Say You’re One Of Them (6 page)

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.

That night, the bike followed me into the land of my dreams. I rejected Suzuki, Honda, and Kawasaki and chose a Nanfang and became rich forever. I used it to climb the coconut trees, learned to park on the palms, and used coconut milk for gas. I rode it across the ocean, creating a huge wake behind me. I flew it like a helicopter to distant places and landed it many times in my father’s compound in Braffe. At school, all my classmates had Nanfangs, and we played soccer riding them, like in polo. I rode my Nanfang until I grew old, but the Nanfang neither aged nor needed repairs. At the end of my life, my people buried me atop it, and I rode that Nanfang straight to heaven’s gate, where Saint Peter gave me an automatic pass.

FOR
FOUR
DAYS
, WE watched Big Guy teach Fofo Kpee how to ride along the strips of grass in the coconut plantation. From our house, we could see Fofo perched on the bike, his face split in two by his trademark laugh. He looked like a pantomime because we couldn’t hear him or the bike over the sound of the ocean. Big Guy’s shaven head was so oiled that it reflected the sun. Both of them seemed to be having fun, and on the horizon, a ship heading to or leaving Porto Novo dragged a black funnel of smoke across the sky.

The next Sunday, we got ready for church. Fofo had informed the pastor that we were going to have our first Family Thanks-giving, which was what some well-to-do families did every Sunday.

At dawn, Fofo Kpee woke up and took the Nanfang behind the house and propped it on our bathing stone. He undressed it of its plastic covers as gingerly as one would remove stitches from a wound. He poured Omo detergent into a bucket of water and swirled and rattled the water until it foamed. Gently, he sponged the frame and scrubbed the tires, as if they would never touch the ground again. After rinsing the Nanfang, he wiped it with the towel the three of us shared. During our own bath, he squatted and soaked our feet and scrubbed them with a new
kankan,
a native sponge, for the big occasion. He held the
kankan
like a shoe brush and worked on our soles until their natural color returned, until the fissures disappeared.

Later, Fofo Kpee rode us to church, wearing a new
agbada
and huge sunglasses, which gave him a bug-eyed look. The wind pumped up the flanks of his
agbada
like malformed wings. It was our first ride: Yewa was on the gas tank, clutching our family Bible, sporting her flowery dress and new baseball cap. In a pair a of corduroys and a green T-shirt, I was crushed in between Fofo and two acquaintances of his. The woman behind me was dangling a big squawking red rooster by its tied legs on one side of the machine. She was a large woman and her big headgear hovered over me like a multicolored umbrella. The man at the end of the bike carried on his head a basket with three yams, pineapples, oranges, a bag of
amala
flour, and five rolls of toilet paper.

A triumphant midmorning sun filled the day, and a clear blue sky beckoned us. The road was crowded with churchgoers. Fofo Kpee sped off, tooting his horn nonstop, flashing the lights to clear the road ahead of us. The crowd parted before us like the Red Sea before Moses’s rod. Some people waved and cheered us on. My chest swelled with pride, and my eyes welled up with tears, which the wind swept onto my earlobes.

When we got to Our Redeemer Pentecostal Church, Big Guy was waiting by the entrance, smiling at us like an usher. He had shaved his beard, and in his gray suit and loafers, he looked even taller and more intimidating. He stood as straight as one of the thin pillars that adorned the church’s entrance. The church was a big, uncompleted rectangular structure. The new roof shone in the bright sun, but the church had no doors or windows yet, and the walls hadn’t been plastered. You could hear hundreds of shoes shuffling on what we called the “German floor” as worshippers walked in and found their places among the pews, which, for now, were planks set on blocks.

Fofo parked the bike under a guava tree, although not before he had felt the ground around the stand with his right foot to see whether it was safe to do so. He unfolded a big tarp and covered the Nanfang, in case it rained, however unlikely that was.

“Ah,
mon ami,
good morning
o!
” Fofo greeted Big Guy, grabbing his hand when we got to the door.

