The Girl with the Louding Voice

by Abi Daré

  “What happened to Rebecca?” I ask. “If you don’t tell me now, I will shout and shout and tell everybody what happened. That you killed Rebecca.”

  She laugh a shock of bitter laugh. “Me? Kill a human being? Is that how low you think of me?” She sigh. “Adunni, I do not owe you any explanation, but I will tell you this. Rebecca is not dead. She was not harmed. I know Chief got her pregnant. I have always known. The day she left this house, I drove her away.”

  “What about the blood?” I ask. “On the letter? Why is it there?”

  “Where did you find the letter?”

  “Under my bed,” I lie, because I don’t want to put Abu in trouble, and because of that, I know I cannot talk about the wet seat in the car, which I now know was maybe full of blood too before somebody washed it off. “What happened to make her bleed?”

  “This will remain between you and me,” Big Madam says, watching me. Inside her eyes, I see one hundred mouths wide-open, screaming a warning. “The day Rebecca left, I was at home, unwell. My husband did not know I hadn’t left for the shop. He and I were not on speaking terms—we hardly are anyway. I needed Rebecca to make me some food, since Kofi had gone out, and because I called for her with no response, I was forced to go and find her in her room. When I got there, she was in so much pain. She was moaning, holding her stomach, trying hard to twist out her waist beads. She was in a bad state, in real agony. She said she drank something, something my husband gave to her. She must have been in the middle of writing the letter you found under your bed, before the pain started, because I noticed it on her bed as I rushed out to get her help.”

  “I saw the waist beads,” I say, “on her window.”

  She took them off because her stomach was turning with so much pain.

  Big Madam shrugs. “She might have left them there as we got ready to leave the house. I ended up dragging her to the car myself because no one was home. I had sent Abu to deliver an urgent fabric order on the mainland, and I don’t know where Chief went. I suspect he gave her a drug to cause a miscarriage and took a stroll, left her to bleed out the baby. His baby.”

  She stops a moment, sway on her feet a little, then still herself. “I drove her to hospital. On the way, Rebecca started to bleed. Turns out she was nearly four months pregnant—I don’t know how I missed her growing bulge—and that she was losing the baby. She told me my husband was responsible. And that the bastard had promised her marriage.

  “Immediately the doctor was able to control the bleeding, I got her discharged, took her mobile phone off her, deleted all the messages she and Chief had been exchanging, and drove her to the nearest motor-park. I gave her some money, told her to get out of Lagos and never return. She never returned to her village, because Mr. Kola would have found that out and told me, but she has stayed away from my life. And me, in my foolishness, I asked Mr. Kola to get me a much younger girl as my next maid. I didn’t know I was married to an animal. A beast. Age matters not to him. Nothing, absolutely nothing, matters to him.” She sigh. “Go and get your things, Adunni.”

  I look at the scatter of paper on the floor, not moving from where I am standing. “How do I know, ma, that you are not lying?” I ask, but I think she is saying the truth. I think too that Rebecca took the letter with her to the car and hid it there, maybe by mistake or because she had hope that somebody would see it.

  “Our conversation is over,” Big Madam says. “Go now and get your things and leave my home.” And then, raising her voice, she says, “Mrs. Dada, you can come back in. Adunni and I are done.”

  Ms. Tia returns inside, sees the scatter of paper on the floor, says, “What the hell?”

  “Adunni and I are done,” Big Madam says again. “She can go and get her things.”

  * * *

  I run all the way to my room, and when I reach it, I take off my shoes and arrange them under the bed. I peel off my uniform, fold it, keep it on the bed. I wear my dress, put on my sandal-shoes from Ikati.

  I look around slowly, at the bed, the cupboard in the corner, Rebecca’s shoes on the floor, the folded uniform on the bed.

  I set at packing my belongings into my nylon bag: my mama’s Bible, the nine hundred naira I brought with me from Ikati, my pencils and notepad, my Better English and grammar books. I pick up Rebecca’s waist beads, look at them for a long time, and, with shaking hands, drop it into my bag too. If she is from Agan, maybe one day I will see her and give it to her.

