15

If I learned anything from that first day out on the water, it was that I was going to have to teach myself to swim. The master clearly had no intention to, and I was already beginning to realize he wanted no kinship among his workers, so I knew they wouldn’t, either. Moreover, from the way he worked them he’d no doubt consider it a waste of their time to babysit a rookie.

I felt so naïve for assuming I’d get the chance to work with Bright! This man wouldn’t even let kids he’d thrown together from God knows where get to know each other, much less hire a pair of friends! Of course it made sense to isolate people from each other if you were going to treat them like this! Divide and rule—simple as that. His tactics were plain to see.

That night I again heard only snores around me as I sobbed quietly into my hands. It was agonizing to think of Togbe’s hopes for me, his rosy dreams for my future. But this time as I thought of him a gentle calm settled over me, pushing away the shame and hurt as though spiriting me away for a healing respite. It was as though I could sense him telling me that this wasn’t the end but a trial he’d help me through, and what a fool I’d been to think anything in this world could make him love me less!

I woke up confident in my conclusions from the day before, and that made them seem like actual plans because I was thinking with logic now, rather than anguish. I’d teach myself to swim by accepting that it was simply what I had to do and nobody else was going to do it. And I’d manage it by staying calm and watching the others.

When we went out on the lake I watched them in the water, especially Abu and Tseko, who were the most agile swimmers. Without the master along, the boys just ignored me as usual and got on with their work. That gave me time, because I was beginning to realize he mostly stayed onshore. After watching for a while, I’d lower myself into the water and hold on to the side of the canoe, trying to quell my panic and get used to being out in open water.

Baby Joe would join me whenever he was in the boat. To my surprise, he already knew how to swim, though his main job was bailing. I wondered if he came from a fishing community. He’d go into the water with me and follow as I took a deep breath, let go of the boat, and struck out. It was not only the depth and endless expanse of the water that terrified me. It was the waves too. I had not expected such waves in a lake, but the wind whipped them up, and they buffeted me ruthlessly. When I sank, Baby Joe would call the others, and his little hands were always there, trying to help as they hauled me up. The way he rooted for me lifted my spirits more than anything else.

It took a week till the master joined us again, and I steeled myself, ready this time for what was to come. It made all the difference to go in voluntarily—albeit terrified—rather than waiting for him to throw me in, because it meant I was, to some extent, prepared.

To my relief I was able to hold my breath, quell my panic, and coordinate my limbs well enough to start pulling back to the surface. It was more like fighting than swimming, and there was nothing elegant about my movements. But I didn’t care because it was about survival.

As we headed back to the shore that day, I felt no sense of achievement. I just sat huddled in my shorts with water trickling off me. For the first time I noticed that the person sitting next to me in the same state was a girl, barely older than Mawuli. I hadn’t realized there were any girls among us because I’d not yet had the chance to interact with my new mates as people rather than work machines. I knew almost nothing about them despite having spent several days and nights in their midst.

I should have been surprised to find a girl in this business, but I already felt oblivious to that or to any other detail. It was hard to imagine a world in which the pretty glances of a girl had once mattered to me. For now, my immediate concern was, once again, my seasickness. The wind was picking up, raising waves a meter high, and I could barely watch as we rolled over them. I was afraid to say anything but terrified of vomiting again, and the master’s presence only made it worse. A gentle rush distracted me as raindrops riffled the surface of the lake.

“Bail!” yelled the master.

We all grabbed bailing vessels. Thunder cracked, and lightning streaked across the sky like a celestial tree revealing its branches for a split second. I felt as though I were caught in a different dimension where death was as present as life, and everything was elemental and terrifying.

We made it safely to shore, and it thundered and poured all night long. The next day was Sunday, and I wondered if we’d be allowed to rest for a change, or maybe even take the boat to church somewhere. But as soon as it stopped raining, Yao roused us for our morning shift. We still spent the same amount of time working, and the sun baked us out on the lake till I felt like my skin was on fire.

