v
In this way comes morning (death to wan gray, etc.); feeling something is missing, Sadie opens her eyes. Fola is missing, though her scent lies there lightly. The butterflies, too, have abandoned her chest. She feels with some wonder and a touch of suspicion the void in her middle, her shirt damp with sweat. She peers at the alarm by the little framed photo and laughs at the date on the analog clock. Christmas. No chestnuts, no baked beans, no sleigh bells. Pink blossoms, palms, bulbul, an Aspen chalet. She stands up the frame, tries to straighten the photo by tapping. Nothing doing. A terrible shot. But likely the last of the old family photos with all six together, she now understands. With everybody looking in a different direction, her father at the camera, she down at his head, her mother at her tutu, her brother at her mother, the twins at who knows what, all blurry, all there.
7
Mr. Lamptey sits, silent, at the edge of the garden, his legs wet with dewdrops, his joint dwindling down, with the saffron replaced by a heavy black linen, obscured by the shadow, the more for the black. He has done this since Monday, his three days of mourning: has sat by the wall at the edge of the grass, taking leave before sunrise, unseen by the woman who comes to the kitchen at a quarter past six. She doesn’t come out to the garden, or look; she just stands at the counter and fixes her drink with the frozen expression of grief before sorrow, the soft, pretty features gone hard with her shock. The dog came on Tuesday but found it too doleful and remained on the beach when he set off at dawn. The birds that he found in the fountain on Monday have yet to return, so he mourns on his own.
In a way he has come here to see the soft woman, to bid her “wake up” with his blue-bellied gaze, with the sense that his presence might send her a message, that all is not lost, that she isn’t alone. (In fact it is he who is lonely, uncharacteristically. He misses the man in the sunroom he built. He misses the wave of the napkin, the glasses, the spilling of coffee on trousers, their dance.) He sits with his joint at the back of the garden and puffs with great rue, idly stroking the grass. He wonders if the man ever noticed the plant here, the lush marijuana set back from the pinks? Likely not. He laughs sadly. He closes his eyes and exhales. It is sunrise. It is time to go home.
He is thinking he’ll wait just a few minutes longer to see her once more before leaving for good, when he hears someone parking a car in the driveway, the crunching of tires on the pebbles, beep-beep. He opens his eyes, laughs again. What is this now? He waits there, unmoving, amused by surprise. Someone rings the bell at the gate, a nasal buzzer. He looks at the house as if watching a film. The door doesn’t open. The buzzer, for longer. The person raps once on the person-height gate. Mr. Lamptey puffs, torn. Should he wait for the woman? Should he let in the person? The man never had guests. At least not for the years that he slept in the tent or on Mondays. Only Kofi, and later the nurse.
Here she is. Nightdress and pink furry slippers. She opens the doors to the house and steps out. (The man demanded double doors — simple bamboo with a K on one handle, an F on the other — for the entrance to the gray-not-green courtyard, the main entrance, with the heatable walkway around the small square. Mr. Lamptey would have thought a K and S more appropriate but carved out the letters with no questions asked.) The woman steps out of these doors in her nightdress and walks down the path of flat stones to the gate, a straight line of gray slate through the sea of white pebbles, as sketched on a napkin in faded blue ink.
“Hello?” she says warily.
“Hello.” A woman’s voice.
But a different sort of woman’s voice, a different sort of woman.
He has never heard her speak before, the woman-in-pink, but her voice is exactly as he’d thought it would be: very sweet, very innocent, awaiting instruction, the voice of someone used to being told what to do. The woman-at-the-gate’s hummed “Hello” is a river, the bottom of a river, an echo, a tide. The voice does not wait for instruction but gives it, and gently. The woman-in-pink acquiesces. She pulls out the bar at the top of the gate, rather trustingly, and pushes it open.
The river-woman enters, her arms full of flowers. Mr. Lamptey laughs softly again, with surprise: they are the very same flowers he chose for this garden, a raucous arrangement, bright pinks and deep reds. Her appearance is arresting, the effect beyond “striking.” It doesn’t stir up, neither jealousy or awe. It quiets. The woman-in-pink stares in silence. He pauses his puffing to squint from his perch. Even from here by the wall, at this distance, his eyes going bad, he can see the effect. The woman laughs, embarrassed. “I’m sorry to bother. It’s terribly early, I know, for a guest, but Benson, er, Dr. Adoo, he gave me this address, and I thought that I’d come by to pay my respects.”
The woman-in-pink stares in silence.
“I’m Fola.” She pauses. “I’m Kweku’s — I was Kweku Sai’s wife.” She holds out the flowers. “I’m so very sorry. These are for you. I–I don’t know your name.”
“Ama,” says the woman-in-pink, like a question. “I am Ama?” She sounds baffled, unsure what this means. She repeats Fola’s words as in pursuit of a right answer, as a schoolgirl does dictation, “I was Kweku Sai’s wife.” She pauses to consider the words she’s just spoken, the frozen-stiff features beginning to melt. “Dr. Sai isn’t here,” she adds sweetly, voice quivering, repeating a line clearly used on the phone. The shoulders begin trembling. “May I please take a message?”
“Oh, darling,” says Fola, setting down the bouquet. She wraps both her arms around Ama’s plump shoulders. She is taller, much taller. Mr. Lamptey thinks, a tree. (“What kind of trees are these?” he’d asked, of the napkin. The man was looking murderously at the mango. “Never mind that.”)
The two women stand at the gate for some moments. When Ama can, she pulls away to wipe her button nose. “I am sorry,” she sniffles.
“Never mind that,” says Fola. A deep and short laugh, a small wave of the hand. “We’ve planned a small ceremony, very small, in Kokrobité. You’ll come with us, no? Nothing fancy. Just us.”
They carry on talking, Ama receiving instruction. Mr. Lamptey watches, smiling: so she isn’t alone. Fola says she’s happy just to wait in the driveway if Ama would like to get dressed and come with? Ama insists that Fola come wait in the house, and retrieving the flowers, she leads the way in.
• • •
Fola pauses briefly at the entrance, sees the handles. She touches the K and the neat hand-carved F. Only now does she glance to her right, see the fountain, and laugh at the statue adorned with the weeds. She doesn’t see the man at the edge of the garden. She enters the house and the double doors close. When they come back outside, she and Ama together, the garden is empty. Mr. Lamptey is gone.
ii
They return to the beach, Ama riding with Fola, the others with Benson, a small caravan. No one quite knows what to say to this Ama; they all smile politely and leave it at that. The sisters stand huddled together, suspicious. They exchange a few greetings with Ama in Ga. Benson produces the urn from an official-looking container and hands this to Fola with an official-looking nod. She had it in mind to toss his ash to the sea breeze, to let the man free, end at the beginning and that. But now as she twists off the top, she can’t do it. The idea of him scattered seems wrong in some way. We’ve been scattered enough, she thinks. Broken pot, fragments. Keep him inside, she thinks, let him stay whole. She twists the metal top on and kneels by the water. She doesn’t face her children, afraid that she’ll cry. “Odabo.” Good-bye. Puts the urn in the water. A wave washes in but doesn’t take the urn out. It rolls to the side, sort of drifts a few inches. Another wave comes, but it still doesn’t go. She stands up and watches, an arm at her middle. The urn turns in foam, drifts a bit farther out. As if waiting for something. She thinks but can’t say it. I love you. A wave with some promise appears. Ama makes a squeaking sound, a bit like a bulbul. Fola watches Kweku bobbing, bobbing out of view.