Half of a Yellow Sun

  “Yes.” He took her hand in his and held it for a little too long.

  “Thank you, doctor.”

  “For what? I can’t do much.” He gestured toward the door, and Olanna knew he meant the women who were waiting outside. As she left, she glanced at the near-empty cupboard of medicine.

  Olanna ran past the town square on her way to Akwakuma Primary School in the morning. She always did that in open spaces, running until she got to the thick shade of trees that would give good cover in case of an air raid. Some children were standing under the mango tree in the school compound, throwing stones up at the fruit. She shouted, “Go to your classes, osiso!” and they scattered briefly before coming back to aim at the mangoes. She heard a cheer when one fell, and then the raised voices as they quarreled over whose throw had brought the fruit down.

  Mrs. Muokelu was in front of her classroom fiddling with the bell. The thick black hair on her arms and legs, the fuzz on her upper lip, the curled strands on her chin, and the squat muscular limbs often made Olanna wonder if perhaps Mrs. Muokelu would have been better off being born a man.

  “Do you know where I can buy antibiotics, my sister?” Olanna asked, after they hugged. “Baby has a cough, and they did not have any at the hospital.”

  Mrs. Muokelu hummed for a while to show that she was thinking. His Excellency’s face glared from the fabric of the boubou she wore every day; she often announced that she would wear nothing else until the state of Biafra was fully established.

  “Anybody can sell medicine, but you don’t know who is mixing chalk in his backyard and calling it Nivaquine,” she said. “Give me the money and I will go to Mama Onitsha. She is authentic. She will sell you Gowon’s dirty pant if you pay the right price.”

  “Let her keep the pant and just give us medicine.” Olanna was laughing.

  Mrs. Muokelu smiled and picked up the bell. “I saw a vision yesterday,” she said. Her boubou was too long for her short body; it dragged along the ground and Olanna feared that she would trip on it and fall.

  “What was the vision?” Olanna asked. Mrs. Muokelu always had visions. In the last one, she had seen Ojukwu personally leading the battle in the Ogoja sector, which meant that the enemy had been completely wiped out there.

  “Traditional warriors from Abiriba used their bows and arrows and finished the vandals in the Calabar sector. I makwa, children were walking over their bones to go to the stream.”

  “Really,” Olanna said, and kept her face serious.

  “It means Calabar will never fall,” Mrs. Muokelu said, and began to ring the bell. Olanna watched the swift movements of the masculine arm. They really had nothing in common, herself and this barely educated primary-school teacher from Eziowelle who believed in visions. Yet Mrs. Muokelu had always seemed familiar. It was not because Mrs. Muokelu plaited her hair and went with her to the Women’s Voluntary Services meetings and taught her how to preserve vegetables, but because Mrs. Muokelu exuded fearlessness, a fearlessness that reminded Olanna of Kainene.

  That evening, when Mrs. Muokelu brought the antibiotic capsules wrapped in newspaper, Olanna asked her to come inside and showed her a photo of Kainene, sitting by the pool with a cigarette between her lips.

  “This is my twin sister. She lives in Port Harcourt.”

  “Your twin!” Mrs. Muokelu exclaimed, fingering the plastic half of a yellow sun that she wore on a string around her neck. “Wonders shall never end. I did not know you were a twin, and, nekene, she does not look like you at all.”

  “We have the same mouth,” Olanna said.

  Mrs. Muokelu glanced at the photo again and shook her head. “She does not look like you at all,” she repeated.

  The antibiotics yellowed Baby’s eyes. Her coughing got better, less chesty and less whistling, but her appetite disappeared. She pushed her garri around her plate and left her pap uneaten until it congealed in a waxy lump. Olanna spent most of the cash in the envelope and bought biscuits and toffees in shiny wrappers from a woman who traded behind enemy lines, but Baby only nibbled at them. She placed Baby on her lap and forced bits of mashed yam into her mouth, and when Baby choked and started to cry, Olanna, too, fought tears. Her greatest fear was that Baby would die. It was there, the festering fear, underlying everything she thought and did. Odenigbo skipped the Agitator Corps activities and rushed home earlier, and Olanna knew he shared her fear. But they did not talk about it, as though verbalizing it would make Baby’s death imminent, until the morning she sat watching Baby sleep while Odenigbo got dressed for work. The resonating voice on Radio Biafra filled the room.

