had been able to count on an extra twenty thousand—now forty thousand.
As she turned the corner, the Adomi Street exit in sight, Limah remembered she had forgotten to blow out the wick. She sucked her teeth and turned back, doubling her pace. When she reached the corner stall, a hand snaked out.
“You don’t rent this stall.”
When Limah realized it was Charles who had ambushed her, she had already sunk all but the hilt of her knife into the flesh under his chevrons. With his strong arm, he yanked her by her headscarf. Limah felt the scallop-edged polyester slip past her shoulders as her heart made an uneven rhythm of her breath.
“I saw you last week, and the week before. You switch places with the one who rents it.”
Watching Charles pull the knife out of his arm with a pained gurgle, she felt exhausted by her lie. In the beginning, she had hoped their relationship could progress beyond these market nights, but now she realized she had just been deceiving herself.
Blood spurted from his bicep, surprising them both. “I want the money I’ve been giving you these last four months. Every pesewa.”
Quickly, she inserted the key and yanked the padlock open, pulling him inside. The flame gyrated with the oxygen the opened door brought in.
Limah went for the Dettol behind the counter. The bottle held just a splash. She dragged down one of the many pieces of lace packed on the shelf that lined the wall, tore it free from its plastic casing, and soaked a corner of it with the antiseptic. The chemical stench filled the stall.
Charles whimpered as he struggled to unbutton his shirt. His right sleeve was now dripping rivulets of blood. Limah handed him the Dettol-soaked lace with shaking hands and watched him hurl it across the stall. The wick flickered dangerously.
“I have to go to hospital,” he said with the weary sobriety of a child forced to admit misbehavior.
His blood was everywhere. All over his hands. On his trousers. Fat drops on his boots. Smears on Limah’s T-shirt and the scarf that had been on her head. The cracked tile floor, a poor man’s mosaic, was slippery with it.
“Help me up!” Charles barked.
Limah was a petite girl, slim and slight. The flame watched her futile attempts to hoist him. “Help me help you up!” she ordered finally, both of them alarmed when he couldn’t. Then he slumped, his weight pinning her to the ground. She wriggled out from under him, her foot knocking the wick in the process.
She gasped at the sudden blackness and the silence that followed, only her breath and heartbeat in her ears.
* * *
“Limah!” Asana whispered sharply. Ah! Limah knew she had to be out before Auntie Muni came. She tapped the metal door insistently, pulling out her phone.
“The number you have dialed has been switched off,” reported the British woman who had won the contract to voice all such messages. “Please try again later.”
It was almost four a.m. In an hour, Auntie Muni would be at the market or close.
“Limah!”
Banging now, Asana wondered with mounting anxiety whether her friend had forgotten to drop off the key before heading to collect her son. She only had one and had given it to Limah.
Asana sank to the cement incline that rose into the stall. Seething, she rehearsed the curses she would hurl at Limah, and the cluelessness she would perform if Auntie Muni came to meet her locked out.
She rented the stall from Auntie Muni for thirty thousand a week. She only had use of it at night, to sleep in when the market closed. As part of their rental agreement, Asana cleaned the stall before she left in the morning, had her bath at the market shower, and then returned to sell Special Ice water for Auntie Muni, getting five pesewas for every thirty-pesewa sachet she sold, on top of the 2,500 a day Auntie Muni paid her.
The arrangement was a luxury Asana worked hard to keep so she wouldn’t have to return to sleeping outside, praying away rain, armed robbers, and rapists. The ten thousand she took from Limah each week enabled her to save some of the roughly 200,000 (twenty cedis in the new money) she earned weekly selling for Auntie Muni. She planned to buy her own Special Ice carton and bring her junior sister from their uncle’s farm in Yendi to sell for her until she could one day own a market stall.
But every week, Limah did something to risk Auntie Muni finding out that Asana let her use the stall to sleep with her police officer. She always seemed to forget something—a scarf, a still-smoking mosquito coil, a condom wrapper—and she always left later than their agreed upon four a.m., giving Asana little time to clean up after her. This week, she had not only told Limah to leave at three, but made an excuse not to watch Adama, hoping Limah would finish early to pick him up. Asana regretted this now, realizing she had no guarantee Limah would come straight back to her.
Ready to pound the metal door again, she heard a rustle coming from inside. Her pocket vibrated. She hissed Limah’s name into her phone. “Open for me.”
Asana listened for the metallic slide of the unlocking door and pushed her way in. Her eyes adjusting to the darkness, she turned toward the sound of two distinct ragged breaths, suddenly afraid she had entered a trap.
“Limah? Gom beni?” she asked in their native Dagbani, hoping the rapist or armed robber who might be holding her friend hostage couldn’t understand.
“I am fine.” Limah’s voice shook.
“Why are you in the dark?” Asana’s eyes still adjusting, she moved toward Limah’s voice and tripped. Scrimmaging to her elbows, Asana turned to see what had made her fall. It hadn’t been Limah’s selling pan or some other discarded object. Whatever it was had the mass of an animal. A big one. Like one of the cows the men in Yendi used to pool money to buy and kill for Eid. She pulled herself up, yanking her phone from her pocket.
“Charles,” Limah explained as Asana directed the device’s light to the body.
Asana gasped. There was a lifeless police officer in Auntie Muni’s stall, and there was blood. She put her hands on her head.
“I thought he was an attacker.”
Asana nodded understanding. There wasn’t a female among them who didn’t know the fear that came with night. Whether guarding the wares they sold in the storage sheds, or asleep on the roadside just outside Mal’ Atta, they lived with the paranoia of attacks past and recent. Even those who could pay to sleep in padlocked market stalls were vulnerable to armed robbers and rapists who knew they might be inside, easily overpowered.
“We have to get him out of here before Auntie Muni comes.”
“He’s too heavy.” Limah’s voice was thin with despair. “We should call the police.”
“And tell them what? You thought your married officer was an attacker so you killed him?” Asana turned her phone’s light on Limah. Her friend sat defeated, the swatch of fabric she had earlier worn wrapped around her hair now draped around her shoulders and streaked with blood, the balding circle of scalp she was so self-conscious about, exposed. “A police officer is dead. It will be your word—a kayayo—against his family’s desire to bury him honorably, his wife’s embarrassment, and his fellow officers’
