All of the next morning, Ogadinma refused to eat. She turned her face away when Aunty Ngozi brought her a breakfast of hot Milo and sliced bread. She pulled the blanket over her head when Ifeoma brought her a bowl of egusi soup and fufu in the afternoon. She wept silently when Aunty Ngozi insisted she must eat something that night, and when she spooned the spicy beans and plantain porridge into her mouth, she dashed into the bathroom and vomited.
The following morning, Aunty Ngozi felt her neck with the back of her palm, screamed and said Ogadinma had fallen ill to malaria. ‘Nekwa anya, your body is burning,’ she said. ‘Your husband will be very disappointed if he hears what you are doing to yourself.’
Ogadinma finally acquiesced.
‘Milk is very scarce now,’ said Aunty Ngozi as she prepared a cup of hot chocolate for Ogadinma. ‘Everyone is grinding soybeans to make milk, but I don’t like it. I don’t think you will like it either. That’s why I brought out this tin of Peak Milk, the only one we have left. Please, don’t waste it.’
Ogadinma wondered what Tobe had eaten that morning, if he was also given soya milk; if he slept well at all. She had read the big story in Daily Times, about how prisoners were squashed together in tiny cells, how they stayed awake because of the fat rats that crawled out of the holes in the walls at night, how the facilities had been run down and prisoners all suffered skin diseases, that they rarely ate, and when they did, they were served portions too small to fill a child’s stomach. She stared at her cup of hot chocolate and the fried eggs and sliced bread, the luxuries she still enjoyed which Tobe no longer had, and began to cry. And after she had exhausted herself from crying, she began to eat.
She spoke with her father later. He said he would come to Lagos if she wanted him to. He sounded so calm, his Igbo so crisp, and she remembered years ago when the soldiers punished him for overtaking them at a junction, how he had remained unruffled even as they shoved him around like a petty thief.
‘They will let him go because he did nothing wrong,’ he told her. ‘I believe that he did nothing wrong. These soldiers always like to show their power. Just be strong, ị nụgo?’
‘Yes, Papa.’
‘Everything will be all right, ị nụgo?’
‘Yes, Papa.’
But everything was not all right. Aunty Ngozi and Uncle Ugonna said they were speaking with people who knew the state governor, who could help with Tobe’s release. Ogadinma woke every day waiting for his return, so they could move back into their house and for everything to be as it was before. But Tobe did not come home that week, or the next, and each time she asked, Uncle Ugonna or Aunty Ngozi would say they were still working on his release. As the weeks passed, she began to wonder if they were really working on it or if they were too preoccupied with their lives. They did not tell her how Tobe was faring, what he ate, if he was doing well, until she asked and asked. And they simply shooed her away with soft, gentle words, as though she was not strong enough, as though she was still a child. And this began to annoy her.
Nnanna had gone to seek admission at the University of Benin, and so Ifeoma doted on Ogadinma. Ifeoma brought her meals, prepared her bath, offered to wash her clothes. And when Ifeoma asked if she needed an extra duvet one night, Ogadinma shook her head and said, ‘I am fine like this,’ irritated by the excessive gentleness.
That night, she dreamed that Tobe had broken out of prison and as they raced down the street, the soldiers hot on their heels, a house appeared at the junction, and when they ran inside, they resurfaced in her room in Kano. She woke up sweating. Ifeoma was still sleeping, her legs spread open, her wrapper bunched around her waist. Ogadinma pulled down the wrapper and straightened Ifeoma’s legs, then got off the bed and went outside.
It was a Saturday and neighbours had gathered outside, cleaning their drains, cutting and clearing their front gardens. The Head of State had declared a compulsory sanitation exercise which must be held on the last Saturday of every month. Uncle Ugonna and Aunty Ngozi were cleaning, too. While Uncle Ugonna shovelled out dirt from the gutter, Aunty Ngozi raked it into a pile. They saw her and dropped their tools, and as though choreographed, began to walk towards her. In all the five weeks since Tobe went to prison, since she came to live with Aunty Ngozi and Uncle Ugonna, they treated her like she had become a fragile thing, and did not let her overwork herself.
