The Girl with the Louding Voice

by Abi Daré

“Adunni, you must do good for other peoples, even if you are not well, even if the whole world around you is not well.”

Your schooling is your voice, child. It will be speaking for you even if you didn’t open your mouth to talk. It will be speaking till the day God is calling you come.” That day, I tell myself that even if I am not getting anything in this life, I will go to school. I will finish my primary and secondary and university schooling and become teacher because I don’t just want to be having any kind voice . . . I want a louding voice.

I want to shout at the night and tell it never to become a tomorrow,

We all be speaking different because we all are having different growing-up life, but we can all be understanding each other if we just take the time to listen well.

Rich people have plenty brain problem, honest.

I didn’t too sure I understand what Ms. Tia is talking about, or why she is calling her Abroad peoples white and black when colors are for crayons and pencils and things. I know that not everybody is having the same color of skin in Nigeria, even me and Kayus and Born-boy didn’t have same skin color, but nobody is calling anybody black or white, everybody is just calling us by our name: Adunni. Kayus. Born-boy. That’s all.

My mama is nothing but a sweet memory of hope, a bitter memory of pain, sometimes a flower, other times a flashing light in the sky.

“My mama say education will give me a voice. I want more than just a voice, Ms. Tia. I want a louding voice,” I say. “I want to enter a room and people will hear me even before I open my mouth to be speaking. I want to live in this life and help many people so that when I grow old and die, I will still be living through the people I am helping. Think it, Ms. Tia. If I can go to school and become a teacher, then I can collect my salary and maybe even build my own school in Ikati and be teaching the girls. The girls in my village don’t have much chance for school. I want to change that, Ms. Tia, because those girls, they will grow up and born many more great people to make Nigeria even more better than now.”

Sometimes I wish I can just believe for a good life and it will magic and happen for me, just like that. But maybe, to believe it in my mind is the start, so I nod my head, drag it real slow up and down as I am saying: “Tomorrow will be better than today. I am a somebody of value.”

I want to ask, to scream, why are the women in Nigeria seem to be suffering for everything more than the men?

He gives me a long look, sighs. “It will all make sense one day,” he says. “One day, things will get better.”

When I go back and lie down on my bed, I don’t sleep. I stay thinking about my life, Ms. Tia, Big Madam and her sick sister, about Big Daddy not even caring of his wife, about all the money rich people have and how the money is not helping them escape from problems, until the night turns and brings the morning light.

“I read your essay, Adunni,” she says. “You’ve been through so much, so bloody much, and yet you always have a smile, you cheeky thing, you always have a damn smile on your face. When I got flogged in that church, I felt a fraction of—” She drops my hand, drawing another breath to steady herself before she picks my hand again. “I felt a fraction of what you have had to endure for months. I tasted your normal, Adunni, and I have to say, you are the bravest girl in the world. And all this bullshit happening to me, that’s nothing compared to what you’ve been through. Nothing.”

“Chale, I swear, if you can pull it off,” Kofi says with a side smile, “then kudos to you. And who knows, maybe someone will talk about you too one day. You know, as part of history.” I stop my sweeping, stand myself up to his level, and look him in the eyes. “Not his-story,” I say. “My own will be called her-story. Adunni’s story.”

And at first, she struggles, but I hold her two hands tight until she slacks herself and closes her eyes, until she accepts that sometimes even the strongest of people can suffer a weakness.

Now I know that speaking good English is not the measure of intelligent mind and sharp brain. English is only a language, like Yoruba and Igbo and Hausa. Nothing about it is so special, nothing about it makes anybody have sense.

I want to tell her that God is not a cement building of stones and sand. That God is not for all that putting inside a house and locking Him there. I want her to know that the only way to know if a person find God and keep Him in their heart is to check how the person is treating other people, if he treats people like Jesus says—with love, patience, kindness, and forgiveness—but

I leave Kofi and run to the main house, but before I go to Big Madam and Ms. Tia, I pass by the dining room and step into the library. “Thank you,” I say to all the books in the shelf. “Thank you,” I say to The Book of Nigerian Facts, touching the cover with the shining map and the green-white-green color of the Nigerian flag, the lettering of many, many facts inside the pages. “Thank you,” I say to the Collins and all my book friends, for helping me find my free in the prison of Big Madam’s house.

because it is true, the future is always working, always busy unfolding better things, and even if it doesn’t seem so sometimes, we have hope of it.