“I did already. I walked.”
Odenigbo stared at her.
“I walked,” Olanna said again. “I used the toilet.”
There was something she had never seen on Odenigbo’s face, something precious and frightened. She sat up and he immediately reached out to hold her, but she shrugged him off and walked a few steps to the wardrobe and then back to the bed. Odenigbo sat and looked at her.
She took his hand and touched it to her face, pressed it against her breast. “Touch me.”
“I’m going to tell Patel. I want him to come in and take a look at you.”
“Touch me.” She knew he didn’t want to, that he touched her breasts because he would do whatever she wanted, whatever would make her better. She caressed his neck, buried her fingers in his dense hair, and when he slid into her, she thought about Arize’s pregnant belly, how easily it must have broken, skin stretched that taut. She started to cry.
“Nkem, don’t cry.” Odenigbo had stopped; he was lying next to her and smoothing her forehead. Later, when he gave her more pills and some water, she took them dutifully and then lay back and waited for the strange stillness they brought.
Ugwu’s gentle knock woke her up; he would open the door and come in with a tray of food that he would place next to her packets of medicine, bottle of Lucozade, and tin of glucose. She remembered the first week she came back, the week that Odenigbo sprang up whenever she stirred. She had asked for water and Odenigbo opened the bedroom door to go to the kitchen and nearly tripped on Ugwu, curled on a mat right outside their door. “My good man, what are you doing here?” he asked, and Ugwu answered, “You don’t know where anything is in the kitchen, sah.”
She closed her eyes now and pretended she was asleep. He was standing close to her and watching her; she could hear his breathing.
“When you are ready, mah, the food is here,” he said. Olanna nearly laughed; he probably knew all the times she pretended to be asleep when he brought her food. She opened her eyes. “What did you cook?”
“Jollof rice.” He raised the cover of the dish. “I used fresh tomatoes from the garden.”
“Has Baby eaten?”
“Yes, mah. She is playing outside with Dr. Okeke’s children.”
Olanna picked up the fork and held it.
“I will make fruit salad for you tomorrow, mah. That pawpaw tree behind has a ripe fruit. I will give it one more day, and then I will pluck it fast before those birds come for it. I will use orange and milk.”
“Good.”
Ugwu still stood there, and she knew he would not leave until she had started to eat. She raised the fork to her mouth slowly, chewing with her eyes closed. It was as good as whatever Ugwu cooked, she was sure, but, except for the chalky pills, she had been unable to taste anything in so long. Finally, she drank some water and asked Ugwu to take the tray away.
On her bedside table, Odenigbo had placed a long sheet of paper with WE, UNIVERSITY STAFF, DEMAND SECESSION AS A MEANS OF SECURITY typewritten at the top and a patchwork of varied signatures at the bottom.
“I was waiting for you to be strong enough to sign it before I deliver it to the statehouse in Enugu,” he had said.
After Ugwu left the room, she picked up a pen and signed the letter and then checked through the text for any errors. There were none. But Odenigbo didn’t need to deliver the letter because the secession was announced that evening. He sat on the bed with the radio placed on the bedside cabinet. The reception had little static, as if the radio waves understood the importance of the speech. Ojukwu’s voice was unmistakable; it was vibrantly male, charismatic, smooth:
Fellow countrymen and women, you the people of Eastern Nigeria: Conscious of the supreme authority of Almighty God over all mankind; of your duty over posterity; aware that you can no longer be protected in your lives and in your property by any government based outside Eastern Nigeria; determined to dissolve all political and other ties between you and the former Republic of Nigeria; having mandated me to proclaim on your behalf and in your name that Eastern Nigeria be a sovereign independent Republic, now therefore I do hereby solemnly proclaim that the territory and region known as and called Eastern Nigeria, together with her continental shelf and territorial waters, shall henceforth be an independent sovereign state of the name and title of The Republic Of Biafra.
“This is our beginning,” Odenigbo said. That false softness had left his voice and he sounded normal again, bracing and sonorous. He took his glasses off and grabbed Baby’s little hands and began to dance around in circles with her. Olanna laughed and then felt as if she were following a script, as if Odenigbo’s excitement would abide nothing but more excitement. She sat up and shivered. She had wanted the secession to happen, but now it seemed too big to conceive. Odenigbo and Baby were moving round and round, Odenigbo singing off-key, a song he had made up—“This is our beginning, oh, yes, our beginning, oh, yes …”—while Baby laughed in blissful incomprehension. Olanna watched them, her mind frozen in the present, on the cashew-juice stain on the front of Baby’s dress.
———
The rally was held in Freedom Square, in the center of the campus, lecturers and students shouting and singing, an endless sheet of heads and placards held high.
We shall not, we shall never move,
Just like a tree that’s planted by the water,
We shall not be moved.
Ojukwu is behind us, we shall never move.
God is behind us, we shall never move.