‘But you cannot let it continue.’
She nodded, but did not volunteer when or how she might tell Mummy. Mummy was a good employer, but she was a busy woman who had a top position in a bank. She had little time for her family. She could be brusque and short. Sometimes, to hear Chidinma tell it, the only thing she wanted was an efficient household – place kept clean, soup stored in freezer, her husband’s clothes washed and ironed, and children in bed by eight o’clock. So long as things were taken care of, she left the running of the house and the nurturing of her children to Chidinma. Now, Chidinma felt responsible for this situation too.
Chidinma leant against the wall, once white but now brown with dust and the dirt of schoolgirls’ and -boys’ fingers. Her face was worried.
I thought for a while. This affected me in a way I could not explain: I thought of Papa Emma fondling me and all my sense of justice came rushing from my toes up through my body into my heart. It caused an almost painful, choking sensation there.
‘Tell Urenna,’ I said. ‘Tell him and he will take care of it.’ I said this with full assurance – once Urenna knew, he would take care of it.
‘But you can tell him,’ Chidinma whined. ‘Tell him, inugo? This thing is too bad to speak about.’
I did not spend time weighing why Chidinma would not tell Urenna.
‘I know what to do,’ I told her. ‘Leave it to me. I will tell him.’
She nodded, eager to have someone else take care of this smelly situation.
‘He gave me this to give to you.’ She passed me a piece of paper. Now that she had put her load on my head, she felt free, it seemed, to talk about my dalliance with her employers’ son. She had ceased telling me that it was dangerous, and foolish, and unlikely to go anywhere good. She had stopped talking about how he was only using me, and asking if I had not seen the girls from university who came to visit him. She had stopped telling me that Urenna’s mother would report me to Mummy once she found out, and that she was bound to, and that Mummy would send me home after giving me a thorough lashing with the cane. She had now put away her fear of Urenna’s mother sending her home for being complicit in what should not be: a relationship between a housemaid and the only son of a rich family. Four months of subterfuge, hundreds of love notes, and weeks of secret meetings later, she had resigned herself to my stupid but exciting love affair with Urenna.
I opened the folded paper. It was another love note, asking me to meet him at our usual place. How many times had I thanked God that I could read well – well enough to read his flowery notes – and at the same time regretted the fate that placed me in primary school, many rungs of the ladder below Urenna, who was in his first year of university? In this one, he said he missed me. I had not seen him in a whole week; I missed him too. Although Chidinma had once said that the sons of rich men never marry housemaids.
After Chidinma told me about Mr Nzom, I could not wait to see Urenna. That evening, as I prepared to sneak out to meet him, Mummy was watching Zik on the television, and gesticulating at him. ‘Leave these people o, they will disgrace you, Zik – you are on a much higher level than they are,’ she was saying loudly as if they, the political candidate and the party people, could hear. Zik, the first president of Nigeria, must know what he was doing, I thought, and it would be nice for an Igbo man to be president. Maybe then water would run in my village and we would not need to go to the stream for it but have taps flowing inside the house the way they did in Lagos.
I thought that I could go out and be back quickly while the programme had Mummy singing and making commentaries on politicians, their lives, and wives. For once, neither of us was worrying about Daddy and which part of the house might not be perfect. He had travelled to Lagos on business. So Mummy might spend longer than usual watching the television, which gave me time to sneak out. I asked for money to buy tinned tomatoes. She obliged.
When Urenna and I met at our spot, we embraced each other – he, boldly, like I belonged to him. I had to tell him what Chidinma had told me that day at school. It was not the stuff that romantic evenings were made of, but it had weighed heavily on me all afternoon.
‘Mr Nzom has been touching your little sister,’ I blurted out as soon as I left his arms.
‘What?’
‘Yes, Ugomma told Chidinma,’ I said and waited.
‘He has been fondling a little girl when he should be teaching her English and Maths? What nonsense! Mummy must hear this. The man has to be dismissed and reported to the police!’
