The Girl with the Louding Voice(80)

Ms. Tia is still in Port Harcourt, she text me just this morning. She say her mama has been in hospital admission since new year and that things have “finally settled down, so should be on the next available flight back to Lagos.” She say too that her husband, “bless his heart, has been coming to Port Harcourt every Friday to be with me.”

I read the message three times, before I reply: OKAY. SEE U SOON.

“Do you have money for church offering?” Big Madam asks Big Daddy now, as the car is climbing up the bridge that looks like it is hanging by the many threads, thin white fingers on the left and right side of it. I think this is the Lekki-Ikoyi bridge that Ms. Tia uses for her morning running.

“What kind of stupid question are you asking me, Florence?” Big Daddy says. “Did you give me offering money?”

Big Madam grunts, opens her bag of feathers, and brings out money, bundles of it, a brown rubber band around the bundle. “That is fifty thousand naira,” she says to Big Daddy, dragging a fat bundle out from the rest. “Use 10K as offering. The forty thousand is your donation for the Good Men conference next weekend. Chief, please make sure you donate the money, because the last time I gave you two hundred thousand for the Over Fifties Men’s Retreat, the church secretary never received it.”

Big Daddy snatch the money and push it deep into the pocket of his green agbada. “Why don’t you wait till we get to church so you can take the microphone and announce to the congregation that you gave your husband, the head of the family, the man in charge of your home, two hundred thousand naira for retreat, and that he spent the money? Useless woman.”

Big Madam nods, but her jaw is shaking, shaking like she is fighting to not cry, and I feel something pity for her. When she faces the window and sniffs something up her nose, Abu loud up the radio and The News on Sunday fill up the car with noise.

We drive like that, with nobody except the radio talking, until Abu climbs down the bridge and cuts a turn by the left of a roundabout.



* * *





When Abu brings the car to a stop, Big Madam climbs down, but Big Daddy stays in the car. He says he will be joining us after; he wants to smoke a small siga first, to make his mind open to be hearing from heaven.

The church is a round hat-shape building with a gold, heavy-looking cross on the tip of the roof. The windows, I count fifty of it, is made of colorful glass with drawings of doves and angels on it, the whole compound full of tall cars like Big Madam’s Jeep. Everybody coming in is dressing like it is a birthday party or wedding celebrations, with high heels, geles of all sorts of rainbow colors, costly-looking lace, and plenty makeups on the face of the women.

In Ikati, our church is having just roof and bench and drum for the music, and people be wearing cloth to church like they mourn, sing like they mourn too. This one, from even outside, I am hearing plenty music, makes me want to dance.

We climb up the stairs, enter a place that looks like a parlor with no sofa. It is cool in there, with many people laughing, talking, smiling to each other, saying happy Sunday. In front of us is the front door of the church, two glass doors with red carpet on the floor in front of it.

There is one woman standing in the front of one of the doors like a gate man; she is wearing too-tight black skirt that look like it is giving her breathing problem, and a red shirt that look like it belongs to a child that is two years of age. It push all her breast up to her neck. Under her plenty makeup, pimples be pinching all her face, make her look like she had a measles sickness that didn’t finish healing itself.

“Good morning, welcome to the Celebration Arena,” she says, giving Big Madam a wide smile that stretch her lip, and all the pimples around her mouth gather to one angle.

“I assume this is your housemaid?” she says, looking at me like I am wearing my cloth from back to front.

I kneel, greet her. “Good morning.”

“Adunni, get up and bring my handbag,” Big Madam says. “Yes, she is my house girl,” she says to the woman. “Am I correct in thinking that she cannot enter this church auditorium? I need her after the service to bring fabric from the car.”

The woman shakes her head. “She can’t. She will go to the housemaid service at the back. I will take her there and bring her to you later. Go on in, ma’am. God bless you.”

I am standing there, watching, as Big Madam enter the glass door, as a shock of cold air and singing voices escape and reach me.

“Why am I not following my madam into the church?” I ask the woman after the door has swallowed Big Madam inside of it. “Where will I find her when she finish? I don’t know anywhere in Lagos. I don’t want to lost.”

The woman stretch her lips into a quick smile. “Don’t worry, you will be fine. Follow me. This way.”

We cut to the far, far back of the church. She is walking on her red high-heel shoe as if the floor is a tightrope. We pass one path with a bush to the left and right of us, like a parting of short, full hair on a flat head. We reach a house. It is the first time I see a gray house in Lagos that make me think of Ikati. It has no paint or door or window. Beside it is another small house, with no door too. I smell the piss before I see the round edge of the white toilet bowl, the broken brown tiles on the floor. It look like they just builded this house anyhow and throw it to the back of the church, after they finish using all the money for the fine church in the front.