Say You’re One Of Them (15 page)

“
Hén,
what? Leave me alone. . . . I no want teach dem new lesson.”

“Ah no
o.
We still get at-sea orientation for dem
o. Na
last lesson.”

Big Guy looked up at the space between the walls and the roof and nodded, smiling as if he had just noticed the change. “I see, I see. You done change de place, huh. . . . Even de windows
dey
open.”

“
Na
my place.
N’gan bayi onú de jlo mi
. Or you want make I suffocate my children for my house?”

“
Ecoute,
if I be you,” Big Guy said, winking at us and pulling Fofo so close that they almost fell over, “I go just
dey
follow de plan and
dey
teach dese children. No dash deir hope for notting
o.
” The bedsprings squeaked, and they regained their balance. Fofo smiled a sad smile but didn’t answer him. “You just
dey
fear fear, Kpee.” Big Guy stood up. “Make we go talk outside.”

“Talk?”

“I get small matter I want tell you. Make we go.”

“Impossible,” Fofo said calmly, his elbows on his thighs, his fists together supporting his chin. “I go pay you back. I
dey
make some money wid Nanfang. Just gimme time,
na mi tán.
”

“Dis ting no be about money but helping our children. We can even give you
plus argent.
Come outside. Remember,
na
you be our point man for dis area?”

“Take de Nanfang,
abeg.
”

“No way,” he said, and shrugged a big shrug. “Keep de machine. Dat
na
wicked ting. We no go take your daily bread. You go destroy yourself if you negotiate like dis.”

Since he wouldn’t leave Fofo in peace, our uncle followed him outside.

“No come out
o, mes amis,
” Big Guy said to us in a voice that betrayed a grain of anxiety. “Remain inside.” We nodded. He opened the door for Fofo and closed it behind him as if our house were his.

Once their footsteps waned, we rushed to the window and watched them through the worn blinds. They walked until they reached the road and stopped. Fofo was facing us. We couldn’t hear them. The plantations and sea loomed behind the road, and sometimes it looked as if the plantations were on the sea or as if the people on the road were walking on water, like Jesus.

The two men argued loudly, raising their hands. Sometimes people who knew them startled them with greetings, and you could see them stop momentarily, flash empty smiles, then go back to business as if to make up for lost time. Fofo kept shaking his head, as if he were saying a big no to whatever his friend was saying. And each time I saw the
no
shape in his mouth, I felt like clapping for him. It became very predictable, and naturally I started shaking my head too, and my mouth formed many silent
no
s. I held tight to the window frame. I was praying for Fofo to stand firm.

Then Big Guy seized Fofo by the shoulders and shook him until Fofo spun and broke free, staggered and regained his balance. He didn’t move away from Big Guy but stood his ground.

“He’s going to beat up Fofo Kpee,” Yewa whispered. “Big Guy is mean. Is he a bully?”

“I don’t know.”

“Big Guy is a bad man.” Her voice began to crack with emotion. “I won’t dance with him anymore. And he won’t follow us to Gabon! I’ll report him to Mama and Papa.”

“Shhh, don’t cry now, OK? Fofo is strong.”

Suddenly, four police officers showed up and surrounded Fofo; they came in twos from either direction, as if they had expected Fofo to try to escape. They wielded
koboko
whips, and their waists bulged with pistols and batons. All of them were screaming at Fofo, with Big Guy getting more and more manic. Fofo Kpee’s mouth was shut, and he stood very still, like a man in the presence of unfriendly dogs. After watching the scene for a while, I knew that Big Guy was determined to get Fofo to agree with him. But Fofo folded his hands in front of him and shook his head periodically, very slowly. Whenever they looked in our direction, I ducked and dunked Yewa’s head under the window too.

It was quite a scene, because in all of Fofo’s years of being a tout, the police had never visited our place or harassed him for duping people. Yewa held my hand tightly. We didn’t know whether to lock ourselves inside or to run out toward the pool of bystanders that had gathered around and blocked our view.

