It was now past midday, and it was still very hot. The sun was shifting from the centre of the sky to one side. Okolie was thankful that when they had met Eze at Asaba he had at least given Ojebeta some food. She yawned and stretched like a tired cat, and he kept assuring her that their relatives would soon come. Thirsty, Okolie asked the girls for some water. One of them went to fetch a big green bottle which they kept under one of the benches away from the sun and poured some water into a white bowl with a blue rim for him to drink. He admired the smoothness of the bowl, rubbing his rough farm fingers all over it, then gulped down the cool liquid and asked for more. The girls started to giggle again; these girls laughed at everything, he thought. He could not, however, finish the second bowl so he gave the rest of the water to his sister.
Ojebeta noticed that the water here tasted different, as if something had been added to it. She was about to ask her brother about it when they heard a group of laughing female voices approaching. One of the girls called in a voice so low, so urgent and so sibilantly formed that Ojebeta thought something terrible must be about to happen:
“Chiago, Nwayinuzo—shh…shh…. They are coming. They are coming….”
At once heads were once more bent to work. The big girl called Chiago stood with the wooden cloth measure in her hand like a soldier on guard, almost behind Okolie and his sister. The owners of the jocular voices were still hidden by a stall that jutted into the middle of the passageway. Many other people came and went. Ojebeta was silent in expectation. Okolie’s stomach started to rumble in apprehension.
They heard the leave-takings and farewells; and then a very big lady appeared from around the corner—a lady who was tall of bearing, a lady who was very proud. She had a large, very sensuous mouth, and the laughter was still on her lips. She was also the most well dressed person Ojebeta had ever seen. She was wearing a brown abada with fish patterns on it, a yellow blouse, and silk scarf on her head. She walked with easy steps, saying hello to this stall and how-do-you-do to that person. She seemed to know everybody and they responded to her warmth.
“There she is,” said Chiago unnecessarily under her breath, while keeping a straight face and not looking in the direction of the woman who was their owner.
At last Ma Palagada strolled into her stall and greeted them fulsomely.
“Oh, oh—have you been waiting for me long? Why did you not tell the girls to come for me? I was at a meeting with the U.A.C. people. Welcome! Welcome! Have they given you something to eat? Is this the little sister you talked about? Welcome. Oh, my! She is just a baby. For her to have lost everyone…. Still, God knows best. Welcome!”
A velveteen cushion on a bench was plumped up for her to sit on. Okolie watched and answered her in monosyllables, indicating that, no, they had not eaten anything: the girls had not known who he was.
At this Ma Palagada laughed; it was not a very loud sound but it had a mellow richness in it. It was the laughter of the well fed, the laughter of someone who had not known for a very long time what it was to be hungry. “We shall soon take care of that. These thoughtless girls should have given you something.”
She looked down again at Ojebeta, appraising her from head to foot, then called her to come to her.
Ojebeta did not want to go and she clung to her brother. It was not that she did not like her relative but that the whole show was just too sudden for the poor child. What did this woman want with her? She might be a relative, but Ojebeta had never seen her before; moreover, she did not look like any relative she had ever seen before. All this cloth on her stall and the amount she had on herself, and her way of speaking the Ibo language—Ojebeta was over-whelmed. No, she did not want to go to her.
It was at this point that she had the first clue of what was in store for her, for here something like suppressed anger escaped from her brother. His voice was direct and businesslike, almost as if he were someone who did not know who she was, a stranger to her. Ojebeta was so startled that she burst into tears and called out:
“My mother, please come to me. I am lost!”
Ma Palagada was moved and told Okolie to be gentle with his sister. “Come,” she urged Ojebeta, “I only want to greet you. You haven’t even said a single word to me. Come. I am your relative, you know. Come. You mustn’t be frightened of us. We are not bad people. Just come here….”
Okolie pulled and half carried Ojebeta to the lady who, with a smile on her face, felt her arms and peered into her eyes, then smiled again and asked, “Are you hungry?”
Ojebeta was a child brought up with so much love and so much trust that it never occurred to her to distrust a smiling face. Her tears had been a reaction to this new voice she heard her brother whom she had known all her life use to her; now the voice had stopped. She nodded her head vigorously up and down like a mad lizard. Yes, of course she was hungry.
