by Abi Daré
“Adunni, you heard the woman,” the doctor mama says. “Shut your mouth.”
Mother Tinu is now walking back to us. She is holding a folded white cloth and what look like a pack of long brooms. She reach us, and I see that she is holding four brooms. Each of the brooms is made up of long, very thin, and very many sticks tied together with a red thread around the top of it. We use this kind of broom for sweeping the floor in Ikati. What are they using it for here?
“Take this,” Mother Tinu says, giving the cloth to Ms. Tia. “Take off your clothes and put them on the floor. Tie this white cloth around your body, and the smaller one on your head.”
Ms. Tia collects the cloth, and slowly, she pulls off her jeans, her t-shirt. She is wearing a pink brassiere and pink pant of lace material. Her stomach is the flat of floor, her skin smooth. There is a mark to the left of her belly button, darker than her skin, looks like a tiny upside-down map of Africa. She press the square of folded cloth between her breasts, saying nothing. Not one word. Her lips just shake and shake, like she wants to burst with angry words, but something is holding her back, tying her down.
“Come on, Tia,” the doctor mama says. “We have to hurry. Tie the clothes around you, take off your bra and underwear. Those must go too. Is that right, Mother Tinu?”
“Yes, everything she came in. Be quick, please.”
“Leave her to take her time,” I say, my voice sharp.
“Shut your gutter mouth,” the doctor mama says.
Ms. Tia ties the cloth around her chest and on her head. Next, she drops her pant to the floor, and pulls her brassiere out from her chest, drops it to the floor too.
“Now,” Mother Tinu says to us, “will you two take a few steps back please?”
Me and the doctor mama, we take two steps back and stand far from each other like enemies in a battlefield.
I watch as Mother Tinu takes Ms. Tia to the edge of the river.
I watch as the women stop their moaning, stand up on their feet at the same time, and collect the brooms from Mother Tinu at the same time, as if they been planning the movement for weeks.
I watch as one of the women pulls off Ms. Tia’s cloth, exposing her naked, as she begins to whip her with the broom. At first, Ms. Tia is looking shocked. She is standing there, mouth open like small letter O. When it seems that she is understanding that they are flogging her, that she is collecting a whipping instead of a washing of water and soap, she starts to fight back. She kicks her legs and screams and says what the fork and what the hell, but the other three women, they hold her hands, and her legs, and cover her mouth, with no feelings on their face. No frown, no smile. Nothing. They struggle, pull Ms. Tia to the wet, muddy ground. One woman standing by Ms. Tia’s head twists her two hands behind her back and ties them with a thick brown rope I didn’t see before, and the other wraps the rope around her leg, making it tight with one thick knot.
They step back, pick up the brooms, and begin to whip.
I want to jump in front, to fight them with my life, to tear them away from my Ms. Tia, but something is gumming my legs to the floor, my hands to my side, and I am not able to move any part of me.
And so I watch as they whip, and whip, and whip, as Ms. Tia is rolling on the ground and screaming, until her fine smooth skin is having puncture from the sand, and until her whole body is becoming the red of the earth.
CHAPTER 46
By the time the women finish the flogging, Ms. Tia is no more shouting and screaming.
She is just staying on the floor, bleeding blood, her back full of so much marks. Mother Tinu collects the brooms from the other women and throws them into the river, puts her head up, shouts, “THE EVIL OF CHILDLESSNESS HAS BEEN CHASED OUT. PRAISE BE TO THE LIVING HIM!” The other four women, they clap their hands and say, “ELI-JAH!”
They pull Ms. Tia up, scoop water from the river edge, and pour it on Ms. Tia’s body, ever so gentle, as if to say, Sorry, sorry we flog you.
When Ms. Tia turns, and I see her face, my legs become rubber. Like something yank out all my bones. I fall, pushing a cry deep inside of me. Ms. Tia’s face is full of so many whip marks, like the drawing hanging in her parlor, the one of clay head with no eyes and no mouth. Only this one is Ms. Tia. And she has eyes and mouth and ears and is feeling so much pain. And her eyes, her eyes have a look, of a wild animal, of a hunter that is wanting to kill.
