“Papa?” I move to his front. It is nighttime now and the parlor is having dim light from the candle sitting on the floor, the white of the stick is melting itself and making a mess beside the sofa leg.
“It is me, Adunni,” I say.
“My eye is not blind,” he say, speaking Yoruba. “If the food is ready, put it inside plate and bring it come.”
“I am needing to talk to you, sah.” I low down and hold his two legs. My mind is shocking at how his leg keep thinning more and more since Mama have dead. Feel as if I am grabbing only cloth of his trouser leg.
“Please, Papa.”
Papa is one hard man, always stronging his face and fighting the whole everybody in the house, and this is why I was wanting Enitan to follow me come beg him. When my papa is in the house, everybody must be doing as a dead person. No talking. No laughing. No moving. Even when Mama was not dead, Papa was always shouting her. Long times ago, he beat her. Only one time. He give her one slap, swelling her cheek. He say it is because she talk him back when he was shouting her. That womens are not suppose to talk when mens are talking. He didn’t beat her again after that, but they didn’t too happy together.
He look me down now, his forehead shining with sweat. “What?”
“I don’t want to marry Morufu,” I say. “Who will be taking care of yourself? Kayus and Born-boy are boys. They cannot be cooking. They cannot be washing cloth and sweeping the compound.”
“Tomorrow, Morufu will bring four he-goats to this compound.” Papa hold up four thin fingers and start to speak English: “One, two, ti-ree, four,” he say as spit fly from his mouth and land on my up lip. “He is bringing fowl too. Agric fowl, very costly. Bag of rice, two of it. And money. I didn’t tell you that one. Five thousan’ naira, Adunni. Five thousan’. I have a fine girl-child at home. At your age, you are not suppose to be in the house. You are suppose to have born at least one or two childrens by this time.”
“If I marry Morufu, that means you are throwing all my futures inside the dustbin. I have a good brain, Papa. You know it, Teacher know it. If I can be finding a way to go to school, I can be helping you when I get a good job. I am not minding to go back to school and be old of all in the class, I know I can learn things quick. Soon, I finish all my educations, become teacher, and then I will collect monthly salary-moneys to build you a house, buy you a fine car, a black Benz.”
Papa sniff, wipe his nose. “There is no moneys for food, talk less of thirty thousan’ for community rent. What will becoming teacher do for you? Nothing. Only stubborn head it will give you. And sharp mouth, because the one you are having is not enough, eh? You want to be like Tola?”
Tola is Mr. Bada child. She is twenty-five years and look like a agama lizard with long hair. Mr. Bada send her to school in Idanra town and she is now working inside bank there and is having motorcar and money, but she didn’t find husband. They say she is looking everywhere for husband but nobody is marrying her, maybe because she is looking like a agama lizard with long hair or maybe because she is having money like a man.
“She is having plenty money,” I say. “Caring for Mr. Bada.”
“With no husband?” Papa shake his head, slap his hand two times. “God forbid. My sons will care for me. Born-boy is learning mechanic work at Kassim Motors. Very soon, Kayus will follow him. What will I do with you? Nothing. Fourteen years going fifteen is a very good age to marry.”
Papa sniff again, scratch his throat. “Just yesterday, Morufu tell me that if you manage and give him a boy as first born, he will give me ten thousan’ naira.”
A load roll on top my chest, join the other load that was there since Mama have dead.
“But you make a promise to Mama,” I say. “And now you are forgetting the promise.”
“Adunni,” Papa say, shaking his head. “We cannot be eating promise as food. Promise is not paying our rent. Morufu is a good man. This is a good thing. A happy thing.”
I keep begging Papa, keep holding his leg and wetting his feets with my tears, but my papa is not hearing me. He keep shaking his head and saying, “This is a good thing, a happy thing. Idowu will be happy. Everybody will be happy.”
* * *
When Morufu come the next morning, and Papa call me to come and be thanking him for the fowl and he-goats, I am not giving them answer. I tell Kayus to tell Papa that my monthly visitor have come. That I am sick with pains in the stomach. I lie on my mat and use my mama’s wrapper to cover my head as I am hearing Papa and Morufu in the parlor, snapping open the cover of schnapps gin bottle and cracking groundnut.
I am hearing them as Morufu is laughing loud laugh, talking in Yoruba about elections coming next year, about Boko Haram stealing plenty girls from inside a school just last month, about his taxi business.
I lie there like that, wetting my mama’s wrapper with tears, until the night is falling, and until the sky is turning to the black of a wet soil.
CHAPTER 5
Me and Enitan are in the backyard of our house behind the kitchen.
She is doing the makeups testing for the wedding tomorrow, slapping white powder on my cheeks and pressing black eyespencil deep inside my eyesballs.
Our kitchen is not like the ones I use to see inside tee-vee with cooking gas or anything electrics. Our own is just a space with three log of firewood under a iron pot and one white plastic bowl which we are using for kitchen sink. There is one short wood bench, the one I am sitting on top of now, a very handsome bench that Kendo, our village carpenter, builded for me with the wood from the mango tree in our compound.
“Adunni, now you look like a real olori,” Enitan say to me now as she press the pencil inside my head as if she want to wound me. “The wife of the king!”
I can hear laughing inside her voice, the joy of a friend that must be so prouding that she is doing wedding makeups. She push up my chin and press the pencil into the middle of my forehead, like those Indian people we see on the tee-vee in the village town center. Then, she draw the pencil on my eyesbrows, left and right, and paint my lips with red lipstick.
“Adunni,” Enitan say, “I count one . . . two . . . and three, quick! Open your eyes!”
I blink my eye, open it. At first I am not seeing the looking-glass Enitan is holding to her chest because of the tears inside my eyes.
“Look,” Enitan say. “It is fine?”
I touch my face here and there, say “Ah, ah,” as if I am very happy with how she make up my face. But the black inside my eyes is looking as if somebody elbow me on the eye.
“Why are you looking sad?” Enitan ask. “You are still feeling sad to marry Morufu?”