Binding Scars

by Maya Rossi

  The room was… empty of personality. No sign of anyone having spent time here. Like a visitor’s room, rarely used but kept in shape for situations like mine. Well, not exactly. Cream curtains, red rug, a side cupboard and a bed.

  Her expression didn’t change. Not when she gave the order to sit, or at my refusal to stain the bed with my person.

  Finally, I sat. She climbed the bed to reach the back of my dress. She drew the zipper and drew it down my shoulders. Stunned, I remained still as she got the dress off me. The lights caught the run in my pink dress, the blood from my menstrual stain and the ripped out hem line.

  She nodded at the bedside cupboard. “You’ll find pads, tampons and anything else in there.”

  My face burned. She reached for a robe hooked on a door to my right, giving me the privacy to take off my panties and the soaked pad.

  “Here.”

  I collected it with slack fingers, shocked out of my mind. She gathered everything without a harsh word or a censuring glance.

  Without waiting for any kind of gratitude from me, she opened the door. I followed slowly. It was a bathroom. Same like the room, simple and neat. Heaven.

  She grabbed a bottle from the shelf and walked over. Calmly, she poured a buttery yellow concoction into her open palm and held it up to my nose.

  “Do you like it? This is banana. We have apple, pineapple--”

  “Anything is fine,” I said hurriedly. I just needed to get away.

  “Do you like it?” she repeated in a way that let me know we could stand here all day debating body wash.

  I nodded.

  She ran the bath. When I realized she really was running a bath for me, I slumped against the door. At the slight noise, she turned.

  “Are you alright?”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Too late, I’ve done it.” She cocked the bottle on the body wash and reached for a towel. “Wash and I will take care of your clothes and the injury.”

  I remained rooted to the spot as she left.

  She undressed me.

  Ran my bath.

  Washed my clothes.

  Disposed of my sanitary pad.

  I wanted to kill her. Madam Gold would kill me.

  But I couldn’t. I lowered my body into the bath and washed. The water drained the aches away. It was the most relaxing bath I had ever had. But I didn’t linger. I couldn’t afford to. By the time she returned with my clothes, I was seated by the tub waiting.

  She handed over my things, took a pad from the cupboard and handed it over. It was the best kind, same one Blessing and Benita used. I hesitated, my hand hovering over the pack. Then I became conscious of the silence behind me.

  Clad in my pants and bra, I stepped out the bathroom to find her seated on the bed. Waiting.

  Waiting on me.

  My face twitched in shame, embarrassment? I wasn’t sure.

  With efficient hands, took care of my foot. Even gave me painkillers. She helped me into my clothes. As she drew my zip up, I let out a breath I wasn’t even aware I was holding. I turned to her; she arched an eyebrow. Watching, waiting.

  I forced my lips to move. “Thanks.”

  She nodded, eyes narrowed on my face.

  We walked out of the house and I never saw Kisser once. I recalled how I reacted and felt ashamed of my behaviour. Everything that had happened. Annoying Oga, being thrown out, forgetting my slippers. Everything was my fault.

  I stopped, meeting her eyes even if it was the last thing I wanted. “Please tell him I’m sorry.”

  “Which of them?” she asked.

  “Kisser,” I blurted.

  Both of her eyebrows went sky high. Embarrassed, I shook my head. “Ermm, the one who, he’s dark--”

  “They’re both dark.” Was she amused?

  “He was drunk,” I murmured, eyes aimed somewhere above her shoulder, “he might have kissed me. I was rude.”

  “You were rude,” she repeated tonelessly.

  I nodded. “Tell him I’m sorry but he shouldn’t get so drunk next time.”

  “I will,” she said seriously.

  Five minutes later, I had the bike man pull over. I waited until he left before making my way to the hotel.

  When Oga opened the gates, I was on hand to greet him and wish him a good day at work. He had on embroidered up and down native shirt and trousers. He must be going to the factory first. I kept my head down as I put his bag in the back seat of the car. I waited as he drove off.

  I gave a sigh of relief as I went inside to start the chores. It didn’t matter we were in a hotel. Madam hated their food, so we came prepared with our cooking pots and ingredients. Moi-moi. I hated it. Madam Gold would say I didn’t have a right to hate any food, I should be grateful.

  I know.

  Did she think I didn’t know that? Maybe the twins were starving. I knew exactly how lucky I was, down to the sanitary pads I used. Whenever a girl got old enough to see her menstrual periods, Madam Gold got this pinched look. It meant water and tissues and soaps for the stains. Money.

  Mary, my friend who worked a few houses away, once told the story of a girl who used nothing for her periods and was still beaten for every stain.

  You see that situation? No way out.

  But for me it was different. I had a room to myself, never went hungry, a Madam that said thank you, and even let me watch television sometimes.

