by Uwem Akpan
“Big Guy, calm down, look at me, o jare . . . you worry too much.”
Big Guy shrugged and said, “No, Big Guy no dey worry. Na you dey worry.”
We could tell that Big Guy was disappointed. He pursed his lips so hard that we saw a bit of the red of his nostrils, embers of the anger he was fighting to control. As I said, I didn’t worry because I had seen Fofo in more difficult situations, and I was confident he would calm the man.
“What about de house?” Fofo Kpee said, gesturing at our house.
“What about it?” Big Guy said, without even giving our house a look, though Fofo continued to encourage him.
Its zinc roof was completely covered with rust, and the two rooms had no ceilings. The walls were made of mud and plastered with cement, and in the narrow veranda, there were mounds on either side of the door, for sitting, which is where Fofo wanted Big Guy to be if he didn’t want to enter the house. The eaves were supported by pillars made of coconut wood.
“You like it?” Fofo asked.
“Your house dey OK for de business for now,” Big Guy said. “I want leave.”
“You see, you see,” Fofo told him, chuckling. “At least I do one ting well.”
“Well, after, we go build de one wey better pass dis one . . . bigger.”
“Ça ira, ça ira . . . Tings go work out.”
Big Guy walked away, the disappointment still in his eyes.
“Of course, only dead people dey owe us!” he said. “Only dead people.”
“I sure say nobody go die. . . . Well, as de Annang people dey say, de dead no dey block de way, de killer no dey live forever,” Fofo Kpee called out to him, laughing. “See you tomorrow, á demain o. And make you greet ta famille pour me o.”
WE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT to make of the motorcycle when Big Guy left. We stood around it quietly, as if a long lost member of our family had returned. Fofo Kpee stared at our faces, as if he had given us a puzzle and wanted to see the first sparks of our comprehension.
“Nanfang!” Yewa exclaimed, breaking the spell. “Zoke˙ke˙ . . . zoke˙ke˙!”
“Who owns it?” I gasped.
“Us o,” Fofo said, and chuckled. “Finalement, we get zoke˙ke˙!”
“Us? Zoke˙ke˙?” I said.
“Oui o, Kotchikpa, my son.”
Yewa began to circle the bike in silence, like a voodoo priest at his shrine, her hands held out but afraid to make contact. She had large brown eyes that now shone out from her lean face, as if the machine’s aura forbade them to blink. Her hair was short, like a boy’s, and she wore only pink underpants, her stomach bloated. Her legs stepped lightly, her feet in socks of dust. My palms, dirtied from stoking the cooking fire with wood and making sure the pot of Abakaliki rice didn’t fall off our stone tripod behind the house, began to sweat. I held my hands away from the bike and away from my shorts, rubbing my fingers against my palms.
“We belong to you,” Yewa chanted in a whisper to the machine. “You belong to us, we belong to you.”
“Yeah, daughter,” said Fofo, enjoying our bewilderment. “God done reward our faitfulness. . . . Nous irons to be rich, ha-ha!”
The sudden merriment in his voice stopped Yewa. She looked at my face, then at Fofo’s, as if we had conspired to trick her. Fofo Kpee opened his portmanteau, which he carried to the border every day, and pulled out the invoice for the bike from Cotonou City. It was too much for us. I started clapping, but Fofo stopped me, saying he didn’t have enough drinks yet to offer people who might be attracted by the noise. I held my hands apart, palms facing each other as if they were of two opposing magnetic poles, my desire to clap repelled by Fofo’s warning. Then a wave of happiness rose within me, and I ran inside, washed my hands, and put on a shirt and my flip,-flops, as if an important visitor had descended on us. When I came out, Fofo had opened our door and pushed the thing into our parlor-cum-bedroom. He lit a kerosene lantern and put it on a stand near the door to the inner room. The lantern’s rays played above the Nanfang’s fuel tank, outshining its two-tone design like the glow of a setting sun over the waves of the Atlantic.
To lock the front door, Fofo pulled out a plank of wood from under our bed and placed it snugly on the metal latches. Tonight, he tested the lock’s strength, putting his left shoulder on the bar and carefully applying his weight. He sighed and nodded, beaming contentedly at the bike.
