it was best to go back to Lagos and leave them alone? At the door, he moved a step back when he saw the two soldiers through the glass. They grabbed the handle and jerked at the locked door. Ugwu opened it. One of them was wearing a green beret and the other had a white mole on his chin like a fruit seed.
“Everybody in this house, come out and lie down flat!”
Master, Olanna, Ugwu, Baby, and Mr. Richard all stretched out on the living room floor while the soldiers searched the house. Baby closed her eyes and lay perfectly still on her belly.
The one with the green beret had eyes that blazed red, and he shouted and shredded some papers on the table. It was he who pressed the sole of his boot on Mr. Richard’s backside and said, “White man! Oyinbo! Don’t shit hot shit here, oh!” It was he, too, who placed his gun to Master’s head and said, “Are you sure you are not hiding Biafran money here?”
The other one, with the mole on his chin, said, “We are searching for any materials that will threaten the unity of Nigeria,” and then went to the kitchen and came out with two plates heaped with Ugwu’s jollof rice. After they ate, after they drank some water and belched loudly, they got into their station wagon and drove away. They had left the front door open. Olanna stood up first. She walked into the kitchen and poured the rest of the jollof rice into the dustbin. Master locked the door. Ugwu helped Baby up and took her inside. “Bath time,” he said, although it was a little early.
“I can do it myself,” Baby said, and so he stood by and watched her bathe herself for the first time. She splashed some water on him, laughing, and he realized that she would not always need him.
Back in the kitchen, he found Mr. Richard reading the sheets of paper he
had left on the countertop.
“This is fantastic, Ugwu.” Mr. Richard looked surprised. “Olanna told you about the woman carrying her child’s head on the train?”
“Yes, sah. It will be part of a big book. It will take me many more years to finish it and I will call it ‘Narrative of the Life of a Country.’”
“Very ambitious,” Mr. Richard said.
“I wish I had that Frederick Douglass book.”
“It must have been one of the books they burned,” Mr. Richard said and shook his head. “Well, I’ll look for it when I’m in Lagos next week. I’m going to see Kainene’s parents. But I’ll go first to Port Harcourt and Umuahia.”
“Umuahia, sah?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Richard said nothing else; he never spoke about his search for Kainene.
“If you have time, sah, please find out about somebody for me.”