She heard the other girls giggling again. Now what had she done? Ojebeta wondered in bewilderment, hating the smallest girl who sniggered the most. She felt like fighting that girl, for she was not much bigger than herself, but she ignored her and kept on nodding.
“You shall have some food,” Ma Palagada said. “Chiago, go to the food stalls and buy Ogbanje—is that your name?—buy her a piece of agidi from those people from Accra. Have you eaten their agidi before? It is very nice.”
Ojebeta nodded once more; she had tasted “agidi Akala”, as her dead mother used to call it. On the days her mother used to go to Onitsha she would buy one large piece, and Ojebeta and all her friends and her father would sit up and wait for her to come home from Otu, just to have their little bits of Accra agidi. In those days it had been a real delicacy for her; and now she was once more going to have some to eat, her mouth watered like a dog’s. Ma Palagada gave some money to the big girl Chiago, who ran among the other stalls, turned a corner and disappeared into the market. They all waited. More customers came. Okolie and Ma Palagada talked blatant nothings to gain time. Sitting away from her brother, apart from the other girls, Ojebeta thought of her mother, her father, of the “agidi Akala” she was going to have.
Chiago soon arrived with the corn dough steaming. It was the first time Ojebeta had seen it hot, for the agidi her mother used to buy was always cold by the time she reached home from the market. She watched Chiago peeling the wrapping leaves off and putting them into another white bowl.
“Do you want pepper on it?” asked Chiago then.
Ma Palagada, who had seemed to be unaware of the goings on, intervened: “Let her do it the way she wants. Give her the pepper and salt. She can spice it herself.”
So Chiago handed Ojebeta the whitest and the best agidi she had ever seen in her life. At first Ojebeta did not know what to do. Should she eat it all, or share it with the others, her brother in particular?
Okolie saw her dilemma and said, with his mouth watering, “Eat it, it’s all for you.”
Ojebeta could not believe her ears. The other girls did not even look as if they were at all interested. Why, in her home five people would have shared this, for agidi was regarded as something special, not heavy enough to be everyday food. She did the only thing that she felt was right: she scooped one big handful and gave it to her brother. The latter looked this way and that way, felt ashamed and said with little heart:
“No, my sister, you eat it. Your relative bought it for you.”
That was strange, thought Ojebeta. But if Okolie had gone off his food, what of the new relative she had just acquired, who had been kind enough to buy all this hot agidi with fresh pepper and salt? She walked up to her with the innocence of a child who had never been taught to fear adults and said. “Have some, it’s nice.” Ma Palagada smiled, called her a good little girl but said that she had eaten; they had had their midday meal before she went to the meeting. So Ojebeta could eat it all. She hurried back to the bench and, sitting with her head bent to one side, busied herself with her day’s good luck—a whole piece of agidi Akala to herself.
Ma Palagada and Okolie talked and talked in voices so low that Ojebeta did not bother to make any attempt to find out what they were saying. It was too much of an effort, and besides what did it matter at the moment. So immersed was she in the agidi that she scarcely heard her brother announce:
“I am going to the food stalls to eat some pounded yam. I shall not be long.”
Ojebeta looked up and nodded.
“I will show you the way,” Ma Palagada said casually to Okolie. “Chiago, take care of the stall. I shall not be long.”
“Yes, Ma,” said Chiago.
Ojebeta went on scooping the agidi into her mouth, showing it off as she did so to the youngest girl, whom she had heard them refer to as Amanna. But Amanna did not even seem to envy her, and instead laughed each time Ojebeta scooped the food up. The urge to fight this cheeky girl was becoming strong, though once more she managed to ignore her while polishing the bowl with her fingers, at the same time making a great deal of noise with her mouth. It had been a delicious meal and Ojebeta was now full; though the last bit had been cold and not as tasty as when she first started it, she finished it all.
Now she looked about her, pleased with the world. The other girls still giggled, but she had decided to take no notice of their foolish behaviour. She sat perched on the wooden bench by the edge of the stall so that she would be the first to catch a glimpse of her brother and Ma Palagada when they showed up eventually. She watched people come in and out of the stall and was fascinated by the fast method the girl Chiago used to mend torn clothes, for she had never before seen a sewing machine. She wished she too could have a go at the black monster with yellow patterns on it. When Chiago wound it, it made sounds as if it was singing, and after it sang on each piece of cloth they came out stitched together so well and so quickly. This way, she noticed, it was not necessary to use needles like her mother had used for sewing tears in her cloth.
