Girls at War

At first Martha was reluctant, but when the great man offered her ?5 for the girl’s services in the first year—plus feeding and clothing and other things—she began to soften.

“Of course it is not money I am concerned about,” she said, “but whether my daughter will be well cared for.”

“You don’t have to worry about that, Ma. She will be treated just like one of our own children. My wife is a Social Welfare Officer and she knows what it means to care for children. Your daughter will be happy in our home, I can tell you that. All she will be required to do is carry the little baby and give it its milk while my wife is away at the office and the older children at school.”

“Vero and her sister Joy were also at school last term,” said Martha without knowing why she said it.

“Yes, I know. That thing the government did is bad, very bad. But my belief is that a child who will be somebody will be somebody whether he goes to school or not. It is all written here, in the palm of the hand.”

Martha gazed steadily at the floor and then spoke without raising her eyes. “When I married I said to myself: My daughters will do better than I did. I read Standard Three in those days and I said they will all go to College. Now they will not have even the little I had thirty years ago. When I think of it my heart wants to burst.”

“Ma, don’t let it trouble you too much. As I said before, what any one of us is going to be is all written here, no matter what the difficulties.”

“Yes. I pray God that what is written for these children will be better than what He wrote for me and my husband.”

“Amen!… And as for this girl if she is obedient and good in my house what stops my wife and me sending her to school when the baby is big enough to go about on his own? Nothing. And she is still a small girl. How old is she?”

“She is ten.”

“You see? She is only a baby. There is plenty of time for her to go to school.”

He knew that the part about sending her to school was only a manner of speaking. And Martha knew too. But Vero who had been listening to everything from a dark corner of the adjoining room did not. She actually worked out in her mind the time it would take the baby to go about on his own and it came out quite short. So she went happily to live in the capital in a great man’s family and looked after a baby who would soon be big enough to go about on his own and then she would have a chance to go to school.

Vero was a good girl and very sharp. Mr. Emenike and his wife were very pleased with her. She had the sense of a girl twice her age and was amazingly quick to learn.

Mrs. Emenike, who had almost turned sour over her recent difficulty in getting good servants, was now her old self again.

She could now laugh about the fiasco of free primadu. She told her friends that now she could go anywhere and stay as long as she liked without worrying about her little man. She was so happy with Vero’s work and manners that she affectionately nicknamed her “Little Madame.” The nightmare of the months following Abigail’s departure was mercifully at an end. She had sought high and low then for another baby-nurse and just couldn’t find one. One rather over-ripe young lady had presented herself and asked for seven pounds a month. But it wasn’t just the money. It was her general air—a kind of labour-exchange attitude which knew all the rights in the labour code, including presumably the right to have abortions in your servants’ quarters and even have a go at your husband. Not that Mark was that way but the girl just wasn’t right. After her no other person had turned up until now.

Every morning as the older Emenike children—three girls and a boy—were leaving for school in their father’s Mercedes or their mother’s little noisy Fiat, Vero would bring the baby out to the steps to say bye-bye. She liked their fine dresses and shoes—she’d never worn any shoes in her life—but what she envied them most was simply the going away every morning, going away from home, from familiar things and tasks. In the first months this envy was very, very mild. It lay beneath the joy of the big going away from the village, from her mother’s drab hut, from eating palm-kernels that twisted the intestines at midday, from bitter-leaf soup without fish. That going away was something enormous. But as the months passed the hunger grew for these other little daily departures in fine dresses and shoes and sandwiches and biscuits wrapped in beautiful paper-napkins in dainty little school bags. One morning, as the Fiat took the children away and little Goddy began to cry on Vero’s back, a song sprang into her mind to quieten him:

Little noisy motor-car

If you’re going to the school

Please carry me

Pee—pee—pee!—poh—poh—poh!

All morning she sang her little song and was pleased with it. When Mr. Emenike dropped the other children home at one o’clock and took off again Vero taught them her new song. They all liked it and for days it supplanted “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and “Simple Simon” and the other songs they brought home from school.

“The girl is a genius,” said Mr. Emenike when the new song finally got to him. His wife who heard it first had nearly died from laughter. She had called Vero and said to her, “So you make fun of my car, naughty girl.” Vero was happy because she saw not anger but laughter in the woman’s eyes.

“She is a genius,” said her husband. “And she hasn’t been to school.”

“And besides she knows you ought to buy me a new car.”

“Never mind, dear. Another year and you can have that sports car.”

“Na so.”

“So you don’t believe me? Just you wait and see.”

More weeks and months passed by and little Goddy was beginning to say a few words but still no one spoke about Vero’s going to school. She decided it was Goddy’s fault, that he wasn’t growing fast enough. And he was becoming rather too fond of riding on her back even though he could walk perfectly well. In fact his favourite words were “Cayi me.” Vero made a song about that too and it showed her mounting impatience:

Carry you! Carry you!

Every time I carry you!