The Girl with the Louding Voice(54)

“Can we please discuss the fund-raising for the Ikoyi orphanage?” someone ask, but before I can check who it is, Thin Woman say, “I knew it would happen! I knew it. I warned Lola, didn’t I? I told her to organize some boys to beat the bleach out of the chick’s skin, but she was quoting scripture, saying God will fight her battles.”

I keep carrying the tray around, hearing them talk and talk about the shopping, about buying costly bag and shoe with dollar money and pound of money, and about one husband giving side-chickens pregnant.

I reach the last woman. She is standing by herself in one corner, looking like she lost and find herself here by one kind accident. She is wearing t-shirt, pink color, with blue jeans-trouser, white canvas-shoe on her feets. She look more young than the other womens here, with her slim, egg-shape face and skin the color of a roasting cashew nut. Her head is full of plenty tiny twists, like a million millions of them, some of it is hanging in front of her face, the curly tip of it bouncing on the round top of her nose, and the rest of it is pack up in a band at the middle of her head. There is no makeups on her face—only red lipstick on lips which is looking like the cherry in the middle of the plate. There is one earring inside her nose, a spot of gold to the left of her nostrils.

I hold the tray for her, and she give me a smile, show white teeths with iron gate around it. “We are women,” she say in her honey voice. She is talking whisper, but it is loud for me to be hearing her. “Don’t mind them.”

Honest, honest, her voice is doing music inside my ears, and I am just feeling something in my belly, like I want to be singing. Laughing. I take my eyes from her face, keep it on her white canvas-shoe, on her short, thin legs inside the blue jeans-trouser. She pick the meat, fingers small, nails short and neat. “Thank you,” she say.

Thank you.

That is something I don’t ever hear in this house. I look her face, blink. Why is she saying thank you? For just holding tray? For nothing?

“Thank you,” she say again, with that music voice. “I certainly hope you enjoy serving your madam Florence.”

“Kind of you,” I say. “To say thank you to me. Nobody have say thank you to me since I leave Ikati.”

“It’s okay,” she say, touching my shoulder, gentle. “Go on now.”

The touch is like electrics on my body. I shock, drop the tray, the stick-meat scattering the floor by my feets.

“Are you all right?” the woman say.

I look all the stick-meats, the remaining six of it on the floor, and all I want is my mama. I want her to not be dead, just for two or three minutes only, so she can bring herself come here and tell Big Madam to not beat me, or maybe she can magic and hide me until all the meats is no more on the floor. Or maybe she can—

“Don’t cry,” the woman say. “Here, let me help you get those. Step back a bit so I can—”

“No, no,” I say, wiping my tears. “I get it myself, ma.”

As I bend to pick the first meat, I feel a quick cold air, and something heavy is landing on my head as the honey-voice woman is shouting, “Florence, what the hell?” and I want to tell her that yes, my head is very hell, because it feel as if my head is frying inside a fire, burning, burning, burning, and I am thinking the ceiling have come down and crash on top my head, but when I look up, I see Big Madam. She is holding one leg of her red shoe, and before I can say another one word, she smash the shoe right inside the middle of my head.





CHAPTER 30

Fact: Zamfara state in northern Nigeria was the first to make polygamy legal, in 2000.

Can you hear me?”

Her voice is making my inside to be warm, but my head is still hot, my brain is running up and down inside my skull, boom, boom, boom. Everywhere around me is black. I feel something wet on my face, my eyes. It is cold, soft, a cloth?

“Open your eyes.”

I am smelling her scent, of coconut oil, butter, a white lily flower.

“Adunni,” she say again. “Open your eyes.”

We are in the outside, at the backyard. My back is lying on the wall near the outside tap, and she is bending in front of me, kneeling down with one leg. Behind her, the sun is bright in the sky, throwing sun rays over the grass fields in the afar. She is giving me a smile, the gate on her teeths blinking in the sun. I want to smile back, but when I try, my head is pounding of pain, it collect the smile from my lips, crush it.

“It must hurt,” she say.

“Very hot,” I say.

She nod. “I’ll see if I can get the cook to give you some paracetamol.”

Something wet is climbing down my face, and before I can be touching it, she use a cloth and wipe it. The cloth is the gray cleaning cloth from the kitchen, but when she wipe my face, the color is changing to red.

“I am bleeding blood?” I ask. “Big Madam wound me bad?”

“It looks worse than it actually is,” she say. “How are you feeling?”

“Like Boko Haram is bombing inside my head.”

She smile. “Your madam was very upset. She said she asked you to do some work outside. Why were you serving guests?”

“Kofi ask me for help,” I say.

She throw one look back at the house, where there is noise and laughters and music. “I think I might just sit here with you for a while.”