  I feel a strong pull of sadness as my mind drags me back to Ikati, back to when I was about five or six years of age and playing in the village stream with Enitan, splashing water on our faces, laughing with no sense of what life will bring for all of us. My mind rolls again, like a tire set down from the top of a mountain, as I think of Mama and her laugh, which was the sound of ten quiet sneezes; of Khadija, my friend, and the many nights we lay together on the mat in her room, sharing stories into the far deep of the night. I think of Rebecca, and I say a prayer that wherever she is, she will find peace.

  It is when I think of Kayus—who I had been locking up in my mind for so long, for fear of running mad with the pain of missing him—that my knees make a sudden bend.

  I fall to the floor and start to cry: for Mama, who spent all her days—sick and well—to gather school fees money, sometimes frying one hundred puff-puffs to sell under the hot Ikati sun, and many times, returning home at night with tears in her eyes because she didn’t sell even one. I cry for Papa, who thinks that a girl-child is a wasted waste, a thing with no voice, no dreams, no brain.

  I cry for Big Madam, with her big house, the big cage of sadness around her soul. For Iya, who was kind to me because my mama was kind to her. For Khadija, who lived and died for the love of a man that left her to die. And for myself, for the loss of everything good and happy, for the pain of the past and the promise of the future.

  My cry is a soft wail, both a whipping and healing to my heart . . . until someone calls my name from afar, a sound that stops the wail so sudden, as if something snap off a rushing stream from the source of it.

  I wipe my face, push myself up, and pick up the cloth-hanger inside the cupboard. Kneeling on the bed, I pull and twist and stretch out the hanger until it is a thin line, a metal pen with no ink. Slowly, I begin to scratch the wall with the tip of it. I scratch and scratch, blowing away the chippings from the white paint, curving and carving letters deep into the wall until my neck and fingers are paining from too much bending and scratching.

  When I finish, I climb down from the bed, pick up the nylon bag of my belongings. At the door, I look at the wall, at what I scratched into it. The C is one half of a square and the A is almost a triangle, but I can read the words:

  ADUNNI & REBECCA

  I leave the room, closing the door on the memory of the sad and the bitter and the happy of it all, knowing that even if everybody forgets about Rebecca, or about me, the wall in the room we shared will remind them that we were here. That we are human. Of value. Important.

  CHAPTER 56

  I got in, Kofi!” I shout when I get to the kitchen. “I am going to school!”

  Kofi drops the round of dough in his hand, cuts to where I am standing, and gives me a quick embrace. “Ah, Adunni. I overheard the doctor’s wife talking to Big Madam just now! You got in! Congratulations.” He sniffs, wipes one eye with the edge of his apron. “I know the school, and I will come and visit you at some point. But whenever you visit Ms. Tia, please call my number. I have stored it in your phone.”

  I wide my eyes. “You know I have a phone?”

  “Chale, I knew from the day you got it. I even know the code. I have stored my name as Chale. Call me sometime, my friend?”

  I start a crying laugh, a happy one. “Thank you, Kofi, my friend,” I say. “For pushing me to enter the scholarship. For everything.”

  Kofi wave away my thank you. “All I did was to give you i
nformation and encourage you. I would have done the same for my daughter. You did all the hard work. You and that woman, the doctor’s wife.” He low his voice, “So, what did she do with the letter?”

  “She teared . . . tore it all up,” I say, my voice low.

  Kofi’s eyes are sad. “If I had suspected that anything terrible happened to her, I would have done more for her.”

  “No more we can do for her,” I say. “Big Madam told me what happened.”

  As I tell Kofi, his eyes grow from sad to wide, then to calm. “Let us hope she is okay, wherever she is. You did your best for her.” He pats my cheeks two times. “Go and enjoy your new life. When my house is complete, you can come and visit.”

  “And what about all my salary? Should I ask Big Madam about it?”

