Ogadinma Read online

  ‘Come.’ He pulled her through the connecting door. She was walking in a daze. The passageway melted into the room where white light flooded in from the tall windows. She was falling, and he was crushing her on the soft bed, his smell of muted perfume and sweat filling her nose.

  ‘I have never done this before,’ she said. ‘Please.’

  ‘Then I promise I will go slowly. I won’t hurt you.’ He started to tug at her underwear, her skirt. ‘You have my word.’

  There was a moment when a scream came to her throat, but she clamped her lips shut. She would be going to the university. She would get into the best university. She would study Literature, and all of this would no longer matter. She spoke these words to herself, even when her body stretched and a sharp pain travelled swiftly to her waist. He arched above her, his thrusts feverish, his face contorted into an ugly mask. Dollops of sweat from his face and neck spattered on her chest, her breasts. The room was so bright; outside the window the sun shone with passionate intensity. A lone bird flew past, and she thought how wonderful it would be to wing into the sky and fly away, far away from here.

  He made a sound, an animal choking. And then he collapsed on her body and rolled off to his side of the bed.

  ‘Are you crying?’

  She swiped at her face. ‘No.’

  She sat up. There was blood on the sheet between her legs. She did not even begin to think where this came from, what this meant. She only concentrated on pacing her breathing and blinking fast to hold back her tears. He was looking at the stain too. He inspected his flaccid penis, confusion and satisfaction on his face at the sight of the blotch of blood on the tip.

  He pulled her to his chest, held her for a second, left her. ‘Go to the bathroom and wash. I will change the sheets and make us some spaghetti and fish. You eat spaghetti? That’s my favourite food in the whole world.’

  She came to hate spaghetti after she had shat a tapeworm when she was seven or eight. The worm was the length and colour of a cooked spaghetti strand.

  In the bathroom, she climbed into the white tub and turned on the tap to fill up the red bucket sitting under it. She scooped water and splashed between her legs, then rust-coloured goo slid down her legs and rushed down the drain.

  When she returned, Barrister Chima had changed the sheet, and her dress was folded neatly on the bed. He was whistling a tune in the kitchen, banging pots and spoons. She put on her clothes and returned to the parlour. She looked down at the stool before her, where the sweating bottle of Maltex still sat waiting for her. And she knew that this bottle would always trigger sad memories, that she would never ever drink this brand of malt again. She pushed the stool away, further from her line of sight, and then returned her gaze to the TV. But she could no longer hear what was being said because she was busy pushing the memories of today away from her mind, folding them into careful sizes and chucking them into her mental loft, so that even if she ever looked back, she would never again know the horror she had experienced.

  He emerged half an hour later with a bowl of spaghetti and fish. They ate, sitting side by side on the sofa, their eyes fixed on the TV.

  ‘Do you like it?’ he asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘I cook everything I eat. These restaurants are all dirty. Two years ago at Tropicana Restaurant, I saw a cockroach in the bowl of vegetable soup they served me. And that did it for me.’ He chewed on a piece of fish. ‘Do you cook?’

  ‘I cook everything we eat.’

  ‘Your mother doesn’t help?’

  She put her plate down. ‘She left us.’

  ‘Oh, baby. So sorry.’ He touched her shoulder, her cheek. ‘When did she die?’

  ‘She is not dead!’ she said curtly. ‘My mother is not dead.’ As if repeating the words would mean keeping her mother alive, wherever she was.

  Barrister Chima was staring at her, his brows furrowed with what seemed like irritation.

  She looked down at the blue ceramic plate with the gold trimming. She was too scared to look up again. She had behaved badly, had shouted at the man that was supposed to help her. She wished she could take her words back. And when he put his hand on her shoulder and rubbed it, she did not resist. All she did was stare at her plate and listen to his heavy breathing as he rubbed her cheek. Then he lifted her chin to meet his gaze.

  ‘I am sorry I shouted,’ she said.

  ‘One day you will tell me about her?’

