“Tell Abu to find me in my room later,” I say. “I went to Ms. Tia. I was full of worry for her. But all is okay now, I think.”
“Why were you worried for her?”
I shrug, shake my head. I want to tell Kofi, but I cannot ever be telling him something so deep about Ms. Tia.
“So what if Big Madam was home?” he say. “Look at the filthiness of this compound! If that woman causes Big Madam to sack you before you can plan your way out of here, chale, I swear, all I will give you is tissue paper to dry your tears.”
“How is her sister?” I ask. “Is it bad?”
“Her sister is in surgery,” Kofi say. “Big Madam called a few minutes before you got here. She wants me to cook some fish stew and send it with that idiot she calls her husband. I don’t think she’ll be back for a few days. Why do you look so happy?”
I laugh, even though nothing is causing me a tickle. Something pinch my feet in that moment, making me want to dance, so I jump up and begin to sing to a song that has been in my head since I left Ms. Tia’s house:
Eni lo j’ayo mi
Lo j’ayo mi
This is the day of my joy
The day of my joy
* * *
Kofi is watching me with a smile as I am turning around and around, going up and down, waving my broom in the air.
“Did Mr. Kola finally bring your salary?” he asks when I stop dancing. “Or, wait, let me guess? You heard back from the scholarship people? The results are out this week or next week, isn’t it? Is that why you are so happy?”
“No any news about scholarship yet.” I tap the broom head and begin to sweep the dry leaves. “And I didn’t ever see that nonsense Mr. Kola man since he dropped me in this house. Mr. Kola is a slave trader. Him and Big Madam, they are slave-trading people like me. Only difference is I am not wearing a chain. I am a slave with no chain.”
“Preparing for the scholarship has helped you learn a lot.” Kofi puts his cap on his head, slaps it down. “So, illuminate my understanding. Tell me what you have been learning about the slave trade.”
“The Slavery Abolition Act was signed in the year of 1833,” I say as I sweep around his feet. “But nobody is answering the abolition. The kings in Nigeria from before, they were selling people into slave work. Today, people are not wearing chain on their slaves and sending them abroad, but slave trading is continuing. People are still breaking the act. I want to do something to make it stop, to make people to behave better to other people, to stop slave trading of the mind, not just of the body.”
“Chale, I swear, if you can pull it off,” Kofi says with a side smile, “then kudos to you. And who knows, maybe someone will talk about you too one day. You know, as part of history.”
I stop my sweeping, stand myself up to his level, and look him in the eyes.
“Not his-story,” I say. “My own will be called her-story. Adunni’s story.”
CHAPTER 50
It is midnight.
The rain outside has been beating the roof like a gun shooting shots, the air smelling of the dust of the earth, of the hope of my independent. I am lying on my bed, talking to Mama, telling her about Ms. Tia and the doctor hiding things from her, about my scholarship result coming out very soon, when there is a knock on my room door.
Ko, ko, ko.
Three knocks. Abu.
I push myself up from the bed, run to the door, push the cupboard a little from the back of it, and open the lock. “Abu,” I say. “Sorry I was not free yesternight when you were looking for me.”
“Sannu,” Abu say, greeting me with a quick bow of head. But he doesn’t try to enter my room and I don’t ask him to enter. He stand outside, throw a quick look to the left and right of the dark corridor, before he puts a hand in his pocket, brings out a folding paper. His face is a shadow of fear, his jalabiya wet with rainwater and gumming to his chest. “I left Big Madam in the hospital so I can give you this thing. Adunni, this thing I want to give you, you cannot say it is from me. You did not get it from me. Walahi, if anybody ask you and you say it is me, I will tell them you are lying!”
“What is it?”
“I found it in the car, about a week after Rebecca was missing. It was inside the 350 Benz Big Daddy is always using to go out,” he say. “I have been keeping it for too long, but now the load of it is weighing me down, making it hard for me to say my prayers. Dan Allah, Adunni, I beg you, take this thing from me! Take it.”
He presses the paper into my hand as if it is an evil curse that he doesn’t want to hold with his own hands, and folds my fingers to cover it. “Adunni, hear this because after today, I will not talk about this thing again. See. The day after Rebecca was missing, I went to wash the 350 Benz because Big Daddy asked me to wash it. I washed outside, but inside the car . . .” He draws a breath. “Inside, the front seat was wet. Wet like somebody poured water on it. So I stop washing, run to Big Daddy to ask who wet the front seat. He said he did not know. I asked Big Madam, she said maybe Glory, her shopgirl, maybe she poured water by mistake. I asked Glory, she said she didn’t pour any water on the seat. It was when I found this letter after one week of Rebecca missing, and I read it, that I know why the seat was wet. And since then, I have been keeping the letter, carrying the load.”
“Why are you telling me about wet seat?” I ask, confused.
“The letter”—Abu shakes his head, as if the memory is causing him pain, as if I didn’t just ask him a question—“it was deep inside the seat belt buckle. Inside. I only saw it because I was trying to buckle it, to wipe it clean, and the buckle was refusing to work. When you open the letter, look it well, you will understand everything I am saying. I am going back to Big Madam in the hospital. Sai gobe. Good night.”
Before I can say one word, Abu bow quick, turn around, and disappear into the darkness.
I fold out the paper with shaking hands. A short letter with no end. The writing is small and neat in black biro, and each letter is measuring the same tall and wide size, the same space in the middle of the letters, but near the end of the letter, the writing is changing to rough, like the person was hurrying up, and what is that stain on it?
I hold the letter up in the light. The edge look like it was inside a struggle, like the scattered teeth of a mad man, or the edge of Kofi’s bread knife, and near that edge is a print or two of a finger dipped in blood. I look at it well, at the red-brown color, the stain of dried blood, around the fingerprint, and I think, as my heart is starting to climb a ladder of fear, that the person who was writing this was bleeding blood.
My room seem to turn around on itself as I try to steady my jumping heart, to set myself and read: