“Maybe because . . .” Ms. Tia pinch her lip with her teeths, think. “I am not sure, actually. It is something to think about.”
“Like Kofi,” I say. “He cook all the food since nearly five years, but everybody is blinding to him. When the visitor come and eat Kofi’s fried rice, they are always saying well done to Big Madam, that the rice is very sweet, and Big Madam is always smiling, saying thank you. Why she cannot say it is Kofi that make the food? She is taking the thank you for another person work.”
“Because she’s not thinking about it,” Ms. Tia say. “Maybe because she’s paid Kofi a salary. It doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. I’ll just log out of Facebook.”
“This Facebook thing,” I say. “I can find anybody I am looking for inside it?”
She nod her head yes. “Most times.”
I think of Bamidele, whether I can find him inside this place. “Can you find somebody they are calling Bamidele?”
“Bamidele?” She press her phone, shake her head. “Adunni, there are too many people called Bamidele on here. What’s his surname?”
“I didn’t sure,” I say.
“I am not sure,” she say.
“You say what?”
“I am correcting you. It is ‘I am not sure,’ not ‘I didn’t sure.’”
“Ah,” I say.
“Right. So, our first lesson is to get you to understand your tenses. Thankfully, you have a very good understanding of English, can even manage some complex words, but your tenses need work. Are you ready for this?”
“Yes,” I say, “very ready.”
“Here,” she say, eyes bouncing with a twinkle. “Take the notepad and pencil. Let’s get started.”
CHAPTER 34
Fact: Nigerians did not need a visa to travel to the United Kingdom until 1984.
Honest, honest, English is just a language of confusions.
Sometimes, I am not even understanding the different in what Ms. Tia is teaching me and what I already know. In my mind, I am speaking the correct English, but Ms. Tia, she is always saying I am not saying the right thing. Even though it take a lot of begging for her to help me at first, she now seem so happy to be teaching me, and every day, by seven thirty, she arrive like happy childrens, bouncing on her two feets, holding exercise book and pencil, wanting to teach me. It is tiring me sometimes, her teachings and corrections, but I know that the more better I am learning, the more better the chance for me to enter the school.
But sometimes, we just talk and talk.
Yesterday, I tell her more about me. That I was running away because my papa was wanting to sell me to Morufu because of community rent, and how I was meeting Mr. Kola, and how he was bringing me to Big Madam’s house. I tell her about Mama, and how I am missing her, and when I start to cry, Ms. Tia rub her hand on my back around and around and say, “You’ll be fine, Adunni, you’ll be just fine.” But how she know I will be just fine? All she need to do is enter a aeloplane and she will see her own mama in Port Harcourt. But me, which aeloplane can take me to heaven?
My mama is nothing but a sweet memory of hope, a bitter memory of pain, sometimes a flower, other times a flashing light in the sky. I didn’t tell Ms Tia that I ever marry Morufu or about all the things he did to me in the room after he drink Fire-Cracker. I didn’t tell her about what happen to Khadija. I didn’t tell her because I have keep it inside one box in my mind, lock the box, and throw the key inside river of my soul. Maybe one day, I will swim inside the river, find the key.
She tell me more things about herself too. That she and her papa are “incredibly close,” but she and her mama been always fighting because her mama was “too demanding” when she was growing up. She say her mama didn’t let her to have many friends when she was growing up, and so now she don’t know how to keep many friends. She say too that they didn’t teach her how to speak Yoruba because they are mix of Edo and Ijaw, and now she feels one kind of shame that she cannot speak Yoruba because she wants to be talking with her husband’s family in Yoruba, so I tell her I can be teaching her and she smile and say, “That’d be amazing!”
Then she tell me she is wanting childrens. Well, she is wanting, but her husband is didn’t too serious about the wanting of the baby like her, but now they are starting to try for the baby. When she say this, her eyes fill up with tears, and I sense that she feel a release inside of her spirit, as if she take off a load that she been carrying about for a long time. When I ask her why she change her mind to be wanting childrens, she bring out her phone and press the internet thing and give me.
“Listen to that,” she say. “It’s a lesson in oral English. Listen and pronounce.”
I don’t like those oral English-speaking lesson. I am not hearing the people when they are talking. Their voice is fast, fast, like something is chasing them with cane and making them to talk with no stopping to breathe, but because Ms. Tia is always looking me, I am forcing myself to be saying what the phone is saying. Like yesterday, it was teaching me how to say one word: “cutlery.”
I say: “Kotee-leer-ree.”
The phone say: “Kutluh-ree.”
Ms. Tia say: “Kutluh-ree.”
I say: “How is my own differenting from your own?”
Ms. Tia say: “How is mine different from yours, Adunni. ‘Different.’ Not ‘differenting.’”
Then she teach me the different in her own different and my own differenting.
That is how we are doing. We will start talking, then I will say something, she will twist her nose, begin to teach me, and then we just forget the thing we are talking about before.
But this evening, before we start our English lesson, I sit down on the floor beside her, say, “Ms. Tia? Mind I ask you something?”
“Yep,” Ms. Tia say. “Ask me anything.”
“Mind I ask you again why you change your mind about wanting childrens?” I say.
She sigh, pick a stone by her feets, throw it into the grass, then pinch her bottom lip with her teeths, bite it hard, and blink, blink, blink. “I told you how my mother was a tough woman,” she say. “She still is, but the sickness has softened her a bit, made her weak. My mother demanded perfection in every way. Over everything. As a child, I didn’t have friends. Every moment was spent studying. She wanted me to be an accountant. I hate numbers. She also wanted me to get married at twenty-two and have children immediately because she wanted to be a grandmother before a certain age. She insisted I move back to Port Harcourt after my studies, but I met Ken and moved to Lagos instead. My mother had a manual for how my life would go and I rebelled—got stubborn—at every decision she made for me. She made me so unhappy that I couldn’t imagine having a child and doing what she did to me to my own child. I didn’t think I would be a good mother. I didn’t even want to bring children into this world. I mean, look at the state of things! I was happy to voluntarily reduce our population to save our planet, so I spent a year traveling—before I met Ken—campaigning against population growth.”