  She lowered her eyes, and put the plate on the table.

  ‘You didn’t finish your food.’

  ‘I am okay.’

  ‘I should have asked the quantity you could finish.’ He picked up her plate and headed to the kitchen.

  ‘Thank you for the food,’ she said, but he had already left. She grabbed her bag and placed it on her lap. When he returned, he looked at the bag and her face.

  ‘We haven’t talked about your admission yet.’ He stood by the telephone, lifted the handset, stubbed a finger into the wheel and began to dial a number. He cradled the handset by his neck. ‘So, tell me: what’s your JAMB score?’

  ‘Two hundred and forty.’

  ‘That’s a good score. And you chose Literature?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He held a hand over the mouthpiece and said, ‘I am calling my brother at the university. He hasn’t picked up the phone yet.’

  Fear jumped in her throat. She sat forward, willed the man at the other end to pick up the phone. But Barrister Chima put the phone down.

  ‘I will call him again at night.’ He returned to her side, kissed her on the cheek. ‘Everything is going to be all right, just like your name – or don’t you think so?’ He kissed her again. ‘Your name is so apt. Ogadinma. Everything is going to be all right.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘You want to watch a movie? I just bought this rare VHS player and some tapes. I have really good movies here.’ His cheeks were dotted with pimples that had begun to ripen, the tips filled with pus.

  ‘I have to go.’ But she wanted to stay so that if his brother at the university called back she could listen to their conversation, and she would respond to his questions if he needed more details about her. The chair sucked her in. The clock on the wall behind the TV chimed. It was five already; her father would be home in an hour. She stood up. ‘I really have to go home. My father will be home by six.’

  ‘Oh, my poor baby.’ He pulled her on to his lap, her back to him. He groped her breasts. She tried to slide off his lap but he pinned her with the other hand. She began to count; it was easier this way, counting, because she would not have to remember how she felt. She only had to remember how long she had counted. When he was done, she pulled on her clothes. She did not look at him. She grabbed her bag and headed for the door.

  ‘Come by the office tomorrow and I will let you know what my brother thinks.’

  She nodded, and stepped outside into the sun.

  Her father had not yet returned when she got home. In the bathroom, she scrubbed herself vigorously, every inch of skin, everywhere Barrister Chima’s hands had touched.

  In her room, she brought out her JAMB result and stared at the part that said: first choice: university of nigeria, nsukka.

  Only a year ago, she used to sit hunched in the school library that smelled of rotting wood, studying for her final senior secondary school exams. Afterwards, she would trek to her father’s shop twenty minutes away, where she would have a late lunch. On one such occasion she had just settled into her father’s chair and dug into a plate of jollof rice, while her father sat outside chatting with a neighbour, when they heard cries.

  At first she did not understand what was happening, until her father rushed in and yelled Hide under the table! as he drew the metal doors shut. A blanket of darkness fell over them. Her father was crouched beside her, panting. They could hear the scuttle of feet outside, the screech of machete on tarred road, the smash of bottles, the piercing cries and chants of rioters. People ran up an
d down. Someone slammed a metal club against their doors, again and again. Ogadinma peed on herself. Metal warred with metal. The doors did not yield, and he gave up. The air soon grew hot; things had been set on fire. And she was crippled with fear. Had they set the shop on fire? But then the chaos retreated slowly. The rioters carried their mayhem out of hearing range.

  Her father opened the doors an hour later. His Peugeot pickup he had parked by the roadside was on fire. The same devastation was strewn all around Burma Road. Shopfronts were smashed in. The air was thick with the smell of something burning, like the familiar smell that hung heavy during Christmas, when her father slaughtered a goat and roasted off its hair and hooves on a tripod. But this was not the smell of a burning goat. She stepped outside. In the middle of the road were the charred remains of a man.

  Later, they would learn that the riot started because their Muslim neighbours were angry with the Christians in nearby Fagge who were reconstructing a church situated too close to a mosque.

