Second Class Citizen

by Buchi Emecheta

  As was to be expected, Mr Noble’s humble abode was situated in the middle of the gloomy part. There was a mighty building curving right into the middle of the street, shutting away the cheerful side from the gloomy one, as if it were determined to divide the poor from the rich; the houses from the ghetto, the whites from the blacks. The jutting end of this building was just like a social divide; solid, visible and unmovable. This building, built with red bricks, was a school or something and it pointed right in front of Mr Noble’s house, so that one side of it faced the good side of the street, and the other the forbidding side. His house needed no description. “Just go to Willes Road, ask for the black man’s house and it will be shown to you,” Janet had said, and she was right. Francis and Adah had little difficulty in finding the house. It was unmistakable.

  It looked the oldest house in the street, sandwiched between two houses owned by some Greeks. These houses were old, too, but had been coated with fresh paint and the front gardens still had flowers in them. The windows had white net curtains and their doors had brass knockers. Mr Noble’s house looked like a midget between two giants. His was neglected. The front garden contained piles and piles of uncleared rubbish and the fence needed mending. The whole house needed a coat of paint.

  Francis banged the curved, blackened knocker. The knock was faint and uncertain and was swallowed up by the music blaring from the television. It was the time when the Beatles were still handsome young boys doing their “He loves you, yeah, yeah”, stuff. The “yeah, yeah” was echoing from the house. Francis would have to knock harder. Adah felt like telling him so, but decided to be quiet, otherwise they would go into the Nobles’ house still arguing who was right and who was stupid.

  The intensity of the knocks progressed from the first mild knock to a final thunderous one. The whole house shook and two curtained windows, on either side of the door, made funny moves as if they were hiding the curious. Francis looked desperately right and left, like a man who felt like running. Adah looked at him, her silent, sad face asking what he was going to do. Francis thought better of it. Maybe remembering the price he had had to pay for coming this far he decided to wait.

  Then they heard a pair of feet shuffling on a lino-covered floor. The owner of the feet was not in too much of a hurry, he was taking his time, all right. The door opened a little, and someone peered at them through the small gap. The person stood there for what seemed centuries, deliberating, maybe, about whether Adah and Francis should be allowed in or not.

  Then, all of a sudden, there was a funny laugh. The type of laugh one usually associates with ghosts in places like Tutenk-hamun’s tomb. It was like the sound made by an old frog. Mr Noble even looked like a black ghost, for his head was hairless, and he seemed to have dyed the skin on his head black. It was a while before Francis and his wife realised that the croaky noise was Pa Noble’s way of welcoming them.

  The noise subsided slowly, giving way to a smile on a face; the face of an old man. A face that had been battered by gallons of African rain; burned almost to scorching point by years and years of direct Nigerian sun; and later on ravaged by many biting wintry winds in England; a face that was criss-crossed like a jute mat by bottled-up sorrows, disappointments, and maybe occasional joys. It was all there, on Pa Noble’s face, just like an indelible legend written by Mother Nature on one of her sons. He had a hollow in the middle of his neck. Two prominent bones formed a triangle which encased this hollow, and whenever Pa Noble talked, something that looked like a chunk of meat inside his gullet would dance frighteningly in this encased hollow and the onlooker would feel like begging him to stop talking. But that was the last thing Pa Noble could do; he never stopped talking. He reminded one of a dying old man eager to tell it all to the living world before he passed to the other side and his voice was silenced forever. To press home his point, which he did very often, Pa Noble would gulp.

