The gate opens at half past four and my husband, Ebuka Owusu, walks through it with a woman I have never seen. I am standing in the yard with a basket of wet laundry when it happens. Eight years I have been his wife. Eight years in this compound, this yard, these walls. I know the sound of that gate the way I know my own breathing. The woman behind him is young — maybe twenty-four, twenty-five. She has a round, soft face and large eyes that sweep the yard quickly before settling into something careful and still. She wears a yellow dress that fits like someone chose it for this exact moment. She is holding a small bag against her chest like a shield. Ebuka stops in the middle of the yard and looks at me. "Chiamaka," he says, and his voice carries the particular steadiness of a man who has rehearsed this. "This is Titilayo. My wife." The wet wrapper in my hands drips onto my feet. I feel the water but I do not look down. Titilayo's eyes move to mine. She drops them almost immediately. She looks confused, or she is performing confusion — I cannot tell yet, and something in me files that away. I set the basket on the ground. I walk into the main house. I do not say anything because there is nothing to say that would not break me open in front of both of them. In the main bedroom I go straight to my mother's sewing machine — the old Singer she left me, the one I have carried through every move since I was nineteen. I wrap the cord around its neck and lift it. It is heavier than I remember. I do not ask the house girl who appears in the doorway to help. I do not ask Ebuka's cousin who comes up the hallway saying my name. I carry it myself, through the corridor, down the back steps, across the yard to the boys' quarters — the small outbuilding at the rear of the compound that has been used for storage since Ebuka's uncle left. It takes three trips. The machine. My clothes. The box of fabric I have been keeping under the bed for no particular reason, or maybe for exactly this reason. On the last trip I see Sipho standing in the doorway of the main house. Ebuka's younger brother, quieter than Ebuka in every way that matters. He is watching me. He has both hands braced against the doorframe and he does not move toward me, does not call out, does not offer. He just watches. I carry the last box into the BQ and I do not look back at him, but I know he is still there. ---