  “Forget that, chale,” he says. “I’ve always told you to apply wisdom in all your ways. This is a rare chance at freedom, you better take it and run!”

  I leave Kofi and run to the main house, but before I go to Big Madam and Ms. Tia, I pass by the dining room and step into the library. “Thank you,” I say to all the books in the shelf. “Thank you,” I say to The Book of Nigerian Facts, touching the cover with the shining map and the green-white-green color of the Nigerian flag, the lettering of many, many facts inside the pages.

  “Thank you,” I say to the Collins and all my book friends, for helping me find my free in the prison of Big Madam’s house.

  I stay like that a moment, quiet and still and looking at the bookshelf, as if it is the grave of my mama, and my thank you is the sand I am pouring on the coffin, only this time my sadness is mixing with joy and thank you.

  I stay there until I know it, until I feel a warm release inside of me that it is time to go. When I walk away from the library, I don’t close the door. I leave it open for the spirit in all the books to be following me.

  “That took you forever!” Ms. Tia says as I reach the reception area. She is dancing on her feet, eyes like fire. “All packed and ready to go?”

  Big Madam is sitting in the chair beside the aquarium, head bent low, turning and turning her mobile phone in her hand.

  “I am ready,” I say.

  “Mrs. Dada.” Big Madam raises her head. I have never seen her look so sad, confused, and angry all at once. “Adunni is a, a very smart girl. She . . . she served me well. Good luck with her. And Adunni.” She pushes herself from the sofa and comes to stand in front of me, eyes like a low-burning fire, a tired flame. “It would be better for you to mind your business and face your future,” she says, slowly, almost whisper. “Face your life. Do. You. Understand. Me?”

  I understand the silent warnings in the four words that make up her question: You must not say a word to anybody about what was in that letter. About what I told you. Do you understand me?

  “I understand,” I say. “Bye-bye, ma.”

  Big Madam nods, but she does not respond. She turns away from me and leaves the room, shutting the door with a quiet click. For a moment, me and Ms. Tia, we keep our eyes on the door as if expecting her to come back. But she does not come back. Instead, her feet stamp up the stairs, the sound fading with every stamp, until a door slams so hard, the whole house shakes.

  “Goodness me!” Ms. Tia says quietly. “Can we get the hell out of here, like this minute?”

  We leave the reception, shut the door, and start to walk to the gate.

  “Why did she ask to speak to you privately?” Ms. Tia says as we walk past the first set of flowerpots. “You guys were speaking for quite a while. Is it about the torn paper on the floor? Was it a letter?”

  I start to think of a lie to close the matter, to forget talking about it ever again, but I know I cannot let Big Madam put me in a box of fear, a prison of the mind, after freeing me from the prison of her house.

  “Yes,” I say. “The letter is about Rebecca, from Rebecca.” I look back at Big Madam’s house, the big and powerful and sad of it. “I will tell you everything later tonight.”

  It feels good to say this to her, to tell her that me and her will talk, face to face, mouth to mouth, not with any text message that you cannot be showing your sad or angry feeling or any feeling.

  It feels good to give Big Madam back her box of fear. To put the key on top of the box and leave it in her compound, in her house, where it belongs.

  “How are things with the doctor?” I ask Ms. Tia. I am walking a little faster, taller. “Better?”

  “So much has happened,” she says with a sigh, “but I think we will pull through.”

  “You think?” I ask, stopping to roof my eyes from the morning sun, to look into her face.

  “I think.” She nods. “We have decided to explore something called adoption. Do you know what that is?”

  I shake my head no and start to say I will check it in The Book of Nigerian Facts before I remember that I am leaving the book behind. That I am leaving this life behind and facing a new one.

  “I will tell you about it,” Ms. Tia says as she takes my hand and holds it tight. “Because tomorrow will be better than today, right?”

  At first, I am not giving her any answer.

  My mind cannot be imagining a day better than today, with the endless blue-gray in the sky and the smell of new hope and new strength in the air, but I know another day will come when I will see Papa and Kayus and Born-boy, when I can visit Ikati with no fear, or maybe they can visit me.

