Jaja shifted on his chair before pulling his schedule out of his pocket. “Aunty, Papa’
s schedule says we should study in the evenings; we brought our books.”
Aunty Ifeoma stared at the paper in Jaja’s hand. Then she started to laugh so hard that she staggered, her tall body bending like a whistling pine tree on a windy day. “Eugene gave you a schedule to follow when you’re here? Nekwanu anya, what does that mean?” Aunty Ifeoma laughed some more before she held out her hand and asked for the sheet of paper. When she turned to me, I brought mine, folded in crisp quarters, out of my skirt pocket.
“I will keep them for you until you leave.”
“Aunty…,” Jaja started.
“If you do not tell Eugene, eh, then how will he know that you did not follow the schedule, gbo? You are on holiday here and it is my house, so you will follow my own rules.”
I watched Aunty Ifeoma walk into her room with our schedules. My mouth felt dry, my tongue clinging to the roof.
“Do you have a schedule at home that you follow every day?” Amaka asked. She lay face up on the floor, her head resting on one of the cushions from a chair.
“Yes,” Jaja said.
“Interesting. So now rich people can’t decide what to do day by day, they need a schedule to tell them.”
“Amaka!” Obiora shouted.
Aunty Ifeoma came out holding a huge rosary with blue beads and a metal crucifix. Obiora turned off the TV as the credits started to slide down the screen. Obiora and Amaka went to get their rosaries from the bedroom while Jaja and I slipped ours out of our pockets. We knelt next to the cane chairs and Aunty Ifeoma started the first decade. After we said the last Hail Mary, my head snapped back when I heard the raised, melodious voice. Amaka was singing!
“Ka m bunie afa gi enu…”
Aunty Ifeoma and Obiora joined her, their voices melding. My eyes met Jaja’s. His eyes were watery, full of suggestions. No! I told him, with a tight blink. It was not right. You did not break into song in the middle of the rosary. I did not join in the singing, and neither did Jaja. Amaka broke into song at the end of each decade, uplifting Igbo songs that made Aunty Ifeoma sing in echoes, like an opera singer drawing the words from the pit of her stomach.
After the rosary, Aunty Ifeoma asked if we knew any of the songs.
“We don’t sing at home,” Jaja answered.
“We do here,” Aunty Ifeoma said, and I wondered if it was irritation that made her lower her eyebrows.
Obiora turned on the TV after Aunty Ifeoma said good night and went into her bedroom. I sat on the sofa, next to Jaja, watching the images on TV, but I couldn’t tell the olive-skinned characters apart. I felt as if my shadow were visiting Aunty Ifeoma and her family, while the real me was studying in my room in Enugu, my schedule posted above me. I stood up shortly and went into the bedroom to get ready for bed. Even though I did not have the schedule, I knew what time Papa had penciled in for bed. I fell off to sleep wondering when Amaka would come in, if her lips would turn down at the corners in a sneer when she looked at me sleeping.
I DREAMED THAT A MAKA submerged me in a toilet bowl full of greenish-brown lumps. First my head went in, and then the bowl expanded so that my whole body went in, too. Amaka chanted, “Flush, flush, flush,” while I struggled to break free. I was still struggling when I woke up. Amaka had rolled out of bed and was knotting her wrapper over her nightdress.
“We’re going to fetch water at the tap,” she said. She did not ask me to come, but I got up, tightened my wrapper, and followed her.
Jaja and Obiora were already at the tap in the tiny backyard; old car tires and bicycle parts and broken trunks were piled in a corner. Obiora placed the containers under the tap, aligning the open mouths with the rushing water. Jaja offered to take the first filled container back to the kitchen, but Obiora said not to worry and took it in. While Amaka took the next, Jaja placed a smaller container under the tap and filled it. He had slept in the living room, he told me, on a mattress that Obiora unrolled from behind the bedroom door and covered with a wrapper. I listened to him and marveled at the wonder in his voice, at how much lighter the brown of his pupils was. I offered to carry the next container, but Amaka laughed and said I had soft bones and could not carry it.
When we finished, we said morning prayers in the living room, a string of short prayers punctuated by songs. Aunty Ifeoma prayed for the university, for the lecturers and administration, for Nigeria, and finally, she prayed that we might find peace and laughter today. As we made the sign of the cross, I looked up to seek out Jaja’s face, to see if he, too, was bewildered that Aunty Ifeoma and her family prayed for, of all things, laughter.
We took turns bathing in the narrow bathroom, with half-full buckets of water, warmed for a while with a heating coil plunged into them. The spotless tub had a triangular hole at one corner, and the water groaned like a man in pain as it drained. I lathered over with my own sponge and soap—Mama had carefully packed my toiletries—and although I scooped the water with a shallow cup and poured it slowly over my body, I still felt slippery as I stepped on the old towel placed on the floor.
Aunty Ifeoma was at the dining table when I came out, dissolving a few spoonfuls of dried milk in a jug of cold water. “If I let these children take the milk themselves, it will not last a week,” she said, before taking the tin of Carnation dried milk back to the safety of her room. I hoped that Amaka would not ask me if my mother did that, too, because I would stutter if I had to tell her that we took as much creamy Peak milk as we wanted back home. Breakfast was okpa that Obiora had dashed out to buy from somewhere nearby. I had never had okpa for a meal, only for a snack when we sometimes bought the steam-cooked cowpea-and-palm-oil cakes on the drive to Abba. I watched Amaka and Aunty Ifeoma cut up the moist yellow cake and did the same. Aunty Ifeoma asked us to hurry up. She wanted to show Jaja and me the campus and get back in time to cook. She had invited Father Amadi to dinner.
“Are you sure there’s enough fuel in the car, Mom?” Obiora asked.
“Enough to take us around campus, at least. I really hope fuel comes in the next week, otherwise when we resume, I will have to walk to my lectures.”
“Or take okada,” Amaka said, laughing.
“I will try that soon at this rate.”
“What are okada?” Jaja asked. I turned to stare at him, surprised. I did not think he would ask that question or any other question.
“Motorcycles,” Obiora said. “They have become more popular than taxis.”