Characters in Second-Class Citizen
Major characters in Second-Class Citizen
Adah Obi (nee Ofili)
Role
Originally Adah Ofili, Adah Obi is her name in marriage. She is an Ibuza woman, married to an Ibuza man, named Francis. By the time she is quarrelling with her husband, both of them are probably in their early twenties. She is the daughter of Ma and Pa who are artisans - Ma, a seamstress and Pa, a railway moulder She is not on the beautiful side; she is said to be "cranky and ugly" and "all skin and bone" (P. 20). She is a brilliant girl whose brother, Boy, is considered more important than she is. Her brother is sent to school while she is being encouraged to take to a trade, probably sewing. She is a prolific woman; in a few years she has four children, and the fifth was on the way as she parted ways with Francis. We are told that Ada was so fast on child delivery that "she was given the nickname 'Touch Not' among the other wives of her age group" (p. 28). that she has lost it. Cousin Vincent gives her a good thrashing which draws no tears from her eyes. Her stubbornness is also manifested in her tangle with the headmaster who canes her for laughing when in fact her laughter or smile has nothing to do with the man. Nicknamed "the Ibo tigress," she bites Latifu, the boy who backs her for the headmaster's strokes of the cane. With the pilfered sum, Adah buys the entrance examination form, passes the entrance and obtains a scholarship with which she attends a secondary school which she would not have attended, her father having died and her mother having remarried. She is a self-willed fellow who does not "believe in that stuff of loving your enemy" (p. 24). She is unhappy with Cousin Vincent to the extent that when she hears that he has failed his Cambridge School Certificate examinations, "Adah burst out laughing. God had heard her prayers” (p. 24). Because of the nature of her family, for practically having no home, early marriage is acceptable to her. Although she is originally pestered by elderly suitors whom she rejects, Francis whom she accepts his hand in marriage "was not an old baldy” (p. 25). She is said to have been happy that Francis "was too poor to pay five hundred pounds bride price Ma and the other members of her family were asking for" (p. 25).
Motivated by Lawyer Nweze's reception for having become a barrister in the UK, Adah makes "a secret vow to herself that she would go to the United Kingdom one day" (p. 17). We are further informed that she would go to the United Kingdom one day was a dream she kept to herself (p. 17). The day she is informed they both would go overseas "she started to dance an African Calypso". She is glad to know "she was soon going to be called 'been-to" (p. 29). Before Francis leaves for England, he drops his preference relying on what his father's view is: "Father said you're earning more than most people who have been to England. Why lose your job just to go and see London?" (p. 30) Rather than confront Francis on the suggestion she cautions herself to be as cunning as a serpent but as harmless as a dove" (p. 30). That way, she allows her husband to depart for England first before she negotiates her way to the UK through winning over her mother-in-law and Francis' Pa by slow and quiet argument, taking into consideration their own interests. While Adah reminds her father-in-law of her knowledge of "leave without pay" which enables one to retain one's job at home, she hands over her golden jewellery to her mother-in-law, to the latter's surprise. Her differences with her husband would often result in what looks like a confrontation. On whether or not English people joke about death, she insists Francis is lying, which stings the latter to the marrows. Another argument centres on the use of the land by English people compared to how it is used in Lagos which is a basis for disagreement between husband and wife. Yet another point of disagreement is the house and location of their accommodation in the slum. She wails within her, "Oh Francis ... how could you have done this to us?" (p. 42). The altercation gets to a point when Francis "lifted his hand as if to slap her but thought better of it" (p. 42). We are presented at a stage of the story that Adah is an opportunist. We surmise that she had married Francis because she needed a home and "the immigration authorities were making it very difficult for single girls to come to England" (p. 43). We must not forget she had made coming to the UK an utmost priority. No wonder we are told that “even if she had nothing to thank Francisfor, she could still thank him for making it possible for her to come to England" and also "for giving her her own children" (p. 43). Thus it is as if she has used Francis as a latch with which to get to achieve her desires. Adah is a hardworking lady who wants the best for herself, her children and her husband. She constantly engages herself and fends for others - her children, her husband's education, her parents-in-law and Francis' sisters. When she comes to England, she takes care of her family and where her landlord and landlady no longer tolerate them, she goes in search of a new place, the Noble's place. Even as a mother and a worker, she writes a manuscript which her husband later burns. She seems to lack tolerance for those who either do not do things the way she wants or those who fail her. Although Francis has his own problems, Adah's intolerance seems to have exacerbated their misunderstandings. The same thing happens in her relationship with Trudy. We hear her voice all through without any opportunity for the child-minder to tell her own story. She accuses Trudy of sleeping with her husband without giving her a chance to defend herself. Even Miss Stirling, the children's officer who takes in her report against Trudy with sufficient grace, incurs her anger. She wants everyone who knows about her complaints against the child-minder to see the matter from her point of view. From the moment there's the initial loss of faith with Trudy,"she took everything Trudy said with a pinch of salt" (p. 58). Apart fro m her bigoted approach to things, she seems to be incredulous. An ambulance comes to take Vicky, her first son, to hospital. She doubts the offer from the Royal Free Hospital and wonders if Vicky is going to "a second-class hospital, a free one, just because they were blacks" (p. 66). We are further told: "Adah did not believe in anything good coming from something you did not pay for" (p. 66).
She is a censorious person, and a bit on the termagant side of life. We have made reference to her squabble with Trudy under whose care Vicky takes ill; her wrangles with her husband portray her as a turbulent fellow. Her painting of the character of her husband shows that she is ill-at-ease with everything about Francis. The narrator's description of Francis leaves us with the belief that it is Adah giving vent to her frustration about him: "Francis had a small mouth, with tiny lips, too tiny for a typical African, so when he pouted those lips like that, he looked so unreal that he reminded the on-looker of other animals, not anything human" (p. 74). Initially, describing her husband as having a face "like a warm sunshine after a thunderous rain" (p. 27), Adah can now afford to tell Francis to his face after a Caesarean in a hospital, “If you do not go out of this ward, or stop talking, I shall throw this milk jug at you. I hate you now, Francis, and one day I shall leave you" (p. 133).
Adah's comportment when she is in hospital shows that she has no confidence in herself. She is virtually jealous of fellow hospital inmates who have something she has not. As she sees the new shawls used to cover the other babies, she wonders why her baby's shawl "was not new it was off- white and not soft” (p. 137). She also desires a new night dress and for not having one, she forgets to say "good-bye, nicely" (p. 128) to fellow inmates with whom she had exchanged jokes and pleasantries. Apart from how close her pregnancies come, her other reason emanates from the night-dress episode in the hospital: "She was not going to allow herself to get pregnant again. Never" (p. 156). burns.
Adah is God-conscious. That is why she constantly makes reference to the Presence", which permission to do family plaming, she has to forge his signature which she later regrets. Convinced that she could not achieve much except having to twist the facts," we are told that “she prayed to God again and again to forgive her" (p. 156). manuscript of The Bride Price which Bill calls her brainchild. It is this brainchild that Francis Being a worker and the breadwinner of the Orbis family, Adah is richer than Francis who abhors work. Notice that when Adah is under the apron strings of Francis, the family lived in a one-room apartment; after leaving him, she and her children live in two rooms.