  Anger at my ingratitude washed over my hunched figure in waves. I pushed a fist through the beans. Reddish brown water arched upwards, hitting my eyes, chin and mouth. Disgusted, I spat it out. The spittle landed right back inside the beans.

  I reached a trembling hand to my scar.

  “Where were you?”

  I turned, and there was Madam, a suspicious glint in her eyes. My heart clenched painfully in my chest. It was a look I prayed never to see in her beautiful eyes. I dropped my eyes to ground and lowered my hands.

  For a second, the only sound in the kitchen was that of the beans water dripping from my wet fingers to the tiled ground. She smoothed gentle fingers over my cheeks, wiping off my tears. I glanced at her in surprise.

  “I hate when you have to sleep outside.”

  Madam got closer. My lips trembled involuntarily.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I shook my head. A Madam cannot be sorry. And my Madam wasn’t just any Madam.

  Her perfume, light and airy and fresh like a new day after a heavy rain washed over me. Like magic, some of my self-directed anger bled away.

  “But when I came outside to check on you--”

  “Y—you—you came to check on me?” I could have kicked myself for interrupting.

  “I did. I always do when Oga sends you out.” She sighed. “Keep out of sight when he’s around.”

  “But who will serve him then?”

  “Our children can serve their father the food you cooked, don’t you think?”

  I sank my teeth into my lower lip, unable to reply. It was my job. To serve. To kneel. To have another do it was to have all I was taken away.

  “I will do well next time. Make sure the rice is less salty.”

  “Oh, Ada.” She pulled me into her arms. I pressed close, inhaling her comforting scent raggedly. “The rice was perfect. Even Aunty Yemi said so.”

  I pulled back in shock. That was the highest compliment because Aunty Yemi was a professional cook. Her party food made gluttons out of respected guests.

  Madam nodded. “Now, where were you?”

  “Never lie to your Madam. Ever. She is your everything. Trust her. Tell the truth. She will love you.”

  I stilled. My chest grew tight like it sometimes did on cold nights.

  “I can smell…,” she sniffed, “you smell different.”

  So I told her. Everything. Except for Kisser.

  She stared at me for a long time. Then she turned around and left the kitchen without a word. I watched the empty doorway long after she had gone. Inside, I scramb
led for normalcy. I should have told the truth, told her about Kisser.

  It meant nothing. I would never see him again.

  .

  Chapter two

  I woke with a foot pressed to my chest, stealing my breath. With a gasp, I forced my eyes open with no idea what had dragged me from the temporary comfort of sleep. A cock crowed, the sound long and shrill, I opened gritty eyes, blinking past the dark spots in my vision.

  Eighteen.

  Deliberately, I moved the fingers of my left to the mark on my left cheek. A puckered, ugly scar, upraised and rough to the touch, branded the skin. An unwelcome reminder of the past. Someone cursed, the words the only speck of color in the darkness. I braced myself, expecting my Madam to descend on me with hands and fists and brooms.

  The soft slap to my hips startled me more than a blow would have.

  “Get up.”

  It came rushing back. We were somewhere at Abeokuta for Aunty Yemi’s wedding. I pushed back the wrapper I used to sleep, scraping the bare floor for my slippers as I rose. All thoughts of entering my eighteenth year fled. “The last time I sleep like this I was six years old.”

  The girl paused in her rush to glance at me in disbelief. “The hotel de burn. You no smell smoke?”

  The last vestiges of sleep disappeared to be replaced by horror. Now I could smell smoke. I bunched my wrapper in my fists, trying to catch the eyes of the other girls and boys. There were eight of us who shared the single room behind the hotel. There was no discernible hurry, yet I could smell burning fumes.

  “Why they no hurry?” I asked the girl in pidgin English, pointing at the others.

  She shrugged. “The main hotel. Our brother no de there. No be our business.”

  The realization slammed into me. “Oh, God.”

  “What?” she asked, running a glob of vaseline over her lips. “Your brother or sister de there?”

  “My Madam,” I gasped out before slipping past the others. I ran outside, almost stumbling over a bucket we girls used to pee at night. Stale urine poured over my foot.

  “Hey,” one girl — the one who woke me called, “if you throw that piss I go vex o.”

  I didn’t pause, just ran all the way to the hotel. There was already a sizable crowd closing off my way. I wanted to scream; they didn’t think to help, just stood there watching the building. As I shoved my way to the front of the crowd, the temperature rose. By the time I got to the front, the heat singed, drawing out the sweat from my pores.

  The formerly beautiful hotel with its huge pillars and glass door was no more. The flames rose high and glorious, a menacing, determined enemy. The front door was completely gone, the reception unrecognizable. Shirtless young men worked hard trying to put out the fire.

  Disoriented, breath coming in short gasps, I ran like a headless chicken, from the fire to the crowd and back again. Someone grabbed my arm and yanked me back.