After Ojebeta had watched this for a while, the longing for her brother and for them to be going home from the market began to increase. She could see that some other people were already starting to leave. Yet Ma Palagada’s girls sat there, doing their sewing, intermittently singing scraps of song, but looking as if they were willing to wait the whole day if necessary. Ojebeta was fed up of waiting. The sweet sensation the hot agidi had given her was fast evaporating and giving way to a kind of boredom, tinged somewhat with rebellion. Not wanting to ask the permission of these unfriendly strangers, she scrambled up from her seat, determined to go and find her brother. Had he not promised Uteh’s husband that they would be back home before the evening meal? Well, it was fast approaching sundown and she knew they had a very long trek ahead of them. She then realised how tired her feet were, but the urge to go home was far more pressing than her need to give in to fatigue.
As she took a few steps from the stall, the girls looked at her and all of a sudden stopped their endless chatter. Chiago was the first to find her tongue.
“Where are you going, little girl from Ibuza?”
“I am going to look for my brother,” came the unpolished reply.
For once the other girls did not laugh at her. Only Amanna made a slight tittering sound but was quickly hushed by Chiago’s stern glance. The latter was thinking fast to herself: Poor parentless child. They probably did not tell her. She probably does not know she may never see her brother again. Poor girl.
Aloud she said, not without pity, “Come back, little Ibuza girl. Your big brother will soon be here. Come back, or you will get lost in the market, and the child-catchers from the coast will take you away in their canoes. Come back.”
Ojebeta stood and looked at her for a moment, wondering why the child-catchers should want to take her away. She had, it was true, heard stories of people going missing even in Ibuza, but that such a fate could befall her was beyond belief. After all, she was only going to get her brother, over there round the corner. She would run faster than any child-catcher in the world, and once she had found her big brother Okolie who would dare catch her?
“Will my ‘little father’ be here soon?” she asked, seeking further reassurance.
“Of course he will. What have we been telling you?” replied Chiago, her eyes averted.
Ojebeta did not know what came over her then, except that it was connected with her having been brought up by simple people who looked you straight in the eye because they had nothing to hide. The way this big girl spoke to her, the way the others all at once seemed to be made of mechanical wood, working without feeling at their work and not daring to look at her, made her uneasy. She did not want to wait to find out what they were being so cagey about; all she wanted was her brother and for them both to go back home to Ibuza, where her aunt Uteh would be waiting for her with pounded yam and palm soup and little crabs from the Oboshi stream. All the girls were seemingly engrossed in their sewing, and she told herself that they were not watching her. She knew where her brother Okolie was—just round the corner, at the stalls of the food sellers. If she ran that way she would surely find him, still sitting there eating yam and stew. She would find him, before these girls ever caught up with her. She would find him….
And just like a hunter’s arrow that had been quivering impatiently in its bow while the hunter covered his prey until the opportune moment to let fly, so did Ogbanje Ojebeta dash out of the Palagada cloth stall. She ran, almost flew like an arrow, her little legs like wings, her heart beating fast in fear and anticipation, going as she thought to her brother—her brother, the only person she knew in this market full of strange people, the only person who would take her home to their town, the only person who had brought her here. She made music with her metal charms and cowries as she ran to meet him. She was an unusual sight among the sophisticated, rich, fat mammy traders who formed the backbone of Onitsha market.
“If I can’t find him, my big brother,” she said to herself as she ran, “I shall go back to Ibuza to the hut of my big mother and wait for him.”
But it was to be an abortive attempt at freedom.