In the end, all the struggle between Francis and Adah in the name of marriage is a nullity. Even the marriage could not start as it was initially planned because there was no ring. Thus apart from the constant squabbles between husband and wife, there is no document to show that they are married: "Francis said they had never been married... She could not even produce her passport and the children's birth certificates. Francis had burnt them all. To him, Adah and the kids ceased to exist" (p. 191). Although she takes her husband to court, she is not ready to have him jailed. This is evidence that there is 'the Presence' in her which guides her against taking extreme positions.
Significance
Although both Francis and Adah are Ibuzans, it does not stop them from quarrelling with each other. Their belonging to the same town does not ensure harmony. It is ironical that her ability to give birth at a fast rate rather than be a source of joy to her is partly responsible for constant frustration in the relationship between husband and wife. In spite of the age difference between her and Boy, the latter is sent to school while the learning of sewing is reserved for her. As the novel is ending, there is no information on Boy which suggests he has done better than Adah who was being debarred from going to school.
The incidents of her being caned prove decisively that she is a stubborn fellow. It is this stubbornness that she takes to her marriage which probably precipitates the collapse of the marital union. Her intransigence extends into assertiveness and hard-heartedness. She does not believe in one loving one's enemy as codified in the Christian religion which she admits is her faith. Thus when she hears that Cousin Vincent fails his examinations, Adah is quite gladdened Her being happy that Francis cannot pay her bride price paints her as strange. But as we see later, with the non-payment of the bride price by Francis and the latter burning of all documents pertaining to their marriage, can Francis' claim that “they had never been married" be faulted?
Adah is a quick-witted woman whose motto is: "be as cunning as a serpent but as harmless as a dove." With this principle, she is able to overcome/win over the Obis who had not been disposed to allowing her leave for England. We should also recall that issues important to Adah are usually introduced when Francis demands sex from her. Although this may be seen as vile and immoral, it is clear that she knows how to cater for her problems. It is a similar thing that Adah does when she considers her mother-in-law's support as crucial in her desire to go to the UK. She hands over all her jewellery to Francis' mother to the latter's consternation. her constant quarrel with her husband on sundry issues is in fact the friction often experienced when traditionality is in interaction with modernity. Francis is a traditionally-minded fellow who faces a modern-minded person and thinks he can absorb her. Notice the way she comports herself in hospital, being largely jealous of the other women for one thing or the other they have which she does not have. For example, she adores the woman who had no child for 17 years and yet her husband accepts her. She is worried because she has no new night dress. Such is her frustration that she leaves the hospital without saying goodbye nicely to fellow inmates.
Francis Obt
Podle
Born in the 1940s like his wife, his age is close to his wife's. Francis wants to be an accountant and decides to go to England in order to achieve his aim. He and Adah are ready to marry, each having his or her reason for wanting the other. We are informed that he had told her that "he married her in the first place because she could work harder than most girls of her age and because she was orphaned very early in life” (p. 45).
Francis is a male bom among many females. Thus he enjoys a closeness with his parents in a culture where premium is placed on malehood. He is a self-conscious African who enjoys throwing about his maleness, the respected gender in his immediate culture. In his relationship with his wife, "he was the male, and he was right to tell her what she was going to do" (p. 30). Thus he enjoys beating his wife and considers it normal to be doing so. Francis forgets to bring along the marriage ring on the first day. Although the ring comes on the second day, it is evidence of irresponsibility. He complains often. The apartness in the relationship between husband and wife first begins when an inconsequential matter is given prominence by Francis. While still in Barcelona, on his way to England, he complains that Adah "did not cry for me and goes on to say "You were very happy to see me go, were you not?" (p. 34) Described by the narrator as a man "from another culture” (p. 179), Francis is a conservative fellow. He kisses his wife in public only once which makes her think England may have changed him. But not yet. The way he addresses her; his mode of dressing (see p. 81); his unreadiness to allow his children touch his radio; his constant quarrelsomeness; his tendency to consult his parents over difficult issues within his own immediate family; his readiness to see something wrong in looking after his own children; his inability to relieve his wife when the latter is tired; his attitude to family planning; his attitude to Adah's manuscript; his thought that children are the business of mothers rather their fathers as well, etc, indicate that Francis is a traditional man living in a modern environment Thus we can say that he is an uncooperative husband. When his wife feels "so heavy this morning" and asks him, "Could you please take the children to Trudy for me?" his answer is "Oh God" (p.61). Even to secure a room when the landlord and the wife do not want them again, he only agrees when Adah virtually makes it a condition for giving him sex. He is said to be there "pleading like a fool" by asking his own wife, "Have I sver refused anything you said? Are you not like my
(i) Francis appears like one who enjoys poverty somehow. He relies on his wife to feed him; his mother to me in this country? Have I ever refused your command?" (p. 95). mode of dressing denies him respect before the wife; he likes going down to the Nobles to watch television, he allows his wife to pay his sisters' school fees, the accommodation of his family as arranged by him is always in a one-room rented building, etc. Which is why throughout the story nobody visited them. His few friends are fellow Jehovah Witness members. The narrator informs that "Francis did not believe in friendship” (p. 104). We are told that Francis' only recreation is sex. He "could never have a mind as healthy as those men" (p. 171). (k) He is always picking quarrels with his wife. It is true that it takes two to tango, it could have been manly to avoid occasions where such misunderstandings would blossom. When he insists that his wife did not wish to appear in my send-off photograph" (p. 34), he lays the foundation for some of their future feuds. Earlier, he had insisted in his first letter to his wife from abroad that at the airport, Adah had not cried, as if weeping is evidence of genuine love. From some of his actions, evidence abounds which shows that Francis is picky and fault-finding. Although he does not easily make friends, Francis converts Trudy, his children's minder into his mistress. Adah accuses him of philandering with Trudy, but he neither denies it nor does he prove her wrong His burning of Adah's manuscript is evidence of his wicked tendencies. As we learn later, he also burns his marriage certificate and his children's birth certificates. And when Adah asks him why he had burnt her brainchild, Francis responds "I don't care if it is your child or not" (p. 187). Francis' membership of Jehovah's Witness is borne out of a desire to have few friends and less expenditure and to use it to preach the virtuous woman, which Adah knows is targeted at her. He is a bit on the violent side. Apart from the more than one occasion he engages the wife in fights, the last one in which he smashes his wife's new radiogram, and the new teaset and the dislocation of the flowery pattern in her new living room show that he is a violent fellow. Apart from this, he nearly strangulates Adah but for Mr Devlin, her Irish co-tenant, who intervenes and separates them.
Although Francis is Igbo-centred in his thinking and actions, meaning that he allows the Igbo way of life to direct his relationship with his wife and which generates most of their misunderstandings, he objects to Mr Okpara's intervention in his quarrel with Adah. Okpara uses the Igbo-centred approach to reconcile the couple, yet Francis is not enthused. Mr Okpara's approach is for him and Adah to "go and beg his forgiveness" and "he would let you in" (p. 170) even as he had not heard Adah out. However, we are told that Francis "resented this intrusion into his family life” (p. 173) which is un-Igbo.