  He opened the door wider, welcoming them. It was then that he displayed his hands. They were so claw-like, those hands; they were wizened, blacker than the normal black, in fact they looked like burnt clumps, with tiny, equally black fingers attached to them. As for the dislocated arm, it reminded anybody of those unfortunate thalidomide kids. He came nearer to them, to have a better look at his two visitors. It was then that he removed his large square glasses and peered again and again, like a blind bat. His eyes were deeply set inside deep hollows. Adah could not see the whites of those eyes properly, but nevertheless she got the impression that she was being looked over by a pair of very wise and very old wicked eyes. They were so sharp, so precise, even though they were set so far back. Adah recoiled from Mr Noble’s effusive welcome. The words and sentences he uttered were warm but those eyes, that face, that laugh! Adah prayed to God to make Mr Noble put on his glasses again. At least that would cover the two hollows. Was that why he wore glasses in the first place, to cover the skeleton-like cavities? He certainly seemed to see better without them.

  God heard Adah’s silent prayers and Mr Noble replaced his glasses. He had on layers and layers of clothes, vests, shirts and old jumpers and on top of it all an old grandpa God-forsaken coat with sagging pockets. The trousers looked as if they had originally belonged to somebody bigger than him; on him they hung loose like the clothes of a television marionette. The feet were covered with folds of woollen socks, which sagged on his ankles, the elastic grips having been long exhausted. The whole lot, the feet and the tired socks, were stuffed into two large, ill-matched slippers. One of the slippers was made of brown leather, the other was made of blue canvas. The man looked exactly as people described him - like a witch-doctor.

  “Come in, come in, iyawo.” Iyawo is a Yoruba word for a young wife, not necessarily a bride. Adah must have looked quite young to Mr Noble. “Come in, and welcome,” he said, showing his gleaming teeth. God was merciful. Giving such a perfect set of teeth to such an ugly old man. Those teeth added life to his face, making it show traces of humanity.

  He drew Adah and Francis towards him. They entered the hallway and waited for Pa Noble to shut the door.

  All of a sudden, another voice rose above the sound of the television, louder than the Beatles. The voice was a woman’s, loud, authoritative and direct.

  “Papa! Papa! Papa! Who is it? Who is it, Papa? Papa … Pa …”

  “Visitors!” Mr Noble croaked, his old voice almost cracking in the attempt. The lump in his throat danced furiously. “Visitors,” he repeated, this time in a lower key, as he ushered the two trembling figures into the sitting-room.

  The over-heated room, the blaring television, the airless atmosphere all combined to greet them in one big whiff as they went inside. The room was small. A large double bed took up a considerable portion of the room. Opposite the bed was a table on which were clustered all sorts of children’s articles: feeding bottles, a plastic plate, clothes. In the centre of this jumble stood the majestic television, trumpeting away as if determined to make its presence felt amidst the sobering jumble. Children’s litter was accumulated everywhere, on the floor and on the chairs; even the walls were not spared from little smears. Piles and piles of clothing in different stages of cleanliness lay in uncomfortable places. A child was sleeping on the bed, apparently too tired to be disturbed by the noise. Sitting very near the child, with her feet stretched straight in front of her, was a woman. Mrs Noble.

  Mrs Noble was a large-boned Birmingham woman, still young and still pretty, with masses of auburn hair hanging loose about her shoulders. Her blue eyes were direct and candid and looked as if they were determined to find out straight away what Francis’s and Adah’s business was. Those eyes were always suspicious of people. That hair of hers, hanging long and thick, and curly in parts, made her look like a wild gipsy beauty. If she had had earrings on, Adah would have sworn that Mrs Noble was the very woman who approached her weeks before at Queen’s Crescent, telling her that she would be lucky with men and that she would have many boy friends. Her eyes were now peering at them, from her
wide face, seemingly unsure of how to receive their visitors. Adah involuntarily had to say “Hello”. She made a great show of mouthing it, because the television was still blaring. She gave a wobbly smile as well.

  Mrs Noble’s eyes leapt into action. They danced humorously, their centres twinkling like distant blue waves on a sunny day; she shouted, welcoming them as if she had been waiting for them all her life. She jumped up smartly, surprisingly nimble for her large bulk, from the bed of jumble and started to fuss over them, her eyes bright and laughing all the time. She was warm-hearted, kind, friendly, loud, and unreserved; the type of woman who would not hesitate to tell you the first thing that came into her head.

