Everything Good Will Come (41 page)

“Take care of yourself.”

“Safe journey, Uncle,” I said.

The next visit was from Grace Ameh, who came first thing in the morning. She smiled as she did the day I met her and I was relieved to see her.

“You're out and about already?” I said, hugging her.

She was wearing a dress again. This one was pale yellow with a pleated skirt, and she carried her brown portfolio. She patted my back like a comrade.

“My dear, I can't let them stop me.”

“I hope they're not still monitoring your movements.”

“They must be tired of me. I've been up and down.”

“Wicked people.”

She placed his portfolio on the table. “I've been meaning to speak to you.”

“Yes?”

“I was wondering if you would be interested in joining a campaign, for Peter Mukoro and our friends who have been detained, your father included. There will be more detainees, I'm sure, after this latest coup fiasco.”

“Yes.”

“A group of wives will spearhead this one. I think they feel left out of the wider campaign. They're looking for someone, anyone, who can be their spokesperson. I think you will be an ideal candidate.”

“Me?”

“You're the most qualified. The other lady is a bank clerk and she works full-time, and she has three young children. Bear in mind we're in the early stages. We don't have many members. Ten at most.”

“They want me?”

“I know you had reservations the first time we spoke, but that must have changed by now.”

I remembered Niyi's warning. “Yes, I want my father out of detention.”

“You may need to do more than want now. If they're conjuring up coups, they can conjure up coup plotters.”

“My father?”

“Any of the detainees. I've always said, men fight for land, and women fight for family.”

I was unable to agree, but she was in journalist mode again, stirring me in a pro-democracy direction.

“I don't know,” I said. “But let me be honest. I know your magazine's agenda, I read it regularly and I will not campaign for deposed politicians, if that is what you're really asking.”

Her eyes flickered with impatience.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “They don't care about democracy. They never have, only about power. My memory of them, throwing cash to villagers, rigging elections, setting opposition groups on fire, making themselves richer... ”

“The military enrich themselves. They've always done.”

“We didn't vote for them, but politicians, we do. The last elections, I voted only because there was an election. No other reason.”

“Our elections were the fairest they've ever been. And no one is campaigning for politicians. It's the process we're interested in. Let the process begin. Good will will take care of itself.”

“What happens if there's another coup? There's nothing to stop the army from coming in again.”

She knew the facts better than I did. Coup after coup after coup, especially on the west coast of Africa. 1963, Slyvanus Olympio of Togo, killed. 1966, Tafawa Balewa, our first Prime Minister, killed. The same year, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. After that, it was non-stop. No one in the world recognized that African soldiers had fought against Hitler, but almost everyone was aware they spent time deposing their own rulers, heading civil wars from Somalia to Liberia, fueling civil unrest from Algeria to Angola.

She asked, “You're suggesting we never seek democratic rule because of the threat of military coups?”

“I'm saying we may never have a democratic government if we have an army.”

“Every country needs an army, to protect its people.”

“Evidently, in Africa we need armies to kill our people.”

She smiled. “Your views are impractical. Politicians with pure intentions and a country with no army.
Na wa
, I hope you're never thinking of running for office.”

“No.”

“So, will you settle for our small campaign, instead?”

This time I was thinking of my time in prison.

“I have a child to think about in a few months,” I said.

“I wouldn't put you in a compromising situation.”

“Tell me. What situation are you putting me in?”

“Let me see, a group of wives, coming together once a month, in someone's house, doing what women do best. Gossiping.” She winked.

“I've never passed up the opportunity to gossip.”

She smiled.

“Please,” I said. “Give me time.”

“Of course,” she said.

They, too, would need time, she said, to raise funds. Their aim was to increase local awareness about detentions. The wives felt that only important people were being spotlighted. Grace agreed. “Not all detainees are equal.”

She would be out of Lagos, meanwhile, covering a story in the Delta. There had been more detentions following protests against oil companies. “Peter Mukoro is from those parts,” she explained. “It was his story to tell. He's the son of an Urhobo farmer.”

“Wasn't he in a family dispute over the farm?”

“No, his dispute was with an oil company. They destroyed his father's land. The irony of it is that Peter Mukoro was offered a scholarship by the same company. He rejected it and became a journalist.”

“I didn't know.”

“Not many people do. He's a true son of the soil.”

“They say it's a wasteland in the Delta.”

“You should see,” she said. “Oil spills, barren farmland, villages burned down. They don't pray for rain anymore. When it rains, it shrivels their plants.”

“Oil.”

“It's always been about the oil. The control of it. They tell us we can't get along, ethnic tensions, Africans not ready for democratic rule. We know exactly where we want to go in this country. A few greedy people won't let us get there.”

I thought about Niyi again. “My husband says he can name five men in our country who can pay off our national debt, and a hundred companies overseas who earn a higher turnover than our oil revenues. I think that it will be better when the oil finally dries up. Maybe then we can have leaders who will get on with the business of running this country.”

“Maybe. But meanwhile their greed is our problem. Here and in the rest of Africa.”

Drought, famine, and disease. There was no greater disaster on our continent than the few who had control over our resources: oil, diamonds, human beings. They would sell anything and anyone to buyers overseas.

