3. Problem At Home

In fact, there was a big hullabaloo going on. Pa had been called from work, Ma was with the police being charged with child neglect, and the child that has caused all the fuss was little Adah, staring at all of them, afraid and yet triumphant. They took Ma to the police station and forced her to drink a bowl of garri with water. Garri is a tasteless sort of flour made from cassava. When cooked and eaten with soup, it is delicious. But when uncooked, the watered type Ma was forced to drink; it became a torture, purgatorial in fact!

These policemen! Adah still wondered where they got all their unwritten laws from. This happened at the police station near Sabo market. Ma told them with tears in her eyes that she couldn't swallow the garri no more. She must drink the whole lot, she was told, and told in such language that Adah hid behind Mr. Cole. If Ma did not finish the garri, the policemen went on, they would take her to court. How they laughed at their own jokes, those horrid men; and how they scared Adah!  Ma went on gulping, her eyes dilating. Adah was scared; she started to howl, and Pa, who had said very little, begged the policemen to stop. They should let Ma go now, he explained, for she had learnt her lesson. She was a great talker, very careless, otherwise Adah would not have been able to slip away as she had. Women, were like that. They sat in the house, ate, gossiped and slept. They would not even look after their children properly. But the policemen should forgive her now, because Pa thought she had had enough garri.

The chief policeman considered this plea, them looked once more at Ma, cupping the garri to her mouth with her fingers, and smiled. He took pity on Ma, but warned her that if such a thing should happen again, he personally would take her to the court.

'You know what that means?' he thundered.

Ma nodded. She knew court means two things: a heavy fine which she would never be able to afford, or prison, which she called 'pilizon'. They advised her to sell one of her colorful lappas and send Adah to school, because she looked like a child who is keen to learn. At this point Ma gave Adah a queer look – a look that contained a mixture of fear, love and wonder. Adah shrank back, still clutching Mr. Cole.

When they got home from the station, the news has already gone round. Adah had nearly sent her mother to 'pilizon'. So frequently was this sentence repeated that Adah began to be quite proud of her impulsive move. She felt triumphant, especially when she heard Pa's friends advising him to make sure he allowed Adah to start school soon. This discussion took place on the veranda, where the visitors were downing two kegs of palm-wine to wet their parched throats. When thy departed, Adah was left alone with her parents.

Things were not as bad as she thought they would be. Pa fished out the cane and gave her few strokes for Ma's benefit. Adah did not mind that because they were not hard strokes. Maybe Pa had been mellowed by the talks with his friends, because when Adah cried after the caning, he came and talked to her seriously, just as if she were a grown up! He called her by her pet name, 'Nne nna', which means 'Father's mother', which was not so far from the meaning of Adah's real name. how's she came by that name was a story itself.

When Pa's mother was dying, she had promised Pa that she would come again; his time as his daughter. She was sorry she could not bring him up. She died when Pa was only five. She would come again, she had promised, to compensate him for leaving him so young. Well, Pa grew up and married Ma at the Christ Church in Lagos, which was a Christian church. But Pa did not forget his mother's promise. The only reservation he had was that he did not want a girl for his first child. Well, his mother was impatient! Ma had a girl. Pa thought Adah was the very picture of his mother, even though Adah was born two months prematurely. He was quite positive that the little, damp monkey-like thing with unformed face was his 'come back mother'. So she was loaded with strings of names: 'Nne nna', 'Adah nna', 'Adah Eze'. Adah Eze means Princess, daughter of a kiln. Sometimes they called her Adah Eze, sometimes Adah nna and sometimes Nne nna. But this string of names was too long and too more so for impatient Ma. So she became just 'Adah'. She didn't mind this. It was short: everybody could pronounce it. When she grew up, and was attending the Methodist Girls' High School in Lagos, where she came in contact with European missionaries, her name was one of the first ones they learned and pronounced correctly. This usually gave her a start against the other girls with long names like Adebisi, Gbamgbose, or Oluwafunmilayo Olorunshogo!

So that was how Adah started school. Pa would not hear of her going to the Methodist Primary; she was to go to the posh one, Ladi-Lak. Success in life would surely have come earlier to her if Pa had lived. But he died soon after, and Adah and her brother Ben were transferred to an inferior school. Despite all this, Adah's dream never left her.

It was understandable that Ma refused to take her to see the new lawyer, because Adah had started school only a few weeks before the preparation for the great man's arrival. Ma got really furious with Adah for asking such a thing.

'You made me drink garri only last month until I nearly burst my stomach, all because you said you wanted school. Now we gave you school, you want the wharf. No, you won't go. You chose school. To school you must go from now until you go grey.

How right Ma was! Adah would never stop learning. She had been a student ever since.

Adah's face had fallen at this. If only she had known before, she would have staged her school drama after the arrival of Lawyer Nweze. But as it turned out, she missed little. The women practiced their songs several times and showed off their uniform to which they had given the name – Ezidiji ji de ogoli ome oba, meaning: 'When a good man holds a woman she becomes a queen.'

They wove the name of the uniform into the song and it was a joy to hear and see these women, happy in their innocence, just like children. Their wants were simple and easily met. Not like those of their children who later got caught up in the entangled web of industrialization, Adah's Ma had no experience of having to keep up mortgage payments: she never knew what it was to have a family car, or worry about its innards; she had no worries about pollution, the population explosion or race. Was it surprising, therefore, that she was happy, being unaware of the so-called joys of civilization and all its pitfalls?