I Do Not Come to You by Chance - By Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani Page 0,4

of the Bible make mention of it. That old earth must have had another man who looked like a monkey. But when creating the new earth, God decided to make the new type of man in His own image.’

Augustina’s head swung from side to side like someone in a mini trance. He talked more about dinosaurs and other strange animals that must have existed in that old earth, about how scientists had even been finding their bones. Right there and then, Augustina fell in love with his brain. Throughout that night, his voice led a procession of his words all around her mind. She wondered how all this information could be contained in one head, how all this confidence could be exuding from one breath.

Afterwards, he came more and more often to see her. Eventually, he raised the issue again.

‘Augustina, why don’t you go to university?’

She smiled on one side of her face and kicked at a passing earthworm. Each time Augustina was tempted to consider the issue, she remembered her father. He would never approve. The sensible thing for a girl to focus on at this time of her life was getting married and building a home.

‘I don’t want to go back to school,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ve decided that I want to sew and that’s what I’m going to do. Please stop asking me.’

They sat in silence while she watched the earthworm wriggle away to a better life. This was the first time she had spoken to him sternly. She hoped he was not put off, and she was already composing a suitable apology in her mind when he uncrossed his legs and sat superintendent straight.

‘If you go to university,’ he said, ‘I will marry you.’

Augustina gaped like a trout.

‘Augustina, if you agree to go back to school, I’ll assist with your fees, and when you finish, I’ll marry you.’

That was how he proposed.

On the day that her admission letter to study Clothing and Textile at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, arrived, Engineer leapt over the moon and back.

‘Augustina,’ he said feverishly, ‘our children are going to be great. They’re going to have the best education. They’re going to be engineers and doctors and lawyers and scientists. They’re going to have English names and they’re going to speak English like the queen. And from now on, stop calling me Engineer. Call me Paulinus.’

Then he lost control of himself and did something that he had never done before. He ran his fingers through her hair and told her that he loved her.

Part 1

Okuko si na ya anaghi eti ka egbe ji ya haa

ya; kama na ya na-eti ka oha nuru olu ya.

The chicken carried away by a hawk says that it is crying not

so that the thing carrying it will let it go, but so that the

public will hear its voice and be witness.

One

My taste buds had been hearing the smell of my mother’s cooking and my stomach had started talking. Finally, she called out from the kitchen and my siblings rushed in to fetch their meals. Being the opara of the family, I was entitled to certain privileges. As first son, I sat at the dining table and waited. My mother soon appeared carrying a broad plastic tray with an enamel bowl of water, a flat aluminium plate of garri, and a dainty ceramic bowl of egusi soup.

I washed my hands and began to eat slowly. The soup should have been a thick concoction of ukazi leaves, chunks of dried fish and boiled meat, red palm oil, maggi cubes - all boiled together until they formed a juicy paste. But what I had in front me were a midget-sized piece of meat, bits of vegetable, and random specks of egusi, floating around in a thin fluid that looked like a polluted stream.

The piece of meat looked up at me and laughed. I would have laughed back but there was nothing funny about the situation at all. My mother was not a novice in the kitchen. This pitiful presentation was a reflection of the circumstances in our home. Life was hard. Times were bad. Things had not always been like this.

After her Clothing and Textile degree, my mother had travelled to the United Kingdom with my father. They returned armed with Masters degrees. He was posted to the Ministry of Works and Transport in Umuahia; she acquired a sizeable tailoring shop that still stood at the exact same spot where it had been founded all those years ago. My