The Slave Girl by Buchi Emecheta

Author:Buchi Emecheta
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: George Braziller Inc.
Published: 1977-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

9 A Rich Religion

Ma Palagada’s son did not turn out after all to be as bad as Ojebeta had been led to expect. At least he did not treat them roughly physically. Yes, he ordered everyone about, wanting this and wanting that, even when the things he demanded were within his own reach. But that was the behaviour of people brought up in big houses where there were many servants and slaves. For, they told themselves, if they had to bother to tie their own shoelaces and cut their fingernails themselves, what were the slaves and servants for?

One evening when the girls were busy in the kitchen, they saw the Palagads seeing off a white woman. It was Ijeoma who saw them first and called to the others.

“Come, everybody, come and see Ma and Pa talking to an oyibol”

Of course they all ran out, including the big Jienuaka. He left the wood he was breaking for the fire, dropped his axe and went to the gate leading out of the backyard, where he could watch with the others unseen. They were not the only ones fascinated by the sight. Many children from up and down the narrow street came out, following the “oyibo” in a crowd a little distance from her. A few of the local people, especially those who traded with the foreigners at Otu market, had seen red-faced men, who were suppoesd to be white. Those men, however, seldom brought their wives with them. They usually made do with local girls, giving them babies and leaving them; that was why places near the sea, such as Sapele, Onitsha and Warri, were full of so many “half-castes”. But here was a white woman, a rare sight.

“I wonder how Ma understands what she says,” mused Ojebeta, as they all pressed against each other to get a better glimpse of this strange person.

“Ma does not understand, but Clifford does. Besides they say the woman oyibo speaks a kind of Ibo. You have to listen very carefully to understand it—she speaks through her nose, and pronounces her words in a funny way,” Jienuaka volunteered, breathing heavily as he was wont.

There was a gentle ripple of laughter among them, the kind of laughter that can be identified with suppressed making fun of overlords and supposed “betters”.

Encouraged by their mutual mischievous joy, Ijeoma remarked, “How starved she looks! See how her hips are flat and shapeless, as if she was a lizard lying flat on its stomach. She must be ill all the time.”

“Perhaps that is why they don’t bring their wives to these shores, and instead make our girls have children the colour of unripe palm fruits.”

They all laughed again and someone, probably Chiago, wondered if a woman as thin and ill-looking as that could ever bear children of her own.

Nobody replied to that, for now Jienuaka called them to go back to their duties. Even in this short minute of freedom, the slave mentality was still dominant in him. Jienuaka was the type who, although he could enjoy a joke, would never be disloyal to his master.

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