  These African states have fallen prey to the British-American imperialist conspiracy to use the committee’s recommendations as a pretext for a massive arms support for their puppet and tottering neocolonialist regime in Nigeria.…

  “That’s right!” Odenigbo said, buttoning his shirt with quick movements.

  On the bed, Baby stirred. Her face had lost its fat and was eerily adult, sunken and thin-skinned. Olanna watched her.

  “Baby won’t make it,” she said quietly.

  Odenigbo stopped and looked at her. He turned the radio off and came over and held her head against his belly. Because he said nothing at first, his silence became a confirmation that Baby would die. Olanna shifted away.

  “It’s only normal that she doesn’t have an appetite,” he said finally. But his tone lacked the certitude she was used to.

  “Look how much weight she’s lost!” Olanna said.

  “Nkem, her cough is getting better and her appetite will come back.” He began to comb his hair. She was angry with him for not saying what she wanted to hear, for not assuming the power of fate and telling her that Baby would be well, for being normal enough to continue to dress for work. His kiss before he left was quick, not the usual lingering press of lips, and that too she held against him. Tears filled her eyes. She thought about Amala. Amala had made no contact with them since the day at the hospital but she wondered now if she would be expected to tell Amala if Baby were to die.

  Baby yawned and woke up. “Good morning, Mummy Ola.” Even her voice was thin.

  “Baby, ezigbo nwa, how are you?” Olanna picked her up, hugged her, blew into her neck, and struggled with her tears. Baby felt so slight, so light. “Will you eat some pap, my baby? Or some bread? What do you want?”

  Baby shook her head. Olanna was trying to cajole Baby into drinking some Ovaltine when Mrs. Muokelu arrived with a knotted raffia bag and a self-satisfied smile.

  “They have opened a relief center on Bishop Road and I went very early this morning,” she said. “Ask Ugwu to bring me a bowl.”

  She poured some yellow powder into the bowl Ugwu brought.

  “What is that?” Olanna asked.

  “Dried egg yolk.” Mrs. Muokelu turned to Ugwu. “Fry it for Baby.”

  “Fry it?”

  “Is something wrong with your ears? Mix it with some water and fry it, osiso! They say children love the taste of this thing.”

  Ugwu gave her a slow look before he went into the kitchen. The dried egg yolk, fried in red palm oil, looked soggy and unnervingly bright-colored on the plate. Baby ate all of it.

  The relief center used to be a girls’ secondary school. Olanna imagined the grassy walled compound before the war, young women hurrying to classes in the morning and sneaking to the gate in the evening to meet young men from the government college down the road. Now it was dawn and the gate was locked. A large crowd had gathered outside. Olanna stood awkwardly among the men and women and children, who all seemed used to standing and waiting for a rusted iron gate to be opened so they could go in and be given food donated by foreign strangers. She felt discomfited. She felt as if she were doing something improper, unethical: expecting to get food in exchange for nothing. Inside the compound, she could see people moving about, tables set out with sacks of food, a board that said WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES. Some of the women clutched their baskets and peered over the gate and mutter
ed about these relief people wasting time. The men were talking among themselves; the oldest-looking man wore his red chieftaincy hat with a feather stuck in it. A young man’s voice stood out from the others, high-pitched, shouting gibberish, like a child learning to speak.

  “He has serious shell shock,” Mrs. Muokelu whispered, as if Olanna did not know. It was the only time Mrs. Muokelu spoke. She had slowly edged her way to the front of the gate, nudging Olanna to follow her each time. Somebody behind had begun a story about a Biafran victory. “I am telling you, all of the Hausa soldiers turned and ran, they had seen what was bigger than them…” The voice trailed away as a man inside the compound strode toward the gate. His T-shirt, LAND OF THE RISING SUN written on it in black, was loose around his slim body and he carried a sheaf of papers. He walked with an air of importance, his shoulders held high. He was the supervisor.

  “Order! Order!” he said, and opened the gate.

