Second Class Citizen

by Buchi Emecheta

  “Now why don’t you tell me the good news?” she asked, smiling as much as her sewn-up stomach would allow her. “Tell me, I am dying to hear it.”

  “First read this,” Francis commanded. He handed her a letter from her boss at the library where she was working. The woman, her boss, God bless her, advised her to make the best of her stay in hospital and give herself some rest. Adah was trying to read and concentrate, but Francis was impatient and was urging her on to get to the last paragraph, which he said was the most important. Adah skipped most of the middle part of the letter just to satisfy Francis, and read the last part. Yes, it was good news in a way. The Finchley Borough had decided to pay her a lump sum for the holidays she had not taken. Her boss remarked that she hoped Adah would use this money to take a holiday after her confinement and get some clothes for herself. She concluded the letter by telling her that the staff had collected some money and bought her a red woollen cardigan to go with the lappa with birds on it that she usually wore to work.

  “They are very kind people in that library. I hope they will take me back after all this. I must go and thank them personally some time,” Adah remarked smiling and thinking that God had helped her so much with this small fortune. So she could now tell Francis about the nightdress which the nurse wanted her to have, she could now afford to buy the double ones, and she was going to buy two or three … but Francis was talking, about something he said was very important. Adah forced her mind back to what he was saying.

  “… you know that course Mr Ibiam said had helped him in passing his Cost and Works accountancy examinations? I can now afford to pay for it. It costs less than forty pounds, and that would hasten my success. I am paying for the whole course on Monday, so that the whole lot can be sent to me as soon as possible.”

  What does one say to such a man? That he is an idiot? That he is selfish? That he is a rogue? Or a murderer? Nothing Adah could think of could convey her feelings adequately. She simply sighed and, instead, asked about the children, whom Francis seemed to have forgotten to mention. She was told they were well and that they did not miss her much.

  “Don’t they? Suppose I had died a few days ago, who would have taken care of them? Tell me. With you still living in your dreams about what you are going to be in the future and what you are going to be in the New Kingdom of God. But you forget the children need you now. I don’t care whether you become an Nkrumah or another Zik. I want a husband now and a father for my children now!” Adah cried.

  Francis looked about him wildly. He was sure they could not be heard by the rest of the patients and their visitors, but Adah was speaking in their Ibo language and that meant gesticulating in the air. The gesticulations were wild, like the arms of a windmill that had gone mad. She kept her voice low, but was talking and talking and would never stop.

  “If you are worried about who is going to look after the children, if you had died, well, I’ll tell you this. My mother brought us all up and I don’t see….”

  “If you don’t go out of this ward, or stop talking, I shall throw this milk jug at you. I hate you now, Francis, and one day I shall leave you. I did not bring my children into the world to be brought up by a woman who can’t even sign her name. A woman who used her thumb on our marriage certificate because she could not write. If you really want to know, I brought my children here to save them from the clutches of your family, and, God help me, they are going back as different people; never, never, are they going to be the type of person you are. My sons will learn to treat their wives as people, individuals, not like goats that have been taught to talk. My daughters … God help me, nobody is going to pay any bleeding price for them. They will marry because they love and respect their men, not because they are looking for the highest bidder or because they are looking for a home….”

  At the mention of a home, Adah started to cry. If only she had had a home, she would not have married so early. If only Pa had not died when he did. If only her people in Lagos had been civilised enough to know that a girl who decided to live by herself and study for her degree was not necessarily a prostitute, if only … Her thoughts went on and on. Now here she was in a foreign country, with no single friend, except her children….

  Yes, I have my children. They are only babies, but babies become people, men and women. I can switch my love to them. Leave this person. No, live with him as long as it is convenient. No longer. Adah dried her tears. Crying showed softness and weakness. Crying was too late now. There was no Ma and no Pa. And her brother Boy was miles away, and could not be of any help. She had to act for herself. She was looking for a home. She had never had one since Pa died years ago; she had looked for it in the wrong place and among the wrong people. That did not mean the whole world was wrong or that she could never start another home, now that she had her babies to share it with. She smiled at Francis, thanking God for giving her him as a tool with which it was possible to have her children. She would not harm him, because he was the father of her babies. But he was a dangerous man to live with. Like all such men, he needed victims Adah was not going to be a willing victim.

  She smiled again. She told him that the hospital authorities wanted her to buy a nightdress. She said she would like to have blue, but the look on Francis’s face and her former outburst had sapped all her energy. She did not have the courage to tell him she would need more than one, because she was still losing blood heavily, she could not tell him she would like a beautiful and fashionable one. Adah suddenly realised that she was dealing not with the husband of her dreams, but with an enemy. She had to be very careful, otherwise she would get hurt. She did not care any more about flowers or cards, but wanted only to get well quickly and go back to her children.

  “Suppose this money had not arrived, what would you have bought the nightdress with?”

