Just yesternight, she was comforting me with her words. “When you begin to born your children, you will not be too sad again,” she say. “When I first marry Morufu, I didn’t want to born children. I was too afraid of having a baby so quick, afraid of falling sick from the load of it. So I take something, a medicine, to stop the pregnant from coming. But after two months, I say to myself, ‘Khadija, if you don’t born a baby, Morufu will send you back to your father’s house.’ So I stop the medicine and soon I born my first girl, Alafia. When I hold her in my hands for the first time, my heart was full of so much love. Now, my children make me laugh when I am not even thinking to laugh. Children are joy, Adunni. Real joy.”
But I don’t want to born anything now. How will a girl like me born childrens? Why will I fill up the world with sad childrens that are not having a chance to go to school? Why make the world to be one big, sad, silent place because all the childrens are not having a voice?
All night, my mind was busy thinking, thinking on the medicine Khadija was taking, on if I can stop my own pregnant from coming.
This morning I find Khadija in the kitchen, where she is sitting on a bench by the stove and plucking ewedu leafs into a bowl by her feets.
“Adunni,” she say, “good morning. You feeling good today? No more crying for your mama?”
“I been thinking of what you say last night,” I say, my eyes on my feets, on my toesnails, which look like they need a clipping. “About childrens.”
“Ah,” Khadija say.
I peep behind me to check it sure that no one is coming, then I tell her. “I am having a real fear to born childrens,” I say, my words climbing each other, rushing fast. “I was thinking of what you say . . . about medicine for not wanting baby. I am just . . . not wanting to born a baby now. What can I do?”
Khadija stop her hand on the plucking of the leafs and nod her head.
“Adunni, you know that our husband is wanting two boys? One from me and one from you. You know this?”
“I know,” I say. “I just want to wait.” I am hoping that maybe if the pregnant is not coming ever and ever, maybe Morufu will send me go back to my papa. But I don’t say this to Khadija.
“You are fearing?” she ask after a long moment, pity in her voice.
“Very,” I say. “My stomach cannot be swelling every year because I am looking for boys to give Morufu. The only thing I want to be swelling is my head and my mind with books and educations.” I bite my lips. “I am not strong like you, Khadija. I cannot be borning a baby at this my age.”
“You are strong, Adunni,” she say, her voice low. “A fighter. We are the same, only you don’t know it. You want to fight with your educations—good for you, if you can do it in this our village. Me, I am fighting with what I have inside of me, with my stomach for getting pregnants. With it, I can fight to stay here so that my childrens will keep a roof on their head, and my mama and papa will keep having bread to eat and soup to drink.”
I stand there, looking her, at the small hill of leafs in the bowl which is rising with each falling leaf from Khadija’s hand, at her fingers which are dark green and wet from the pinching and twisting of the leafs from the branch.
“Do you know how to count the days for your monthly visitor?” she ask. “You know when it is starting every month?”
“Yes,” I say. “Why?”
“There is something you can take. A mixing of strong leafs.”
“It will help me?” I ask, my heart lifting with hope. “It will stop the pregnant?”
“I am not making you any promise, Adunni, but I will see if I can find the leafs for it in Ikati farm. You will add it to ten paw-paw seeds and mix it with gingerroot and dry pepper. Put it all in a dark bottle and soak it in rainwater for three days. You must drink it five days before and five days after your monthly visitor and every time you and Morufu are doing the thing.”
She lift up her head and thin her eyes at me. “Morufu must not know you are drinking medicine. You understand me, Adunni?”
My heart is melting as I look the round of her face, the kind spirit in her eyes. “Thank you, Khadija,” I say, bending to pick up one branch. “Can I pluck this one for you?”
“Adunni,” she say, taking the branch from my hand with care and setting it down on the floor. “Your mind is so full of worry, it is pouring all over your face. Forget about housework for today. Pull that bench, sit here with me, and let us talk.”
CHAPTER 11
With Khadija, the days in this house are short and sometimes sweet.
We talk together, laugh together, and with her stomach swelling so big and making her sometimes sick, I am helping to do her washing, cooking, everything. I am helping with her small childrens too, baffing for Alafia and her sisters, and feeding them food and washing their hair and dirty cloths. They are good childrens, Khadija’s childrens, ever happy and laughing and looking for Labake’s trouble.
Me and Morufu, we don’t talk much. He is always so busy with his farming and taxi-driving work from early morning till night. Sometimes, he will call me to his room, make me to stand in his front with my hand in my back, and ask me question as if he a doctor. He will ask me if I am having pregnants yet or if my monthly visitor have come because he want me to quick and carry pregnants and born a boy, but most times, he just want to rough me and eat food. I keep to drinking the drink Khadija make for me, from a dark bottle full of bitter leafs and ginger.
When it is my turn with Morufu, I will take a quick cap of it, go to his room, and watch him swallow his own Fire-Cracker, before I am making myself a dead body so that he can rough me. I am hoping that maybe after six months or something like that, he will see that no pregnant is ever coming, and he can send me go back to my papa. Maybe.
Labake is still fighting me. She will stamp her feets and curse if I am too long in washing the plates in the kitchen, or if I am too quick to sweep the compound, or too slow in grinding beans. She is always looking for my trouble, that Labake, always finding a way to fight me.
But today is the second Tuesday in the month.
The day for market womens and Ikati farmers meeting, which means the two both of Labake and Morufu are not in the house. Because of it, I am feeling one kind of a free I didn’t feel in a long time, and as I am cleaning the parlor this early morning, I feel a pulling in my heart to sing. To just be happy. To not think of sorrow or worry things. So I start singing a song I just make up in my head:
Hello, fine girl!
If you want to become a big, big lawyer
You must go to plenty, plenty school
If you want to wear a high, high shoe