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trays of fruits, squashing papayas with his boots and laughing. When we got into the car, Kevin told Mama that the soldiers had been ordered to demolish the vegetable stalls because they were illegal structures. Mama said nothing; she was looking out of the window, as though she wanted to catch the last sight of those women.
    I thought about the woman lying in the dirt as we drove home. I had not seen her face, but I felt that I knew her, that I had always known her. I wished I could have gone over and helped her up, cleaned the red mud from her wrapper.
    I thought about her, too, on Monday, as Papa drove me to school. He slowed down on Ogui Road to fling some crisp naira notes at a beggar sprawled by the roadside, near somechildren hawking peeled oranges. The beggar stared at the note, then stood up and waved after us, clapping and jumping. I had assumed he was lame. I watched him in the rearview mirror, my eyes steadily on him, until he disappeared from sight. He reminded me of the market woman in the dirt. There was a helplessness to his joy, the same kind of helplessness as in that woman’s despair.
    The walls that surrounded Daughters of the Immaculate Heart Secondary School were very high, similar to our compound walls, but instead of coiled electrified wires, they were topped by jagged pieces of green glass with sharp edges jutting out. Papa said the walls had swayed his decision when I finished elementary school. Discipline was important, he said. You could not have youngsters scaling walls to go into town and go wild, the way they did at the federal government colleges.
    “These people cannot drive,” Papa muttered when we got to the school gates, where cars nosed up to each other, horning. “There is no prize for being first to get into the school compound.”
    Hawkers, girls much younger than I, defied the school gate men, edging closer and closer to the cars to offer peeled oranges and bananas and groundnuts, their moth-eaten blouses slipping off their shoulders. Papa finally eased the car into the wide school compound and parked near the volleyball court, beyond the stretch of manicured lawn.
    “Where is your class?” he asked.
    I pointed to the building by the group of mango trees. Papa came out of the car with me and I wondered what he was doing, why he was here, why he had driven me to school and asked Kevin to take Jaja.
    Sister Margaret saw him as we walked to my class. She waved gaily, from the midst of students and a few parents, then quickly waddled over to us. Her words flew generously out of her mouth: how was Papa doing, was he happy with my progress at Daughters of the Immaculate Heart, would he be at the reception for the bishop next week?
    Papa changed his accent when he spoke, sounding British, just as he did when he spoke to Father Benedict. He was gracious, in the eager-to-please way that he always assumed with the religious, especially with the white religious. As gracious as when he presented the check for refurbishing the Daughters of the Immaculate Heart library. He said he had just come to see my class, and Sister Margaret told him to let her know if he needed anything.
    “Where is Chinwe Jideze?” Papa asked, when we got to the front of my class. A group of girls stood at the door, talking. I looked around, feeling a weight around my temples. What would Papa do? Chinwe’s light-skinned face was at the center of the group, as usual.
    “She is the girl in the middle,” I said. Was Papa going to talk to her? Yank at her ears for coming first? I wanted the ground to open up and swallow the whole compound.
    “Look at her,” Papa said. “How many heads does she have?”
    “One.” I did not need to look at her to know that, but I looked at her, anyway.
    Papa pulled a small mirror, the size of a powder compact, from his pocket. “Look in the mirror.”
    I stared at him.
    “Look in the mirror.”
    I took the mirror, peered at it.
    “How many heads do you have,
gbo
?” Papa asked,