and I’ll take you to McDonald’s and Burger King—”
“What is that?”
“You don’t know?”
Abeo shook her head.
“Well, they’re wonderful restaurants that make delicious hamburgers and milkshakes!”
Abeo licked her lips.
Ismae snorted. “That food is garbage. It’s American trash and I won’t have my child eating it.”
Serafine and Ismae looked at each other and something passed between them sharp enough to cut the air.Finally, Serafine returned her gaze to Abeo. “So, tell me, do you have a boyfriend?”
Abeo made a face. “Yuck!”
Serafine laughed. “So you don’t like boys?”
Abeo shook her head.
“Don’t worry, one day you will. One day you will love them.”
* * *
Months after Serafine had returned to her life in America, Ismae realized that she was feeling more drained and lethargic than usual. She was severely anemic and the disorder had always played havoc with her menstrual cycle, so she didn’t think anything was wrong—or in this case, right—when two months passed and she still had not seen her period. It was the light-headedness and the nausea that washed over her whenever she smelled cooked meat—that and the unmistakable flutter deep down in the pit of her belly—that finally alerted her.
Ismae had had so many false alarms in the past that she dared not say anything to Wasik before she was 100 percent sure. When Dr. Jozy confirmed that she was indeed with child, she sat blinking and mute for ten whole minutes.
That evening, when she shared the news with Wasik, his face lit up like a candle.
“Are you sure?”
Nodding, Ismae wrapped her arms protectively around her midsection.
Wasik pulled her into him, hugging her tightly. “I can’t believe it.” His words were choked with happiness. “After so many years, finally, God has answered our prayers.”
“I always knew that He had not forsaken us,” Ismae said.
“All in His time,” Wasik whispered into her neck.
Agwe was born in the spring—a round brown boy with pink gums and sparkling eyes. Wasik finally had a son; he could not have been more proud. His family was complete.
Abeo spent most of her free time staring at Agwe. He was the most wondrous thing she had ever seen. “I love him more than crisps,” she chanted joyfully. That said a lot, because crisps were Abeo’s absolute favorite treat.
3
It was dinnertime when the call came from a cousin who’d walked four miles from Prama to a pay phone. When Wasik answered, an angry evening wind whipped the palm trees surrounding the house, creating static on the line. “Hello?”
“This is Djiimy.”
“Djiimy?” Wasik moved the phone to his other ear. “Djiimy?” he echoed shakily, already sensing the bad news.
“Your papa has passed away,” Djiimy stated thinly.
Outside, the wind whipped again and lightning flashed across the sky.
“Hello? Djiimy? Hello?” Wasik cried into the receiver.
The line crackled and went dead.
The next day he packed his family into the car and drove to Prama. The trip took four hours and when they arrived, the Mercedes was covered in red dust. As they entered the village, a group of children—the boys indistinguishable from the girls—began running alongside the car, tapping the windows and waving.
When they reached the hut where Wasik had been born and raised, they found his mother seated outside on a stool, picking through a gourd filled with dried peas.
Wasik leaped from the car and bounded over to her, wailing, “Mama, oh Mama!”
Abeo’s visits to Prama had always been filled with delight and discovery: the wonder of watching a goat give birth, fetching freshly laid eggs from the chicken coop, drinking warm milk straight from the udder of a cow. But she sensed that this visit would be different. The frenzied excitement that normally accompanied the preparation and four-hour journey was marred by her father’s dark melancholy. At the petrol station on their way out of town, Wasik, who was sitting behind the wheel waiting for the attendant to finish filling the tank, suddenly melted into uncontrollable sobs. This frightened Abeo because she had never seen her father—or any man—cry.
Abeo now climbed from the car clutching her Walkman protectively to her chest. The circle of children closed in, pointing fingers and probing.
“What is that?”
“Can I have it, sister?”
“What is that? Did you bring one for me?”
“What is that, sister?”
Abeo broke free, fled to her grandmother, threw her arms around her neck, and inhaled a sour mixture of sweat and grilled meat.
The old woman squeezed Abeo, kissed her cheeks, patted her backside, told her that she was too thin, offered her a mango, eyed the silver-and-black contraption the girl held in her hands, and shook her head in dismay.
Grandmother’s home was a three-room, thatched-roof mud hut. The front room held two metal chairs with tattered green cushions and one short square table made of wood. A yellowed calendar depicting the deceased prime minister Mbeke Kjodle hung on the wall near the door. The back rooms were furnished with twin-size beds, grass sleeping mats, and nothing else. The cooking area was located behind the house and consisted of three piles of stones beneath an awning made of grass. There was no indoor plumbing, just a standpipe in the middle of the compound where the women lined up daily to fill their buckets with water for cooking, drinking, and bathing. Not too far from the standpipe was the communal toilet, which was little more than a concrete box with a hole in the ground.
In the days leading up to their father’s burial, Wasik and his brothers were fitted for the special funeral garments—red-and-gold dashikis. While the tailor labored away, the carpenter constructed a coffin from a forty-year-old walnut tree. An artisan was hired from the neighboring village to carve the coffin with details that reflected the senior Kata’s life as a farmer, husband, and father.
The cost was high, a staggering three thousand cendi. Wasik’s brothers grumbled at the price, but Wasik said he didn’t care if it was thirty thousand cendi; his father deserved the best.
The nights in Prama were long and black. Strange sounds echoed in the darkness and turned sinister in Abeo’s imagination. Mating cats became feuding lions; the patter of feet—a charging elephant. She pressed her trembling body against the bulk of her grandmother until the music of the old woman’s heart lullabied her to sleep.
On