Significant
Both Francis and his wife are young. From time to time their youthfulness seems to stand in the It is a relationship based on what each hopes to gain from each other. He marries Adah because he considers her hardworking and for the fact that she is an orphan. In other words, he saw in Adah His intolerance of Adah may have arisen from the fact that he is a man among women. In a culture where men are considered more important than women, little wonder that he finds it difficult to Francis' failure to produce their wedding ring on the very first day they had wanted to marry
The Bride Price
way of their relationship.
one who would be malleable to his antics.
accept what a woman says or even listen to what she says.
(d)
symbolizes that the marriage would have a hiccups
in the end. Another symbolism is recalled by
their last fight when Adah now lives with the children when
he beats her thoroughly. Whereas he
had complained that Adah did not cry for him on his departure day from Nigeria, this final cry
from which she is saved by Mr Devlin seems to have made up for the one she had not cried as he
stepped out of Nigeria.
(e) Similarly, Adal's missing out from Francis' final send-off photograph as he exits Nigeria equalsF Francis'denial of their marriage as well as the products of that marriage, whose evidence he destroy burning. Francis' life is due to his ambivalent (two-sided) lifestyle. While he is a conservative, believingin the Igbo attitude to existence, he marries a woman who respects Westernization moret she does her Igbo background. But even then, when it comes to succumbing to the Igboa approach to living, Francis is found wanting. His non-tolerance of Okpara's intervention in hism maritallife is a proof that he picks and chooses from the two cultures he is exposed to.Francis harbours behaviours which ensure that his marriage will not work. He does not love work and is comfortable with his wife feeding him. Thus he seems to prefer embracing lack and insufficiency. He is said not to smile; he is also said to have an aversion for friendship whereas marriage is about intimacy and affection. Another activity of his which strikes at the root of his marriage is infidelity. Francis hobnobs with Trudy, his children's minder, to the extent that Adah notices. Although this occasion could not be proved decisively, his silence to the charge indicates there may be some truth in it. His tendency to be a Jehovah's Witness anytime he likes evinces dishonesty and unreliability: "he became a Jehovah's Witness whenever he felt like it" (p. 32). See also p.122. His capacity for wickedness is exhibited by his constant beating of his wife, his burning of her manuscript and his smashing of her newly acquired household property. There is a tendency to believe Adah's accusations against Francis since no character, friend of relation in the story talks about him. We get to hear his faults and things he fails to do well from his wife while the few times he speaks he seems to justify those allegations. For instance when Adah tells the readers that Francis made no friends, we see Adah's own friends or those she was friendly with - Mrs Konrad, Peggy, Bill, Janet, etc
Francis takes their confidential matters to his parents and to neihbours. Because he had never been allowed to make his own mistakes... he had never made his own decisions” (p.51). He often consults his parents over decisions he is expected to make. Everything Francis does indicates that he is not sure of himself. Upon Vicky's illness, he fails to comport himself as men would do because she did not know how to do such things, how to be a man. Instead he cried like a woman, with Adah" (p. 69). Again, when the couple approaches Hawley Street in search of a new accommodation, Francis “started to blow his nose, lagging behind as if he were going to face castration" (p. 83).
Minor characters in Second-Class Citizen
Babalola (p. 52)
He came to London to study just like the Obis. Initially, he was unmarried and on a Northern Nigerian scholarship although he was not doing any studies. He has lots of money on him, being on scholarship. He has a “glossy flat and is always "entertaining" His philosophy of life is to live for today while Allah "would take care of the future" (p. 53). After a while, the source of Babalola's money is cut off and it stops flowing. His friends gradually disappear when they discover he is getting poorer. He moves from the highbrow area he had been living in to Ashdown Street in Kentish Town, a much more modest area. Babalola takes Janet, a sixteen year-old pregnant English girl home, and begins to entertain his few remaining friends with her until they both fall in love. After her first pregnancy with the West Indian boy, she gets pregnant for Babalola and they live as husband and wife. His decision to make Janet all his own turns his friends into his enemies. It was he who connected Adah to Trudy, the child minder.
Mr Barking (p. 166)
Mr Barking is Adah's boss at the Chalk Farm Library. He is said to be thin and ill-tempered. His daughter got married to a worthless fellow, whose marriage he is determined to end even if it would cost him his life. Because of the poor marriage, Mr Barking's daughter turns mentally ill. Mr Barking has a wife about whom he hardly discusses. Yet it is this wife who makes the sandwiches he brings to the workplace, and which apparently he enjoys. He does not like to join in the light-hearted talk in the library and always keeps to himself. It is assumed that he likes to be alone because of thoughts about his daughter.
Beautiful Nurse (p. 67)
She is the nurse with a soft voice who had told Adah to go home from the hospital where Vicky had been admitted for Virus Meningitis disease. Adah refuses to leave the Royal Free Hospital premises as she had been advised by this nurse. Shedozes off on a wooden bench. When she wakes up, it is this beautiful nurse that she encounters again. Because of her insistence on not going, the nurse asks Adah if Vicky is her only child. Adah responds: "there was another, but she was only a girl." The beautiful nurse retorts: "Only a girl? What do you mean by 'only a girl"? She is a person too. you know, just like your son." Adah has a lot of Igbo cultural information which she is unable to give the beautiful creatures regarding the importance of the male child.
Big Pa (Francis' father) (p. 28)
Big Pa is Francis' father. Francis consults him and the mother whenever he has decisional problems to solve.
Considered as elders, he and his wife are very influential in the lives of Francis and Adah before the younger persons come to England. Whatever Adah regrets most about this parental influence is that her own parents did not live long enough to also exert their own authority on the marriage He had "suffered from unemployment when he was a young man and knew that the type of job Adah had then did not grow on trees" (pp. 35-36). Thus when Adah tells the in-laws that her going to England will be regarded as "leave without pay" (p. 36), they are softened on the matter of her joining her husband in England. Big Pa understands matters like this more than his wi He and his wife brought Francis up in such a way that they took decisions for Francis, especially on those matters that the latter found difficult to solve. As a consequence, Francis often consulted he and his wife on issues in his own immediate family,
5. Bill (p. 166)
He is a big, handsome Canadian. He is said to look down on anything English which is why he flies in all his major needs from home. He uses the word 'Britisher' for the English as if he were an American and would not study for the British Library Association Examinations. (b) A year earlier, he married Eileen, the Children's Librarian whom the narrator describes as "tall and beautiful, a more perfect match you could never imagine" (p. 166).
Bill knows a little about everything. He likes black writers whereas Adah, a black lady, only knows about Chinua Achebe and Flora Nwapa for which Bill reproved her for being an intelligent black girl with little knowledge of her own black people. Adah agrees with him and likes him as a consequence. He is an intelligent man and talks about authors and their new books, especially during staff breaks. Bill almost always reads new books before others James Baldwin's books teach Adah that black is beautiful. Bill confirms this assertion to be true Bill is Adah's first real friend outside her family. She trusts his judgment just as she had trusted her late father's opinion. As Bill's flat becomes smaller because he and his wife, Eileen, are expecting their third child, he thinks of returning to Canada where he had been a racho newscaster. We are told that Bill had come to England to ward off his mother's desire to have him marry a certain girl. When everybody involved in the library chit-chat starts talking about their individual worriesand Adah merely laughs, a character like Peggy wonders as to why she is laughing. Bill comes to Adah's defence, namely "she has no problems. She is happily married to a brilliant husband..." (p. 168). Adah will not oppose him. Bill is the first to discover the writer' in Adah. He rates her first manuscript, The Bride Price, rather highly. He calls this manuscript Adah's brainchild.
