by Abi Daré
“Ah,” Khadija say.
I peep behind me to check it sure that no one is coming, then I tell her. “I am having a real fear to born childrens,” I say, my words climbing each other, rushing fast. “I was thinking of what you say . . . about medicine for not wanting baby. I am just . . . not wanting to born a baby now. What can I do?”
Khadija stop her hand on the plucking of the leafs and nod her head.
“Adunni, you know that our husband is wanting two boys? One from me and one from you. You know this?”
“I know,” I say. “I just want to wait.” I am hoping that maybe if the pregnant is not coming ever and ever, maybe Morufu will send me go back to my papa. But I don’t say this to Khadija.
“You are fearing?” she ask after a long moment, pity in her voice.
“Very,” I say. “My stomach cannot be swelling every year because I am looking for boys to give Morufu. The only thing I want to be swelling is my head and my mind with books and educations.” I bite my lips. “I am not strong like you, Khadija. I cannot be borning a baby at this my age.”
“You are strong, Adunni,” she say, her voice low. “A fighter. We are the same, only you don’t know it. You want to fight with your educations—good for you, if you can do it in this our village. Me, I am fighting with what I have inside of me, with my stomach for getting pregnants. With it, I can fight to stay here so that my childrens will keep a roof on their head, and my mama and papa will keep having bread to eat and soup to drink.”
I stand there, looking her, at the small hill of leafs in the bowl which is rising with each falling leaf from Khadija’s hand, at her fingers which are dark green and wet from the pinching and twisting of the leafs from the branch.
“Do you know how to count the days for your monthly visitor?” she ask. “You know when it is starting every month?”
“Yes,” I say. “Why?”
“There is something you can take. A mixing of strong leafs.”
“It will help me?” I ask, my heart lifting with hope. “It will stop the pregnant?”
“I am not making you any promise, Adunni, but I will see if I can find the leafs for it in Ikati farm. You will add it to ten paw-paw seeds and mix it with gingerroot and dry pepper. Put it all in a dark bottle and soak it in rainwater for three days. You must drink it five days before and five days after your monthly visitor and every time you and Morufu are doing the thing.”
She lift up her head and thin her eyes at me. “Morufu must not know you are drinking medicine. You understand me, Adunni?”
My heart is melting as I look the round of her face, the kind spirit in her eyes. “Thank you, Khadija,” I say, bending to pick up one branch. “Can I pluck this one for you?”
“Adunni,” she say, taking the branch from my hand with care and setting it down on the floor. “Your mind is so full of worry, it is pouring all over your face. Forget about housework for today. Pull that bench, sit here with me, and let us talk.”
CHAPTER 11
With Khadija, the days in this house are short and sometimes sweet.
We talk together, laugh together, and with her stomach swelling so big and making her sometimes sick, I am helping to do her washing, cooking, everything. I am helping with her small childrens too, baffing for Alafia and her sisters, and feeding them food and washing their hair and dirty cloths. They are good childrens, Khadija’s childrens, ever happy and laughing and looking for Labake’s trouble.
Me and Morufu, we don’t talk much. He is always so busy with his farming and taxi-driving work from early morning till night. Sometimes, he will call me to his room, make me to stand in his front with my hand in my back, and ask me question as if he a doctor. He will ask me if I am having pregnants yet or if my monthly visitor have come because he want me to quick and carry pregnants and born a boy, but most times, he just want to rough me and eat food. I keep to drinking the drink Khadija make for me, from a dark bottle full of bitter leafs and ginger.
When it is my turn with Morufu, I will take a quick cap of it, go to his room, and watch him swallow his own Fire-Cracker, before I am making myself a dead body so that he can rough me. I am hoping that maybe after six months or something like that, he will see that no pregnant is ever coming, and he can send me go back to my papa. Maybe.
Labake is still fighting me. She will stamp her feets and curse if I am too long in washing the plates in the kitchen, or if I am too quick to sweep the compound, or too slow in grinding beans. She is always looking for my trouble, that Labake, always finding a way to fight me.
