The Girl with the Louding Voice

by Abi Daré

  “Where is Big Daddy?” My whole body is dripping wet with rainwater and anger, the letter in my hand is a wet leaf. “Where is he?”

  She opens her eyes, slow, as if her eyelids are too heavy, but she will not look at me. She looks drunk too, like she’s been drinking the drink of sorrow and pain.

  “I have a letter, ma,” I say. “From Rebecca.”

  “Rebecca is gone,” she says, voice dragging. “Gone—”

  “I know, ma,” I say. “But she write something here. In this letter.”

  I bring out the letter. The biro ink on the paper is changing color because of wet, the words fading in some parts. “I should read it for you?” I ask.

  She shakes her head, opens up her hand, and I give her the letter. She stares at the paper, at the words in it, but I don’t think she reads it, her eyes are too swollen, nearly blind with pain. She puts the letter on her chest as if she wants to use the paper to wrap the pieces of her breaking heart, to pack it and seal it up.

  “Chief has killed me,” she says after a long, long moment. She is not talking to me but to herself and the air. “I could understand the other girls, I tolerated them, I even took care of his mess. But this time, he went too far. Chief Adeoti, you went too far!”

  I turn myself around and go to the kitchen. Kofi is not there. I fill a bowl with warm water and take a cloth. Back inside the parlor, I dip the cloth in warm water, squeeze it out, and then slowly begin to wipe the blood from Big Madam’s mouth, the tears from her eyes, the shaking from her hands. And at first, she struggles, but I hold her two hands tight until she slacks herself and closes her eyes, until she accepts that sometimes even the strongest of people can suffer a weakness.

  I sing the song my mama was teaching me when I was growing up in the village, the same one I was singing when I was first coming to Lagos, and when I check, Big Madam’s eyes are still closed, but this time, she is snoring softly, so I pluck the letter from where it has floated to the floor, and go to my room.

  CHAPTER 52

  Fact: About 30% of businesses registered in Nigeria are owned by women. The continued growth of these businesses, which is critical to sustaining the economy, is largely hindered by limited access to funds and by gender discrimination.

  Chale, what the hell happened in this house last night?”

  Kofi is standing in front of my room door, blinking as if somebody slapped his head with a big plank of wood. “What’s going on?”

  I couldn’t sleep all night.

  My mind felt like it was inside the washing machine, tumbling and tumbling, until this morning when Kofi knocked the door of my room, freeing me from the tumbling of the mind.

  “The living room was in a state when I got in this morning,” Kofi says. “Big Daddy is not home, and Big Madam looks like she got hit by a lorry. What happened?”

  “Where did you go?” I ask, keeping one hand on the door, the other holding my nightdress. Kofi didn’t ever behave to me in a bad way, but after yesternight, I cannot be talking to any man without fearing he will jump on me.

  “Big Daddy gave me some time off,” he says. “Last night, he asked me to take a break, to go away for the night. Since Big Madam was at the hospital with her sister, I took the opportunity to go and see my old friends at the Ghana High Commission. To be honest, I was skeptical when he gave me some time off, but I was so tired from cooking for Big Madam’s— What happened?”

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “Chale, talk to me. Did Big Daddy come here?” His face falls, and he presses a hand to his chest. “I should have known when he insisted I should go away for the night. Adunni, talk to me. Why are you just standing there and staring? What did he do to you?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “What do you want?”

  “Did he rape you?” Kofi asks, his voice climbing high. “Did that imbecile rape you?”

  The word “rape” sounds like a knife-cutting, a stabbing, a word I never heard of in my life, but I know I am not needing the Collins to check the meaning.

  “He didn’t rape me,” I say, voice soft. The memory of it is still giving me shivers, still causing my heart to bang in my chest. “Big Madam opened the door before it happened.”

  Kofi spits on the floor. “Kwasea. God punish him.”

  “Did Rebecca go to school?” I ask. “How was her English? Was she sharp in the brain?”

  “Rebecca? She spoke good English but was very naïve for her age,” Kofi says. “Her former boss—before Big Madam—educated her. Sent her to a private primary and secondary school and even took her on holidays with the family. When the woman died, Rebecca came here to work. Why are you asking?”

  “Nothing,” I say. If Rebecca was a wise girl, she will know that Big Daddy cannot marry her and keep her in the same house with Big Madam. She will know the man was telling lies. Now I know that speaking good English is not the measure of intelligent mind and sharp brain. English is only a language, like Yoruba and Igbo and Hausa. Nothing about it is so special, nothing about it makes anybody have sense. “Do you have a sample of anything she write?” I ask. I want to be sure so that Big Daddy will not say it is somebody else that write that letter. I want to be sure that Big Daddy will suffer for Rebecca because Bamidele didn’t suffer for Khadija.

  Kofi shakes his head. “Abu might have something; she always gave him the shopping list. I would ask him, but he’s been away as well since last night. He should be back this morning.”

  I make to close my room door, but Kofi blocks it with his hand. “Big Madam wants you,” he says. “She said you should come straight up to her room, right inside. Why would she ask you to come to her room? She never asks anyone into her room—least of all you. What am I missing here?”

  “Thank you,” I say, and close the door.

  * * *

  “Come on in,” Big Madam says when I reach her bedroom.

  Her whole face is a sore wound and I stand there a moment, not moving, even though the door is wide-open. She is wearing a long red robe that looks like red silk wings around her body. Her hand is on the door handle, holding it open for me.

  “Come in,” she says again, turning and walking away. “Shut the door, take a seat on that chair.”

  I step in. There is a round bed right in the center of the room, with feather cover-cloth and like fifteen pillows, I am not sure how she will find space to sleep in the bed. There are pictures of her children when they were young lining up the wall on my side, of them laughing inside playground, and one of Big Madam when she was young. She looks so slim in the picture, her skin smooth-looking, I am almost wanting to touch it, to say sorry for how her face will swell in the future because of Big Daddy.

  A strange smell, a mix of toilet bleach and dirty feet, fills my nose, and I see the dressing table on my left, filled with big bottles of cream and a nylon makeup bag that is full of all sorts of powder, eye color, pencils, and lipsticks. I catch the names on the bottles: InstaWhite Plus Skin Milk, Skin Fade (New & Improved), Bright Bleaching Mix.

  Why is Big Madam wanting to bleach her skin? And with these smelling creams? She is looking fine in the picture of herself on the wall, with her skin before. Is this why her face keeps having different colors, why her legs are brown on the ankle and the knees but the rest is a pale, sicking yellow, sometimes green?

  I sit down in the long purple chair facing Big Madam’s bed and fold my dress in my lap. “Kofi says you want to see me. I am here.”

  She looks at her nails as if she is checking it for swelling. “I must ask you, Adunni. Yesterday, did Chief, did he—”

  I shake my head no. “He didn’t rape me.”

  She snaps her head up, tight her eyes. “You know what ‘rape’ means?”

  “Yes, ma,” I say.

  “Tia Dada, Dr. Ken’s wife, she called me yesterday. She told me she wants to come and see me, to discuss
your future. What stupid future? Who does she think she is? How much of your salary has she ever paid? Or does she think you are one of her environmental projects?” She draws a breath. “She hung up when I asked her that question, and I swear, I saw red. My head was boiling. I left my sister in hospital and told my driver to take me home. My plan was to find you and give you the kind of beating that will reset your brain and throw you out into the streets, because Adunni, you have brought me nothing but trouble since you got here. Tia Dada is not my mate. She cannot even be up to forty years old, and she is hanging up the phone on me? I was going to deal with you first, then face her and deal with her, but what did I find in your room instead? My husband.” She stops talking, but her lips keep shaking.

  “Chief goes to church. He is a member of the Men of Virtue group. How can a man go to church for so long, for years, and not find God?” Big Madam ask this as if she lost, confuse.

  “Because God is not the church,” I say, keeping my chin down, my voice low.

  I want to tell her that God is not a cement building of stones and sand. That God is not for all that putting inside a house and locking Him there. I want her to know that the only way to know if a person find God and keep Him in their heart is to check how the person is treating other people, if he treats people like Jesus says—with love, patience, kindness, and forgiveness—but my heart is running fast and beating hard and making me want to piss, so I pinch something from my uniform, a red thread, and roll it around and around in my fingers until it is a small knot, a thread-full-stop.

  She presses a hand on her knees, leans forward. “Adunni, I have been thinking about Tia’s phone call. Do you know what Tia Dada wants to discuss with me?”

  “No, ma,” I say, whisper. “I don’t know.”

  Big Madam nods her head slowly. “If she wants to take you away from here, will you go with her?”

  I nod.

  “Because of what Chief did?”

  I am not sure of what to tell her, my mind is wanting to say many things, but I am fearing she will vex for me, so I only say a small part of what is coming to my mind. “Because you are not very always kind to me and Kofi. You beat me and make me cry to miss my mama. And because of Big Daddy.”

  I bite my lip to stop talking, but in my mind, my mouth keeps on moving: Because if Rebecca was your Kayla, you will not rest, not for one night or one day, until you are finding her. And because you are slave-trading me and you are letting Big Daddy slave-trade you.

