Say You're One of Them

by Uwem Akpan

  “I’m OK, pas de problem,” he said when he recovered and caught us staring at him. “Why you dey look me like dat?”

  “You spoke in your dream,” I said.

  “No be me,” he denied. His voice wore a touch of anger. “Make we do school, d’accord? Mary, why you dey hide behind him to look me like say I dey talk Wolof?”

  “I don’t know,” Yewa said, shrugging.

  “Sure? Or you no want study tonight?”

  “We want to study tonight,” I said. “Maybe she’s frightened by your dream.”

  Fofo stood up and stretched.

  “My dream? Which dream?” He laughed a stern laugh and sighed. “No fear.”

  I couldn’t tell whether he knew what he had said in his dream or not. And because of the anger in his voice now, I didn’t ask him. He tried to act normal, yet he couldn’t shake off the fright in which he had awakened. He kept shutting his eyes tight and opening them wide as if that would wipe away his dread. Then he started pinching his scar and shaking his head. He was more nervous and restless than he was the night our godparents came to see us. I was afraid, but I pretended to be strong so as not to frighten my sister. The nightmare should have served as a warning to me that our dream could unravel.

  “You have not eaten anything,” I said gently as I placed a bowl of food before him.

  “Who told you I want to manger?” he said, pushing the bowl aside. He brought his gin out from under the bed and took two long gulps straight from the bottle and cleared his throat. “Peutêtre, maybe je veux go Gabon aussi.” He chuckled an empty chuckle. “Maybe I should come take care of you. . . . Ah non, il faut que man be strong!”

  “You are going to miss us?” my sister said, her voice as abrupt as a town crier’s.

  “Oui, c’est ça,” he conceded, and shrugged, without looking us in the face. The liquor had cleansed his voice of anger. Now the more he drank the steadier his demeanor became, though it didn’t stop the sweat. “Yeah, make I no worry, I suppose.”

  Yewa went over and placed herself in between his legs.

  “We’ll miss you too. Won’t we, Pascal?” my sister said.

  “We will,” I said. “Fofo, don’t worry. We’ll be OK with Mama.”

  He didn’t say anything. He just sat there, looking down, hugging Yewa, and stroking her head like Mama did. My sister climbed up to sit on his lap, and the silence seemed to last an eternity. The sweat from Fofo’s face dripped on my sister, but it didn’t matter. We were getting used to the heat and the perspiration that came with it. All I could think about was how he would miss us. I began to think seriously for the first time about missing him too. I started to miss his jokes and his care for us.

  Some indescribable guilt arose within me, and I saw myself as an ingrate for wanting to go away. I couldn’t look at Fofo’s face, and he couldn’t look at our faces. I wished Yewa would say something or do something crazy to shatter the silence. But she just sat there with a sad look, and the fact that she didn’t disrupt this silence deepened my guilt. Who would Fofo talk to when he came back from work? Who would cook for him or wash his dishes? How should we pay him back for his care and for finding these godparents who had helped our parents in Braffe and would send our other siblings to Gabon? I made up my mind to tell our parents everything Fofo had done for us since we arrived here. And when he had children, I promised myself, I would do all I could to show love to my cousins. I started thinking about how we would insist that our godparents allow us to come back to visit him. I would write him letters every week, telling him about our lives. Maybe he would be able to visit us.

  “But you can come with us,” Yewa suggested, relieving me of my shame. “Mama will not mind. Maybe you can live with Fofo Vincent or Fofo Marcus or Fofo Pierre.”

  “Or Fofo David and Tantine Cecile,” I said eagerly.

  “We can take the Nanfang along,” my sister said. “Once you buy a car in Gabon, you can sell it.”

  “No, I’ll learn to ride it there,” I said.

  “But if you don’t come with us,” she said, “it’s OK. I’ll buy you a Lexus and Benz. . . . I’ll send you money too.”

  Fofo Kpee looked at her sorrowfully and dipped his finger into the bucket of water by his bed and flicked a drop in my face. “Will you miss me, Pascal?” he taunted me.

