Jagua Nana

Her mother rubbed her eyes and stared. ‘I’ll not touch it,’ she said, when she had heard the story of the bag. ‘It’s blood money.’

‘Is not blood money,’ Jagua explained. ‘Is party money.’ She was sure it was O.P. 2 money given to Uncle Taiwo to spend for the elections. The elections were over, Uncle Taiwo had been killed. This portion he must have kept back for himself, hoping to come back later and use it for his own ends.

While her mother stood aghast, Jagua knelt down and counted one hundred bundles of £50.

‘Do as you like with am, I got no hand in it.’

Jagua threw her hands upwards in an attitude of prayer. ‘God know, if I do wrong to take dis money ’pon all my suffer dat I suffer.’

In the morning, she was a different person. She talked with a new air of authority. ‘Mama, when de time come, I know what I goin’ to do widde money. I will give some to de Mission in Ogabu for take finish de church buildin’. De res’ I goin’ to put in business. Las’ time when I was in Onitsha I see some shop in Odoziaku Street, very near de Company. I goin’ to buy dat business and God will help me for become real Merchant Princess. But de first thing I wan’ to go Port Harcourt firs’.’ She raised her hands, and threw her face at the skies. ‘Dis one be God work! …’

Rosa accompanied her to Port Harcourt to buy dress materials. As they walked along the street, their eyes darted from window to window. It was raining here too and they had to take refuge now and again in the shops. In one of the shops Jagua saw a lawyer whom she had observed at Freddie’s funeral. From him she inquired about Nancy.

‘Nancy? …’ He pondered it over, his eyes on the rain outside. ‘You mean Nancy Namme … Oh yes! …’

That had been a real fight, the man told her. Yes. The Bar Association had taken up the case seriously on behalf of the doctor who ran the private hospital from which Freddie had been forcibly removed in his critical illness. Removing a man in that manner amounted to a felony. They had asked for a compensation of £20,000 to be paid by the police to Nancy, the widow of Freddie. After all, if they had not moved him the chances were that he might have recovered. But all they got was £2000. ‘We should have asked for £200,000,’ the lawyer grinned. ‘Always ask for ten times what you want.’ But it was not the money they were fighting for so much as the protection of the dignity of professional men like the doctor from political nonsense; and also to bring the misguided police officials to book.

They talked at length about Freddie and how rash he had been to get himself involved in the rough and tumble of politics. Jagua was glad Nancy would not suffer. But she did not tell the lawyer how she had loved Freddie, pinning all her hopes for the future on him, and how she had lost.

While still in Port Harcourt they took a taxi and went down to the waterfront to see if they would meet anyone Jagua knew coming from Bagana, so that they might ask about Chief Ofubara. Jagua sat on a cement banking for a long time, watching the canoes land and the women board them, carrying their oranges, yams, vegetables. It did not appear that anyone she knew would be coming to Port Harcourt from either Bagana or Krinameh that day. Rosa walked up to her, a sling bag over her shoulder.

‘What we goin’ to do now?’ she asked. ‘You wan’ make we go Bagana an’ Krinameh? Is only two hour from ’ere, so de canoemen say.’

Jagua glanced at the mourning dress she was wearing. ‘I wan’ go, because I promise Chief Ofubara I mus’ come back to Krinameh. But dis dress!’ It was a far cry from the Jagwa-ful outfit in which she had first appeared before the chief.

‘What you goin’ to do?’ Rosa said. ‘Is only to salute de man, das all! If he ask why you wear black, you kin tell ’im you loss your fadder.’ She pointed at the beach. ‘Look! De canoe dere almos’ ready. Make we go join am.’

They raced towards the canoe and were the last two passengers in. The engine of Ever Jolly Time was already running. It began to rain, gently. A mistiness shrouded the mangrove trees. Out of the mistiness, Jagua saw the Church steeple of Bagana, pale and ghostly against the black sky. Her eyes filled nostalgically with tears when she sighted it.