The police tried to disperse the bystanders, but the people simply gave them a wide berth and kept watching. At the end Big Guy stormed away as abruptly as he had arrived, and the police went in different directions, their sudden departure startling the onlookers. Fofo stood there smiling at everybody as if the whole thing were a joke. We couldn’t hear what he was telling them, but from the way he was gesticulating and their periodic laughter, it was clear that his humor had returned. It was a relief; he was once again the
fofo
we knew. In a little while, the crowd lost interest and disappeared into the evening, leaving him there by the road, looking out at the sea and waving to people who waved to him.

Yewa broke free from my grasp, opened the door, and ran toward him, stumbling and shouting, “Fofo, Fofo!” He turned suddenly on hearing her and opened his mouth, but before he could speak Yewa came to a complete stop. With one sharp hand gesture, he sent her back to the house. She walked in sobbing while Fofo Kpee continued to look at the sea and the road.

When he finally turned and walked toward home, his strides were weak, his face down, his hands behind him as if in handcuffs. He walked slowly, as if he didn’t quite want to reach home. It must have been more difficult to come back to us that evening than it had been dealing with Big Guy and the police. He walked like a student who had committed a big offense and was afraid of being expelled.

That night he told us we should no longer go to school. It didn’t seem like a good time to ask questions, so we hushed.

FOFO
KPEE
NEVER
MENTIONED
Big Guy or Gabon in our presence again. And since Gabon had become the talk of our family and our impending departure the collective dream, its absence from our conversation created a vacuum in our lives. Fofo brooded and didn’t go to work. He didn’t say much to us. He seemed to be struggling even to get out of bed. He was no longer drinking. He read the Bible nonstop and prayed a lot—alone, never inviting us to join him as in the old days. His pride in his Nanfang dissipated, and he no longer washed it daily, nor tooted the horn nonstop nor rode it to church. Even his manner of dress became something else. He stopped wearing his jackets and beautiful shoes and went back to his flip-flops and rugged jeans, his pre-Nanfang clothes, whenever he left the house.

All our stuff in the inner room meant nothing to him now. In fact, it seemed he couldn’t bear going in there at all. He covered the bike completely, like we did the day we cemented the inner room. Even Yewa knew better than to talk about or play with the Nanfang. In those empty days, we expected Fofo to finish removing the mortar in the parlor to let in more air and to begin working in the other room. But he never did. And, though Fofo gazed at it nonstop when he lay on his bed, it was as if he lacked the willpower or interest to carry through with the project. Instead, he put all his energy into watching us and warning us not to follow or talk to anybody without his permission.

“Be careful,” he said to us the second day after Big Guy’s visit, “bad people
dey
mess wid oder people children!” It was the longest sentence we had heard from him since Big Guy roughed him up. I swallowed my reaction, because I didn’t want him to know what I was thinking.

He bought a machete and put it under his bed, where he could reach it in an instant. He carried a dagger in his pocket, even when we went to church. If we went outside to play, he came and sat on the mound, watching us without blinking, like a statue. Many times daily he walked around the compound, checking this and that, like a security man. If we went to the outhouse, we came out and saw him waiting, like the people who run commercial toilets in Ojota. If we wasted time, he came and knocked and asked whether we had fallen into the pit latrine. If he went out, he locked us up.

Seeing that he was ready to defend us by all means, I abandoned my plan to escape. I sensed he wasn’t going to let any harm come to us. When we walked to church, he held our hands, and when people asked him about the bike he said it was sick. We entered the church with the humility of our pre-Nanfang days. One Sunday, Fofo gave some money to Pastor Adeyemi to say a special prayer for him. When the man pressed him for details of his predicament, he said he had a little family problem.

THAT
AFTERNOON
,
WHILE
YEWA
was asleep, Fofo Kpee stood staring out of the window. “We must escape, Kotchikpa,” he whispered.

“Yes, Fofo!” I said, leaving my bed, moving toward him. I knew he was serious because he used my native name. Shocked by my response, he turned sharply from the window and came and sat on the edge of the table, facing me. I was bursting with excitement.

He wrung his hands, searching for words like a penitent: “I know say you want go dis Gabon well well . . .”

“I don’t want to go, Fofo, I do not!”

