The Girl with the Louding Voice

by Abi Daré

  Who will be caring of Kayus when I marry Morufu? Born-boy?

  I sigh, look my older brother, Born-boy, as he is sleeping on the bed, a vexing look on his face. His real name is Alao, but nobody is ever calling him that. Born-boy is the first born, so Papa say it is respecting for him to be sleeping on the only one bed in the room three of us are sharing. I don’t mind it. The bed have a thin mattress foam on top it, full of holes that bedbugs are using as kitchen and toilet. Sometimes, that mattress be smelling like the armpit of the bricklayers at the market square, and when they are raising their hand up to greet you, the smell can kill you dead.

  How can Born-boy be caring for Kayus? He don’t know how to cook or clean or do any work except of his mechanic work. He don’t like to laugh or smile too, and at nineteen and half years of age, he look just like a boxer, both his hands and legs be like the branch of a thick tree. He sometimes is working all night at Kassim Motors, and when he come home too late in the night, he just throw hisself inside the bed and sleep. He is snoring now, tired, every of his breath is a shot of hot wind in my face.

  I keep my eye on Born-boy a moment, watching the lifting up and down of his chest in a beat with no song, before I turn to Kayus and give him two soft slaps on his shoulder. “Kayus. Wake up.”

  Kayus pinch open one eye first, before the second one. He do this all the time when he want to wake up: open one eye first, then the second one a moment after, as if he is fearing that if he open the two eyes at the same time, he will suffer a problem.

  “Adunni, you sleep well?” he ask.

  “I sleep well,” I lie. “And you?”

  “Not well,” he say, sitting up beside me on the mat. “Born-boy say you are marrying Morufu next week. Was he joking me?”

  I take his hand, cold and small in my own. “No joke,” I say. “Next week.”

  Kayus nod his head up and down, pull his lips with his teeths and bite on it. He don’t say one word after that. He just bite his lips and grip my hand tight and squeeze.

  “Will you ever be coming back after the marriage?” he ask. “To be teaching me? And cooking my palm oil rice for me?”

  I shrug my shoulder. “Palm oil rice is not hard to cook. You just wash the rice in water three times and keep it in a bowl to be soaking. Then you take a fresh pepper and—” I stop talking because the tears is filling my mouth and cutting my words and making me to cry. “I don’t want to marry Morufu,” I say. “Please beg Papa for me.”

  “Don’t cry,” Kayus say. “If you cry, then I will cry too.”

  Me and Kayus, we hold each our hands tight and cry with no noise.

  “Run, Adunni,” Kayus say, wiping his tears, his eyes wide and full of a fearing hope. “Run far and hide yourself.”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head. “What if the village chief is catching me as I am running? Are you forgetting Asabi?”

  Asabi is one girl in Ikati that didn’t want to marry a old man because she was having real love with Tafa, one boy that was working in the same Kassim Motors with Born-boy. The day after her wedding, Asabi was running away with Tafa but they didn’t able to run far. They catch Asabi in front of the border and beat her sore. And Tafa? They hang the poor boy like a fowl in the village square and throw his body to Ikati forest. The village chief say Tafa was stealing another man’s wife. That he must die because in Ikati, all thiefs must suffer and die. The village chief say they must lock Asabi in a room for one hundred and three days until she is learning to sit in her husband’s house and not running away.

  But Asabi didn’t learn anything. After the one hundred and three days of locking inside a room, Asabi say she is no more coming outside. So she stay in that room till this day, looking the walls, plucking hair from her head and eating it, pinching her eyeslashes and hiding it inside her brassiere, talking to herself and the spirit of Tafa.

  “Maybe you can be coming to play with me in Morufu’s house,” I say. “I can be seeing you in the stream too, even at the market, anywhere.”

  “You think?” Kayus ask. “What if Morufu is not letting me to come and play with you?”

  Before I can think to answer, Born-boy turn hisself in his sleep, wide his two legs apart, and push out a loud mess that fill the air with the odor of a dead rat.

