“We never said two, but five,” Big Guy said, waving his fingers, some of which ended in dead nails, before Fofo. “Where de oder children now?”
Fofo stepped away from the fingers, saying, “You know my arrangement wid your people?”
“Quel peuple?” Big Guy taunted.
“Your boss,” Fofo Kpee said.
“But tu dois deal wid me—directement!”
“Ah non, abeg, make we celebrate first. Gbòjé . . . relax.”
“No, I dey very serious. Just moi.”
“You? You want do me open eye?”
“I no want frighten or cheat you. We dey do dis kind business like dis. . . . I dey warn you o. Abi, you want play wid fire?”
“We dey dis deal togeder,” Fofo begged him. “No fear. Everyting go dey fine.”
Big Guy shrugged and surveyed our surroundings, his eyes as suspicious as those of a traveler who has been duped at the border. He cast a disgusted glance at me and my sister and looked away. In the distance, the sun was a ball of gold in the foliage of the coconut plantation that guarded the approach to the Atlantic Ocean. The water that could take us abroad frothed gray and wild, resisting the sun’s gold brushes, and on this canvas of water, the coconut vistas cast their swaying grids. The wind from the sea blew at the land in a mild, endless breath.
“Big Guy, calm down, look at me, o jare . . . you worry too much.”
Big Guy shrugged and said, “No, Big Guy no dey worry. Na you dey worry.”
We could tell that Big Guy was disappointed. He pursed his lips so hard that we saw a bit of the red of his nostrils, embers of the anger he was fighting to control. As I said, I didn’t worry because I had seen Fofo in more difficult situations, and I was confident he would calm the man.
“What about de house?” Fofo Kpee said, gesturing at our house.
“What about it?” Big Guy said, without even giving our house a look, though Fofo continued to encourage him.
Its zinc roof was completely covered with rust, and the two rooms had no ceilings. The walls were made of mud and plastered with cement, and in the narrow veranda, there were mounds on either side of the door, for sitting, which is where Fofo wanted Big Guy to be if he didn’t want to enter the house. The eaves were supported by pillars made of coconut wood.
“You like it?” Fofo asked.
“Your house dey OK for de business for now,” Big Guy said. “I want leave.”
“You see, you see,” Fofo told him, chuckling. “At least I do one ting well.”
“Well, after, we go build de one wey better pass dis one . . . bigger.”
“Ça ira, ça ira . . . Tings go work out.”
Big Guy walked away, the disappointment still in his eyes.
“Of course, only dead people dey owe us!” he said. “Only dead people.”
“I sure say nobody go die. . . . Well, as de Annang people dey say, de dead no dey block de way, de killer no dey live forever,” Fofo Kpee called out to him, laughing. “See you tomorrow, á demain o. And make you greet ta famille pour me o.”
WE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT to make of the motorcycle when Big Guy left. We stood around it quietly, as if a long lost member of our family had returned. Fofo Kpee stared at our faces, as if he had given us a puzzle and wanted to see the first sparks of our comprehension.
“Nanfang!” Yewa exclaimed, breaking the spell. “Zoke˙ke˙ . . . zoke˙ke˙!”
“Who owns it?” I gasped.
“Us o,” Fofo said, and chuckled. “Finalement, we get zoke˙ke˙!”
“Us? Zoke˙ke˙?” I said.
“Oui o, Kotchikpa, my son.”
Yewa began to circle the bike in silence, like a voodoo priest at his shrine, her hands held out but afraid to make contact. She had large brown eyes that now shone out from her lean face, as if the machine’s aura forbade them to blink. Her hair was short, like a boy’s, and she wore only pink underpants, her stomach bloated. Her legs stepped lightly, her feet in socks of dust. My palms, dirtied from stoking the cooking fire with wood and making sure the pot of Abakaliki rice didn’t fall off our stone tripod behind the house, began to sweat. I held my hands away from the bike and away from my shorts, rubbing my fingers against my palms.
“We belong to you,” Yewa chanted in a whisper to the machine. “You belong to us, we belong to you.”
“Yeah, daughter,” said Fofo, enjoying our bewilderment. “God done reward our faitfulness. . . . Nous irons to be rich, ha-ha!”
The sudden merriment in his voice stopped Yewa. She looked at my face, then at Fofo’s, as if we had conspired to trick her. Fofo Kpee opened his portmanteau, which he carried to the border every day, and pulled out the invoice for the bike from Cotonou City. It was too much for us. I started clapping, but Fofo stopped me, saying he didn’t have enough drinks yet to offer people who might be attracted by the noise. I held my hands apart, palms facing each other as if they were of two opposing magnetic poles, my desire to clap repelled by Fofo’s warning. Then a wave of happiness rose within me, and I ran inside, washed my hands, and put on a shirt and my flip,-flops, as if an important visitor had descended on us. When I came out, Fofo had opened our door and pushed the thing into our parlor-cum-bedroom. He lit a kerosene lantern and put it on a stand near the door to the inner room. The lantern’s rays played above the Nanfang’s fuel tank, outshining its two-tone design like the glow of a setting sun over the waves of the Atlantic.
To lock the front door, Fofo pulled out a plank of wood from under our bed and placed it snugly on the metal latches. Tonight, he tested the lock’s strength, putting his left shoulder on the bar and carefully applying his weight. He sighed and nodded, beaming contentedly at the bike.
“We must buy new doors for de house,” Fofo Kpee said.
“Windows also,” Yewa blurted out, her attention still wrapped around the Nanfang as if the windows were part of it.
“Yeah, pas du problem,” he said, and started locking up the two little square wooden windows on either side of the door. “We go change les choses lo˙pa lo˙pa, many tings, I tell you.”
There were two six-spring beds on either side of the room and a low wooden table in between. I slept with Yewa in one bed, while Fofo had the other bed to himself. Our clothes were in cartons under the beds, but Fofo’s important clothes hung at one corner of the room, from a bambu pole suspended from the rafters by two ropes. Because the room was small, the bike stood, poking its handlebars and front tire into the wardrobe, like a cow whose head is lost in the tall grass it’s eating. In the evenings, when we gazed into the roof, its rusty texture looked like stagnant brown clouds, no matter the brilliance of our lantern. On very hot days we could hear the roof expand with little knocking sounds.
Now we drew closer and gawked, and smelled and felt the Nanfang’s body. Fofo had to shout at me twice to warn me about bringing the lantern too close to the machine. The smell of newness overpowered the stuffiness of the room. Yewa pulled at the clear plastic that covered the seats and lights and mudguards, until Fofo warned her not to remove them.