Were those kinds of things ever reported to the police, I wondered. Did children ever get justice for such awfulness? Maybe the children of the rich did. At least Ugomma had Urenna. I thought of Lagos: Papa Emma, going up and down on top of me in painful thrusts; Madam’s knife going up and down; me, screaming into the night. The memories came back as fresh and strong as morning palm wine.
I saw Urenna looking at the scars on my hand. He knew what I was thinking because I had told him the story, the first person I had told since my stepmother’s angry incredulity all those years ago.
‘Yes, please tell your mother. Tell her to find a female teacher for them. Tell her to tell Chidinma to stay in the room when they are being taught. Tell her to let the girls know that they can tell her anything, that it is not Ugomma’s fault,’ I said urgently.
Urenna’s face was dark; anger made it look red, thunderous. Yet he stroked my hands, up and down, up and down, as he digested the news and pondered what to do. He was gentle.
‘I will,’ he said, responding to the force of my words. He drew me into his arms and we stood there in silence, our meeting coloured by the situation. When we sat together we were brooding instead of engaging lightly and happily in love talk. He did not reach for my underwear in the dark; our mutual disgust over Mr Nzom contaminated the atmosphere.
It was not long before I had to go. I had rushed out on the excuse that I had to buy tinned tomatoes for jollof rice that evening. We took leave of each other regretfully.
I did not hear anything for a week. Chidinma had no news for me and no notes from Urenna. Mr Nzom, she told me, had not shown up on Tuesday, but had been there on Wednesday, and then had not come for the rest of the week. Urenna had gone back to school on Thursday. I was by turns anxious and exasperated. Anxious, because I wanted to know what had happened and if Mr Nzom was going to face any punishment. Exasperated, because Urenna should have known better than to keep me waiting for news.
Mr Nzom had not come to work, Chidinma told me the next week. It was safe to think then that he had been dismissed. But what had happened?
Meanwhile, it was almost time for our First School Leaving Certificate Examination. I stayed up late at night after doing my chores, studying for the exam and wondering how Urenna was doing. I resisted the temptation to look at the novels Urenna had given me – two Agatha Christies and Things Fall Apart – because I had promised him I would study. When I studied for English and Maths, I took care not to peek at the answers at the back of the practice book Daddy had bought me, until I had attempted the questions. I revised the Social Studies questions. Who is the Head of State of the Federal Republic of Nigeria? His Excellency, Major General Olusegun Obasanjo, I wrote. Who is the Governor of Anambra State? A colourless man, I wanted to write – that was what Daddy called him. I did not know if colourless meant that he did not have a colour or if it meant something else. He was clearly not colourless. He was dark skinned, as the picture of him at the teachers’ office showed, almost as dark as me. There was nothing in the questions about the new political parties that I overheard Daddy and his friends discussing. Nor was there anything there about the new constitution which my teacher, Mr Azari, kept talking about with so much enthusiasm. Nobody in the class understood or really cared why it mattered that there was a new constitution and that we soon would be seeing the end of military rule and the beginning of democracy. It would certainly not change the amount of food one was allowed to eat or the number of chores that
had to be done. At night, I fell asleep reciting the names of the states, their governors, and the local governments in my state – Anambra State, Lagos State, Oyo State, Bauchi, Kano, Kaduna – and woke up to my chores and to wondering when I would see Urenna and what had happened with Mr Nzom.
One evening, about two weeks later, as we walked to school, Chidinma passed me a note from Urenna. We were to meet at the usual place.
I was eager and anxious to hear what had happened. Urenna told me he had spoken to his mother. Naturally, he said, she was angry and disgusted. She waited to talk to Mr Nzom when he came to teach the next day and confronted him. Mr Nzom did not deny it. He apologised, Urenna said. But Urenna, who was there for the confrontation, said he was angry that Mr Nzom would be let go after his apology, with nothing more by way of punishment, not even a threat to report him to the police.
So, Urenna followed him outside and told Mr Nzom that they would report him to the head teacher at the school where he taught.
