Busy Bee

Adjo Agbedefu’s biological clock yanked her from sleep in the stuffy shack long before dawn. Her husband, who had gone to bed hours before her snored at the far side of the bed, against the rusting roofing sheet wall. Adjo stretched her aching body, moaned from her burning heart, and scratched her withered skin itchy with bed bug and mosquito bites. Her mouth still tasted bitter from the malaria threatening her since the day before.

Gingerly she reached out her foot and felt for the ground between the bodies of her children sprawled on mats spread on the floor. She swung the other leg out of the straw-filled

bed and tip-toed between the children stretched right up to the door. She pushed it open and a breath of cool air washed over her.

Adjo crossed the courtyard and slid into the kitchen. She groped in the dark for a box of safety matches. She groaned when she couldn’t find the box where she had left it on a table. Tut-tutting, she fumbled everywhere until matches rattled somewhere. She cursed; and before the cock crowed, she had beans sputtering on charcoal fire and before the sounds of the city began she had the stew of cotton oil sizzling.

“Wake up!” Adjo shouted to her children when a neighbour’s radio announced six o’clock, tip-toed over their squirming bodies and disappeared behind the dirt-grimed cotton partition screening the bed from the room and changed her faded cloth for a less faded one she used for peddling food.

With her two-year-old daughter Sena strapped to her back, her eldest son, twelve-year-old Kodjo, helped lift the bowl of beans topped with a pan of gari—a fried cassava dough meal—and two pots of oil—the fried and palm—onto her head and she slogged out, crying “Hot beans here!” Hopefully she would sell enough today to go to the health centre.

            Adjo crossed rue Bougainvillier and entered rue Hibiscus perpendicular to it.

            “Beans seller!” the first customer called Adjo and she stopped crying her ware. The customer helped her lower the load to the ground. Adjo served her and the customer helped her carry the load back onto her head and she went off crying again. She served her customers right up to the intersection with rue de la Frontière, then turned left and soon clomped down rue Jasmin, parallel to rue Hibiscus. She saw a group of young men and slowing down, shouted louder to attract their attention but they went on arguing.

            “Beans seller!” one of them yelled when Adjo was three houses away.

            Adjo sighed and turned slowly. Do they think that it’s easy to hawk food?

            When she came back the men left Adjo standing for a while before one of them helped her with one hand to carry down the food. Adjo had to support most of the weight to prevent the food from tumbling. Then she had to wait for tempers to cool down before getting the order. Getting paid also took minutes. It was with joy that she left them. She had just turned the fourth corner when she bumped into the city council ticket seller.

            “Please wait!” Adjo pleaded as the man grabbed the roll of tickets.

            “What’s the matter?” The man sounded cross.

            “Today many people bought on credit.”

            “That’s your business,” the ticket seller said, tore off a ticket and tended it towards her.

            Adjo’s sad face hardened into a scowl as she fetched the two hundred francs cfa—about half a dollar—from a waistband, paid and stomped away. The rising sun spewed out more heat. Soon, Sena began to whimper. Adjo shook her and she soon shut up. Minutes later Sena cried again. Adjo loosened the cloth in which she was tied, drew her into her armpit area and thrust her breast into her mouth. Sena sucked hungrily.

            “What’s in that dry thing?” a lady passing by said. She helped Adjo carry down her load and Adjo gave Sena some beans mixed with gari and oil. Satisfied, Sena began to prattle.

Adjo kissed her and strapped her back onto her back. By ten, Adjo’s bowl felt light enough for her to return home.

She checked her sales. Her heart fluttered lightly. She had made some profit. She strolled to the market to pay creditors for beans, gari, oil, and condiments and to collect fresh supplies. Back home, Adjo picked foreign matter, especially pieces of stones, from the beans.

“Why do I always have to ask you to make fire for me to cook for you?” Adjo castigated her ten-year-old daughter, Lawoe, as she and her two brothers returned from school at noon and wore long faces.

“We’re hungry,” Lawoe said.

“And the food should cook itself for you to eat?”

Lawoe slouched into the kitchen and soon was coughing from smoke.

“Up to now you still don’t know how to make fire?” Adjo boomed.

“The charcoal’s too hard,” Lawoe mumbled and Adjo strode into the kitchen to help her. She struggled with the fire wondering why nobody sold good charcoal anymore. It took some time for her children to have steaming akume—a corn flour meal—and herring sauce to eat.

It was when her children returned to school at 2.30 and Sena had gone to sleep and the two other children had slipped out to play that Adjo found time to doze on a stool in the kitchen.

            Half an hour later Adjo jerked awake. The children’s clothes had to be washed. She swapped at the hordes of houseflies feeding on the dishes and wondered whether to start from there. She was still debating when the sun’s rays dimmed and she sprang up and fetched water from the well and did the laundry first. Then she scoured the dishes clean. Glancing at her whitened hands she wished they would always be as soft as now. When dry, her palms felt as calloused as parched leather.

