Girls at War

by Chinua Achebe

  Whatever the reason the government cancelled the scheme. The New Age wrote an editorial praising the Prime Minister for his statesmanship and courage but pointing out that the whole dismal affair could have been avoided if the government had listened in the first place to the warning of many knowledgeable and responsible citizens. Which was true enough, for these citizens had written on the pages of the New Age to express their doubt and reservation about free education. The newspaper, on throwing open its pages to a thorough airing of views on the matter, had pointed out that it did so in the national cause and, mounting an old hobby-horse, challenged those of its critics who could see no merit whatever in a newspaper owned by foreign capital to come forward and demonstrate an equal or a higher order of national commitment and patriotism, a challenge that none of those critics took up. The offer of space by the New Age was taken up eagerly and in the course of ten days at the rate of two or even three articles a day a large number of responsible citizens—lawyers, doctors, merchants, engineers, salesmen, insurance brokers, university lecturers, etc.—had written in criticism of the scheme. No one was against education for the kids, they said, but free education was premature. Someone said that not even the United States of America in all its wealth and power had introduced it yet, how much less …

  Mr. Emenike read the various contributions with boyish excitement. “I wish civil servants were free to write to the papers,” he told his wife at least on three occasions during those ten days.

  “This is not bad, but he should have mentioned that this country has made tremendous strides in education since independence because parents know the value of education and will make any sacrifice to find school fees for their children. We are not a nation of Oliver Twists.”

  His wife was not really interested in all the argument at that stage, because somehow it all seemed to hang in the air. She had some vague, personal doubts about free education, that was all.

  “Have you looked at the paper? Mike has written on this thing,” said her husband on another occasion.

  “Who is Mike?”

  “Mike Ogudu.”

  “Oh, what does he say?”

  “I haven’t read it yet … Oh yes, you can trust Mike to call a spade a spade. See how he begins: ‘Free primary education is tantamount to naked Communism’? That’s not quite true but that’s Mike all over. He thinks someone might come up to nationalize his shipping line. He is so scared of Communism.”

  “But who wants Communism here?”

  “Nobody. That’s what I told him the other evening at the Club. But he is so scared. You know one thing? Too much money is bad-o.”

  The discussion in the Emenike family remained at this intellectual level until one day their “Small Boy,” a very bright lad of twelve helping out the cook and understudying the steward, announced he must go home to see his sick father.

  “How did you know your Father was sick?” asked Madame.

  “My brodder come tell me.”

  “When did your brother come?”

  “Yesterday for evening-time.”

  “Why didn’t you bring him to see me?”

  “I no no say Madame go wan see am.”

  “Why you no talk since yesterday?” asked Mr. Emenike looking up from his newspaper.

  “At first I tink say I no go go home. But today one mind tell me say make you go see-am-o; perhaps e de sick too much. So derefore …”

  “All right. You can go but make sure you are back by tomorrow afternoon otherwise …”

  “I must return back by morning-time sef.”

  He didn’t come back. Mrs. Emenike was particularly angry because of the lies. She didn’t like being outwitted by servants. Look at that little rat imagining himself clever. She should have suspected something from the way he had been carrying on of late. Now he had gone with a full month’s pay which he should lose in lieu of notice. It went to show that kindness to these people did not pay in the least.

  A week later the gardener gave notice. He didn’t try to hide anything. His elder brother had sent him a message to return to their village and register for free education. Mr. Emenike tried to laugh him out of this ridiculous piece of village ignorance.

  “Free primary education is for children. Nobody is going to admit an old man like you. How old are you?”

  “I am fifteen years of old, sir.”

  “You are three,” sneered Mrs. Emenike. “Come and suck breast.”

  “You are not fifteen,” said Mr. Emenike. “You are at least twenty and no headmaster will admit you into a primary school. If you want to go and try, by all means do. But don’t come back here when you’ve gone and failed.”

  “I no go fail, oga,” said the gardener. “One man for our village wey old pass my fader sef done register everyting finish. He just go for Magistrate Court and pay dem five shilling and dey swear-am for Court juju wey no de kill porson; e no fit kill rat sef.”

  “Well it’s entirely up to you. Your work here has been good but …”

  “Mark, what is all that long talk for? He wants to go, let him go.”

  “Madame, no be say I wan go like dat. But my senior brodder …”

  “We have heard. You can go now.”

  “But I no de go today. I wan give one week notice. And I fit find anoder gardener for Madame.”

  “Don’t worry about notice or gardener. Just go away.”

  “I fit get my pay now or I go come back for afternoontime?”

  “What pay?”

  “Madame, for dis ten days I don work for dis mont.”

  “Don’t annoy me any further. Just go away.”

  But real annoyance was yet to come for Mrs. Emenike. Abigail, the baby-nurse, came up to her two mornings later as she was getting ready for work and dumped the baby in her lap and took off. Abigail of all people! After all she had done for her. Abigail who came to her full of craw-craw, who used rags for sanitary towels, who was so ignorant she gave the baby a full bowl of water to stop it crying and dropped some through its nose. Now Abigail was a lady; she could sew and bake, wear a bra and clean pants, put on powder and perfumes and stretch her hair; and she was ready to go.

