Adah Obi (nee Ofili) faces a lot of gender discrimination in Nigeria and racial discrimination in England.
CHAPTER 1: Adah is born a girl in Lagos as the first child of a couple who would have preferred a boy. They hail from Ibuza, a town near Asaba in Delta State of Nigeria. As a girl child, she is kept at home while her younger brother , Boy, goes to an expensive school (Ladi-Lak). One day, she sneaks out of the house to a cheaper school, the Methodist School, where a neighbour (Mr Cole) teaches. She spends the whole day in Mr Cole's class. The police charges Adah's mother with child neglect before her arrival from the school. Thereafter, Pa sends her to Ladi-Lak, like her brother. About a month later, Ibuza women in Lagos (including Ma, Adah's mother) prepare to welcome Lawyer Nweze (their hometown's first lawyer) from the United Kingdom. Adah (about 8 years old) is not allowed to go because it falls on a school day. She starts dreaming of going to the UK from then on.
CHAPTER 2: Just a few months after Adah starts school, Pa (her father) falls ill and dies. Adah is sent to live with her maternal uncle as a servant. Ma is inherited by Pa's brother while Boy is to live with one of Pa's cousins. Adah is kept at school only because she is too young for marriage at 9 and that her longer stay in school will fetch a bigger bride price. She has to fill a big drum with water at 4:30 am before going to school. At 11 years of age, she diverts the money for an errand to pay for her entrance exam into a secondary school and gladly bears Cousin Vincent's beatings for lying that she lost the money. She gets a scholarship as one of the best 5 students in the exam. She wants to study further after her O'Level but needs a peaceful home environment. Teenagers, especially girls, are not allowed to live alone so Adah has to marry. Adah marries Francis Obi, a young man who is reading to be an accountant, under the Statutory Law. Her people ostracise her for not bringing in a bride price. She bears a girl, Titi (which means "flower" in Igbo language), and gets a job as a librarian in the American Consulate Library. Her pay is 3ce that of Francis, but his father assures him it is to their benefit. Most of the financial decisions are made by Francis' family elders (on Adah's money!) without any of her family's elders being involved. (Her mother too has died, at 38!) This also fuels Adah's desire to relocate with her husband to a neutral place. Adah's salary goes into paying the school fees of Francis' 7 sisters and the rent, feeding herself and the children,etc. Francis leaves for England just before Adah bears a son, Vicky. She is to send him £20 every month for his school fees and save for her and their children's transport fare to join him later. Adah later persuades her parents-in-law to let her join him. Boy sees her and her kids off into the ship taking them to England.
CHAPTER 3: Apart from the normal cold English climate in Liverpool,
Adah is shocked by the overcrowded house they have to live in. Their room is on the topmost floor. Francis tells her, "You may be living like an elite in Lagos working for the Americans, but you are a second-class citizen the day you land in England"(page 43). Away from his parents (who respect Adah for her high earnings), Francis feels free to beat her. She is lucky to get a job as a senior library assistant at North Finchley Library but gets pregnant from the unprotected sex of the first night of her arrival (when Titi is barely 2 years old and Vicky 9 months). "Francis would not work as he was studying and he said this would interfere with his progress"(page 45). Adah manages to conceal the pregnancy in order to get the job.
CHAPTER 4: Adah starts work at the library on June 1, almost 3 months since her arrival in the UK. The chief librarian is Mrs Konrad, a Czech lady. The other girls are near Adah's age but single with romantic ideals . Adah's landlord, landlady and co-tenants at Ashdown Street resent her children's not being sent to live with an English foster mother like most Nigerian families. Mr Babalola (a Nigerian man with a white wife, Janet) and Francis introduce Adah to Trudy (a prostitute and a registered daily child minder). Francis sleeps with Trudy, who takes care of Adah's children while Adah is at work. Trudy allows Titi and Vicky to be exposed to filth from a refuse dump near her home. Miss Stirling (the children's officer) says there is no nursery place available yet for Adah's children so they continue staying with Trudy. Francis blames his exam failures on Adah for bringing the children to England and getting pregnant soon after her arrival.
CHAPTER 5: The legendary mother's gut instincts drive Adah to Trudy's place from work early one day. She finds that Vicky is very ill with virus meningitis (an illness linked to contaminated food). While talking with Trudy on her findings (from reading relevant books at the library) one day, she sees Titi coming in very filthy as usual and loses her temper with Trudy. Miss Stirling (whose office is opposite Trudy's house at Malden Road) intervenes and announces that there are now nursery places for both Titi and Vicky. Trudy leaves Malden Street for Camden Town, in case Vicky dies and Adah comes for her.
CHAPTER 7: In the 1940's, many Nigerians have gone to England to acquire degrees that will help them rule Nigeria after independence. They resign from their jobs and leave their wives and children behind. Most of them do not make it as they expect and marry just any white woman they see as a status symbol. Mr Babalola (mentioned in Chapter 4) is an example. So is Mr Noble (who dumps his dream after his gratuity has been used up in writing repeat exams). He buys an old terrace house in Willes Road, just by Kentish Town station. The top 2 floors of the 3-storey house are occupied by 2 white sisters who, as rent-controlled tenants, cannot be evicted or have their rent increased by any new landlord. They refuse to pay more rent to Mr Noble, though the 41-year-old son of one of them can afford to (as a junior manager in an office). Unable to evict them legally, he threatens to report them to his mother "who is a great witch back home". Nobody takes him serious until the great winter of 1962-3 kills the sisters one after the other. The son flees in terror and nobody wants to live in his house again. He is married to Sue, a white woman who is much younger than he is. Adah and Francis move into Pa Noble's house 2 days to the expiration of their quit notice.