A cry is boiling inside of me and I want to release it, but I feel a warm hand on my shoulder: the doctor mama.
“I didn’t know,” she says, whispering. There are tears shining in her eyes, her voice shaking, fingers on my shoulder shaking too. “I didn’t know that they’d do this to her. That it would be this brutal, this bad. They told me it was just a bath. An ordinary, harmless bath. If I had known, I wouldn’t have . . . I should have stopped them. My son is going to . . .” She sighs, snatching her hand from my shoulder. “Go and bring her clothes from the car.”
I pick myself up and drag myself away from the place. My stomach is turning, the beans I ate yesternight seems to want to climb out of my throat. I stop my walking a moment, bend my knees by a short bush. I cough, pressing my stomach, but nothing is coming out. I wipe my mouth with my dress and make myself to keep walking.
Behind the church, from the open window, I see a woman on the floor, kneeling, holding a red candle in her hand, nodding, shouting “AMEN” and the prophet, he is bouncing, turning around, shouting, “ELI . . . ELI.”
And the Jesus in the picture is no more vexing His face.
Now, He just looks tired. And sad.
CHAPTER 47
We drive home like dead bodies in a coffin.
Nobody is talking. Or moving. The car feels too small, coffin-size, the cold air from the air-con so dry, my lips feel like fish scales. We are breathing though. Hard, fast breathing. Slow, heavy breathing. We are saying many things with our breathing. We just don’t talk. Don’t say a word.
But there are words in my head, many things I want to say. I want to tell Ms. Tia I am sorry I made her come here. I want to ask why the doctor didn’t come too. Why didn’t he come and get a beating like his wife? If it takes two people to make a baby, why only one person, the woman, is suffering when the baby is not coming? Is it because she is the one with breast and the stomach for being pregnant? Or because of what? I want to ask, to scream, why are the women in Nigeria seem to be suffering for everything more than the men?
But my mouth is not collecting the questions from my head, so I just keep it there. Keep it hanging, turning inside my head, causing a banging head pain.
The doctor mama try to make small talk with Ms. Tia. “I promise you that I had no idea what was going to happen—at least not to that extent,” she says. “I wanted to stop them, but how could I go against so many women? And I thought of your miracle, your baby . . . Is there a, a way we can keep this between us? We can find a story to tell Ken, but he must not know that I allowed something so horrible . . . Think of what could happen in nine months, Tia.”
Ms. Tia keeps her eyes to the window. She doesn’t give the doctor mama any answer. Not one word to anybody. She is just sitting there, breathing fast, hard, her fingers on her lap are curling into each other so tight, the skin is nearly splitting.
We drive for about fifteen minutes until the go-slow in one street forces us to slow down, where one man selling ice cream in front of us holds up one block of ice cream and presses his nose to the window.
“Buy ice cream!” he says, and the closed window makes his voice sound as if he is chewing a cloth and talking at the same time.
But when he sees Ms. Tia’s face with all the lines and marks, he becomes stiff, looking at Ms. Tia for a long, long moment, worry and concern all over his face, until the driver presses his horn to make him jump back.
* * *
The house is quiet when I enter.
Big M
adam’s car is not anywhere in the compound. Where has she gone? It is late now, around eight o’clock, and by this time, Big Madam will be sucking oranges inside her parlor, watching Sky tee-vee or CNN news channel and cursing Nigeria. I walk fast, my feet crunching the dry grass, until I reach the back of the kitchen. From the kitchen window, I see Kofi’s buttocks up in the air, the top half part of his body inside the oven. I knock on the window, and he brings his head out from oven, makes a beckon.
I enter, greet him good evening. The whole place is smelling of sweet cakes. It turns my stomach, making me want to crawl somewhere and vomit the nothing in my stomach.
“Where have you been?” he asks, wiping his hand on the apron around his body.