  She leans back and closes her eyes, and when she starts to speak, her voice is so low, as if I am no more in her front, and she and herself are talking to each other: “How could Chief do this to me? To us? How do I carry on without Chief by my side? What do I tell people when they ask me what happened?”

  He wasn’t ever by your side. Except maybe when he is blowing you in the face.

  “What do you mean by that?” Big Madam snaps her eyes open, voice sharp.

  Was my voice in my head, or was I speaking out? I start to shake my head no, to make up one lie, but she says, “Adunni! What. Do. You. Mean. By. That? Tell me exactly what you mean before I grind you to powder.”

  I twist the edge of my dress around and around my finger until the blood is no more flowing to the finger. “It is Big Daddy, ma. He is a bad man. Very wicked.”

  I raise my head as something twist a tap inside my mouth open, and the words, bitter and true and sharp, start to pour out. “He beats you nearly every time and fills you up with so much anger and sadness that when you see me and Kofi, you pour all of the anger out on us, on me most of all. Your husband, he makes you sad and . . .” And mad.

  “Sorry, ma,” I say, when I see how her eyesballs are nearly climbing out of her head. “You asked me to say what I mean and, and I am just saying what I mean. The end.” I push out a breath, feeling like a balloon that is losing all the air until it is becoming flat, with no power to float again, so I stand to my feet, real slow, and look around the room like a fool because I don’t want to look at her face.

  “Can I massage your feet?” I ask. “Or scratch your hair before I go? Yesterday, I sang a song and you fall asleep. Can I sing for you? A song that my mama—”

  “Go,” she says, waving me to the door, her eyes wet, angry. “Get out of my sight!”

  CHAPTER 53

  At night, there is banging on the gate, a crazy horning, as if the person driving the car put his hand on the horn and slap, slap, slap it. When the sound doesn’t go away after three minutes, I stand up from my bed and peep out of my room.

  “That fool has been horning for close to thirty minutes,” Kofi says from where he is standing in the corridor, scratching his eyes and yawning.

  “Which fool?” I ask, coming out of my room and closing the door. I stand beside him, and together we look to the darkness, where the night is one thick wall of black, and the crickets and the horning are filling the air turn by turn, making it one kind crazy melody sounding song: peen—kre-kre—peen—kre-kre.

  “Big Daddy,” Kofi says. “He’s the one horning like a maniac. Big Madam instructed Abu and me not to open the gate for him, which is very strange.”

  “Why is it very strange?” I ask.

  “Because she has never instructed us not to let him in. Not even when she is sure he’s been to see his girlfriend.”

  “You’ve seen his girlfriend before?”

  “He has a few,” Kofi says. “I have seen one of them—a girl he picks up at Shoprite. Skinny thing. Looks like a twelve-year-old. A gust of wind would snap her in two on a good day. But that’s the fool’s problem.” Kofi bend his neck, eye me. “So, what did Big Madam say to you when she called you to her room?”

  “Nothing,” I say as another horn noise blast the air. “Why did Big Madam say we don’t open the gate?”

  Kofi shrugs. “As I said, she’s never done that before. If anything, she’ll direct me to make sure Big Daddy’s food is served, no matter how late he gets back home. You should have seen her when she gave us the instruction, Adunni. Her eyes were raw, full of something I have never seen before. Something like steel. Resolve.”

  “Did you ask Abu? For the list for shopping?”

  “Ah, yes.” Kofi puts his hand into his trouser pocket, brings out a paper. “Here it is. The last shopping list she wrote before she . . . you know.”

  I take the paper, open it. The writing—a list of shopping for Fairy Soap, White Rice, Cling Film, Tissue Paper, and Bleach—is the same as the letter.

  My heart sighs. “Kofi, did you ever see her and Big Daddy together?”

  “A few times.” Kofi frowns, his forehead flesh dividing into three thick lines of skin. “I had caught him leaving Rebecca’s room a few times. They seemed close, unusually so, especially when Big Madam was away. I asked her about it, told her to be careful with him, but she always laughed and said I was jealous. Why would I be jealous of a fool? I know how every single maid we’ve had always seemed to interest him. Which was why I warned you to be careful of him from the very first day. I warn every single maid that comes to work in this house.”

  I feel a chill, it comes so sudden, causing the hair on my hand to stand up. “Did Big Madam go to Rebecca’s house in the village? To find her?”

  Kofi shakes his head. “I heard Mr. Kola went a week or two after she disappeared. Big Madam, as far as I am aware, did not go anywhere.”

  There is another horning, and Big Madam, her voice like five thunders, screams from the main house: “Go back to the hell you are coming from, Chief! No one is opening this gate for you.”

  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.”