  A day will come when my voice will sound so loud all over Nigeria and the world of it, when I will be able to make a way for other girls to have their own louding voice, because I know that when I finish my education, I will find a way to help them to go to school.

  A day will come when I will become a teacher, send money to buy Papa a car, or build a new house for him, or maybe I can even build a school in Ikati in the memory of my mama and of Khadija, and who knows what else tomorrow will bring? So, I nod my head yes, because it is true, the future is always working, always busy unfolding better things, and even if it doesn’t seem so sometimes, we have hope of it.

  We begin the five minutes of walking to Ms. Tia’s house in the early-morning silence through the big black gates that I used to wipe four times a day with that thick yellow cloth in the kitchen, down Wellington Road with its houses full of screaming peacocks—the rich man’s fowl—and then finally into Ms. Tia’s compound, where the white house with a mirror on its roof is blinking, blinking at me as if to say, Welcome, Adunni, welcome to your new free.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank:

  God, for every breath, for every word, for this gracious gift and for the ones to come.

  Felicity Blunt, for all the hard work you poured into this. You are amazing and incredible and simply the best. Emma Herdman and Lindsey Rose, my spectacular editors on both sides of the Atlantic, who worked with me with deep kindness, courteousness, and consideration—thank you both for your excellent suggestions and patience while I worked through the edits. The fantastic team at Curtis Brown UK, ICM Partners, Scepter, and Dutton, including Jenn Joel, who championed and pushed this book in the US, Rosie Pierce, Melissa Pimentel, Claire Nozieres, Louise Court, Helen Flood, Amanda Walker, Jamie Knapp, Leila Siddiqui, and all the wonderful people who have worked, and continue to work, tirelessly for this book.

  Caroline Ambrose, for creating the Bath Novel Award, for helping to birth destinies, and for working so hard to give writers like me a chance. Winning the Bath Novel Award in 2018 changed my life. Julia Bell, for those conversations in your office, or in class, and for selflessly driving the Best Workshop Group Ever. The Birkbeck MA #SuperGroup, for the crucial feedback and encouragement during our MA and for the many Thursday evenings since then. Professor Russell Celyn Jones, for reading the very first three thousand words, and for opening my eyes to the possibility of fulfilling a lifelong dream.

  My precious famil
y. Professor Teju Somorin, for advocating for and championing my advancement in every way. Engineer Isaac Daré, who always called me “Duchess,” because, in his eyes, I was royalty, and because he, despite his schedule, made time to read and give feedback on everything I ever wrote. Segs, who is rare and wonderful and everything in between. Yemi, who believed in me from day one, and my daughters, who are my heartbeat, and who inspired and informed this novel in many ways. Mrs. Modupe Daré, Mrs. Busola Awofuwa, Sis Toyin, Aunty Joke, Olusco, and the girls, for warm food to eat, for a word in season, for love and encouragement, and for all you do. Wura of Glitzallure Fabrics, for the last-minute, quick calls to educate me on fabrics. I love you all more than words can say.

  Adunni, for sharing your world with me. You came at a time when I felt most frustrated in my writing journey. Hearing your first words in broken, desperate English, first as a whisper in my ears one morning, and then as a persistently loud voice for nearly three years after, changed everything for me, for you, and hopefully for girls like you. And to you, dear reader, for this journey, and hopefully for more to come.

  Thank you.

  A NOTE ON SOURCES

  While The Book of Nigerian Facts: Past to Present is not a real book, the facts about Nigeria gathered in this book are all available online.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Abi Daré grew up in Lagos, Nigeria, and has lived in the UK for more than eighteen years. She studied law at the University of Wolverhampton and has an MSc in International Project Management from Glasgow Caledonian University as well as an MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London. The Girl with the Louding Voice won the Bath Novel Award for unpublished manuscripts in 2018 and was also selected as a finalist in the 2018 Literary Consultancy Pen Factor competition. Abi lives in Essex with her husband and two daughters, who inspired her to write her debut novel.