“Who’s stupid? Me?” I snarled.
Yewa spun around and bared her teeth, ready to bite me, which was what she did each time I hit her for being naughty. Even against the brighter background outside, I could see her smirk. I rushed toward her, but Fofo hooked the seat of my shorts with his fingers and yanked me back. I stumbled and kicked in his grasp. Yewa stood her ground and kept calling me names until Fofo told her to stop or she wouldn’t go to Gabon.
Yewa refused to come in or go out. Her eyes were swollen with unshed tears, which soon came flushing down her cheeks. The combination of her desire for what she called Gabon food and the threat that she might not go to Gabon upset her. She cried like she did when she had malaria and the quack doctor came to give her an injection in her bottom. Fofo started begging me not to beat her up, and when he saw that I had calmed down he released my shorts. He picked up Yewa, brought her into the parlor, and carried and nursed her as Mama had done that night.
“I don’t want to go back to the market,” I said quietly. “Why didn’t this monkey say this when I was going to the market?”
“Who want send you back to market sef?” Fofo said. “Make you no scold your sister again. You know de gal dey too light. We must fatten her for de trip. Oderwise, she go embarrass Mama and Papa. And, Pascal, you suppose be glad de gal done begin like Gabon food before you reach de place.”
“She has to be more considerate, Fofo Kpee,” I said, and went outside to sit on the mound and sulk.
“Anyway, no wahala,” Fofo said. “I dey go market myself, den.”
He carried Yewa on his back, went into the inner room, and wheeled out the Nanfang. He set it outside, smiled at it. In those difficult months, it seemed the machine was a source of stability for him, something he could always be proud of, something he would still have when we left for Gabon. He looked at himself many times in the side mirrors, smiling and mumbling to the machine, as if it could hear and answer him. Now, he swung Yewa from his back onto the gas tank, sat on the bike, and rode out to the market. He didn’t come back as soon as he should have, because, as he said later on, he wanted to give Yewa a longer ride. When he came back, he put the Nanfang back as majestically as he had brought it out. We were going to eat and drink inside as usual, but Yewa complained that the smell of the wet mix was nauseating. We went outside and ate under the mango tree, like we were having a picnic.
Later that afternoon, we went back to work, this time trying to seal off the inner room. It was more difficult to work in there because it was crowded with things. Fofo wasn’t in the business of letting the Nanfang stand in the sun or even in the parlor. So now he took his time and moved the Nanfang to the center of the room and covered it with our bedspread and tarp. It was as if he were dressing up a big pet. I wanted to take the other things out of the room or push them out of the way.
“Where you want put dese tings?” he asked me.
“Outside,” I said.
“No . . . you no get head, boy? You want expose my riches to everybody?”
“What about the parlor?” I asked, bending down to close the pots of soup in the corner and drape old newspapers over them.
“And if person dey come, wetin we go do? You see me invite anybody to help me in dis work? No move anyting o,” he said, pushing the mortar away from the wall to make room for the chair on which he would stand to do the job.
WE WORKED HARD AND fast. Fofo wasn’t talking or whistling or humming, as he had when we worked in the parlor. He left no holes in the walls here. He seemed so focused on the job that in some ways it felt as if he was uncomfortable with what he was doing now. He had no time for finesse anymore. Even though the cement fell on all the signs of the better life we had come into, he didn’t care. And when I wanted to stop to wipe off the mix, he glared at me.
“Fofo, you are leaving no holes in this room?” I asked, offering him the cement mix.
“So what?” he said.
“We need air in here.”
“Dis moi, you sleep in dis room before?”
“No.”
“Your sister nko?”
“No.”
“You dey cry for de Nanfang, abi? Just dey work and stop interrogating me.”
As we filled in the space at the top of the walls, the room became darker and darker because he wouldn’t even open a window. I could only see his profile. Down where I stood, since we didn’t move anything out of the room, it wasn’t only dark but crowded. It was afternoon outside but night in our home. I wanted to light the lantern, but Fofo warned me that if his Nanfang caught fire, we would lose everything. We started sweating, and Yewa refused to come inside, saying it was getting too hot. With the lack of air, the smell of the cement mix hung heavily in the room.
“I no need dis, un ma jlo ehe!” Fofo Kpee cursed suddenly, and slapped the wall. “Dis no go work.”
“Are you talking to me?” I asked.
“You? Why I go talk to you? Can’t a man just talk about dis stupid riches? Must you answer everyting, huh? I say ma so˙ question mi ba!”
It was the first time I saw him show frustration or doubt about our new life. Seeing how tense he was and hearing his continual sighs, I kept quiet. He was so distraught by whatever was worrying him that we abandoned the outside walls. After a while he got so angry that in one final rush of work, he closed up everything. And darkness descended on the room.
I prayed that his outburst had nothing to do with our going to Gabon. Since he wasn’t comfortable with opening the door of the inner room, I couldn’t clean the place very well. I made do with wiping the surfaces in the dark. The Nanfang was the only possession that was spared the dirt from our work.
That evening he drove away, still muttering to himself, to meet with Big Guy. He came back more agitated than before, with three silver-colored padlocks and black latches. While the Nanfang stood outside, he asked me to bring the lantern into the inner room so he could see what he was doing. With hammer and nails, he attached the latches to the windows and back door. He padlocked the two windows and the door from inside and added the keys to his bunch. He was left with spare keys. “I buy triplicate, but I done give one set to Big Guy,” he mumbled, his eyes scanning for a hiding place for them.
“Is he coming to live with us?” Yewa asked.
“Not really,” he said. “De man na my best friend.”
“He’s our friend too!” my sister continued, delighted. “We’ll play with him every day.”
When Fofo Kpee couldn’t find a good place, he took the keys to the parlor and put them in the breast pocket of the olive green corduroy coat in his wardrobe. He only wore it on important occasions.
THAT NIGHT, OUR HOME began to feel like an oven. We couldn’t sleep, even though we took off all our clothes.
Once we locked up, a massive heat swallowed the rooms, and the walls became warm. Yewa, who always slept between me and the wall, cried, and Fofo asked me to switch places with her. We sweat until our bed felt like one of us had wet it. Though we could hear the wind coming in from the ocean, sweeping through the banana and plantain trees, we couldn’t feel it. It was like standing by a stream but dying of thirst. It was stuffy, and the three of us tossed and turned. We got up and tried to sleep on the cement floor, but it felt like sandpaper, the sand and dust sticking to our wet bodies. It was useless. And when our fatigue finally plunged us into sleep, the mosquitoes, which must have survived from the previous nights, descended, and we woke up one another as we swatted them. Fofo Kpee kept cursing and blaming potential thieves for forcing us to close the rafter spaces.