The Girl with the Louding Voice(82)

Big Daddy is at the back snoring loud, and Big Madam is on her phone talking to somebody about a “supply of organza material for two hundred wedding guests.”

When we reach home, Big Madam and Big Daddy climb out of the car, but I don’t climb out. I don’t want to enter the house. I want to stay here, in this car, and hide myself forever.

Everything Chisom said about Rebecca is not making sense. If she was marrying somebody, then why didn’t Kofi know? Why didn’t anybody know? I sigh. I am tired. Hungry. Confused. Angry at myself too, for thinking something bad happened to Rebecca when she was happy and getting married and maybe just decide to run away because she didn’t want Big Madam to stop her marriage plans.

Just like how I too don’t want Big Madam to stop my scholarship plans.

But why did she take off her waist beads if she was just getting married?

I sigh again.

My hair, which Big Madam was dragging in church, is paining me in the brain. My body is looking like a map, showing different marks of where Big Madam has been beating me so much. There is one on my back, a wound, she used her shoe heel to open it two times, causing it to smell bad for a week, after it was nearly drying. There is another behind my ear, one to the left of my forehead.

How will I free myself from this place? The end of April seem so far, even though it is only few weeks from now. Even then, I don’t know if I will win the scholarship, and even if I win, will Big Madam let me go from here? I feel a longing so deep for Ikati, for my life of before, a pulling that twist my heart and cause me to start to cry.

“Adunni,” Abu say, and I look up, forgetting he was even in the car. “Haba. What is making you cry?”

I wipe my face. “Everything, Abu,” I say. “My life, Rebecca, everything. I am just tired.”

I put a hand on the door handle, make to push it open.

“Wait,” Abu say. “Why is Rebecca making you cry? She is not here.”

“Yes,” I say, then I tell him about the waist beads, and what Chisom say.

Abu keeps nodding as I am talking, and when I finish, he sigh and say, “May Allah be with her.”

“Amen,” I say. “I just keep feeling that maybe she was in trouble, and that maybe what happened to her will happen to me. I feel close to her. She was from Agan village, which is not far from my own village. But now, I think she is okay. She was just running away to marry and I was worrying myself for nothing.”

“Adunni,” Abu say, then look over his shoulder to where the house is so far away. “I want to show you something. Something I saw inside the car . . . after Rebecca was missing.”

“What? What did you see?”

“Not now,” he say, looking over his shoulder again. “The thing is inside my room. I will bring it to you when Big Daddy is maybe sleeping at night, or when he is not in the house, ko?” His face look so serious, eyes so wide with fear, that I feel my heart starting to beat.

“Okay,” I say. “When you come, knock the door three times, I will know it is you. I don’t like to open my room door at night for anybody.”

“Eh,” he say, nodding, “I will knock it three times and wait for you outside your room.”

“Till then,” I say as my phone make a vibrate in my chest. I climb out of the car, walk a little away from Abu and hide behind one of the flowerpots, before I pull out my phone.

Another text message from Ms. Tia:

About to board a flight back to Lagos. See you tomorrow afternoon for bath.

Your madam is okay for you to come with me to the “market.” No need to reply. xx

I smile a little, wonder what “xx” mean, before I put the phone back in my brassiere and run inside to begin my afternoon housework.





CHAPTER 44

Fact: The Yoruba ethnic group considers twins to be a powerful, supernatural blessing, believed to usher in great wealth and protection for the families they are born in.

Hey,” Ms. Tia say when I meet her in the compound on Monday afternoon.

She is sitting under the coconut tree, and when she sees me, she push herself up and dust the sand from her buttocks. “My days, look at you! You are awfully thin. Has it really been nearly four months since I last saw you?”

“Yes,” I say. “Since before Christmas.”

She gives me a quick embrace. “I flew into Lagos a few times between Christmas and now, but only to check in at the office. I would have stopped by to see you, but I couldn’t. Did you get my text messages?”

“Yes,” I say. “How is your mama? Is she feeling fine now? Are you and her trying to be more close?”

I pull the padlock of our gate, open it, and we go outside on the street, begin to walk to her house. The black smooth road is a stretch in front of us, looking like it is full of oil under the heat of the sun, the top of it like thin waves of water.

She nods. “She had a chest infection and we nearly lost her, but she somehow managed to pull through. Things are a lot better between us . . . thanks for asking. Did you have a nice Christmas and new year? How’s your Big Madam? Have the beatings stopped? You’ve lost a lot more weight.”

She is always asking if the beatings have stopped, but my answer has never changed itself. “Just yesterday, after church, she poured water on my head,” I say. “Somebody used the downstair toilet and didn’t press the flush well. There was shit inside. She says it is me that do the shit. She beat me, saying I am a devil-child, and a big, fat liar. She doesn’t ever give me food to make me fat, so why is she calling me fat? She made me put my hand into the toilet, pick up the shit one by one, and carry it to our own toilet.”