“We must buy new doors for de house,” Fofo Kpee said.
“Windows also,” Yewa blurted out, her attention still wrapped around the Nanfang as if the windows were part of it.
“Yeah, pas du problem,” he said, and started locking up the two little square wooden windows on either side of the door. “We go change les choses lo˙pa lo˙pa, many tings, I tell you.”
There were two six-spring beds on either side of the room and a low wooden table in between. I slept with Yewa in one bed, while Fofo had the other bed to himself. Our clothes were in cartons under the beds, but Fofo’s important clothes hung at one corner of the room, from a bambu pole suspended from the rafters by two ropes. Because the room was small, the bike stood, poking its handlebars and front tire into the wardrobe, like a cow whose head is lost in the tall grass it’s eating. In the evenings, when we gazed into the roof, its rusty texture looked like stagnant brown clouds, no matter the brilliance of our lantern. On very hot days we could hear the roof expand with little knocking sounds.
Now we drew closer and gawked, and smelled and felt the Nanfang’s body. Fofo had to shout at me twice to warn me about bringing the lantern too close to the machine. The smell of newness overpowered the stuffiness of the room. Yewa pulled at the clear plastic that covered the seats and lights and mudguards, until Fofo warned her not to remove them.
“I get someting for vous,” Fofo Kpee said to calm us down. He sank into his bed and dug into the portmanteau and offered us little cones of peanuts and half-melted toffees from his pocket, which we chewed in the wrappers. That night Fofo didn’t tell us stories about which he laughed louder than we did. He brought out a bottle of Niyya guava juice and poured us a drink. “Hey, temps de celebration,” Fofo Kpee said. “We tank God!”
“We bless his name!” we responded.
He raised his cup. “Ah, we no create poverty. . . . Cheers à la Nanfang!”
“Cheers!” we responded, tipping our cups.
It had been a long time since we had fruit juice. Yewa drank hers immediately, in one long endless gulp, tilting the cup so quickly that the juice poured from both sides of her face and dribbled onto her belly, thick red teardrops. I took one gulp and stopped, thinking it would be better to save the juice until dinner, and went to set my cup down on a safe spot between the lantern stand and the wall.
The excitement of that night was such that when we finally descended on the Abakaliki rice and stew of onions, kpomo, and palm oil, we didn’t mind if we found little pebbles in the rice. No matter how thoroughly you picked the rice for stones, you couldn’t get rid of all of them. Now, occasionally, we cracked a pebble, held our jaws, and washed down the half-chewed food with juice. Though Fofo Kpee used to scold me each time he bit into a pebble, because it was my job to pick the rice, that night he didn’t. We were celebrating our Nanfang. And with my stingy sips of juice, I could stand any amount of sand in the rice that night.
When I got down to the last gulp, I stopped and saved it. I had water instead and ate and drank until my stomach filled up, the palm oil in the stew yellowing my lips. Then I downed the rest of the juice so the taste would remain in my mouth until I went to bed.
“KOTCHIKPA, MY BOY, QUICK quick, go prepare de inner room for de Nanfang!” Fofo Kpee told me after dinner.
“Yes, Fofo Kpee,” I said.
“Let the Nanfang stay here!” Yewa appealed to him. She was still jumping up and down, celebrating.
“Ah non, my gal,” Fofo said. “Next room for Nanfang.”
“I shall sleep inside, then,” my sister said, bowing her head to her chest and looking sad.
“With Nanfang.”
“Je dis non, Yewa,” Fofo insisted, and tried to change the subject: “I go buy tree new book for you. Your teacher go dey happy well well for you now, yes?”
“I don’t want books,” Yewa said.
“Hmmm, you no want book?” he asked. “D’accord, new crayons? Pencils?”
She shook her head. “I want to sleep avec Nanfang . . .”
“Haba!” Fofo Kpee shut her up.
Yewa sat down on the floor in protest, facing the machine, her back to us. Fofo went over and squatted behind her and caressed her shoulders, while she shrugged and tried to push him off.
“Ah, mon Yewa, mon Yewa,” he sweet-talked her, “you go learn how to write. You be future professor!”
“No,” Yewa said, shaking her head vigorously, as if a bug had just entered her nostril. Yewa was like that when she set her mind on something, stubborn and saying little.
“Ah non, you no want be agbero like me, oui?”
“Leave me alone.”
Fofo leaned over to pour more juice into her cup, but she refused.
“Why you no want be good gal today?” he said. “Well, Kotchikpa no go write for you. Everyone must learn to write. Education est one person, one vote.”
Yewa was silent.
“Yewa, tu es toujours un bébé!” I said, trying to coax her out of her stubbornness. “Crybaby!”
“Leave me alone.”
“Oya, I go buy you sandal for school” Fofo Kpee begged her. She still didn’t get up, so Fofo stood, shrugged, and came and sat on his bed and faced me. “Kotchikpa, je t’acheterai two textbook plus an exercise book, d’accord?”
“Books for me?” I said, excited. “When?”
“Tomorrow. You no go borrow book again for school. Since you like to read, you go dey read every night.”
“Thanks, Fofo Kpee,” I said, and glanced at the new bike, as if to acknowledge that without it coming into our lives I wouldn’t have had what I needed for school.
“Witout education, you children, comme moi, go just rot for dis town, where danger full everywhere. No, I go try make sure say una go dey rich. I go even make sure say una go come be like de children of our politicians and leaders. Una go go school sef for abroad.” He paused, then turned sharply to Yewa. “Hey, mon bébé, no problem if you no want be professor. Abi, you want become international businesswoman, yes? Anyway, you go dey cross dis ocean to Gabon, go come, go come, as if you dey go toilet,” he said, snapping his fingers and pointing in the direction of the ocean.
“Give us a ride on the Nanfang,” Yewa said suddenly, in a petulant voice. I felt she wanted to be granted this, since she couldn’t sleep in the same room with the Nanfang.
“Easy, pourquoi pas?” our uncle said, going over to pour her more juice. “C’est tout?”
“Yes, take us out, Fofo, please,” said Yewa, turning around. She was struggling not to smile, trying to remain angry, as if she still had all the power.
“Oh no, me I be responsible man,” Fofo Kpee said in a cooing voice, and smiled a large smile. His face creased and lessened the tension on his left eye, making the scar on his cheek look artificial. “How me go come risk una life when I never sabi how to drive de zoke˙ke˙ yet? Gimme time . . . I go carry you go anywhere. . . . Bois . . . bois. Drink . . . drink.”
“Allons Braffe! To see Papa and Mama!” I said.
My sister quickly unstuck her mouth from the cup, swallowed, and said breathlessly, “Yes, yes, to Braffe . . . to Braffe!”
“Absolutement,” Fofo said.
“Tomorrow,” Yewa said.
“No . . . impossible.”
“Mr. Big Guy will ride us,” I said.
Fofo shook his head. “Ah non, you want shame me, mes enfants? How me go arrive for Braffe village when I never fit drive my zoke˙ke˙? No, make we wait small. I go learn fast. . . . Even sef, I never get enough money to visit Braffe now.”
“Papa and Mama will be happy to see us and the Nanfang,” Yewa said, and got up and came to sit on the bed with me.
“Grandpapa will give you many handshakes. Grandmama will dance,” I said. “Hey, let’s go on Monday.”
“Kotchikpa, Monday?” Fofo Kpee said incredulously. “No, I go first come your school to pay school fees on Monday. . . . School before pleasure, right, mon peuple, right?”
“Yes, Fofo,” I said. When I looked at my sister, happiness had taken over her face. She started babbling about our family in the village.
We hadn’t seen them for one and a half years, since Fofo came to the village to take us to live with him. Papa, a short chubby man with a stern face, was bedridden, tended by our dutiful and teary grandmother. Mama, a mountain of a woman, with an everlasting smile and restless energy, had already lost her bulk, become emaciated, and couldn’t walk to the farm without resting two or three times under the ore trees by the roadside. No matter how many times we asked, nobody volunteered any information about our parents’ sickness. Our relatives talked in hushed voices about it, a big family secret. However, by eavesdropping, I learned that my parents had AIDS, though I didn’t know what it meant then.