Mr Nzom had been frightened; Urenna could see it on his face.
And then, Urenna said, Mr Nzom had sneered at him. ‘Well, I guess we would have to report you too to the madams of the house girls you sleep with.’
At that moment, hearing his words, fear rose from my heart and went down my body. People knew about me and Urenna; the thought rang through my head like a bell in a bad dream. People knew.
It was a short meeting that evening, even shorter than usual. Urenna was tense. We did not discuss when next we might see each other. There was too much else on our minds.
For days, I waited for Mummy to call me in for interrogation. But nothing happened. Life went on as usual. Except that I did not see or hear a word from Urenna for weeks.
‘Maybe he has forgotten me,’ I said to Chidinma. I mopped my brows. The heat of the day seemed too much punishment for all that I had to endure.
‘Would that not be best?’ she retorted. ‘Eh, I am asking you, would that not be better? Is it not time for you to come back to your senses? Where is this thing with Urenna going to get you? Maybe in a pot of hot, sticky okra soup? Or maybe in Mama Nkemdilim’s wicked grip when his parents or Daddy and Mummy find out?’
I knew she was not trying to be mean. But her words felt too harsh to me. It was true that the possibility of returning to my stepmother in disgrace was enough to put the fear of hellfire in me. But what I wanted to know more than anything else was whether Urenna had been with other housemaids.
‘I do not think so,’ Chidinma said when I asked her. ‘And you know I have lived there for a long time.’
I felt comforted, my jealousy and suspicion quelled. Yet my heart ached like the toothache I had had years ago in the village before the tooth fell out – the pain by turns sharp and overwhelming, then dull and heavy in the middle of my chest.
‘I know you will not like to hear this. Truth can be as painful as a thorn,’ she said, sounding wiser than her years. ‘But you and Urenna must stop this thing.’ As she spoke it was as though she was pulling out a shard of broken bottle from my heel – painful but necessary.
I wept for hours in the middle of the night, sobbing quietly so that no one would hear. Perhaps it was best, as Chidinma had said. Perhaps it was best, I repeated to myself. But it was too late. And I had no way to know this at the time.
CHAPTER FIVE
Daddy called me into the sitting room one Saturday evening. Panic came but went quickly; it was a Saturday and I had cleaned and mopped, scrubbed and dusted. I even got Ikenna to take a nap, an increasingly difficult task. He was now playing ncho, a game I had taught him, while I prepared supper.
‘How was your exam?’ Daddy wanted to know. He was drinking water from the dry glass I had given him only moments before. Mummy was sitting beside him. She smiled at me. They looked peaceful together in that moment.
‘It was fine, sir,’ I said, wondering what was wrong.
‘You think you will pass?’
‘Yes, sir.’
We, Chidinma and I, were waiting for the results of our First School Leaving Certificate Exams. I was confident I would pass; Chidinma was sure she would fail. Pass or fail, the release of the results would mean taking the next step into our future.
‘That is good. We will send you to the commercial school on Dhamija Avenue. We have told Mr Hyacinth to tell your mother.’
‘Thank you very much, sir.’ Although that had always been my hope, nothing definite had been said before now.
‘We like your work here. Keep working hard, do you hear?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Daddy seemed content, unusually expansive. It was no surprise that Mummy was happy too. I allowed their benevolence to envelop me. I felt relief, even though the results of the exams were yet to be released. Now I knew what I was doing for sure. In 1978, I would be learning typing and shorthand, getting ready to be a secretary.
Chidinma would be happy for me. I would tell her when we walked to church tomorrow.