  The swift scrambling rush of the crowd surprised Olanna. She felt jostled; she swayed. It was as if they all shoved her aside in one calculated move since she was not one of them. The firm elbow of the elderly man beside her landed painfully on her side as he launched his run into the compound. Mrs. Muokelu was ahead, dashing toward one of the tables. The old man in the feathered hat fell down, promptly picked himself up, and continued his lopsided run to the queue. Olanna was surprised, too, by the militia members flogging with long whips and shouting “Order! Order!” and by the stern faces of the women at the tables, who bent and scooped into the bags held out before them and then said, “Yes! Next!”

  “Join that one!” Mrs. Muokelu said, when Olanna moved to stand some way behind her. “That is the egg-yolk line! Join it! This one is stockfish.”

  Olanna joined the queue and held herself from pushing back at the woman who tried to nudge her out. She let the woman stand in front of her. The incongruity of queuing to beg for food made her feel uncomfortable, blemished. She folded her arms, then let them lie by her sides, and then folded them again. She was close to the front when she noticed that the powder being scooped into bags and bowls was not yellow but white. Not egg yolk but cornmeal. The egg-yolk line was the next one. Olanna hurried over to join it, but the woman who was dishing out the yolk stood up and said, “Egg yolk is finished! O gwula!”

  Panic rose in Olanna’s chest. She ran after the woman. “Please,” she said.

  “What is it?” the woman asked. The supervisor, standing close by, turned to stare at Olanna.

  “My little child is sick—” Olanna said.

  The woman cut her short. “Join that line for milk.”

  “No, no, she has not been eating anything, but she ate egg yolk.” Olanna held the woman’s arm. “Biko, please; I need the egg yolk.”

  The woman pulled her arm away and hurried into the building and slammed the door. Olanna stood there. The supervisor, still staring, fanned himself with his sheaf of papers and said, “Ehe! I know you.”

  His bald head and bearded face did not look familiar at all. Olanna turned to walk away because she was sure he was one of those men who claimed to have met her before only to have a chance to make a pass.

  “I have seen you before,” he said. He moved closer, smiling now, but without the leer she expected; his face was frank and delighted. “Some years ago at Enugu Airport when I went to meet my brother who was returning from overseas. You talked to my mother. I kasiri ya obi. You calmed her down when the plane landed and did not stop right away.”

  That day at the airport came back to Olanna hazily. It had to be about seven years ago. She remembered his bush accent and his nervous excitement and that he had seemed older than he looked now.

  “Is it you?” she asked. “But how did you recognize me?”

  “How can anybody forget a face like your own? My mother has always told the story of a beautiful woman who held her hand. All the members of my family know the story. Every time somebody talks about my brother’s return, she will tell it.”

  “And how is your brother?”

  Pride lit up his face. “He is a senior man in the directorate. He is the one who gave me this job with relief.”

  Olanna immediately wondered whether he could help her get some egg yolk. But what she asked was, “And your mother is well?”

  “Very well. She is at Orlu in my brother’s house. She was very ill when my elder sister did not return from Zaria at first; we all thought those animals had done to her what they did to the others, but my sister returned—she had Hausa friends who helped her—so my mother got better. She will be happy when I tell her that I saw you.”

  He paused to glance at one of the food tables where two young girls were fighting, one saying, “I am telling you that this stockfish is mine,” and the other saying, “Ngwanu, both of us will die today.”

  He turned back to her. “Let me go and see what is going on there. But wait by the gate. I will send somebody to you with egg yolk.”

  “Thank you.” Olanna was relieved that he had offered and yet felt awkward at the exchange. At the gate, she skulked; she felt like a thief.

  “Okoromadu sent me to you,” a young woman said beside her, and Olanna almost jumped. The woman slid a bag into her hand and walked back into the compound. “Thank him for me,” Olanna called out. If the woman heard, she did not turn. The weight of the bag felt reassuring as she waited for Mrs. Muokelu; later, as she watched Baby eat until only the palm oil grease was left on the plate, she wondered how Baby could stand the awful plastic taste of the dried egg yolk.

  The next time Olanna went to the relief center, Okoromadu was talking to the crowd at the gate. Some women held rolled-up mats under their arms; they had spent the night outside the gates.