  There was no need to reply. Her pay for the month had just arrived, the letter said so; they could afford several nightdresses, if Francis did not think them a wasteful luxury. But she said nothing. Instead, she turned her head to the rest of the patients, got bored with watching, closed her eyes and went to sleep.

  Two days later, the nightdress did arrive. It was blue. The shape and cut was exactly like the one Adah had in the hospital. It was just a long cotton shirt, the type specially made for the very old. Adah was indifferent. At least she would not feel guilty about wearing the hospital’s shirt any more.

  She did not bother to show it round as she had planned, because she was not proud of it. It was not beautiful, and she could only have one. So for the rest of her stay she learned another rule. She should keep to herself. If she got herself involved in any kind of gossip or conversation, she might be lured to talk about herself, about her children and about her husband. She did not want to do that anymore. There was nothing to talk about.

  Soon the women in the ward started going home. Everybody was anxious to be home before Christmas. The sleek lady was the first to melt away unobtrusively. She had to go to another ward, she told Adah. She wished her luck during her stay in England and told her it had been nice knowing her and that she hoped Adah got better soon. Adah was so moved that she was tempted to act just as she would have in Nigeria. She wanted to ask the lady for her address, but something in the lady’s politeness stopped her. It was the type of politeness one usually associated with high intelligence She could talk to Adah in the hospital ward, she could joke with her, she could tell her the story of her life, because she knew they would never meet again, not on this earth. So, Adah just thanked her and wished her luck. She slipped out of the ward, padding noiselessly, so that people who saw her thought she was simply going for a bath. But she was gone. She died a few days afterwards. Nobody told the few remaining mothers the details. All they knew was that she had died. The nurses would reveal no more.

  Adah wanted to go home.

  Getting ready for home was another ordeal. You dressed yourself and dressed your new baby in its brand new clothes and new shawl. Then the baby would be sh
own round in his first civilian clothes, and everybody would coo and remark on how smart he looked. They would also congratulate the mother on her trim figure. These congratulations were not always very sincere, because all new mothers went home with that frontal bulge which disappears only with time. But on that day, the day the mothers leave the hospital, they would squeeze and stuff themselves into tight dresses or suits. One could watch these women with sympathy, trying to prove to themselves that nothing had changed, that they had not lost their figures, that they were still trim and nice, just as they were before their babies were conceived; that having the babies did not mean losing their youth and that, like every young woman in the street, they could go about in ordinary clothes and not the tent-like outfits which had been their lot over the past months.

  Adah’s African costume solved the figure problem for her. Her Ibo lappa would stretch and stretch so that there was no need for her to draw her tummy in. Her lappa would cover it all for her. She had asked Francis to bring her the one with “Nigerian Independence, 1960” written all over it. She was going to show people that she came from Nigeria and that Nigeria was an independent republic. Not that the other women did not know, but Adah felt that she would like them to remember it always, that she came from Nigeria, and that Nigeria was independent.

  Her problem was the baby’s clothes. When she had had Vicky, the Americans had been so good to her, ordering all her baby’s clothes from Washington. The shawls and the baby’s blankets were all very soft and beautiful. But now, Adah had had to use them twice over. She did not mind the blankets and baby’s clothes, what she minded and worried about was the shawl. It had gone off-white. It was never really white when it was new, but had had that sort of beautiful baby-soft creamy whiteness. Now after nursing Vicky with it and after about a hundred washes, that creaminess had lost its softness. It had now got that type of creaminess one could not quickly dissociate with dirt, bad washing and poverty. Surely every new child deserved a new first outfit. She could not tell her worries to her husband, because she knew the answer she would get. He would tell her that a shawl was a shawl and that was that. The agony Adah went through just for that creamy shawl! Could she just disappear from the ward with her baby, whilst the other mothers were sleeping, so that they would not notice how shabbily her baby was dressed? Should she tell the nurse not to show her baby round because she did not like him being displayed like that? What was she going to do? The nightdress episode had made her quiet, uncommunicative even to the Greek woman opposite her. But the trouble was that Adah guessed people knew why she had so suddenly gone quiet. If only she could be confident enough to put on a show of indifference, that would have made life much more simple for her friends in the ward and for herself too. But this type of attitude, that of the sophisticated poor, was to be achieved much later. On that December day, to twenty-year-old Adah, a new shawl was the end of the world. Since she did not have it, she was beginning to envy the sleek lady who had escaped it all by dying. If only she had died, if only the nurses did not think her baby gorgeous, because he had thick curly hair, when most babies in the nursery were bald, if only they would simply let her grab him and disappear.

  Francis came with her lappa. Adah tied it round herself hurriedly, but refused to go back to the ward. She stood firm in the hospital corridor. She watched the nurse showing Bubu around, she was sure the nurse was taking a long time in doing that just because Bubu’s shawl was old. She was sure that the women were all laughing at her and saying “poor nigger!” She stood there, biting her nails, almost eating her own flesh in her anxiety. Give me my baby back, her heart cried painfully. But the nurse was showing them all, the women, the doctors, anybody who happened to be around, that this was their special baby, born miraculously, for whom the mother had suffered so. And was he not worth all the sufferings and sacrifices? It was Francis who followed the nurse, listening to all the talk. Of course he heard only the sweet words, he did not see that the baby’s shawl was not new. That it was off-white and not soft. Men are so blind.

