This must be what Big Madam read in his phone the day she found it in my room, why she is still keeping Big Daddy locked out from the house, why she is looking like she will just die any day now from the pain and shame of it all. And me, I was here thinking she was sad and angry because Big Daddy wanted to rape me.
Big Madam is now listening and nodding and sighing, but I cannot hear what the other woman is saying. “I don’t know what prayers would do for me right now, Kemi,” she says finally. “Go and rest, you need it.”
She throws her phone to the bed, and when she looks at me, her eyes dig a hole into my heart and pours her sorrow into the hole, burying me with it.
“Massage my feet,” she says, stretching out her two legs in front of her. “My ankles are swollen.” I nod my head, bend, pick up her feet and put them in my lap. I rub my thumb and fingers on her ankles, her toes, slowly, as if to press away all the pain that she has been carrying for so long, releasing her from the prison of herself, her pain.
We stay like that a moment, she releasing the pain, me working it out from her legs, her body.
“I am going to have him arrested,” she says suddenly, as if she is just thinking of it. “Yes, that is it. He will be arrested for Rebecca’s disappearance, and I will make sure he rots in jail unless he can produce that girl.” She rests her head back, closes her eyes. “Adunni?”
“Ma?”
“The night that . . . that Big Daddy tried to . . . Do I recall you saying Rebecca wrote a letter?”
“Yes, ma,” I say as hope is rising inside me. I have been waiting for her to ask me about it, waiting for when she will do something to help Rebecca.
“I want to see it,” she says. “To read it properly. Bring it to me first thing tomorrow. For now, I need to sleep. My eyes sting. Sing for me.”
“Yes, ma.”
And so I sing as if my mama is sitting in that purple chair, as if I want to empty out all my voice and cause it to make Big Madam feel all better. I sing as if I want to make Rebecca not missing, to make Ms. Tia’s husband not having problem of making Ms. Tia pregnant, as if I want to stop myself from feeling sad that Big Madam is feeling sad.
When I finish my song and look up, Big Madam’s eyes are closed. Soft puffs of air escape from her open mouth, but her jaw keeps on twitching every one or two seconds, as if she is biting on the remaining peace left inside her soul, fighting to hold it with her teeth.
But the peace is stubborn; it slips out of her grip and crashes around us.
CHAPTER 54
Fact: A 2003 study of over sixty-five countries suggested that the happiest and most optimistic people in the world live in Nigeria.
I have been awake since five, lying on my bed and listening to a peacock screaming like a bush baby afar in a neighbor’s house, to the wind sweeping the leaves from the coconut trees against the window-louvers in my room, to the faraway sound of Kofi banging pots and plates in the kitchen.
My body feels stiff, like I need some oiling to move, some housework to keep me moving. I stand, pull out Rebecca’s letter from under my pillow, fold it into a neat square, and push it into my brassiere. After I wear my uniform, I put on my shoes, taking my time to push the thinning leather rope of it inside the buckle, because I don’t want it to cut and give up finally.
Outside, the air is cold, and a thin cloud of wet is covering the grass. The sky is so clear; there is no end to the blue-gray of it. I walk quickly, and find Kofi in the kitchen, slicing a loaf of bread with a big knife.
“Good morning,” I shout to him as I pick the broom behind the kitchen tap in the backyard, tap the head, and begin to sweep, again, slowly, as if the floor is the long, long hair of a dear friend, and my broom is the comb.
“Adunni,” Kofi calls, “I have been waiting for you to come out. Come, come. Drop that broom.”
I put the broom on the floor, wipe my hands, and enter the kitchen. I stop in front of the gas cooker, near him. “What happened?”
“I just got off a call from my friend at the embassy,” he says. “He says the results came out yesterday. Once I finish my morning work, I will go and find out if you got in.”
“Thank you, Kofi,” I say. “Ms. Tia too will check it. Has Big Madam gone to her shop?” I ask Kofi.
“Not today,” Kofi says, still whispering. “We have guests in the reception. Big Daddy’s two sisters. The fool himself is there too, they came in a few minutes ago. Big Madam says we shouldn’t let them into the living room, so they are all at the reception.”
Can Big Daddy try and do something bad to me today? With everybody here?
“Adunni.” Big Madam enters the kitchen wearing a black bou-bou, the black of a mourner. Her eyes are the sad of a young widow, the purple around them a fading mark. “What are you doing in here? Go and find food to eat.”
I touch my chest. “Me? Find food to eat?”
“Do you have the . . . that letter?” she asks.
“Yes, ma,” I say. “You want it now, ma?”
“I will call you when I need it,” she says. “Kofi, keep Adunni at the back and find something for her to eat. I am expecting a police officer. Chief and his family must remain in the reception. Serve them food if they want, but please don’t let them into any other rooms in the house apart from the downstairs toilet.”
When Big Madam leaves, Kofi shakes his head. “Police officer? What for? You told me Big Daddy didn’t rape you. Why did you lie? What letter is she talking about?”
“Big Daddy didn’t rape me,” I say.
And then I tell him about Rebecca’s letter.
* * *
I stay in the backyard, sweeping, until Kofi calls me.
“I should bring the letter?” I ask as I enter the kitchen. He is standing beside the door that is leading to the reception, pressing his ear against the glass of it. There is flour on his nose, a big dot of white powder on his smooth skin.
“Don’t say a word,” he whispers, pressing a finger to his two lips, sshh. “Just come and hear what they are saying.”
I walk to him, my heart sounding louder than my feet as I stand beside him and press my eyes to the cloudy glass of the door. I can see shadows: of Big Madam, a big black mountain sitting behind a setting sun; of Big Daddy, his fila perching like a small, sleeping ostrich on his head; and of two women, one tall and the other short, the geles on their heads a shadow of two giant hands.
“Where is the police man?” I ask Kofi, talking low.
“That one.” Kofi presses his finger to the shadow of a man standing far left. Big Madam’s voice is the loudest of all, and she is sounding very angry: