“No,” my sister said.
“Godpapa? Godmama?” I said, guessing.
“No,” he said. “Godmama, Godpapa, dey sound too okrika! Make you try again.”
“Mom . . . Dad?” I said.
“No, juste Papa and Mama . . . efó!”
“Papa? Mama? No!” Yewa protested.
“Hén,” Fofo said, dragging out the word yes.
“My papa and mama are in Braffe,” Yewa said.
“We know dat,” he said.
“Let’s call them Mom and Dad, then, to avoid confusion,” I suggested.
“No, it’s better to address dem exactly as you dey address your parents. Ils sont your godparents. Godparents. Godparents, you know?”
I shrugged and gave up and looked at Yewa, who was staring down stubbornly.
“Does Big Guy know our godparents?” I asked.
“Absolutement,” Fofo said.
“But you said we should not tell our friends,” I said. “Did you tell Big Guy?”
Yewa looked up sharply, sensing the contradiction. Fofo didn’t reply immediately. Instead, his face split into a long mischievous smile as he nodded and sipped his payó.
“Kotchikpa,” he said finally, “you be bright, bright garçon.”
“Thank you, Fofo,” I said.
“But we must make sure your intelligence no dey lead you in de wrong direction o. Remember, na only de fly witout direction dat go follow de corpse enter grave. You understand?”
“No, Fofo,” I said.
“Use your head well. . . . Big Guy done become my trusted friend—de only person I invite sit wid us for our Tanksgiving, remember?”
Now he laughed a short laugh and winked at us, as if to say, “I have defeated you finally.” I laughed with him because he was funny and because I thought I should have figured this out myself. Then Yewa laughed too.
When we stopped laughing, he tickled us. We laughed even more, but he laughed the hardest, as if some invisible hands were tickling him. Yewa started throwing her pillow at me, and we got into a pillow fight. Fofo, who normally wouldn’t let us fight, didn’t stop us. It seemed to amuse him. He sat there cheering us on, moving his hands, ducking each time one of us hit the other with a pillow. He coached Yewa to climb on the bed to get an advantage over me. Yewa was excited, the springs of the bed squeaking with each blow she landed. I wanted to climb on the bed too, but Fofo said no. He even asked me to allow my kid sister to win the pillow fight. Suddenly, like a crazy man, he stood up and started playing with the lantern wick. The flame fluttered. We became very excited, giggling hard, trying to figure out what he wanted to do.
He lowered the wick, and we fought in darkness. When one of us fell, he increased the flame to be sure nobody was hurt. When one of us screamed in the darkness, he laughed before giving us light. We were having fun and played until we scattered everything. The two mattresses were on the floor; most of Fofo’s clothes fell from his wardrobe. The bed frame stood at awkward angles. Our cartons of clothes were out from under the beds, their contents all over the place. What finally exhausted us wasn’t the energy we used playing but the toll of endless laughter on our ribs.
“ANYWAY, YOUR PAPA AND Mama—your godparents—go visit you soon,” Fofo Kpee said later that night, after we had tidied up everything. “Dem go bring oder children dem dey help so dat una go all meet. Maybe dem go carry all of una go abroad for studies. Across de sea.”
My heart leaped, and I sat up.
“Us? Abroad?” I said.
“Of course, de children who dey study abroad no get two head.”
“What about me?” my sister asked. “You don’t like me?”
“My very own, what? You want abandon your fofo, bébé?”
“Yes, Fofo is a big man. If Kotchikpa goes, I must go . . .”
“Kai, you na real bargainer . . . lawyer! You go voyager togeder, d’accord? Oder lucky children go even travel wid you—God bless your godparents.”
After our night prayer, during which Fofo thanked God profusely for sending us our benefactors, then spoke in tongues like Pastor Adeyemi, I lay on my bed and thought about our godparents. What did they look like? Where did they live? Or did they simply travel from country to country to save children? I tried to imagine the faces of such goodness. I wanted to meet them as soon as possible. No matter how much I tried to picture them, it was the images of my parents that filled my mind.
I began to imagine my parents back in good health, my mother going to the farms in the morning, my father riding his bicycle to Korofo Market. I thought of how relieved my grandparents would feel now; out of our thirteen fofos and aunts, my parents were their favorites, so their sickness was a hard blow. They took care of our parents, and before we left home they fasted so much that they became almost as emaciated as the sick. I thanked God that my parents’ sickness was gone. I thanked God for sending our godparents to buy drugs for our parents. With all they had already done for us, calling them Mama and Papa wasn’t too much to ask. I was sure my parents back home wouldn’t mind this good man and woman being addressed like this. I began to miss my parents a lot that night and looked forward to visiting home and spending time with them. I also began to miss our godparents whom I hadn’t met, because I was already a beneficiary of their goodness; they were like a second pair of parents in a world where sickness had almost robbed me of the first. I even began to long to see the other children our godparents were helping. The bounds of my family extended and began to grow that night as I listened to the snoring of Fofo and the gentle breathing of Yewa beside me.
I begged God to give us the brains to do well in school so that we wouldn’t disappoint our godparents and Fofo and our parents. Having spoken French and Idaatcha all our lives, I thanked God for helping us pick up English very well and even come to understand a bit of Egun in the year and a half we had spent on the border. I hoped that wherever our godparents took us we would exhibit the same flair. Remembering my promise to our parents and grandparents, I promised God again tonight, as I did every night, to be always obedient to Fofo. I told God I would do everything to support him. I asked God to guide Yewa’s thinking so that she wouldn’t embarrass or be difficult with our godparents when they visited us.
THE FIRST VISIT FROM our godparents and our new siblings was low-key. The three of us had sat outside on the veranda mounds, facing the sea, before they arrived.
Now Fofo brought out the lantern and placed it on the floor beside us. It stood there, its lone flame fluttering in the wind. Yewa and I were chatting and thinking about what lay at the other side of the water. Both of us were wearing green T-shirts and black shorts. We had showered that evening, and our faces glowed with AZ petroleum jelly, and we kept sneezing because our uncle had rubbed too much camphor, which he called “poorman perfume,” on our clothes.
Fofo was nervous. He kept crossing and uncrossing his legs, folding and unfolding his arms across his chest.
“Yewa, wetin you go call your godparents?” he quizzed her suddenly.
“Papa and Mama,” she said.