“Alaba. .”
“No, Ma, I have to tell you my mind. It’s not fair! All of them are abroad enjoying their lives, but look at me, look at my life, look at what Amos has done to me. I can’t be the only one doing everything. Taking care of my children, taking care of my husband, taking care of my mother, going to my boutique every day because all those girls I hired are thieves! I have seven children, plus another one coming, and now Amos has gone to give my house girl belleh! Nobody can take me for granted o! I’m not a donkey that will be carrying everybody’s—”
Ma Bille raised her hand. “Sit down, Alaba. You’re giving me a headache.”
Alaba strode to the seat opposite Ma Bille and dropped into it. She crossed her leg, clutched the arms of the chair like it was hurtling through the air, and stared into space, scowling.
“Everybody has their own life to live,” Ma Bille said quietly. “I don’t expect anybody to come and take care of me. I don’t ask any of you to feed me. All I’m asking is that you follow me to the hospital for my operation tomorrow.”
“But I can’t, don’t you see?” Alaba said. She stretched her hands, palms open, toward her mother. “I have to be in the house when the driver brings the children from school. I can’t leave them alone, I have to cook for them. If Tokini was still around then I would have followed you, no problem, but I can’t, not now, not until I get a new house girl.”
Ma Bille opened her mouth to speak, but shut it without making a sound. She bowed her head, stared into her lap, struggled to compose her face. One word rose above the hubbub in her head—abandonment. Her husband, her youth, her health, her sight even: all had abandoned her. Her children, too, had abandoned her. All the years she had given, the sacrifices, the worrying, the love — everything she gave, she gave for nothing.
“No, not for nothing,” she murmured. “I gave because I wanted to.”
Alaba glanced at her. “What did you say, Ma? I didn’t catch that.”
Ma Bille raised her eyes, stared at her daughter’s face, searching its contours for traces of the child she had breastfed, whose nose she had sucked mucus from, whose mouth had opened wide to gulp food from her fingers. Memories shuffled through her head, blinding her with images. When that face was seven years old, the child had tripped over a broom and gashed her forehead against the dining table, right there, where that scar glistened beneath the face powder. At seventeen, she had come first in her class, and as a treat Ma Bille took her to the Chinese restaurant that used to be on the third floor of Chanrai House. When she was in her final year in university — she was twenty-three then — Ma Bille sold her finest pieces of gold jewelry, presents from her late husband, to the black-market merchants on Adaka Boro Street, to pay Alaba’s fees. That night, when Alaba came home from the hostel to collect the money, she hugged Ma Bille and whispered against her cheek, “I love you, Ma.”
I love you too, Alaba, Ma Bille thought, gazing at her daughter’s averted face. All the support she had given, and she still gave, accompanying her daughter to the hospital whenever she went into labor, bathing her grandchildren when they were babies, feeding them, rocking them to sleep, passing on to her daughter the tricks of child caring — everything she gave, she gave because she wanted to.
Ma Bille said her daughter’s name.
“Yes?” Alaba answered in a sullen tone, and sneaked a look at her mother.
“That belt you’re wearing, it’s too tight. Go and remove it. It’s not good for the baby.”
The children were happy to see their grandmother. Every time Ma Bille responded to the greedy questions they shot at her — all six of them who had tumbled into the house in a storm of dust and noise — she said their names: Wariso, Sekibo, Owanari, Nimi (whom everyone except her called Small Nimi), Ibinabo, and Dein. The oldest of Alaba’s children, Enefaa, who was studying for a law degree at the University of Jos, was Ma Bille’s namesake. Amos had insisted that his children be given native names, and Ma Bille, whenever she had the chance, instructed her son-in-law on the pronunciations, explained the meanings, described the idiomatic treasures of his children’s names.
It was evening when Ma Bille stood up to leave. The driver had closed for the day and Alaba was too busy with the children to drive her mother home, but it didn’t matter, because Ma Bille said she wanted to walk to the bus stop. The exercise was good for her legs, she told her daughter.
