“It won’t be necessary. I’m returning to England soon.”
“Really? I thought you might stay. Papa has grown fond of you.”
Fond of. I was a trinket for the Adjeis to hold on to, a new creature for their zoo.
“You’re all so entitled,” I said.
She narrowed her eyes. It was a look she used in court, perhaps, to quell anyone who threatened the Adjei rule of law.
“We don’t notice. It comes as naturally as our skin color.”
Yes, that was it. If I had been raised here, I would never notice standing at the front of the queue.
“Was he a good father?” I asked.
“Absent and strict but loving.”
“Kweku said he put him in jail.”
“Yes, I remember that. He was very stubborn. Papa doesn’t like his children to cross him. It wasn’t a bad cell. I visited him.”
She smiled and Amir came to clear our plates.
“The bill, please,” Afua said.
“On the house,” Amir replied.
“Really. That’s unnecessary.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Perhaps I can show your friend around town, if she’s here for a while longer. If that’s all right with you, my lord?”
He gave me a card with a phone number written on it.
“You don’t need Afua’s permission,” I said.
“Of course. Anytime you’re available, I’m free. Just call me.”
Outside, the driver was waiting in the car with the engine off and windows down, slowly baking in the sun.
“Amir has a child,” Afua said, once we were in the backseat.
“So do I.”
On the drive back, she answered a phone call and left me to my thoughts. I did not care for the future Afua had mapped out for me in Bamana, an appendage to the Adjei machine, but what future did I have in London if I refused Robert’s offer? My house suddenly seemed a distant, grey memory on a silent, graveyard street. I had already attempted life on my own there without much success.
Afua walked me to the front door and pressed her cheeks to mine.
“Thank you for lunch,” I said.
“The pleasure was mine, me nua.”
“Pardon?”
“It means ‘my sister.’”
“Me nua,” I said.
When she was gone, I lingered in the hallway entrance. The sun shone through the stained-glass windows and cast colored lights on the floor. It was fine workmanship, worthy of a cathedral, worthy of the Adjeis.
Kofi had not asked me to stay but he was fond of me, Afua said, and I was drawn to him by some strong homing instinct. Staying would be casting my lot with the powerful and standing against the Kinnakro Five, against Marcellina and Abena chained to a stake in the ground. There was no space in Bamana for neutral Adjeis.
Kofi does not come that day or the next. Sule is still trying to get me out of the country. I save Amir’s number but I do not call him. Robert’s declaration has left me once again feeling bound by fidelity. There is no one to ask for advice. I know Rose’s opinion, and I can guess at Katherine’s because of her faith. And what of Anna?
I would never have come to Bamana if Robert and I were still a couple, but then I also wouldn’t be stuck in Bamana. My marriage did lend a certain stability. And what of love? Robert no longer loomed so large in my mind. Coming to Bamana had put him in perspective.
I wear the dressing gown, which is starting to take on my musk. My canvases do not arrive. I lie on the floor several times and try to see the woman in the painting. The artist must have been a man to obscure her so completely, to pile her with paint until she disappeared.
On the opening night of my exhibition at Martha Reuben’s gallery, she invited me to answer questions. It was the point in the evening where all the guests were tipsy and thus supposedly full of goodwill.
“I noticed none of the figures have faces. Can you tell us why?” The question was obvious and I was grateful for it. My answer was practiced.
“The mind is more important than the face but sadly, in our society, the face has become more important than the mind. I wanted to distance myself from our obsessive beauty culture and try to paint thoughts instead.”
I sounded like a cheap guru but I was pleased with my answer. Next question.
“There are so few depictions of black bodies in Western art, so why are all your figures Caucasian? Especially as you’re painting as a black female artist.”
The woman who asked was wearing an orange print dress, large gold hoop earrings, and a headscarf that added a foot to her height. She was the darkest person in the room.