“With Ms. Tia,” I say. “Did Big Madam ask of me?”
“She’s out,” he says. “Her sister, Kemi, had an accident. She had to go to the hospital from the shop. Not sure she’ll be back anytime soon. Big Daddy is watching the news in the living room. Completely useless, that man. His sister-in-law is in hospital and he asked me to bake him cupcakes to have with his evening coffee.” He rubs his hand together. “Oh, but I must show you the latest pictures of my project in Kumasi. The roofing is almost complete, and I had to ship the floor tiles from— Chale, why the long face? What happened? Did the school reject you? Did you hear from them?”
“I didn’t hear from them,” I say. “Any work for me to do this night?” I am so tired, but I want to wash and clean and scrub until I scrub away this afternoon out from my mind. Bleach it all away too. Make my mind white, blank.
“Well, there are some clothes that need ironing upstairs, but you don’t look well. Go and lie down. If anybody asks, I will find something to say.”
“Thank you,” I say.
I turn around.
“Adunni,” Kofi calls.
I stop, look him.
“Are you hungry?” he asks. “I can give you some cupcakes. You like cupcakes, don’t you?”
“No, thank you,” I say. “Good night.”
He gives me a long look, sighs. “It will all make sense one day,” he says. “One day, things will get better.”
“I know,” I say with a tiny, tired voice. “Tomorrow will be better than today.”
“Abu is looking for you,” Kofi say, “Shall I send him to your room?”
“Not this night,” I say. I want to hear what Abu wants to say about Rebecca, but I don’t want to hear it tonight. This night, I just want to crawl inside my bed and close my eyes and not think about anything or anybody.
“No problem,” Kofi says. “Go and sleep.”
CHAPTER 48
The sleep is not coming.
I find the sleep, beg it to come, but it is not coming. My eyelids feel like they are full of wet sand, as if I put a stone inside the middle of my eyeballs so that when I try to be closing it, it is scraping my eyes, causing it to hang in the middle of the open and the close. My chest is paining me too, paining from all the things I saw today, from a deep longing for Mama. I want her so much, just for one minute, so I can tell her about Ms. Tia, about what happened today, about the wicked things those women are doing in the church, things that are making God and me and Ms. Tia sad.
A sound cuts my thinking, two short hoos of an owl in one of the trees, and I sit myself up, and peep the crack in the window, at the full moon in the sky casting a glow over the fields, at the grass looking like they are full of tiny blue-green lightbulbs, at the metal fence surrounding Big Madam’s house, high and round and endless, and I wonder if I will ever leave this place, if things will ever be better for me.
When I go back and lie down on my bed, I don’t sleep. I stay thinking about my life, Ms. Tia, Big Madam and her sick sister, about Big Daddy not even caring of his wife, about all the money rich people have and how the money is not helping them escape from problems, until the night turns and brings the morning light.
At the first light, I wash myself, wear my uniform, and find Kofi in the kitchen.
“Morning, Adunni,” he says, slapping a egg on the edge of one glass bowl to crack it. “Do you feel better today?”
“Has Big Madam come back?” I ask.
Kofi shakes his head, yawns. “She’s still at the hospital with her sister. I’m making breakfast for that glutton.” He starts to turn the egg with a fork. “I didn’t go to bed until midnight because of his cupcakes, and at four a.m., he sent me a text to bring up some scrambled eggs. What do you need Big Madam for? You know what to do. Get the broom—”
“I am going out,” I say as I leave the kitchen. “If Big Madam comes back and asks of me, tell her I am . . . Tell her anything you want.”
* * *
“Adunni,” Ms. Tia says. “It’s really early. Come on in.”
She doesn’t look good, Ms. Tia. Her hair is all hiding, packed up under one black scarf. Her eyes are all red and swollen, her face is looking as if they roasted her inside a fire instead of flogging her with brooms. The lines are all black and brown and angry, but it is her eyes that give me a shiver; the all at once red and angry of it.