  “What’s worrying you?”

  Through my panic, I made out kind old eyes and a graying head of hair. “My Madam. Where’s she?”

  For the next ten minutes, I searched the crowd. I ignored the shouts of outrage as I stepped on toes, the shoves as the angry ones retaliated my rough handling. The crowd seemed to increase, with spectators, not helpers. I struggled to breathe through the heat and my panic.

  “Ada,” Benita, Madam’s youngest daughter called.

  Relief weakened my legs, and I stumbled, crashing into a group of young men. One grabbed at my breast.

  “Fine girl,” he said with a smarmy smile.

  I knocked off his hand and jabbed my elbow into his ribs. “Idiot.”

  Benita frowned, searching through her beautiful red handbag. It cost almost fifty thousand naira. I knew because I went shopping with the girls when she bought the unnecessary bag. It was so tiny, barely the size of my outstretched palm.

  “Ada, I’m looking for my Zaron brown powder--”

  “Where’s your mother?” I interrupted harshly.

  She frowned harder, taking her time to swing her bag onto her shoulders. “Come on, get me what I asked you, what--”

  This time I grabbed her shoulders and shook her slightly. “Where’s Madam?”

  Benita’s jaw dropped as she studied my face in disbelief. Whatever she saw there had her chin jutting forward. She looked every inch the fifteen-year-old teenager in that moment. As I stared down at her, I realized something else. She looked too clean, her makeup intact, her dress unruffled even in the midst of the chaos.

  “Did you go out?”

  She pulled away, glaring her displeasure but looking guilty as hell. “It’s none of your--”

  I pulled in an exasperated breath. “I no care where you went--”

  “Christ, you talk like a village girl. I don’t care, not I no care.”

  My fingers tingled with the urge to smack her seven ways till Sunday. But as annoying as Benita could be, I had learned English thanks to her rude corrections. “The hotel is burning and I can’t find your mother, do you know if she’s still inside?”

  Her mouth dropped open. Suddenly fearful, she grabbed my arm. “Jesus. I don’t know. Ada, do something. What if she’s still inside?”

  I turned to the hotel. It still burned like someone offended it. I imagined Madam somewhere inside, crying for help. My foot moved before my brain computed the order. I snatched a wet towel from a stranger.

  “Hey.”

  “Ada!!”

  I ran past the hands holding me back and headfirst into the fire. I smelled my hair and clothes burning as I pushed through the heat. Ironically, inside was remarkably cooler and relatively untouched by the flames. I took the stairs two at a time until I arrived at Madam’s rooms.

  She wasn’t in there.

  Her bed was a big fourposter, comfy with huge pillows. It looked freshly made. A black nylon peeked from her suitcase at the foot of the bed. It contained money from a customer, a big payment made yesterday. I grabbed it and headed out.

  Halfway down the stairs, I heard a low cry. Behind the stairs, two girls of around six and four huddled. The sight of the older holding the younger took me back to the village with my siblings. I shook off the memory and urged the girls forward.

  “Come, we’ll go together--”

  “Are you mad?” One of the shirtless, sweaty men putting out the fire ran towards us. “What were you thinking entering a burning--” he saw the children and cursed, “oh, you went to get your sisters.”

  I didn’t bother correcting him. He led us to the back where a wall had been demolished to help get people out.

  Outside, I bent over, gasping for breath. The feeling of drawing in clean air into my smoke ravaged lungs was heady. The girls saw their mother and ran off. The guy hovered.

  “I thought they were your sisters.”

  I shook my head.

  “Why did you go in there then?”

  “I thought--”

  “Oh, God. Don’t scare me like that again.” Madam hugged me tight. Her perfume enveloped my senses. As she held me close, my fears disappeared. I exhaled harshly.

  “I went to see Yemi. She will be busy after and we won’t get to see each other again. You understand?”

  I nodded. I liked aunty Yemi. She was kind, gave me her old clothes and shoes sometimes. Even brought me presents when she visited. Aunty Yemi was good.

  Madam pulled away without letting go of my fingers. She stared at the dark walls of the hotel. The fire was out; the crowd had dispersed but the smell of smoke remained.

  “You went in there for me?”

  I pushed the black nylon into her hand to avoid meeting her eyes. I didn’t do well with praises. I hated it. She looked into the bag. Her eyes grew big. “Ada, you shouldn’t have.”

  “Ma--”

  “Nothing is more important than your life, your happiness. I mean that.”

  I believed her.

  “Don’t you fucking talk to me like that again,” Benita warned. Ever since she got back from
the holidays with some cousins who schooled in America, she spoke like them. Or tried to. She sounded funny, but I didn’t laugh.

  It annoyed her sister, Blessing. But she was fifteen years old and not as beautiful or as self-assured as Blessing. “I’m sorry--”