  From that day Mrs. Emenike hated the words “free primary” which had suddenly become part of everyday language, especially in the villages where they called it “free primadu.” She was particularly angry when people made jokes about it and had a strong urge to hit them on the head for a lack of feeling and good taste. And she hated the Americans and the embassies (but particularly the Americans) who threw their money around and enticed the few remaining servants away from Africans. This began when she learnt later that her gardener had not gone to school at all but to a Ford Foundation man who had offered him seven pounds, and bought him a bicycle and a Singer sewing-machine for his wife.

  “Why do they do it?” she asked. She didn’t really want or need an answer but her husband gave one all the same.

  “Because,” said he, “back home in America they couldn’t possibly afford a servant. So when they come out here and find them so cheap they go crazy. That’s why.”

  Three months later free primary ended and school fees were brought back. The government was persuaded by then that its “piece of hare-brained socialism” as the New Age called it was unworkable in African conditions. This was a jibe at the Minister of Education who was notorious for his leftist sympathies and was perpetually at war with the formidable Minister of Finance.

  “We cannot go through with this scheme unless we are prepared to impose new taxes,” said the Finance Minister at a Cabinet meeting.

  “Well then, let’s impose the taxes,” said the Minister of Education, which provoked derisive laughter from all his colleagues and even from Permanent Secretaries like Mr. Emenike who were in attendance and who in strict protocol should not participate in debate or laughter.

  “We can’t,” said the Finance Minister indulgently with laughter still in his mouth. “I know my right honourable friend here doesn’t wo
rry whether or not this government lasts its full term, but some of us others do. At least I want to be here long enough to retire my election debts …”

  This was greeted with hilarious laughter and cries of “Hear! Hear!” In debating skill Education was no match for Finance. In fact Finance had no equal in the entire Cabinet, the Prime Minister included.

  “Let us make no mistake about it,” he continued with a face and tone now serious, “if anyone is so foolish as to impose new taxes now on our longsuffering masses …”

  “I thought we didn’t have masses in Africa,” interrupted the Minister of Education starting a meagre laughter that was taken up in good sport by one or two others.

  * * *

  “I am sorry to trespass in my right honourable friend’s territory; communist slogans are so infectious. But as I was saying we should not talk lightly about new taxes unless we are prepared to bring the Army out to quell tax riots. One simple fact of life which we have come to learn rather painfully and reluctantly—and I’m not so sure even now that we have all learnt it—is that people do riot against taxes but not against school fees. The reason is simple. Everybody, even a motor-park tout, knows what school fees are for. He can see his child going to school in the morning and coming back in the afternoon. But you go and tell him about general taxation and he immediately thinks that government is stealing his money from him. One other point, if a man doesn’t want to pay school fees he doesn’t have to, after all this is a democratic society. The worst that can happen is that his child stays at home which he probably doesn’t mind at all. But taxes are different; everybody must pay whether they want to or not. The difference is pretty sharp. That’s why mobs riot.” A few people said “Hear! Hear!” Others just let out exhalations of relief or agreement. Mr. Emenike who had an unrestrainable admiration for the Finance Minister and had been nodding like a lizard through his speech shouted his “Hear! Hear!” too loud and got a scorching look from the Prime Minister.

  A few desultory speeches followed and the government took its decision not to abolish free primary education but to suspend it until all the relevant factors had been thoroughly examined.

  One little girl of ten, named Veronica, was brokenhearted. She had come to love school as an escape from the drabness and arduous demands of home. Her mother, a near-destitute widow who spent all hours of the day in the farm and, on market days, in the market left Vero to carry the burden of caring for the younger children. Actually only the youngest, aged one, needed much looking after. The other two, aged seven and four, being old enough to fend for themselves, picking palm-kernels and catching grasshoppers to eat, were no problem at all to Vero. But Mary was different. She cried a lot even after she had been fed her midmorning foo-foo and soup saved for her (with a little addition of water to the soup) from breakfast which was itself a diluted left-over from last night’s supper. Mary could not manage palm-kernels on her own account yet so Vero half-chewed them first before passing them on to her. But even after the food and the kernels and grasshoppers and the bowls of water Mary was rarely satisfied, even though her belly would be big and tight like a drum and shine like a mirror.

  Their widowed mother, Martha, was a hard-luck woman. She had had an auspicious beginning long, long ago as a pioneer pupil at St. Monica’s, then newly founded by white women-missionaries to train the future wives of native evangelists. Most of her schoolmates of those days had married young teachers and were now wives of pastors and one or two even of bishops. But Martha, encouraged by her teacher, Miss Robinson, had married a young carpenter trained by white artisan-missionaries at the Onitsha Industrial Mission, a trade school founded in the fervent belief that if the black man was to be redeemed he needed to learn the Bible alongside manual skills. (Miss Robinson was very keen on the Industrial Mission whose Principal she herself later married.) But in spite of the bright hopes of those early evangelical days carpentry never developed very much in the way teaching and clerical jobs were to develop. So when Martha’s husband died (or as those missionary artisans who taught him long ago might have put it—when he was called to higher service in the heavenly mansions by Him who was Himself once a Carpenter on earth) he left her in complete ruins. It had been a bad-luck marriage from the start. To begin with she had had to wait twenty whole years after their marriage for her first child to be born, so that now she was virtually an old woman with little children to care for and little strength left for her task. Not that she was bitter about that. She was simply too overjoyed that God in His mercy had lifted her curse of barrenness to feel a need to grumble. What she nearly did grumble about was the disease that struck her husband and paralysed his right arm for five years before his death. It was a trial too heavy and unfair.