            Adjo stretched her back and remained half-bent, wincing. Was she getting old at thirty-two? She was wondering when her raw hand flew to her forehead. Her head throbbed as

if a sledge-hammer banged in there. She must do something about her malaria before it struck her down. She needed to be costantly on her feet, esle... She sighed.

            Adjo dragged herself outside. It was too late to go to the health centre. She wasn’t too keen on going there anyway. One pays a consultation fee there. Also they often prescribed medicine which she could hardly afford.

            At the roadside Adjo explained her problem to the woman selling drugs brought in by traders.

            The woman rummaged through the packets of drugs and pulled out a yellow box from which she extracted white, large tablets. “This is like quinine,” she said. “You’d take two now and tomorrow two in the morning, the same in the afternoon and in the evening.” She again fetched two blister packs of coloured tablets. “These are strong multivitamins. Take one of each now and the same dose in the morning, afternoon and evening.”

            Adjo thanked her profusely and trotted off. She has paid less than a consultation fee for medicine which would no doubt restore her health.

            Back home Adjo took the medicine as instructed, washed her children and had a cold bath herself as directed by the medicine seller.

            “Kodjonon,” a tenant said to her, “have you drank some medicine already?”

            Adjo nodded. “And I feel a little better now. That lady at the roadside knows medicine!”

            “What would we the poor do without her?”

            “We’d all die,” Adjo said.

            “Sure,” the tenant said. “Do take a moment’s rest, okay?”

            Adjo agreed and sat down to rest. Immediately work beckoned to her.

            Adjo rushed to the market and credited provisions for supper. On the way back she felt the world whirling, her feet wobbling and her stomach threatening to empty its contents. She

rushed home just in time to have a bitter, yellowish mixture rush out. She retched some more and depleted her stomach of the little food in it. Soon the retching only pulled in her flat stomach and flooded her sides with pains. She leaned against the soot-grimed kitchen wall, panting. Soon she began to feel better. Then she was on her feet again but felt too weak to work. She waited till the children returned from school. She prepared supper with Lawoe, going through the chores like a film in slow motion.

            An hour after eating supper and taking the tablets again, Adjo began to feel better. She washed the beans and scooped them onto the fire.

            “What’s for supper?” her husband said after parking the old Datsun 160 taxicab in the owner’s garage across the street and strolling into the house, “I’m famished!”

            Adjo sighed and leered at him. What her husband gave was not enough to feed the two of them, yet with six kids he expected to eat like a king.

            Adjo served him.

            “Is this for a baby or for a man like me?” he barked.

            Eat it or leave it, Adjo muttered to herself, strutting out, and then pranced to the gas station to buy kerosene. Power shedding by the electricity company had made her evening business thrive. Back home, her older children helped her to fill half- and quarter-litre bottles. Then she asked them to go and study their lessons. Adjo remained in front of the house selling the fuel.

            “Any coins, Adjo?” her husband asked, going out.

            “I haven’t sold anything,” she grumbled.

            “You never sell anything,” he observed.

            “I can’t look after your kids and yourself.” Her voice rose.

Her husband tittered and slunk away.

Useless man, Adjo sneered. Who should work for you to drink?

Soon the noises of the city began to die down. Adjo was getting ready to go in when her husband came tottering back.

“I’d be waiting for you, Adjo,” he said drunkenly.

Adjo tutted and went on packing. Inside, she stowed away her dishes, tip-toed over the children, and crawled wearily into bed.

            “Adjo,” her husband soon whispered.

            She remained still.

            “Are you already asleep?” he asked in a beggar’s voice.

            Adjo tried to cut off her breath.

            Her husband shook her.

            Adjo grunted.

            “Adjo?” His tone was insistent.

            “Yes?” she drawled.

            He brushed his palm over her body.

            Adjo stiffened. Lord, let this senseless brute leave me alone.

            “What’s the matter?” he said, somewhat edgy.

            “Don’t you know I’m sick?” she retorted.

            “Sh-h-h-h,” he whispered, “you’d wake up the children.”

            Adjo pulled the covercloth over her head and tried to sleep.

            Her husband breathed hard. Soon he was caressing her shoulder.                         

Adjo firmly brushed off his hand. “Don’t you feel for others?” she said and curled herself some more.

 “I do but ... Well, you know how I feel, don’t you?”

“I don’t! So leave me alone!” She snorted.

“Please! Please! Please!” he offered and withdrew to his side of the bed. Soon he rolled back and was begging and pleading as if his very existence depended on what he wanted. The night waits for nobody. Day would soon be here and she has to be up and about. To have opportunity to sleep, she gave her husband what he wanted.

            Adjo sighed. Although she had lost, she felt triumphant. Her husband hadn’t totally won. He has been talking about having another child. All he knew was to make her pregnant. He didn’t worry about the accompanying expenses. How she regretted for not going to the family planning centre long ago for that injection! Tomorrow she would go to the Welfare Centre to ask what all this strange thing about marital rape was about. She was sure that would help her control their sexual relationship too. A pot standing on three legs cannot tumble over: Next, she would have to join a micro-credit union to achieve financial independence.

            For the first time in the day and for several days, a big smile crossed Adjo’s haggard face.