  “We have nothing for you today. The lorry carrying our supplies from Awomama was hijacked on the road,” he said, in the measured tone of a politician addressing his supporters. Olanna watched him. He enjoyed this, the power that came with knowing whether or not a group of people would eat. “We have military escorts, but it is soldiers who are hijacking us. They set up roadblocks and take everything from the lorry; they even beat the drivers. Come on Monday, and maybe we will be open.”

  A woman walked briskly up to him and thrust her baby boy into his arms. “Then take him! Feed him until you open again!” She began to walk away. The baby was thin, jaundiced, squalling.

  “Bia nwanyi! Come back, woman!” Okoromadu was holding the baby with stiff arms, away from his body.

  The other women in the crowd began to chide the mother—Are you throwing your child away? Ujo anaghi atu gi? Are you walking in God’s face?—but it was Mrs. Muokelu who went over and took the baby from Okoromadu and placed it back in the mother’s arms.

  “Take your child,” she said. “It is not his fault that there is no food today.”

  The crowd dispersed. Olanna and Mrs. Muokelu walked slowly.

  “Who knows if it is true that soldiers really hijacked their lorry?” Mrs. Muokelu said. “Who knows how much they have kept for themselves to sell? We never have salt here because they keep all the salt to trade.”

  Olanna was thinking of the way that Mrs. Muokelu had returned the baby to the mother. “You remind me of my sister,” she said.

  “How?”

  “She’s very strong. She’s not afraid.”

  “She was smoking in that picture you showed me. Like a common prostitute.”

  Olanna stopped and stared at Mrs. Muokelu.

  “I am not saying she is a prostitute,” Mrs. Muokelu said hastily. “I am only saying that it is not good that she smokes because women who smoke are prostitutes.”

  Olanna looked at her and saw a malevolence in the beard and hairy arms. She walked faster, silent, ahead of Mrs. Muokelu, and did not say goodbye before she turned in to her street. Baby was sitting outside with Ugwu.

  “Mummy Ola!”

  Olanna hugged her, smoothed her hair. Baby was holding her hand, looking up at her. “Did you bring egg yolk, Mummy Ola?”


  “No, my baby. But I will bring some soon,” she said.

  “Good afternoon, mah. You didn’t bring anything?” Ugwu asked.

  “Can’t you see that my basket is empty?” Olanna snapped. “Are you blind?”

  On Monday, she went alone to the relief center. Mrs. Muokelu did not come by to call her before dawn and was not there among the crowd. The gate was locked, the compound empty and she waited around for an hour until the crowd began to disperse. On Tuesday, the gate was locked. On Wednesday, there was a new padlock on the gate. It was not until Saturday that the gate swung open and Olanna surprised herself by how easily she joined in the inward rush of the crowd, how she moved nimbly from line to line, dodged the swinging canes of the militia, pushed back when somebody pushed her. She was leaving with small bags of cornmeal and egg yolk and two pieces of stockfish when Okoromadu arrived.

  He waved. “Beautiful woman. Nwanyi oma!” he said. He still did not know her name. He came over and slipped a tin of corned beef into her basket and then hurried away as if he had done nothing. Olanna looked down at the long red tin and nearly burst out laughing from sheer unexpected pleasure. She brought it out, examined it, ran a hand over the cold metal, and looked up to find a shell-shocked soldier watching her. His stare was blunt; it did not care to disguise itself. She put the corned beef back into her basket and covered it with a bag. She was pleased Mrs. Muokelu was not with her, so she would not have to share it. She would ask Ugwu to make a stew with it. She would save some to make sandwiches and she and Odenigbo and Baby would have an English-style tea with corned beef sandwiches.

  The shell-shocked soldier followed her out of the gate. She quickened her pace on the dusty stretch that led to the main road, but five of them, all in tattered army uniforms, soon surrounded her. They babbled and gestured toward her basket, their movements disjointed, their tones raised, and Olanna made out some of the words. “Aunty!” “Sister!” “Bring am now!” “Hungry go kill all of us!”

  Olanna clutched her basket tight. A hot childish urge to cry rose in her. “Go away! Come on, go away!”