The Girl with the Louding Voice(90)

Ko, ko, ko.

Three knocks. Abu.

I push myself up from the bed, run to the door, push the cupboard a little from the back of it, and open the lock. “Abu,” I say. “Sorry I was not free yesternight when you were looking for me.”

“Sannu,” Abu say, greeting me with a quick bow of head. But he doesn’t try to enter my room and I don’t ask him to enter. He stand outside, throw a quick look to the left and right of the dark corridor, before he puts a hand in his pocket, brings out a folding paper. His face is a shadow of fear, his jalabiya wet with rainwater and gumming to his chest. “I left Big Madam in the hospital so I can give you this thing. Adunni, this thing I want to give you, you cannot say it is from me. You did not get it from me. Walahi, if anybody ask you and you say it is me, I will tell them you are lying!”

“What is it?”

“I found it in the car, about a week after Rebecca was missing. It was inside the 350 Benz Big Daddy is always using to go out,” he say. “I have been keeping it for too long, but now the load of it is weighing me down, making it hard for me to say my prayers. Dan Allah, Adunni, I beg you, take this thing from me! Take it.”

He presses the paper into my hand as if it is an evil curse that he doesn’t want to hold with his own hands, and folds my fingers to cover it. “Adunni, hear this because after today, I will not talk about this thing again. See. The day after Rebecca was missing, I went to wash the 350 Benz because Big Daddy asked me to wash it. I washed outside, but inside the car . . .” He draws a breath. “Inside, the front seat was wet. Wet like somebody poured water on it. So I stop washing, run to Big Daddy to ask who wet the front seat. He said he did not know. I asked Big Madam, she said maybe Glory, her shopgirl, maybe she poured water by mistake. I asked Glory, she said she didn’t pour any water on the seat. It was when I found this letter after one week of Rebecca missing, and I read it, that I know why the seat was wet. And since then, I have been keeping the letter, carrying the load.”

“Why are you telling me about wet seat?” I ask, confused.

“The letter”—Abu shakes his head, as if the memory is causing him pain, as if I didn’t just ask him a question—“it was deep inside the seat belt buckle. Inside. I only saw it because I was trying to buckle it, to wipe it clean, and the buckle was refusing to work. When you open the letter, look it well, you will understand everything I am saying. I am going back to Big Madam in the hospital. Sai gobe. Good night.”

Before I can say one word, Abu bow quick, turn around, and disappear into the darkness.

I fold out the paper with shaking hands. A short letter with no end. The writing is small and neat in black biro, and each letter is measuring the same tall and wide size, the same space in the middle of the letters, but near the end of the letter, the writing is changing to rough, like the person was hurrying up, and what is that stain on it?

I hold the letter up in the light. The edge look like it was inside a struggle, like the scattered teeth of a mad man, or the edge of Kofi’s bread knife, and near that edge is a print or two of a finger dipped in blood. I look at it well, at the red-brown color, the stain of dried blood, around the fingerprint, and I think, as my heart is starting to climb a ladder of fear, that the person who was writing this was bleeding blood.

My room seem to turn around on itself as I try to steady my jumping heart, to set myself and read:

My name is Rebecca. I am a housemaid of Chief and Florence Adeoti, which we are calling Big Madam and Big Daddy. I am pregnant for Big Daddy. Big Daddy forced me to sleep with him at first, then he promised to marry me if I am sleeping with him all the time. Sometimes, when Big Madam is at home, Big Daddy will put sleeping medicine inside Big Madam’s cup of juice at night so she will sleep when he is coming to my room.

When I found myself pregnant, Big Daddy was very happy. He said he will marry me and that me and Big Madam will be his two wives and live in this house together. Since he told me, I have been so happy.

This morning, he said we are going to the hospital to see the doctor, but I want to write this letter because after eating the food Big Daddy bought for me, my stomach has been paining me, and I am somehow afraid that Big Madam will be angry about

About what, Rebecca? Why didn’t you finish the letter? What happen to make you stop writing and hide it inside the seat belt buckle?

I fold and fold the paper until I cannot fold it again, until it is a small, hard rectangle, a bullet-looking thing. My whole body is shaking. Big Daddy is the boyfriend that Kofi and Chisom were talking about. But why did she take off the waist beads? Why is there blood on the letter? Did he kill her? Or did he keep her somewhere?

I squeeze the letter in my hand, feeling something bitter form inside my heart like a rock as I climb my bed and lie there like that for nearly one hour, thinking about Rebecca, fearing so much for what happened to her, that when there is a twist on my door handle, I don’t hear it.

When it comes again, I sit up straight. At first, I think it is the rain, maybe it caused a twig outside to crack, snap to the floor, but when the cupboard groans from behind the door, when it begins to move, I sit up.

“Abu?” I say, standing. I didn’t lock the door on myself when he left, but I pushed the cupboard just a little to block it. Did Abu turn back from going to the hospital to meet Big Madam because maybe he wants to tell me more things about Rebecca? “Abu?”