The Girl with the Louding Voice(94)

I bite my lip to stop talking, but in my mind, my mouth keeps on moving: Because if Rebecca was your Kayla, you will not rest, not for one night or one day, until you are finding her. And because you are slave-trading me and you are letting Big Daddy slave-trade you.

She leans back and closes her eyes, and when she starts to speak, her voice is so low, as if I am no more in her front, and she and herself are talking to each other: “How could Chief do this to me? To us? How do I carry on without Chief by my side? What do I tell people when they ask me what happened?”

He wasn’t ever by your side. Except maybe when he is blowing you in the face.

“What do you mean by that?” Big Madam snaps her eyes open, voice sharp.

Was my voice in my head, or was I speaking out? I start to shake my head no, to make up one lie, but she says, “Adunni! What. Do. You. Mean. By. That? Tell me exactly what you mean before I grind you to powder.”

I twist the edge of my dress around and around my finger until the blood is no more flowing to the finger. “It is Big Daddy, ma. He is a bad man. Very wicked.”

I raise my head as something twist a tap inside my mouth open, and the words, bitter and true and sharp, start to pour out. “He beats you nearly every time and fills you up with so much anger and sadness that when you see me and Kofi, you pour all of the anger out on us, on me most of all. Your husband, he makes you sad and . . .” And mad.

“Sorry, ma,” I say, when I see how her eyesballs are nearly climbing out of her head. “You asked me to say what I mean and, and I am just saying what I mean. The end.” I push out a breath, feeling like a balloon that is losing all the air until it is becoming flat, with no power to float again, so I stand to my feet, real slow, and look around the room like a fool because I don’t want to look at her face.

“Can I massage your feet?” I ask. “Or scratch your hair before I go? Yesterday, I sang a song and you fall asleep. Can I sing for you? A song that my mama—”

“Go,” she says, waving me to the door, her eyes wet, angry. “Get out of my sight!”





CHAPTER 53

At night, there is banging on the gate, a crazy horning, as if the person driving the car put his hand on the horn and slap, slap, slap it. When the sound doesn’t go away after three minutes, I stand up from my bed and peep out of my room.

“That fool has been horning for close to thirty minutes,” Kofi says from where he is standing in the corridor, scratching his eyes and yawning.

“Which fool?” I ask, coming out of my room and closing the door. I stand beside him, and together we look to the darkness, where the night is one thick wall of black, and the crickets and the horning are filling the air turn by turn, making it one kind crazy melody sounding song: peen—kre-kre—peen—kre-kre.

“Big Daddy,” Kofi says. “He’s the one horning like a maniac. Big Madam instructed Abu and me not to open the gate for him, which is very strange.”

“Why is it very strange?” I ask.

“Because she has never instructed us not to let him in. Not even when she is sure he’s been to see his girlfriend.”

“You’ve seen his girlfriend before?”

“He has a few,” Kofi says. “I have seen one of them—a girl he picks up at Shoprite. Skinny thing. Looks like a twelve-year-old. A gust of wind would snap her in two on a good day. But that’s the fool’s problem.” Kofi bend his neck, eye me. “So, what did Big Madam say to you when she called you to her room?”

“Nothing,” I say as another horn noise blast the air. “Why did Big Madam say we don’t open the gate?”

Kofi shrugs. “As I said, she’s never done that before. If anything, she’ll direct me to make sure Big Daddy’s food is served, no matter how late he gets back home. You should have seen her when she gave us the instruction, Adunni. Her eyes were raw, full of something I have never seen before. Something like steel. Resolve.”

“Did you ask Abu? For the list for shopping?”

“Ah, yes.” Kofi puts his hand into his trouser pocket, brings out a paper. “Here it is. The last shopping list she wrote before she . . . you know.”

I take the paper, open it. The writing—a list of shopping for Fairy Soap, White Rice, Cling Film, Tissue Paper, and Bleach—is the same as the letter.

My heart sighs. “Kofi, did you ever see her and Big Daddy together?”

“A few times.” Kofi frowns, his forehead flesh dividing into three thick lines of skin. “I had caught him leaving Rebecca’s room a few times. They seemed close, unusually so, especially when Big Madam was away. I asked her about it, told her to be careful with him, but she always laughed and said I was jealous. Why would I be jealous of a fool? I know how every single maid we’ve had always seemed to interest him. Which was why I warned you to be careful of him from the very first day. I warn every single maid that comes to work in this house.”

I feel a chill, it comes so sudden, causing the hair on my hand to stand up. “Did Big Madam go to Rebecca’s house in the village? To find her?”

Kofi shakes his head. “I heard Mr. Kola went a week or two after she disappeared. Big Madam, as far as I am aware, did not go anywhere.”

There is another horning, and Big Madam, her voice like five thunders, screams from the main house: “Go back to the hell you are coming from, Chief! No one is opening this gate for you.”