8

On the way to the creek, we cut dry branches for firewood, and I started a fire as soon as we arrived while Togbe and Grandpa Dodzi—as I now thought of him—husked the corn. I laid the cobs out on our makeshift grill while Togbe cut the pawpaws with the cutlass and scooped out black seeds. He sliced up the juicy orange fruit and handed it round.

“Delicious!” Grandpa Dodzi wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “So”—he turned to me—“has your Togbe taught you to swim yet?”

“Ei!” laughed Togbe, while I shook my head. “I don’t even remember myself!”

“Oh, please!” said Grandpa Dodzi. “Don’t mind this old fibber, he swims better than me! Dives too.”

“Really?” I turned to Togbe.

“Well, Edem did teach me deep diving, but that was a long time ago!”

“You see!” said Grandpa Dodzi. “He learned from the best—that legendary grandma of yours! Has the old rascal told you how I once toiled to court a woman only for him to swoop in and snatch victory from the jaws of my defeat?”

I jumped to my feet, chuckling, nudged the corncobs off the fire and onto a plate, and passed them round. We started munching.

“He got the better woman too, while I wasted time, blinded by beauty! But never mind all that; the point is, young man, if you can’t swim, it’s high time you learned!” He set down his half-eaten cob and beckoned to Togbe. “Come on, we need to teach the boy!”

“What—now?” Togbe asked, midchew.

“And how long is this water going to be around for?”

Togbe and I looked at each other. Grandpa Dodzi peeled off his T-shirt and stood in his shorts. “Last one in is a toothless crocodile!” he called over his shoulder.

Togbe shrugged and pulled off his shirt, chuckling. “Vinye, are you ready?”

I felt scared and excited at the same time, but I wasn’t going to miss getting in the water with these two. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of asking Togbe before.

“Let’s go!” I tossed away my corncob.

The water was easy to slip into—pleasantly cool but far from cold. I felt the gentle pull of the current and the slipperiness of moss and mud beneath my feet. I stayed close to the bank while Togbe and Grandpa Dodzi took off like fish that had been stranded on land and were finally back in water. Gone were Togbe’s limp and Grandpa Dodzi’s shuffling gait as they sliced the water with their arms and splashed it with their feet. The years just seemed to roll right off them, and I watched transfixed as they laughed like rascals and raced each other, then swam leisurely back to the bank.

Grandpa Dodzi showed me how to move my arms and legs, but when I launched in, trying to copy him, I sank like a stone. I tried to get up, but I slipped on the mud and fell back in. I thrashed my arms, swallowing water, convinced I was about to drown. Then I felt Togbe’s hand under me and came up spluttering, nose and throat burning.

“It’s okay,” he said soothingly. “See? You’re fine. Try again!”

I shook my head. I wasn’t going to go through that again. It looked so easy when they did it, but it clearly wasn’t for me.

“Okay, I’ll hold you up while you practice moving your arms and legs. Go on, you can do it!”

In my rational mind I knew they wouldn’t let me drown, so I plucked up my courage and gave it another try.

“Good!” they chorused. We continued for a while, then Togbe tried removing his hand, and I promptly sank again.

“I’m too heavy!” I said in dismay as he helped me back up.

They burst out laughing. “Heavier than a ship?” Grandpa Dodzi flipped over and did a backstroke, then floated on the water as if lying on a bed. I stared in envious wonder.

“It’s fear!” said Togbe gently. “That’s what’s weighing you down, vinye! You don’t know the weight of fear till you try to swim. Once you lose it your body will move through the water like the birds through the air!”

I looked up at birds circling weightlessly on wind currents above. “But how do I lose it?”

“By making friends with the water! Don’t rush it, just play in it, and with it. Once you’re relaxed, thinking only of the feel of it, you’ll sense it buoying you up, whispering softly to your body about the lightness, the deliciousness of floating. That’s when it’ll be time to try again!”

After that I just splashed around in the shallows, watching them revel in the water while I relished the cool of it sliding over the sunshine on my back and shoulders. I might not learn to swim today, and the holidays might soon be over, but there was always next rainy season.

Soon after school reopened for my final year of junior high, I realized Togbe was beginning to tire quicker than usual, especially on the farm. He’d press on his stomach every once in a while, with a strained look on his face. On the mornings it happened I hated having to leave him with Ma and go to school. I asked if we could take him to the hospital, and he scoffed and said it was nothing, but I noticed he’d started losing weight. I had hoped we’d be able to spend time at the creek during the Christmas holidays, perhaps with Grandpa Dodzi again. But as December began, I could see that Togbe needed all the rest he could get.

Then, as if the decline were contagious, two weeks before Christmas, Grandpa Dodzi had a stroke. As soon as we got the news, I helped Togbe get ready, and we set off to the hospital. I tried to keep his spirits up in the tro-tro minibus, and then in the waiting room. But when we finally got into the ward, Grandpa Dodzi was hooked up to tubes and wires, unmoving and unconscious. He never even knew we were there. It was hard to tell which was more painful, seeing him like that, or watching Togbe gaze silently at him.

I prayed for him at bedtime, and in church on Sunday too. But to our devastation, he died the following week. His funeral took place at the beginning of the Christmas holidays, and I accompanied Togbe to each event. At the wake he stared straight ahead with a blank look in his eyes. At the burial he sprinkled earth on the coffin, and I felt as though he were leaving a part of his own life force in the grave. When we got home, he looked older and more exhausted than I’d ever seen him before. I felt drained too when I thought how much could be taken away from one moment to the next. All the years Grandpa Dodzi had lived, the changes he’d seen, the struggles he’d overcome, his grit, his irrepressible humor—all lost to us and the world because his time had come.

Mr. Adjoyi Jr., grief-stricken, was grateful for our support because, although other senior members of the family traveled to Tovime for the funeral, Togbe was now the closest thing he had to a father.

It was hard to feel festive that Christmas. We didn’t have a Christmas tree, but we’d made paper chains in school, and Ma dug out our wispy old tinsel garlands. Togbe could not join us this time as we climbed up on chairs to hang them over the window frames. He stood below, handing them up to us while leaning on a chair, and gave me money to go and buy the biscuits and sweets he usually lavished on us at Christmas. On the day itself he rested in the bedroom while we prepared lunch.

This time it was up to me to kill the chicken we’d done our best to fatten. Mawuli plucked it, then pounded boiled palm nuts in the narrow wooden mortar to help Ma prepare the palm soup. Meanwhile Klenam and I made the fufu, me pounding the steaming plantain and cassava together in the large wooden mortar while she turned and shaped the blended mass adeptly between each stroke of the pestle.

The meal was our collective gift to each other because we didn’t have money to buy other things, but this year I’d used the skills Togbe taught me to make something for everyone: new coal pot fans for Ma, different-shaped baskets for Klenam and Mawuli, and—the thing I’d spent the most time on—an extra-large fish trap for Togbe. Woven into its fronds was the dearest wish of my heart—that we would return to the creek together.

We did our best to be merry, but although Togbe joined in the meal and was delighted with my gift, we could all sense the steady dimming of his spirit, and for me that overshadowed not only Christmas but everything else. Ma insisted on him resting as much as possible. I tried to spend more time with him, but it was difficult because I was taking on more farmwork since he couldn’t do much himself anymore and the Christmas holidays would soon be over.

In the new year his bouts of illness became more frequent, and the day came when he could not go to the farm anymore. Ma took him to the hospital, and they came back with a whole set of pills. I asked what illness he had, but neither of them knew. The doctor had not taken the time to explain, and the nurses had been bossy and rude, said Ma. He’d been told to come back in a month for review. I looked at the different medications—paracetamol, vitamins, and two others with long names that I didn’t know.

Togbe took his tablets dutifully each time Ma gave them to him, but he said they just made him feel worse. He lost more weight. When the time came to go back to the hospital, he refused. He said he’d stay in the peace of his home and use his own remedies instead of throwing more money away.