I was fast learning that our work schedule was dictated solely by the master’s needs, not by ours, and definitely not by any conventions of the outside world. Although we mostly went out on the lake without him, we worked just as hard because he monitored our catches closely. With this relentless schedule my swimming, if I could call it that, soon improved enough to join properly in the work, or at least assist the others in doing it. I was also learning to hold my breath underwater. It was a huge relief to become functional in this hellish new world, but I was never confident and always made sure to stay close to the others.

We fixed nets, often between tree stumps, and searched for fish to drive into them. Those submerged trunks and branches gave us our most hazardous work because the nets constantly got caught and tangled in them. Sometimes we had to dive deep to disentangle them. I dreaded doing that in the dark. We’d poke around, trying our luck this way and that, running out of air and diving back down again and again.

It made me think of Grandma Edem, the famous clam picker. I was haunted by the story of how she’d got her foot trapped, and I had panic attacks about getting stuck myself. I’d always marveled at the stories about her, but now I stood in utter awe, and prayed her spirit would watch over me while I labored clumsily doing things that must have been a total breeze for her.

There was lots to do on land too. Cleaning nets was a chore because of the small fish. The worst was what they called kapenta, a kind of tiny sardine. Most of our fish went straight from the lake to Mr. Kofigah, but when we caught more than he needed, we had the job of sorting, scaling, cleaning, and smoking it. Then we’d take the canoe and go and sell it at the closest mainland communities. Our shore duties also included cooking and cleaning for the master, and the boys fought over these jobs for the sake of his leftovers, which were far tastier than ours. I was never interested because I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything but revulsion toward him.

Every time he spoke to me, I had to wrestle down the urge to call him the names he deserved. When he hit me, or the others, I held in my clenched fists to keep from punching him back. I, Sena, who had always spoken up! Who had questioned Jack of Diamonds himself when my mates didn’t dare! But there was a grim menace out here, not only in the master’s manner but in the desolation of our surroundings. Who knew what the brute was capable of? Was it wise to provoke him? And how could anyone come to our rescue when they had no idea where we were?

In all, there were ten of us working for him, most of them younger than me. The names I’d picked up so far were Yao, Tseko, Abu, Seth, Gideon, and Baby Joe. Yao seemed to be some kind of a nephew to the master, which was why, if this place of nightmares had been a classroom, he’d have been the prefect. He was the only one toward whom the brute displayed any modicum of trust. Seth, Abu, and Tseko had come from far away like me—Seth from the western shore of the lake, Abu from the north, and Tseko from Ningo, a town on the coast, west of my home. I knew nothing about the others. We spoke Ɛwɛ, Twi, and broken English with each other, and with the master.

Although I hated the sight of him, it made me anxious when he’d take off in the boat, leaving us marooned on the island, sometimes overnight, and it was terrifying to be caught in storms on the lake by ourselves. The sky would turn black, and the water would swell into waves that rolled the boat around like a toy. I’d feel suffocated between nausea and terror as lightning streaked from sky to water and thunder boomed painfully into our eardrums. Yao would take charge of getting us back to shore, but I could see the fear in his eyes. Baby Joe would abandon bailing and cling to me, his heart racing. And even here on the island I had already seen scorpions, cobras, and green mambas, and it always felt like disaster could strike in the blink of an eye.

Sometimes the master returned with a woman and two small children. I guessed they must be his family. The aroma from the meals she cooked made our mouths water, but we only ever got whatever leftovers we could lay our hands on. She kept her children away from us as though we were filth but trained us in cleaning and smoking fish, and cooking for the master, barking orders and dishing out slaps. She got as good as she gave, though, because he didn’t treat her much better than he did us. Sometimes we heard him beating her. She was usually gone within a week. He brought other women back from his trips too, but he’d always have Yao dispatch them the next morning.

Once in a while I’d hear Seth or Abu crying quietly at night when they thought everyone was asleep. And Seth coughing too. But during the day I never saw any trace of emotion on their faces. Abu was the best swimmer and net fixer among us. He was a quiet boy with a slim but hard-muscled frame. He’d been longest with the master, and he worked like a well-oiled machine. Watching him, you’d never know he could shed tears. But I still shed them too, sometimes. As for Joe, he was still a baby really, so it was his job to cry, more or less, though he did so less than one might have expected from a child his age in a place like this.

