“No, you’re not.” Olanna smiled. She liked his shyness. She didn’t want him to leave just yet. “Would you like Ugwu to bring you some chin-chin? They’re fantastic; he made them this morning.”
“No, thank you. I should be on my way.” But
he did not turn to leave. He pushed his hair away from his face only to have it fall back again.
“Okay. Well, have a safe trip.”
“Thank you.” He still stood there.
“Are you driving? No, you’re not, I remember. You’ll take the train.” She laughed an awkward laugh.
“Yes, I’m taking the train.”
“Have a safe trip.”
“Yes. All right then.”
Olanna watched him leave, and long after his car had reversed out of the compound, she stood at the door, watching a bird with a blood-red breast, perched on the lawn.
In the morning, Odenigbo woke her up by taking her finger in his mouth. She opened her eyes; she could see the smoky light of dawn through the curtains.
“If you won’t marry me, nkem, then let’s have a child,” he said.
Her finger muffled his voice, so she pulled her hand away and sat up to stare at him, his wide chest, his sleep-swollen eyes, to make sure she had heard him properly.
“Let’s have a child,” he said again. “A little girl just like you, and we will call her Obianuju because she will complete us.”
Olanna had wanted to give the scent of his mother’s visit some time to diffuse before telling him she wanted to have a child, and yet here he was, voicing her own desire before she could. She looked at him in wonder. This was love: a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became miracles. “Or a little boy,” she said finally.
Odenigbo pulled her down and they lay side by side, not touching. She could hear the raspy caw-caw-caw of the blackbirds that ate the pawpaws in the garden.
“Let’s have Ugwu bring us breakfast in bed,” he said. “Or is this one of your Sundays of faith?” He was smiling his gently indulgent smile, and she reached out and traced his lower lip with the slight fuzz underneath. He liked to tease her about religion’s not being a social service, because she went to church only for St. Vincent de Paul meetings, when she took Ugwu with her for the drive through dirt paths in nearby villages to give away yams and rice and old clothes.
“I won’t go today,” she said.
“Good. Because we have work to do.”
She closed her eyes because he was straddling her now and as he moved, languorously at first and then forcefully, he whispered, “We will have a brilliant child, nkem, a brilliant child,” and she said, Yes, yes. Afterward, she felt happy knowing that some of the sweat on her body was his and some of the sweat on his body was hers. Each time, after he slipped out of her, she pressed her legs together, crossed them at her ankles, and took deep breaths, as if the movement of her lungs would urge conception on. But they did not conceive a child, she knew. The sudden thought that something might be wrong with her body wrapped itself around her, dampened her.
6
Richard ate the pepper soup slowly. After he had spooned up the pieces of tripe, he raised the glass bowl to his lips and drank the broth. His nose was running, there was a delicious burning on his tongue, and he knew his face was red.
“Richard eats this so easily,” Okeoma said, seated next to him, watching him.
“Ha! I didn’t think our pepper was made for your type, Richard!” Odenigbo said, from the other end of the dining table.
“Even I can’t take the pepper,” another guest said, a Ghanaian lecturer in economics whose name Richard always forgot.
“This is proof that Richard was an African in his past life,” Miss Adebayo said, before blowing her nose into a napkin.
The guests laughed. Richard laughed too, but not loudly, because there was still too much pepper in his mouth. He leaned back on his seat. “It’s fantastic,” he said. “It clears one up.”
“The finger chops are lovely too, Richard,” Olanna said. “Thank you so much for bringing them.” She was sitting next to Odenigbo, and she leaned forward to smile at him.
“I know those are sausage rolls, but what are these things?” Odenigbo was poking at the tray Richard brought; Harrison had daintily wrapped everything in silver foil.
“Stuffed garden eggs, yes?” Olanna glanced at Richard.