Grace Ameh reached for her portfolio.

“You have to go?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “To be honest, I don't know how much longer we can continue. We hold editorial meetings in churches and mosques these days. The government has warned us not to speculate about the coup. You've heard?”

“I don't speculate.”

“They will arrest anyone who does.”

“What keeps you going?” I asked, escorting her to the door. “You have a family to think of, and yet you risk your life to tell a story.”

She smiled. “Because they detain us and fire bomb our offices? You can't kill a testimony of a country and of a people. That's what we're fighting for, a chance to be heard. And the second thing is, I love my country. ”

Did I? I believed I could live nowhere else. I hoped to be buried nowhere else. Was that enough to say that I loved my country? I barely knew the place. We had thirty-six geographical states, from the triad of North, West, East regions the British created before I was born. My father was from a town in the middle belt of Nigeria; my mother, from the West. They lived in Lagos. I was born here, raised here. Privilege never did blind my eyes, but there were parts of the city I'd never visited, parts I never needed to. Most of my country I had not seen, not even the Delta Grace Ameh spoke of. I only spoke one of our languages, Yoruba.

There were times I'd felt my hand leprous, bringing out my Nigerian passport, in case an immigration officer mistook me for one of those drug smugglers who were giving us a bad name around the world; other times I'd felt happy to wave a flag for women in my country; African women. Black women. What was the country I loved? The country I would fight for? Should it have borders?

Walking to the window, I caught a glimpse of Grace Ameh leaving our premises. She stopped to buy sugar cane from one of the women who sat across the road. The woman had been there from morning, would probably be there all day. Her ware couldn't be worth more than twenty naira. The cheap pen in my hand was worth more. “People are hungry,” people liked to say, especially when the political debate heated up, “People are starving
out there!
” I'd heard it said, with some pride, that we didn't have the same type of hunger as other African countries where people died because their bodies eventually rejected food. Hunger in my country always looked like a child with a swollen belly, and I strongly believed that no one, except those who were hungry, should speak of it. The rest of us, unless we were prepared to give up half our food, were only entitled to shut up. But this woman selling sugar cane, would she eat better on the promise of a vote? And if her children were hungry, could she tear up her ballot to slip into their mouths? I was almost certain she didn't vote, but the result of the general election was considered to be the will of the people. Some brave people caught bullets in their chests defending this will. I was not one of them. I stayed at home that day. The government had warned us not to participate in the protest, and our mothers reiterated the message at home. What freedom was worth dying for? Soweto, Tiananmen Square. Remember.

I was lying on my bed. One arm was over my belly, the other was behind my head. Through the mosquito netting across my bedroom window I could see a huge satellite dish perched on the house across the road. It was the sort of afternoon that made me want to rip my clothes off. We had no electricity.

I was thinking of campaigns, military decrees, constitutional rights. In a democratic system, with a constitution in place, a citizen could challenge injustices, even if the system itself was flawed. With the military in power, without a constitution, there was no other recourse besides protest, peaceful or violent. I was thinking of my country, which I'd done nothing for. If she were a Lagos woman, she would be laughing right in my face. “Did you give me food to eat? Did you put clothes on my back? No. So, clear out of my sight, with your miserable face.”

Downstairs my mother-in-law chatted to Niyi about
frajon
, a dish prepared for Good Friday. “Enitan can't make
frajon
?” she was saying. “I'm surprised. It is so easy to make. All she needs to do is soak the beans overnight, boil them till they're soft, then grind them with a blender, then stir in coconut milk, boil it with nutmeg. But she must wrap the nutmeg in muslin cloth. Remember how your uncle broke his tooth? You don't want that to happen, eh? So. When the
frajon
is boiled, then she can make the fish stew. You have fish? Not too bony fish, and I prefer not to fry mine, but that is her choice.
Frajon
is easy to make. In my day it was real work. We used to have to grind the beans and coconuts on slates, sift it... ”

I turned over, imagining they had wrapped me in white muslin cloth and dipped me in scalding
frajon
. When I died, I would be called to give account of my time here on earth. What a pity if I said I cooked and cleaned. What a pity, even, if I couldn't give account of a little sin.

I imagined I marched downstairs to where they sat, banged my fist on the kitchen table and yelled, “Get out of my house!” Filled my lungs so our president could hear it in his presidential palace: “Get out of my country!”

I got up and stripped naked. The mirror on the dressing table was short so I could see my torso only. I liked the swell of my stomach; the roundness, tautness, softness of my hips; stretched nipples, darkened. I had not been touched in four months.

“Enitan?”

My mother-in-law stood in the doorway. I hurried over to my bed to retrieve my clothes. I was tripping and huddling over.

“Sit,” she finally said.

She patted the bed, and I sat next to her, disheveled. She spoke without mixing her words. “Niyi has told me everything. I don't want you two to fight anymore. It's enough now.”

“Yes, ma,” I said.

She took my hand.

“I was not born into this family. I married into it. It was not easy for me as a young bride. I'd just finished nursing when I met Niyi's father. He was a difficult man. Difficult. The Franco men are difficult. But you know, my dear, when two rams meet head on, nothing can happen until one backs down.”

“I know, ma.”