There was only one more thing that I waited for. Urenna. Waiting for him to say yes or no. To go forwards or back. An uncertainty had settled into our relationship after Mr Nzom’s revelation. His words seemed to have poured cold water over Urenna’s love for me, I thought sometimes, chilling its fervour like hot spicy pepper soup that had been diluted with too much water. He made little effort to see me, certainly not as often as he had done in the past. When we did see each other, he was in no hurry to touch me. True conversation – that rubbing of hearts that had so delighted me and made me happier than the rubbing of bodies – had moved house. When I tried to probe, Urenna said that I worried too much. He said that I was no longer in school and that meeting as we had been doing was dangerous; that he was concerned not to get me in trouble. This was why he no longer dropped in at mid-day. He stopped bringing me books and did not talk about how well he thought I would do at school.
There was an unfamiliar dishonesty in him. I think it was this, more than anything, that I disliked – this obstinate refusal to acknowledge that something was wrong, this determination to speak less than truth. And yet, I pined for him, longed for those notes that came so rarely these days. Chidinma had told me that lately a girl from university had been paying him regular visits. Jealousy threatened to eat me, swallow me whole. Was this what kept him away, his eyes averted from me?
Perhaps I should have been more concerned with my body, with the changes that forced themselves on my consciousness as vigorously as I tried to push them away. I had no symptoms, just a knowingness that something was different. I had never kept track of my periods, but I knew that I had missed at least one. I knew that I was in trouble.
I kept this knowledge inside of me as much as I could. It would become real as soon as I said it out loud. And I did not want it to become real, for then fearful things would happen. I kept it inside, stuffed like clothes in a too-small bag, until I no longer could. One day, when Chidinma came over to the house, I took her to my room and told her.
‘Chidinma, I think I am pregnant.’ My eyes welled up with tears.
She was stunned. I saw shock and disbelief and anger and a myriad other emotions come upon her face.
‘Mbanu, no, are you sure?’
Now that I had said it, I was even surer of it. She held me while I cried. ‘I knew this was trouble; I knew this was dangerous,’ she said, looking ready to cry too. ‘I thought you said he was being careful.’
‘Yes,’ I said simply. I could not bear to remember. I just cried, and Chidinma cried with me.
‘You will tell Urenna, won’t you?’ she said finally.
Neither of us had any faith in what would happen when I told him, but there was nothing else to do. I wrote a note and gave it to Chidinma. For the first time, I was the one requesting a meeting. I even suggested a day and time. Perhaps this surprised him, for he did not reply with silence or empty notes saying he was very busy, as he had to my other notes in which I’d asked how he was and given him snippets of news. He sent a note wi
th my friend. It said that he would see me on the day planned.
That day, he hugged me and immediately began to caress me. Even though my heart was not in it – I had far too much on my mind – I obliged him. Afterwards, we lay on the floor, on top of the newspapers he had brought for the hard cement. His eyes were closed and his breathing even, but I knew he was not sleeping. I blurted it out. The news came out differently from the speech I had rehearsed so many times to myself.
‘I am pregnant.’
His eyes flew open, and I could read shock in them before they turned opaque. A lustre left his face and never came back after that.
‘Are you sure?’ He sounded frightened. And this made me more afraid.
I thought over his question. That was what I had asked myself too at first. He had always ejaculated outside me. Always, without exception. He had told me he did this to protect me from this very situation, in my mind at least until we got married.
‘Yes, I think so,’ I said, a little timidly. His voice was cold, distant, as if he were far away and not on the same hard, uncomfortable floor as me. ‘I have not had a period for two months.’
‘Hmm,’ was his reply. By this time, he was sitting up, looking away from where I was still lying, half-naked and awkward.
The conversation was not going as it had gone in my imagination.
‘Don’t worry, I will take you to a doctor.’ His eyes stared at me, but I could tell he was not really looking at me; he was thinking.
‘A doctor?’ I asked. I almost heaved a sigh of relief; he was taking me to a doctor to make sure I and the baby would be all right.
‘No, no, no,’ he said, a little harassed, almost angrily. ‘No, not a doctor. Em, I know this woman who some of my friends have used. She will give you something to drink that will remove it quickly and no one will know.’ He tapped his fingers on his lap now as if in thought. ‘Yes, no one will know.’
The Son of the House Page 6
