CHAPTER FOUR

The note was still in my cardigan pocket.

I had not taken it out this morning.I had just looked at the cardigan hanging there on the wall knowing well it contained something and left it.

Today was the date at the bottom of that note.

I knew that without checking.

I picked up my bag and my books and walked out.

The second lecture of the day was Introduction to Research Methods.

Dr. Benson was a small man who spoke like he was always slightly annoyed at the room. He had been teaching for long enough that he no longer felt the need to make anything interesting. He just delivered and expected you to keep up.

I sat near the window. Third row from the back. Far enough from the front that nobody would notice if my pen stopped moving.

It stopped moving twice.

The first time was when Dr. Benson wrote a list on the board and told us we needed a recommended textbook before the next class. He said the title without looking up. Said the price the same way.

I wrote both down.

The girl beside me leaned over to her friend.

“My brother used that one last year,” she whispered. “I will just collect his own.”

Her friend nodded and crossed it off her list like it was already handled.

I looked at what I had written.

Title. Price.

I drew a small line under both and kept looking at it.

It was the same feeling as yesterday. The number on Dr. Cole’s board. The automatic way everyone around me reached into bags and purses and sorted things without thinking. The way money moved easily through some hands and stayed impossible in others.

I closed my notebook.

Kept my face even.

Kept my back straight.

The lecture ended at half past ten.

I was putting my books into my bag when someone stopped at the end of my row.

A girl. She was holding a small folded paper and looking at me with the expression of someone who had been asked to find a specific person and was relieved to have found them.

“Are you Elena Hart?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

She held out the paper.

“From the department office,” she said. “Dr. Cole’s secretary.”

She walked away before I could ask anything.

I unfolded it slowly.

The handwriting was neat and administrative.

Miss Hart. Please come to my office after your morning lectures. Room 14. Faculty of Behavioral Sciences. This is not optional.

No greeting. No explanation. No please.

I read the last line again.

This is not optional.

I folded the paper. Put it in my bag.

Sat there for a moment after everyone else had filed out.

The classroom was empty now. Just me and the sound of the corridor outside and three words sitting at the bottom of a note in a cardigan pocket at home.

Today was the day.

I stood up and walked out.

Room 14 was at the end of a long corridor.

I knocked.

“Come in.”

I pushed the door open.

The office was cold in a way that had nothing to do with temperature. Everything had a place. Books arranged in a way that made sense to nobody but him. No photographs. No colour anywhere. A single window with pale light that seemed to enter apologetically.

Dr. Adrian Cole sat behind the desk like he had been there for hours and would be there for hours more. He looked up when I came in. His expression said nothing.

“Sit,” he said.

I sat. Put my bag on my lap. Kept my back straight.

He opened the desk drawer. Placed a document on the desk between us. I turned it to face me.

I looked at the heading.

Marriage Contract.

I looked up at him.

He said nothing. Just waited.

I picked it up and read it. Every word. Every clause. My eyes moved slowly and carefully the way they moved over exam questions. One year. Legal arrangement. Separate rooms. No public contradiction of the terms.

In exchange. Full funding for my graduate research. Outstanding tuition cleared. Feeding and accommodation taken care of. An agreed monthly payment at my convenience. A letter of recommendation from Dr. Adrian Cole.

I set it down.

The office was very quiet.

“Why me?” I said.

“You argued with me publicly on your first day and did not back down,” he said. “You study behavioral psychology. You believe in what you study. You are convincing.”

The word sat between us.

Convincing.

Not worthy. Not chosen. Convincing.

“There is a complaint filed against me with the university board,” he continued. His voice was the same as it always was. Even. Deliberate. “My position is under review. A marriage resolves the optics. I need someone the board will believe in.”

I looked at him for a long moment.

“And you thought of me,” I said.

“I assessed the available options,” he said. “Yes.”

I looked back at the contract.

At my tuition cleared in black and white.

At my research funded.

At every door I had been standing outside of for months with nothing in my hands.

I picked up the contract.

And placed it back in front of him.

“No,” I said.

Something moved in his jaw. Barely.

“You have not fully considered….”

“I have considered it,” I said. I stood up. Picked up my bag. “I am not an option Dr. Cole. I am not available for assessment.”

I walked to the door.

“Miss Hart.”

