The Girl with the Louding Voice(18)

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I don’t think I ever run so fast since the day my mama born me.

I skip on my feets, jumping the rocks on the floor, not stopping to greet some of the womens carrying firewood on their head as I pass them on the way, or the childrens selling morning bread in a tray on their head. I keep my eyes to my front, holding Khadija’s clay pot in one hand, my wrapper tight in the other hand until I am near. Afar off, near the fence of banana leafs by the edge of the river, I see Ruka and Enitan.

There are five or six boys in the other far end of the river, playing a boxing match and shouting and laughing, but I keep my eye on Enitan, who is drawing a square in the wet sand with a stick. Her bucket is on the ground beside her, and Ruka is perching her buttocks on the back of her feets, watching what Enitan is drawing.

I stand there a moment, feeling my heart swell as I am thinking back to the time when I didn’t have a husband, when I was free to be playing like this.

Enitan is now drawing another square. I know she will draw about six or seven squares in the sand for a game we are calling suwe, which is my best-of-all game. I will throw a stone inside one of the square, then be jumping on every square with only one leg, trying to not fall until I pick the stone, while Enitan and Ruka will be clapping and singing “Suwe! Suwe! Suwe!” from outside the box. But all of that was all before in the past.

I set down Khadija’s clay pot, shout, “Enitan! Ruka!”

Ruka turn her head to where I am standing, wide her eyes, and smile a big smile. “Look! Adunni!”

Me and Enitan and Ruka, we run to embrace ourselfs and begin to laugh and talk all at once.

“Our wife,” Enitan say, pulling my hand to sit down on a rock by the river edge. Ruka sit on the other side of me so that I am in the middle of the two both of them. I feel as if my heart will just burst from the smile on their face, the bouncing happy in their eyes.

“How is life as a wife?” Enitan ask, eyes shining as if a bulb light is inside her head. “Tell us everything, tell us everything!”

“Look your cheeks!” Ruka say, pinching my left cheeks. “Adunni, you been eating too much bread and milk. You are living well!”

“There is plenty to eat there,” I say.

“And how is your senior wifes?” Enitan ask. “Morufu? How is he doing to you?”

“Wait, let me ask her one too!” Ruka say. “Tell us, Adunni, did you do that thing with your husband?” She wink her eye like something gum her eyeslids together. “Did it pain you or was it sweet?”

“Are you cooking every day?” Enitan ask.

“Tell us about that thing!” Ruka say. “I want to hear it!”

“Too many questions,” I say, laughing at Ruka, who is still winking. “The first wife, Labake, she is just a very wicked somebody. She always be painting her face with white powder like a ghost. She keep fighting everybody too.”

“Kike’s mama?” Enitan say, pulling her wrapper to cover her knees as a quick cold breeze blow us. “I know that woman. She is always doing like something is worrying her. What of the second wife? What is her name?”

“Khadija.” I touch my chest, look my friends left to right. “She is just like us. Only six years more old, but she have three childrens and a new one on the way. She is so kind. She cook for me, teach me plenty things. I sing for her too, at night. She likes to hear my singing. She be just like another mama to me.”

My eyes pinch with tears as I am thinking of it. Khadija be like another mama to me. A mama! I been praying long for God to bring back my mama, even though I know she don’t ever be coming back, but for the first time since then, I think that maybe Khadija be the answer to my prayer.

“See!” Enitan is saying, clapping. “It is not so bad to be a wife!”

“No,” I say, talking slow, “it is not so bad, but only because of Khadija. About that thing you ask of me—” I turn to Ruka with a twist in my stomach. Maybe if I tell them how it is, they will not be hurrying so much to marry. “It is too much pain, make it hard to walk sometimes. I even bleed blood after, and many times, it make me feel so sick. Don’t rush and marry, I tell you!”

But Ruka, the foolish girl, she laugh a shy laugh and push my knees to one side. “Lie! Lie!”

I am wanting to ask her why she think I am lying, but Enitan point to the back of us, shout, “Look who is coming from the boys’ side of the river! Kayus!”

I jump to my feets and look. True, true, my Kayus is coming, running fast, shouting my name. It is the first time I am seeing Kayus since I marry Morufu two months back, and I pick myself and begin to run to him, leaving Enitan and Ruka. We meet just before he reach the girls’ side, and he pick me up, turn me around and around in the air until the sky become ground. He so strong sometimes, Kayus!

“I was hearing the girls shouting your name from afar,” he say as he set me down. “And I say to myself, ‘No, it is not my Adunni,’ but when I look well, I see it is you!”

I steady myself on my feets, then cup his face in my two hands. “My Kayus!”

“I didn’t talk to Papa since you marry that goat Morufu,” he say, fighting to remove his head from my hands, but I hold it tight because I want to soak up his whole face with my eyes: his long, thick eyeslashes, the thinning marks on his cheeks, his two front teeths that have a chipping on the edge of it from when he smash his mouth in a fall.