But today is the second Tuesday in the month.
The day for market womens and Ikati farmers meeting, which means the two both of Labake and Morufu are not in the house. Because of it, I am feeling one kind of a free I didn’t feel in a long time, and as I am cleaning the parlor this early morning, I feel a pulling in my heart to sing. To just be happy. To not think of sorrow or worry things. So I start singing a song I just make up in my head:
Hello, fine girl!
If you want to become a big, big lawyer
You must go to plenty, plenty school
If you want to wear a high, high shoe
And walk, ko-ka-ko
You must go to plenty, plenty school
I take the thick newspaper that been sitting under the lantern on top the tee-vee, fold it this way and that until it look kind of like the paper lawyer-wig I sometimes see inside the tee-vee. I put it on top my head, hold it down with one hand. Then I stand on the tip of my toes as if I am wearing a too-high shoes on my feets. I begin to walk on my toes up and down the parlor, singing:
Walk, ko-ka-ko
In your high, high shoe!
As I say “ko-ka-ko,” I stop my walking a moment to twist my buttocks left and right to the beat, then I keep walking on my toes, swinging one hand up and down, the other pressing the newspaper to my head so it don’t fall off.
My voice is happy and clear like a early-morning bird, and I don’t even see Khadija peeping her head into the parlor, looking me with the newspaper on my head, laughing silent.
“Adunni!” she say.
I shock, stop singing, then give her a big smile when I see that she didn’t angry.
“Sorry,” I say, “I was just—”
“Did you finish your morning work?” she ask.
“I finish it all,” I say as I remove the newspaper from my head, fold it, and keep it back on the tee-vee. “I make up a song about a girl wanting to become a lawyer. You want me to sing it for you? Hello, fine girl—”
She wave her hand to stop my singing and rub her stomach. “No, not now. I am still feeling a little sick. Maybe at nighttime.”
“Okay,” I say. “Did you see the okra I cook for you this morning?”
“I will drink some now,” she say. “Thank you.”
I look around the parlor, then nod my head yes. “All of this place is very clean. Now, let me go and start washing—”
“No,” Khadija say. “Leave the cloth in the backyard, I will wash it for you when I am better. The rains of last week must have swell up the river. Can you go and bring water from Ikati river for me? My clay pot is beside the well. Use it.”
“You want me to go to Ikati river?” I press a hand to my chest, blink. “Me?”
Morufu don’t ever allow me to go anywhere far like the river. He say that new wifes is didn’t suppose to be going up and down everywhere until after one year, after I have born a baby boy for him.
Khadija nod her head yes, then smile soft. “Adunni, I know your friends be always playing in the river around this time. The house is free of Labake and Morufu. It been too long since you seen them all. So go quick. Come back before afternoon.”
“Oh, Khadija,” I say, jumping up and down and clapping my hand. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
* * *
I don’t think I ever run so fast since the day my mama born me.
I skip on my feets, jumping the rocks on the floor, not stopping to greet some of the womens carrying firewood on their head as I pass them on the way, or the childrens selling morning bread in a tray on their head. I keep my eyes to my front, holding Khadija’s clay pot in one hand, my wrapper tight in the other hand until I am near. Afar off, near the fence of banana leafs by the edge of the river, I see Ruka and Enitan.
There are five or six boys in the other far end of the river, playing a boxing match and shouting and laughing, but I keep my eye on Enitan, who is drawing a square in the wet sand with a stick. Her bucket is on the ground beside her, and Ruka is perching her buttocks on the back of her feets, watching what Enitan is drawing.
I stand there a moment, feeling my heart swell as I am thinking back to the time when I didn’t have a husband, when I was free to be playing like this.
Enitan is now drawing another square. I know she will draw about six or seven squares in the sand for a game we are calling suwe, which is my best-of-all game. I will throw a stone inside one of the square, then be jumping on every square with only one leg, trying to not fall until I pick the stone, while Enitan and Ruka will be clapping and singing “Suwe! Suwe! Suwe!” from outside the box. But all of that was all before in the past.