  “Yes, Fofo Kpee, yes,” I said, nodding. “I’ll build you big houses like those in our godparents’ pictures.”

  “Non, I go come Gabon! Wid you.”

  Nobody said anything. The three of us looked at each other, and then we began to laugh until we cried. Though we were chatting now, it felt very surreal, solemn. Fofo opened his mouth as if to say something but gave up. He snatched his bottle from the table and poured gin into his mouth as though he needed a big gulp to drown whatever he had wanted to say in his stomach.

  Then he poured the drink into our cups in large doses and said we needed to celebrate his coming to Gabon. We drank gleefully, until our eyes sparkled and the payó bit our guts. A boost of energy swept through my body, my sister became very talkative, and sleep went very far away from us.

  WHEN WE THOUGHT HE was going to begin the lesson that night, he got up slowly, as if he had been taken over by voodoo, and went to the lantern, where he always stood to prepare us for our trip. He removed his wrappa and threw it over the table onto the floor. He was stark naked, like us. At first, we wondered if maybe it was an accident. Then we thought maybe he was drunk, though we had never seen him drunk before. But when he didn’t pick up the loincloth, we became concerned. He looked like a man who had stolen from the open market and was about to be stoned. My sister had both hands over her mouth, to keep herself from letting out a sound, her eyes wide and unfocused. In embarrassment, I began to look up at the roof.

  Fofo Kpee poured water into a bucket and started dabbing himself with his towel. The sight of him cooling himself with very little water, like camel riders crossing the Sahara, was unbearable. His lightheartedness was gone, and the room became very quiet except for the wind outside and the sound of him putting the towel into the water bucket and wringing it. He kept babbling and had become oblivious to our presence.

  We were scared, and Yewa drew close to me. Fofo looked like a man in pain, a man who couldn’t take the heat anymore. I began to wonder why he couldn’t stay outside, where there was fresh air. Do the people of Gabon walk around naked and sleep in airtight rooms? Is it so hot there that we have to learn to behave like this? But when I remembered the beautiful beaches and houses in the pictures our godparents showed us, I convinced myself that that wasn’t the case. Since he was now coming with us to Gabon, did he have to be this dramatic to catch up with our preparation? The whole thing was like a bad dream from which we must quickly awake.

  “Hey, children,” he said, finally looking at us, sounding funny again, “j’espère que shame no dey catch you to see Fofo comme çi.” He left the lantern and came toward us. “When una dey small, una no shower wid your parents for Braffe?”

  “We did,” we said, still trying to look away.

  “So why you dey behave like small chicken now? Person who fit cross de sea done become big man o. . . . In de boat il faut qu’ everybody dey mix wid everybody, vous comprenez? Even dat your sister, Antoinette, if she dey remove her dress make sure confusion no enter your head o.”

  “She’s going to be naked?” my sister asked, alarmed.

  “Impossible!” I said.

  “Not really,” Fofo said. “But if you see her change her dress, na one of dose tings.”

  “No,” she said.

  “When you get sister for family, na like dat . . . but we be family, oui?” We nodded reluctantly without saying anything. “And no shame if una see your godparents’ nakedness. No big difference dey between ome˙nno˙to˙ le˙. Naked people nulopo lo˙ wé yé yin . . . partout. Your godparents dey run a world organization. You go see all kind of people for Gabon. You go see white people, colored people, tourists who support de work o
f your godparents. Do whatever dem want—go beach wid dem, go hotel wid dem . . . if dem want take una go Europe, follow dem. Even if una no like dem, soiyez patience, no condition dey permanent . . .”

  “But you’re coming with us,” I cut in, uncomfortable with what he was saying. Yewa was shaking her head in disagreement.

  “Whatever de case,” Fofo said, “make good use of l’opportunité. Don’t worry. No big deal for all dis . . . gbòjé!”

  The dread that had hung around him since he awoke from his nightmare went away now. Apart from his nakedness, he looked very normal. His whole body glowed with sweat except his bushy pubic hair, out of which hung a limp penis, its head smooth like mango skin, its body wearing a tube of tiny rings of flesh, like the neck of an oba in an odigba.