“I tell you say I no go miss dis one,” Big Guy said, and pulled us aside, away from the doorway. “Somehow, I been tink
say
you go bring de oder children to church.”

Fofo Kpee froze. “
Wetin?
Which children, Big Guy?” he said.

Big Guy looked away. “You know
wetin
I
dey
talk, Smiley Kpee, you know.”

Big Guy wasn’t as agitated or angry as he had been when he brought the Nanfang and said he expected to see
five
children. Now, there was an uneasy silence between the two men. The four of us looked like an island in the river of people entering the church.

“OK, God bless you,” Fofo Kpee said, and nudged him on the side. “Make we talk about dis matter
oso˙
.”

“Tomorrow never come,” Big Guy said, his voice rising in seriousness.

“You loser! Who send you come spoil my Family Tanksgiving?”

Because of the way Fofo sounded, some people turned and stared at Big Guy. Two ushers started wading through the crowd toward us, as if they anticipated a quarrel.

“Just joking,” Big Guy said, and let out a nervous laugh.

“I hope you
dey
joke,” Fofo said, chuckling, and people went back to minding their business.

Big Guy turned to us immediately and squatted before Yewa, touching her cap and holding our hands. In spite of his bad nails, his palms were soft and gentle. “Oh, our children are so beautiful!” he said.

“Thank you,
monsieur,
” we said.

“Wow, Fofo
dey
treat you well
o.
”

“Yes, he does,
monsieur.
”

“
Abeg o. Appellez-moi
Big Guy. Just Big Guy, deal?”

“Yes, Big Guy,” my sister said, nodding.

“And you?” Big Guy said, turning to me.

“Yes, Big Guy . . .
monsieur,
” I said.

“Oh, no, no,” he said, clucking his tongue disapprovingly. “
N’est pas
difficult. Big Guy, just Big Guy. Your kid sister done master de ting.” He turned again to Yewa: “You must be smart for school,
abi?
”

“Yes, Big Guy,” Yewa said, licking her lips excitedly.

“No worry, Kotchikpa go master de name too,” Fofo said, coming to my defense as Big Guy rose to his feet. “Give de boy time, man . . . right Kotchikpa?”

“Yes, Fofo,” I said.

“Dere you are,” Fofo Kpee said to Big Guy, and shook his hand again, while folding the wings of his
agbada
onto his shoulders. His smile was so wide that the tension between his lip and left eyelid eased, and his eyes looked the same size. “
Ete˙ n’gan do˙? Na
our family turn for Tanksgiving.
Abeg,
join us in peace.”

“
Pourquoi pas?
” Big Guy said, shrugging. “You know say our God no be poor God. . . . He bring me and you togeder for better ting.”

“Yeah, you know, as our people say, man be God to man,” Fofo said. “Hunger
o,
disease
o,
bad luck
o,
empty pockets
o
—our heavenly
baba
go banish all of dem from us today. God done already shame Satan.”

“If you
dey
poor, know dat because you be sinner. Someting
dey
wrong wid you. And God
dey
punish you,” Big Guy said.

IN
CHURCH
,
THE
FOUR
of us sat in the front pew. When it was time for Thanksgiving proper, we went to the back. Fofo went outside and rolled the Nanfang up to the church. Two ushers helped him lift it over the three stairs at the front.

Like two acolytes, Yewa and I stood at the head of the procession, our dance steps at once shy and excited, not completely in sync with the heavy drums and singing. Then came Fofo and Nanfang. He held the bike majestically, like a bride. Still, from time to time Fofo Kpee managed to stoop low and gyrate and flap and gather his
agbada.
The trumpets were so loud that even if the rooster we brought, which was held by someone deep in the procession, was still squawking, nobody heard.

When there was a lull in the trumpeting, someone behind us filled the church with a loud yodeling. When I turned around, I saw it was Big Guy. He loomed behind us like a pillar of cloud. His dance was elegant and unique: he didn’t bend down like Fofo but was very erect, as if his suit refused him permission to stoop or spread out his long legs. Instead, he simply shook and threw his legs and arms gingerly, like a daddy longlegs.