‘Let me help,’ she told Aunty Ngozi.
Aunty Ngozi shook her head. ‘Nne, you need more rest,’ she said. ‘We are almost done anyway.’
‘Yes,’ Uncle Ugonna said.
And Ogadinma sat by the door, wanting to work, wanting her husband back, and wondering why the hell were they taking so long to bring him home. But she knew she could never speak to them rudely; speaking to them in that manner was akin to yelling at her father – something she would never be able to do, even in her dreams.
She swiped at the sweat that had beaded her forehead. Lagos made no sense without Tobe by her side. The neighbourhood was too quiet. She did not hear the loud music that always rent the air on weekends, and there was something different about the people, how they went about the sanitation exercise with the eagerness of people numbed by fear. The soldiers had subdued Lagos.
But Uncle Ugonna and Aunty Ngozi didn’t seem to mind the atmosphere. They went to work every morning and returned in the evening with no information about Tobe. They would sit in the parlour at nights to watch the news, nor when NEPA had cut the electricity, they listened to Radio Nigeria. When she joined them at church one Sunday, they played a tape in the car. It was Igbo Christian songs. Aunty Ngozi sang with a quavering voice. Uncle Ugonna bopped to the music. Ifeoma was also whispering the tune. Ogadinma watched them. They all seemed to be at peace, and she looked out of the window and wondered how they could be that calm when her world had been rocked to a stop, when Tobe was still in prison and she was not sure what their life would be like when he came home, if he would even come home anytime soon. When she looked at them again, she found Uncle Ugonna watching her from the rear-view mirror.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked her, looking at her as if he was trying to read her mind.
‘Why is my husband still in prison?’ she asked him.
Aunty Ngozi turned around to face her, her mouth pinched with irritation, and began to shout. ‘So, you think we are all happy that my brother is in prison, eh? So, you think we have all folded our hands and let him suffer in prison, eh?’
Uncle Ugonna touched Aunty Ngozi’s shoulders, his eyes darting between the rear-view mirror and the road. ‘Don’t shout at her. She only asked a question,’ he said gently.
‘Rapụkene m, I don’t like how this girl has been squeezing her face these days,’ Aunty Ngozi told him, her voice breaking. ‘Haba. We have tried everything we can to get Tobe out, but he is still headstrong and has refused to give the soldiers what they want. Tell me, should I now go and kill myself so that Ogadinma will believe that we have been working hard to get him out, eh? Should I just kill myself to please this girl?’
Ogadinma stared at Aunty Ngozi. Her shoulders seemed shrunken and the skin around her neck and her face had become shades darker, the body of someone who toiled in the sun every day. Uncle Ugonna had changed too, his neck thinner and sticking out of his bony shoulders. They had both drastically changed since Tobe went to prison. Ogadinma felt a sudden rush of guilt; she had been so absorbed in her sorrow that she did not see how they grieved. She stared out of the window at passing cars, the trees blending into each other, the dust-stained houses, and wished she knew why Tobe refused to reach an agreement with the soldiers, why he still would not let her visit, if he even thought of her. Then, a thought crept into her mind that he did not think about her, because who would go for many months without bothering to even see his wife or hear her voice? She was overwhelmed with a dizzying rush of sadness. She had never considered the possibility that Tobe would forget her. All this while, she had thought of him, but now it dawned on her that he did not think of her, that he was being too headstrong and making things difficult for everyone.
When they got home, she finished the plate of rice Aunty Ngozi gave her and drank the bottle of Coke Uncle Ugonna offered. Although she ate with relish and tried to smile so that Aunty Ngozi would see that she was no longer squeezing her face, her eyes still tingled with unshed tears when she showered that evening. And when her father called to ask how she was doing, she wanted to say she was not fine, that nothing made sense any more and her heart was still breaking, but she imagined him holding the phone tightly to his ear, listening to her tensed breathing and everything she was not saying. He was all alone in their flat in Kano with no one to keep him company, no one to comfort him in a time of distress. So she did not want to burden him with her troubles.
‘I am well, Papa,’ she finally said.
He seemed to take forever to respond. She tried to pace her breathing, knowing that he was still listening to the strained silences. ‘I will call you again tomorrow to know how you are doing,’ he said.
