She’d laid there on the floor. Rest, she’d thought. For a moment. Just rest. She thought briefly about how odd it all was: She’d spent so much time trying to work out how to protect Simisola from her father’s plans, but she needn’t have done. For it was clear that Simi had already worked out how to protect herself.
Finally, when she was able, Monifa moved hesitantly to the kitchen. From the refrigerator, she brought out ice. She was wrapping a few cubes into a kitchen towel when the phone began to ring. She let it go to message and heard, then, her mother’s voice. “Abeg no vex me, Monifa. You must answer this phone. Abeo has rung me. I know what has happened. Pick up the phone.”
Monifa did, as always, what she was told to do. But she said, “What has Abeo told you?”
Her mother’s answer was, “You must not be a mumu wife, Monifa. You must not oppose Abeo in this. He will kill you, daughter. You must stop this at once.”
“I found someone to do it,” Monifa cried. “It was to be done in a way that Simisola would not suffer the way I suffered.”
“Monifa, listen well well. Let Abeo bring her to Nigeria. I will tell him he may stay with us so that Simisola can see her granny, yes? I will make the arrangements here. I will see it’s done proper way.”
“There is no ‘proper way’ in Nigeria, not where you live,” Monifa told her.
“I will see to it.”
“Like you saw to me?”
A silence before her mother said, “That was many, many years ago. It is different now.”
“How is it different? I won’t do it. No.”
Her mother’s sigh was perfectly audible, even at all this great distance from her. “Monifa, daina. I ask you this. What good are you to Simisola if you are dead, eh? What happens to her if you are gone? Abeg. Let him bring her to me and I will see she does not come to harm.”
Monifa didn’t reply. Tears seeped from her eyes, easing beneath the kitchen towels that held the ice and snaking down her cheeks.
“Monifa, are you there? You hear me? I can ring him now?”
Silently, Monifa replaced the phone. She lowered herself painfully to one of the chairs at the table. She returned the kitchen towel and the ice to her face and was sitting there when the door opened. She steeled herself to what would come next.
But it was Tani who spoke, “Mum! Fuck! What’d he do to you?”
Hastily she lowered the ice, but that act and what it revealed caused him to cry out, “I’m taking you to A and E. Let’s go.”
“No,” she said. “That will make things worse.”
“So what’s it going to be?” Tani demanded. “Are you just going to let him kill you? Then, what? I c’n take care of myself, Mum, but Simi can’t.”
“She managed . . . Yesterday, she went. She knew what to do. She will be—”
“Bloody goddamn hell, Mum. I was here. I was in the bedroom. She didn’t take herself anywhere. I took her.”
“Where?”
“Someplace safe.”
“Where? You must tell me.”
“Tha’s not on. No way am I letting him beat it out of you. You won’t find her. Neither will he.”
Tani had his rucksack with him, and he dropped this on the table where she sat. He opened it. He riffled through its contents and brought out a sheaf of papers. They appeared to be documents that had been filled out. “This’s called a protection order,” he told her. “It’s meant to keep Simi safe. It’s all filled out but you got to add information ’bout wha’s been going on round here. You got to write that Dad is planning to take her to Nigeria so she can be cut. An’ you got to sign it. ’F you do that, I mean if it comes from you direct, we c’n get an urgent order, and Pa doesn’t learn ’bout it till it’s all done. It means we don’t need to wait for papers to go through some government system. It gets done fast—like today, Mum—an’ only later is there a hearing.”
“A hearing? With a judge? A magistrate? I cannot—”
“Yes, you can. ’Specially if you ever want to see Simi again. An’ I mean that. Cos ’nless you fill out these parts of the order I lef’ blank, I’m not bringing her back. You got to write all of it out. You got to include the cutter here in London. You got to explain how Dad means to take Simi to Nigeria now, how he’s going to have her cut there, how he’s going to arrange for her marriage, and all the rest.”