“My mother is white.”
It was the first answer that came to mind. A foolish one, I saw, from the scorn on her pretty face. I glanced at my mother. She was shrinking from my public reference to her but Aunt Caryl lowered her champagne flute and spoke up.
“My niece can paint whatever the fuck she likes.”
I’d never been so proud of and embarrassed by a person.
I was still lying on the floor when Kofi finally arrived.
“Did you lose something?”
“I’m trying to see the woman in the painting.”
“She’s a myth.”
He drew the curtains. When the light hit the canvas, her foot was suddenly obvious, arched playfully, a ballerina’s foot. It was almost worse. She was now dismembered, a woman with a foot but no body.
“Come. You’ve stayed in this room for too long.”
“When can I go back to England?”
“Soon, but first I have some things to show you.”
“Like what?”
“Get dressed. Pack some overnight things.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll find out. Meet me outside.”
I could not resist Kofi. He understood this, perhaps: that a child can long for a parent in a way that a parent can never long for a child. He was fully formed when I was born, while I have always been missing a father.
I didn’t have any overnight things except the clothes that were brought for me. Kweku had guessed my size correctly but not my taste. Everything was excessively embroidered or, in some instances, studded with rhinestones. I chose the plainest outfit, a black boubou with gold threads on the neckline. I looked in the bathroom mirror. My bruises had faded to the color of a tea stain.
I had not left the house since my lunch with Afua two days ago. I lingered. This mansion was more straightforward than the one in Gbadolite. The east and west wings met at a central staircase that led to the front door. It felt like a museum. There were evenly spaced paintings on the walls and Roman busts on columns, faces sculpted in black stone or cast in bronze. Kofi’s taste in art was literal. The paintings were mostly portraits: famous Bama historical figures, perhaps, sitting and standing, dressed in Victorian garb, dressed in traditional Bama kente. At the bottom of the stairs, I paused on the threshold. When I stepped outside, I felt exposed in the sun’s glare, like an animal in an open field.
Kofi was waiting in the driver’s seat of an SUV. Sule was by the window speaking to him.
“Sir, I don’t think this is a good idea,” Sule said.
“Come now, I did not employ you to be my nanny.”
“Forgive me. I am just concerned for your safety.”
“Who will recognize me? I am in disguise.”
He wore a hat and sunglasses. Apart from that, he was in his trademark monochrome, an olive-green set today.
“Anna. Wonderful. Put your things in the back seat. The boot is full. Sule, open the gate.”
“But, Sir—”
“Enough.”
Sule, like me, did as he was told.
“Where are we going?”
“I want to show you your country.”
We drove for three hours and seemed no closer to our destination. The highway stretched to the horizon, a point where the sky met asphalt. Water mirages sprung up in the distance. I had forgotten my sunglasses and I squinted to see.
Lorries dominated the road. The cabs were open and their goods were on view, pyramids of logs held together by rope, baskets of tomatoes, live cows packed so close that their horns locked and formed branches.
On either side of us, the forest thinned into grassland. We passed a few settlements, too sparse to be called towns, too dense to be villages. We ate lunch in one of these places, in an open-air canteen that faced the road. The other diners looked up at our entrance, but it was me, not Kofi, they stared at.
Kofi ordered two plates of banku and palm-nut stew. The banku was smooth and white, rising from the stew like a chalk hill. Kofi ate with his hands, cutting off a morsel of banku with his fingers, dipping it in the red stew before putting it in his mouth. It was elegant when he did it. When I tried, the banku burned my fingers and the stew ran down my wrist.
“It takes practice. Try again.”
The banku on its own was sour but it was balanced by the thick, rich stew. It was a taste I might acquire with a few attempts. The other diners were mostly men, roughly hewn, with worn clothes and broad shoulders. They ate with their mouths close to their food, their eyes alert. Every time a lorry thundered past, we felt the quake in our plastic chairs.