Six-year-old Ibinabo escorted her from the house, singing in a breathless voice and skipping circles around her grandmother. Her smooth legs flashed; her bare feet scattered gravel on the path. The gateman emerged from his cubicle, pulled open the gate, and Ibinabo crooned her good-bye, then whirled round and raced up the driveway toward the house. Ma Bille passed through the gateway and headed down the road she had come, her footsteps dragging. The road ahead was empty, darkened by twilight, bleak. As Ma Bille approached the fence of the next compound she heard a strange noise behind her, turned around to look, and froze.
A dog stood before her, near enough that she could smell its earthy odor. It was a big one, an outsized beast: its thick legs were splayed under the weight of its trunk. Its short-haired coat was brindled, brown and black, and a ruff of spiky fur grew over its shoulder and down the curve of its spine. A studded collar was fastened around its neck, and the leather leash snaked between its legs. It grinned at Ma Bille, its tongue lolling, its tail stump twitching.
“Don’t worry — don’t be afraid.” The speaker, a blond, teenaged girl, approached Ma Bille at a saunter. She was panting. “Here, Granbull, here, boy — woohoo!” she said to the dog, and stooped to pick up the leash. “Let’s leave the nice lady alone.”
When she tugged the leash, the dog opened its mouth and let out a boom. Then another, and another, each bark deeper, more ferocious. It resisted the girl’s desperate pulling without taking its heavy-lidded eyes off Ma Bille. Its red, serrated lips flapped and quivered.
“Behave, Granbull!” the girl commanded. She threw Ma Bille a close-lipped smile. “He’s never acted this way before. Maybe he knows you?”
“No, it’s not that,” Ma Bille said. “I have the blood of five dogs on my hands.”
The dog was still barking, its snout flecked with foam, and the girl was staring, her eyes round with shock, when Ma Bille turned and walked away.
She remembered their names, all five of them. “One for you to name and look after,” her husband had said to each of the children every time he brought home a round-bellied Alsatian puppy. It was Ineba who started the trend in beverages. She was gifted the first dog, and she named it Whiskey after her father’s favorite drink. Three months later, when Otonye got his dog, he told his sister, “Now Whiskey has her Brandy.” Alaba called hers Sherry, because, she said, the name sounded aristocratic. Ibiso, even then, had faith only in what she knew, so she called her dog Cocoa. Nimi chose Coffee, because Beer or Tea or Coke did not sound to him like names even a dog would bear.
The dogs, all five of them, died on the same day thirty-six years ago, on a hot July afternoon. Because the sun was out and it was a public holiday, Ma Bille had instructed the children to wash the animals. After the bath, the dogs were tethered to the verandah railing so that they would not roll in the yard and soil their wet coats. Ma Bille was in the parlor darning school uniforms and listening to Boma Erekosima on FM radio when Nimi entered in tears and told her Coffee was suffering. She went outside to see for herself what the matter was. In the struggle to free themselves the dogs had entangled their chains, and they were bunched together in one corner of the verandah, where the floor was puddled with dog-hair-colored water and scattered with dogshit. The dogs whined and yowled, strained against their chains, looked dejected. They were plagued by a buzzing swarm of flies. Ma Bille directed the children to unravel the chains and clean up the mess, but even after the floor was washed with Izal disinfectant, the flies remained. The dogs shook themselves fiercely, and snapped at the air, and ducked their heads, but the flies circled and swooped, tormenting them. In a final exasperated effort Ma Bille fetched the can of Baygon insecticide from her bedroom and sprayed the floor, the walls, the flies, the dogs. The flies dropped out of the air, the dogs lay down in relief, Nimi wiped his tears, and Ma Bille went back inside to catch her radio program. Ten minutes later the dogs began to howl, and they did not cease this racket until they were stretched out in all corners of the yard, their coats sodden with diarrhea and blood and vomit, their jaws locked in the snarl of death.