I set down Khadija’s clay pot, shout, “Enitan! Ruka!”
Ruka turn her head to where I am standing, wide her eyes, and smile a big smile. “Look! Adunni!”
Me and Enitan and Ruka, we run to embrace ourselfs and begin to laugh and talk all at once.
“Our wife,” Enitan say, pulling my hand to sit down on a rock by the river edge. Ruka sit on the other side of me so that I am in the middle of the two both of them. I feel as if my heart will just burst from the smile on their face, the bouncing happy in their eyes.
“How is life as a wife?” Enitan ask, eyes shining as if a bulb light is inside her head. “Tell us everything, tell us everything!”
“Look your cheeks!” Ruka say, pinching my left cheeks. “Adunni, you been eating too much bread and milk. You are living well!”
“There is plenty to eat there,” I say.
“And how is your senior wifes?” Enitan ask. “Morufu? How is he doing to you?”
“Wait, let me ask her one too!” Ruka say. “Tell us, Adunni, did you do that thing with your husband?” She wink her eye like something gum her eyeslids together. “Did it pain you or was it sweet?”
“Are you cooking every day?” Enitan ask.
“Tell us about that thing!” Ruka say. “I want to hear it!”
“Too many questions,” I say, laughing at Ruka, who is still winking. “The first wife, Labake, she is just a very wicked somebody. She always be painting her face with white powder like a ghost. She keep fighting everybody too.”
“Kike’s mama?” Enitan say, pulling her wrapper to cover her knees as a quick cold breeze blow us. “I know that woman. She is always doing like something is worrying her. What of the second wife? What is her name?”
“Khadija.” I touch my chest, look my friends left to right. “She is just like us. Only six years more old, but she have three childrens and a new one on the way. She is so kind. She cook for me, teach me plenty things. I sing for her too, at night. She likes to hear my singing. She be just like another mama to me.”
My eyes pinch with tears as I am thinking of it. Khadija be like another mama to me. A mama! I been praying long for God to bring back my mama, even though I know she don’t ever be coming back, but for the first time since then, I think that maybe Khadija be the answer to my prayer.
“See!” Enitan is saying, clapping. “It is not so bad to be a wife!”
“No,” I say, talking slow, “it is not so bad, but only because of Khadija. About that thing you ask of me—” I turn to Ruka with a twist in my stomach. Maybe if I tell them how it is, they will not be hurrying so much to marry. “It is too much pain, make it hard to walk sometimes. I even bleed blood after, and many times, it make me feel so sick. Don’t rush and marry, I tell you!”
But Ruka, the foolish girl, she laugh a shy laugh and push my knees to one side. “Lie! Lie!”
I am wanting to ask her why she think I am lying, but Enitan point to the back of us, shout, “Look who is coming from the boys’ side of the river! Kayus!”
I jump to my feets and look. True, true, my Kayus is coming, running fast, shouting my name. It is the first time I am seeing Kayus since I marry Morufu two months back, and I pick myself and begin to run to him, leaving Enitan and Ruka. We meet just before he reach the girls’ side, and he pick me up, turn me around and around in the air until the sky become ground. He so strong sometimes, Kayus!
“I was hearing the girls shouting your name from afar,” he say as he set me down. “And I say to myself, ‘No, it is not my Adunni,’ but when I look well, I see it is you!”
I steady myself on my feets, then cup his face in my two hands. “My Kayus!”
“I didn’t talk to Papa since you marry that goat Morufu,” he say, fighting to remove his head from my hands, but I hold it tight because I want to soak up his whole face with my eyes: his long, thick eyeslashes, the thinning marks on his cheeks, his two front teeths that have a chipping on the edge of it from when he smash his mouth in a fall.
“When I start working at Kassim Motors,” he say, voice hard, “I swear, I will make plenty money and come and collect you from that Morufu. I will pay back all his foolish bride-price and we will build our own house and live there forever, just me and you!”
