I Do Not Come to You by Chance by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani Read Free Book Online Page A

misunderstanding. Perhaps she was angry that I had not been to visit her as regularly as I should have. But then, the woman was always busy. Ola’s mother, for the earlier part of her married life, had been a contented housewife. She was forced to start her own business only after her husband defected to some other woman. Now she owned a busy pepper-soup joint somewhere in the middle of town, which she ran with an almost fanatical zeal.
    This mystery was going to torment me forever. There was no better way to regain my peace of mind than to pay her a visit tomorrow.
     
    I decided to walk. As I tried my best to avoid the speeding cars and the gaping gutters, I was amazed to see how much this obscure town was developing just a few years after Abia State had been carved out of Imo State, and Umuahia made the capital. There were several more cars on the roads, and neon signs announcing new businesses. There were more and more posters advertising the political intentions of . . . almost everybody. The scallywags hired to post these bills did not spare any available space in the pursuit of their endeavours. Faces of candidates were posted over traffic signs, and faces over the faces of other contestants. There were even faces posted on dustbins. Did these people not realise the subconscious message of seeing a candidate’s hopeful face grinning from a container specially prepared for garbage? Perhaps most of them did not go to school.
    A red car zoomed past and nearly broomed me off the road.
    ‘Hei!’ I cried while struggling to keep myself from tumbling into the gutter.
    These parts were largely populated by civil servants and traders; the most ostentatious they aspired to was a Mercedes-Benz V-Boot. Anybody riding such an extraterrestrial car must either be a dealer in human body parts or a 419er - a swindler of men and women in distant lands, an offender against section 419 of the Nigerian Criminal Code, which addresses fraudulent schemes.
    ‘Criminal!’ I hissed after the flashy vehicle. Was it his dirty money that had constructed the road?
    Ola and I had done this journey between her house and mine several times before. It was best enjoyed in the late evening - when there were fewer cars on the road, when the ill-tempered sun was taking its leave, when a fresh breeze was fanning the skin. Walking with Ola was magical. We would take slow steps and talk about everything - our dreams, our fears, what happened to us during the day, how we had spent our time. Usually, I did most of the serious talking. But once in a while, she raised some heavy issues.
    ‘My mother was asking me some things about you today,’ she said sometime towards the end of my stay in school.
    ‘Oh, really? What did she want to know?’
    ‘She was asking how I was sure that you would still be interested in marrying me when you finished school and got a good job in an oil company.’
    I laughed. Ola’s laughter was much smaller.
    ‘She was going on about how she wasted her life trying to please my father, only for him to leave her for someone else.’
    I stopped laughing. It had been a painful experience for them. Following the birth of the first two girls, Ola’s father had made it quite clear to their mother that what he now wanted was a boy. Three girls later, he began his coalition with another woman, who agreed to bring forth sons only if he married her. Without informing his existing family, Ola’s father paid the woman’s bride price, arranged a traditional marriage ceremony, and moved in with her. So far, the newer bride had popped out two bouncing baby girls.
    ‘How can she think I’m so fickle?’ I asked indignantly. ‘She obviously doesn’t know how much you mean to me.’
    ‘That’s what I told her,’ Ola smiled, and squeezed my hand.
    But there was still something else on her mind. It came after a few paces of silence.
    ‘Kings, but how come you haven’t given me a ring?’ she asked.
    ‘Sweetheart, I don’t have to give