At the end of the line of cloth stalls was a very big one belonging to a fat mammy called Ma Mee, who was one of the richest Onitsha marketwomen at the time. She, like Ma Palagada, had a double stall, but her twin stalls curved into the pathway, almost blocking the way from the riverside. Hers was a corner site, and the fact that she occupied this privileged position had been the cause of a great deal of backbiting and bickering among the other cloth traders, particularly the smaller fry who had only a single stall. They said that it was because of Ma Mee’s advantageous placing that she sold more cloth than the rest of them put together. They said that her situation made it possible for her to see prospective buyers coming up from the canoes; they said that very few customers passed through her stalls without buying anything. But, as often happens in like circumstances, no one could bring themselves to tell her to her face. Ma Mee had been in the selling business for a long time. She knew that people talked among themselves, for from time to time some of the hurtful things others said about her did reach her ears. But she reasoned to herself, “If I go about challenging all the things people say about me, who will be my friend? For whoever I challenge about spiteful things they are said to have said about me, that person will deny it, and I will only have added one more enemy to the list I already have.” So she behaved as if the gossip did not exist, and this spirit endeared her to many other traders who consequently came to regard her as having great maturity. In fact in avoiding the trouble of having open enemies, she was simply being prudent, for there were occasions when each trader needed the goodwill of the others, for example when robbers—well aware that the cloth stalls contained valuable materials and belonged mainly to a few wealthy and privileged women—would organise themselves for raids. But if one stall could raise the alarm and the thief was seen, God have mercy on his soul. These were women who did not have time for the police; they could not afford to lose a day’s trade by going to a court or going to see a chief. They invariably dealt with the culprit in the way they themselves thought fit.
The same fate awaited any runaway domestic slave. Many of the market women had slaves in great number to help them with the fetching and carrying that went with being a full-time trader—and also in the vain hope that one day the British people at the coast would go and some of these house slaves could be sold abroad, just as their fathers and grandfathers had done, so profitably that the abundance of capital and property they had built could still be seen in many families round Onitsha and Bonny and Port Harcourt.
On this hot afternoon, a tiresome and very hungry Ibo beggar of a fisherman had caught a sizeable thorn fish which he had brought to the prosperous cloth sellers. He had expected to sell it at a higher price than Ma Mee was offering, and because he was anxious for the extra money to take home to the hinterland to feed his needy family he stayed on and was haggling and haggling. Ma Mee was really beginning to pity him and the unfortunate fish that was still alive, wriggling its body and fighting desperately for air. Although its protective thorns could be deadly to an enemy and were all spread out in its fruitless struggle to free itself, the fisherman did not want to kill it outright for he could show prospective buyers that it had just been caught and, better than just fresh, was still alive. The fisherman became more despondent as Ma Mee would not agree to the price he wanted and as he saw that the fish’s resistance was growing more feeble, whether because it now realised it was fighting a losing battle or because of the effects of having been out of the water for so long on such a hot afternoon. He stopped dangling the fish on the powerful wire which he had strung through its open mouth, and was summoning up the courage to touch its slimy body, at the same time as Ma Mee was beginning to feel compelled to buy it from him, when they all—the fisherman, Ma Mee and the girl slaves who had been passive throughout the preceding argument—heard the cries of alarm of the girls at Ma Palagada’s stalls.
Everyone’s first involuntary reaction was to look for a club, a knife, even the wooden measuring stick, to arm themselves with ready to fight to protect their own territory, as it were. They all dashed out, led by the poor fisherman who wanted to play the role of a gallant man preserving the women from robbers.
Ma Mee was a big woman, so big that she never stopped perspiring. But there were certain happenings which appeared to make her weightless: happenings such as market thieves and runaways. For if you did not help your neighbour in such a situation, the day the same trouble befell you, people would turn a blind eye rather than offer assistance; it was an unwritten law among the traders on the banks of the Niger. So, tightening her voluminous lappa round her substantial posterior, her breasts heaving in unison to her great haste, she rushed forward prepared to do battle with and if necessary maim this market thief causing the outcry, if she could lay hands on whoever it was, for daring to go into her absent colleague’s stall.
However, it was not a market thief that they saw; it was a sight so peculiar that people simply stared bemused as it sped past their stalls—Chiago tearing along the pathway chasing a small, helpless and terrified child: a little girl festooned with bells and cowrie shells, just like a slave prepared for sacrifice! They stared, and did not understand.
Chiago’s cries soon put them in the picture.
“Hold her! Please hold her for me, she is new—hold her!”
But she did not look at all like any slave girl Ma Mee had ever seen before, this little creature who more or less ran into her arms for protection and cried out:
“Oh, my mother, I am lost.”
For a split second, Ma Mee held her, as she would have embraced her very own child; then she let go of the fugitive but still barred her way with her great bulk.
“You are not lost, little girl with pagan charms,” she replied. “You are just a domestic slave.”
