I am very fearing for her, but I hide my fear and tell her to keep walking, to don’t stop, to don’t piss or shit. The bus is not full, just market womens holding basket of bread, orange, beans, making preparations for selling morning food. We sit in the front seat, me near the driver that is smelling of early-morning spit, and Khadija near the door. I hold her bag in my laps, keep my eyes on her, as if my eyes will hold the baby inside her stomach. When the driver is starting the bus and is leaving the garage, I ask Khadija how she feel now. “Baby staying up?”
“Still coming down,” she say as she rest her head on my shoulder, squeeze my hand. “My eyes are closing. We are going to Kere village. Wake me when we reach.”
Before I can say don’t sleep, she close her eyes, and is starting to snore.
CHAPTER 14
We cut through the forest road, the bus driving between the tall mango trees with thick branches and leafs to the left and right of it.
The branches are leaning close, covering the road like a umbrella, light from the sun entering through a crack in the umbrella. We pass farmers riding their bicycle to the farm, the bells on it ringing to chase away peoples, chickens, and dogs from their road. We pass the womens with trays of firewood, bread, and green plantains on their head, their childrens sleeping in the wrappers around their back. They are just coming from the farm, taking the firewood and food to the house for cooking. I think about this, why the mens in the village are not letting many of the girls go to school, but they are not minding when the womens are bringing firewood and going to market and cooking for them?
We pass Ikati border, and soon a line of red hills be surrounding us like a embrace. Some of the hills is having mud houses perching on the edge of it, looking as if it will fall off the hill and just kill all the peoples inside any moment now.
Black goats, about fifty of them, are climbing up one of the rocks. There is a man at the bottom of it, holding a long stick, flogging the goats up, up. To the left of me is another hill that look like it is crying real tears; and a line of clear water, the blue of the sky, is running down the face of it, the top of the hill egg-shape and smooth like a man’s head.
One hour or so after the hills, we reach Kere garage, and Khadija, who been sleeping all the way, snoring deep too, is talking nonsense inside her sleep.
The driver bring the bus to a stop near a cocoa tree. The air have a smell of roasting nuts, and when I look around, I see a man turning walnuts in a wheelbarrow sitting on top a firewood flame. There are one or two peoples in his front, waiting to buy the walnut. It is a small village, this Kere place, half of Ikati, it seems, with one or two round houses that they builded with red sand here and there and the rest houses are nearly falling off the hills.
Across the garage, there is one shop selling choco-sweet, siga, newspapers, and bread. A woman is sweeping the front of the shop, the broom doing swish, swish as she is going front and back on the floor and singing, her voice climbing across the road to come and meet us:
In the mornin’
I will rise and praise the Lor’
“This is reach Kere village,” the driver say with a shout. “We stay here for ten minutes, then we move!”
My stomach is starting to tight itself as I elbow Khadija. “Open your eyes,” I say, but she just drop her neck to one side. Why she sleeping so much? I lick my lips, feel as if I lick a fire, and elbow her again. “Khadija?”
Why, why, why did I follow her to this place? What was I thinking in my brain? What if she keep sleeping on and on, forever and forever?
“Khadija, wake up!” I shout and the bus driver look me. “She didn’t wake up!” I say to the driver, and the sound of my tears in my voice shock me.
“Adunni?” Khadija open her eyes slow, look around the place, and wipe spit from her mouth. “I am waking up. This is the place. Let us come down.”
“You doing fine?” I ask. The twisting in my stomach stop a moment as I wipe her face with my hand. “I was fearing you were sleeping too deep. You feeling well?”
“Very well,” she say, collecting my hand. “Follow me.”
Together, we climb out from the bus and walk, her stopping and moaning, me telling her to try keep going, until we cut across the bus garage, pass the singing woman in front of her shop, and find ourselfs on one road. There is a guava tree on the side of the road, and one brown goat with red thread on his neck is eating the grass around the root of the tree. The goat look up, see us as we are coming, tear a grass, and run away. Khadija stop, rest herself on the guava tree, the fruit on top of the tree dropping low to near her head, looking yellow, ripe for plucking.
“You want to sit down?” I ask, putting her bag on the floor. “Rest yourself.”
Khadija bend herself until she is sitting on the tree root. “I will wait here for you.” She point a shaking finger the round house in the afar. “Cross this road and go to that house with red door. Knock it three times. If a woman open it, tell her you are selling leafs, then turn back and come here. But if is a man that open it, tell him you ask for Bamidele. Tell him Khadija send you. Bring him come to me.”
I strong my face, confuse. “Where is the midwife’s house?” I ask. Bamidele is the name of a man. I never see a man-midwife in my life. “Khadija?”
There is new sweat on her forehead now, beads of water spotting her up lip.
“Please don’t ask too much questions now,” she say. “If you want my baby to not die, please go and ask for Bamidele. Tell him . . . Ah, my back, Adunni. My back is paining me.”
I give her a long look, wonder again why I follow her come. Why didn’t I stay in Ikati and mind my own matter? But Khadija help me with the drink for not having pregnant, she keep my mind free of worry in Morufu’s house, she fight Labake for me. And if she die here, everybody will say I kill my senior wife. They will say jealousy make me carry her to Kere village and kill her dead and leave her by a guava tree. They will kill me too, with no question, because in Ikati, they kill anybody that kill or anybody that steal.
I remember when one farmer, Lamidi, he kill his friend because of farmland fight, and the village chief tell his servants to be flogging Lamidi seventy lashes with palm frond in the village square every day until he have die dead. They burn his body after he finish dying. No burial. They just throw his black body inside the forest, a burning offering to the gods of the forest.
I carry my legs and cross the road quick, hurrying my feets until I reach the front of the clay house.
When I look back, Khadija raise her hand and wave me bye-bye.
The door is the red of blood, angry-looking. I fold my fingers and knock it one time. No answer. I can hear something inside, somebody is hearing radio, the morning news in Yoruba.
I knock again.