  If the riot had not happened – if the boys had not burned down properties belonging to Christians, including her father – he would not have insisted that she choose a university in the east. She might just have been admitted in the north because that was much easier.

  If she hadn’t chosen the eastern university, they might not have needed Barrister Chima’s help.

  Months had passed since she filled out the form, and she wanted to reach back and choose another university. She could have chosen the University of Lagos. She would not have crossed paths with Barrister Chima. Things would have been as they used to be. But she had made that choice, and now she could not imagine retaking JAMB. She could not waste away at home for another year.

  And so she returned to Barrister Chima the following day. He spoke with someone who requested her details. After he ended the call, he led her to his car again. They went home again, her heart thumping each time. Though disgust rose from her stomach and stained her tongue bitter, and she returned home to wash and scrub her body, she still went back to him again and again.

  January came. It was time for the new academic session and students who had gotten admission letters were leaving home. Ogadinma’s name had yet to appear on the admissions list. She continued to submit to Barrister Chima, and at home, she began to sleep too much.

  ‘Your name will be on the last list,’ he said one Monday afternoon, when she was so tired to the bones that she rested her head on his desk. ‘Are you feeling ill? You look so dull,’ he said, his voice heavy with concern.

  ‘I think I have malaria.’ She was dizzy.

  He glanced at her dubiously and then he got out his wallet, brought out some cash, much more than she had ever received, and folded the notes into her palm. ‘Here, go and take care of yourself,’ he said.

  She did not remember how she got home, but she slept all through the evening and until the next morning. When she opened her eyes again, her father was staring down at her, worry wrinkling his brow.

  ‘We are going to the hospital,’ he said. ‘You don’t look well at all.’

  ‘But Papa, I have to go to Barrister Chima. The third list will be out today. My name will be on that list.’

  He sank down on the space beside her. ‘Your name is not on the list. Barrister Chima told my friend to tell you.’

  She sat up. ‘How, Papa?’

  ‘You didn’t meet the cut-off mark. The university set it at two hundred and fifty. We will try again next year.’

  She opened and closed her mouth, and then a whimper left her lips. She held onto her father and wept until her stomach felt as though everything in it had been dug out. Later, he insisted they were going to the hospital still.

  ‘I am fine, Papa. I am just tired,’ she said, reassuring him and herself: perhaps if she did it convincingly everything would be all right, as it used to be.

  It had always been the two of them since her mother left during the Biafran War, when their town fell. Though her father had never told her about it, how he returned from fighting the enemies, worn out and dried up, to learn that her mother had left. Ogadinma had gathered bits and pieces of the retellings of the story, fitting and stitching them together until she constructed a logical narrative: the war had tired her mother; the burden of caring for a constantly hungry baby tired her, and one morning, the day after their town fell to the Nigerian soldiers, she thrust Ogadinma into her mother-in-law’s arms and walked out of the compound. She did not stop walking, not even when her grandmother gave chase, thrusting Ogadinma back into her hands. She did not hold Ogadinma and she did not stop walking.

  If her father minded being unmarried all these years, he hadn’t shown it. He didn’t show it when he brought his sister, Aunty Okwy, from the village to live with them in Kano. He didn’t show it those times his mother begged him to take another wife. He didn’t show it when they travelled for Christmas and the wives of the umunna brought their daughters for him to choose from. Instead, he stripped the flat of her mother’s memories. There were no pictures of her mother lying around, nothing for Ogadinma to hold onto as the years went by.

  After her father left for his shop, Ogadinma checked the Michelin calendar hanging on her wall. The date was 18 January. She had been so obsessed with getting admission into the university that she had forgotten to check the dates; a month had passed since she last saw her period. Her knees weakened and she collapsed on the floor. Sweat beaded her forehead. From her position, she could see outside her window. A child was standing on the veranda of the opposite flat. Mary’s flat. Mary was holidaying in Benin. Mary would know what to do with a pregnancy. Mary, who taught her how to roll papers into cigarettes, who dug up bugs and squashed them on their nipples when their breasts had yet to bud. The thought of Mary, of Mary’s wildness and bravery, changed something in her, returned strength to her knees.