Boy (p. 9)
Boy is Adah's younger brother. There is no evidence that there is another sibling. He is favoured to go to school more than Adah. When Adah is not allowed to start school, she is asked to take Boy to Ladi-Lak Institute When Adah is about to leave in the Oriel for England, Boy in a brown African robe that was too big for him" starts to cry, "wiping his eyes with a velvet hat" (p. 36). (In her travail with Francis in England, Adah regrets tha parents are not around nor Boy who was "miles away, and could not be of any help" (p. 133). Boy "never liked Francis." We are informed that Boy "knew even before Adah found out that Francis looked like those men who could live off women because of his good looks” (p. 161). When Francis heats up his relationship with Adah over this cap issue," Boy sends the sister " his savings asking her to leave Francis and his children and come back to Nigeria where her work at the Consulate would be waiting for her" (p. 169). He is angry because Francis had written to his parents on the cap issue. It does not seem that Boy had gone far in education in spite of his having had a head start more than his sister.
7. Boy with craw-craw (p. 11)
His name is not revealed in the story. He later becomes a health lecturer in Lagos City Hospital He has craw-craw on his head and makes Adah's first day in school very memorable. (c) He gives Adah a bit of his pencil with which the former scribbles away while "enjoying the smell of craw-craw and dried sweat" (p. 12).
8. Bubu (p. 119)
He is the third child whose coming is a heavy burden for his mother. When he arrives via a Caesarean, looking "so big and so hairy" (p. 119), he is described as "this Mohammed Ali of a son" (p. 12) He does not cry like other babies but is hungry like a wolf. He is too busy with his mouth "sucking his big fingers, swallowing the wind” (p. 119). He sleeps often but once it is night "then Bubu would wake and wake in style, loud and manding. He is popular in the hospital ward, although at night he is a terror. So troublesome is he that's special emergency nursery was fitted out at the end of the corridor for him alone" (p. 124). Part of the proof that Francis is stingy and inconsiderate is his failure to give Adah a present, particularly because of this big baby. Adah does not mind that Francis will likely buy this gift with her own money
Cecilia and Angelina (p. 28)
The two girls are some of Francis' four sisters. Adah pays their school fees and does not regret doing so. While at work, Adah has rest of mind because the sisters will take care of her two children,
Chinese doctor (p. 150)
When the Indian doctor refuses to come and see ailing Vicky on Christmas Day, it is the Chinese doctor who comes instead. From his eyes and shape of his "round head like that of a calabash" (p. 150) A dah knows that he is a China man, a second-class citizen like herself and cannot prove superior to her. He examines Vicky, including the latter's temperature and his earlobes. His eyes which are sharp roam round the room while he seems to be scratching his bottom "but was doing it gently” (p. 151). He soon discovers that the room is infested with bedbugs. He chides the couple (Francis and Adah) for calling the police when the Indian doctor refuses to come. It is he who says that Vicky has a bug-bite and that it is not a serious matter because his grandmother also suffers from such bites and suggests what is to be done
Mr Cole (p. 10)
Mr Cole is a Sierra Leonian living next door to the Ofilis on Akinwumi Street. He is a teacher at the Methodist School just by the corner. It is his class that Adah searches for when she enters the Methodist School compound, and whenshe locates it she goes in. The entire pupils giggle, started by one of them. Mr Cole is a handsome and huge person. A real African, black and leathery, his "blackness shone like polished black leather" (p. 11). Notwithstanding that the pupils make fun of her entry, Mr Cole gives her a reassuring smile. Unlike his pupils, Mr Cole does not laugh because he understands the situation. He leads Adah to the boy with craw-craw on his head and asks her to sit beside him without wanting to know why she had come. When the day's schooling ends, he takes her home after buying boli for her to eat. It is not clear if it is Mr Cole that reports Ma to the police for not sending her daughter to school However, it is after this encounter with Adah that Ma is arrested and punished with excessive gari-drinking
12. Cousin Vincent (p. 22)
Cousin Vincent is Adah's cousin on her mother's side. He is a young man who has a wife. He is a struggling fellow yet to pass his school certificate examinations. Adah goes to live with husband and wife when her father, Pa dies and her mother, Ma, remarries. He gives Adah two shillings to buy a pound of steak from a market” (p. 22). Rather than do what shenoist asked ter dos Adahauses the money to buy an entrance form into Methodist Girls High School and later claims that she had lost it. Nobody seems to believe her. Cousin Vincent sends her out again with a three penny piece to buy the type of cane called the koboko" (p. 23). It is with this koboko that punishment is administered on Adah after Cousin Vincent had assured her he would not stop caning her until she said the truth. Cousin Vincent administers a hundred and three strokes without Adah doing as if she is under pain. Adah's cousin tells her that she will never talk to her again: "not in this world nor in the world to come" (p. 23). Thus later, when Adah hears that Cousin Vincent fails his Cambridge School Certificate examinations, she bursts out laughing because to her "God had heard her prayers” (p. 24).
13. Cynthia (p. 62)
She is one of the library staff with whom Adah works. In spite of what the girls generally say about marriage, her view is optimistic. She is engaged to be married "and was sure hers was going to work” (p. 62). When she notices Adah's stomach rumbling, she will offer her married co-worker some food. It is Cynthia who first informs Adah that her children had had a health problem: Victor (Vicky) is in danger, but not dead. Mrs Konrad drives Adah to the hospital.
14. Mr Eke (p. 42)
He is Francis' contemporary who when he learns of his family joining him in England, moves out of Ashdown Street into a more suitable accommodation.
15. Dark Indian doctor (p. 169)
He is Adah's doctor by the time she gets pregnant for the fourth time. He is elderly although "one could easily take him for a young man" (p. 163). His wife is also a doctor; they had met at Cambridge where both of them were students. He is well-known among "the blacks living in that part of Kentish Town at that time." With such credentials, Adah thinks he will understand her plight as a foreigner with children studying in London. She appeals to him to terminate her new pregnancy. The doctor shook his head, sympathized." He then asks her why she had failed to come "to us for the cap." He blames Adah for not having told her about it. With the way their conversation has gone, Adah thinks she has a sympathizer in the dark Indian As it is too early to confirm if she is indeed pregnant, he gives her pills which she thinks will remove the pregnancy. When she later goes to tell him the child is sitting there pretty" and accuses him of not keeping to his promise of helping her, the dark Indian doctor ripostes: "I did not give you the pills to abort the child" (p. 169) With this answer, she makes up her mind to have the baby but warns that if her child is deficient in any way "you are responsible. You know that" (p. 169). From that day, the dark Indian doctor and Adah become allies and he works with her against another Caesarean section. He prescribes diet for Adah so that in the end, she has a peaceful labour during the birth of Dada, her fourth child.
16. Mr Devlin (p. 189)
The old Irish co-tenant with Adah and her children in their new abode. He saves Adah from her merciless beating by her husband. He breaks Adah's door and saves her and her children.
