"We are going to publish underground now," Papa said. "It is no longer safe for my staff."
I knew that publishing underground meant that the newspaper would be published from a secret location. Yet I imagined Ade Coker and the rest of the staff in an office beneath the ground, a fluorescent lamp flooding the dark damp room, the men bent over their desks, writing the truth.
That night, when Papa prayed, he added longer passages urging God to bring about the downfall of the Godless men ruling our country, and he intoned over and over, "Our Lady Shield of the Nigerian People, pray for us."
The school break was short, only two weeks, and the Saturday before school resumed, Mama took Jaja and me to the market to get new sandals and bags. We didn't need them; our bags and brown leather sandals were still new, only a term old. But it was the only ritual that was ours alone, going to the market before the start of each new term, rolling the car window down as Kevin drove us there without having to ask permission from Papa. In the outskirts of the market, we let our eyes dwell on the half-naked mad people near the rubbish dumps, on the men who casually stopped to unzip their trousers and urinate at corners, on the women who seemed to be haggling loudly with mounds of green vegetables until the head of the trader peeked out from behind. Inside the market, we shrugged off traders who pulled us along the dark passages, saying, "I have what you want," or "Come with me, it's here," even though they had no idea what we wanted. We scrunched up our noses at the smells of bloody fresh meat and musty dried fish, and lowered our heads from the bees that buzzed in thick clouds over the sheds of the honey sellers. As we left the markets with our sandals and some fabric Mama had bought, we saw a small crowd gathered around the vegetable stalls we had passed earlier, the ones lining the road. Soldiers were milling around. Market women were shouting, and many had both hands placed on their heads, in the way that people do to show despair or shock. A woman lay in the dirt, wailing, tearing at her short afro. Her wrapper had come undone and her white underwear showed.
"Hurry up," Mama said, moving closer to Jaja and me, and I felt that she wanted to shield us from seeing the soldiers and the women. As we hurried past, I saw a woman spit at a soldier, I saw the soldier raise a whip in the air. The whip was long. It curled in the air before it landed on the woman's shoulder. Another soldier was kicking down trays of fruits, squashing papayas with his boots and laughing.
When we got into the car, Kevin told Mama that the soldiers had been ordered to demolish the vegetable stalls because they were illegal structures. Mama said nothing; she was looking out of the window, as though she wanted to catch the last sight of those women.
I thought about the woman lying in the dirt as we drove home. I had not seen her face, but I felt that I knew her, that I had always known her. I wished I could have gone over and helped her up, cleaned the red mud from her wrapper.
I thought about her, too, on Monday, as Papa drove me to school. He slowed down on Ogui Road to fling some crisp naira notes at a beggar sprawled by the roadside, near some children hawking peeled oranges. The beggar stared at the note, then stood up and waved after us, clapping and jumping. I had assumed he was lame. I watched him in the rearview mirror, my eyes steadily on him, until he disappeared from sight. He reminded me of the market woman in the dirt. There was a helplessness to his joy, the same kind of helplessness as in that woman's despair.
The walls that surrounded Daughters of the Immaculate Heart Secondary School were very high, similar to our compound walls, but instead of coiled electrified wires, they were topped by jagged pieces of green glass with sharp edges jutting out. Papa said the walls had swayed his decision when I finished elementary school. Discipline was important, he said. You could not have youngsters scaling walls to go into town and go wild, the way they did at the federal government colleges.
"These people cannot drive," Papa muttered when we got to the school gates, where cars nosed up to each other, horning. "There is no prize for being first to get into the school compound."
Hawkers, girls much younger than I, defied the school gate men, edging closer and closer to the cars to offer peeled oranges and bananas and groundnuts, their moth-eaten blouses slipping off their shoulders.
Papa finally eased the car into the wide school compound and parked near the volleyball court, beyond the stretch of manicured lawn. "Where is your class?" he asked.
I pointed to the building by the group of mango trees. Papa came out of the car with me and I wondered what he was doing, why he was here, why he had driven me to school and asked Kevin to take Jaja.
Sister Margaret saw him as we walked to my class. She waved gaily, from the midst of students and a few parents, then quickly waddled over to us. Her words flew generously out of her mouth: how was Papa doing, was he happy with my progress at Daughters of the Immaculate Heart, would he be at the reception for the bishop next week?
Papa changed his accent when he spoke, sounding British, just as he did when he spoke to Father Benedict. He was gracious, in the eager-to-please way that he always assumed with the religious, especially with the white religious. As gracious as when he presented the check for refurbishing the Daughters of the Immaculate Heart library. He said he had just come to see my class, and Sister Margaret told him to let her know if he needed anything.
"Where is Chinwe Jideze?" Papa asked, when we got to the front of my class.
A group of girls stood at the door, talking. I looked around, feeling a weight around my temples. What would Papa do? Chinwe's light-skinned face was at the center of the group, as usual.
"She is the girl in the middle," I said. Was Papa going to talk to her? Yank at her ears for coming first? I wanted the ground to open up and swallow the whole compound.
"Look at her," Papa said. "How many heads does she have?"
"One/' I did not need to look at her to know that, but I looked at her, anyway.
Papa pulled a small mirror, the size of a powder compact, from his pocket. "Look in the mirror."
I stared at him.
"Look in the mirror."
I took the mirror, peered at it.
"How many heads do you have, gbo?" Papa asked, speaking Igbo for the first time.
"One."
"The girl has one head, too, she does not have two. So why did you let her come first?"
"It will not happen again, Papa."
A light dust lkuku was blowing, in brown spirals like uncoiling springs, and I could taste the sand that settled on my lips.
"Why do you think I work so hard to give you and Jaja the best? You have to do something with all these privileges. Because God has given you much, he expects much from you. He expects perfection. I didn't have a father who sent me to the best schools. My father spent his time worshiping gods of wood and stone. I would be nothing today but for the priests and sisters at the mission. I was a houseboy for the parish priest for two years. Yes, a houseboy. Nobody dropped me off at school. I walked eight miles every day to Nimo until I finished elementary school. I was a gardener for the priests while I attended St. Gregorys Secondary School."
I had heard this all before, how hard he had worked, how much the missionary Reverend Sisters and priests had taught him, things he would never have learned from his idol worshiping father, my Papa-Nnukwu. But I nodded and looked alert. I hoped my class girls were not wondering why my father and I had chosen to come to school to have a long conversation in front of the classroom building.
Finally, Papa stopped talking and took the mirror back. "Kevin will be here to pick you up," he said.
"Yes, Papa."
"Bye. Read well." He hugged me, a brief side hug.