She sigh, say, “No, I don’t cry. I am so sorry to hear your mother passed. Sounds like you were close.”
“My mama?” I smile soft. “She was everything to me. My best of friend. Everything.”
“Good for you,” she say. “I . . . uh, how to say this? I relocated . . . came back home to Nigeria last year.”
It don’t sound like she is having much feeling for her mama. Or like she want to talk of her.
“Why did you move back to the Nigeria?” I ask. “Because your mama sick?”
“Because I wanted to,” she say. “I got an amazing opportunity to join a small, lovely company called the Lagos Environmental Consultancy, and I knew I had to take it. And”—she pluck a twist of hair from her face, twist it around her finger—“because I fell in love and got married to my husband.” Her voice is taking a new, strange, high tone as she is talking of her husband, her eyes brighting up. “His name is Ken,” she say. “Kenneth Dada. He is a doctor. A good man. He helps women get pregnant.”
My eye cut to her stomach. It is flat under the t-shirt she is wearing. Is she having childrens of her own?
“I don’t have children,” she say, as if she know what is in my mind.
“You don’t have childrens?” I ask as a lizard run out from behind the flowerpot. He stop, look me and Ms. Tia, blink his eyeslids real slow, as if he is fighting sleep. He nod his orange head up and down, before he cut to the other side of the compound.
“Nope,” she say, eye on the lizard. “Don’t want any.”
“You don’t want any at all, at all?”
Honest, honest, I never hear of a adult woman not wanting childrens in my life. In my village, all the adult womens are having childrens, and if the baby is not coming, maybe because of a sickness, then their husband will marry another woman on top of them and the adult woman will be caring for another woman’s baby so that she don’t feel any shame. I look her face, concern. “Will your husband marry another woman on top of you if you didn’t have childrens?”
When she laugh, it sound like bell ringing quiet. “No way,” she say. “People choose not to have children for all sorts of reasons.”
I nod, feel as if I understand what she mean a little, even though she is a adult woman.
“Not too long ago,” I say, thinking back to when I was drinking leafs in Morufu’s house to stop my pregnants from coming, “I was so very afraid of borning childrens because in my village, they want us girls to be borning childrens early. But I am wanting to finish my schooling. My mama, before she was dead, she fight so much for me to finish my school. She was the best mama in the whole wide world of it. So I make up my mind that after I finish my schooling and I find a working job, then I will find a very good man to marry. My papa didn’t always be kind to me and he didn’t want girls to be going to school, but I am different from my papa and I will not marry a man like him. No. I will work hard and born my own childrens, and me and my husband, we will send them to a very good school, even if they are all girls-childrens. Then one day, I will go to Ikati and show my papa, then he will be proud of me when he see my own childrens and my own money.”
I feel sad as I am thinking this, thinking that maybe, one day, Papa will not be too angry that I run away from Ikati. “I have a old friend from my village, Khadija was her name. She tell me that childrens be bringing joy,” I say with a smile. “Maybe one day, I will feel that joy too, and share it with my papa, make him a happy old man.”
She nod slow, looking me for a long time until I begin to feel discomfort.
“What about you?” I tilt my neck, surprise myself with the question I ask her: “You finish schooling. You are working a good job. So, what is your own sorts of reasons for not wanting childrens?”
When she strong her face, I am thinking I cause her to be angry. Now, she will remove her shoe and smash it on my head just like Big Madam, and my brains will scatter finish. But she didn’t remove her shoe. She just look me sharp, her eyesbrows drawing together in a line. Then she push herself up, dust the sand from her buttocks.
“I hope your head gets better soon,” she say. “It’s been lovely chatting with you.”
As she is walking away from my front, I am thinking, why did I open my big mouth and say something so foolishly foolish?
CHAPTER 31
Fact: Nigeria’s film industry is called Nollywood. With over fifty films produced weekly, the industry is worth about $5 billion and is the second largest in the world, behind India’s Bollywood.
The day after she was nearly breaking my head, Big Madam call for me.
I meet her where she is sitting in the sofa in her parlor, one leg hanging across the chair handle, the other one on a cushion pillow on the floor. The tee-vee is on, loud, showing one old Yoruba movie. The man in the tee-vee is wearing red cloth with cowries hanging from it and holding a white fowl. There is black paint with white dots everywhere on his face. He is talking to the fowl, begging the fowl to make him rich.
“Ma?” I say, kneeling in her front, keeping one eye on the tee-vee. The man is now dancing on one leg, turning the fowl around and around.
Big Madam press the remote-controlling to stop the tee-vee, making the man to hang one hand and one leg in the air, like a statue about to fly.
She turn to me. “How is your head?” She keep a straight face as if she is wanting me to tell her that my brain have dead.
“My head is okay, ma,” I say.
“Next time, I will make sure I crack your skull open so that when I give an instruction, you will store it in the right compartment,” she hiss. “You know I have zero tolerance for rubbish. I said stay outside when I have visitors. Don’t come into my parlor. Do. Not. Enter. My. Parlor. What part of that didn’t you understand?”
“I understand now, ma.”
“You are very lucky Tia Dada was in this house yesterday,” she say. “If not, God knows that I would have killed you with beating. I don’t even know who invited that one with her thin voice. Imagine her intervening, telling me she will call the police because I disciplined my own housemaid. Which police can she call in Nigeria to arrest Big Madam? Does she know who I am? Me that I supply fabric to the who-is-who in Nigeria? Where will they see me to arrest? Who is the policeman that will arrest Chief Mrs. Florence Adeoti? Where does she think she is?” Big Madam pinch the top of her gold boubou, blow air inside it.
“I blame Dr. Ken. When we told him to settle and marry Molara, he said no, he wants a woman that will understand his needs. What foolish needs? Look at what he now ended up with. An unfriendly, empty barrel. One whole year of marriage and no sign of pregnancy.”