17. Fay (p. 167)
A lady librarian, she is engaged to an English man who "was away in Cambridge reading law” (p.167). A boyfriend of Fay's, overtaken by jealousy because of Fay's intendant at Cambridge, smashes her car. The damage is such that it will cost Fay a fortune to repair. Fay does not like to associate herself with black people "because she was too white, a mulatto" She is very beautiful "in a film-star type of way with smooth, glossy skin" and is at least thirty years old. Adah thinks that such an age for a woman without marriage is an outrage then" (p. 168).
18. Greek woman (p. 136)
One of the women Adah encounters in the hospital where she has Bubu. Her bed is opposite Adah's. although the latter would not talk with her because of her anger over the nightdress episode.
19. Headmaster (p. 21)
He is the headmaster of Adah's primary school who announces the list of secondary schools the students could apply for their secondary education career. He misunderstands Adah who smiles to herself when her inner ear hears what the Presence reveals about her future. It is this self satisfying smile the headmaster takes to mean she is laughing at what he had said. All efforts Adah makes to convince him that she had not been insolent prove abortive as he orders four tough-looking boys to raise her posterior for his cane strokes. Not like her Cousin Vincent's swishing which she had taken with sufficient calmness, the headmaster's "was so intense that Adah was beyond screaming" (p. 21). At the height of the pain the headmaster administers on her buttocks, Adah sinks her teeth into Latifu's back. Her teeth had dug so deep into the young man's back that "fragments of his flesh were stuck between her teeth" (p. 21). Adah gets a nickname after: "the Ibo tigress" (p. 21). The headmaster threatens Adah with jail for the deep bite, but nothing comes out of it in the end.
20. Dr Hudson (p. 111)
She is a surgeon and runs a surgery at the Crescent. It is to her surgery that Adah runs when the foetus kicks hard at her stomach. To get to the surgery Adah's walk is duck-like: "she padded just like a duck, first to the right then to the left" (p. 111) It is not a straight träble anticowgh is has found bocorner on the surgery and sat down." (p. 111) The pain is rather unbearable although it is not labour, "those hot ones that make a mad person of any woman In the midst of the baby's inflicted pain a woman employed to do housework leads Adah to a chair in the surgery. Already she and Francis had agreed she would have the baby at home. As a consequence, she tells the doctor (Hudson) that she is not having her baby at University College Hospital but at home in their room at Willes Road. Dr Hudson asks the pregnant Adah why she has changed her mind, "seeing all the trouble she had taken in booking her in at that particular hospital because the waiting list was long" (p. 113). She asks her other related questions, including "Then what had got into her head to make her refuse to go into hospital?" (p. 113). A great talker, the doctor talks on and on. It is like a sermon to Adah, the second that day. Earlier, her husband had preached to her on "how Jehova was going to bless the virtuous woman" (p. 109). Adah finds it difficult to explain why she will not give birth in a hospital. The reason for avoiding a hospital is to save six pounds if the baby is delivered at home, in their one-room apartment. Explanation, she suspects will lead to questions which she will not be able to answer. For instance, should Adah be asked why her husband cannot go out to work to make up for the six pounds the child birth will cost in hospital, "Adah would have to tell the doctor woman that her husband believed in Armageddon. So there was no need for him to exert himself too much in this world" (p. 113).
21. Irene (p. 175)
She is a West Indian girl who has a baby for a Nigerian who fails to marry her because he insists the baby is not his. She shows Adah that she can live on Assistance until her children grow up. Her name is Irene. When Francis fails to send Adah flowers while she is in hospital over Bubu's birth, she gives three pounds to Irene and told her to post three cards a day after the baby was born" (p. 175). Adah asks Irene to send her two big bunches of flowers - one on her arriva with "Francis' name attached to it with sentimental words"; the other bunch is meant to come in when she has had "her safe delivery" (p. 175). Should Adah die in labour, Irene is instructed to turn the bunches into a wreath with her children's names attached. We are told that "Irene got sentimental and started to cry" (p. 175).
22. Janet (p. 52)
a) A cockney girl , Janet is Babalola's wife. Originally a girl Babalola picks up with her pregnancy and makes available to his friends for their entertainment, he later falls in love with her and stops his friends and neighbours from having access to her anymore, for which some of them turn into enemies. The pregnancy with which she meets Babalola is by a nameless West Indian. Her mother's new husband (Janet's father died a year previously leaving her mother with seven children) refuses to have her siblings and herself except she gives the child she is carrying away. But Janet wants her baby With Babalola's offer of marital possibility to her she “glowed” and becomes pregnant for her new man. Janet is Adah's friend. She is intelligent. Adah learns that she is not as loose as she had been made to appear. Her baby, Tony, is “a noisy eighteen month-old baby who was a good playmate for Titi" (p. 54). Adah tells Janet her troubles and in turn Janet confides in the former. She it is who asks Adah to look for a daily-minder for her children "until the nurseries had vacancies for them” (p. 54). It is probably on this score that Janet's husband, Babalola decides to connect Adah to Trudy After Adah's quarrel with Trudy, Janet agrees to baby-sit for the class. It is she who reminds Adah that "two rooms made a flat. Didn't Adah know?” (p. 83). Janet directs Adah to Mr Noble's house. She says, "just go to Willes Road, ask for the black man's house and it will be shown to you" (p. 96). Adah eventually gets a room there.
23. Mrs Konrad (p. 47)
She is the Finchley Central Library chief librarian under whose headship Adah works. She is a Czech who is very friendly and welcomes Adah at the library. She is a wide lady, with wide hips and wide waist with "a face like a flattened O” (p. 47). She has fine lines around her eyes and these lines deepened when she smiled" (p. 47). She is not given too much make-up and has her hair cropped “just like a man's used to be” (p. 48). Mr Konrad's skirts were gathered and local and she keeps to any fashion she has adopted without being moved by what is the vogue. Come rain, come shine she wears her gathered skirts. With this "together with unusually tight blouses, gave her the look of an overblown ballet dancer” (p. 48). At a point Adah is pining over their poverty, especially not having any Christmas gifts for her children, Mrs Konrad, her boss at the North Finchley Library, sends toys - a doll with eyes that blinked for Titi, a little guitar for Vicky and a squeaking hedgehog for Bubu. Adah is excited by these unexpected gifts.
24. Landlord and landlady (p. 49)
They own the house where the Obis first live. They don't tolerate children's noises since they have none. They therefore insist on the Obis moving out of the building until Adah and her husband afford a new place.
25. Latifu (p. 22)
The boy who carries Adah on his back while the headmaster canes her mercilessly. At the height of the pain inflicted on her by the headmaster, Adah sinks her teeth into her back. The headmaster promises to send the aggressive girl to jail. He probably fails to do so because the bite on Latifu's back may not have been so deep to merit imprisonment.
26. Ma Ofill (Ma on Ada's side) (p. 8)
She is Adah's mother. A seamstress, she is married to Pa who used to work in the railways as a metal moulder. She is a fierce woman who fights when provoked. She prefers Boy going to school to Adah doing so. She believes that girls rather than go to school spend a year or two there to learn how to write their names and thereafter learn how to sew. She used to ask Adah to take Boy to Ladi-Lak Institute which is reputed to be expensive. Adah believes that it is she who had opposed her further schooling unlike her father who would have made sure that "I started school with Boy" (p. 10). It is for Ma's failure to send Adah to school that the police arrests and punishes her with gari-water drinking At the death of her husband, Ma remarries, sending her children to relations. She dies at thirty-eight. She participates actively at Lawyer Nweze's reception.
