“I can help you be taking care of yourself,” I say. “I can cook, wash, fetch water, go to market, you just say it and I will be doing it.” But as I am saying that, I am thinking, how will I do that and the peoples from this village will not send a message to my papa?
Iya is shaking her head no. “The end is near for me, Adunni,” she say in Yoruba. “My ancestors, they are calling me come.” She tilt her head to the side and up in the air, as if somebody from the top of the window is calling her name. “Can you hear it? They are drumming the drums and singing the songs to welcome me.” She open all her teeths in one kind of smile, and the lantern light is making it look as if she only have one half of face.
I didn’t sure how to answer her or her ancestors, so I am keeping my words to myself.
“Your mother was a kind woman,” she say. “God rest her soul.” She think a moment. “Stop crying, Adunni. I can help you.” She push her head back until she is lying on the mattress. “I have one brother, Kola is his name. We share the same father but not the same mother. He is doing job of helping girls like you.”
She is looking up in the ceiling now, eyes open wide with no blink. For one moment, she don’t say anything. Then she say, “Tonight we sleep. Tomorrow we talk. Off that lantern so we don’t die inside fire before the cock crow.”
“Yes, ma.” I off the lantern, stretch myself on the floor, and fold my hands under my head, my nylon bag of belongings by my feets. The whole place is quiet, but crickets outside are speaking kre-kre far into the night. Sometimes Iya will just start to cough like she wants to cough out all her lung. Other times, she will snore like a generator engine.
I lie there, thinking of my mama, of Kayus, of Khadija, of the time when I didn’t have plenty trouble like this. I am thinking all these things until the first cock is saying coo-koo-roo-koo at first light and the early-morning sunlight is pouring inside the room from the window.
Just then, there is one kind noise, sound like two animals fighting. At first I am thinking maybe the noise is inside my head, but the more it is coming close, the more it is louding. It is not animals fighting. It is voice of a man, a voice I know very well. It is coming closer with feets that is sounding bam-bam like a mad solja marching to the war front. As it is reaching Iya’s compound, my heart is starting to beat fast because it is the voice of my papa. His most angry of all voice.
He is shouting: “Where is my daughter? And who in this cursed village is bearing the name Iya?”
CHAPTER 20
All my body have collapse.
My head, it is telling myself to get up—Adunni, get up, get up and run—but my arms and legs is not making sense with itself. I feel like going to toilet, and as I am thinking of it, hot piss is flooding my dress, covering the whole floor. My heart is in my ears, banging boom-boom-boom.
Papa is here. Here in Agan village. What can I do? Where can I go to disappear and never be finding myself?
“Adunni,” Iya is calling me from her mattress. I am giving her answer, but my voice, it have gum to my throat. It is not coming out.
“Adunni?” she call again, and the sleep is dragging in her voice. “Is it your papa’s voice I am hearing?”
“Yes, ma,” I say, but is like she didn’t hear me. I didn’t hear myself too. Something have snatch my voice. There is a knocking on her door, ko-ko-ko. The door is shaking and Papa is shouting, vexing. “Open this door now!”
Cold is spreading rashes over my body. I am finished. Killed dead. What will I do? Where will I go?
“Adunni.” Iya is talking with her breath and I am not hearing her well. “Behind the mattress is one door,” I think she is saying. “It is leading to our baffroom. Go there. Quick.”
When I don’t move, Iya slap her hand on something. “Go. NOW!”
I push myself up as if something just shock me electric in the back. I can see the door she is showing me, it is the place where she was hanging cloth. How was I blinding to this yesterday?
The door is still rattling. “Open this door,” Papa is saying. And Iya is answering, “I am getting up from my bed. If you break the door of a old sick woman, thunder will strike you dead.”
I push the door open, and I am tumbling into a narrow corridor that is smelling like piss. The piss smell is choking me and making me to cough and bringing water to my eyes.
There is one very big bang, and then Papa’s voice: “Why was it taking you long to open door?”
Iya is giving a mumble of answer that didn’t make sense.
At the end of the corridor is another door. I enter, swallowing the vomit in my throat at the shits on the floor, some round and brown, like hard-boil egg, others watery like porridge. All of it is stinking. Flies is perching on the shits, jumping and dancing from one shit to another. To my left, beside the broken toilet with no flushing hand, is a baffing bowl with shit stains everywhere. I plant my feets on the only clean space on the floor and hold my vomit as I listen to Iya and Papa arguing with theirselfs:
“Where is my daughter?”
Mumble. Mumble.
“Did something gum your mouth? I say where is my daughter? Peoples say they see her coming here last night.”
Mumble. Mumble.
Papa say, “Kayus, this old woman is having ear and mouth problem. Search this room for me. Check it everywhere. Find Adunni!”
I hear boom, bam, slap, and I think Kayus and Papa are throwing the belongings in Iya’s room this way and that.
Papa say, “What is in this nylon? Is it not Adunni’s cloth? Kayus, look it and tell me.”
I don’t hear what Kayus is saying. I keep shut my eyes, fold myself into myself.
“Is that a door there?” Papa say. “Open it.”
Something is tumbling inside the corridor. Feets is making slap-slap again. Papa say, “Kayus, go inside that stinking place and check it that Adunni is not hiding inside. YOU HEAR ME?”
“Yes, sah,” Kayus say.
As the door is opening, I am holding my breath and pushing myself until my back is rubbing the shits on the wall. I am just praying the wall will open and swallow me and the shits, all of us together like that.
Kayus is standing in my front. Looking me. No blink. Like he is seeing the spirit of Mama and Mama’s mama. I am shaking my head, pressing one finger to my lips. My eyes are begging him, my spirit is begging him. Please don’t tell Papa, my eyes are saying, don’t tell Papa.
“Is she inside that place?” Papa ask from outside. “Kayus?”
“No, sah,” he say. “Nothing here . . . but the window is open, maybe she is running to the market square.”