When she say that, I stand to my feets. “I am here, ma,” I say. “Where is Mr. Kola?”
“Once she gets changed, show her around the house,” Big Madam say. She is not looking me. She is just talking to Kofi. As if I didn’t just talk.
“Squeeze five oranges for me and bring it upstairs,” she say. “There are a pile of clothes in the laundry room that need ironing. I doubt she can operate an iron. Show her. If she burns my clothes, your next month’s salary will pay for it. Is that understood?”
“Perfectly understood, ma’am,” Kofi say.
“Good,” she say. “Tell Abu to bring three bundles of the burgundy French lace from the boot. Put them in the reception for me. Caroline will be sending her driver to pick them up. I do not want to be disturbed.” She turn around, enter inside another glass door, and close it.
“Is all okay with her?” I ask Kofi, my eyes on the glass door. “Why didn’t she talk to me?”
“You don’t want her to be speaking to you,” Kofi say, talking whisper. “Wait here. Let me turn off the gas cooker and show you around. By the time Big Madam comes back downstairs, she expects you to already be working.”
When Kofi leave my front, I catch my face in the looking-glass. My hair is looking like a bad farm: New, thick hairs are growing over the lines of the plaiting like stubborn weeds on a garden path. All the red beads Enitan put on it so long ago have fall off. My eyes are wide and big and shocking, and my skin, which was smooth and bright and fair, is now the color of spoiling tea with no milk.
CHAPTER 25
Big Madam’s house is having rooms here and there, left and right.
The room for shitting is different from room for baffing. Room for hanging cloth is different from room for sleeping in bed. There is room for shoes-keeping, for car parking in the outside, for keeping makeups in the upstairs. All the rooms are having space and gold tiles on floor. We didn’t enter inside Big Madam’s bedroom, but Kofi say she is having a round bed and another baffroom inside. In the downstairs, there are two parlors. One for visiting people and the other is for Big Madam only. “No one sits in here unless Big Madam asks you to,” Kofi say as he is closing the door in front of the second parlor. There is a looking-glass on the wall in every room. “Big Madam is quite vain,” Kofi say. “Always looking at herself in the mirror.”
There is another room just for eating food with a long table and like fifteen chairs. The chair is gold, the table a long gold slate on top four glass legs. There is a light case with about one hundred bulbs hanging in middle of the ceiling, glass flowerpots full of pink and red and smelling fresh flowers in the every corners of the room.
“Dining room,” Kofi call it. “Big Daddy and Big Madam eat here when they are on good terms, which is a rare occurrence these days. Follow me. Yes, this small room here is the library.” He open another door and we are inside a room with books sitting inside a dark brown wooden case. So many books are climbing up the case to the ceiling. There is a sofa with correct cushion in one corner, and table and chair next to it, a gold standing fan with three blades beside it. The whole place is smelling of dust, but I am not minding it. My heart is swelling as I am looking it all. Is like I am inside one kind heaven of books and educations.
“You like books?” Kofi ask.
“I want to be reading every day,” I say, feeling a pinch of happiness as I am remembering what Kike say to me about feeding my mind with reading of books. I bend my neck, trying to read the title name of some of the books:
Things Fall Apart
Collins English Dic-tion-ary
Africa Bible Com-men-ta-ry
A His-tory of Nigeria
1000 Prayer Points to Secure Your Marriage
The Book of Nigerian Facts: From Past to Present, 5th edition, 2014
“Who is owning all this books?” I ask as my eye is cutting around the wonder of the whole room.
“Big Daddy,” Kofi say. “He used to love reading many years ago. But that was before he lost his job and turned to alcohol. Now the library is hardly ever used. I am only showing it to you because you will need to dust it often.”
“Who is this Big Daddy?” I ask. “Is he Big Madam’s husband?”
“Yes,” Kofi say, whisper. “Unrepentant alcoholic. Chronic gambler. He keeps getting into debt and making his wife bail him out. Shame of a man, if you ask me. Real shame. He is away on business, should be back later today. And when I say ‘business,’ I mean woman business.”
“You mean how?”
Kofi round his eye. “He is a womanizer. He has girlfriends. Plenty of them.” He turn his mouth down, as if he is tasting something bitter so sudden, then he ask, “How old are you, Adunni?”
“Fourteen years of age,” I say. Why is he wanting to know my age?
“I see,” Kofi say. “Come with me this way.”
As we are leaving the library and Kofi is opening another glass door and enter inside, he stop a moment, then look me deep inside my eyes and make his voice so whisper, I am nearly not hearing him. “Be very careful of Big Daddy,” he say. “Extra careful.”
I am wanting to ask what he mean by that, but he clap his hand two times loud and say, “Right. This here is the kitchen. My favorite part of the house. Come on in.”
The kitchen is like nothing I ever see. There is machine for doing every work. Machine for blending, for washing cloth, for water pumping, for heating water. The fridge is like ten times big than the one I use to see inside shop that was selling fridge in Ikati market square. The color of every machine in the kitchen is to match. Everything is red this and that. There is a looking-glass even on the cooking stove. “Is it Big Madam that put looking-glass in this stove?”
Kofi laugh. “That’s how the gas cooker was made,” he say. “The oven door is made of reflective glass. It is like a mirror.” He tap the cooker two times, like he is prouding of it. “This here is a top-of-the-range Smeg with six burners. I call her Samantha. Sammy for short. Fantastic piece of equipment. She is one of the reasons why I remain in this house.”
I close my eyes a moment, and I see my mama in this big kitchen, I can see her singing songs as she is licking her palm for taste of sugar in the flour, as she is pressing this button and that button on the machines to be frying her puff-puff. I open my eyes to the clear windows behind the kitchen sink, the wide green fields outside, and I think of Kayus. Oh, how Kayus will love to be kicking his football there. A real football, not like the tin of milk he is always kicking at home. I can hear his voice in my head now, shouting Is a goal! as he score one in the net. Since he was a small boy, Kayus was wanting to be like Mr. Mercy, a footballer from the Abroad.