Adah's Mother

Adah has a more complicated relationship with her mother than she does with her father. She believes early on that her father would have sent her to school sooner if her mother had not disapproved of the idea, and this causes her to feel a "secret joy in disobeying her mother" (9). This culminates in Adah sneaking off to go to school and her mother being brought into the police station and forced to drink gari as a result. Nevertheless, Adah is saddened when her mother dies at the same time she is having Titi, as she wishes her mother would have lived to see her first grandchild.