The Thing Around Your Neck - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie [52]
Two days ago she had buried her child in a grave near a vegetable patch in their ancestral hometown of Umunnachi, surrounded by well-wishers she did not remember now. The day before, she had driven her husband in the boot of their Toyota to the home of a friend, who smuggled him out of the country. And the day before that, she hadn’t needed to take a passport photo; her life was normal and she had taken Ugonna to school, had bought him a sausage roll at Mr. Biggs, had sung along with Majek Fashek on her car radio. If a fortune-teller had told her that she, in the space of a few days, would no longer recognize her life, she would have laughed. Perhaps even given the fortune-teller ten naira extra for having a wild imagination.
“Sometimes I wonder if the American embassy people look out of their window and enjoy watching the soldiers flogging people,” the man behind her was saying. She wished he would shut up. It was his talking that made it harder to keep her mind blank, free of Ugonna. She looked across the street again; the soldier was walking away now, and even from this distance she could see the glower on his face. The glower of a grown man who could flog another grown man if he wanted to, when he wanted to. His swagger was as flamboyant as that of the men who four nights ago broke her back door open and barged in.
Where is your husband? Where is he? They had torn open the wardrobes in the two rooms, even the drawers. She could have told them that her husband was over six feet tall, that he could not possibly hide in a drawer. Three men in black trousers. They had smelled of alcohol and pepper soup, and much later, as she held Ugonna’s still body, she knew that she would never eat pepper soup again.
Where has your husband gone? Where? They pressed a gun to her head, and she said, “I don’t know, he just left yesterday,” standing still even though the warm urine trickled down her legs.
One of them, the one wearing a black hooded shirt who smelled the most like alcohol, had eyes that were startlingly bloodshot, so red they looked painful. He shouted the most, kicked at the TV set. You know about the story your husband wrote in the newspaper? You know he is a liar? You know people like him should be in jail because they cause trouble, because they don’t want Nigeria to move forward?
He sat down on the sofa, where her husband always sat to watch the nightly news on NTA, and yanked at her so that she landed awkwardly on his lap. His gun poked her waist. Fine woman, why you marry a troublemaker? She felt his sickening hardness, smelled the fermentation on his breath.
Leave her alone, the other one said. The one with the bald head that gleamed, as though coated in Vaseline. Let’s go.
She pried herself free and got up from the sofa, and the man in the hooded shirt, still seated, slapped her behind. It was then that Ugonna started to cry, to run to her. The man in the hooded shirt was laughing, saying how soft her body was, waving his gun. Ugonna was screaming now; he never screamed when he cried, he was not that kind of child. Then the gun went off and the palm oil splash appeared on Ugonna’s chest.
“See oranges here,” the man in line behind her said, offering her a plastic bag of six peeled oranges. She had not noticed him buy them.
She shook her head. “Thank you.”
“Take one. I noticed that you have not eaten anything since morning.