Master came home from a meeting early that evening. “We’ll leave for Umuahia tomorrow,” he said. “We would have gone to Umuahia anyway. We’re just leaving a week or two sooner.” He spoke too fast, looking at a point in the distance. Ugwu wondered if it was because he did not want to admit that his hometown was about to fall, or if it was because Olanna had not been speaking to him. Ugwu did not know what had happened between them but, whatever it was, it happened after the village square meeting. Olanna had come home in a strange silence. She spoke mechanically. She did not laugh. She let him make every decision about the food and about Baby, spending most of her time on the slanting wooden chair on the veranda. Once he saw her walk over
to the guava tree and caress its trunk, and he told himself he would go and pull her away, after a minute, before the neighbors said she was going mad. But she didn’t stay long. She turned quietly and went back and sat on the veranda.
She looked just as quiet now. “Please pack our clothes and food for tomorrow, Ugwu.”
“Yes, mah.”
He packed their things quickly—they did not have that much anyway, it was not like Nsukka where he had been paralyzed with so many choices that he had taken very little. He put them in the car early the next morning and then went around the house to make sure he had missed nothing. Olanna had already packed the albums. She had bathed Baby. They stood waiting by the car while Master checked the oil and water. On the road, people were walking past in thick groups.
The wooden gate in the mud wall behind the house creaked open and Aniekwena came into the compound. He was Master’s cousin. Ugwu disliked the sly twist of his lips; he always visited at mealtimes and then said “Oh! Oh!” in exaggerated surprise when Olanna asked him to join them in “touching their hands to their mouths.” He looked grim now. Behind him was Master’s mother.
“We are ready to go, Odenigbo, and your mother has refused to pack her things and come,” Aniekwena said.
Master closed the bonnet. “Mama, I thought we agreed that you would go to Uke.”
“Ekwuzikwananu nofu! Don’t say that! You told me that we have to run and that it is better that I go to Uke. But did you hear me agree? Did I say ‘oh’ to you?”
“Do you want to come with us to Umuahia, then?” Master asked.
Mama looked at the car, packed full. “But why are you running? Where are you running to? Can you hear any guns?”
“People are fleeing Abagana and Ukpo, which means the Hausa soldiers are close and will soon enter Abba.”
“Did you not hear our dibia tell us that Abba has never been conquered? Who am I running away from my own house for? Alu melu! Do you know that your father will be cursing us now?”
“Mama, you cannot stay here. Nobody will be left in Abba.”
She looked up and squinted in concentration as though looking for a ripening pod on the kola nut tree was more important than what Master was saying.
Olanna opened the car door and asked Baby to get in the back.
“The news is not good. The Hausa soldiers are close,” Aniekwena said. “I am leaving for Uke. Send word to us when you get to Umuahia.” He turned and started to walk away.
“Mama!” Master shouted. “Go and bring your things now!”
His mother kept looking up the kola nut tree. “I will stay and watch over the house. After you all have run, you will come back. I will be here waiting. Who am I running away from my own house for, gbo?”
“Perhaps it would be a better idea to speak to her gently instead of raising your voice,” Olanna said in English. She sounded very formal, clipped. Ugwu had not heard her speak to Master like that, except during the months before Baby was born.
Master’s mother was looking at them suspiciously, as if she was sure that Olanna had just insulted her in English.
“Mama, will you not come with us?” Master asked. “Biko. Please come with us.”
“Give me the key to your house. I might need something there.”
“Please come with us.”
“Give me the key.”
Master stared at her silently and then handed her a bunch of keys. “Please come with us,” he said again, but she said nothing and tied the keys into one edge of her wrapper.
Master climbed into the car. As he drove out, he kept turning back to see his mother, perhaps to see if she would change her mind and dash after Aniekwena or wave to him to stop. But she didn’t. She stood there, not waving. Ugwu watched her too, until they turned into the dirt road. How could she stay there all alone, not surrounded by relatives? If everybody in Abba was leaving, how would she eat since there would be no market?
Olanna touched Master’s shoulder. “She will be all right. The federal troops won’t stay in Abba if they pass through.”
“Yes,” Master said. He leaned over and kissed her lips, and Ugwu felt a buoyant relief that they were speaking normally again. The stream of refugees filing past was thinning.
“Professor Achara has found us a house in Umuahia,” Master said, his voice too loud, too cheerful. “Some old friends are already there, and everything will soon be back to normal. Everything will be perfectly normal!”