Gods and Soldiers (15 page)

Why was Father Damian telling us about those children? Mama shouted as we walked home. What can we do for them? I calmed her down, told her he probably just needed to talk to someone about his work and did she remember how he used to sing those silly, off-tune songs at church bazaars to make the children laugh?

But Mama kept shouting. And I too began shouting, the words tumbling out of my mouth. Why the hell did Father Damian tell us about those dying children, anyway? Did we need to know? Didn't we have enough to deal with?

Shouting. A man walked up the street, beating a metal gong, asking us to pray for the good white people who were flying food in for the relief center, the new one they set up in St. Johns. Not all white people were killers, gong, gong, gong, not all were arming the Nigerians, gong, gong, gong.

At the relief center, I fought hard, kicking through the crowds, risking the flogging militia. I lied, cajoled, begged. I spoke British-accented English, to show how educated I was, to distinguish me from the common villagers, and afterwards I felt tears building up, as though I only had to blink and they would flow down. But I didn't blink as I walked home, I kept my eyes roundly open, my hands tightly wrapped around whatever food I got. When I got food. Dried egg yolk. Dried milk. Dried Fish. Cornmeal.

The shell-shocked soldiers in filthy shirts roamed around the relief center, muttering gibberish, children running away from them. They followed me, first begging, then trying to snatch my food. I shoved at them and cursed them and spit in their direction. Once I shoved so hard one of the men fell down, and I didn't turn to see if he got up all right. I didn't want to imagine, either, that they had once been proud Biafran soldiers like Nnamdi.

Perhaps it was the food from the relief center that made Obi sick, or all the other things we ate, the things we brushed blue mold from, or picked ants out of. He threw up, and when he was emptied, he still retched and clutched at his belly. Mama brought in an old bucket for him, helped him use it, took it out afterwards. I'm a chamber pot man, Obi joked. He still taught his classes but he talked less about Biafra and more about the past, like did I remember how Mama used to give herself facials with a paste of honey and milk? And did I remember the soursop tree in our backyard, how the yellow bees formed columns on it?

Mama went to Albatross hospital and dropped the names of all the famous doctors she had known in Enugu, so that the doctor would see her before the hundreds of women thronging the corridors. It worked, and he gave her diarrhea tablets. He could spare only five and told her to break each in two so they would last long enough to control Obi's diarrhea. Mama said she doubted that the “doctor” had even reached his fourth year in medical school, but this was Biafra two years into the war and medical students had to play doctor because the real doctors were cutting off arms and legs to keep people alive. Then Mama said that part of the roof of Albatross hospital had been blown off during an air raid. I didn't know what was funny about that but Obi laughed, and Mama joined in, and finally I did, too.

Obi was still sick, still in bed, when Ihuoma came running into our room, a woman whose daughter was lying in the yard inhaling a foul concoction of spices and urine that somebody said cured asthma. “The soldiers are coming,” Ihuoma said. She was a simple woman, a market trader, the kind of woman who would have nothing in common with Mama before Biafra. But now, she and Mama plaited each other's hair every week. “Hurry,” she said. “Bring Obi to the outer room, he can hide in the ceiling!” It took me a moment to understand, although Mama was already helping Obi up, rushing him out of the room. We had heard that the Biafran soldiers were conscripting young men, children really, and taking them to the front, that it had happened in the yard down our street a week ago, although Obi said he doubted they had really taken a twelve-year-old. We heard too that the mother of the boy was from Abakaliki, where people cut their hair when their children died, and after she watched them take her son, she took a razor and shaved all her hair off.

The soldiers came shortly after Obi and two other boys climbed into a hole in the ceiling, a hole that appeared when the wood gave way after a bombing. Four soldiers with bony bodies and tired eyes. I asked if they knew Nnamdi, if they'd heard of him, even though I knew they hadn't. The soldiers looked inside the latrine, asked Mama if she was sure she was not hiding anybody, because that would make her a saboteur and saboteurs were worse than Nigerians. Mama smiled at them, then used her old voice, the voice of when she hosted three-course dinners for Papa's friends, and offered them some water before they left.

Afterwards, Obi said he would enlist when he felt better. He owed it to Biafra and besides, fifteen-year-olds had fought in the Persian war. Before Mama left the room, she walked up to Obi and slapped his face so hard that I saw the immediate slender welts on his cheek.

The Igbo say that the chicken frowns at the cooking pot, and yet ignores the knife.

Mama and I were close to the bunker when we heard the anti-aircraft guns. “Good timing,” Mama joked, and although I tried, I could not smile. My lips were too sore, the harmattan winds had dried them to a bloody crisp during our walk to the relief center and besides, we had not been lucky, we got no food.

Inside the bunker, people were shouting Lord, Jesus, God Almighty, Jehovah. A woman was crumpled next to me, holding her toddler in her arms. The bunker was dim, but I could see the crusty ringworm marks all over the toddler's body. Mama was looking around. “Where is Obi?” she asked, clutching my arm. “What is wrong with that boy, didn't he hear the guns?” Mama got up, saying she had to find Obi, saying the bombing was far away. But it wasn't, it was really close, loud, and I tried to hold Mama, to keep her still, but I was weak from the walk and hunger and Mama pushed past me and climbed out.

The explosion that followed shook something inside my ear loose, and I felt that if I bent my head sideways, something hard-soft like cartilage would fall out. I heard things breaking and falling above, cement walls and glass louvers and trees. I closed my eyes and thought of Nnamdi's voice, just his voice, until the bombing stopped and I scrambled out of the bunker. The bodies strewn across the street, some painfully close to the bunker entrance, were still quivering, writhing. They reminded me of the chickens our steward used to kill in Enugu, how they flapped around in the dust after their throats had been slit, over and over, before finally laying quiet. Dignity dance, Obi called it.

I was bawling as I stared at the bodies, all people I knew, trying to identify Mama and Obi. But they were not there. They were in the yard, Mama helping wash the wounded, Obi writing in the dust with his finger. Mama did not scold Obi for being so careless, and I did not rebuke Mama for dashing out like that either. I went into the kitchen to soak some dried cassava for dinner.

Obi died that night. Or maybe he died in the morning. I don't know. I simply know that when Papa tugged at him in the morning and then when Mama threw herself on him, he did not stir. I went over and shook him, shook him, shook him. He was cold.

“Nwa m anwugo,”
Papa said, as though he had to say it aloud to believe it. Mama brought out her manicure kit and started to clip Obi's nails. “What are you doing?” Papa asked. He was crying. Not the kind of manly crying that is silence accompanied by tears. He was wailing, sobbing. I watched him, he seemed to swell before my eyes, the room was unsteady. Something was on my chest, something heavy like a jerry can full of water. I started to roll on the floor, to ease the weight. Outside, I heard shouting. Or was it inside? Was it Papa? Was it Papa saying
nwa m anwugo, nwa m anwugo.
Obi was dead. I grasped around, frantic, trying to remember Obi, to remember the concrete things about him. And I could not. My baby brother who made wisecracks and yet I could not remember any of them. I could not even remember anything he said the night before. I had felt that I had Obi for a long, long time and that I did not need to notice him, really notice him. He was there, I felt, he would always be there. I never had the fear that I had about Nnamdi, with Obi, the fear that I may mourn someday. And so I did not know how to mourn Obi, if I could mourn Obi. My hair was itching and I started to tear at it, felt the warm blood on my scalp, I tore some more and then more. With my hair littered on our floor, I wrapped my arms around myself and watched as Mama calmly filed Obi's nails.