“You been crying?” I make to touch her face, but she pulls herself back, twists the rope of her robe, and makes a tight bow in front of her stomach.
“Thanks for, for yesterday,” she says. “I am sorry I made you come with me. It must have been horrible for you . . .” She presses two fingers to both of her eyes, keep it there a moment.
“I am sorry I didn’t save you,” I say. “I tried, but my legs, my legs was not working well.”
She pulls my left cheek with a sad smile. “There was nothing you could have done. This was not your fault, okay?”
“Okay,” I say. “The doctor mama, she said she didn’t know those women will flog you. I don’t think she is too much a bad woman.”
Ms. Tia nods her head, real slow. “It doesn’t matter,” she says as she turns around and walks far into her compound. I follow her until we reach her kitchen back door. She didn’t make to enter, so I stand there, the early-morning grass like a carpet of crushed ice under my feet.
“You haven’t got shoes on,” Ms. Tia says. “It’s chilly.”
“Your face,” I say. “Is it paining you?”
“I will be fine,” she says.
“Rub palm oil on your face every day. In no time, it will vanish. Then your skin be like a baby’s own again.”
She pulls me and gives me embrace so quick, I shock. “Thank you,” she says. “You are one brave girl.”
“What did the doctor say?” I ask, whispering. “When he saw your face, what did he say?”
Ms. Tia put her hands on her face and scrape her cheeks up and down as if to scrape away the stain of the memory. “He and his mother had a big fight. He accused her of hurting me. She said she was only trying to help. He told her she can’t help, and he asked her to leave our home. When she left, he told me that the bath is useless, and that he—” She draws a breath, her chest climbing high. Then she begins to talk real fast, and her words are running inside theirselfs and almost confusing me.
“He cannot get me pregnant,” she says. “His mother didn’t know. He didn’t tell anyone. Ken is infertile, unable to— That’s why his ex, Molara, left him, why he started to help other families, I think, because he knows what they are going through. He said because we’d briefly discussed not having kids, he didn’t think he needed to tell me he . . . Shit. Shit!” She kicks the back of the door, it shoots out, makes a bang on the wall. “Shit!” she says again, and when she starts to cry, I know she is not really needing the toilet.
“He didn’t tell you this before you married him?” I say when she slows her cry and presses her finger to her eyes again.
“I had no idea,” she says, her voice sounding like she put her throat in a blender, grind it with sand. “If I had known, we could have sought alternatives right from when we decided to
start trying. At first he didn’t tell me because he didn’t think I needed to know, and then when we discussed having kids, he was afraid I would leave him if he told me, and I honestly don’t know how I feel about that.
“And as if I hadn’t had a crappy enough day, I got a call at midnight. My mum’s infection is back. I’m going away for a few days. I leave first thing tomorrow.” She sighs. “Maybe that’s a good thing. It’ll give me a chance to process everything.”
“Tomorrow will be better than today,” I say with a soft smile. “Not so?”
She coughs out a dry laugh. “I wish I could get those women arrested,” she says. “That barbaric act must stop. It’s bullshit.”
“Very bullshit,” I say, even though I am only knowing of cowshit and goatshit.
Ms. Tia laughs again, dips her hand inside her pocket, and brings out tissue. She blows her nose as if she wants to uproot it, then smash up the tissue and throws it into one white dustbin behind me. “I will try and stop by at Ocean Oil office as soon as I get back, to check the list, to see if the results have been published.”
I feel the words escape from Ms. Tia’s mouth, feel them hang like a cloud over my head, feel them drop down, cover my spirit, and drag me to somewhere far, somewhere like a dream. “And what if I enter?” I whisper. “How, what will I tell Big Madam?”
She focus her eyes on the space behind my head. “I will do the talking. I will tell her you got a scholarship and that you have to go.”
“And what if . . .” I am afraid to say it, but I try: “What if I don’t enter?”
“Adunni?”
“Yes, Ms. Tia?”
“Yesterday I tasted your normal,” she says, picking up my hand.