The Girl with the Louding Voice(91)

I don’t hear any answer from Abu, and my room door is still opening, still pushing the cupboard door more and more back, still scraping the floor.

“Who?” I whisper, standing still beside my bed, afraid to move. “Who is there? Who is it?”

Big Daddy. I know it is him. I can smell his drink from where I am standing, can feel his evil inside my room.

I want to move to the door, to push it back, but I know I don’t have the strong power to match his own, so I bend myself low, slide under the bed, and close my eyes.

When he enters, I lie still, make myself a wood log, a dead body. I hear the shift of his feet on the floor as he is coming closer, the ruffle of his cloth. My hand feels something like a ball of cloth and I grip it, hold it tight as if it will save me from Big Daddy.

“Adunni?” His voice is a whisper, dragging with drink. He stops near my bed, his feet so close, so near my mouth. His big toe is ugly, looks like a bending arrow, the toenails long and black, curving into the floor. I think to snap his nail off with my teeth, to bite his toe till he bleeds.

“I know you are here,” he whispers.

The bed creaks and hisses as the mattress is pressing down on my face, the spring inside pressing into my head, my shoulders, my chest, as if to drill a hole through my bones and flesh. His body on the bed is crushing, closing my chest down, down, until I cry. A soft cry, inside of me, but he hears it.

“Aha!” His face is looking at me. There are eyes everywhere on his face, evil-wicked eyes.

“Aha!” he says again as he grabs my feet and drags me and all the dust from under the bed. He falls on top of me, his whole body stinking like sweat of three years.

Fight.

Is that Ms. Tia talking or my mama?

Adunni, fight. Scream.

I scream until my voice is tearing, until I am not hearing myself, until my scream is entering the rain noise and coming back as a thunder. He tries to cover my mouth with his palm, but I knee his stomach; it makes a pffts sound, and he groans, slaps my face, dazing me a moment.

“Behave yourself,” he grunts. “Behave!”

His two hands are nailing me down now, trapping me under his body, but I bite his cheeks, taste the salt of his blood, the drink in his skin, and spit it on his face.

I hear the snipping of his trouser zip. The grunt as he is pressing me down on the floor. His breath is smelling of rotten teeth, of something sweet: the vanilla scenting Kofi is putting in his cupcakes.

Fight.

My hand is dead. My legs are pinned down. How can I fight? I keep to twisting my head left to right, right to left, saying no, no, no, but his palm, wet and hot, is pressing on my mouth and catching my no and pushing it into my nose.

Mama, I cry inside of me. Save me, Mama.

There is a sudden flash of light from outside, the same blink from the past, from the day with Morufu, only this time, it comes with a shout of thunder, a powerful rumble, and I know Mama is here. Mama is fighting for me. Fight, Adunni. Fight.

I gather all my strength, clamp my teeth on his hand, sink it into his flesh. When he shouts, I twist from under him, snatch up my mama’s Bible from the bed, and smash it on his head. His phone, which was lighting up with a number and making a noise in his pocket, fly out, land on the floor, twist around and around like a fan, and keep ringing and ringing.

Big Daddy howls like an animal. “Bitch,” he says, coming for me.

Just then, the door is bursting open and the earth is shaking and Big Madam is standing in the middle of the door, inside my room, and Big Daddy is zipping his zip and pushing Big Madam out of his front and running out of my room.

Big Madam, looking like she is dazed, walk like a ghost, pick up Big Daddy’s ringing phone from the floor, and press it. Then she is staring at it, and staring at it, and I don’t know what she is seeing inside the phone, but it is something very bad and very scary and I think more scary than what was happening with me, because Big Madam, she smash her knees to the ground of my room, put her hand on her head, and is starting to wail: “Chief, ha! Caroline! Baby love? No!”

She look such a sorry sight that I forget about myself and Rebecca and Big Daddy for a moment.

I just want to help Big Madam and beg her to stop crying, but she keeps looking at the phone, keeps pressing it, and her mouth keeps opening wide, wider than I ever see, wider more than the River Benue, which is one of the widest of all the rivers in the whole of Nigeria.





CHAPTER 51

Everything after that just fly away so quick, as if I blink it all away.

I remember Big Madam sitting on the floor in my room, crying and crying, and then, when I finally make a move to touch her, she stares at me like she is seeing me for the first time in my life, before she push me away and run out, run far to the main house.

I am by myself in the room now, but I can still smell him.

His sweat. His rotting teeth. The drink. I smell fear too. The hairs on my hand are standing up, as if rising to the fear with respect, saying, Welcome, sah, welcome, ma.

The rain outside is now stopping and there is no more thundering noise and everywhere is so silent, but there is the faint moan of a woman about to born a baby afar, a woman inside a deep, deep well, a dull trapping noise that fills my whole room with something thick that I am not seeing with my two naked eyes but I am feeling inside of my heart, and so I pick myself up and run to the main house.



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