Second Class Citizen Quotes

She was not even quite sure that she was exactly eight, because, you see, she was a girl. She was a girl who had arrived when everyone was expecting and predicting a boy. So, since she was such a disappointment to her parents, to her immediate family, to her tribe, nobody thought of recording her birth. She was so insignificant.

That was the trouble with Jesus, He never answered you; He never really gave you a sign of what to do in such a tempting situation. Anybody could twist what He said to suit his own interpretation.

The relatives wiped their eyes and stared at Adah. What was the matter with her? Wives cried in the presence of their departing husbands, not when they had gone and could not see the tears!

Boy was now all alone. He had to work very hard to keep the family name going. Adah had dropped out of it. She had become an Obi instead of the Ofili she used to be. Boy had resented this, but his presence at the wharf showed that he had accepted the fact that in Africa, and among the Ibos in particular, a girl was little more than a piece of property.

Adah was quietened [sic] by the sharpness in his voice. The sharpness seemed to say to her: “It is allowed for African males to come and get civilised in England. But that privilege has not been extended to females yet.” […] It was a sad indication of what was coming, but she prayed that the two of them would be strong enough to accept civilisation into their relationship.

“You must know, my dear young lady, that in Lagos […] you may be earning a million pounds a day; you may have hundreds of servants: you may be living like an élite, but the day you land in England, you are a second-class citizen.”

Everybody talked and speculated. The trouble was that Ada was like a peacock, who kept wanting to win all the time. Only first-class citizens lived with their children, not the blacks.

Adah could not stop thinking about her discovery that whites were just as fallible as everyone else. There were bad whites and good whites, just as there were bad blacks and good blacks! Why, then did they claim to be superior?

She told herself to stop being over-romantic and soft. No husband would have time to ask his pregnant wife how she was feeling so early in the morning. That only happened in True Stories and True Romances, not in real life, particularly not with Francis for that matter. But despite the hard talking to herself, she still yearned to be loved, to feel really married, to be cared for.

Among her people, she could have killed Trudy, and other mothers would have stood solidly behind her. Now, she was not even given the joy of knocking senseless this fat, loose-fleshed woman with dyed hair and pussy-cat eyes. She belonged to the nation of people who had introduced “law and order.”

This was where she differed from Francis and the others. They believed that one had to start with the inferior and stay there, because being black meant being inferior. Well, Adah did not yet believe that wholly, but what she did know was that being regarded as inferior had a psychological effect on her. The result was that she started to act in the way expected of her because she was still new in England, but after a while, she was not going to accept it from anyone. She was going to regard herself as the equal of any white.

You come to behave and act like a mad person if you are surrounded by mad people. Was that what people called adaptation? she wondered.

These groups of men calculated that with independence would come prosperity, the opportunity for self-rule, poshy vacant jobs, and more money, plenty of it. One had to be eligible for these jobs, though, thought these men. The only place to secure this eligibility, this passport to prosperity, was England. They must come to England, get a quick degree in Law and go back to rule their country. What could be more suitable?

Nearly all the failures married white women. Maybe it was the only way of boosting their egos, or was it a way of getting even with their colonial masters? Any woman would do, as long as she was white.

But the one thing Adah could not stand was when a group of people took a portion of the Bible, interpreted it the way that suited them and then asked her to swallow it like that, whole. She became suspicious. She did not mind it if Francis believed it, except when it disturbed his studies or if either of the children needed a blood transfusion and he refused.

Francis was so happy and was coming over to her cane chair, kissing her very, very softly, telling her how virtuous she was and how he now was the lord and master of several farms, miles and miles around. What more could a man want than a virtuous wife like her who had helped him achieve all this?

Her adoptive parents were good, she added quickly, too quickly for Adah, who could never guess how it could be possible for somebody else to love you as if you were their very own flesh and blood. They did love her, her adoptive parents, but she was determined to make a happy home for herself, where she would be loved, really loved, and where she would be free to love. She had been lucky. It seemed as if her dream was coming true.

“It is not coming true; it is true. You are now almost like a princess,” Adah said, wanting to cry.

When in Rome, do as Rome does. When in University College Hospital in Gower Street, do as they do in University College Hospital in Gower Street. Neat, that.

“I brought my children here to save them from the clutches of your family, and, God help me, they are going back as different people; never, never are they going to be the type of person you are. My sons will learn to treat their wives as people, individuals, not like goats that have been taught to talk.”

If we humans could rationalise about dates and all that, she believed that God, who made the humans who could rationalise and come to terms with things, would be able to rationalise still more. So, having equipped herself with this idea, she did not share Mrs Noble’s distress. The long and short of it was that she had no money for Christmas; God would understand.

At least some of the provisions of the Welfare State worked for both second- and first-class citizens alike.

Why was it necessary to have a husband brought into an issue like this? Could not the woman be given the opportunity of exercising her own will? Whatever happened, she was not going to have any more children.

“Don’t you remember, or have you forgotten, the saying of our people, that a husband and his wife always build their home for many things but particularly for quarrels? A home is where you quarrel in.” Adah nodded, she did remember.

She should have asked Mr Okpara whether the old people lived in one room, whether the men gave babies to their wives in such quick succession.

She worked out a timetable, and found that she could manage to have three hours of quiet each afternoon. Then her old dream came popping up. Why not attempt writing? She had always wanted to write. Why not?

Francis could kill her child. She could forgive him all he had done before, but not this.