When he finally turned to look at her, just before they got to the campus, his heart stopped at the sight of her shut eyes, her lax lips. But her chest was rising and falling. She was breathing. He exhaled slowly and thought about those cold evenings when she would cough and cough, and he would stand pressed to the flinty walls of her hut, listening to his father and Chioke ask her to drink the mixture.
Olanna opened the door, wearing the apron that had an oil stain in front. His apron. She kissed Master. ‘I’ve asked Patel to come,’ she said and then turned to Ugwu’s mother. ‘Mama. Kedu? ’
‘I am well,’ his mother whispered. She glanced around the room and seemed to shrink even more at the sight of the sofas, the radiogram, the curtains.
‘I’ll take her inside,’ Olanna said. ‘Ugwu, please finish in the kitchen and set the table.’
‘Yes, mah.’
In the kitchen, Ugwu stirred the pot of pepper soup. The oily broth swirled, the hot spices wafted up and tickled his nose, and the pieces of meat and tripe floated from side to side. But he did not really notice. He was straining to hear something. It was long, too long, since Olanna had taken his mother in and Dr Patel went in to join them. The peppers made his eyes water. He remembered that last time when she was sick from the coughing, how she cried out that she could no longer feel her legs and the dibia asked her to tell the evil spirits to leave her alone. ‘Tell them it is not yet your time! Gwa ha kita! Tell them now!’ the dibia had urged her.
‘Ugwu!’ Master called. The guests had arrived. Ugwu went into the living room and his hands worked mechanically, serving kola nuts and alligator pepper, uncorking bottles, shovelling ice, laying out steaming bowls of pepper soup. Afterwards, he sat down in the kitchen and pulled at his toenails and imagined what was going on in the bedroom. He could hear Master’s raised voice from the living room. ‘Nobody is saying that burning government property is a good thing, but to send the army in to kill in the name of order? There are Tiv people lying dead for nothing. For nothing! Balewa has lost his mind!’
Ugwu did not know who the Tiv people were, but hearing the word dead made him shiver. ‘It is not yet your time,’ he whispered. ‘Not yet your time.’
‘Ugwu?’ Olanna was at the kitchen door.
He flew off the stool. ‘Mah? Mah?’
‘You mustn’t worry about her. Dr Patel says it’s an infection and she will be fine.’
‘Oh!’ Ugwu was so relieved he feared he would float away if he raised one leg. ‘Thank, mah!’
‘Put the rest of the pottage in the fridge.’
‘Yes, mah.’ Ugwu watched her go back to the living room. The embroidery on her close-fitting dress gleamed and she looked, for a moment, like a shapely spirit who had emerged from the sea.
The guests were laughing now. Ugwu peeked into the living room. Many of them were no longer sitting upright but sloped on their seats, mellowed by alcohol, languorous with ideas. The evening was ending. The conversation would soften into tennis and music; then they would get up and giggle loudly at things that were not funny, such as the front door being difficult to open and the night bats flying too low. He waited for Olanna to go to the bathroom and Master to his study before he went in to see his mother, asleep, curled childlike on the bed.
She was bright-eyed the next morning. ‘I am well,’ she said. ‘The medicine that doctor gave me is very powerful. But what will kill me is that smell.’
‘What smell?’
‘In their mouth. I smelt it when your madam and master came in to see me this morning and also when I went to ease myself.’
‘Oh. That is toothpaste. We use it to clean our teeth.’ Ugwu felt proud saying we, so that his mother would know that he too used it.
But she did not look impressed. She snapped her fingers and picked up her chewing stick. ‘What is wrong with using a good atu? That smell has made me want to vomit. If I stay here much longer I will not be able to keep food in my stomach because of that smell.’
She looked impressed, though, when Ugwu told her that he would be living in the Boys’ Quarters. It was like being given his own house, separate, all to himself. She asked him to show her the Boys’ Quarters, marvelled that it was bigger than her hut, and, later, insisted that she was well enough to help in the kitchen. He watched her, bent over to sweep the floor, and remembered how she used to smack Anulika’s bottom for not bending properly to sweep. ‘Did you eat mushrooms? Sweep like a woman!’ she would say, and Anulika would grumble that the broom was too short and it was not her fault that people were too stingy to buy longer brooms. Ugwu suddenly wished that Anulika were here, as well as the little children and the gossiping wives of his umunna. He wished his whole village were here, so he could join in the moonlight conversations and quarrels and yet live in Master’s house with its running taps and refrigerator and stove.
‘I will go home tomorrow,’ his mother said.
‘You should stay a few more days and rest.’
‘I will go tomorrow. I shall thank your master and mistress when they return and tell them I am well enough to go home. May another person do for them what they have done for me.’
Ugwu walked with her to the end of Odim Street in the morning. He had never seen her walk so fast, even with the twined bundle balanced on her head, never seen her face so free of lines.
‘Stay well, my son,’ she said, and thrust a chewing stick into his hand.
On the day Master’s mother arrived from the village, Ugwu cooked a peppery jollof rice. He mixed white rice into tomato sauce, tasted it, and then covered it and reduced the heat. He went back outside. Jomo had leaned his rake against the wall and was sitting on the steps eating a mango.
‘That thing you are cooking smells very good,’ Jomo said.
‘It is for my master’s mother, jollof rice with fried chicken.’
‘I should have given you some of my meat. It will be better than the chicken.’ Jomo gestured to the bag tied behind his bicycle. He had shown Ugwu the small furry animal wrapped in fresh leaves.
‘I cannot cook bush meat here!’ Ugwu said in English, laughing.
Jomo turned to look at him. ‘Dianyi, you now speak English just like the children of the lecturers.’
Ugwu nodded, happy to hear the compliment, happier because Jomo would never guess that those children with their cream-pampered skin and their effortless English sniggered whenever Mrs Oguike asked him a question because of how he pronounced his words, how thick his bush accent was.
‘Harrison should come and hear good English from somebody who does not brag about it,’ Jomo said. ‘He thinks he knows everything just because he lives with a white man. Onye nzuzu! Stupid man!’
‘Very stupid man!’ Ugwu said. He had been just as vigorous last weekend when he agreed with Harrison that Jomo was foolish.
‘Yesterday the he-goat locked the tank and refused to give me the key,’ Jomo said. ‘He said I am wasting water. Is it his water? Now if the plants die, what do I tell Mr Richard?’
‘That
