I Do Not Come to You by Chance - By Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani Page 0,102

proud. If you check it, poor people are some of the proudest people in this world.’

My father, for example.

Ola kept quiet. Then she nodded.

‘I agree with you, you know. Poor people can be soooo proud. There was a time back in school . . . that time I joined the Feed the Nation people . . . I don’t know if you remember?’

Like almost everything else about her, I remembered it clearly.

‘When we used to go out every Sunday to feed poor people in the streets. One time, there was this man who came and asked us for his own pack of rice and sachet of water. We gave him. Then he asked us to give him another one for his wife.’

They asked the man to go and bring his wife; they were only supposed to feed those physically present. He explained that his wife was ill. They asked him to imagine what would happen if everybody collected an extra portion for a spouse who was ill. There would be nothing for those who actually came.

As Ola spoke, a huge fly came and took up residence on her left ear. I wanted to stretch out my hand and frighten it away, but for some reason, I did not.

‘Do you know that the man got so angry with us?’ The fly ran away but returned almost immediately. ‘He told us that we were insulting him, that we were calling him a liar. That did we think it was a big deal that we were giving him food?’

Then he flung the rice and water on the floor in front of them and stormed off.

‘Can you imagine?’ she concluded.

She had narrated the story to me the very same day it happened. Still, I shook my head and tut-tut-ed in all the right places as if I were hearing it for the first time.

‘Like I said before, I’m quite surprised that somebody like you is doing 419. You used to be so soft and innocent. How do you cope with swindling all those white people of their money? Don’t you feel guilty?’

I shrugged. The fly left her ear at last.

‘Well, I guess I just don’t think about it too much,’ I replied.

‘But how can you not feel guilty?’

She appeared truly bemused. What was there to be guilty about? Was anybody feeling guilty about the artefacts and natural resources pilfered from Africa over the centuries? My mugus were merely fulfilling their role in the food chain.

‘So how’s married life?’ I asked, changing the topic.

‘Oh, everything is fine,’ she replied quickly. The smile that should have accompanied her voice came some nanoseconds after she had spoken. ‘My husband opened a new headquarters in Enugu, so we moved from Umuahia almost immediately after we got married.’

She paused.

‘The kids and I will be leaving for London by next weekend.’ Her face lit up with excitement; emotion had now returned. ‘We’ll be there for about two weeks and then we’ll go on to America.’

She rhapsodised some more about the forthcoming holiday trip. I asked her what she was doing at present. All the excitement left her voice in a deep sigh.

‘My husband doesn’t want me to work. He wants me to just stay at home and take care of the kids and it’s really frustrating. Everybody has tried talking to him but he’s been adamant.’

Apparently, the man’s decision had taken her by surprise. I could have warned her for free. His actions perfectly fitted the profile of the average, uneducated Igbo entrepreneur.

‘What type of job would you have wanted to do?’ I asked.

‘I’d like to work in a large organisation . . . Something related to my degree. Or maybe just get one of these bank jobs that everybody seems to be getting these days. Anyway, I’ve already made up my mind. As soon as my youngest child starts school, I’m going to look for a job.’

‘What if your husband says no?’

She frowned.

‘Kings, leaving my brain to lie fallow is too high a penalty to pay for maternity. God knows I won’t allow that to happen.’

Good luck to her. The best the man would probably ever allow her was a boutique where his friends’ wives could go and purchase expensive shoes and bags.

‘How old are your children?’

She smiled.

‘Ah, I have some pictures here.’

She dipped into her Louis Vuitton handbag and whipped out a batch of photographs.

‘These are from the birthday party of my first child.’

I inspected each photograph. There was a shot with the two children sitting in front