‘Thank you, Papa.’
After she ended the call, she went into the bathroom, locked herself inside, sat on the toilet bowl and wept into her palms. She had never felt so helpless in her entire life.
And then she received the tape recorder from Uncle Ugonna on a rainy evening in August, the same day she turned eighteen.
She had forgotten her birthday; she had worried herself into a tight ball of tension, wondering why Tobe did not want to see her, because if Aunty Ngozi and Uncle Ugonna could visit him and return home every time without a scratch on their bodies, then she should be fine, too. She had begun to resent him.
But the tape recorder changed everything. Uncle Ugonna said he had paid a prison warder to sneak it in because Tobe wanted to send her a message on her birthday. Ogadinma stared at the device – a small, black shiny thing whose battery compartment was still sealed in a clear plastic bag. Tobe had remembered her birthday. Her eyes burned with tears. She switched the recorder on and held it against her ear. For a moment, there was only static silence, and then his voice came. He sounded like his old self when he had a cold, and he coughed at intervals as he asked if she was doing well. He said he missed her. He said a day never went by without a thought of her. He said he would come home soon, and no one would separate them again. He talked as though his lungs were lined with thick mucus. Ogadinma’s tears blinded her, her slow sobs drowned out all sounds until she couldn’t hear every other message the tape carried. And long after the recording had ended, she still held the device close to her ear, and an overwhelming sense of shame rippled through her. She had resented him for the wrong reasons. Then she made up her mind to make Uncle Ugonna take her to Tobe; she would run away if he didn’t grant her request.
Ogadinma shifted as far away as she could from the prison warder. The dank emptiness of the room made her feel nervous. She resisted the urge to press her nostrils shut. She had not imagined that the place would smell so thickly of stale urine. She glanced around the room. The blue wall paint had begun to peel, and the edges of the floor were stained a deep brown and coated with dirt. At one end of the room, a warder in a washed-out uniform sat slouched over a table, eating bananas and groundnut. At the other side, visitors sat stiffly, waiting.
Beside her, Uncle Ugonna sat staring at the floor. He looked like he hadn’t had a good sleep in many days. When she threatened to run away if he didn’t bring her to Tobe, he tried to talk her out of it, and when that failed, he held out his hands to her, and when she did not come to him, he plopped on the parlour sofa with a weary sigh. That night, she wondered if she would have carried out her threats. And now, sitting beside him and waiting for them to be taken to Tobe, she realized she could have gone through with it.
The door was thrown open and a warder in a faded brown khaki uniform, his face creased like crumpled paper, summoned them in a loud voice. ‘Oya, make una come,’ he said.
Uncle Ugonna stood up first and Ogadinma held tightly to the bag containing the flask of white rice and chicken stew she had brought for Tobe. Uncle Ugonna had said prison food was bad, that he and Aunty Ngozi always brought food during each visit. She clutched the bag close to her chest as they stepped into the search area where an ashen-faced warder stood waiting. The warder took the bag from Ogadinma, peeked inside, and began to shout.
‘Who tell you say you fit carry food come here, eh? You think say we no dey give dem food, eh?’ His voice carried down the hall.
‘We don see your oga,’ Uncle Ugonna began to say, just as the warder they had met at the door rushed inside and whispered into the ears of the angry man, who immediately lowered his voice and began to smile. ‘Oya, carry your food.’ He pushed the bag over to Ogadinma, before he waved them into a smaller, boxy room.
Tobe walked in later. And for a moment, Ogadinma simply stared at him; he looked much taller and this was because he had lost so much weight, the angles of his shoulders visible through his stained shirt.
He held out his arms to her and said, ‘Nwunye m, you shouldn’t have come.’
She wrapped her arms around his body. There was a strong smell of urine and something else on him. His arms and legs were riddled with scabs. She suppressed the sudden desire to cry.
‘My husband,’ she said.
He touched her collarbone, ran a lazy finger along the length of it. ‘Look how skinny you have become,’ he said.