  Suddenly, Fofo Kpee parted his legs and grabbed his genitals as if to push them back into the bush.

  “You naked, I naked, why you fear?” he said like one reciting a poem. “You have it, I have it. My own big, your own small, right? Say ‘hén, Fofo,’ s’il vous plaît!”

  “Yes, Fofo,” we stammered, and nodded.

  “Let talk about sex, mes bébés,” he began to sing, and wriggled like a madman. “Let talk about vous and moi.” He balled one hand into a microphone, the other still grabbing his genitals. He skulked around the room as if he were on stage; he jumped onto the table, then jumped down. He moonwalked until his back grazed the clothes in the wardrobe. He stopped suddenly, with one leg raised in frozen posture. “You know de song?”

  “No,” we said.

  “You want touch my ting? Come on, do it, allez, touchez moi.”

  He was now coming toward us.

  “No, no!” I said, and we backed away.

  My sister was silent. She never spoke again that night but shielded her privates with her hands and moved behind me.

  “Oh, you want touch your ting, mes enfants?”

  “No,” I said.

  I felt a numbness around my groin, and my heart began to pound. I didn’t feel the heat anymore, though I noticed more sweat was pouring from my body. My penis seemed to have shrunk completely, and my balls became one hard nut. I knew immediately this was different from my fofo’s ordinary clowning. I was afraid.

  “Or you want touch white man, Mary, huh?” he said.

  Yewa shook her head.

  When he turned his gaze on me, I said, “Maybe we should not go to Gabon . . .”

  “Shut up, bastard!” he exploded, and shook his head and downed more payó. “You want drink, abi?”

  “No.”

  “You want woman?”

  “No.”

  “Just don’t disgrace me for foreign land o . . . you hear?”

  “No.”

  “Non?”

  “Yes, Fofo.”

  We stared at each other for a while. “Good, at least,” he said, “you no dey hide your face anymore. Gbòjé, gbòjé!”

  He held the cap of his penis by his fingertips and stretched it downward until the rings of flesh disappeared. He spun and released it like a cone. It didn’t turn but returned weakly to its perch on the balls. He continued to do this until his penis began to get bigger. He giggled and tied his wrappa around his waist again and sat on the bed.

  “Would you like some food?” he said.

  “No,” I said.

  “Sure, Mary? Some Gabon food, cornflakes, Nido, huh?”

  “I want to sleep,” she whispered.

  That night I tried to convince myself that I was drunk, that none of this had really happened. In spite of the heat, I put on my shorts and turned my back toward Fofo and lay with my hands between my legs, trying to protect myself even in sleep. My sister simply wrapped herself up in the bedspread. I was repulsed by thoughts of traveling to Gabon. I no longer felt at home in our place. It was as if every piece of furniture had been stained by Fofo’s performance that night. My mind sank deeper into shame and fear as I remembered all the things we had bought since we started thinking of going to Gabon. For instance, I hated the very shorts I was wearing and thought of taking them off, but I couldn’t bring myself to sleep naked that night. I hated the Nanfang and vowed never to ride on it again.

  For the first time, I sympathized with Paul—and wished I could have vomited, like him, all the good food I had ever eaten in the past few months. I wondered how he and Antoinette were doing. Did they know something we didn’t know? Did they go through their orientation before visiting us? Who would be giving them this lesson? Big Guy?

  I wasn’t interested in traveling anymore, though somehow my mind refused to associate my godparents with what had happened that night. I felt better thinking they didn’t know, and took solace in the memory of their visit. Though I no longer felt like following them, I didn’t think they meant us any harm. And though Fofo apologized to us the next morning and said he overdid things just a bit in case life became difficult abroad, I started thinking of how to escape and run back to Braffe with my sister.

  ONE DAY FOFO RUSHED back from work unexpectedly, like in his pre-Nanfang days when he had duped someone at the border and needed to go underground. He jumped off his bike and stormed into the parlor. He quickly locked the door behind him and leaned against it, breathing like one who had escaped from a lion. Uncharacteristically, Fofo had abandoned the Nanfang outside. He didn’t respond to our greetings. He mumbled something about protecting us from evil and started unbolting the windows. A humid gust of wind drifted in and flushed the room of the stuffiness that had filled the place since we sealed the house three weeks before.

