Ngozi Chimamanda - Half of a Yellow Sun

"Good evening," Ugwu said. He felt something close to disappointment.

She was peering in, behind him, and on her face was a great and stark fear; it made her look stripped down to nothing, like a skull with gaping holes as eyes.

"Odenigbo?" she was whispering. "Odenigbo?"

Ugwu understood right away that it was all she could say, that perhaps she had not even recognized him and could not get herself to ask the full question: Is Odenigbo alive?

"My master is well," Ugwu said. "He is inside."

She was staring at him. "Oh, Ugwu! Look how grown you are." She came inside. "Where is he? How is he?"

"I will call him, mah."

Master was standing by his study door. "What is going on, my good man?" he asked.

"It is Miss Adebayo, sah."

"You asked me to hide under a table because of Miss Adebayo?"

"I thought it was the soldiers, sah."

Miss Adebayo hugged Master and held on for too long. "They told me that either you or Okeoma didn't make it back"

"Okeoma didn't make it back." Master repeated her expression as if he somehow disapproved of it.

Miss Adebayo sat down and began to sob. "You know, we didn't really understand what was happening in Biafra. Life went on and women were wearing the latest lace in Lagos. It was not until I went to London for a conference and read a report about the starvation." She paused. "Once it ended, I joined the Mayflower volunteers and crossed the Niger with food…"

Ugwu disliked her. He disliked her Nigerianness. Yet a part of him was prepared to forgive it if that would bring back those evenings of long ago, when she argued with Master in a living room that smelled of brandy and beer. Now, nobody visited, except for Mr. Richard. There was a new familiarity to his presence. It was as if he was more like family, the way he would sit reading in the living room while Olanna went about her business and Master was in the study.

The banging on the door some evening later, when Mr. Richard was visiting, annoyed Ugwu. He put his sheets of paper down in the kitchen. Couldn't Miss Adebayo understand that it was best to go back to Lagos and leave them alone? At the door, he moved a step back when he saw the two soldiers through the glass. They grabbed the handle and jerked at the locked door. Ugwu opened it. One of them was wearing a green beret and the other had a white mole on his chin like a fruit seed.

"Everybody in this house, come out and lie down flat!"

Master, Olanna, Ugwu, Baby, and Mr. Richard all stretched out on the living room floor while the soldiers searched the house. Baby closed her eyes and lay perfectly still on her belly.

The one with the green beret had eyes that blazed red, and he shouted and shredded some papers on the table. It was he who pressed the sole of his boot on Mr. Richard's backside and said, "White man! Oyinbo! Don't shit hot shit here, oh!" It was he, too, who placed his gun to Master's head and said, "Are you sure you are not hiding Biafran money here?"

The other one, with the mole on his chin, said, "We are searching for any materials that will threaten the unity of Nigeria" and then went to the kitchen and came out with two plates heaped with Ugwu's jollof rice. After they ate, after they drank some water and belched loudly, they got into their station wagon and drove away. They had left the front door open. Olanna stood up first. She walked into the kitchen and poured the rest of the jollof riceinto the dustbin. Master locked the door. Ugwu helped Baby up and took her inside. "Bath time," he said, although it was a little early.

"I can do it myself," Baby said, and so he stood by and watched her bathe herself for the first time. She splashed some water on him, laughing, and he realized that she would not always need him.

Back in the kitchen, he found Mr. Richard reading the sheets of paper he had left on the countertop.

"This is fantastic, Ugwu." Mr. Richard looked surprised. "Olanna told you about the woman carrying her child's head on the train?"

"Yes, sah. It will be part of a big book. It will take me many more years to finish it and I will call it 'Narrative of the Life of a Country. '"

"Very ambitious," Mr. Richard said.

"I wish I had that Frederick Douglass book."

"It must have been one of the books they burned," Mr. Richard said and shook his head. "Well, I'll look for it when I'm in Lagos next week. I'm going to see Kainene's parents. But I'll go first to Port Harcourt and Umuahia."

"Umuahia, sah?"

"Yes."

Mr. Richard said nothing else; he never spoke about his search for Kainene.

"If you have time, sah, please find out about somebody for me."

"Eberechi?"

A smile creased Ugwu's face before he hastily looked solemn again. "Yes, sah."

"Certainly."

Ugwu gave him the family's name and address, and Mr. Richard wrote it down, and afterward they were both silent and Ugwu fumbled, awkwardly, for something to say. "Are you still writing your book, sah?"

"No."

""The World Was Silent When We Died." It is a good title."

"Yes, it is. It came from something Colonel Madu said once." Richard paused. "The war isn't my story to tell, really."

Ugwu nodded. He had never thought that it was.

"Can I give you a letter, in case you see Eberechi, sah?"

"Of course."

Ugwu took the sheets of paper from Mr. Richard and, as he turned to make Baby's dinner, he sang under his breath.

Richard walked into the orchardand toward the spot where he had sat to watch the sea. His favorite orange tree was gone. Many of the trees had been cut, and the orchard now had stretches of cultivated grass. He stared at the point where Kainene had burned his manuscript and remembered days ago in Nsukka, how he had felt nothing, absolutely nothing, watching Harrison dig and dig in the garden. "Sorry, sah. Sorry, sah. I am burying the manscrit here, I know I am burying it here."

Kainene's house was repainted a muted green; the bougainvillea that had wreathed it was cut down. Richard went around to the front door and rang the doorbell and imagined Kainene coming to the door and telling him she was fine, she had simply wanted to spend some time alone. The woman who came out had slender tribal marks on her face, two lines on each cheek. She opened the door a crack. "Yes?"

"Good afternoon," Richard said. "My name is Richard Churchill. I'm Kainene Ozobia's fiance."

"Yes?"

"I used to live here. This is Kainene's house."

The woman's face tightened. "This was abandoned property. It is now my house." She started to close the door.

"Please, wait," Richard said. "I'd like our photos, please. Can I have some of Kainene's photographs? The album on the shelf in the study?"

The woman whistled. "I have a vicious dog, and if you don't go now I will turn it on you."

"Please, just the photographs."

The woman whistled again. From somewhere inside, Richard heard a dog growl. He slowly turned and left. As he drove, his windows down, the smell of the sea in his nose, he thought about the many times Kainene had driven him down the same lonely road. Inside the town, he slowed down as he passed a tall woman, but she was too light-skinned to be Kainene. He had delayed coming to Port Harcourt because he first wanted to find her so that they would visit the house together, look together at what they had lost. She would try to get it back, he was sure, she would write petitions and go to court and tell everyone that the federal government had stolen her house, in that fearless way of hers. The same way she had stopped the beating of the young soldier. It was his last full memory of her, and his mind edited it of its own accord-sometimes the sleep-tussled wrapper tied across her waist was flaked with gold, other times with red.