Almost fainting with that kind of disappointment and sense of unfairness which is sometimes inexplicable, Ojebeta the only living daughter of Umeadi cried out once more in despair, this time to her dead mother:
“Save me, Mother, for now I am lost.”
Unable to go forward past Ma Mee, she had no alternative but to allow herself to be caught by her pursuer.
“Let me go, let me go!” Ojebeta screamed as she wriggled violently in the hands of Chiago, the biggest of the Palagada girls.
Chiago would have held Ojebeta gently except that she knew it was likely to have resulted in real trouble for herself. So she gripped her tightly, masking her pity for this parentless child by explaining unnecessarily to the crowd, and especially to Ma Mee, that Ojebeta had only just arrived that very afternoon.
Ma Mee did not envy her neighbour for having four girl slaves; and this new little one would bring the total number of Palagada slaves to seven, since they also had two male slaves who had been bought or captured—she was not quite sure of the story—from among the people called the Urhobos. It was said that Pa Palagada had bought the men from some Potokis who were leaving the country and returning to their own land. The two, who were young boys at the time, could not remember where they had originally come from, so they were given Ibo names and were put to work on the Palagada farms. Sometimes Ma Palagada would bring to the Otu market the big yams that these two hardworking and now hefty men had produced. So as far as Ma Mee was concerned the Palagadas already had as many slaves as they needed; after all, one couldn’t sell them abroad as in the old days. However, she kept all these thoughts to herself.
Chiago thanked Ma Mee in the way she had been taught to greet important ladies like her, with a curtsy, and half pulled, half carried Ojebeta back to their own stall, knowing that the eyes of all the other women were following her. As she tried to lessen the shock for the poor girl, Chiago too was near tears, remembering how it had come about that she herself had been sold.
That year had been a bad one for her family. Where exactly her village was to be found was now shrouded in obscurity, though she knew she came from somewhere not far from the rivers where Pa Palagada went to sell palm kernels to some foreigners near Bonny. But she could remember that she had had a mother who was forever bearing children, and who was always carrying a baby on her back, held there with a tiny piece of cloth which was all she had. Then came a year when the rains were so heavy that almost all the vegetation, except the oil palms, was carried away. Her father had brought her to this dark bearded, overblown and formidable-looking man, who told her that his daughter was getting married just like the white people did. Her father told her that they needed a little girl to wear white muslin and to carry flowers for this man’s beautiful daughter. Having done that service, she would be well paid, and her father would be waiting for her by the river, with the very canoe with which they had come. She had believed her father, especially when it was explained to her that the money she would earn would be used to pay the native doctors who would make her mother well again. And then their life would be back to normal. They would live in their house on the boat, and come to land to sell the fish they caught, and when it became too wet to live on the water, they would come to land and plant and eat cocoyam, ede, and sometimes yam….
Chiago remembered that she had had to cross another river, and they had walked what seemed endless numbers of miles. For days they had walked and they were so tired that for part of the journey Pa Palagada had to be carried by local bearers in a hammock. At a town called Arochukwu they had stayed for days, and it was here that she had a bitter taste of what life held in store for her. She did not see the so-called daughter of Pa Palagada; in fact she seldom saw him at all. She was thrust into a small room at the back of the house with other strange people, who all seemed unhappy and, like her, scantily dressed. They all ate together, and had to go to the stream to fetch water, and she had to help in the large cooking place they called the “kinsheni”, or something like that. She had stayed there with Pa Palagada and his entourage for just five days, and then they had set off again walking and walking and only resting at occasional drinking and eating places. They crossed another fairly small river in a canoe, and by this time Chiago had not even been able to remember from which direction she had originally come.
She had thought about it constantly since, and had finally decided that she had no choice but to accept things as they were. Her family would certainly have starved had she not been sold to this man, Pa Palagada, who had later handed Chiago to his wife. It was a blessing that at least her stomach had been sold with her, so her parents would no longer have to worry about how to feed her; and perhaps the money her head had fetched had helped her family for a while.
The picture of her family, however, had dimmed after eleven years with her mistress and her husband. The long stay had taught her a great many things. The most important was that a slave who made an unsuccessful attempt to run away was better off dead. Such a slave would be so tortured that he or she would be useless as a person, or else might be used for burial.