27. Mother-in-law (Ma on Francis' side) (p. 28)
This is Francis' mother whose daughter-in-law, Adah, reveres so much. She loves her mother-in-law so much that she will not like to offend her. When Francis leaves for England, Adah finds it difficult to extricate herself from his mother. Adah virtually has to bribe her with her golden jewellery to negotiate her exit. Both Adah and mother-in-law are close. We are told that she was everything that Ma (Adah's mother) was not." She is quiet, beautiful and motherly. So close are Adah and her mother-in-law that people think the latter is Adah's real mother. The love and respect Adah has for her seems to have extended Adah's torture in the hands of Francis. This is because Adah does not want the news of their misunderstanding abroad to reach home. It seems that Francis is aware of that, and so capitalizes on it by writing home in order to quieten her.
28. Mr Noble (p. 89)
He is an old Nigerian whose name initially had not been Mr Noble. He got the name upon arriving England when he became a second-rate (second-class citizen) person. That was in the early 1960s. So many stories chase him about "so confusing and so contradictory that he became a living legend" (p. 89). Rumours about him include his having been a retired civil servant, son of a certain chief in Benin City; he has six wives and twenty children whom he leaves behind to come and study Law in England. In the end, he does not make a law degree. We are told that his failure to make a law degree is due to "a gross miscalculation” (p. 90). He fails to get to England with sufficient sum of money as the money he comes in with "was not even enough to see him through GCE or Matriculation" examinations. He presses on, however. He decides to work and study He looks for jobs but gets none until he becomes a lift man at a tube station whose work is to shout “Mind the doors" all day and to collect tickets and sometimes pennies from fare-dodgers" (p. 90). He is constantly drinking, becoming a jester or clown, made so by mates at work or those he meets in clubs. Nearly naked at each of these performances he is entitled to a pint of alcohol. Alter a while, he starts to behave like a child. These acts earn him the nickname, Noble, which later After taking up 'Mr Noble' as his name, "things became a little easier for him" (p. 90). With his clownishness he boasts that "Africans were very strong" (p. 90). Working at the railway, be becomes his name. decides to shoulder a lift without electricity provided. But somehow something happens and his shoulder is trapped, "among the twisted metal of the lift door. His entire arm becomes paralyzou The railway pays him “a lump sum as a compensation for his injury" (p. 91). The reality being that he is not likely to be a lawyer, he invests the compensation in purchasing an old terrace house on Willes Road, just by Kentish Town station. It is in Mr Noble's house that the Obis live. Part of Mr Noble's clownishness is what happens between him and the two old sisters and a son who occupy two of the floors of the rundown building he has just bought. Thinking that his having taken delivery of the house means complete ownership, he fails to realize that in England the law sides with the tenant. We are told that because the two old sisters are controlled tenants, they cannot be taken out of the building without the law's concern. All efforts by Mr Noble to send them and their son away fails from the position of the law. Mr Noble adopts psychological pressures. He tells the elderly sisters that his mother was the greatest witch in the whole of Black Africa" (p. 92). He assures them that he has reported them to her and that she will kill them. He makes song and dance with this information even when he saw the old ladies in the street" (p. 92). Mr Noble's house begins to feel the strain of severe winter weather. It is dilapidated building which need repairs. Not only does he not have money, "the old ladies did not pay enough rent" (p. 93). After a while, one of the old women dies: "In one of the cold weeks that followed, the other sister died. The son fled in terror.” Mr Noble boasts about these events proclaiming that his “mother killed them from her grave" (p. 93). Many people, including his tenants, believe Mr Noble has the capacity to kill. While Mr Noble enjoys the popularity of his claims to killing his old tenants, "nobody would live in his house" (p. 93). Although there is housing shortage, tenants are not keen about his house. The Obis are lucky to have found a room in his crumbling house and quickly snatch it up.Mr Noble is said to look like “a black ghost for his head was hairless and he seemed to have dyed the skin on his head black” (p. 97). On his face are written bottled up sorrows, disappointments and maybe occasional joys." We are also informed that "he had a hollow in the middle of his neck” and that “two prominent bones formed a triangle which encased this hollow” (p. 97). He wore many clothes upon vests and old jumpers in his bid to fight cold, and when he laughs, the narrator notices that such a perfect set of teeth is (given] to such an ugly man” (p. 98). Pa Noble takes snuff in his "wide nostrils, then wheezed and sneezed" (p. 101). Mr Noble has a television set which Francis often enjoys watching. On one rare occasion when Adah calls her husband, he is unhappy that his wife had drawn his attention when she "knew that he was watching a pantomime on television” (p. 148). At the point he is showing such an anger, "Vicky's right ear was getting as big as that of an elephant" (p. 148) At the height of Francis' family planning dispute with his wife, he calls Mr Noble and the tenants. As soon as Mr Noble knows why they are gathered he reminds his tenant (Francis) that his wife (Adah) has some health issues and sent all the inquisitive tenants away," insisting that "there was nothing bad in Adah getting birth control gear" except that “she should have told her husband" (p.161).
29. Mrs Noble (Sue) (p. 92)
She is Mr Noble's wife. A white woman married as a consolation for Mr Noble's failure to make his law degree, gives him many children. Sue is her name. She is amused by her husband's claim that he has reported his headstrong elderly tenants to his (Mr Noble's) mother. She is a large-boned Birmingham woman "still young and still pretty, with masses of auburn hair hanging loose about her shoulders” (p. 99). She is warm-hearted, friendly, loud and unreserved. She is the type of woman "who would not hesitate to tell you the first thing that came into her head" (p. 100). She is a good hostess. As the Obis arrive as their guests, Sue makes every effort to make the visitors comfortable: "she lumped together two or three piles of clothes, some damp, others dry, to make room for Adah and Francis" (p. 100). At Sue's joke or any action similar to that, Adah "looked bleak” but the hostess (landlady to-be) "roared with laughter" (p. 100). Adah is confused since she would not know "whether she (Sue) was laughing with or against her." However, Adah later discovers that anytime Sue thinks she has cracked a joke "she laughed like that, forcing her listeners to laugh with her whether they saw the joke or not" (pp. 100-101). She calls her husband 'Papa' and talks so much "about everything but about nothing in particular" (p. 101). It is as if she feels that she will fail "as a hostess if there was any silence at all” (p. 101). Mrs Noble's tea party is for children. Very elaborate with her preparations, cups, plates and napkins decorated in "Christmas paper, all shining and bright" (p. 147) are placed everywhere. The foods are coloured as well even though many of them are sugary. Adah gets her children ready, instructing Titi “to eat everything on her plate because Mrs Noble would be very angry if she made a mess of her food" (p. 147). It is at this party that Vicky's ailment is more pronounced: it is about his ear which is getting bigger than an elephant's. Being a Christmas Day, the Indian doctor refuses to come for Vicky. She is a kind person. As the party she had organized comes to an end, "Mrs Noble brought the left-over jellies to Vicky. Vicky refused to eat them; he had never seen food look so colourful" (p.