  She stood and walked into the kitchen, opened the fridge and stared at the contents for a minute, before she reached for the limes in a compartment. She cut four of the limes and squeezed them into a cup, then she picked out the seeds and gulped down the juice in one swig. Her teeth rattled. Her stomach churned. She boiled water and drank it hastily, her mouth burning. Tears leaked out of her eyes.

  Afterwards, she stepped onto the veranda and made for the stairs. Then she ran up and down the stairs, pausing only to catch her breath. Up and down, she went – ten, fifteen, twenty times. Her knees buckled and she limped to her room and wept.

  ‘Is anything wrong with your legs? Why are you walking like that?’ her father asked that evening, after she served him dinner, casting a worried glance at her face. ‘You are walking somehow.’

  ‘I bumped my foot against a stone, Papa. I am fine now.’

  He looked at her, unconvinced. ‘Ndo, go and rest. I will wash the plates later.’

  In her room, she squeezed more limes into a cup and drank. Her stomach hurt. She balled her hands into fists, raised and brought them hard against her stomach, again and again, until she buckled under intense pain.

  That night, she woke frequently to check her underwear for blood spotting, but only found her clean panty lining staring back.

  She continued the routine: running up and down the stairs, drinking warm water, drinking lime juice. The torture changed nothing. At the end of the month, vomit began to rise to her throat. Sour-smelling spittle filled her mouth. She hated the smell of fried onions; she developed strong aversions. And she slept too much.

  One morning, an idea crept into her mind and grew root: she would go to the hospital, the massive three-storey building one street away from their home. She would take care of herself. Wasn’t that what Barrister Chima told her when he gave her money the other time, take care of yourself? She would go to the hospital and she would give them a fake name and address. She would not speak to anyone except the doctor. She counted the money Barrister Chima had given her and stuffed it into her bag.

  When she walked into the hall of the hospital, the receptionist, a pinche
d-faced woman who threw her a suspicious look, gave her a form to fill. Her hand was steady. She wrote down the name Ijeoma Nnedi and gave an address in faraway Brigade area on the outskirts of her suburb. She did not feel nervous; her heart did not thud frantically. She bristled with such confidence that when she took a seat and waited for her turn to see a doctor, she wondered why she had bowed to fear and hadn’t come earlier.

  The doctor, a tall fair man in blue jeans, offered her a seat and asked what ailed her.

  She stared at the cluttered desk. ‘My period was supposed to be here two months ago. I want it to come out.’

  For a moment she feared the doctor would fly into a rage. ‘Have you told anyone this?’ he asked instead. She said no.

  The doctor asked if she had had unprotected sex, and how many times. She returned her gaze to his desk, and responded to each question, her mind partly leaving her body, travelling to Barrister Chima’s office, to that first day she walked in and the fan whirled, scattering the papers on the desk. She should have taken that as a sign that things were going bad, that everything would float out of her control. She began to cry. The doctor watched her cry and after she was done, he asked her to lie on the table by the side of the room. She did as she was told, stared at the ceiling as the doctor felt her stomach, pinched her nipples.

  When she got down from the table and returned to sit before him, he told her the cost and she handed him all the money Barrister Chima gave her. He shoved the notes into his drawer without counting, and then scribbled down an address where she must meet him by afternoon.

  ‘We don’t do that in this facility. It is illegal,’ he said. ‘But I want to help you. You are still young, and you just made a mistake.’

  She folded the address slip into her handbag. She could finally breathe well.

  The address was on Enugu Road, four streets from their home. An old woman dozed in front of a TV, her cornrows a dusty white, her neck hanging at an awkward angle. Two small girls, no older than four, chased after each other in the flat, both of them wearing plastic tiaras. They ran past Ogadinma, laughing as they made for a connecting door, and long after the doctor had appeared by the door of an adjacent room and summoned her in, she still heard them giggling.