  Kayus sniff a laugh and cup his hand on his nose. “Maybe marrying Morufu is better than staying in this house with Born-boy and his smelling mess.”

  I squeeze his hand and drag a smile to my lips.

  * * *

  I wait till Kayus is sleeping again before I leave the room.

  I find Papa in the outside, sitting on the kitchen bench near the well. The morning is beginning to light up now, and the sun is just waking up from sleep; be like half a orange circle peeping from behind a dark cloth in the sky. Papa is not having any shirt on, just his trousers and no shoes on his feets. He is eating a short stick in the corner of his mouth, his black radio in one hand, and with the other hand, he is banging a stone on his radio to wake it up. He do this every morning to wake the radio up since before Kayus was born, and so I low myself to the sand and keep my hand in my back and wait for the radio to wake up.

  Papa bang the stone on the side of the radio three times—ko, ko, ko—and the radio make a cracking noise. A moment pass, and a man’s voice in the radio say, “Gooood morning! This is OGFM 89.9. The station for the nation!”

  Papa spit his stick to the sand beside me and look me like he want to slap my head for bending low in his front. “Adunni, I am wanting to hear six o’clock morning news. What is it?”

  “Good morning, Papa,” I say. “There is no beans in the house. Can I go and borrow from Enitan’s mama?”

  I have beans swelling inside a tin of water in the kitchen, but I am needing to talk to somebody about this whole wedding coming because Enitan and me, we been best of friends since we been able to read ABC and count 1-2-3. Her mama is also having a small farm, and many times, she like to give us beans, yam, and egusi, and she will tell us to pay for it whenever we are having moneys for it.

  Papa shock me when he laugh and say, “Wait.”

  He set the radio on the bench ever so gentle, but the radio make a cracking noise two times, and then it just die dead like that. Give up spirit. No more OGFM 89.9 voice. No more station for the nation. Papa look the radio a moment, the silent black box of it, then he hiss, slap the radio from the bench, and smash it to the ground.

  “Papa!” I say, putting my two hands on my head. “Why you spoil your radio, Papa? Why?” The tee-vee didn’t ever work, and now, all that is remaining of the radio is a broken plastic with yellow, red, and brown wires peeping out of it.

  Papa hiss again, shift his left buttock up, and dip his hand in his back trouser pocket. He bring out two fifty-naira notes of moneys and give me. I wide my eyes, look the money, dirty and soft and stinking of siga. Where is Papa finding moneys to give me? From Morufu? My heart is twisting as I fold the naira inside the edge of my wrapper.

  I don’t say, Thank you, sah.

  “Adunni, hear me well,” Papa say. “You must pay for the beans with that money. Then you tell Enitan’s mama that after your wedding, me your papa”—he slap his chest as if he want to kill hisself—“will pay for all she been ever give us. I will pay it all everything. Even if it is costing thousan’ of naira, I will pay it all. Every naira. You tell her that, you hear me?”

  “Yes, sah.”

  He look the scatter of his radio on the floor and bend his mouth in a stiff smile. “Then I will buy a new radio. A correct one. Maybe even a new tee-vee. A cushion sofa. A new— Adunni?” He slide his eye to me, strong his face. “What are you looking at? Off you go! Quick!”

  I don’t say one word as I leave his front.

  * * *

  The path to Enitan’s house is a thin line of cold, wet sand behind the river, with a bush as tall as myself on the left and ri
ght side of it. The air on this side of the village is ever cold, even with the sun shining bright in the sky. I am singing as I am walking, keeping my head and voice down because behind the bush, childrens from the village are laughing as they are washing and splashing theirselfs in the river. I don’t want nobody to call my name, to ask me about any foolish planning for any nonsense wedding, so I quick my feets, cut to my right at the end of the path, where the ground is dry again, and where Enitan’s compound is.

  Enitan’s house is not like our own. Her mama’s farm is doing well, and so last year or so, they begins to cover the red mud of their house with cement and begins to fix it so now they have a sofa with cushion and a bed with a good mattress and a standing fan that don’t make a loud noise when it is turning. Their tee-vee is working correct too. Sometimes, it even catch the Abroad movies.