  Her visitors relaxed though, mainly due to her.

  Mrs Noble got busy. She lumped together two or three piles of clothes, some damp, others dry, to make room for Adah and Francis. She made a blind dive into one of the damp piles, fished out a towel, rubbed it energetically over two straight-backed chairs, and invited them to sit down.

  Pa Noble took Adah’s white coat which he hung on a nail behind the door. Francis refused to take off his coat because of his shabby jumper, so he sweated in the heat. It was then that Adah realised that she had made a mistake in allowing her coat to be taken. What would these people say when they realised that they were not just visitors but prospective tenants? They could see that she was pregnant, they would soon know that she had two other children as well. All that was not going to be easy to explain away. Maybe they had not noticed. So she made frantic attempts to do her breathing exercises. She held in her bulge, feeling the pain. She would relax after they had made their enquiries.

  Mrs Noble was determined to play the role of the perfect hostess to the very full, quite oblivious of Adah’s thoughts.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed as Adah was settling on the chair provided. “Oh, that chair is too hard for you.” Adah jumped. The woman’s eyes had not missed a thing. Would Adah like to sit on the bed, it was much more comfortable, much softer, “you know what I mean.” She gave Adah a good wink of her blue eyes, a wink that was meant to be conspiratorial. But Adah looked blank. But Mrs Noble roared with laughter. Whether she was laughing with or against her, Adah could not tell. But she learned later on that whenever Mrs Noble felt she had cracked a joke, she laughed like that, forcing her listeners to laugh with her whether they saw the joke or not. Her laughter went on and on so that even Francis, who seldom smiled, had to join in. She was so infectious that woman.

  Tea was served in chipped cups and mugs. Adah’s arrived in a big mug, over-sugared and too milky.

  “You must drink for the two of you,” Mrs Noble explained kindly.

  Adah shrank back with fear, avoiding Francis’s eyes. Adah thanked her aloud, but in her heart she consigned her to her Maker. If only she would stop her natter, the air would be cleared for them to proceed with their request.

  But Mrs Noble did not stop, she talked about everything, but about nothing in particular. She seemed to feel that she would be failing as a hostess if there was any silence at all. She drew Adah into the orbit of her topic by asking her if her children had started taking English food. This surprised Adah, because she did not know that the Nobles knew they had other children. They probably also knew why they were paying them this visit. Their Nigerian neighbours had been doing a great deal of gossiping.

  “No, they have not taken to English food much, but they are fond of chips,” replied Adah.

  “All children like fish and chips. Ours will not take boiled or roast potatoes, but you fry them and away they go, just like that! I think children all over the world like fish and chips. It’s an international food, not just English,” Pa Noble said absentmindedly, his eyes focused on the television.

  His wife looked at him curiously and asked: “Papa, did you eat fish and chips when you were little?”

  Papa, who until then seemed to have forgotten their existence, leapt back to life. He took out a small tin of snuff and administered the stuff to his wide nostrils, then wheezed and sneezed, then jolted himself upright and put the snuff tin back into one of his sagging coat pockets, clapped his claw-like hands in an unnatural sort of way, hunched up his stiff shoulder and rubbed his hairless head. His wife sat back nicely, making herself comfortable among the piles of clothing, relaxed, ready to be amused.

  Papa Noble told them that he was born in a tree. His mother fed him on breast milk until he was almost twelve. He had to be weaned because he was by then old enough to join the menfolk in the farm work. He never wore clothes until he was taken into the army. Yes, he said, all children in Nigeria were brought up like that. There was no food, people died of dysentery every day. He ate meat only twice in the year during the yam festival and the festival of his father’s gods. In fact, he only started to live when he came to England. And, of course, he started to enjoy life only when he met his Sue.

  “Why did you not tell your wife that your father had tails, Pa Noble?” Adah blurted out. She felt sick. Why must Pa Noble descend so low? Just to be married to this woman?

  Mr Noble simply laughed, or rather croaked, “Iyawo, you are very, very, young and inexperienced. I hope you’ll learn very soon.”