30. Nurse (p. 129)
She is unnamed. She is a young nurse at the hospital where Bubu is born by a Caesarean. She is the one given the task of informing Adah to stop using the hospital night-dress. She informs Mrs Obi that the hospital gown is meant to be used after one's baby has been delivered. The hospital night-dress is adorned in the labour room. After this message, she smiles and disappears. Based on this message, Adah is pained that her husband has not thought of buying her a new night-dress. As a consequence, Adah thinks that she is being discussed in the hospital ward. Her bitterness against her husband increases the more. The nurse's intimation further makes her think of how the other inmates may have been rating her. She is the nigger woman with no flowers, no cards, no visitors, except her husband who usually comes five minutes before the closing time" (p. 130). The night-dress problem and all bad feeling it generates in Adalı make her think of telling the nurse not to display her baby. The sadness makes Mrs Obi shun speaking with the Greek Woman on the bed opposite her. However, the nurse was showing them all, the women, the doctors, anybody who happened to be around that, this was their special baby, bom miraculously, for whom the mother had suffered so" (p. 137).
31. Lawyer Nweze (p. 8)
He is the first Ibuza lawyer, trained in the United Kingdom. An event is organized by Ibuza women to welcome him. He is treated as a Messiah, one who "would go into politics and fight for the rights of the people of Ibuza... Oh, yes Lawyer Nweze was going to do all sorts of things for the people of Ibuza" Most of the blouses sewed for the occasion are made by Ma (Adah's mother) who is a seamstress. The noise from this reception inspires Adah to aspire to go to the UK. The Ibuza women practise their songs several times and showed off their uniform to which they had given the name Ezidiji de ogoli , ome oba" (p. 15). The occasion holds at the wharf as the women "welcome someone who had been to have a taste of that civilization" (p. 15). The women are beautiful in their new uniform bearing pale blue drawings of feathers on it. We are told that the headscarf is red, the shoes they wear are of black patent leather called 'nine-nine' while the new gourds are covered with colourful beads: "When these gourds were rattled, they produced sounds like the Spanish samba, with a wild sort of animal overtone" (p. 16). The story about Lawyer Nweze is mythic and gaps in the tale are filled in by Pa, Adah's father. All Ibuza men, like their women, go to welcome him on the day, a Sunday. One thing that impresses the men about the lawyer is that "he did not bring a white woman with him" (p. 16). And if he had tried to do so, "Oboshi would have sent leprosy on her" (p. 16).
32. Mr Okpara (p. 170)
Adah is sitting in a park near Gospel Oak village ruminating over her recent experiences. She is silently crying over her life with Francis and how the initial glimmer of hope in her life has turned into a mirage because of her bad experiences of later years. Then a hand touches her on her shoulder, a black man's, a Nigerian's, an Igbo man's hand. A sensitive and experienced man, Mr Okpara guesses that she may have had a fight with her husband. Although Adah has had no fight with Francis at that point, Mr Okpara's guess is near enough: she is in a very sad and gloomy mood. Mr Okpara introduces himself and asserts that he knows Adah to be an Igbo woman. He does not ask for what may have happened between her and her husband but simply would want both of them to go beg her husband to have her back. The narrator comments that that is "typical Ibo psychology, men never do wrong, only the women, they have to beg for forgiveness, because they are bought, paid for... obedient slaves” (p. 170) Adah leads Mr Okpara to their house. He and his wife who is a secretary in the Civil Service have been in England for a while. He has now finished his studies in the UK and will return to Nigeria in about four months' time. Mr Okpara tells Adah that he and his wife have outgrown quarrels, “but they still quarreled” (p. 170) all the same. He reminds Adah of an Igbo proverb which says that the home is built for many things “but particularly for quarrels" (p. 171). Although she appreciates Mr Okpara's Igbo proverbs, their condition of living in the UK and what obtains at home in families are different: they (Francis and Adah) live in one room with their children; Francis sits in the room all day "turning the pages of this book and that book," gets up to eat; has no job; with sex as his only recreation. However, she does not raise these issues with
Mr Okpara.
Mr Okpara meets Francis in their one room. Mr Okpara is described as "immaculate" in his dressing: "his white shirt was dazzling... He was wearing a black three-piece suit, and his black shoes shone" (p. 172). Francis, on the other hand, is "looking as untidy as ever." He has an unshaved face and does not really care as nothing will change who he is: "Francis was Francis, not ashamed of being Francis" (p. 172). Francis denies having 'touched' Adah and says "she simply went out. "He says he does not know where she had gone out to, but he had been sure she would return because of her children. Mr Okpara advises them not to quarrel between themselves as everyone in England minds his or her business. As a result, "most lonely African students usually had emotional breakdowns" (p. 173). He wants to know if he (Francis) would want his wife to have such a breakdown and further asks if that "would not be a drain on his purse” (p. 173). Rather than appreciate Mr Okpara's intervention, Francis resents it. We are informed that "he lashed his tongue at Okpara, told him to go back home and mind his own business” (p. 173). Mr Okpara rather than be angry and shy away, persists in his reconciliatory effort. He advises Francis to get a job rather than sing Jehovah Witness' songs to the children. Otherwise "he would lose his manhood and these children he was singing to would soon realize that it was their mother that bought them clothes and food" (p. 174). We are informed that as Mr Okpara raises his last point, "Francis stared at him as he said this because it was a great humiliation to an African not to be respected by his own children" (p. 174). In the weeks and months that follow, Mr Okpara and his pretty little wife."did their best but Francis would always be Francis” (p. 174).
33. The Ojos (p. 52)
They are co-tenants of the Obis. They are Nigerians who had not come to England with their four children. They are among those who advise the Obis to send their children back to Nigeria. The Ojos and the other tenants tell the Obis that "only first-class citizens lived with their children, not the blacks" (p. 52).
34. Pa Ofili (Adah's father) (p. 8)
He worked in the railway as a metal moulder. Pa is an Ibuza man. He is one of those who calls United Kingdom with a heavy sound like the type of noise one associated with bombs. It was so deep, so mysterious..." Adah's father, Pa, always voices United Kingdom in "hushed tones, weaving such a respectful expression as if he were speaking of God's Holiest of Holies" (p. 8). Adah's parents, of which her father is one, are of the view that Lagos is a bad place, “bad forbringing up children because here they picked up the Yoruba-Ngbati accent" (p.8). He shaves with a curved knife which he sharpens on a broken slate. Pa rubs some carbolic soap lather on his chin before using the sharpened curved knife. His sudden death is a big set-back for Adah's ambition to be educated. It puts her educational quest in jeopardy. Adah sees him more as a friend than one's father. The reason is that if she offends, he will give her a few strokes and forget the offence, but if it is Ma, "she would smack and smack, and then nag and nag all day long" (p. 12). When Ma is charged with child neglect, Pa arrives from his work place to plead for her release by the police. When she is eventually released, Pa fishes out the cane and gave her (Adah) a few strokes for Ma's benefit... they were not hard strokes” (p. 14). Pa loves Adah because he thinks that the latter "was the very picture of his mother" (p. 14). The few gaps in the magical story of Nweze's arrival from England is filled in by Pa. He is the person who discovers that Lawyer Nweze "could not swallow pounded yam anymore; he could not even eat a piece of bone" (p. 16). As for Lawyer Nweze's meat, it "had to be stewed for days until it was almost a pulp" (p. 16) which does not suit Pa's manner of food. Such a pulpish meat reminds him of the watery food we ate in the army" (p. 16). This indicates that Pa Ofili fought in the Second World War. and his friends agree that Lawyer Nweze's failure to return with a white woman is a goodthing. He and his friends also toast to the goddess of the River Oboshi "for not allowing Lawyer Nweze to go astray" (p. 17).
