But Ruka, the foolish girl, she laugh a shy laugh and push my knees to one side. “Lie! Lie!”
I am wanting to ask her why she think I am lying, but Enitan point to the back of us, shout, “Look who is coming from the boys’ side of the river! Kayus!”
I jump to my feets and look. True, true, my Kayus is coming, running fast, shouting my name. It is the first time I am seeing Kayus since I marry Morufu two months back, and I pick myself and begin to run to him, leaving Enitan and Ruka. We meet just before he reach the girls’ side, and he pick me up, turn me around and around in the air until the sky become ground. He so strong sometimes, Kayus!
“I was hearing the girls shouting your name from afar,” he say as he set me down. “And I say to myself, ‘No, it is not my Adunni,’ but when I look well, I see it is you!”
I steady myself on my feets, then cup his face in my two hands. “My Kayus!”
“I didn’t talk to Papa since you marry that goat Morufu,” he say, fighting to remove his head from my hands, but I hold it tight because I want to soak up his whole face with my eyes: his long, thick eyeslashes, the thinning marks on his cheeks, his two front teeths that have a chipping on the edge of it from when he smash his mouth in a fall.
“When I start working at Kassim Motors,” he say, voice hard, “I swear, I will make plenty money and come and collect you from that Morufu. I will pay back all his foolish bride-price and we will build our own house and live there forever, just me and you!”
I pull him close and press his head to my chest, my heart.
“I know you will,” I say. “But till then, I will manage myself. Things is not so bad at Morufu. Come and sit with me, let me tell you everything about it.”
* * *
Around midday, I leave the river, say my bye-bye to Kayus and Enitan and Ruka, and begin my trekking back home.
The sun is a shining hot plate in the sky, resting itself among balls of white cotton wool. I carry Khadija’s pot of fresh water on my head, my heart skipping in a dance at the sound of Kayus’s laughters still in my ears.
As I am nearing the house, my heart stop the skipping and begin to feel as if I put rocks inside, heavy rocks that press me down on my feets and slow my walking. I feeling to just run back to Kayus, to take him to our house and cook palm oil rice for him and sing him to sleep at night, but I know that Papa will give me a beating for it, so I turn to the path behind the house and keep walking to Morufu’s house.
A throwing-stone away from the house, the bush make a crunching noise so sudden, I stop my walking. “Who is there?” I say, thinking to put the clay pot down and peep. “Who?”
Labake climb out from the bush, a brown cloth tight around her chest, eyes wide with something crazy. In her hand is a thin, long stick, the one with short wooden nails on it, same one she like to keep at the back of the kitchen for scaring away Khadija’s childrens when Khadija is not in the house.
“Good afternoon, ma,” I say, trying to not show my fear at the stick in her hand. “What are you doing in the bush?”
“Waiting for you,” she say in Yoruba. “I want to catch you by yourself so that Khadija cannot save you. Now, tell me. Why is the kerosene in my stove low?”
I think of the okra soup I cook for Khadija early this morning. She been drinking a bowl of okra every morning since two weeks now, say it help to wake up baby when it is stiff in her stomach. I cook it with Khadija’s stove, the green stove beside the washing bowl.
“I don’t know why your kerosene is low,” I say.
“Did you cook?” she ask. “In the kitchen?”
“For Khadija,” I say.
“Which stove did you use?”
“Khadija’s stove.”
Did I mistake and use Labake’s stove? I check my mind, search it everywhere before I shake my head no. There are two of the same kind of green stoves in the kitchen, one beside the washing bowl and the other one behind the bench, and every evening, after cooking, Labake will take her stove to her room. No, I shake my head again, I didn’t use Labake’s stove because it was not even inside the kitchen this morning.
“Please move from my way,” I say. “I want to take this water to—”
“My stove is the one beside the washing bowl,” she say, moving more close, eyes thinning with anger. “The green one. I didn’t take it to my room last night. Khadija’s stove is not working, but I think her pregnant stomach is worrying her brain, so she didn’t remember telling you that Morufu take it for fixing. Now, I ask you again, did you use my stove?”
“Your stove is the which one?” I ask, my heart beginning to jump, my hands sore from gripping the clay pot too tight.
She put a hand on my chest and push me. Just a small push, but the water in the pot sway this way and that, drops of it pouring on my face, inside my cloth, the cold of it shocking my chest.
“You are still asking me which one?” She crack the air with the stick, and I feel a slicing on my skin from the sound.
I lick my lips, take two steps back, the pot of water on my head like a pot of fire and stones and troubles.
“I think maybe—” I start, wanting to beg her to don’t be angry, to don’t flog me, when I hear the voice of Kike, Labake’s daughter, from behind us: “Mama!”
Kike come running up the path, breathing fast. Me and her don’t talk much since I marry her father. She keep to herself in the house, and me, I don’t even look her face. She is tying a cloth around her chest and holding a wooden spoon with white dough on the tip of it. Be like she was turning fufu in a pot and just leave it to come running to us. What is she finding here? Is she coming to join her mama in beating me?
“Mama,” Kike say, dipping her knees into the sand to greet Labake. “It was me, Mama. It was me that use your stove to, to boil garden-eggs this morning. Not Adunni.”
“Kike, it was you?” Labake say, looking her daughter down and eyeing her as if she is not believing her. “Are you sure?”
“I swear, Mama, it was me.”
Labake hiss, pushing my chest again. This time, the pot of water jump out from my hand, smash to the floor, and scatter to pieces.
I keep my eyes on the pieces of Khadija pot, watching the sand turn to a deep, dark red as Labake is walking away; her feets sending dust up in the air, her voice loud, full of cursing for me and Khadija.
When it is just me and Kike by ourselfs, I turn to her, where she is still kneeling on the floor, still holding the wooden stick in her hand, looking like she herself is not understanding what she is doing here.
“You lie for me,” I say, my heart swelling with a mixing of thank you and a sad surprise. “Why?”