The Girl with the Louding Voice(4)

“Don’t cry,” Kayus say. “If you cry, then I will cry too.”

Me and Kayus, we hold each our hands tight and cry with no noise.

“Run, Adunni,” Kayus say, wiping his tears, his eyes wide and full of a fearing hope. “Run far and hide yourself.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “What if the village chief is catching me as I am running? Are you forgetting Asabi?”

Asabi is one girl in Ikati that didn’t want to marry a old man because she was having real love with Tafa, one boy that was working in the same Kassim Motors with Born-boy. The day after her wedding, Asabi was running away with Tafa but they didn’t able to run far. They catch Asabi in front of the border and beat her sore. And Tafa? They hang the poor boy like a fowl in the village square and throw his body to Ikati forest. The village chief say Tafa was stealing another man’s wife. That he must die because in Ikati, all thiefs must suffer and die. The village chief say they must lock Asabi in a room for one hundred and three days until she is learning to sit in her husband’s house and not running away.

But Asabi didn’t learn anything. After the one hundred and three days of locking inside a room, Asabi say she is no more coming outside. So she stay in that room till this day, looking the walls, plucking hair from her head and eating it, pinching her eyeslashes and hiding it inside her brassiere, talking to herself and the spirit of Tafa.

“Maybe you can be coming to play with me in Morufu’s house,” I say. “I can be seeing you in the stream too, even at the market, anywhere.”

“You think?” Kayus ask. “What if Morufu is not letting me to come and play with you?”

Before I can think to answer, Born-boy turn hisself in his sleep, wide his two legs apart, and push out a loud mess that fill the air with the odor of a dead rat.

Kayus sniff a laugh and cup his hand on his nose. “Maybe marrying Morufu is better than staying in this house with Born-boy and his smelling mess.”

I squeeze his hand and drag a smile to my lips.



* * *





I wait till Kayus is sleeping again before I leave the room.

I find Papa in the outside, sitting on the kitchen bench near the well. The morning is beginning to light up now, and the sun is just waking up from sleep; be like half a orange circle peeping from behind a dark cloth in the sky. Papa is not having any shirt on, just his trousers and no shoes on his feets. He is eating a short stick in the corner of his mouth, his black radio in one hand, and with the other hand, he is banging a stone on his radio to wake it up. He do this every morning to wake the radio up since before Kayus was born, and so I low myself to the sand and keep my hand in my back and wait for the radio to wake up.

Papa bang the stone on the side of the radio three times—ko, ko, ko—and the radio make a cracking noise. A moment pass, and a man’s voice in the radio say, “Gooood morning! This is OGFM 89.9. The station for the nation!”

Papa spit his stick to the sand beside me and look me like he want to slap my head for bending low in his front. “Adunni, I am wanting to hear six o’clock morning news. What is it?”

“Good morning, Papa,” I say. “There is no beans in the house. Can I go and borrow from Enitan’s mama?”

I have beans swelling inside a tin of water in the kitchen, but I am needing to talk to somebody about this whole wedding coming because Enitan and me, we been best of friends since we been able to read ABC and count 1-2-3. Her mama is also having a small farm, and many times, she like to give us beans, yam, and egusi, and she will tell us to pay for it whenever we are having moneys for it.

Papa shock me when he laugh and say, “Wait.”

He set the radio on the bench ever so gentle, but the radio make a cracking noise two times, and then it just die dead like that. Give up spirit. No more OGFM 89.9 voice. No more station for the nation. Papa look the radio a moment, the silent black box of it, then he hiss, slap the radio from the bench, and smash it to the ground.

“Papa!” I say, putting my two hands on my head. “Why you spoil your radio, Papa? Why?” The tee-vee didn’t ever work, and now, all that is remaining of the radio is a broken plastic with yellow, red, and brown wires peeping out of it.

Papa hiss again, shift his left buttock up, and dip his hand in his back trouser pocket. He bring out two fifty-naira notes of moneys and give me. I wide my eyes, look the money, dirty and soft and stinking of siga. Where is Papa finding moneys to give me? From Morufu? My heart is twisting as I fold the naira inside the edge of my wrapper.

I don’t say, Thank you, sah.

“Adunni, hear me well,” Papa say. “You must pay for the beans with that money. Then you tell Enitan’s mama that after your wedding, me your papa”—he slap his chest as if he want to kill hisself—“will pay for all she been ever give us. I will pay it all everything. Even if it is costing thousan’ of naira, I will pay it all. Every naira. You tell her that, you hear me?”

“Yes, sah.”

He look the scatter of his radio on the floor and bend his mouth in a stiff smile. “Then I will buy a new radio. A correct one. Maybe even a new tee-vee. A cushion sofa. A new— Adunni?” He slide his eye to me, strong his face. “What are you looking at? Off you go! Quick!”

I don’t say one word as I leave his front.