  I find Enitan at the back of her house, pulling a bucket out of the well with a strong rope. I wait till she set it down before I call her name.

  “Ah! Look who is in my house this early morning!” she say, putting her hand up in the air like a salute. “Adunni, the new wife!”

  When she make to bow her head, I slap her right up, right in the middle of her head. “Stop this!” I say. “I am not a wife. Not yet.”

  “But you will soon become a wife,” she say, twisting her wrapper out from her chest to wipe her forehead with the edge of it. “I was greeting you, special one. You can like to be angry sometimes, Adunni. What is worrying you this morning?”

  “Where is your mama?” I ask. If her mama is in the house, then I cannot be talking to Enitan about the wedding because her mama is worst of all for not understanding why I am not wanting to marry Morufu. One time she hear me talking my fears of marrying any man with Enitan, she pull my ears and tell me to eat my words of fear and be thanking God that I am having a man to care for me.

  “In the farm,” Enitan say. “Ah, I think I know why you are sad. Follow me. I have some beans in the—”

  “I am not looking for food,” I say.

  “Then what is all this worrying face for?”

  I put my head down. “I been thinking about . . . begging my papa to don’t let me marry Morufu.” I am speaking so quiet, I am nearly not hearing myself. “Can you follow me to beg him? If you follow me, maybe he will change his heart about this whole thing.”

  “Beg your papa?” I can hear something strong in her voice, something confuse, angry too. “Why? Because your life is changing for better?”

  I dig my toesnails into the sand, feel a sharp stone pinch my toe. Why is nobody understanding why I am not wanting to marry? When I was still inside school and was the old of all in my class, Jimoh, one foolish boy in the class, was always laughing me. One day as I was walking to sit on my table, Jimoh say, “Aunty Adunni, why are you still in primary school when all your mates are in secondary school?” I know Jimoh was wanting me to cry and be feeling bad because I didn’t able to start my schooling on time like the other childrens, but I look the devil-child inside his eyes and he look me back. I look his upside-down triangle-shape head, and he look me back. Then I sticked out my tongue and pull my two ears and say, “Why are you not inside bicycle shop when your head is like bicycle seat?” The class, that day, it was shaking with all the laughters from the childrens, and I was feeling very clever with myself until Teacher slap her ruler on the table three times and say: “Quiet!”

  In the years I was in school, I was always having a answer for the peoples laughing me. I always fight for myself, always keeping my head up because I know I am in school to be learning. Learning is not having age. Anybody can learn, and so I keep to my learning, keep getting good marks in my work, and it was when I was getting more better in my Plus, Minus, and English that Papa say I must stop because he didn’t have money for school fees. Since then, I keep trying to not forget my educations. I even been teaching the small boys and girls in the village ABC and 1-2-3 on market days. I am not collecting plenty money for the teaching, but sometimes, the mamas of the childrens will give me twenty naira, or a bag of corn or a bowl of rice or some tin sardines.

  Anything they give me, I collect it, because I like to teach those childrens. I like the way their eyes be always so bright, their voices so sharp, when I say, “A is for what?” and they say, “A is for apple, AH-AH-APPLE,” even though nobody is ever seeing any apple with our two naked eyes except of inside the tee-vee.

  “Who will be teaching the small childrens in the village on the market days?”

  “The childrens have their own mama and papa.” Enitan cross her hand in front of her chest, roll her eyes around. “And when you born your own childrens, then you can be teaching them!”

  I bite my lips to lock the tears inside my eyes. Marriage is a good thing in our village. Many girls are wanting to marry, to be wife of somebody, or of anybody; but not me, not Adunni. I been cracking my mind since Papa tell me of this marriage, thinking that maybe there is a better options than to be a wife of old man, but my head, it have refuse to cooperating with ideas. I was even thinking to run away, to go far, but where will I go that my papa will not be finding me? How can I go and leave my brothers and my village just like that? And now, even Enitan is not understanding how I am feeling.

