I understand the silent warnings in the four words that make up her question: You must not say a word to anybody about what was in that letter. About what I told you. Do you understand me?
“I understand,” I say. “Bye-bye, ma.”
Big Madam nods, but she does not respond. She turns away from me and leaves the room, shutting the door with a quiet click. For a moment, me and Ms. Tia, we keep our eyes on the door as if expecting her to come back. But she does not come back. Instead, her feet stamp up the stairs, the sound fading with every stamp, until a door slams so hard, the whole house shakes.
“Goodness me!” Ms. Tia says quietly. “Can we get the hell out of here, like this minute?”
We leave the reception, shut the door, and start to walk to the gate.
“Why did she ask to speak to you privately?” Ms. Tia says as we walk past the first set of flowerpots. “You guys were speaking for quite a while. Is it about the torn paper on the floor? Was it a letter?”
I start to think of a lie to close the matter, to forget talking about it ever again, but I know I cannot let Big Madam put me in a box of fear, a prison of the mind, after freeing me from the prison of her house.
“Yes,” I say. “The letter is about Rebecca, from Rebecca.” I look back at Big Madam’s house, the big and powerful and sad of it. “I will tell you everything later tonight.”
It feels good to say this to her, to tell her that me and her will talk, face to face, mouth to mouth, not with any text message that you cannot be showing your sad or angry feeling or any feeling.
It feels good to give Big Madam back her box of fear. To put the key on top of the box and leave it in her compound, in her house, where it belongs.
“How are things with the doctor?” I ask Ms. Tia. I am walking a little faster, taller. “Better?”
“So much has happened,” she says with a sigh, “but I think we will pull through.”
“You think?” I ask, stopping to roof my eyes from the morning sun, to look into her face.
“I think.” She nods. “We have decided to explore something called adoption. Do you know what that is?”
I shake my head no and start to say I will check it in The Book of Nigerian Facts before I remember that I am leaving the book behind. That I am leaving this life behind and facing a new one.
“I will tell you about it,” Ms. Tia says as she takes my hand and holds it tight. “Because tomorrow will be better than today, right?”
At first, I am not giving her any answer.
My mind cannot be imagining a day better than today, with the endless blue-gray in the sky and the smell of new hope and new strength in the air, but I know another day will come when I will see Papa and Kayus and Born-boy, when I can visit Ikati with no fear, or maybe they can visit me.
A day will come when my voice will sound so loud all over Nigeria and the world of it, when I will be able to make a way for other girls to have their own louding voice, because I know that when I finish my education, I will find a way to help them to go to school.
A day will come when I will become a teacher, send money to buy Papa a car, or build a new house for him, or maybe I can even build a school in Ikati in the memory of my mama and of Khadija, and who knows what else tomorrow will bring? So, I nod my head yes, because it is true, the future is always working, always busy unfolding better things, and even if it doesn’t seem so sometimes, we have hope of it.
We begin the five minutes of walking to Ms. Tia’s house in the early-morning silence through the big black gates that I used to wipe four times a day with that thick yellow cloth in the kitchen, down Wellington Road with its houses full of screaming peacocks—the rich man’s fowl—and then finally into Ms. Tia’s compound, where the white house with a mirror on its roof is blinking, blinking at me as if to say, Welcome, Adunni, welcome to your new free.