I look Big Madam, wondering when she ever talk to any governor’s wife just now, but she keep a straight face.
“Florence!” Caroline shake her head with a laugh. “You will make me bankrupt, I swear. How much for the two, three yards each? Do you have the turban in store?” She turn to me. “Adunni, run downstairs. My car is in the parking lot. My house girl is sitting in the front seat. Her name is Chisom, tell her to give you my handbag and bring it up for me.”
As I turn around and leave them, Big Madam is saying, “Before I forget, there is one turquoise tulle fabric I think you would love . . .”
* * *
The four doors to Caroline’s black Jeep are wide-open.
A girl is sitting in the front seat, talking on a mobile phone that is pressed between her ear and her shoulder. She is nodding to the phone, laughing too, as she pick up a spoon full of jollof rice from a bowl in her lap and eat it.
The driver, a man with a black cap covering his face, is sleeping in the driver’s seat, which he push all the way down. His two legs are up, in the space between the wheel-steering and the open car door. The man doesn’t even move as I go near the car.
“Hello,” I say, looking the girl, pressing a hand to silent the hungry noise in my stomach. “Are you Aunty Caroline’s housemaid?”
She look nothing like a housemaid. Her hair is full of thick, neat plaiting all the way down to her back. Her dress, bright yellow and pink with patterns of a bird in a tree, look nothing like my own. I don’t see her feet, but her fingers, which she is using to hold the spoon, is having nails the same pink color of her dress.
“Let me call you back,” she say to her phone.
“Or are you her daughter?” I ask. Maybe she is Caroline’s daughter. She look like a daughter, dress like a daughter. Speak like a daughter too.
“Hello,” she say to me.
“I am looking for Chisom,” I say. “Aunty Caroline’s housemaid. She said I should bring her bag up to the shop.”
“I am Chisom,” she say, eyeing me from up to down. “You are Big Madam’s maid?”
“Yes,” I say. “She say I should bring her bag.”
“Sure,” the girl say, then turn to the back seat, pick up a black leather bag with big letters L and V stamping everywhere on it, and give me. “What is your name?” she ask as I collect the bag.
“Adunni.” I swallow the hot spit in my mouth as I watch her. She pick up the plastic cover of the jollof rice bowl and put it on the bowl, covering the rice and fried meat.
“Bia, Adunni, why are you so skinny like this?” She look at me a moment, then at the bowl, then she laugh. “Do you want my remaining rice?”
I drag my eyes away from the bowl. I cannot collect the rice because Big Madam will beat me. But maybe I can find a corner to eat it quick?
“Rebecca was always hungry,” Chisom say. She slap her hand on the cover to lock the rice well, then hold up the bowl to my face. “Take my food. My madam will buy me another one.”
“You know Rebecca?” I wide my eyes, forgetting all my hunger, the rice. “How? Do you know what happened to her? Was she from Agan village?”
Chisom shrug. “She used to talk about Agan,” she say. “Me and her were not too close, so I don’t know if she was from there, but whenever I see her here, I will give her food. Then one day, she didn’t come again.”
“When did she stop coming to the shop?” I ask.
Chisom think a moment. “Maybe around the time she was starting to get big. Before then, she was skinny. Like you.”
“She was getting big?” My heart begin to beat fast as I think of the waist beads under my pillow. Maybe she take them off because she was getting big, but the beads are inside a elastic string, so it can stretch and stretch and she don’t really need to ever take it off. I sigh. “Chisom, did she tell you—”
“Adunni!” Big Madam shout from upstairs. “Is Caroline’s bag in Saudi Arabia? Do you need to apply for a visa before you can access the bag, ehn? If you make me come downstairs and find you, I will—”
“I am coming, ma,” I shout before Big Madam will complete her sentence.
I turn around quick, nearly falling over as I run to the stairs, and just before I start to climb, I look back and see Chisom laughing, shaking her head at me.
* * *
“Your shop is very fine, ma,” I say to Big Madam as we leave the shop, and Abu is driving up a short bridge.
“So very big, beautiful.” My stomach is very hungry, and keeping silent too much is making my mouth to smell a foul odor, so I keep talking, even though Big Madam is sitting in the back seat, breathing hard, not answering me.
“Just like heaven,” I say. “All the lights in it, shining beautiful. The smell too, like perfume. The fabrics? So costly. So nice.”
Abu slide his eye to me, as if to ask if I am mad, but I keep talking: “And all those peoples coming into your shop and calling on the telephone, very big Nigerian people. Your children must feel too proud of their mother.” Then I keep quiet.
As Abu is turning into the road that is leading to the house, Big Madam say, “You think so?”
At first, I am not sure she is talking to me, so I whisper my answer, say, “I think so.”
Big Madam laughs. A real laugh. I turn around to look at her in the back seat. She is smiling. At me. With me.
“You are very good at selling to everybody,” I say, forgetting all of my hunger, and Chisom, and everything that was worrying me. “All the customers that came inside today, you sell to all of them, making good money. You make it seem so easy to do business. Honest, ma, if I am ever wanting to be selling clothes, ma, I want to be selling just like you.”
“Like me?” Big Madam press her fingers, full of gold rings, on her chest and laugh again, and her eyes, which were red and tired, are now lighting up the whole car. “Adunni, I started my business from nothing,” she say, pushing herself to sit up and lean forward. “Fifteen years ago, I was selling cheap materials from my boot, going from place to place, looking for customers. I wasn’t born into wealth. I have worked hard for my success. I fought for it. It wasn’t easy, especially because my husband, Chief, he didn’t have a job. If you want to be like me in business, Adunni, you will need to work very hard. Rise above whatever life throws at you. And never, ever give up on your dreams. Do you understand?”
I nod. Keep my eyes on her. Feel something share between me and her. Something warm, thick, like a embrace from an old friend.