She had watched one such horrible burial when she had been about twelve and was travelling with Ma Palagada in the Ibo interior. The chief wife of the master of the house had died, and it was necessary for her husband to send her to the land of the dead accompanied by a female slave. The one chosen was a particularly beautiful slave, with smooth skin and black closely cropped hair, who was said to be a princess captured in war from another Ibo village; she had made attempts to return to where she came from, but unfortunately her new owner caught her and she lost her freedom of movement. On the eve of the burial she was brought and ordered to lie down in the shallow grave. As might be expected, she resisted, but there was no pity on the faces of the men who stood by watching, amused by her cries. She made appeals to the gods of her people to save her, she begged some of the mourners to spare her life, saying that her father the chief of another village would repay them, but to no avail. One of the sons of the dead woman lost his patience and, maybe out of mercy and a wish to have it all done with as quickly as possible, took a club and struck the defenceless woman hard at the back of her shaved head. The more Chiago thought about it in later years, the more convinced she was that the woman slave must have had seven lives. She did not drop down into the grave she was later to share with her dead mistress as was then expected. Instead she turned to look at the chief, who was calling on his son to cease his brutality, and she said to him, “For showing me this little mercy, chief, I shall come again, I shall come again….”
She was not allowed to finish her valedictory statement, for the stubborn young man, disregarding his father’s appeal, gave the woman a final blow so that she fell by the side of the grave. But she was still struggling even when the body of her dead mistress was placed on her. She still fought and cried out, so alive. Soon her voice was completely silenced by the damp earth that was piled on both her and the dead woman.
Chiago never quite recovered from this early shock, not even when sometime later she heard Ma Palagada talking to another woman trader about it and ending up by saying that one of the chief’s younger wives now had a baby daughter very like the slave princess who had been buried alive; to clinch the resemblance, this little girl was born with a lump on the back of her head, in the same place as where the slave princess had been struck….
Chiago had seen, too, many slaves who had become successful, who had worked so well with their masters that they themselves became wealthy traders at Otu market, given their freedom when their masters grew old. The majority of them, particularly the male slaves, did not wish to go home, if they could even remember which part of the country they had come from originally. Some of them stayed because they could not return to their region as a result of some atrocity they had committed. One of the Palagada slaves was born a twin and her people, somewhere among the Efiks, did not accept twins; her mother had nursed her secretly and later had her sold, simply to give her a chance in life.
If only Chiago could have communicated all that passed through her mind to this struggling little girl. She wished she could tell her that the only course left for her was to make the best of everything, by being docile and trouble-free. She had stopped holding her too tightly but had her arms round the girl’s naked waist, looking at her with pity as if she were her own sister. In fact they would soon be like sisters—did not the same fate await them?
“I shall tell my father of you,” Ojebeta whimpered in between exhausted hiccoughs. In her confusion after the long, wearying journey and her escape attempt, she imagined her father was still alive and well in Ibuza. She stared at everyone in front of the stalls they passed, hoping that one of them would be her brother.
If the girls felt like reminding Ojebeta that her parents were long dead, they restrained themselves. They had seen scenes like this played out before their very eyes too often, and they knew from experience that to indulge in a little fantasy would do her no harm at all; if anything, it would do her good. So they let her wallow in her own world of wishful thinking. She went on repeating that she would tell her father, her mother and her big mother Uteh, until she was completely exhausted.
Ma Mee soon strolled round to their stall to find out how they were coping and whether Ma Palagada was back. Chiago replied that she was sure she would be back soon, and this statement awakened in Ojebeta a last, futile hope to gain sympathy.
“Please, kind mother, can you bring my brother back for me? He only went there round your stall to eat pounded yam.”
“Yes,” Ma Mee replied in a soft voice, “I shall bring your brother back. But do you want me to buy you anything to eat? Do you want honeyed meat balls from the Hausa people down the coast?”
Ojebeta shook her head vigorously as though she would snap it off from her body. She did not want anything, not anymore, not from these people who had tricked her into letting Okolie out of her sight because of some hot agidi.
“I don’t want anything. I only want to go home.” She little realised in what circumstances and how long it would be before that going home took place.
Ma Mee walked back to her stall telling herself that buying and selling people could not be helped. “Where would we be without slave labour, and where would some of these unwanted children be without us?” It might be evil, but it was a necessary evil.