  “She’s only a woman,” Francis said by way of an apology.

  Mrs Noble had been so amused that she started to laugh to herself. Francis, who like Pa Noble always had a certain tenderness towards any white woman, smiled at her. It seemed as if their friendship clicked in that smile. Adah felt betrayed, but she knew something. They were going to get the room they were asking for. Pa Noble was too old for Sue.

  8

  Role Acceptance

  One day, weeks later, when Adah, Francis and their two young children had settled in at the Nobles’, Adah felt unwilling to go to work. She felt uncomfortable and unusually heavy. She could have stayed longer in bed, but she had to be in the library by nine-thirty. Sad, and feeling very sorry for herself, as she usually did on such days, she dragged herself up, envying her husband who was still having a good snore. She felt like waking him up, just for the sheer joy of it. She was just stretching her hand towards him, on the verge of pulling him up, when the piece of humanity inside her gave her a gentle kick. It seemed to be saying to her, What do you think you’re doing, eh? This gentle push was followed by arrow-like punches. One of the punches was so intense that she was jolted into reality.

  According to her calculations, she should have the baby at the beginning of December. As a matter of fact, she could have the baby any time, because it was almost due. It was already December, the second day of the month. The baby would not come on the second, she told herself. The actual date was the ninth. So she was sure the child inside her was simply having a morning stretch. Do babies do morning exercises in their mothers’ tummies? She must check it up sometime.

  But one thing was beginning to worry her, though. Her bulk. Her boss was always looking at her, when she thought Adah was not watching, wondering. Adah had lied to them, to the doctor, saying that her baby was due early in February, so that she could stay as long as possible at work. They would then have enough money to tide them over till she started work again. Francis had been convinced that it would be right for him to work during Christmas at the post office. So if only Adah could work as long as possible, they would be able to pay their rent, pay for the children’s nursery and put some money by until she got strong enough to go back to work.

  Looking back at that time, she still wondered why she never thought it odd that she should be doing all the worrying about what they were going to live on, why she, and she alone, always felt she was letting those she loved down if she stayed away from work, even for the sake of having a baby. The funniest thing was that she felt it was her duty to work, not her husband’s. He was to have an easy life, the life of a mature student, studying at his own pace.

  She got herself ready that morning, and hurried to Kentish Town station. When she got there, she realised that the railwaymen were having one of their go-slows.
She did not know of this, because she was so completely isolated from other people, that if not for her visits to her place of work, she would not know anything that happened outside her home. Francis did not believe in friendship. The only friends he was beginning to cultivate were one or two Jehovah’s Witness people, who came to their room once or twice. Their bags were so big that all they reminded Adah of were the Hausa meat-hawkers in Lagos. Adah did not mind them, they might even make a faithful husband out of Francis. But the Jehovah people could not tell her that there was going to be a rail strike. They never read the papers, it was a waste of money, Francis had maintained. They had neither radio nor television. They were so completely cut off from any type of mass media. Though Francis infrequently went downstairs to Mrs Noble’s to watch their television, Adah was banned from going there because the woman would be a bad influence on her. Adah did not particularly like Mrs Noble and was too busy with her own lot, so she did not make any protest. She simply accepted her role as defined for her by her husband.

  There was a crowd of innocents there on the platform. Maybe they, too, like Adah were completely isolated from the goings on in society, or maybe they thought the railwaymen would have changed their minds in the night. The crowd waited, patiently, though muttering like angry bees.

  The pushes and nudges inside her became more determined. She wondered what the little devil wanted her to do. Scream right there on the platform? A kind huge gentleman with a bowler hat, dark suit, briefcase and tightly rolled umbrella, vacated one of the wooden benches for her and motioned her to sit down. “We may still have a long time to wait,” he said smiling. His great big face looked like that of a little boy. Adah thanked him. She was sure he was a headmaster of a boys’ school. What gave her the idea she did not bother to find out.