CHAPTER 8: Adah feels belly pains on December 2, a week to her EDD. That same day, railway workers' strike prevents her from going to work. When she returns home to tell Francis about the strike, he thinks she is lying and starts preaching about the Proverbs 31 (virtuous) woman. He also says she should give birth at home so they can earn £6. Midwives examine her at home and discover that the sideways-lying baby is too big for her to push out vaginally. She later gives birth that same day to a baby boy by Caesarean Section.
CHAPTER 9: After the CS delivery, a rubber tube is fixed through her nose into the back of her mouth for 4 days. The tube prevents her from talking with the other patients. In the hospital ward, she meets a woman her mother's age who has just given birth to a son after 17 years of a childless marriage. The sleek young woman next to Adah's bed has a loving husband who has 2 grown sons from his late wife. However, the sleek woman later dies during childbirth.
Even after the 4th day, she still feels belly pains and is not allowed to move about on the bed. Her back is sore. * A nurse tells Adah to get her own nightdress and give up the hospital one for newer patients. Her boss at the library sends her a lump sum of money for the holidays she has not taken but Francis is already thinking of a £40 course and grudgingly buys her only the compulsory nightdress. 20-year-old Adah goes home after spending 13 days at the hospital.
CHAPTER 10: Francis starts work as a postman (while Adah stays home for full recovery) but he always complains about the heavy bag of letters and the English dogs that may eat him up. Five days after leaving the hospital, Adah feels and looks weak as she takes Titi to a play-group. On her way back home, she meets a black student postwoman singing happily as she goes around distributing letters from her heavy bag. She is not a lazy pessimist like Francis. Mrs Konrad sends new Christmas gifts to Adah's children. Vicky's ear swells from a bedbug bite on Christmas Day and sends his parents into panic. But the incident shows that even second-class citizens are entitled to prompt emergency medical care, even on public holidays, and can report erring doctors to the police.
CHAPTER 11: Francis says the withdrawal method is enough for them as a family planning method. Adah doesn't want any more children,especially after that CS, so she forges his signature on the family planning clinic's consent form. She also doesn't want to jeopardize her new job at the Chalk Farm Library. After meeting a woman who has rashes all over her body from using the Pill, Adah settles for the cap. Francis feels the cap during sex, beats her up and creates a scene at home. Worse still, she gets pregnant again.
CHAPTER 12: Adah makes various friends at her new workplace, listening to (& drawing consolation from) their various family problems without revealing her own. Mr Noble gets tired of Adah's and Francis' frequent fights and asks them to leave. All the other women in the house also write an open letter to Adah to keep her philandering husband in check. After Francis writes to his parents in Nigeria over the cap issue, Boy sends her all his savings to enable her leave Francis and come back home to her Consulate job. Mr Okpara (an Igbo man who worked while studying) reasons in vain with Francis to be more hardworking and not laze around the house. Francis works only when Adah can't (e.g. just after childbirth). Yet he still fails his exams. To increase her chances of a safe delivery, Adah doesn't hand over her pay packet to Francis this time but feeds well and buys all the necessary baby things. She tells Francis to work to feed himself. She bears a girl, Dada (nicknamed "Sunshine"), vaginally as her 4th child at 21. Hunger drives Francis to work as a clerical officer in the post office. He then becomes a miser , keeping his salary figure to himself and forbidding Adah and her children to touch his new radio. He grudgingly pays the rent and gives Adah £2 for the 6 of them. Adah feeds herself and her children from her savings from the superannuation pay. When her savings start running out, she decides to use her spare time to earn money from creative writing.
CHAPTER 13: Adah now has "4 children all under 5" (page 179) and stays home as a housewife for the first 5 months after Dada's birth. Francis resents having to work in the mornings and study in the evenings and on Saturdays, though he gives Adah just enough money to feed his own mouth. She takes in clothes to sew for a clothing factory and writes her book, "The Bride Price". Though her colleagues at the library (Bill and Peggy) encourage her to print the book after reading her manuscripts, Francis refuses to read her "rubbish" and burns it up several days later. Adah gets an even better-paying job at the British Museum as a library officer. Francis gives up his job but Adah insists that her money is for herself and her children only. After a terrible fight necessitating police intervention, Adah moves out with her children and just a box of clothes for the children. A month later, she discovers that she is 3 months pregnant. Francis trails Titi and Vicky home from school. He says their culture doesn't permit a woman to leave her husband , no matter what. When she replies that the rule works only for men who take good care of their families, he attacks her physically and wrecks her flat. The Indian doctor's wife who treated her injuries encourages her to charge him to court for assault and call her as a witness. She takes the matter to court, in order to restrain Francis from ever coming near her and her little children. While Adah is afraid of sending him to prison and doesn't call in the doctor's wife as witness, Francis uses his knowledge of Law to tell a lot of lies in court. He claims that her bruises are from falls and that they had never been married (telling her in Igbo that he has burnt their marriage certificate, her passport and the children's birth certificates). The court grants Adah sole custody of the children as their breadwinner but asks Francis how much money he can contribute to their upkeep. He refuses to pay a dime and Adah tells the judge not to worry as she will never let her children down as long as she lives. She walks out of the court in tears and arrives at Camden Town, where she runs into an old male friend from her secondary school days. He pays for the taxi that takes her home from Camden Town because he thought she was still with her husband.
THE END.
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VOCABULARY
* According to page 188 of the novel, "Yaimirin ... means a race of cannibals" and is an abusive word often used on Igbos. Don't earn a slap by misusing the word.
