The Girl with the Louding Voice(3)

My throat tight itself as I hear her voice in my head now, the faint and weak of it, as she was begging Papa to don’t give me to any man for marriage if she die of this sickness. I hear Papa’s voice too, shaking with fear but fighting to be strong as he was answering her: “Stop this nonsense dying talk. Nobody is dying anything. Adunni will not marry any man, you hear me? She will go to school and do what you want, I swear to you! Just do quick and better yourself!”

But Mama didn’t do quick and better herself. She was dead two days after Papa make that promise, and now I am marrying a old man because Papa is forgetting all the things he make promise to Mama. I am marrying Morufu because Papa is needing moneys for food and community rent and nonsense.

I taste the salt of my tears at the memorying of it all, and when I go back to my mat and close my eyes, I see Mama as a rose flower. But this rose is no more having yellow and red and purple colors with shining leafs. This flower be the brown of a wet leaf that suffer a stamping from the dirty feets of a man that forget the promise he make to his dead wife.





CHAPTER 3

I didn’t able to sleep all night with all the sorrowing and memorying.

At first cock crow, I don’t climb to my feets to begin my everyday sweeping or washing cloth or grinding beans for Papa’s morning food. I lie there on the mat and keep my eyes close and listen to all the noise around me. I listen to the crying of a cock in the afar, a deep mourning cry; to the blackbirds in our mango tree singing their happy, every-morning song. I listen as far away, somebody, a farmer maybe, is hitting a ax at the buttocks of a tree; hitting, hitting, hitting. I listen as brooms are making a swish on the floor in one compound, as one mama in another compound is calling her childrens to wake up and go baff, to use the water in the clay pot and not the one in the iron bucket.

The sounds are the same every morning, but today, every sound is a blow to the heart, a wicked reminding that my wedding is drawing close.

I sit up. Kayus is still sleeping on his mat. His eyes are close but he look like he is having two minds about waking up. He been doing this shaking of his eyeslids in a struggle since the day we bury Mama, throwing his head left and right and shaking his eyeslids. I move near to him, press my palm on his eyeslids, and sing a soft song in his ear until he keep hisself still.

Kayus is only eleven years of age. He use to bad behaving many times, but he has my heart. It is me Kayus come to and cry when the boys in the village square was laughing him and calling him cat-fighter because Kayus, he was all the time sick as a child, so Papa take him to one place and they use razor blade to slash on his cheeks three times this way and that, a mark to chase away the spirit of sickness. When you are seeing Kayus, it is as if he was in a fight with a big cat, and the cat use his nails to scratch Kayus on his cheeks.

It is me that was teaching Kayus all the schoolwork I know, the Plus and Minus and Science and, most of all, the English, because Papa is not having school fees moneys for even Kayus too. It was me that tell him his futures is bright if only he can push hisself to learn.

Who will be caring of Kayus when I marry Morufu? Born-boy?

I sigh, look my older brother, Born-boy, as he is sleeping on the bed, a vexing look on his face. His real name is Alao, but nobody is ever calling him that. Born-boy is the first born, so Papa say it is respecting for him to be sleeping on the only one bed in the room three of us are sharing. I don’t mind it. The bed have a thin mattress foam on top it, full of holes that bedbugs are using as kitchen and toilet. Sometimes, that mattress be smelling like the armpit of the bricklayers at the market square, and when they are raising their hand up to greet you, the smell can kill you dead.

How can Born-boy be caring for Kayus? He don’t know how to cook or clean or do any work except of his mechanic work. He don’t like to laugh or smile too, and at nineteen and half years of age, he look just like a boxer, both his hands and legs be like the branch of a thick tree. He sometimes is working all night at Kassim Motors, and when he come home too late in the night, he just throw hisself inside the bed and sleep. He is snoring now, tired, every of his breath is a shot of hot wind in my face.

I keep my eye on Born-boy a moment, watching the lifting up and down of his chest in a beat with no song, before I turn to Kayus and give him two soft slaps on his shoulder. “Kayus. Wake up.”

Kayus pinch open one eye first, before the second one. He do this all the time when he want to wake up: open one eye first, then the second one a moment after, as if he is fearing that if he open the two eyes at the same time, he will suffer a problem.

“Adunni, you sleep well?” he ask.

“I sleep well,” I lie. “And you?”

“Not well,” he say, sitting up beside me on the mat. “Born-boy say you are marrying Morufu next week. Was he joking me?”

I take his hand, cold and small in my own. “No joke,” I say. “Next week.”

Kayus nod his head up and down, pull his lips with his teeths and bite on it. He don’t say one word after that. He just bite his lips and grip my hand tight and squeeze.

“Will you ever be coming back after the marriage?” he ask. “To be teaching me? And cooking my palm oil rice for me?”

I shrug my shoulder. “Palm oil rice is not hard to cook. You just wash the rice in water three times and keep it in a bowl to be soaking. Then you take a fresh pepper and—” I stop talking because the tears is filling my mouth and cutting my words and making me to cry. “I don’t want to marry Morufu,” I say. “Please beg Papa for me.”