The Girl with the Louding Voice(83)

Ms. Tia makes a face like she wants to vomit. “That’s just . . .” She shakes her head and doesn’t say anything again until we reach her gate, where one car is parked in the front of it.

Ms. Tia slow her walking. “That’s my mother-in-law’s car,” she says, her voice low. “I told her you are coming with me. Ken talked her into letting you come. I can’t even believe I agreed to do this, but who knows? Maybe the bath would work, make all this . . . the stress from her, from everyone, make it all stop.” She shake her head, then talk low, to only herself. “I’ve been off the Pill since late last year. We’ve been doing the right things, but nothing yet. It’s bloody frustrating.”

The Pill is Tablet. Tablet is Medicine. Like the one Khadija made for me in Morufu’s house to stop me from getting pregnant. If Ms. Tia is no more taking the medicine for stopping baby, and they been trying for months now, why is the baby not coming?

I put my hand on Ms. Tia’s shoulder and tell her it will be fine, just like she is always telling me.

She gives me a wet smile and pulls my hand. “Come on, let’s do this.”



* * *





Ms. Tia’s mother-in-law is a thin woman with a nose like a teapot.

She looks just like Dr. Ken with no mustache to the jaw, and with a short black wig on her head. She is wearing a costly-looking red lace dress with stones on it, and when I greet her, she just sniffs up something in her teapot nose.

Ms. Tia climbs into the car, sits beside the woman, and me, I sit in front with the driver.

“Moscow,” the doctor mama say, talking to the driver. “We are going to the Miracle Center in Ikeja. The one by the Shoprite roundabout. Remember it?”

Moscow, a man with head that looks like it is full of dry cement, too heavy for his neck, says yes, he can remember the place, and begins to drive. He put on the radio, and I sit there, feeling cold from the air-con and hearing the radio woman talking like she is from the America about new Buhari president and how Nigeria will be better because of it.

Ms. Tia and the doctor mama, they don’t talk in the back. The only noise inside the car is from the America-talking woman in the radio. She is speaking so fast, the only word I am hearing from all she’s been saying in one hour of driving is “Obama.”

The go-slow is the worst I ever seen in my life. Outside, the other cars in the road are pressing horn like mad people, the drivers cursing. After about three hours, the driver turns into one gate, stops the car, and puts off the engine.

The doctor mama say to Ms. Tia, “We are here. Here is a scarf for you to cover your head with. This is a holy ground. You could give this newspaper to that one in front. She also needs to cover her hair. Why you’d bring a stranger, your neighbor’s housemaid, along to something so sacred, so personal, is completely beyond me. I cannot understand it at all.”

“She has to come with me,” Ms. Tia says. “That is what we agreed. If she cannot come with us, I will leave. She can have the scarf; I’ll use the newspaper.”

“And go in looking like what? A destitute? Tia, please, behave yourself.” The woman is talking like she is just tired of Ms. Tia and her many troubles.

“I invited her,” Ms. Tia says. “It is unfair for her to use a newspaper to cover her hair when she didn’t ask to come here.”

“You will not go in there with a newspaper on your head,” the doctor mama say.

“No, I won’t,” Ms. Tia say, folding her hands across her chest and pushing out her top lip like a vexed, small child. “I am not moving an inch from here unless Adunni wears the scarf.”

The doctor mama whispers something in Yoruba. I know Ms. Tia is not understanding it, but the woman just asked if Ms. Tia is having brain problem, where the doctor find this kind of crazy Port Harcourt woman from the Abroad to marry.

I don’t want them to be fighting because of me, so I face the back seat. “I can take the newspaper,” I say. “I can even wear it like a dress if you want. Where is it?”

I give Ms. Tia a look, begging with my eyes for her to give me the paper.

Ms. Tia nods, picks up the newspaper from the seat, and gives me. I wrap the thing around my head, fold it here and there. It tears many times, but last, last, it resembles one kind mash-up cap.

“See? It looks very good,” I say, giving them a wide smile with all my teeth.

The doctor mama hiss, open the car door, and climb out. “Meet me inside,” she say, slamming the door and walking away.

Me and Ms. Tia, we look at each other and burst into laughter.



* * *





The prophet of this Miracle Center is one short man with bowlegs like two letter Cs facing each other. It make him look like he is bouncing around instead of walking.

He has a sleeping eye, so even when he is awake, you will want to tap him to wake up. He is wearing a long red dress with a white belt around his stomach. A white cap with a slanting purple cross sits on his head, a small gold bell in his hand. When me and Ms. Tia enter the church, he bounces up, rings the bell, gran, gran, says to us, “Welcome to the zone. Sit down.”

The place is having about thirty wood benches, just like my classroom in Ikati. The doctor mama is sitting on the end of one bench, so me and Ms. Tia, we slide to that same bench. At the front of the church, behind the wooden altar with long brown cross in the middle of it, is a picture of one man. I think it is Jesus, but this Jesus looks hungry, with vex face too. He look a bit like Katie in the London too, with long brown hair.