“A duck?” I say, looking around. “Inside this restaurant?”
“Get under the table,” she say, talking through her teeth. “Now.”
I climb under the table, hide behind the bags of shopping, my heart beating fast.
The Thin Woman, her legs like thread, is walking to our table, and I am not understanding how her legs is not breaking into two with how she is strolling so fast on her high-heel shoe.
“Tia Dada,” she say, stopping at our table, her smell of costly perfume swallowing up the smell of my meat pie and sausage.
“What are you doing in Balogun market?” she say. “Let me guess—running a report on the pollution in the area?”
“Titi,” Ms. Tia say, sounding like the cake is a brick in her throat. “Good to see you. How are you?”
“I’m good,” Titi say. “That is a lot of food. Are you expecting someone?”
“Yep,” Ms. Tia say, then laugh a painful laugh. “Nope. It’s all mine. I am famished. Ridiculously so.”
“Ah, famished,” Titi say, voice like a sudden singing-song. “Are you trying to tell us something? Is there a bun in the oven? How far gone—”
“I am loving the bag,” Ms. Tia cut in. “So chic.”
“I know, right,” Titi say, stroking a hand on the blue box of a bag that is hanging from a thick gold chain on her shoulder. There are two gold letter Cs crossing each other on the clip of the bag, and it look too costly, just like her black shoe.
“Do you know I’ve had this boy for three years?” she say. I can hear a smile in her voice. Like she is proud of her boy of a bag. “It’s the most stunning calfskin. And your bag is lovely. Italian?”
Ms. Tia’s bag is shape like a half a triangle and made with black and pink leather with a gold pin as a button. “My bag is Nigerian,” Ms. Tia say. “I mostly wear Nigerian brands.”
“Well, you simply cannot go wrong with Chanel. Anyway, I am running late for a board meeting at the First Bank on Broad Street. I couldn’t resist stopping over for Frankie’s meat pie. Definitely better than the crappy Niçoise salad the CEO at the bank orders for our board meetings. So depressing. Got to run. My love to Kenneth. Take very, very good care of yourself and the bun! Ta-ta!”
The woman walk away, her shoes making clack, clack on the floor.
I wait another six, seven minutes before Ms. Tia put her hand under the table and beckon for me to come out.
“Why am I hiding?” I say when I climb out and stretch my back. “Big Madam knows I followed you to the market. And why is that woman asking you about a bun inside oven? All she ever thinks about is food!”
“Florence knows we are going to the market,” Ms. Tia say, sounding tired. “But she doesn’t know I’m taking you out to eat. She doesn’t know how close we are or that I have been helping you with anything. If Titi had seen you eating here next to me, she would have asked questions. For your own good, no one can know how close we are. Not yet. Do you get it?”
“I get it,” I say, picking my meat pie and cursing Thin Woman in my mind for making my meat pie go all cold and hard.
* * *
That evening, as I enter the house and see that Big Madam is not back from the shop, I finish all my housework quick and then enter my room. Even though my whole body is tired, and my eyes are calling me to be sleeping, I pick a paper and pen, and try to write the essay.
At first I write it anyhow: what my name is, where my mama born me, how my papa and brothers are living in Ikati. I tell a story of a life with small money but a lot of happiness, make up all the good things that I can make up in my head, but when I finish writing it and I read it, I feel sick in my stomach. It is full of so many lies, the paper looks like it is swelling up, about to burst.
Write your truth, Ms. Tia say. Your truth.
I tear to pieces the paper, and throw it to the floor. Then I swim deep inside the river of my soul, find the key from where it is sitting, full of rust, at the bottom of the river, and open the lock. I kneel down beside my bed, close my eyes, turn myself into a cup, and pour the memory out of me.
I write about Morufu, and what he did to me when he drink Fire-Cracker. About Khadija, and how she died, and how I was running. About Papa. And Mama and Kayus and Born-boy. I tell the school that this scholarship is my life. That I need it to live, to become a person of value. I tell them that I need it to be able to change things, to help other girls like me. And at the end of it, I tell them I have a deep love for Nigeria, even though my life has been full of suffering in this country. I add three of the most interesting of the Nigeria Fact that I know, and when I finish writing, I feel weak, as if I just finished swimming a wide ocean with half of my body: one hand, one leg, one nostril.
I try to think of a good title for the essay, something catching, but no more words are coming to my head. My brain is no more having strength to think and so I use the first title that is coming to my tired mind:
The True Story Essay of Myself by Adunni, the Girl with the Louding Voice
And first thing in the morning, before fear will make me change my mind and write another essay, and before anybody is awake, I run to Ms. Tia’s house and slide my essay, folded like a rectangle, under her gate.
CHAPTER 42
Fact: Muhammadu Buhari was the head of state of Nigeria from 1983 to 1985. In 1984 he enacted the War Against Indiscipline, a rule remembered for human rights abuses and restriction of press freedom.
Christmas comes and goes like a stiff, silent wind.
Big Madam and Big Daddy go out every day until New Year’s Day, visiting everybody and coming back home late, tired, drunk, and smelling of jollof rice, fried meat, and drink. Kofi travel back to Ghana to see his wife and children for Christmas, and me, I stay in the house, cleaning, washing clothes, reading books in the library when I have a chance, and remembering Christmas in Ikati with a twist of sadness in my spirit, how everybody will gather in the village square and blow knockouts and bangers and share zobo drink and choco-sweets until late in the night.
Today is the first working day in the year 2015, and Big Madam say I must follow her to her shop, because her shopgirl has gone to her village and she needs me to help her. We are in her car now. I am sitting in front, and Abu is driving through traffic, nodding his head to the radio speaking news in Hausa on a low volume.
Big Madam is at the back seat, speaking to her friend Caroline on the phone. “It will be terrible,” she is saying. “If Buhari wins the elections, Nigerians will not understand what hit them. No idea! That man has an evil agenda. Do you remember what we went through in the ’80s? How people lost their livelihoods because of War Against Indiscipline? I was flogged once by his demonic soldiers as I waited for a bus at Obalende in 1984. Who knows what will happen if he wins? I know at least three of my customers that have promised to check out of the country on a self-imposed exile. Why wait for tragedy to befall you? It is a nightmare. We are doomed. We need to call a meeting for the Fabric Sellers Association of Lagos to make sure the women in our area can convince our people not to vote for him.”