Before we left home, our relatives gathered in our parents’ living room, and Papa and Mama told us to be obedient to Fofo Kpee, not to disgrace them by being ungrateful to him at the border town to which he was taking us. They said he would henceforth be our father and mother and that I was to show a good example to Yewa and to protect the name of our family at all costs. I promised everyone I would be good. Fofo said he was happy to take care of his brother’s children and said he would bring us back to the village to visit our parents and our older siblings, Ezin and Esse and Idossou, whenever time and resources allowed. My grandpapa, the gentle patriarch of our extended family, prayed over us that morning before we left on the Glazoué Cotonou Road. Grandmama sobbed silently beside Papa, who had turned his face to the wall to cry. I remember our siblings and a host of relatives waving to us until our bus turned the corner, heading south.
Now, whenever we asked Fofo about our parents, he always said that they were recovering. He said they were eager to see us and we would soon go back to visit, but it was more important that we got used to our new home and studied hard in school. That Nanfang night, in my excitement, I was already thinking of the celebration that would sweep through our family when we rode in on the motorcycle, and everyone saw that one of theirs had brought home something better than a Raleigh bicycle. I figured once we got off the machine, Ezin and Esse and Idossou would be the first to get a ride. I could imagine Mama and our aunties cooking up pots of obe aossin, melon soup; iketi, cornmeal; and mounds of egun, pounded yam; and Papa and his brothers making sure there was plenty of chapalo, local beer. I looked forward to seeing all our friends and cousins, telling them about the beauty of the ocean and all the border hassles. We might even arrange a soccer match between all the boys in our extended family and another family in the village.
FOFO KPEE PULLED OUT a bag from under his bed and rested it on his lap like a baby, feeling for something inside without looking, until he grabbed and pulled out an old green four-angle schnapps bottle. It was half filled with payó. He shook it and opened it, the local gin’s pungency briefly overpowering the scent of the new bike. He sipped slowly from the bottle, his eyes glittering in the heat of the drink, his left eye shining more because it was bigger, the scar looking like a large tear flowing down his cheek.
“S’il vous plaît,” Yewa whined again, gawking at the drink, “I want to sleep with my Nanfang tonight. Just tonight.” Her little bony face was upturned, the yellow lantern light washing over one side like a half moon. Tears shone from the lighted part of her face.
“If you want small payó, say it,” Fofo Kpee said. But Yewa pretended not to hear what he said. “Gal, you go be big-time businesswoman for Gabon. You be hard bargainer!”
“Please,” Yewa said.
Fofo Kpee gave up and poured some gin into the silver top of the bottle and then into Yewa’s
mouth. Yewa swallowed, cleared her throat, and smacked her lips contentedly. She didn’t say anything else, but just stroked the spokes of the motorcycle gently as if they were the strings of some beloved musical instrument.
“Finish de room for de zoke˙ke˙, den I go give you your drink,” Fofo told me. “Payó head no good for Nanfang!”
I entered the inner room, which was smaller than the first, and began to move things around to make space for the machine. The room had become our treasure store and had been filling up recently, with the sudden change in our lifestyle. I picked up packets of roof nails and gaskets and placed them on the pile of secondhand corrugated roofing sheets by the far wall, near the back door. There were two huge black plastic water vats, neither of which needed to be moved, in opposite corners of the room, and five bags of Dangote cement, stacked by the near wall below the window, that kept shedding a fine gray dust. After I began to move things, a stuffy thickness filled the air. My nostrils felt itchy, and I sneezed three times. If we swept the room, even with the two windows open, the dust whirled up and beclouded everything like the harmattan haze. I began to work the bolt on one window to let in the humid ocean air.
“No open de window o!” Fofo said from the parlor, his voice raspy from the gin. “You want expose my zoke˙ke˙ to tieves, huh? A yón cost of Nanfang?”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“You better be—nuluno˙!”
I went on to rearrange the corner of the room where our food and utensils were. On a big upturned wooden mortar, I put a wicker basket of plates and cutlery. The long black pestle was leaning in the corner, its head white and cracked by use. I stacked up three empty pots, careful not to touch their soot, careful not to touch our pot of egusi soup, which I had already warmed for the night. Stirring it would make it sour before morning. Soon, Fofo, in a solemn procession, brought in the machine and stood it at the center of the room, like a giant bearing down on everything, an athlete poised at the starting line.