The Girl with the Louding Voice(95)

Who knows what that man did to her? My eyes surprise me, bring out tears. I wipe it quick. “I am going back into my room.”

“Same here,” Kofi says, yawning again. “Looks like the fool is going to spend a night with mosquitoes in the car. It’s the least the bastard deserves for all he’s put everyone through.”



* * *





Big Madam stays locked up for the two days. She doesn’t go to her shop or to church or to anywhere. She stays in her room and sleeps. In the morning, Kofi will take up her food of yam and egg, or bread and boiled egg, or toast and tea, and she will only bite a pinch, send the rest down, which Kofi will give me to eat. At night, she will send for me to come and massage her feet. She doesn’t talk when I massage her feet, she just sits there, trapping her tears with her eyes. I want to show her the letter again, but I sense that her heart is so heavy, it weighs her down, too down to even hear what I want to say.

Big Daddy is nowhere around the house. We don’t see him, and we don’t ask questions, but we whisper to ourselves, me and Kofi, or Kofi and Abu, or me and myself. We talk about where Big Daddy is, and if he will ever be coming back, but it is all empty talk, nobody is knowing anything, nobody is seeing anything.



* * *





The third evening after Big Daddy left the house, Big Madam sent for me to come to her room.

This time, I find her sitting in the purple chair, holding her phone to her ear. She waves at me to wait, and so I stand to one corner and keep my hands behind my back. She is looking a lot better, the sore red under her eyes is now the purple of the chair she is sitting on.

“Chief’s people are coming here tomorrow,” she says to the phone. “No, I don’t think you need to come. You need to concentrate on getting better. I know they want to beg me to take him back in. One of his useless sisters sent me a text message last night; Chief has been demanding money from them. He couldn’t even fuel the Mercedes. I always used to put petrol in that car.” She laughs a sad laugh and shakes her head. “Ah, Kemi, I have been a fool. A big fool.”

Yes, ma, I say with my eyes. A very big fool.

“Where was his family when I was struggling to build my client list? To raise our children? To pay the bills? You are my sister.” She wipes her left eye with a finger. “You know what I went through with this man. How I suffered to support our family with my business. I never told you this, Kemi, but for years, I would bring home the money I made and give it to Chief, and he would pocket my money and still beat me and carry his girlfriends. Still, I gave him clothes to wear, took care of him. I covered his shame. I turned a blind eye to his nonsense, but for him to do this . . . with, with Caroline Bankole from the WRWA! Right under my nose. No, please don’t tell me to calm down. No, I am not imagining things. I wish I was.

“I told you how I found the phone he’d been calling her with. The fool stored her number as ‘Baby Love.’ Baby love? From Chief? He has never called me anything love! . . . Kemi, why are you asking me these senseless questions? What do you mean by ‘Are you sure?’ Of course I am sure! I confronted her! She said it was the devil’s fault. The devil? Does that even make sense? This is a woman I called my friend. My friend.” She presses a shaking hand to her mouth to cover her crying noise, and my heart is shifting as I think of Caroline Bankole, the cat with green eyes and bitter orange smell, of the woman who is kind to Chisom because Chisom is keeping her secrets, of the night Big Daddy was talking on the phone behind the boys’ quarters.

This must be what Big Madam read in his phone the day she found it in my room, why she is still keeping Big Daddy locked out from the house, why she is looking like she will just die any day now from the pain and shame of it all. And me, I was here thinking she was sad and angry because Big Daddy wanted to rape me.

Big Madam is now listening and nodding and sighing, but I cannot hear what the other woman is saying. “I don’t know what prayers would do for me right now, Kemi,” she says finally. “Go and rest, you need it.”

She throws her phone to the bed, and when she looks at me, her eyes dig a hole into my heart and pours her sorrow into the hole, burying me with it.

“Massage my feet,” she says, stretching out her two legs in front of her. “My ankles are swollen.” I nod my head, bend, pick up her feet and put them in my lap. I rub my thumb and fingers on her ankles, her toes, slowly, as if to press away all the pain that she has been carrying for so long, releasing her from the prison of herself, her pain.

We stay like that a moment, she releasing the pain, me working it out from her legs, her body.

“I am going to have him arrested,” she says suddenly, as if she is just thinking of it. “Yes, that is it. He will be arrested for Rebecca’s disappearance, and I will make sure he rots in jail unless he can produce that girl.” She rests her head back, closes her eyes. “Adunni?”

“Ma?”

“The night that . . . that Big Daddy tried to . . . Do I recall you saying Rebecca wrote a letter?”

“Yes, ma,” I say as hope is rising inside me. I have been waiting for her to ask me about it, waiting for when she will do something to help Rebecca.

“I want to see it,” she says. “To read it properly. Bring it to me first thing tomorrow. For now, I need to sleep. My eyes sting. Sing for me.”