The Girl with the Louding Voice(9)

Afar off in our compound, beside the mango tree, Born-boy is putting a iron bucket into the well with a long, thick rope. The well, it was belonging to my grandfather-father. He builded it with mud and steel and sweat, and my mama, when she was not dead, she was telling me story of how my grandfather-father kill hisself inside the well. He just fall inside one day as he was fetching water. For three days, nobody knows where he was. Everybody was finding him, looking inside the forest, the farm, the village square, even the community mortuary, until the well was starting to give foul odor of rotten egg and somebody mess. The day they find my grandfather-father’s body, it have swell up as if his leg, nose, stomach, teeths, and buttocks is all pregnants at the same time. The whole village, they mourn him, wailing cry and beating their chest for three days. As I am watching Born-boy now, small part of me is wishing he will fall inside the well so that the wedding will cancel. But that is bad way of thinking of my brother, so I change my mind.

Born-boy draw the water and set the bucket down and wipe sweat from his eyesbrow as Papa is pushing his bicycle with one hand and holding a green rag in his second hand. He is even wearing his best trouser cloth, the blue ankara with drawings of small red boats on it, looking as if he is going to visit a king. Born-boy lie flat on the ground, forehead touching the sand to greet Papa, before he collect the rag from Papa and is starting to shine the bicycle. Enitan put the comb inside my hair, cut the portions, and start to comb it fast and hard.

“Ye,” I say, feeling the pinching from my hair to inside of my brain. “Slow your hand, jo.”

“Sorry,” Enitan say as she press my head down and begin to plait the hair. After the first line, I up my head. Born-boy have finish shining the bicycle. Papa spit on the floor, rub the spit inside the sand with his feets, before he jump on his bicycle and ride out of the compound.



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When Enitan finish the makeups and hair and I wash off the nonsense on my face, I stay in the same place outside the kitchen, sitting on the same bench, tearing green leafs off a stick of corns, plucking the seeds into a bucket.

I been like this since middle of afternoon, and the moon is now so high up in the sky, the night hot and stiff. My back feel like a shell of egg about to crack and my fingers are corn yellow and sore and I want to stop the plucking, but the plucking is keeping my mind from running up and down, from thinking too much.

When the bucket is nearly half full, I shift it to one side, stand to my feets, and stretch myself until my back make a click, and then I pour a bowl of cold water into the bucket before I cover it with a cloth.

Tomorrow morning, Aunty Sisi, who is always cooking for peoples in our village, will come to our house. She will mix the soaking corn with sweet potato and sugar and ginger and grind it all together to make a kunu drink for the wedding.

I kick off the rest ten sticks of corn to one side, not minding that the floor is full of red sand. If she wants more corn tomorrow, then she can peel it herself. Not me. My fingers feel too sore, and my body is crawling with the white, thin hairs of the corn, feel like little snakes climbing up and down my whole body.

I find Papa in the parlor, snoring, his cap perching on his nose. Three cartons of small stout, gifts for the wedding, are sitting by his feets. One of the cartons is missing a bottle, and I see it rolling on the floor beside a stick of a burning candle, dark and empty. I wait a moment, thinking to talk to Papa one more time, to try and maybe make him think sense before tomorrow, but I think of the corn soaking outside, of the big yams inside the kitchen, the bag of rice and red peppers, of the two agric fowl and four he-goats in the back of the house.

I think of Aunty Sisi, of Enitan and of all the other peoples who will be coming here early tomorrow, wearing costly dress and shoe and bag because of me. I look the stout bottle by Papa’s feets and sigh, low myself to the floor by the parlor door, and blow out a breeze on the candle to kill the fire.

I leave Papa by hisself in the dark, and when I reach my room, I off all my dress, shake it for the rest of the corn hairs, and keep it to dry on the window.

I tie a wrapper around my chest and lie down on the mat near Kayus. I try to put my head down on the mat to sleep, but my whole head be breathing by hisself, feel as if Enitan pump hot air inside my head when she was plaiting it to cause a wicked pounding. I sit with my back to the wall and listen to the wind hissing soft outside. Sometimes, I want to be just like Kayus, to have no fear of marrying a man, to not have any worry in this life. All Kayus ever worry about is what food to eat and where he can kick his football. He don’t ever worry about no marriage or bride-price money. He don’t even worry about schooling because I been the one teaching him school since all this time.

Enitan say that Morufu have a house. A real working car. Plenty food to eat, moneys to be giving Papa and Kayus and even Born-boy. Money for Kayus is a good thing. I can try, like Enitan say, to be happy.

I stretch my lips, force it to smile. But my chest feel full of birds flapping their wings inside of it. The birds are pounding their feets and pecking their beak and I want to cry so loud and beg the birds to stop making my heart to jump. I want to shout at the night and tell it never to become a tomorrow, but Kayus is sleeping like a baby, and I don’t want to wake him, so I take the edge of cloth, make it like a ball, and bite on it hard and taste the corn from this afternoon and the salt of my tears.

When my spirit cannot cry any more tears, I spit the cloth from my mouth, sniff up my nose. Tomorrow will come. Nothing I can do about that. I lie down and close my eyes. Open it again. Close it. Open it. There is a sound beside me, a shaking. Kayus?