I pull him close and press his head to my chest, my heart.
“I know you will,” I say. “But till then, I will manage myself. Things is not so bad at Morufu. Come and sit with me, let me tell you everything about it.”
* * *
Around midday, I leave the river, say my bye-bye to Kayus and Enitan and Ruka, and begin my trekking back home.
The sun is a shining hot plate in the sky, resting itself among balls of white cotton wool. I carry Khadija’s pot of fresh water on my head, my heart skipping in a dance at the sound of Kayus’s laughters still in my ears.
As I am nearing the house, my heart stop the skipping and begin to feel as if I put rocks inside, heavy rocks that press me down on my feets and slow my walking. I feeling to just run back to Kayus, to take him to our house and cook palm oil rice for him and sing him to sleep at night, but I know that Papa will give me a beating for it, so I turn to the path behind the house and keep walking to Morufu’s house.
A throwing-stone away from the house, the bush make a crunching noise so sudden, I stop my walking. “Who is there?” I say, thinking to put the clay pot down and peep. “Who?”
Labake climb out from the bush, a brown cloth tight around her chest, eyes wide with something crazy. In her hand is a thin, long stick, the one with short wooden nails on it, same one she like to keep at the back of the kitchen for scaring away Khadija’s childrens when Khadija is not in the house.
“Good afternoon, ma,” I say, trying to not show my fear at the stick in her hand. “What are you doing in the bush?”
“Waiting for you,” she say in Yoruba. “I want to catch you by yourself so that Khadija cannot save you. Now, tell me. Why is the kerosene in my stove low?”
I think of the okra soup I cook for Khadija early this morning. She been drinking a bowl of okra every morning since two weeks now, say it help to wake up baby when it is stiff in her stomach. I cook it with Khadija’s stove, the green stove beside the washing bowl.
“I don’t know why your kerosene is low,” I say.
“Did you cook?” she ask. “In the kitchen?”
“For Khadija,” I say.
“Which stove did you use?”
“Khadija’s stove.”
Did I mistake and use Labake’s stove? I
check my mind, search it everywhere before I shake my head no. There are two of the same kind of green stoves in the kitchen, one beside the washing bowl and the other one behind the bench, and every evening, after cooking, Labake will take her stove to her room. No, I shake my head again, I didn’t use Labake’s stove because it was not even inside the kitchen this morning.
“Please move from my way,” I say. “I want to take this water to—”
“My stove is the one beside the washing bowl,” she say, moving more close, eyes thinning with anger. “The green one. I didn’t take it to my room last night. Khadija’s stove is not working, but I think her pregnant stomach is worrying her brain, so she didn’t remember telling you that Morufu take it for fixing. Now, I ask you again, did you use my stove?”
“Your stove is the which one?” I ask, my heart beginning to jump, my hands sore from gripping the clay pot too tight.
She put a hand on my chest and push me. Just a small push, but the water in the pot sway this way and that, drops of it pouring on my face, inside my cloth, the cold of it shocking my chest.
“You are still asking me which one?” She crack the air with the stick, and I feel a slicing on my skin from the sound.
I lick my lips, take two steps back, the pot of water on my head like a pot of fire and stones and troubles.
“I think maybe—” I start, wanting to beg her to don’t be angry, to don’t flog me, when I hear the voice of Kike, Labake’s daughter, from behind us: “Mama!”
Kike come running up the path, breathing fast. Me and her don’t talk much since I marry her father. She keep to herself in the house, and me, I don’t even look her face. She is tying a cloth around her chest and holding a wooden spoon with white dough on the tip of it. Be like she was turning fufu in a pot and just leave it to come running to us. What is she finding here? Is she coming to join her mama in beating me?
“Mama,” Kike say, dipping her knees into the sand to greet Labake. “It was me, Mama. It was me that use your stove to, to boil garden-eggs this morning. Not Adunni.”