For the Love of Madam
by Maryam Abdulkarim
It all began with the dirty water that leaked from under her madam’s kitchen tap.
At thirteen, Olaide knew she was going to be a big girl. She was going to work in an office and wear shoes that were so pointy, so long, they looked like weapons. She was going to drive big cars in a big city. And it had to be Lagos, that big city she caught glimpses of on Baba Sola’s gigantic screen, visible through his window whenever she took yams to his house to sell. So when they said Baba Sola came to meet her father in the evening of the first rain of the year, to say he had a maid job for her in Ogbomosho, she had said no.
“Your daughter is a hard worker,” he said. “And she is young. Most couples look for young girls. It is safer for their marriage. You know how these things are.”
And before her Baba could respond, Olaide had blurted no.
It was unheard of that a girl like Olaide, whose father’s house was without a roof, who hawked yams from her father’s farm after school hours, would refuse a job offer from Baba Sola.
“Don’t come back into this house until you’ve gotten yourself a head with a brain,” her father thundered that night.
Olaide could not accept Ogbomosho. The classmate who joined their class last term for junior WAEC had come from there, and she looked nothing like a city girl. She looked gruff with her tangled hair and eczema-filled skin, and her English was thick with over-enunciated Yoruba twang. Abandoning school in a struggling village in Akure to go to an even more remote bush town would push her dream farther. Olaide would not have that.
He packed a few of her clothes and went to Uncle Kamaru’s house in Sabo.
Uncle Kamaru was her late mother’s younger brother. He wore shirts and trousers like those men on the screen in Baba Sola’s house. He even tucked them into one another and paired the attire with bow ties of multiple colours. She had heard that he was a teacher in the neighbouring village. Surely, only he would understand better.
But even he had surprised her.
“I believe God is using you to help this family?” he said. “Your grandfather, may his soul rest in peace, said it when you were born. He said you were going to be our wealth. That was why he named you Olaide. Wealth has come.”
Somehow, those words coming from the mouth of this man who drank steaming tea from a tiny cup that was breakable felt like the truth. Maybe her work in Ogbomosho would help ceil her father’s roof. She could almost picture it – her father seated on a sofa that did not have foam not sprouting out of every corner, and drinking steaming steam from the same sort of cup Uncle Kamaru drank from.
It would be fine, she told herself as her Baba escorted her to the park.
It had to be fine, she thought again as her Baba squeezed the naira notes Baba Sola had given him into his back pocket.
***
In Ogbomosho, the house was big. It was wide, long, and spread far – ten times the size of her father’s house. And the madam in the house was kind. Too kind. She allowed her to use the same plate as the rest of the family, bought her new slippers, and added meat to her meals just like she did with her kids. Her madam was the sort of madam you wanted to impress, the kind you wanted to see smile and know you were the reason for the smile. So Olaide worked harder. She scrubbed the toilets places before the instructions came for her to do so, fetched water from the borehole at the town square as early as 6, balancing the bucket on her head, the weight of it making her stagger as she navigated the uneven paths. And when the kids poured food on the ground she had just swept or stepped on the tiles she was mopping, Olaide would say the word her madam usually said to the kids when they ran past a wet floor:
“Be careful.”
She would say it with the same fine accent her madam used, but make her tone lower and softer. Then she would start the chore again, gripping the mop or the broom with her small hands.
It was Friday, and there was a midterm break for the kids. So the house was noisier that morning, and dirtier. As Olaide cleaned, they littered, and it was just 10 in the morning. In the kitchen, dishes were sitting on the sink, waiting for her. Fifteen minutes ago, she had washed them. Fifteen minutes ago, she had gone to the parlour to clean up the mud stain on the carpet and rearrange the bed in the rooms. Now she was back in the kitchen, and not only were there plates to be washed, but the bucket under the sink was filling up, and the steady drip-drip was not stopping because the kids, one of them perhaps, had just poured water into the sink.
The P-trap in the sink was clogged, and this caused frequent leakage. Going outside to pour water that had gunk and food floating at the top was a chore Olaide detested the most. It didn’t help that she was expected to lug it down the street, switching between both palms as the metal handle dug into her palms and fingers, causing painful wounds. Exhausted at the thought of hauling the water down again, Olaide leaned her back against the wall, sliding down.
Her madam’s approaching voice of “Be careful” to the kids caused a sudden panic. Olaide stood erect, plastered a grin on her face, and moved to carry the pail. It was not just about the money her Baba got every month, Olaide wanted her madam to like her, to smile at her.
She was lugging the pail, switching from one hand to the other, and for a moment, out of naïve indulgence, she thought, instead of going all the way to the bush down the street, why didn’t she stop in front of the gate with the gutter? It was a gutter after all, with gunk and growing weeds. And that was what she did. She stopped at the house that had a tall fence surrounding it, a few blocks away from her madam’s own, and she turned the filled bucket over the gutter that separated the road from their gate.
Standing up, the gate opened, and a man she had never seen in the area emerged. He was bare from his waist up, and his blue jeans sagged with an unbuckled belt.
“You’re pouring dirty water in front of my house?” He growled in a strong accent she could not place.
“I no know sah. Please, I sorry, sah.”
“Where is your house?”
There was a fear, however irrational it may seem, that he would come over and harm her madam’s family if she told him. His face, those eyes, seemed capable of something dangerous. So she lied and said her house was three streets away.
“You came all the way from your street to pour yama-yama here? Don’t worry, I will teach you a lesson today.” And then he dragged her hand and began to pull her into the gate. Ravaged by a strong awareness of the looming danger, Olaide struggled to break free of his grasp, holding the wall to give her more strength. She could feel her nails scratching the paint off the wall. But he was stronger. With each strain, her legs moved closer.
Later, when she crept back home and was in the toilet washing off the blood stains, she dredged up the memory. Her shouting had been inaudible when he was pulling her into his house. There were no vibrations in her eardrum or itches in her throat from screaming too loudly. It sounded more like stifled, mumbled, desperate pleas. Why didn’t she scream? Why didn’t she tear down the neighbourhood with her wails? Why didn’t she use the pail in her hand to hit him on the head and run? Why was it that even as fear gripped her soul when he was dragging her inside his house, she was more concerned about causing a ruckus, of offending the neighbours with noise?
“Olaide!” her madam was calling her now.
“Why is my kitchen flooding up?” she was asking. “Where is the bucket?”
Olaide remembered, too, that for fear of losing the bucket, Olaide had held onto it tightly. She held onto it when he threw her against the sofa, when he pulled her skirt down, and she struggled to get free. But at the first thrust, the bucket loosened and slipped from her hand, rolling on the floor, the gunk’s residue splattering on his white rug.
“I leave it for outside, ma,” she called back out. She squeezed her eyes shut, hesitated, and added. “I go and carry it back.”
WENSUM 