The Girl with the Louding Voice(11)

I open my teeths, feel as if I tear my face.

“Very good,” he say. “Be laughing. Be happy. A new wife is always happy.”

We are driving like two mad peoples, me showing my teeths, and him talking to hisself about how he was paying thousands and thousands of naira for bride-price until we pass the junction beside Ikati bakery, and the smell of rising bread is filling my nose and making me to think of Mama. We pass the village mosque, where there are peoples coming out from the iron gate of the mosque: mens wearing white jalabiya, holding prayer beads and plastic kettles, and womens covering their heads with hijab, all of them walking as if something is chasing them.

After nearly twenty minutes of driving from our house, Morufu cut a turn by Ikati canteen, drive enter inside a compound that is big like one half a football field, a cement house in the middle of it. The house is dark, no light in the four windows. There is no door in front, just a short wooden gate. In front of it, a curtain is flapping in the stiff evening wind. Morufu bring his car to a stop near a guava tree with branch that look like a man’s hand, the leafs on it spreading out over the compound like too many fingers on the hand. I see there is another car in the compound, green, a blue nylon bag instead of glass in one of windows in the back.

“This is my house. For twenty years, I build it myself,” Morufu say. He point to the other green car. “That is my other taxi-car,” he say. “How many people are having two cars in this village?” He jam his shoulder to the car door, push it open. “Come down and wait for me there,” he say. “Let me collect your load from the boot.”

I climb down from the car, kick one or two rotting guava on the floor from my path. My ears pick a noise from the house, the sound of a door opening and closing itself. A woman, thick in flesh and round at the hip, as if she hide a paw-paw inside of her hips under the black iro she is tying around her waist, bring herself come out from the house. Her face is white, be like she mash up white chalk and use it as a powder. In her hand is a candle sitting on a plate, and under the dancing candle flames, she be looking like a ghost with hairnet.

She carry the plate of candle like a offering to one god, walking slow, her feets sounding as if she is marching on eggs-shells until she stop in my front.

“Husband snatcher, welcome-o,” she say to the candle, breeze from her mouth making the fire to sleep. “When I finish with you in this house, you will curse the day your mother born you. Ashewo.”

“Labake!” Morufu shout from behind the car, “You have started your trouble again? You are calling my new wife ashewo? A prostitute? I think you want to die this night. Adunni, don’t mind her-o. She is having mental problem. Her head is not correct. Don’t mind her!”

The woman, Labake, she hiss, drawing it, so that it is doing echo around the whole compound, before she turn around and walk away, her buttocks rolling.

Me, I am just standing there, feeling a cold climbing up to my head, until Morufu come to my side. He drop my box on the floor, spit beside my feets, and wipe his mouth with the back of his hand.

“That is Labake, the first wife,” he say. “Don’t mind her at all, at all. All her talk is empty. Now, follow me inside, come and meet Khadija, the second wife.”





CHAPTER 7

I count six peoples in the parlor.

There is a sofa resting by the wall, a wood table in the middle of it with a empty cup sitting on top. The tee-vee in the corner beside the sofa is holding a kerosene lantern which is spitting dark orange light inside the parlor.

I throw my eyes around the womens first. There is Labake, the one with white face, standing near the tee-vee, slapping her stomach as if there is evil inside of it. Beside her, another girl. She look like half a adult, and is wearing long robe, a green-black color in the light of the lantern. I look her from the low-cut hair on her head to the swollen of her stomach. As if she is thinking I will use my eyes to be plucking her baby out from her stomach, she turn it from me and face the wall.

I look the childrens sitting on the floor, all four girls. They are blinking eyes at me as if I am tee-vee movie with too much flashing light. The most young of them look like she is one and a half years of age. All the girls are not wearing correct cloth. Only pant. Even the one with kola-nut-size breast is not wearing brassiere. I use to see that one at the stream, wearing just pant, dragging water inside clay pot. Me and her have play ten-ten before, long times ago.

Just then, her name enter my brain: Kike. She is fourteen. Same age of me. When she give me look as if she is shock of seeing me, I hook my eyes on the lantern on the tee-vee, on the flame of fire dancing inside the glass bowl.

“That is Khadija,” Morufu say, pointing to the tiny one with pregnant. “She look small, but she is still your second senior wife. Kneel down and greet her.”

As I kneel to greet Khadija, Morufu chase away the childrens. “Inside, all of you, inside,” he say, kicking their legs. “Up, up on your feets. Kike, Alafia, up, up. You have seen new wife enough! Inside to your mat. No noise today. No fighting if you don’t want to see my red eyes!”

The girls tumble on top each other, scatter away from the parlor.

“Labake, Khadija, sit down.” Morufu say. “Sit down, let me talk to all of you.”

Labake throw herself inside the sofa, fold her hand on top her chest. “We know what you want to say, so talk quick,” she say.