The Girl with the Louding Voice(16)

Khadija say I should bite Labake next time she try that kind of a thing. That respect is not answer to Labake’s madness. She say that before her stomach was swelling with this baby, that she and Labake will fight and fight until one of them is bleeding blood. She say next time, I must keep a bowl of red, hot pepper beside me in the baffroom so that when Labake come and find my trouble, I can pour the pepper in her face and bite her breast.

Khadija make me feel a pinch of comfort in Morufu’s house. She keep to caring for me in between caring for her three childrens and the one swelling in her stomach. “Adunni, you must eat this yam,” she will say, giving me the bowl of yam and fish soup with a smile. “Eat it and be thanking God that we are having food to eat.” Or, “Adunni, come, let me put oil on your hair. You want me to wash it for you?” And I will say, “No, no, thank you, Khadija, I wash it myself.” Or, “How is that thing now with Morufu? Is it still paining?” And I will say no, it is no more paining me in my body, but in my heart and spirit and mind, the pain is never going away.

Me and Khadija are sharing bedroom now, except of when Morufu call for me. It make things easy, sharing room with Khadija. When sad feelings are catching me in the night, Khadija will rub my back, her hand going around and around, as she is telling me to be strong, to be fighting to keep my mind. Sometimes, when her baby is kicking too hard on her stomach, I press my mouth to her hard stomach and sing a song to the baby inside until she and her baby will fall inside a deep sleep, and Khadija say that when she born the baby, I must keep singing to him too, because the baby is already knowing my voice.

Just yesternight, she was comforting me with her words. “When you begin to born your children, you will not be too sad again,” she say. “When I first marry Morufu, I didn’t want to born children. I was too afraid of having a baby so quick, afraid of falling sick from the load of it. So I take something, a medicine, to stop the pregnant from coming. But after two months, I say to myself, ‘Khadija, if you don’t born a baby, Morufu will send you back to your father’s house.’ So I stop the medicine and soon I born my first girl, Alafia. When I hold her in my hands for the first time, my heart was full of so much love. Now, my children make me laugh when I am not even thinking to laugh. Children are joy, Adunni. Real joy.”

But I don’t want to born anything now. How will a girl like me born childrens? Why will I fill up the world with sad childrens that are not having a chance to go to school? Why make the world to be one big, sad, silent place because all the childrens are not having a voice?

All night, my mind was busy thinking, thinking on the medicine Khadija was taking, on if I can stop my own pregnant from coming.

This morning I find Khadija in the kitchen, where she is sitting on a bench by the stove and plucking ewedu leafs into a bowl by her feets.

“Adunni,” she say, “good morning. You feeling good today? No more crying for your mama?”

“I been thinking of what you say last night,” I say, my eyes on my feets, on my toesnails, which look like they need a clipping. “About childrens.”

“Ah,” Khadija say.

I peep behind me to check it sure that no one is coming, then I tell her. “I am having a real fear to born childrens,” I say, my words climbing each other, rushing fast. “I was thinking of what you say . . . about medicine for not wanting baby. I am just . . . not wanting to born a baby now. What can I do?”

Khadija stop her hand on the plucking of the leafs and nod her head.

“Adunni, you know that our husband is wanting two boys? One from me and one from you. You know this?”

“I know,” I say. “I just want to wait.” I am hoping that maybe if the pregnant is not coming ever and ever, maybe Morufu will send me go back to my papa. But I don’t say this to Khadija.

“You are fearing?” she ask after a long moment, pity in her voice.

“Very,” I say. “My stomach cannot be swelling every year because I am looking for boys to give Morufu. The only thing I want to be swelling is my head and my mind with books and educations.” I bite my lips. “I am not strong like you, Khadija. I cannot be borning a baby at this my age.”

“You are strong, Adunni,” she say, her voice low. “A fighter. We are the same, only you don’t know it. You want to fight with your educations—good for you, if you can do it in this our village. Me, I am fighting with what I have inside of me, with my stomach for getting pregnants. With it, I can fight to stay here so that my childrens will keep a roof on their head, and my mama and papa will keep having bread to eat and soup to drink.”

I stand there, looking her, at the small hill of leafs in the bowl which is rising with each falling leaf from Khadija’s hand, at her fingers which are dark green and wet from the pinching and twisting of the leafs from the branch.

“Do you know how to count the days for your monthly visitor?” she ask. “You know when it is starting every month?”

“Yes,” I say. “Why?”

“There is something you can take. A mixing of strong leafs.”

“It will help me?” I ask, my heart lifting with hope. “It will stop the pregnant?”

“I am not making you any promise, Adunni, but I will see if I can find the leafs for it in Ikati farm. You will add it to ten paw-paw seeds and mix it with gingerroot and dry pepper. Put it all in a dark bottle and soak it in rainwater for three days. You must drink it five days before and five days after your monthly visitor and every time you and Morufu are doing the thing.”