We stayed out to listen for a little while longer before Aunty Ifeoma said we had to go in and sleep.
AUNTY IFEOMA CAME HOME that afternoon with the news of the riot. It was the worst one since they became commonplace some years ago. The students had set the sole administrator’s house on fire; even the guest house behind it had burned to the ground. Six university cars had been burned down, as well. “They say the sole administrator and his wife were smuggled out in the boot of an old Peugeot 404, o di egwu,” Aunty Ifeoma said, waving around a circular. When I read the circular, I felt a tight discomfort in my chest like the heartburn I got after eating greasy akara. It was signed by the registrar. The university was closed down until further notice as a result of the damage to university property and the atmosphere of unrest. I wondered what it meant, if it meant Aunty Ifeoma would leave soon, if it meant we would no longer come to Nsukka.
During my fitful siesta, I dreamed that that the sole administrator was pouring hot water on Aunty Ifeoma’s feet in the bathtub of our home in Enugu. Then Aunty Ifeoma jumped out of the bathtub and, in the manner of dreams, jumped into America. She did not look back as I called to her to stop.
I was still thinking about the dream that evening as we all sat in the living room, watching TV. I heard a car drive in and park in front of the flat, and I clasped my shaky hands together, certain it was Father Amadi. But the banging on the door was unlike him; it was loud, rude, intrusive.
Aunty Ifeoma flew off her chair. “Onyezi? Who wants to break my door, eh?”
She opened the door only a crack, but two wide hands reached in and forced the door ajar. The heads of the four men who spilled into the flat grazed the door frame. Suddenly, the flat seemed cramped, too small for the blue uniforms and matching caps they wore, for the smell of stale cigarette smoke and sweat that came in with them, for the raw bulge of muscle under their sleeves.
“What is it? Who are you?” Aunty Ifeoma asked.
“We are here to search your house. We’re looking for documents designed to sabotage the peace of the university. We have information that you have been in collaboration with the radical student groups that staged the riots…” The voice sounded mechanical, the voice of a person reciting something written. The man speaking had tribal marks all over his cheek; there seemed to be no area of skin free of the ingrained lines. The other three men walked briskly into the flat as he spoke. One opened the drawers of the sideboard, leaving each open. Two went into the bedrooms.
“Who sent you here?” Aunt Ifeoma asked.
“We are from the special security unit in Port Harcourt.”
“Do you have any papers to show me? You cannot just walk into my house.”
“Look at this yeye woman oh! I said we are from the special security unit!” The tribal marks curved even more on the man’s face as he frowned and pushed Aunty Ifeoma aside.
“How you go just come enter like dis? Wetin be dis?” Obiora said, rising, the fear in his eyes not quite shielded by the brazen manliness in his pidgin English.
“Obiora, nodu ani,” Aunt Ifeoma quietly said, and Obiora sat down quickly. He looked relieved that he had been asked to. Aunty Ifeoma muttered to us all to remain seated, not to say a word, before she followed the men into the rooms. They did not look inside the drawers they flung open, they just threw the clothes and whatever else was inside on the floor. They overturned all the boxes and suitcases in Aunty Ifeoma’s room, but they did not rummage through the contents. They scattered, but they did not search. As they left, the man with the tribal marks said to Aunty Ifeoma, waving a stubby finger with a curved nail in her face, “Be careful, be very careful.”
We were silent until the sound of their car driving off faded.
“We have to go to the police station,” Obiora said.
Aunt Ifeoma smiled; the movement of her lips did not brighten her face. “That is where they came from. They’re all working together.”
“Why are they accusing you of encouraging the riot, Aunty?” Jaja asked.
“It’s all rubbish. They want to scare me. Since when have students needed somebody to tell them when to riot?”
“I don’t believe they just forced their way into our house and turned it upside down,” Amaka said. “I don’t believe it.”
“Thank God Chima is asleep,” Aunty Ifeoma said.
“We should leave,” Obiora said. “Mom, we should leave. Have you talked to Aunty Phillipa since the last time?”
Aunty Ifeoma shook her head. She was putting back the books and table mats from the sideboard drawers. Jaja went over to help her.
“What do you mean, leave? Why do we have to run away from our own country? Why can’t we fix it?” Amaka asked.
“Fix what?” Obiora had a deliberate sneer on his face.
“So we have to run away? That’s the answer, running away?” Amaka asked, her voice shrill.
“It’s not running away, it’s being realistic. By the time we get into university, the good professors will be fed up with all this nonsense and they will go abroad.”
“Shut up, both of you, and come and clean up this place!” Aunty Ifeoma snapped. It was the first time she did not look on proudly and enjoy my cousins’ arguments.
AN EARTHWORM WAS slithering in the bathtub, near the drain, when I went in to take a bath in the morning
. The purplish-brown body contrasted with the whiteness of the tub. The pipes were old, Amaka had said, and every rainy season, earthworms made their way into the bathtub. Aunty Ifeoma had written the works department about the pipes, but, of course, it would take ages before anybody did anything about them. Obiora said he liked to study the worms; he’d discovered that they died only when you poured salt on them. If you cut them in two, each part simply grew back to form a whole earthworm.