“Sofly, sofly,” he calmed me, batting down the air with both hands and then holding my hands like a supplicant. A nervous smile crossed his sad face. “Ah, we no want wake her. . . . I no fit sell you and Yewa to anybody, like de slaves of de Badagry slave-trade tales.
Iro
o,
I no fit allow dem ship you across dis ocean to Gabon. If you reach dat central African country,
c’est fini
. You no go smell dis West Africa soil again. . . . When Big Guy visit us last, I tell him say I no gree again. Riches no be everyting—I no want lose you.
Mais,
he
dey
very angry.”

“Just one question . . .”

“Yes?”

“Do our godparents know what Big Guy is doing to us?”

“Yes . . .
complétement
.”

He let go of my hands and looked away again, embarrassed. His answer managed to hit me hard, when it shouldn’t have. Since that night when I lost interest in Gabon, I had directed my anger toward Fofo and Big Guy only. And, though the pieces of the puzzle were coming together, I had refused to accept that the man and woman who were so nice to us and gave us an unforgettable buffet were bad people. But now, the shame in Fofo’s eyes squashed my doubts. I was angry with them.

“Can we run away now?” I asked.

“No . . . in de dark.
Egbé
.”

“Tonight?” I looked around, elated.

“Braffe . . .
din
. Gabon trip
na
one week from today. We go abandon everyting. No tell your sister anyting,
d’accord?
She no go understand.”

“Yes, yes.”

“I done tell de people who know us say we
dey
relocate to Braffe.”

THAT
EVENING
, I
WAS
SO anxious to leave and so disgusted by my surroundings that I couldn’t eat or even drink water. I saw my godparents in everything around me and heard their murmurings in the wind and distant voices. I looked out of the window often and wished I could blow out the sun like a candle or turn the world upside down so that the waters of our ocean could drown it. I begged God to send us the darkest of nights.

Unfortunately, when night came, it brought a miserly, disappointing darkness. Fofo emptied our water vats and threw away our soups. I woke up my sister and dressed her, though she was still half asleep. All of us wore our everyday clothes. Apart from our books, which Fofo stuffed into his bag and strung on the handlebars of the Nanfang, we didn’t take much. From the bulges in Fofo’s back pockets and shirt pockets, I believed he had taken all the money we had.

The stars were out, and a full moon hung low and bright, shining through a spray of dirty clouds. It was so bright that the mango tree and the bushes grew blurry shadows around them, and we could see as far as the sea, the coconut trees looking like an endless sheer dress. When Fofo rolled the Nanfang outside, the moon cast a dull shine on the gas tank. Though I had come to hate all our Gabon riches, that night I hoped that bike would take us to safety.

There was a lot of wind. It hurled the hoots of an owl against the night, an unmistakable refrain amid a cacophony of insects and the sough of coconut foliage. Suddenly the wind choked and broke off, the trees, which had been pushed in one direction, jerking back past their normal postures. A coconut trunk snapped and crashed, and the night creatures hushed for a while.

Fofo locked the door with a chain and a big padlock. He didn’t allow Yewa to sit in her usual place, on the tank, since she wasn’t fully awake. Instead she was sandwiched between us. I guided my sister’s feet with mine so they would stay on the footrests. There wasn’t much room. Fofo didn’t rev the bike as he normally did. Like the escapees from Sodom and Gomorrah, I didn’t look back but straight ahead. Our headlight was dim, and we traveled very slowly because of all the potholes. The soft whir of the Nanfang broke up the silent night, steady and consoling. Fofo knew the road well, since he used it every day, and went from one side to the other, effortlessly avoiding the potholes. The road took us away from the ocean, toward the cluster of homes nearest our place. The houses looked deserted in the moonlight, and in front of them, the long empty tables and stalls where villagers sold their wares during the day looked like the skeletons of prehistoric animals.

After a while, I glanced back and saw two bright dots of light behind us. They were very far away and seemed to be moving all over the road, as if two children were playing with flashlights. Fofo looked into the side mirror, then back, and the bike wobbled. When he steadied the Nanfang, he sped up a bit.

“Let’s go fast,” said my sister, who was now wide-awake.

“Road no good,” Fofo said. “You get eyes?
Soit patient
till we reach Cotonou-Ouidah Road.”