  Soon after Vero withdrew from school Mr. Mark Emenike, the big government man of their village who lived in the capital, called on Martha. His Mercedes 220S pulled up on the side of the main road and he walked the 500 yards or so of a narrow unmotorable path to the widow’s hut. Martha was perplexed at the visit of such a great man and as she bustled about for colanut she kept wondering. Soon the great man himself in the hurried style of modern people cleared up the mystery.

  “We have been looking for a girl to take care of our new baby and today someone told me to inquire about your girl …”

  At first Martha was reluctant, but when the great man offered her λ5 for the girl’s services in the first year—plus feeding and clothing and other things—she began to soften.

  “Of course it is not money I am concerned about,” she said, “but whether my daughter will be well cared for.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that, Ma. She will be treated just like one of our own children. My wife is a Social Welfare Officer and she knows what it means to care for children. Your daughter will be happy in our home, I can tell you that. All she will be required to do is carry the little baby and give it its milk while my wife is away at the office and the older children at school.”

  “Vero and her sister Joy were also at school last term,” said Martha without knowing why she said it.

  “Yes, I know. That thing the government did is bad, very bad. But my belief is that a child who will be somebody will be somebody whether he goes to school or not. It is all written here, in the palm of the hand.”

  Martha gazed steadily at the floor and then spoke without raising her eyes. “When I married I said to myself: My daughters will do better than I did. I read Standard Three in those days and I said they will all go to College. Now they will not have even the little I had thirty years ago. When I think of it my heart wants to burst.”

  “Ma, don’t let it trouble you too much. As I said before, what any one of us is going to be is all written here, no matter what the difficulties.”

  “Yes. I pray God that what is written for these children will be better than what He wrote for me and my husband.”

  “Amen!… And as for this girl if she is obedient and good in my house what stops my wife and me sending her to school when the baby is big enough to go about on his own? Nothing. And she is still a small girl. How old is she?”

  “She is ten.”

  “You see? She is only a baby. There is plenty of time for her to go to school.”

  He knew that the part about sending her to school was only a manner of speaking. And Martha knew too. But Vero who had been listening to everything from a dark corner of the adjoining room did not. She actually worked out in her mind the time it would take the baby to go about on his own and it came out quite short. So she went happily to live in the capital in a great man’s family and looked after a baby who would soon be big enough to go about on his own and then she would have a chance to go to school.

  Vero was a good girl and very sharp. Mr. Emenike and his wife were very pleased with her. She had the sense of a girl twice her age and was amazingly quick to learn.

  Mrs. Emenike, who had almost turned sour over her recent difficulty in getting good servants, was now her old self again.
She could now laugh about the fiasco of free primadu. She told her friends that now she could go anywhere and stay as long as she liked without worrying about her little man. She was so happy with Vero’s work and manners that she affectionately nicknamed her “Little Madame.” The nightmare of the months following Abigail’s departure was mercifully at an end. She had sought high and low then for another baby-nurse and just couldn’t find one. One rather over-ripe young lady had presented herself and asked for seven pounds a month. But it wasn’t just the money. It was her general air—a kind of labour-exchange attitude which knew all the rights in the labour code, including presumably the right to have abortions in your servants’ quarters and even have a go at your husband. Not that Mark was that way but the girl just wasn’t right. After her no other person had turned up until now.

  Every morning as the older Emenike children—three girls and a boy—were leaving for school in their father’s Mercedes or their mother’s little noisy Fiat, Vero would bring the baby out to the steps to say bye-bye. She liked their fine dresses and shoes—she’d never worn any shoes in her life—but what she envied them most was simply the going away every morning, going away from home, from familiar things and tasks. In the first months this envy was very, very mild. It lay beneath the joy of the big going away from the village, from her mother’s drab hut, from eating palm-kernels that twisted the intestines at midday, from bitter-leaf soup without fish. That going away was something enormous. But as the months passed the hunger grew for these other little daily departures in fine dresses and shoes and sandwiches and biscuits wrapped in beautiful paper-napkins in dainty little school bags. One morning, as the Fiat took the children away and little Goddy began to cry on Vero’s back, a song sprang into her mind to quieten him:

  Little noisy motor-car

  If you’re going to the school

  Please carry me

  Pee—pee—pee!—poh—poh—poh!

  All morning she sang her little song and was pleased with it. When Mr. Emenike dropped the other children home at one o’clock and took off again Vero taught them her new song. They all liked it and for days it supplanted “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and “Simple Simon” and the other songs they brought home from school.