They sat, and he slung a hand over her shoulders. He chatted with Uncle Ugonna, his voice oddly cheery. She could not believe the state he had been reduced to; that this was Tobe, chubby Tobe, Tobe who walked with extra swagger, who carried himself like a king. She could not believe that this withered, unkempt man was the husband she had married only months ago.
She brought out the flask and he quickly dug into the food and sighed as he scooped up a piece of chicken and chewed. ‘You have done well,’ he said. ‘This is like Christmas Day to me.’ And to Uncle Ugonna, he said, ‘Every time you come here feels like Christmas Day. Do you know the last time I ate chicken? This morning, we were given spoiled beans they cooked overnight with potash. And I removed twenty-five stones from the small portion they gave me. I don’t think they even bothered to wash the beans before cooking it.’
He continued eating, often lifting his head to tell them stories, how a riot had broken out in the prison yesterday, after inmates who had been sentenced to death learned that the former governor who signed the death warrants was now detained in the same prison on charges of corruption. The inmates broke out of their section and stormed to this side and had almost reached the governor’s cell before soldiers came and started shooting.
‘You should have seen the governor,’ Tobe laughed. ‘He defecated and peed in his trousers. God saved him yesterday. Those boys would have torn him to shreds with their hands.’
‘I heard he was given a twenty-five-year sentence by the military tribunal,’ Uncle Ugonna said.
‘He’s not the only one here. This place is packed full of governors, most of them are still awaiting trial like me. The other day, one of them was beaten blue-black by the inmates and he was told to sleep in the corridor with the rats for one week.’ Tobe shook his head. ‘This place is a republic of its own. We have our president and the deputy, and even a chief justice. God will punish you the day you cross any of them.’
‘I can imagine,’ Uncle Ugonna said.
Tobe shook his head and said, ‘No, you can’t. We even have our own currency. The warders sell new inmates to the Big Ogas of different cells. The Big Ogas are like governors. Each cell has a Big Oga. If you look chubby and rich, they will sell you to the meanest Big Oga in exchange for favours. Those men have their hearts in their backs. Obi fa dị n’azụ. They will make you call your family every week to send them money through the warders. God punish you if your family refuse to send the requested sum.’
Uncle Ugonna began to say something but then stopped, his gaze flitting from Ogadinma’s face to Tobe’s. Her stomach sank. Tobe’s arms were patched and scarred, some fading marks riddled his neck, and there was a thin scar on his lower lip. She tried to wish the worrying thoughts away; he couldn’t possibly have been a victim, she told herself. If she wished it away, then it would be true.
Tobe stopped eating and turned to look at her. She felt transparent, as though he could look into her heart and see that she had resented him, and so she quickly said, ‘I have missed you.’
He cupped her cheek, kneaded the soft skin, then dropped the hand and returned to the food. ‘The problem with eating this good food is defecating,’ he told Uncle Ugonna later. ‘Sometimes we wish we don’t defecate at all because the bucket is in the same cell we sleep in. They empty the bucket once every week. Sometimes they forget to do that.’
‘When will you come home?’ She held him. Her throat was choked with sobs. ‘When will they let you go?’
He began to speak but then the warder opened the door and began to shout, ‘Oya, make una dey go. Una time don finish!’
Before the warder escorted him out of the room, he hurriedly pulled her into his arms and kissed the top of her head. ‘I will come home soon,’ he said, his eyes filled with great resolve. ‘I promise.’
During the drive home, Ogadinma thought about his promise. She thought about it at night when she stretched out in bed, and again the following morning. Each time she remembered the earnestness in his eyes when he said it, a warm sensation rose in her chest. His words birthed something new, because the weight of sadness pressing down on her shoulders lifted, the lethargy in her joints disappeared, the knot in her stomach unfurled and she could finally think clearly again. She began to cry, but this time the cries cleansed her, as if the tears came from deep inside and washed away all the sorrow. And she believed that Tobe would finally agree to pay what the soldiers demanded. That they would move back into their house and return to how they used to live. Maybe his finances would take a beating, but Tobe would resume running his company and she would convince him to let her learn a trade, so she could contribute to their upkeep, and in no time they would earn back what he had lost. She woke each day waiting for news that Tobe had finally changed his mind.