I wished I could get to know them all better, but the master watched out for signs of camaraderie, and would set us against each other and punish any attempt to help each other except strictly for work. When we went out on the boat without him, our talk was mostly about work. It was a new and startling thing to me for ordinary friendship to be as off-limits as romance could be.

But the master’s tactics worked perfectly because everyone just got on with their work and kept to themselves, and all our rage and rebellion cowered down inside our heads. Most of the kids barely spoke, anyway; they seemed to live in their own worlds. They avoided eye contact and stared blankly ahead or kept their eyes lowered. It was as much as I’d been able to do just to learn those few names. Our master never used them, he just called us things like “Small boy!” and “You fool over there!” To him we’d never be anything but a faceless, soulless pack of workers.

“Leave him alone!” he roared a couple of weeks later, shoving me out of the way as I tried to help Baby Joe. “Serves him right for playing all the time!”

We were mending the canoe. The outboard motor had broken down once again, and this time it needed to go to the mechanic. In the meantime, the master had finally decided to tackle the hull because it could barely stay afloat anymore. The tree stumps in the lake had taken their toll. It lay upturned with its inscriptions upside down—in flaking paint on one side, SONS OF GOD; and on the other, MARCH FORWARD!

It was a big job, and everyone was occupied. Baby Joe, playing alone, had got himself tangled up in a heap of netting. Another boat owner arrived in a canoe, with tools our master needed to hire. One of the man’s workers, a tall, skinny boy, carried them ashore in a cardboard carton on his head. He set it carefully on the ground and shuffled from one foot to the other, looking away when any of us made eye contact, even accidentally.

Joe was screaming at the top of his lungs, flailing around inside the net.

“Look at this small idiot!” The master laughed, glancing around to cue the rest of us. “Ah, why?” he barked, seeing the expression on my face. “Are you his mother?” He cued off more sneers, with me, this time, as the butt of ridicule. The other boat master came over to greet him but was drowned out by Joe’s bawling.

“Sharrap!” yelled the master.

“These kids are troublesome o!” said the man. He stretched backward, stifling a yawn, then scratched his head and brought his fingers down to fiddle with a hole in his string vest. “Me too, how I’m sick of them! If they’re not stupid, they’re lazy! If they don’t lie, they steal! The only thing they know how to do is eat. Eat, eat, eat! Like this one!” He inclined his head at his boy. “You too, what are you waiting for?” he snapped. “Stop standing there like a fool and give the tools to Yao!”

“Yessa, Massa,” said the boy, his voice suddenly cracking between the words.

“You’re getting them too old, that’s your problem!” said our master. “Did you hear that? In a week, this boy’s voice will be deeper than yours! He’s already taller than you. I never take them like this. You think he’s trouble now; wait and see!”

“He wasn’t like this when I got him.”

“Take my advice,” said our master. “Next time, go for one of these.” He pointed at Joe, whimpering inside his web. “You can’t beat the babies! Well, not that you can’t actually…” He threw his head back and laughed, looking around again as if he couldn’t believe how funny he was, and how lucky we were to have such a wit in our midst.

The man looked doubtful. “I’m no babysitter.”

“What babysitter? Your boys will look after him! This little rat—he swims already, and you should see him bail! And sort fish. Come and see speed when he’s moving kapenta from the net with those baby fingers!”

“Hmm.” The man looked thoughtful now.

“And you know the best part? He has no idea who he is or where he comes from! All he’ll ever know is he belongs to me!”

They high-fived, chuckling.

“Chale, just let me know when you’re ready. I’ll send you the guy. He can get you as many as you want!”

I listened in horror. It sounded as if our master had actually bought Joe. I hoped I was mistaken, but poverty could drive people to things they’d never imagined, as I well knew. Still, Joe was barely past babyhood! My five years suddenly seemed short in comparison.