“Primary school,” I say. “I was managing nearly almost four years inside primary school before I was stopping. But I like book. And school.”
“Can you read and write?” she ask.
I am nodding my head yes.
She reach down and pull up one handbag with yellow feather, look like somebody kill a fowl, dip the poor thing inside paint, and sell it to Big Madam. She pull out a biro, bite the cover, spit it to the floor, give me the biro with no cover. She pull out a notebook and give me that one too. I collect.
“Now open the two ears God gave you and listen carefully,” she say. “You will write a list of things we need in the house and give it to Abu, my driver. He does the shopping in the house with Kofi on Saturday mornings. Every two weeks, on a Friday, go around the house, note what we need, and write it in that notebook. Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma,” I say.
“I don’t know what Mr. Kola told you, but I am a very important woman in the society,” she say. “I have very important clients. Presidents, governors, senators, they all wear my fabric. Kayla’s Fabrics is number one in Nigeria.”
“Yes, ma.” What is concerning me with all this things she is telling me now?
“Your job is to keep the house clean and tidy and to do what I ask you to do. When you are not working, you stay in the boys’ quarters, in your room. Whenever I need you, I will send for you. Understood?”
“Yes, ma. I am understanding.”
“Now.” She lean back in the sofa and stretch out her feets. “Massage my feet.”
“Like how?” I ask.
She is turning her hand this way and that, as if she is molding clay. “Use your hands and rub my feet and my toes. Massage it.”
I look her feets, skin like dry cement with white cracks on the side of it, and shake my head inside of me. With all the money she is having, her feets be like she work on a building site from morning till night with no shoes. I hold her two feets, twist my nose from the smell as I am using my hands to press the ankles this way and that. I am wanting to ask her about Mr. Kola and my money, but when I look up at her, she is closing her eyes. Soon she be snoring, her throat making a noise like the blender in the kitchen.
I am like that for fifteen minutes when the door to the parlor open, and one man which I am thinking is Big Daddy enter. The man is reminding me of when a balloon have just burst, the shape of it when the air inside is coming out. Big Daddy look like he is having air in the top half of his body, and no air in the rest bottom half. He is wearing a white agbada, with a cap on his head. His skin is the brown color of new potato and around his mouth is full of gray hairs. There is a eye-glass sitting on his nose, and behind it, I can see his eyesballs, wide and red, jumping as if he didn’t have focus. He stagger front, knock the side of the tee-vee, before he come to my side.
“Who is this one now?” His voice is dragging, like Papa’s voice when he drink too much.
“Evening, sah,” I say. “Adunni is the name. New housemaid for Big Madam.”
“Adunni, dunni-licious.” He lick his lips, tongue climbing over his mustaches. “Beautiful name for a beautiful girl.” He touch his chest, show a hand full of plenty hair, thick and curling. “I am Chief Adeoti, the one and only. But you can call me Big Daddy. Say it let me hear. Say ‘Big Daddy’!”
“Big Daddy,” I say.
The man is making me discomfort. I shift, look Big Madam, but the woman is sleeping. I shake her leg, but she just change the gear of her snore. Make it even more louding.
“Big Madam.” I pinch her feets. “Big Daddy is asking of you.”
Big Madam didn’t answer. She is just eating the air and snoring. I tell you true, if I carry the tee-vee and smash it on top her head, I don’t think she will wake. Is like she have dead.
“That woman can sleep through a tsunami,” Big Daddy say as he fall inside the sofa and off his cap, slap it down on the seat beside him. He off his eye-glass, blow air inside of it, and wipe the glass with corners of his agbada before he is putting the eye-glass back on his nose. “What is that your name again?”
“Adunni. Sah.”
“Ah. Adunni. Wonderful name.”
“Thank you, sah.”
“How old did you say you were?”
“I didn’t say my age to you before, sah,” I say.
He laugh, show teeths that is missing one in the bottom. “Sharp-mouthed, eh? I like that. I like that a lot. Okay, let me ask properly. How old are you?”
I tell him.
“Fourteen going fifteen, eh? That makes you what? Nearly sixteen going seventeen. Almost an adult. Not so innocent.”
“No, sah,” I say. “My name is Adunni, not Innocent.”
Big Daddy throw his head back and laugh again, rubbing his big hand on his belly. “An ignoramus of the highest order. Come on, Adunni. Humor me some more. What else have you got in store?”
“Nothing inside the store, sah,” I say, just as Big Madam is jumping awake.
She is looking around the parlor like she lost and just find herself in a dark forest. “Adunni?” she say, looking me down. “Did I fall asleep?”
“Yes, ma,” I say. “Big Daddy have come back.”
She look up, see Big Daddy, blink her eye. “Welcome back, Chief. How was the journey? Adunni, go and tell Kofi to serve dinner. Tell him to squeeze some more orange juice.”
Her feets is still in my lap. I didn’t sure whether to remove it or be waiting for her to remove it.
“What are you staring at?” she shout. “Get up.”
“Your feets, ma,” I say.
She collect her feets, slap it on the floor.
As I am standing up and leaving the parlor, I am feeling the heat from Big Daddy eyes as it is following me outside the parlor, even after I close the door and enter inside the kitchen.
* * *
At night, inside my room, I off the light and climb on the bed and press my hand to my heart, feel it beating hard. My body is paining me from all the cleaning and sweeping, but first time since my mama born me, I am by myself, inside my own room, with my own bed, a real bed with soft mattress.
This is a good thing, to be having all these things, but I feel as if my body is missing a part of it: a eye, a leg, one ear. There is no Khadija here, no Morufu with his Fire-Cracker and stinking, smelling mattress and hard-coconut stomach. Khadija’s childrens are not whispering and laughing quiet to theirselfs in the room at the end of the corridor, and who know when I ever be seeing Kayus and Enitan and Ruka in the stream like I use to do before?