THERE ARE THREE of us in our gang: Maybe, Gaza and me. Today, if I get my way, we’ll become a gang of four. Despite the boys dragging their feet every step of the way, today’s the day of our race.
Not so long ago, Ama’s mother, Auntie Esi, was close to Ma. They ate from the same bowl and shared so many stories that when they were pregnant with us and their sister-love grew, they swore that we’d be friends as well. Friendship by force! Huh! Come and see Ama and I quarrelling! Quarrelling. Then laughing. Up and down. Down and up. Gidi-gidi, day and night.
Only this morning, after reminding me yet again that in our village, girls do not play with boys, and certainly not a nincompoop who lives in Zongo, I tell Ama plain-plain, ‘My friend, your ant’s tongue tires me! How many times must I tell you, that I, Sheba Prempeh, do not care for “they say, they say”! And if you’re foolish enough to think I do – you don’t know me!’
‘You want everyone to see you – a chief’s great-granddaughter – playing with a pauper who behaves like a bush-boy?’ She pulls a face, her pupils specks of black ice. ‘Look at him!’
I glance at Maybe, trying to see him as she does, but before my vision adjusts, my heart heaves and, reminded of the day I first met him, I’m back at his home in Zongo once again.
We’ve tramped over ground marshy as pounded palm nuts oozing oil. Fought our way through a forest of reeds, across rice fields to a patch of dry land where Maybe lives. In a hut on the edge of our village: a simple dwelling of mud-and-thatch that’s quickly put up, easily pulled down.
Maybe’s father has yet to visit him. Unlike me, he knows his father’s name.
‘He’s a hunter and herdsman up north,’ he says. ‘He’s looking after cattle. My mother travelled south to build a business and keep us safe.’
Aware that most outsiders go round in circles, never locating the path to our village, I ask, ‘How was she able to find us?’
‘We were running for our lives,’ Maybe explains. ‘When you’re fleeing from mischief-makers, a path opens up in front of you that brings you here.’
‘Truly?’
‘True, true,’ Maybe assures me. ‘But we won’t stay forever. One day soon my father will take me back to our people. First, he’ll come for me, then, when my brother, Better Life, is older, he’ll collect him. We belong to his line.’
The idea of having a father willing to embrace me and include me in his family, tunnels like a weevil to my heart. That’s what I want: a father with people of his own. Distracted, dreaming of a life away from Ma, I’m mulling this over as I step inside Maybe’s home. One moment I’m outside, eager to find my father. Next, I’m inside, and as the breath of Maybe’s soul warms my skin, I decide there and then that wherever he goes, so will I.
Aunt Clara says that’s what it’s like for some of us with the ‘touch’. We understand the future before it occurs. We know exactly what’s right for us; what’s meant. And once we’ve fingered the hair of someone we love, there’s no turning back.
‘I used to be the same,’ she says. ‘But then look what happened to me, Sheba.’
Aunt Clara didn’t have my ear that day. The only voice I hear, the only voice that matters, is Nana’s.
‘The heart is stronger than the mind,’ she whispers. ‘In all things, listen to the beat of your heart and move to its rhythm.’
My feet are tapping, unfazed by the difference between my home and Maybe’s. We have tables to eat and write off, beds to sleep on, chairs for sitting and dining. Our house is large, with room after room to walk through and sleep in – a salon for lounging and chatting during daylight hours, and at night, an old gramophone player to sing and dance to. Our house without men is a place of plenty.
Apart from a few upturned stools, Maybe’s family have no furniture to speak of: sleeping mats, a portable stove, pots and pans, a jumble of baskets in a corner. Even so, a blur of drawings on the walls radiates through the gloom.
I step into the shadows. Step over a sleeping mat. Duck beneath a line of clothes before I’m able to see that the pictures are of a village with homes like his: mud-and-thatch. A village laden with fruit trees and in the distance, gigantic baobab trees with bulbous trunks.
‘That’s our village,’ he murmurs. ‘And these are some of the baobab trees that grow in the savannah close by.’
He’s drawn the trees again and again. Sometimes in flower, sometimes old and hollowed out with flickering, ghostly shapes beside them. Or with zebras and antelopes munching underneath.
‘We call it the tree of life,’ he tells me. ‘There isn’t a part of it we don’t use: bark, leaves, fruit and seeds.’
As he talks, I feel Maybe’s breath again and tremble. ‘Your pictures are alive.’
His figures dance and sing, while his animals quiver in motion.
I walk to the biggest and best of them, a drawing of an ancient tree, luminous shades around it. ‘What’s this?’
‘Sometimes, where I come from, when the wisest and best among us die, we bury them inside a wizened baobab. The tree can become a place of healing. A good place; a happy place, like the cotton tree here.’
