She shrugged and went back to shaking out black peppercorns from a pod. "Do you cook ofe nsala well?"

"I have never cooked it."

"Why? My son likes it."

"My madam has never asked me to cook it."

"She is not your madam, my child. She is just a woman who is living with a man who has not paid her bride price."

"Yes, Mama."

She smiled, as if pleased that he had finally understood something important, and gestured to two small clay pots at the corner. "I brought fresh palm wine for my son. Our best wine-tapper brought it to me this morning."

She pulled out the green leaves stuffed in the mouth of one pot and the wine frothed over, white and fresh and sweet-smelling. She poured some into a cup and gave it to Ugwu.

"Taste it."

It was strong on his tongue, the kind of concentrated palm wine tapped in the dry season that made men in his village start to stagger too soon. "Thank you, Mama. It is very good."

"Do your people tap wine well?"

"Yes, Mama."

"But not as well as my people. In Abba, we have the best wine-tappers in the whole of Igboland. Is that not so, Amala?"

"It is so, Mama."

"Wash that bowl for me."

"Yes, Mama." Amala began to wash the bowl. Her shoulders and arms shook as she scrubbed. Ugwu had not really looked at her and now he noticed that her slender, dark arms and face were shiny-wet, as if she had bathed in groundnut oil.

Master's voice, loud and firm, came from the living room. "Our idiot government should break ranks with Britain too. We must take a stand! Why is Britain not doing more in Rhodesia? What bloody difference will limp economic sanctions make?"

Ugwu moved closer to the door to listen; he was fascinated by Rhodesia, by what was happening in the south of Africa. He could not comprehend people that looked like Mr. Richard taking away the things that belonged to people that looked like him, Ugwu, for no reason at all.

"Bring me a tray, Ugwu," Mama said.

Ugwu brought down a tray from the cupboard and made as if to help her serve Master's food, but she waved him away. "I am here so you can rest a little, you poor boy. That woman will start overworking you again once she returns from overseas, as if you are not somebody's child." She unwrapped a small packet and sprinkled something into the soup bowl. Suspicion flared in Ugwu's mind; he remembered the black cat that appeared in the backyard after her last visit. And the packet was black, too, like the cat.

"What is that, Mama? That thing you put in my master's food?" he asked.

"It is a spice that is a specialty of Abba people." She turned to smile briefly. "It is very good."

"Yes, Mama." Maybe he was wrong to think she was putting her medicine from the dibia in the master's food. Maybe Olanna was right and the black cat meant nothing and was only a neighbor's cat, although he did not know any of the neighbors who had a cat like that, with eyes that flashed yellow-red.

Ugwu didn't think again of the strange spice or the cat because, while Master had dinner, he sneaked a glass of palm wine from the pot and then another glass, since it was so sweet, and afterward he felt as if the inside of his head was coated in soft wool. He could hardly walk. From the living room, he heard Master say in an unsteady voice, "To the future of great Africa! To our independent brothers in the Gambia and to our Zambian brothers who have left Rhodesia!" followed by laughter in wild bursts. The palm wine had got to Master as well. Ugwu laughed along, even though he was alone in the kitchen and did not know what was funny. Finally, he fell asleep on the stool, his head against the table that smelled of dried fish.

He woke up with stiff joints. His mouth tasted sour, his head ached, and he wished the sun were not so oppressively bright and that Master would not speak so loudly over the newspapers at breakfast. How can more politicians return unopposed than elected? Utter rubbish! This is rigging of the worst order! Each syllable throbbed inside Ugwu's head.

After Master left for work, Mama asked, "Will you not go to school, gbo, Ugwu?"

"We are on holiday, Mama."

"Oh." She looked disappointed.

Later, he saw her rubbing something on Amala's back, both of them standing in front of the bathroom. His suspicions returned. There was something wrong about the way Mama's hands were moving in circular motions, slowly, as if in consonance with some ritual, and about the way Amala stood silent, with her back straight and her wrapper lowered to her waist and the outline of her small breasts visible from the side. Perhaps Mama was rubbing a potion on Amala. But it made no sense because if Mama had indeed gone to the dibia, the medicine would be for Olanna and not Amala. It may be, though, that the medicine worked on women and Mama would have to protect herself and Amala to make sure that only Olanna died or became barren or went mad. Perhaps Mama was performing the preliminary protections now that Olanna was in London and would bury the medicine in the yard to keep it potent until Olanna came back.

Ugwu shivered. A shadow hung over the house. He worried about Mama's cheeriness, her tuneless humming, her determination to serve all of Master's meals, her frequent hushed words to Amala. He watched her carefully whenever she went outside, to see if she would bury anything, so he could unearth it as soon as she went back indoors. But she did not bury anything. When he told Jomo that he suspected Mama had gone to a dibia to find a way to kill Olanna, Jomo said, "The old woman is simply happy to have her son to herself, that is why she is cooking and singing every day. Do you know how happy my mother is when I go to see her without my wife?"

"But I saw a black cat the last time she came," Ugwu said.

"Professor Ozumba's housegirl down the street is a witch. She flies to the top of the mango tree at night to meet with her fellow witches, because I always rake up all the leaves they throw down. She is the one the black cat was looking for."

Ugwu tried to believe Jomo, that he was reading undue meaning into Mama's actions, until he walked into the kitchen the next evening, after weeding his herb garden, and saw the flies in a foaming mass by the sink. The window was barely open. He did not see how so many flies, more than a hundred fat greenish flies, could have come in through that crack to buzz together in a dense turbulent cluster. They signified something terrible. Ugwu dashed to the study to call Master.

"Quite odd," Master said; he took off his glasses and then put them back on. "I'm sure Prof. Ezeka will be able to explain it, some sort of migratory behavior. Don't shut the window so you don't trap them in."

"But, sah," Ugwu said, just as Mama came into the kitchen.

"Flies do this sometimes," she said. "It is normal. They will go the same way they came." She was leaning by the door and her tone was ominously victorious.

"Yes, yes." Master turned to go back to the study. "Tea, my good man."

"Yes, sah." Ugwu did not understand how Master could be so unperturbed, how he could not see that the flies were not normal at all. As he took the tea tray into the study, he said, "Sah, those flies are telling us something."

Master gestured to the table. "Don't pour. Leave it there."

"Those flies in the kitchen, sah, they are a sign of bad medicine from the dibia. Somebody has done bad medicine." Ugwu wanted to add that he knew very well who it was, but he was not sure how Master would take that.

"What?" Master's eyes narrowed behind his glasses.

"The flies, sah. It means somebody has done bad medicine for this house."

"Shut the door and let me do some work, my good man."

"Yes, sah."

When Ugwu returned to the kitchen, the flies were gone. The window was the same, open only a crack, and the wan sunlight lit up the blade of a chopping knife on the table. He was reluctant to touch anything; the mysteries around him had tainted the pans and pots. For once, he was pleased to let Mama cook, but he did not eat the ugba and fried fish she made for dinner, did not take so much as a sip of the leftover palm wine he served to Master and his guests, did not sleep well that night. He kept jerking awake with itchy watering eyes, wishing he could talk to somebody who would understand: Jomo, his aunty, Anulika. Finally he got up and went into the main house to dust the furniture, something mild and mindless that would keep him occupied. The purple-gray of early dawn filled the kitchen with shadows. He turned on the light switch fearfully, expecting to find something. Scorpions, perhaps; a jealous person had sent them to his uncle's hut once, and his uncle woke up every day for weeks to find angry black scorpions crawling near his newborn twin sons. One baby had been stung and almost died.