The Girl with the Louding Voice(93)

“Nothing,” I say. If Rebecca was a wise girl, she will know that Big Daddy cannot marry her and keep her in the same house with Big Madam. She will know the man was telling lies. Now I know that speaking good English is not the measure of intelligent mind and sharp brain. English is only a language, like Yoruba and Igbo and Hausa. Nothing about it is so special, nothing about it makes anybody have sense. “Do you have a sample of anything she write?” I ask. I want to be sure so that Big Daddy will not say it is somebody else that write that letter. I want to be sure that Big Daddy will suffer for Rebecca because Bamidele didn’t suffer for Khadija.

Kofi shakes his head. “Abu might have something; she always gave him the shopping list. I would ask him, but he’s been away as well since last night. He should be back this morning.”

I make to close my room door, but Kofi blocks it with his hand. “Big Madam wants you,” he says. “She said you should come straight up to her room, right inside. Why would she ask you to come to her room? She never asks anyone into her room—least of all you. What am I missing here?”

“Thank you,” I say, and close the door.



* * *





“Come on in,” Big Madam says when I reach her bedroom.

Her whole face is a sore wound and I stand there a moment, not moving, even though the door is wide-open. She is wearing a long red robe that looks like red silk wings around her body. Her hand is on the door handle, holding it open for me.

“Come in,” she says again, turning and walking away. “Shut the door, take a seat on that chair.”

I step in. There is a round bed right in the center of the room, with feather cover-cloth and like fifteen pillows, I am not sure how she will find space to sleep in the bed. There are pictures of her children when they were young lining up the wall on my side, of them laughing inside playground, and one of Big Madam when she was young. She looks so slim in the picture, her skin smooth-looking, I am almost wanting to touch it, to say sorry for how her face will swell in the future because of Big Daddy.

A strange smell, a mix of toilet bleach and dirty feet, fills my nose, and I see the dressing table on my left, filled with big bottles of cream and a nylon makeup bag that is full of all sorts of powder, eye color, pencils, and lipsticks. I catch the names on the bottles: InstaWhite Plus Skin Milk, Skin Fade (New & Improved), Bright Bleaching Mix.

Why is Big Madam wanting to bleach her skin? And with these smelling creams? She is looking fine in the picture of herself on the wall, with her skin before. Is this why her face keeps having different colors, why her legs are brown on the ankle and the knees but the rest is a pale, sicking yellow, sometimes green?

I sit down in the long purple chair facing Big Madam’s bed and fold my dress in my lap. “Kofi says you want to see me. I am here.”

She looks at her nails as if she is checking it for swelling. “I must ask you, Adunni. Yesterday, did Chief, did he—”

I shake my head no. “He didn’t rape me.”

She snaps her head up, tight her eyes. “You know what ‘rape’ means?”

“Yes, ma,” I say.

“Tia Dada, Dr. Ken’s wife, she called me yesterday. She told me she wants to come and see me, to discuss your future. What stupid future? Who does she think she is? How much of your salary has she ever paid? Or does she think you are one of her environmental projects?” She draws a breath. “She hung up when I asked her that question, and I swear, I saw red. My head was boiling. I left my sister in hospital and told my driver to take me home. My plan was to find you and give you the kind of beating that will reset your brain and throw you out into the streets, because Adunni, you have brought me nothing but trouble since you got here. Tia Dada is not my mate. She cannot even be up to forty years old, and she is hanging up the phone on me? I was going to deal with you first, then face her and deal with her, but what did I find in your room instead? My husband.” She stops talking, but her lips keep shaking.

“Chief goes to church. He is a member of the Men of Virtue group. How can a man go to church for so long, for years, and not find God?” Big Madam ask this as if she lost, confuse.

“Because God is not the church,” I say, keeping my chin down, my voice low.

I want to tell her that God is not a cement building of stones and sand. That God is not for all that putting inside a house and locking Him there. I want her to know that the only way to know if a person find God and keep Him in their heart is to check how the person is treating other people, if he treats people like Jesus says—with love, patience, kindness, and forgiveness—but my heart is running fast and beating hard and making me want to piss, so I pinch something from my uniform, a red thread, and roll it around and around in my fingers until it is a small knot, a thread-full-stop.

She presses a hand on her knees, leans forward. “Adunni, I have been thinking about Tia’s phone call. Do you know what Tia Dada wants to discuss with me?”

“No, ma,” I say, whisper. “I don’t know.”

Big Madam nods her head slowly. “If she wants to take you away from here, will you go with her?”

I nod.

“Because of what Chief did?”

I am not sure of what to tell her, my mind is wanting to say many things, but I am fearing she will vex for me, so I only say a small part of what is coming to my mind. “Because you are not very always kind to me and Kofi. You beat me and make me cry to miss my mama. And because of Big Daddy.”