The Girl with the Louding Voice(38)

I drag my eyes away and look up at the green sign on top the road. “‘Third Mainland Bridge. Victoria Is-land. Ikoyi.’” I am reading the sign out loud, because I want Mr. Kola to know that I know English.

“Victoria Island,” Mr. Kola say. “High-land. Not Is-land.”

I don’t understand it. The sign is not reading “high-land,” but I keep my words to myself. “Is it where we are going? This Victoria Island place?”

“We are going to Ikoyi,” Mr. Kola say, and give me one kind look, as if he is wanting me to be jumping and dancing. “But I will take you to Victoria Island, so you see what it looks like, then we turn around and go to Big Madam’s house in Ikoyi. When you get to her house, you will understand. Big Madam has a mansion. Big house. She is rich, Adunni. Very rich.”

“That is good?” I ask.

“Money is always good,” he say, pressing his lips tight as if he is tired of all my questions.

We are driving like that in the silent, until we climb down from another up road and we are now inside town again. This time, everywhere is just shining and brighting. Tall buildings with wall of glass, and shape like ship, like hat, like choco-cubes, like circles, like triangles, all different shapes and color and size is left and right of us on the road.

“Eh!” I say, my eyes wide, looking everywhere.

“Yes,” Mr. Kola say. “It is very nice. Nice but busy. That glass building there is a bank. That blue one, far away, on the edge of the water, is the Civic Centre. This one here, with the hundred or so windows, is the Nigerian Law School. That hotel there, the very tall one that looks like is full of shining stars, is the top of the Intercontinental Hotel. Very expensive hotel. Five stars. Look, that is the Radisson Blu hotel. Let me link back to Ikoyi from here.”

We drive on a street with more buildings and plenty shops until Mr. Kola nod, say, “Look, Adunni, look at that shop, the one with mannequins in the window beside that GTBank, that’s Big Madam’s shop. She owns the entire building.”

I look the tall glass building Mr. Kola is pointing me, catch the shining and blinking blue and green letters on the roof of it: KAYLA’S FABRICS inside of the glass. There are two dolly babies with no hand, behind the window too, their skin like the peoples in the Abroad tee-vee. I never see a dolly baby that is tall like me in my life. One of the dolly baby is having costly-looking blue lace pin down on her body, and the other one be naked with two small breast on top the chest like a guava that didn’t ripe.

“Eh!” I say it again because only “eh” is coming to my head.

“Her daughter’s name is Kayla,” Mr. Kola say, keeping his eyes to the road. “That’s why it’s called Kayla’s Fabrics. Good, the traffic here is moving.” We keep driving, and Mr. Kola keep pointing to this shop, that mall, that office. Everything is too beautiful and too much loud for me to be following it all because it is filling my head and making it to be swelling big. When the car turn into one quiet road with green leaf trees on the left and right, and there is no more noise and glass and bank, then my head is no more wanting to burst.

“What do you think?” Mr. Kola ask. “Of Lagos?”

“Too much, sah,” I say. “Lagos is just a noise-making place with too much light and glass.”

Mr. Kola throw his head back and shift the cap on his head and laugh. “‘Noise-making place’ is a good way to describe it,” he say. “Big Madam lives at the end of this road.”

“Yes, sah.”

“Adunni.” He stop the car on the side of the road, turn his whole body, and look me. “You must behave yourself in Big Madam’s house. Don’t steal. Don’t tell lies, and please, do not follow boys.”

I strong my face. “Me? Steal? It didn’t possible, sah,” I say. “I don’t tell lies. I don’t like boys. I am a very good girl, sah.”

“I need to warn you because if Big Madam tells me she does not want you anymore, I don’t know where to put you. You understand?”

“Yes, sah,” I say. “I don’t know where to put myself too. The village chief will kill me dead if I go back to Ikati.”

“Now—” Mr. Kola clear his throat three times, which means that what he wants to say a serious thing. “Big Madam expects you to be very hardworking.”

“I can be working hard, sah,” I say.

“She will give you rules to follow. You must obey them all.”

I nod my head yes.

“Eat what they give you. Sleep where they show you. Wear what they give you,” he say. “You hear me? Don’t start to grow wings after you have been there for a short time. If you do, you will get kicked out. You know you cannot go back to Ikati, so behave yourself. You hear?”

How I can be growing wings when I am not a fowl? “Yes, sah,” I say. “What else must I do?”

“Every month, she will pay you ten thousand naira,” he say.

“Ten what? For me?” That is too much money to be collecting.

“I will collect the money for you and keep it in a bank,” he say. “When I come and visit in three months, I will bring all the money. You hear?”

“Yes, sah,” I say. Maybe Mr. Kola is a nice man. He didn’t smile every time and he tell a lie about medical test, but maybe he is helping me. “Thank you, sah.”