At Bagana beach, no one came to meet them. They walked up to the Palace in the rain. The maid recognized Jagua. She smiled and offered them seats in the lounge. Jagua looked up at the walls, showing Rosa the photographs of Uncle Namme, David Namme and Chief Ofubara. The maid beamed a welcome and told them that the three men left for Lagos two days previously. They had gone to see the Governor-General over some matter. Jagua and Rosa consulted and agreed they would not stop in Bagana, but would go on to Krinameh, just to see it. They walked down to the beach-side and Jagua saw the bathing place where she had pursued Nancy Namme into Krinameh waters. They found a canoeman who agreed to take them over the rocky waters to Krinameh.

As soon as they rowed past the rocks, Jagua saw – not the Krinameh she knew, desolate and impoverished, but a new Krinameh with good wide roads and so many new buildings that for a moment she thought of Port Harcourt waterfront. They arrived there at closing time for the schools. The streets were filled with children chattering, kicking rubber balls, and laughing. Their presence seemed to fill Krinameh. She remembered Chief Ofubara’s eternal cry for education. She remembered too that with her altered circumstances she could answer some at least of his cry.

She took Rosa by the arm. ‘Make we go back for Ogabu. I seen all I wan’ to see.’

Rosa gave her a glance of surprise, but Rosa did not yet know about Jagua’s condition. In two months’ time, everyone who looked at her would see the swollen belly. It was good like this, that Chief Ofubara should remain in her mind as her happiest romantic memory.

The child was turning over in her belly. Jagua leaned her back against the wall and watched the playful undulations of her own belly, swollen visibly now. She put a hand to catch the feet of the unborn child. Pain gnawed at her and she gritted her teeth. Sometimes she thought of a name for it. Uzo would be a fitting one, meaning Road. She had searched at home in vain for a child, but now the child had come to her from the road, from the shed of the seamstresses, a product of a casual affair with a vanished father. She would see to it that the child grew up straight and strong – and true. That night, out of sheer gratitude, she cried herself to sleep. Even if she went back to the Coast to live, to Lagos or to Port Harcourt, things would be on a new footing. She would never again be so reckless with the ingredients of the fast life and faster oblivion.

Jagua’s mother was due to get out of mourning in a matter of weeks. Rosa stayed with them, waiting for the great day. One of the first things that Jagua did when she was able to, was to go across the river to the Postal Agency and to send to Chief Ofubara twelve bundles of £50 notes as a little help towards his education programme. Rosa saw the money and whistled.

‘Jagua your hand too free! You goin’ to dash all de money away finish!’

‘Never min’,’ said Jagua. ‘De Chief is a very kin’ man. Very kin’. Is de only way I kin repay de love he have for me.’ She looked at her belly. ‘You see now, I done go get pickin from anodder man, so I no fit to marry am again.’

She took the receipts from the postal clerk, but as they walked home, Rosa kept telling her that she was too free-handed. Jagua merely laughed her fears away.

Sometimes Jagua took Rosa visiting. They went to the nearby village where the parents of Rosa’s fiancé lived. He had since gone back to the college. By now Rosa and Jagua’s mother joked freely about Jagua’s condition and Jagua was pleased. She could see that her mother moved about the house with a new expectant freedom.

The time drew nearer for Jagua’s mother to change her mourning clothes, and on the night before, Jagua had felt

a violent searing pain inside her. She kept pacing the room like someone on the brink of insanity. Rosa hailed Jagua’s mother who ran up, rubbing her eyes. Together they took Jagua into the inner room and sat her down, trying to calm her. Jagua heard her mother send someone to fetch the doctor.

Then the splitting pain came again, and they put her back against the wall and spread her legs apart. Rosa held her by one hand and her mother by the other, looking down on her bloated naked body.

‘Give a grunt!’ the mother cried.

Jagua grunted, to no effect.