35. Peggy (p. 165)
Peggy and Adah meet as staff of Chalk Farm Library. She is a library assistant. She is an Irish girl with "a funny hair style.” When he meets Adah, she had been heartbroken because her Italian summer-holiday boyfriend has failed to fulfil his promises to her. She is 23 years old, although she is not very beautiful. Adah and Peggy often talk about this Italian fellow. We are told that the love between Peggy and this boyfriend of his "was love at first sight, and many promises were made" (p. 165). Peggy is always talking about what she will do to this defaulting boyfriend, and "how she was going to get her own back." She informs Adah she had given so much of herself to the young man that “she would regret it all her life" (p. 165). When all the young people who work in the library gather and discuss their problems, Adah willmerely laugh for which Peggy snaps at her: "What the bloody hell are you laughing for?" (p. 168). Peggy and Bill read Adah's manuscript and acknowledge her mastery as a writer. Peggy says Bill answers for Adah: "She has no problems. She is happily married to a brilliant husband” (p. 168). This is not necessarily true. Adah is only masking her headaches, as she fails to contradict about The Bride Price manuscript: "It was so funny, I could not put it down. It was so comical" (p. 185).
36. Two policemen (p. 149)
We are not given their names. We are keen to talk about them because they prove to be wiser than Francis who asks them to arrest an Indian doctor who fails to come for Vicky's enlarged ear on Christmas Day. Rather than do what Francis asks for, they engage him in a dialogue on the matter. The two policemen look at Vicky's ear, and agree with Francis that "it was growing much more rapidly than the rest of his body" (p.149). One of the policemen speaks in a cool voice and sounds like somebody with “lots and lots of reasoning who was capable of using that reasoning when everybody around him was going mad' (150). The policeman in question is tall and has a moustache. He assures Francis that another doctor will come, possibly the Indian doctor's locum/substitute.
37. Miss Stirling (p. 57)
She is the children's officer who oversees issues about children. Trudy, the child-minder works under her. Her office is on Malden Road "in front of Trudy's registered house”(p. 73). She wears a red dress and rimless spectacles, the type academics in old photographs usually wore" (p. 57). In all Adah's dispute with Trudy she fails to get a word in" although she "tut-tutted a great deal" (p. 57). When the first doctor comes for Vicky, she stands there "wringing her hands” (p. 64). She and the doctor agree Vicky is probably "too weak to talk” (p. 65). However, Vicky soon talks. In spite of her appearing non-committal in the Adah-Trudy matter, Trudy is eventually punished by having her name removed "from the council list of approved child-minders" (p. 73). She announces that a nursery has been found for Titi and that Vicky will have a place once he is out of hospital
38. Titi (p. 26)
Titi is Adah's first child, a girl. When she was born, Adah's relations did not congratulate her because she had not related with them for a long while. She is a strong girl who hardly falls ill. Whereas Vicky is known to have been ill twice in the story, Titi is playful. She and her mother, Adah, take a stroll away from their one room apartment on Willes Road, next to Athlone Street Library. On this outside strolling, Titi "skipped up and down, down and up on the dangerous snow” (p. 141). She is a lively little girl who joins in the singing of Adeste Fideles with the mother. On Mrs Noble's tea party day, Titi's mother instructs her "to eat everything on her plate." She accepts to do that but wonders "why people should be forced to eat everything that was set before them" (p.147).
39. Trudy (p. 55)
She is introduced to Adah by Mr Babalola. A baby-minder. She is charged to look after Adah's two babies in addition to two by her. She lives a block away from the Obis. Francis takes the children to her in the morning and collects them at six after Trudy had washed them and given them tea'(p. 55). She is described as “this fat, loose-fleshed woman with dyed hair and pussy-cat eyes” (p. 72). After a few weeks of Trudy's minding of the children, Titi stops talking altogether, a child known to be a chatterbox. Once Adah notices this, she takes the babies to Trudy herself. She discovers that Trudy's milkman delivers only two pints every morning whereas Trudy claims that her children take three pints a day and that her milkman "delivered not the two Adah saw, but five pints every day" (p. 55). Like the Obis, Trudy lives in a slummy area, in a house that had been condemned ages ago" (p.55). At the house's backyard are rubbish, broken furniture, uncovered dustbin, toilet of the old type with faulty plumbing quite smelly and damp. When Adah asks of her own children, having seen Trudy's, she discovers at the direction of the child-minder, that Vicky "had been pulling rubbish out of the bin" while Titi "was washing her hands and face with the water leaking from the toilet" (p. 57). Baffied, Adah takes her children to the children's officer, Miss Stirling. Trudy joins them in floods of tears. Her excuse is that it is her visitor who takes away her attention from the children. Adah does not believe her, however, it is on that day that Trudy's actions destroy one of the myths Adah had nurtured about whites: the myth that they don't.lie. The narrator says Adah "could not stop thinking about her discovery that the whites were just as fallible as everyone else" (p. 58). Adah calls Trudy a prostitute, though behind her when she is quarrelling with her husband, However, before Trudy she is accused of sleeping with Francis. Adah remarks, "I even allow my husband to sleep with her as part of the payment" (p. 73), a statement Trudy does not deny. Instead "Trudy looked as if somebody was forcing her to eat shit" (p. 73). Trudy's name is removed from the list of approved child-minders as punishment for her carelessness. On her own, however, she leaves Malden Road and “moved to somewhere in Camden Town, so that if Vicky had died, Adah could not have carried out her threats" (p. 73).
40. Vicky (p. 35)
Adah's first son, Vicky is part of the mother's pride as a woman. He is faced with two major health crises in the novel . The first health challenge is the virus meningitis he suffers as a result of Trudy's care-free attitude towards looking after him and the sister, Titi. The mother, Adah, is so bothered ailment that she threatens Trudy: "I am going to kill you. Do you hear me? I am going to kill you, anything happens to my child" (p. 72). The second health issue is when one of Vicky's ears begins to enlarge on a Christmas Day. All efforts made by the father, including inviting two policemen to arrest the Indian doctor, fail. It is instead a Chinese doctor who comes and reveals that the enlarged ear is due to a bug-bite
41. West Indian girl (p. 157)
An unnamed West Indian girl who is a mother at such a young age. She is undressed like Adah for the doctor to see them. It is about the birth control gear. Adah takes note of her and goes to sit down beside her. She is the only woman with a baby. As Adah has a baby, too, she thinks it will be wise to hefriend the West Indian girl so that both of them can in turn look after the other's child. Adah smiles (157). Unlike Adah whose husband does not want birth control, the West Indian girl's husband did not mind." Before their meeting, the West Indian girl had taken the pill. However, the younger mother covered with the kind of rash that reminded Adah of the rash caused by prickly heat in African p. 187). Although this is inconveniencing, especially regarding appearance, the constant itching is a problem to her. It is how the West Indian girl looks like somebody with chicken-pox" that discourages her from taking the pill.