  In the taxi that was speeding her home to Vicky and Titi, she wondered if the nurse could be really sincere? Did those women in the ward really admire her baby or were they just curious to see what a new African baby looked like? Suppose one or two were really serious, sincerely admiring her Bubu, should she not have gone round to say a nice goodbye to them?

  She started to feel guilty. She had thought only of herself all the time and not those women who were doing their best to be friendly. What was happening to her? At school, she was never really happy, but she did not have this suspicious attitude towards other people. She tried to find the answer, but the only anchor she could find was her relationship with her parents-in-law, and Francis. She knew she was not loved, and was being used to give Francis an education which the family could not afford. Why should she blame them then? Had she loved Francis to start with? She had only begun to love and care for him later. But the love was short-lived because Francis did nothing to keep it alive. She felt she was being betrayed, by the very man she had begun to love. Was that what love meant? This pain? She so wished she could tell her worries to someone. She wished Pa was alive. Pa would have understood. Since there was no one to tell, she had to put on a cloak of indifference. Francis could now do what he liked, she was not going to tell him what to do. She would only protest if his behaviour started to affect her children. Was it this betrayal of Francis and his people that made her suspicious of the women in the ward?

  She wished, now, that she had said goodbye, nicely. But it was too late. Even if she went back tomorrow, one or two would have gone. She could never get that very same group of people, in the same ward having their babies, again. It could never be repeated. She had lost the opportunity of saying goodbye nicely. The only good thing she had learned was that she would never let such a thing happen to her in future. She must learn to thank people, even for their smiles, and kindly nods.

  This consoling conclusion, this new code of conduct Adah learned from the hospital and from staying together with other women for thirteen days, was to be with her for a long time. She now looked forward to seeing her children, whom she was going to love and protect. To her children, the indifferent attitude would never apply. You see, they were her children, and that made all the difference.

  The taxi stopped in front of the house in Willes Road, and she scooped her babies into her arms. They were all alive and well. They had not forgotten who she was.

  10

  Applying the Rules

  It was a very cold winter that year. Before it started to snow, the air was biting, the atmosphere grey and thick with fog. On some days, you could hardly see beyond a few feet in front of you, so thick was the fog. Then the snow started to fall. It fell and fell as if it would never stop. It was thick on the ground, thick on the roofs of houses, thick in the air, falling, falling all the time. The ground seemed to have all gone white, never to change to any other colour.

  Adah was lucky. She and her family cooked in the same room that served as living-room, bedroom, lounge, bathroom. The only thing they had outside this room was the lavatory.

  The children seldom went out. There was no place in which they could play, so the same room served them as the play-room as well. Titi accepted their baby brother with a shy smile, saying, “It’s a baby, that!” Adah agreed with her that Bubu was a baby. Vicky looked and looked at this new baby that was inheriting his old cot, and did not really know what to make of it all. He would stand there by the cot, peering between the railings and tell his mother that the baby “is clying”.

  Francis went to work for two weeks. Adah felt very guilty about this. She knew her man ought to go out to work for their living, but in her own particular family she had been doing all the work. It seemed to her that she was failing, by staying at home and letting Francis go out and work in that terrible winter. Francis would worsen the effect when he came home, telling her how very difficult it was to work as a postman in England durin
g Christmas. “You are given a big bag of letters and parcels as heavy as the load of Christian in The Pilgrim’s Progress. And, like Christian, you are expected to carry the load, up the stairs leading into flats, and down the stairs to those living in basements.” The load on his back was heavy, the work was killing, going up and down like a mad yo-yo. The work was humiliating, treading the streets with the bag on your back, your nose running into your mouth, and worst of all, you were given a black band for your arm, as if you had lost your mother or something. Adah would shudder at this recital and feel awful, wishing she was well enough to go back to her library job to save her husband all this pain. The most frightful part of the whole business of post office jobs during Christmas was the English dogs. Those people, the English, they did worship their dogs! Adah gave a nod. Was that not the reason why they had a saying in their own language that you should love them and love their dogs? They love dogs, the English do. Yes, they love their dogs, Francis continued, so much so that they would rather the dogs butcher a black man, than let the black man kill the dog. Adah considered this, and decided that it was not fair that people should let their dogs butcher a black man. After all, the black man was only a postman, delivering Christmas cards and parcels. Had it ever actually happened, Adah wondered, or was Francis thinking it could happen and happen to him? She asked him this. Francis was sure not only that it could happen, but that it was going to happen to him. And he was sure he had heard somewhere that it had happened to a man he used to know. Adah did not want to ask where he heard it and what the name of the man was, because Francis might accuse her of wanting to know too much.