I stopped. My hand on the door handle. I did not turn around.

“The offer closes in a few days,” he said.

I opened the door and walked out.

The afternoon streets were busy with people who had somewhere to go.

I walked through them with my braiding bag on my shoulder and my eyes forward. The contract was behind me. The office was behind me. All of it was behind me and I was moving forward the way I always moved forward because that was the only direction that made sense.

I knocked on the first gate I came to.

A woman looked out. Shook her head before I finished speaking.

The second house a man answered. Told me to come back next week.

The third house nobody answered at all even though I could hear a television inside.

I stood on the street outside the third house for a moment. My braiding bag was heavy on my shoulder. The sun was lower now than when I had started. My feet were already tired.

I kept walking.

An hour passed.

Then another.

No customers. Not one.

I turned back toward home when the street lights came on.

My room received me the way it always did. Without comment.

I set my braiding bag down. Sat on the mattress. Took off my shoes.

The cardigan was still on the nail. Still hanging exactly where I had left it this morning. I looked at it for a moment. At the pocket where the note was.

I looked away.

I looked at where my storage containers are. The particular one stored with gari.

The gari was almost finished.

I poured what was left into the cup. Added water. Sat with it in my lap and drank slowly in the grey evening light coming through the small window.

It tasted like nothing.

It always tasted like nothing.

I set the cup down.

My phone was on the floor beside the mattress where I always left it. The screen was face down the way I kept it now so the crack did not catch the light and remind me.

It lit up.

I almost missed it. The vibration was weak, the battery was struggling and the buzz against the floor was more like a whisper than a sound. I reached for it and tilted the screen carefully to the left where the touch still worked.

Unknown number.

But the first digits.

I knew those digits.

I pressed accept and put it to my ear.

“Elena.”

My mother’s voice came through the phone the way her voice always came. Warm and careful and trying not to show something.

“Mama,” I said.

“I told Ngozi not to bother you,” she said. “I told her you have your studies.”

“Mama what is happening,” I said.

“It is nothing serious,” she said. “Just a small fever. You know how my body is.”

“How many days?” I said.

A pause.

“Mama.”

“A week now,” she said quietly. “But I am managing. I have been drinking hot water and…”

“A week?,” I said.

My voice came out steadier than I felt. I pressed my free hand flat against the mattress beside me.

“The medicine is not expensive,” she said. “I just need to…”

“I will handle it,” I said.

“Elena you do not have to…”

“I will handle it Mama,” I said. “Just rest.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“How are you?” she asked. “Are you eating?”

I looked at the empty cup beside me.

“Yes,” I said. “I am fine.”

She made a sound that said she did not fully believe me but would not push. The sound only mothers make.

“Study hard,” she said. “That is all I want.”

“Yes Mama.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

The call ended.

I sat with the phone in my hand for a long time.

The room was getting darker. The window light was almost gone. My mother was lying in a room two cities away with one week fever she had tried to hide from me. The medicine she needed cost money I did not have. My tuition had thirty days. My landlord’s patience was running out. My braiding bag had come home empty again.

And I had walked out of an office today and said no to the only thing that could have fixed all of it.

I put the phone down.

Lay back slowly on the mattress.

The ceiling stain was up there like always. Same shape. Same place.

I stared at it.

The dark came in gradually the way it always did.

Through the window. Under the door. Into all the corners first and then the middle of the room.

I did not reach for the torchlight.

I just lay there.

My eyes were open for a long time.

Then they were not.

I woke up before the light came.

The room was still dark. Still quiet. My phone said it was four in the morning but I was already awake and alert in a way that had nothing to do with being rested.

I lay there for a moment.

Something was different.

Not outside. Not in the room. Inside me. Like something that had been sitting in one position for a long time had quietly shifted in the night without asking.

I stared at the ceiling.

My mother’s voice was still in my ear. A week.

I sat up slowly.

Reached for the cardigan on the nail without turning on any light. Slid my hand into the pocket.

The note was there.

I did not take it out.

I just held it through the fabric.

And sat in the dark with something settled in my chest that had not been settled yesterday.

I already knew what I was going to do.

I had known it since four words came through a phone with a dying battery in a dark room.

Are you eating well?

I sighed, tilted my head against the wall.

And waited for morning.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​