“You spoke in your dream,” I said.
“No be me,” he denied. His voice wore a touch of anger. “Make we do school, d’accord? Mary, why you dey hide behind him to look me like say I dey talk Wolof?”
“I don’t know,” Yewa said, shrugging.
“Sure? Or you no want study tonight?”
“We want to study tonight,” I said. “Maybe she’s frightened by your dream.”
Fofo stood up and stretched.
“My dream? Which dream?” He laughed a stern laugh and sighed. “No fear.”
I couldn’t tell whether he knew what he had said in his dream or not. And because of the anger in his voice now, I didn’t ask him. He tried to act normal, yet he couldn’t shake off the fright in which he had awakened. He kept shutting his eyes tight and opening them wide as if that would wipe away his dread. Then he started pinching his scar and shaking his head. He was more nervous and restless than he was the night our godparents came to see us. I was afraid, but I pretended to be strong so as not to frighten my sister. The nightmare should have served as a warning to me that our dream could unravel.
“You have not eaten anything,” I said gently as I placed a bowl of food before him.
“Who told you I want to manger?” he said, pushing the bowl aside. He brought his gin out from under the bed and took two long gulps straight from the bottle and cleared his throat. “Peutêtre, maybe je veux go Gabon aussi.” He chuckled an empty chuckle. “Maybe I should come take care of you. . . . Ah non, il faut que man be strong!”
“You are going to miss us?” my sister said, her voice as abrupt as a town crier’s.
“Oui, c’est ça,” he conceded, and shrugged, without looking us in the face. The liquor had cleansed his voice of anger. Now the more he drank the steadier his demeanor became, though it didn’t stop the sweat. “Yeah, make I no worry, I suppose.”
Yewa went over and placed herself in between his legs.
“We’ll miss you too. Won’t we, Pascal?” my sister said.
“We will,” I said. “Fofo, don’t worry. We’ll be OK with Mama.”
He didn’t say anything. He just sat there, looking down, hugging Yewa, and stroking her head like Mama did. My sister climbed up to sit on his lap, and the silence seemed to last an eternity. The sweat from Fofo’s face dripped on my sister, but it didn’t matter. We were getting used to the heat and the perspiration that came with it. All I could think about was how he would miss us. I began to think seriously for the first time about missing him too. I started to miss his jokes and his care for us.
Some indescribable guilt arose within me, and I saw myself as an ingrate for wanting to go away. I couldn’t look at Fofo’s face, and he couldn’t look at our faces. I wished Yewa would say something or do something crazy to shatter the silence. But she just sat there with a sad look, and the fact that she didn’t disrupt this silence deepened my guilt. Who would Fofo talk to when he came back from work? Who would cook for him or wash his dishes? How should we pay him back for his care and for finding these godparents who had helped our parents in Braffe and would send our other siblings to Gabon? I made up my mind to tell our parents everything Fofo had done for us since we arrived here. And when he had children, I promised myself, I would do all I could to show love to my cousins. I started thinking about how we would insist that our godparents allow us to come back to visit him. I would write him letters every week, telling him about our lives. Maybe he would be able to visit us.
“But you can come with us,” Yewa suggested, relieving me of my shame. “Mama will not mind. Maybe you can live with Fofo Vincent or Fofo Marcus or Fofo Pierre.”
“Or Fofo David and Tantine Cecile,” I said eagerly.
“We can take the Nanfang along,” my sister said. “Once you buy a car in Gabon, you can sell it.”
“No, I’ll learn to ride it there,” I said.
“But if you don’t come with us,” she said, “it’s OK. I’ll buy you a Lexus and Benz. . . . I’ll send you money too.”
Fofo Kpee looked at her sorrowfully and dipped his finger into the bucket of water by his bed and flicked a drop in my face. “Will you miss me, Pascal?” he taunted me.
“Yes, Fofo Kpee, yes,” I said, nodding. “I’ll build you big houses like those in our godparents’ pictures.”
“Non, I go come Gabon! Wid you.”
Nobody said anything. The three of us looked at each other, and then we began to laugh until we cried. Though we were chatting now, it felt very surreal, solemn. Fofo opened his mouth as if to say something but gave up. He snatched his bottle from the table and poured gin into his mouth as though he needed a big gulp to drown whatever he had wanted to say in his stomach.
Then he poured the drink into our cups in large doses and said we needed to celebrate his coming to Gabon. We drank gleefully, until our eyes sparkled and the payó bit our guts. A boost of energy swept through my body, my sister became very talkative, and sleep went very far away from us.
WHEN WE THOUGHT HE was going to begin the lesson that night, he got up slowly, as if he had been taken over by voodoo, and went to the lantern, where he always stood to prepare us for our trip. He removed his wrappa and threw it over the table onto the floor. He was stark naked, like us. At first, we wondered if maybe it was an accident. Then we thought maybe he was drunk, though we had never seen him drunk before. But when he didn’t pick up the loincloth, we became concerned. He looked like a man who had stolen from the open market and was about to be stoned. My sister had both hands over her mouth, to keep herself from letting out a sound, her eyes wide and unfocused. In embarrassment, I began to look up at the roof.
Fofo Kpee poured water into a bucket and started dabbing himself with his towel. The sight of him cooling himself with very little water, like camel riders crossing the Sahara, was unbearable. His lightheartedness was gone, and the room became very quiet except for the wind outside and the sound of him putting the towel into the water bucket and wringing it. He kept babbling and had become oblivious to our presence.
We were scared, and Yewa drew close to me. Fofo looked like a man in pain, a man who couldn’t take the heat anymore. I began to wonder why he couldn’t stay outside, where there was fresh air. Do the people of Gabon walk around naked and sleep in airtight rooms? Is it so hot there that we have to learn to behave like this? But when I remembered the beautiful beaches and houses in the pictures our godparents showed us, I convinced myself that that wasn’t the case. Since he was now coming with us to Gabon, did he have to be this dramatic to catch up with our preparation? The whole thing was like a bad dream from which we must quickly awake.
“Hey, children,” he said, finally looking at us, sounding funny again, “j’espère que shame no dey catch you to see Fofo comme çi.” He left the lantern and came toward us. “When una dey small, una no shower wid your parents for Braffe?”
“We did,” we said, still trying to look away.
“So why you dey behave like small chicken now? Person who fit cross de sea done become big man o. . . . In de boat il faut qu’ everybody dey mix wid everybody, vous comprenez? Even dat your sister, Antoinette, if she dey remove her dress make sure confusion no enter your head o.”