  “Yes, if dem want kill me, ye ni hù mì,” he said to no one in particular. He had his arms akimbo and seemed very proud of this single action of opening the windows. Then he removed his coat and sat down heavily on the bed.

  “Fofo, who wants to kill you?” Yewa asked quietly, not moving closer to him.

  Since that night when he went naked before us, we were scared to get close to him and said very little to him. He said little to us too. Silence grew between us like yeast, and the room felt smaller, while his presence seemed to expand. We looked forward to his leaving the house, and when he was home, sometimes we pretended to be asleep.

  Now I began to speak to him from our bed: “Fofo, are you . . . ?”

  “Leave me alone!” he warned, holding his forehead in his palms. “Vous pensez que I dey craze, huh?”

  “No, no, Fofo,” I pleaded.

  “I dey OK . . . notting dey wrong wid me.”

  Yewa didn’t say anything. Now she hid behind me, as she did that bad night. The fresh wind filled the room, and we listened to it and the distant wash of the ocean on the beach. After a while, she whispered in my ear that we should go outside, but when I grabbed her hand and wanted to leave the room, he ordered us to sit on the bed. My sister began to sob.

  Fofo Kpee went outside to bring the Nanfang into the inner room. He pushed the bike forcefully, like a police officer arresting a difficult criminal. “If I must sell you to be free,” he said to the Nanfang, slapping the backseat, “I shall!”

  When we saw him slapping the machine, we expected him to blow up at us at any moment. Then we heard him rummaging in the inner room, his anger evident in the way he threw things out of the way. He was searching for something. He came out with an iron bar we hadn’t seen in a long time.

  He went to work with all his energy, climbing on a chair in our parlor-bedroom and chipping the cement mix we had put up a few weeks back, driven by a fury we couldn’t understand. He didn’t bother to move anything or to ask me for help. The brittle fill came flying down in bits and pieces. It was as if the whole place would come crashing down. The whiff of dust streaked the fresh air. And when I coughed, he ordered us to get out of his sight.

  We went outside. The late-afternoon sun had gone past the center of the sky and hit the earth at an angle, pouring out of the clear skies without restraint. Looking down the long path to the road, we could see people going about their business, on foot and on bike
s, in either direction. We sat quietly under the mango tree, facing the house. I sat on the ground with my back against the tree, my legs straight out before me, Yewa sitting on them, her head on my chest. Its shade wide and cool, the mango foliage wore a two-tone look, like our Nanfang. Some parts of the tree were in bloom, the new fruit and bright-green leaves contrasting with the old. The scent of the fruit, fresh and warm in the sun, filled the air, and the ground around us was sprayed with fine light-green pollen.

  “Is he angry with Nanfang?” Yewa whispered to me when we could no longer hear him working inside.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “When we buy him a car, he won’t be angry again.”

  “We’re not going to Gabon!”

  “We’re not?” she said, turning to face me. “Why, huh?”

  “Did you like what Fofo Kpee said the night he danced naked? You liked what he did?”

  “No. But he said sorry to us the next day.” She closed her eyes in defiance and turned her back to me. “OK, I’ll go alone, with Mama and Papa!”

  It was no use arguing with her.

  Under that mango tree, my mind went back to thoughts of running away. Though I had no concrete plans and didn’t know whether it would be possible, the very idea of leaving lifted my mood that afternoon.

  I was no longer sure about escaping to Braffe. Suppose I got there and my extended family was as fixated on Gabon as Yewa was and no one understood my change of mind? Who would believe me if I told them what Fofo had done that bad night? Or what if our siblings had been put through this already and didn’t complain? Again, I was concerned about how to escape with Yewa. How could I convince her to follow me when she was still excited about traveling?

  For a moment, I thought about telling Monsieur Abraham that our uncle had gone crazy, about the late-night lessons and my plans to escape. But I was too ashamed to do that. What would he think of me? What if my classmates got wind of my uncle’s craziness?