I’m not so sure about that. What I do know is that every forty days, my grandmother and Grandma Baby talk to our ancestors by pouring libation at the cotton tree and river. They say it’s to help our village prosper and to keep it hidden. They do what they can, I suppose, and yet the fact remains: everyone with an iota of ambition leaves for the city quicker than a flea can bite you twice.
Nonetheless, I’ve never seen anything like Maybe’s creations before. We gaze at his drawings. Behind his village are grasslands full of trees. Above them, a brilliant blue sky illuminates the nooks and curves of Maybe’s home.
‘Will you draw me one day?’ I ask.
‘One day, one day.’ He nods.
‘Good. I’ll pester you, ahhhhhh, until you keep your promise.’
‘Sheba, can’t you see what I’m seeing?’ asks Ama.
Maybe’s torn shirt is jostled by gusts of harmattan wind. Laden with dust, it scuffs his shins grey while he and Gaza wheel tyres up the track. Up to the top of the hill they trundle, while Ama and I roll a tyre between us.
Behind us, at an upstairs window, Grandma Baby, her lace handkerchief at the ready, is poised to signal the start of our race.
‘His shirt is basaa basaa,’ Ama whinges. ‘Would you wear a shirt like that? No! Your boy is Zongo through and through. Because over there, there’s no money for shoes. No money at all!’ Ama wrinkles her nose. ‘And he smells!’
You see what I mean about her ant-bite tongue? Before the tang of citrus scours my mouth and I lash out, I begin to wonder if jealousy has curdled her brain and made her sour. After all, since I met Maybe I’ve been spending a lot of time with him, and his swagger has entered my walk.
I’m tempted to turn my back on her but somehow, I stay put until I’m able to say: ‘Ama, if you don’t want to race with us, if you don’t want to befriend a boy from Zongo as well as be my friend, why don’t you go home?’
‘You want to lose? Without me, those boys will defeat you as breezily as I greeted you this morning!’ She snorts to emphasise her point.
In the space of a few weeks, the four of us have built a kite of turquoise blue, and releasing it one balmy afternoon, we watched it soar in the sky over the hill to the river.
We’ve discovered Video Man’s van, where, perched on benches, a sheet as a screen, we take in the latest Nollywood films: diabolical ju ju movies about witches which we laugh at, or romances with too much kissing, which make us gasp for air.
Thanks to Maybe, I’m able to catch tilapia, gut it, and roast it with breadfruit, pepper and yam. Now, having mastered the art of manoeuvring tyres, depending on who reaches the bottom first, we’re going to find out if Ama will join us; no questions asked, no insults traded.
When the four of us are in position at the top, I wave to Grandma Baby. She drops her handkerchief and we’re off.
Maybe surges ahead, Gaza a hair’s breadth behind. Each of us, a stick wedged inside the tyre controls it as best as we can. Its direction, its propulsion as we launch rubber over pebbles and ridges. Too far to the left, the tyre tips over. Too much to the right, you’ll tumble. Too fast? Too slow? Ditto. Balance and speed are vital. To be swift but nimble of foot, an added bonus.
Gaza stumbles, falls into a ditch, as step by step, Ama and I gather speed.
I shall always be smaller than Maybe, and my legs will remain shorter than his. But I’m light, fleet of foot. Indeed, sometimes being short is an advantage, for, like an arrow in a bow, as soon as I’m released, there’s no stopping me.
‘Small Girl Danger,’ I yell.
Ama wheels the tyre with the palm of her hand, while I use the stick.
We’ve practised creating momentum yet keeping pace with each other for days. Down, down, we run, faster and faster until we’re almost where we need to be, almost neck and neck with my forever friend.
He propels the tyre forward.
Lunges. Leaps. Zips ahead. Ama’s resolve quickens and we push harder still. So hard that with our feet scarcely touching the ground, we’re nearly flying.
Three feet. Two palms. A hand apart. A finger, and then, crack!
A stick snaps and we’re overtaking Maybe.
There’s no looking back now.
Bounding over spikes, avoiding sticks and stones, we whizz to the bottom of the hill and braking, tumble on top of each other, screaming.
Ama may hiss and spit about my forever friend from Zongo. She may dismiss Maybe as an outsider, a Fulani, who wouldn’t know how to wear a kente cloth if he had money to buy one. She grumbles continuously, and yet her joy in winning is every bit as bright as mine.
‘Yah! Yah!’ she shrieks. ‘Women warriors!’
‘We did it!’ I reply. ‘We destroyed them! Smashed them!’
‘Life is sweet-ooh!’ Ama cackles. ‘All hail, women warriors! All hail to Ama and Sheba! And to Nana Gyata su, a chief brave as a lion, whose spirit lives forever!’
We do a war dance. And as we roll our hips and bottoms, stamping our feet, we hoot at Gaza and Maybe, arm-in-arm, limping down the hill.