I close my eyes as a memory climb over me so sudden: of a time when I was five years of age and me and my mama visit the waterfalls in Agan. I can hear it now, the roaring and thundering of those waters, a noise that was giving Mama a tickle so much that she was throwing up her hands under the shower of it and laughing. But me, as I was sitting on the brown rocks beside the waterfall and watching her, I was fearing, fearing that the water will vex and swallow me and Mama. When my mama sense my fear, she climb down to where I was sitting and pull me to my feets and press my face into the soft and wet of her stomach. “Adunni,” she shout, “have no fear. Listen to the wonder of it, listen to the music in the noise!” So I listen and listen until my ears catch a song in the noise—a blowing of a thousand trumpets mixing with the beat of a hundred drums. And just like that, there is no more fear, and soon, me and my mama, we begin to laugh and dance under the water.
I feel the same fear in this big house tonight: the fear of falling waters, of swallowing thunders and crushing rocks, of Big Madam and Big Daddy and Missing Rebecca, but there is no music in the noise of this house, no wonder in anything. There is no Mama to sense my fear and stop it, and when I close my eyes and try to sleep, all I see is Khadija, lying so weak, in the cold wet sand of Kere village, crying for me to help her, to not let her die.
CHAPTER 27
This is how I am doing work in Big Madam’s house: Every day, I must wash all toilet and baffrooms.
I must use teethsbrush to be scrubbing in the middle of the tiles and be using bleach to be mopping the floors and walls. I must sweep the inside of all the rooms and outside the whole compound. I must be pulling weed from inside the flowerpot even though Kofi say they have one man that his name is “The Gardner.”
Kofi say this Mr. The Gardner will be coming on Saturday morning to be doing flower and grass work, but Big Madam say I must do it first, so I am doing it. When I finish that, I am washing Big Madam’s pant and brassiere with soap and water inside a bucket in the outside. The first time I see Big Madam’s pant, I was wanting to die dead. I tell you true, that pant is wide like curtain. Her brassiere is like boat. She like to be wearing two pant and two brassiere every day, so I am washing so many in one week. After I finish washing her brassiere and pant, then I must be putting it inside the machine-washer in the kitchen so the machine too can be washing it.
When I ask Kofi why I am washing first before machine-washer, Kofi shrug his shoulder and say, “Do it and don’t complain.”
In the evening, I am cleaning window, cleaning looking-glass, dusting table, chair, wiping this, mopping that. I am also massaging Big Madam’s stinking feets at night, and sometimes, she open her scarf and ask me to be scratching her hair. I am only stopping to eat in the afternoons. No evening food. No morning food.
“Big Madam says she can only afford to feed you once a day,” Kofi say when I ask him why no morning or evening food.
Sometimes, Kofi will call me in morning and give me food to be eating before Big Madam is waking up. Two weeks back, Kofi give me rice and stew with one boil egg. Big Madam was sleeping in the upstairs, so I thank him and sit down on a stool inside the kitchen. As I was biting the egg, Big Madam enter the kitchen. I shock, stiff. Hold the egg in my hand, thinking whether the floor will open and swallow me whole with the egg.
When she see me, she march to my front, collect the plate, and pour the rice on top my head. She snatch the boil egg, smash it in the middle of my head. As I was crying because the pepper from the stew is entering my eyesballs and I am fearing I will be blinding, she was starting to slap, punch, kick me everywhere. “Did I not tell you I don’t want to see you eating inside my house without my permission?” she was shouting. “You don’t expect me to clothe and accommodate you in exchange for the substandard work you do for me, do you? If you must eat more than once a day, you sit outside and eat your food. Your own food. Not mine. Is that clear?”
She turn to Kofi. “The next time I see this girl eating more than once a day, I will reduce your salary.” By the time she finish beating me, the hunger is not doing me again. That was the first time Big Madam beat me, and in the nearly one month I been here, she is beating me almost every day.
Just this yesterday morning, she slap my face because I was singing as I was picking the weed from the grass. She was in her car, driving outside the compound when she just ask her driver to stop the car. She climb down from the car, march to where I was kneeling by the flowerpot under the palm tree in the hot sun, and give me a back-hand slap.
I daze. The sun daze too, blind my left eye for a moment.
“You are shouting,” she say. “You are disturbing the citizens of Wellington Road with that noise you call singing. This is not your village. Here we behave like sane people. We have class. We have money.”
As she is shouting on me, I am thinking her own shout must be disturbing the peoples more than my own soft singing, but I cannot be telling her that. When she finish shouting, she release a long breath, nod her head, before she turn around, climb back inside her car, and drive away. When I ask Kofi why she is beating me every time, Kofi say he confuse too.
“Yours is one of the worst I have seen,” Kofi say. “She beats you every time she sets eyes on you. Did you annoy her in any way?”
I think back. “No. I didn’t do anything.”
“In that case, I will suggest you find a way to go back to your village,” he say with a sigh. “Adunni, let me tell you something about me. Five years ago, I seriously considered returning to Ghana after I lost my job as the personal chef to the Ghanaian ambassador to Nigeria. It was a highly distinguished job, Adunni, very important. I lived in the Federal Capital Territory; in a wonderful two-bed house in Abuja, unlike the nonsense we have here. I served world leaders. I lived well. But I lost that job when a new ambassador was appointed, a godforsaken idiot who said my cooking was not to his taste.” He shake his head as if the remembering of it is causing him pain in the head. “I decided to stay back and find another job. I mean, I had studied accounting in university and upset my whole family when I decided to follow my passion and become a chef. How could I go back to Ghana in shame? Especially when I still hadn’t completed my building project? After everyone back home thought I had an important job with the ambassador? Me, I am only working here because I need to finish my house back home. But you have nothing keeping you here. Nothing. Go back to your village. Go home.”
“But how will I go back?” I ask. “Mr. Kola is missing, and I don’t know my way back to Ikati. Even if I am knowing the way, to go back is didn’t possible because . . .” I clamp my mouth. “Going back is didn’t possible.”
Kofi look me, face down. “In that case, stop complaining,” he say. “Do your work. That’s what I did, what I do every day.”
“The beating is too much.” My eyes are feeling hot with tears. “My mama didn’t ever beat me like this, not even my papa.” Or Labake. Or anybody.