2

It was hard to believe we hadn’t always lived with Togbe. Klenam barely remembered the days when we lived with both our parents in Sogakope, seven years before, and as for Mawuli, he didn’t even remember our father. But maybe that was a good thing.

Our father worked in Sogakope, and that was where I started school. I never had to wear a ragged uniform back then, and school was the only work I did, but life was hard in a different way because Dad could be so mean. He shouted a lot, and Ma always looked sad. I heard our cotenants whisper that he had girlfriends, but what I hated most was when he got drunk and hit Ma. I was only six or seven, but I’d try to defend her, and he’d beat me off. That was why I was happy when we left. Ma never said anything about it, but one day, while he was at work, she just packed our bags and took us to the bus station, her mouth set in a firm line.

I wasn’t sure what was happening, but I trusted Ma despite the sad, lost air she had about her. As we headed upriver along the Volta it was soothing to look out the window and see the sun bounce off its ripples. I gazed at its marshes and rice fields, at kingfishers hovering to dive, cattle egrets dotting the landscape with white, and weaverbird nests dangling from trees like Christmas decorations. I hadn’t traveled much, but the few times we’d ever gone anywhere the river would always appear at some point, like when we visited our father’s relatives. That time we went in the opposite direction, following it all the way down to the sea. It was like a kind of travel buddy, always there no matter where we were going or what we were leaving behind.

Togbe came to fetch us from the bus stop at Mepe. Back then his hair was gray, and there was a lot more of it. He was tall and looked fit for his age in a light cotton smock and pants. We’d only met him a few times before, but Klenam was too young to remember, and Mawuli hadn’t yet been born. When the bus arrived, Ma woke me up and asked me to take the lead. She handed me her big bag with the broken handle. I carried it carefully, and as soon as I got out of the bus, Togbe took it from me and lifted me off my feet. I was surprised he recognized me straightaway like that because it was at least a couple of years since we’d last seen each other.

“Vinye!” he said, and there was so much warmth in the word—“my child”—and in his embrace, that I immediately felt I was exactly where I was meant to be. I had no idea how that worked—feeling more at home in a new place than where I’d lived all my life—but his welcome just seemed to gather up all my anxiety and toss it away like trash. And his smile was what I remembered best about him because it felt like something his childhood had accidentally left behind. His lips would twitch and pucker for a second before they stretched into a curve, like someone who had just done something naughty and wasn’t going to tell you what it was.

He took Mawuli out of Ma’s arms as soon as she emerged, and when he started crying, he made a funny noise like a birdcall. Mawuli went quiet and looked at him, puzzled. Then he wiggled his moustache and started playing peekaboo. Mawuli started to giggle in that out-of-control baby way, hiding his face against Togbe’s shoulder. After that Klenam happily took his other hand, skipping along with her purple plastic doll clutched to her chest, while Ma and I loaded our things together with the driver of the rickety taxi Togbe had hailed.

The village of Tovime was farther from the river than we had lived in Sogakope. I’d hoped we might be closer to it, because the gentle rush of its current always made me feel at peace, but I still liked Togbe’s place because we didn’t have to share it with anyone. Our previous home had been two rooms in a compound house where we shared the bathroom and kitchen with other tenants. But Togbe’s house was in its own compound with a small garden patch and a thatched chicken coop. It was built from concrete with metal roofing sheets, and had a small living room; two bedrooms; an open-air kitchen; a walled, outdoor bathing space; and—my favorite part—a front veranda cladded on the outside with clamshells painted a cream yellow like the rest of the house. The furniture was old, and the paint was faded and dirty in places, but the compound was swept, and the house was neat on the inside. There was no running water, though, so the next morning—and each one after that—we had to get up at the crack of dawn to fetch some from the communal tap by the Presby church, and we had to take bucket baths instead of showers.

Learning to farm took even more getting used to. Ma had done it as a child, but we were town kids. At first Klenam and I only went along to the farm on weekends, but as we grew older, we started going after school on weekdays too. In the beginning Klenam found it fun because she was still little and didn’t have to do hard stuff. I did the same tasks as Ma and Togbe, but I didn’t see it as a hardship because it felt like my duty as the eldest, and as a boy, and helping provide for the family made me feel grown-up. Moreover, despite how backbreaking it could be, there was a certain thrill in seeing seeds we’d planted a few days before poke tiny leaves out of the soil and shoot unstoppably upward. And also—a little harder to explain—I felt a sort of calm when surrounded by plants, especially ones I’d helped grow.

I took pride in honing my new skills, especially as the difference my work was making began to show. Togbe and Ma were generous with praise and said I was a fast learner. We made a good team, and I quickly came to treasure our cozy family unit. We might not have much money, but we ate fresh food from our farms every day and looked after each other, and Togbe made sure we laughed a lot together. At the end of a hard day there was nothing I looked forward to more than settling down to hear his stories.

Togbe never began a story with “Once upon a time…” Instead, he’d take us right into it, like when he told us to close our eyes and imagine the gentle lapping of water against a riverbank. Then he sounded a whooshing whistle, and it was a fresh breeze over rippling wavelets.

He told of fishermen on a river and the sun glinting off the backs of silver fish as they wriggled in the net. The excitement of the catch was ours, and a young boy worked side by side with the men, out there on the water, at one with the wind and the wide-open space, sensing an elemental freedom. When the wind swirled around him and filled his lungs, he felt he could do anything. Before anyone could stop him, he had dived down to fetch a lost net. He wanted to show he could do it just as well as the men. But he had not realized how deep the river was.

He turned around and struck for the surface, but he could barely swim for the urge to breathe. He knew it would be water, not air, that would flood in, and yet his whole body was one suffocating urge to inhale. I won’t! he cried inwardly as his strength failed him and his thoughts began to blur. And it was at that moment he felt it. He was rising through the water. Something was pushing him from beneath!

Hope flared through his daze, and he opened his eyes, blinking through the gloom. There below him was a vague shape. Someone or something, surging powerfully, shooting him upward on the beat of a paddle-shaped tail.

Was he dreaming? Or dead already? Before he could decide, he broke the surface of the water, gulping in air. Oh, to be alive! was all he could think as he trod water, inhaling and coughing in spasms.

“What happened?” everyone wanted to know once they’d helped him back into the boat.

So he told them. He thought they wouldn’t believe him because he barely understood it himself, and he’d seen so little through the dim water. And who or what could it have been, anyway, down there at the depths?

“Mami Wata!” whispered an old fisherman.

The others nodded with a peculiar look coming into their eyes. A sense pervaded the boat like a breeze that made you tingle, raising goose bumps on your skin.

The boy was confused. He’d heard Mami Wata spoken of in hushed tones and seen paintings of her on the roadside billboards of spiritual healers—a great water goddess with piercing eyes, flowing hair, and a fish tail, commanding pythons twined around her. Could that really be who or what had saved him? They looked at him with what seemed like awe but asked nothing more as they headed home. It had happened to him, and yet they seemed to know more about it. He was the one asking the questions, but their answers only made him more confused.

“Just count yourself lucky!” the old man said finally. “You must be blessed! Mami Wata only comes to the rescue of good people.”