“Everything is tight now, really, very tight,” Professor Ezeka said. “Requests pour in from everywhere.” He sat down, placed the files on his lap, and crossed his legs. “But I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thank you,” Olanna said. “And thank you again for the provisions.”
“Have some cake,” Mrs. Ezeka said.
“No, I don’t want any cake.”
“Maybe after lunch.”
Olanna stood up. “I can’t stay for lunch. I must go. I teach some children in the yard and I told them to come in an hour’s time.”
“Oh, how lovely,” Mrs. Ezeka said, walking her to the door. “If only I wasn’t going overseas so soon, we would have done something together too, for the win-the-war effort.”
Olanna forced her lips to form a smile.
“The driver will take you back,” Professor Ezeka said.
“Thank you,” Olanna said.
Before she climbed into the car, Mrs. Ezeka asked her to come to the back and see the new bunker her husband had had built; it was concrete, sturdy.
“Imagine what these vandals have reduced us to. Pamela and I sometimes sleep here when they bomb us,” Mrs. Ezeka said. “But we shall survive.”
“Yes,” Olanna said and stared at the smooth floor and two beds, a furnished underground room.
When she got back to the yard, Baby was crying. Mucus ran thinly down her nose.
“They ate Bingo,” Baby said.
“What?”
“Adanna’s mummy ate Bingo.”
“Ugwu, what happened?” Olanna asked, taking Baby in her arms.
Ugwu shrugged. “That is what the people in the yard are saying. Mama Adanna took the dog out some time ago and does not answer when they ask her where it is. And she has just cooked her soup with meat.”
Olanna hushed Baby, wiped her eyes and nose, and thought for a moment about the dog with its head full of sores.
Kainene came in the middle of a hot afternoon. Olanna was in the kitchen soaking some dried cassava in water when Mama Oji called, “There is a woman in a car asking for you!”
Olanna hurried out and stopped when she saw her sister standing near the banana trees. She looked elegant in a knee-length tan dress.
“Kainene!” Olanna extended her arms slightly, uncertainly, and Kainene moved forward; their embrace was brief, their bodies barely touching before Kainene stepped back.
“I went to your old house and somebody told me to come here.”
“Our landlord kicked us out, we were not good for business.” Olanna laughed at her poor joke, although Kainene did not laugh. Kainene was peering into the room. Olanna wished so much that Kainene had come when they were still in a house, wished she did not feel so painfully self-conscious.
“Come in and sit down.”
Olanna dragged the bench in from the veranda and Kainene looked warily at it before she sat down and placed her hands on the leather bag that was the same earth-brown shade as her coiffed wig. Olanna raised the dividing curtain and sat on the bed and smoothed her wrapper. They did not look at each other. The silence was charged with things unsaid.
“So how have you been?” Olanna asked, finally.
“Things were normal until Port Harcourt fell. I was an army contractor, and I had a license to import stockfish. I’m in Orlu now. I’m in charge of a refugee camp there.”
“Oh.”