Far from home

Chapter two

The neighbourhood had its own memory.

Ada discovered this on her second morning, when she went out early to buy akara and

bread from Mama Titi's stall at the corner of the street. Mama Titi herself was still there —

older, wider, her wrapper a brighter orange than Ada remembered — and she took one look at

Ada and screamed with a joy so sudden it scattered the pigeons from the fence.

"Ada! Adaeze Obi! God is good! I thought you had become an oyinbo person for life!"

"Good morning, Mama Titi."

"Morning ke? It is afternoon in my heart! Come, come — sit, let me look at you properly."

She grabbed Ada's arm and pulled her close and looked at her the way the old women of the

street had always looked at her — with that particular blend of affection and assessment,

measuring how much of the girl they knew remained in the woman standing before them.

Ada allowed herself to be examined.

"You are fine," Mama Titi declared. "Too fine for that cold London. What did they feed

you there? You have colour. You have sense in your face."

"Jollof rice, mostly. I cooked it myself."

Mama Titi laughed and pressed six pieces of akara into a bag without being asked. "How

is your father?"

"Holding on."

"Mmm." She clicked her tongue — that sound that meant she knew more than she would

say. "He is a strong man, your father. Too strong sometimes. But God will see him through."

Ada paid and turned to go. Then a voice behind her — male, unhurried, carrying the lazy

confidence of someone who had never needed to rush — said:

"Adaeze Obi. I will be damned."

She turned.

He was leaning against a white Prado parked at the edge of the road. He was taller than she

remembered — or perhaps she had simply forgotten. He wore a light blue kaftan and looked

like exactly what he had become, which was everything his family had always planned for him

to be: prosperous, self-assured, untroubled by the ordinary concerns of ordinary people.

Chidi Abara. Son of the Abara family. Her first love. Her oldest wound.

"Chidi," she said.

"Seven years," he said. "And you didn't even send a text."

"I didn't have your new number."

"You could have found it." He pushed himself off the car and walked toward her,

unhurried, the way he had always done everything. "Welcome home, Ada."

"Thank you."

He studied her in the morning light with a directness she had forgotten men here could

have — no British awkwardness, no looking away. "You look well," he said.

"You look like your father," she replied.

He smiled at that. "He would take it as a compliment."

"So would you."

"True." He tilted his head slightly. "How long are you staying?"

"I don't know yet."

"Your father —"

"Yes."

He nodded, understanding what she meant and what she did not say. That was the thing

about people who had known you before — they could read the silences. Sometimes that was a comfort. Sometimes it was the most terrifying thing in the world.

"If you need anything," he said, "you know where we are."

"The Abara compound hasn't moved?"

"Nothing on this street moves, Ada. That is the whole point of coming back." He turned

back toward his car, then paused. "My mother will want to see you. She has been asking about

you for years."

"I'll come and greet her."

"She'll be happy." He opened the car door. "Don't wait too long. You know how it is. Time

moves differently here when you have been away. You think you have plenty, and then —" He

snapped his fingers in that Lagos way that meant: everything, gone.

He drove away.

Ada stood on the pavement with her bag of akara and watched the white Prado disappear

around the corner. Mama Titi said nothing, which meant she was watching too. Half the street

was probably watching. Mazi Okonkwo Street had always been that kind of street.

She walked back to the compound.

At the gate, Emeka was waiting. His arms were folded. He had that look he wore when he

was pretending he had not been listening to something.

"Chidi Abara," he said.

"You were watching from the window?"

"I was checking the security light."

"Emeka."

"What? A man cannot check his own security light?"

Ada pushed past him through the gate. "Nothing happened. We said hello. That is all."

"He's not married, you know," Emeka called after her. "The engagement broke off two

years ago. The girl's family said —"

"I am not interested in Chidi Abara's marriage history."

"I'm just saying —"

"Emeka."

He fell silent. Ada went inside. She set the akara on the kitchen table and stood there alone

for a moment, looking at the cracked tile on the wall that had been cracked for as long as she

could remember, and she thought about time, and how strange it was that seven years could feel like both a lifetime and an afternoon