The Girl with the Louding Voice(63)

“You are a very beautiful girl,” Big Daddy say. He push his eye-glass down on his nose. “Intelligent too.”

“Thank you, sah.”

“My wife is away,” he say.

“Yes, sah.”

“She’s threatened. My wife. Threatened by every damn female around me. Frustrating, I tell you, very frustrating.”

“Yes, sah.”

“She has nothing to worry about,” he say, sway on his feets, shake his head. “I mean, my wife. She has nothing to worry about.”

I am not saying yes, sah again. I just stand there, keep my back to the wall, fold my hand in front of my chest, and lock my nightdress well.

“I want to make a proposal, Adunni,” he say. “A proposal. That is not the name of a person, you know.”

“What is it you want, sah?” I slap away a mosquito from my arm, yawn. “Sleep is catching me.”

“You don’t have to hurry away from me, Adunni. I am a gentleman, you see.”

I don’t see anything, so I didn’t give him answers.

“All I am trying to say is”—he clear his throat—“I want to help you. To give you money to spend.” He sway, jam the wall with his shoulder. “You understand?”

“No, thank you, sah.” I take one step back, open my room door. He take a step near me, put his feets in the middle of the door.

“Please, sah, go away before I shout.” I am talking with a low voice, but my heart is banging itself inside my head, bam. If this man wants to rough me now, who will I call? If I shout from here, will Kofi hear me?

He push his eye-glass up his nose, hold up his two hand. “Hey, no cause for alarm, here. No point in making—”

“Good evening, sir.” Kofi just appear from nowhere into the corridor. He is not wearing his cooking cap, and his head is a smooth, round ball with no hair on it. He is tying a white cloth around his waist, no shirt on his thick flesh of chest. I never been so happy to see a almost naked man in my whole life.

“I heard some noises,” Kofi say. “It woke me up. Sir, do you need something? A light snack perhaps?”

Big Daddy shake his head. “No, Adunni called for, for help. I think she was, I don’t know, threatened by some noise. I was just, yes, just leaving. Thank you.”

Before me and Kofi can talk, Big Daddy turn around and walk away into the night. A moment later, and a door slam.

“You are lucky I was not asleep,” Kofi say.

A shiver run up and down my body, prick my flesh. “Thank you, Kofi.”

“Big Madam will be back next week,” Kofi say. “Have you started on your essay? You and that woman, the doctor’s wife, have spent the last week working on it, right?”

“She is teaching me better English so that I can write it,” I say, and the thought of it is filling me up with light, with a warm hope that is chasing away the shiver in my body.





CHAPTER 35

Fact: Child marriage was made illegal in 2003 by the Nigerian government. Yet an estimated 17% of girls in the country, particularly in the northern region of Nigeria, are married before the age of 15.

After that night, I am not sleeping very well.

Sometimes, I will sit on the bed, holding Rebecca’s waist beads, as I am reading Mama’s Bible, or learning English with the book Ms. Tia give me. Other times, I will keep my eyes on the ceiling lightbulb, trying to be listening over the generator humming outside, checking it sure that Big Daddy is staying in his house. But it seem like Big Daddy is behaving hisself. He didn’t come back to find me yesternight, or the one before that, but I know he is thinking of how he will come back when Kofi is not there. Before then, I must think of what I can be doing to be keep him afar from me. After much thinking with no solutions, I make the decisions to tell Ms. Tia about it.

This evening, as we are sitting behind the kitchen, me on the short wooden chair and she standing in front of blackboard (Ms. Tia buyed a blackboard and bring it home yesterday. It is square, the size of the tee-vee in our parlor in Ikati), she set it on top the tall kitchen stool and is writing on it with pink color chalk.

“Big Daddy come to me three nights back,” I say as she is wiping the blackboard with a cloth. “He enter into my room.”

She turn around, wipe her hand on a tissue in her back pocket. “What happened? Why did he come to your room?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “But I know it was not to greet me good night. He was finding something, and I am fearing it is a bad something.”

“Did he say anything to you?” she ask, look over her shoulder. “Is he home?”

“He have go out,” I say. “He is not coming back till very late.”

“He has gone out,” she say. “What did he say to you?”

“He was talking nonsense,” I say. “But I was fearing that he wants to rough me.”

She look up, like the words I am speaking is appearing in the air, shake her head. “‘Rough’? Like you mean, touch you inappropriately? In a wrong way?”

“Yes,” I say, make my voice whisper. “Kofi come in and stop the man.” I feel a quick colding as I am thinking it. “I am afraid, Ms. Tia, and that is why I want to leave this place. To enter the school.”