  I raise my head, look her face. She herself was wanting to marry since she was thirteen years, but I think because her top lip is folding and bending to the left from a accident when she was small, nobody is talking marriage to her papa. Enitan don’t care about schooling or learning book. She is just happy to be plaiting hair, and now she is thinking to start a makeupping business as she is waiting for when a husband will find her come.

  “You cannot come and beg my papa for me?” I say.

  “Beg him for what?” Enitan hiss a loud hiss and shake her head. “Adunni, you know how this is a good thing for your family. Think of how you been suffering since your mama . . .” She sigh. “I know it is not what you want. I know you like school, but think it well, Adunni. Think of how your family will be better because of it. Even if I beg your papa, you know that he will not answer me. I swear, if I can find a man like Morufu to marry me, I will be too happy!” She cover her mouth with one hand, laugh a shy laugh. “This is how I will dance on my own wedding.” She pinch her cloth by her knees and hold it up, begin to pick her feets, putting one in front of the other, left, right, right, left in a song only she can hear. “You like it?”

  I think of Papa smashing his radio this morning, of how he is planning to buy new things with Morufu’s moneys.

  “You like it?” Enitan ask again.

  “You are dancing as if you have a sickness in your two legs,” I say to Enitan with a laugh that feel too heavy, too full for my mouth.

  She drop her cloth, press a finger to her jaw, and look the sky. “What can I say to make this Adunni happy now, eh? What can I—Ah! I know what will make you happy.” She pick my hand and begin to drag me to the front of her house. “Come and see all the fine, fine makeups I am planning to use for your wedding. Do you know there is a color green eyespencils? Green! Come let me show you. When you see it all, you will be so happy! Then, after that, we can go to the river and—”

  “Not today,” I say, collecting my hand and turning away to hide my tears. “I have too much work. All the . . . the wedding preparations.”

  “I hear you,” she say. “Maybe I should come to your house in the afternoon for the makeups testing?”

  I shake my head, begin to walk away.

  “Wait! Adunni,” she shout. “What color of lipsticks should I bring? The red of a new wife or the pink of a young—”

  Bring a black one, I say to myself as I turn a corner. The black of a mourner!

  CHAPTER 4

  Two years before my mama was dead, one car drive inside our compound and bring itself to a stop in front of our mango tree.

  I was sitting under the tree, washing my papa’s s
inglet, and when the car stop, I stop my washing, shake the soap from my hand, and keep looking the car. Is a rich man own, this car, black and shining with big tires and front light like the eyes of a sleeping fish. The car door open, and one man climb out, bringing along the smell of air-con and siga and perfumes. He tall like anything I ever see, with skin the brown of roasted groundnut, and his fine face and long jaw make me think of a handsome horse. He was wearing costly trouser cloth of green lace, with a green cap on his slim head.

  “Good morning, I am looking for Idowu,” he say, talking fast, fast, voice smooth. “Is she around?”

  Idowu is the name of my mother. She didn’t ever use to have visitor, except of the five womens from the Church Community of Praying Wife every third Sunday in the month.

  I roof my eyes from the morning sun. “Good morning, sah,” I say. “You are who?”

  “Is she around?” he ask again. “My name is Ade.”

  “She have go out,” I say. “You want to sit-down wait?”

  “I am sorry, I can’t,” he say. “I only came to Ikati village to visit my grandmother’s burial site. She, uh, passed away while I was abroad. I thought to say hello to your mother on my way back to the airport. I fly back tonight.”

  “Fly? Like aeloplane? To the Abroad?” I have been hearing of this the Abroad, of the Am-rica and the London. I am even seeing it inside the tee-vee, the womens and mens with their yellow skin and pencil nose and hair like rope, but I have never see anybody from there before with my two naked eyes. I been hearing them in the radio sometimes too, talking fast, fast, speaking English as if they are using it as special power for confusing everybody.

  I look this tall, fine man, at his skin, which is the brown of roasted groundnut, and his short black hair like foam sponge. He is not resembling the peoples in the Abroad tee-vee. “Where are you from?” I ask him.