“But I don’t mind spending for my Adunni. I don’t mind at all! Now, you three wifes, all of you hear me well. I don’t want you to fight. Labake, mind yourself. You are always finding trouble. If you don’t give me peace, I will chase you out from my compound. I am getting old, I want peace. Let me see. How will three of you be sleeping with me?”
Morufu scratch his gray beard, pull out a hair, put it inside his mouth, and eat it. “Yes. We will do it like this. Adunni will sleep in my room for three nights in the week, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. Labake for two nights, Wednesday and Thursday. You with the stomach, one night, Friday. Me, I will keep the last night to myself, to gather energy. Adunni is a new wife with young blood. She must born a boy-child for me. Not so, Adunni?” He laugh, but no one is joining him in the laughters.
Is he meaning to say we be sleeping on the same bed like a lovers? Is he wanting to see my naked? To do me the nonsense and rubbish things that adult people use to do? I shiver, put my hand around myself. Nobody ever see my naked. Nobody except of my mama. Even when I am baffing in Ikati stream, I am using the water as a cover-cloth, wrapping my whole body inside it. I don’t want Morufu with his rag face to be touching me. I don’t want a husband. I only want my mama. Why death collect her from me so quick? My eyes pinch with tears, but I bite my lip till I break the skin of it.
Morufu push hisself to his feets and remove the agbada he was wearing for the wedding. He is not a fat person, but he have a round stomach. It look hard too, like coconut. Maybe there is a disease inside it. I forget the name of it, but Teacher say, in class of Science, that this sickness is causing stomach to be hard when you are not pregnants and when you are not eating a balancing diets. I think Morufu is having this sickness.
“Khadija will show you the kitchen and baffroom and everywhere in the house. Nothing to be afraid of, you hear me?” he say. “Let me go and prepare myself for you. You have any question?”
I want to be asking if he can release me go back to my papa. I want to tell him to don’t touch me this night, or ever, ever. But I am shaking my head, shivering, shivering. The cold is colding me, even though Labake’s head is shining with sweat, and Khadija is using her hand to be fanning herself.
“No question, sah,” I say. “Thank you, sah.”
When Morufu leave us be, Labake stand up, tight her cloth around her waist, as if she is making preparations for a fight. “You and my Kike are of same age,” she say, eyes blinking fast. “Your dead mother and me, we are age-mates. God forbid for me to share my husband with my own child. God forbid that I am waiting for you to finish with my husband before I can enter his room. Ah, you will suffer in this house. Ask Khadija, she will tell you that I am a wicked woman. That my madness is not having cure.”
She click her finger in my face, and push my chest so that I am falling inside the sofa. “I will suffer you till you run back to your father’s house.”
I shock so much, I start crying.
“Don’t cry,” Khadija say when it is just me and her in the parlor. She peel herself from the wall and come and sit down beside me. “Labake is just talking. She have a big mouth, but she will not do anything. No woman is happy to share her husband. Don’t mind Labake, you hear? Stop crying.” She put a hand on my shoulder, her touch soft. She is speaking better English than me even, and I think she go to school before they force-marry her for Morufu.
“Is not so bad,” she say. “Here, there is food to eat and water to drink. I am thankful for it, for the food.”
I look her face. Her eyes is far inside her head, as if she malnourish, and when she smile, her cheeks is swallowing her eyes so that it is almost disappearing. But I see a kind spirit in the deep of her eyes.
“I am just wanting my mama,” I say, talking whisper. “I didn’t want to marry Morufu. My papa say I must marry him because he pay our community rent.”
“Your own is even good. Me, my father give me to Morufu because of bag of rice,” she say. “After sickness have cut my father’s leg. You know diabetis sickness?”
I shake my head no.
“Sickness of sugar,” she say. “The diabetis bite his leg bad, and the doctor, they cut my father’s leg just here—” She put her hand on her knee and make a slice around it, as if she is cutting yam. “The hospital money is too much, and he cannot work again, so we are suffering to eat. At first, Morufu was helping us, but he soon get tired and he say he must marry me or no food. He buy my family five derica of rice, and my father bundle me into Morufu car and wave me bye-bye. We didn’t even do any wedding party like you.” She force a laugh, dry. “I was in school before that time, learning well. I have been here for five years now. Now he is saying he will not give my family food until I give him a boy-child. I am just tired of everything. I know this one is a boy-child so I can rest.”
“How old are you?” I ask, looking her as she rest her back and put her hand on top the swell of her stomach.
“I am twenty years,” she say. “I marry him when I was fifteen years, and I have three children for him, three girls that he didn’t want because they are girls. Is not a easy thing, to be wife of Morufu. If you want peace in this house, Adunni, don’t let our husband be angry. His anger is a evil spirit. Not good.”
I am not liking it, the way she is saying “our husband,” as if it is title, as if she is saying “Our King.”
“Cheer yourself,” she say. “Smile a smile, be happy. Now, follow me, let me show you everywhere in the house, because our husband is waiting for you. Tonight, you will become a true woman, and if God smiles on you, in nine months’ time, you will born a boy.”
She push herself up and rub her back. Then she hold out her hand. “I think rain is coming. Can you hear it? Follow me, let me show you our kitchen.”
The sky clap a thunder, and it feel as if it strike me, right inside of my heart. I collect Khadija hand as if I am collecting sorrows, then I am following her.
CHAPTER 8
The rain is coming down with anger, be like the roof of the kitchen is a drum, and the rain is drumsticks in God’s hand. Khadija is standing under the roof shade of the kitchen, pointing to the here and the there.
“That is the kerosene stove,” she say, pointing at the iron stove in the left corner of the kitchen, her voice loud because of roaring rain noises. “For cooking food,” she say, as if anybody will use kerosene stove to cook a motorcar. “There is two of the stove. One for me and one for Labake. You can be sharing my own stove if you want.”
“Thank you,” I say as I wrap my hand around my body and look around all the kitchen areas. There is the remainder of fish stew in a bowl on the floor, the bone of fish looking like a thin white comb inside of it. There is one small wooden chair beside the bowl, and on the floor, a raffia sponge with a cube of black soap melting inside it. The kitchen is not having a door, just a space and two wooden pillars holding the roof.