The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré

Author:Abi Daré
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-02-03T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

When I enter my room at night, I sit on the edge of my bed, pull the newspaper out from my brassiere.

I been trying to push the thing to the far back of my mind since Kofi tell me about it, but I keep thinking of it, keep thinking, what if? What if I enter and they pick me and I am going to school?

I wide the newspaper on the bed, use my hand to straight it, and thin my eyes to read the whole thing with the moonlighting from the window. Big Madam sometimes don’t like us to be onning the light at night, but it is too dark to read, so I stand to my feets, go the window, and try to pull the curtain so I can be having more light, but inside the space between the metal gate and the window, there be a string of something shining.

I peep it well, confuse. It look like beads, a long, elastic string of it. Who owns the beads?

I hold my breath and pull, and it make a shree sound until it curl up in my palm like a small snake. I hold it up. What is this? It seem too big to be a neck-chain. The colors of each bead, the yellow, green, black, and red, make me think of Ikati, of some of the girls in the river that are wearing beads on their waist, and when they are dancing and playing, the beads will be making a clapping sound.

I was wanting beads when I was small, but my mama say she don’t like them, so I don’t ever be wearing them. Who owns these waist beads? I keep looking it, swinging it in my hand, and with each swing, I see that for every four beads in the thread, there is a red one, the red of Agan village, a kind of red that is orange under the moonlight and blood-red under the dark.

Was it belonging to Rebecca? Was she from Agan village? And why did she off her beads and hang it on the window metal gate?

I confuse even more. All the girls that are wearing beads in the village don’t be ever offing it from their waist. Never. They wear it from when they are like three years of age and don’t ever off it.

“Rebecca,” I whisper to the night air, “if you run away with your boyfriend like Kofi say, why did you not take your beads with you? Why did you off it?”

There is no answer to my question, no any sound at all, except of the generator humming outside, so I turn back, put the beads under my pillow, and climb my bed, with the newspaper folding in my hands. I try to sleep, but I feel heavy, cold. Something evil happen to Rebecca. I know it. Feel it inside of me, curling around my bones like the waist beads under my pillow.

I hold tight the newspaper, crunch it in my hands.

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