She waved.
“Why doesn’t she speak?”
“The ancestors speak only when they have something to say. Face me now, please, my daughter.”
But I could not turn from my mother. I took a step towards her and she took one step back.
“Do not follow her unless you want to remain in Abbana’s land. Face me, my daughter. Many have gotten lost in this way.”
I faced Wuyo Ama.
“At this point, usually the girls will sing a Fanti song from their childhood, but we must improvise. What song do you know from when you were a young girl?”
“‘Dancing Queen.’ It was always on in the flat. She never danced to it.”
“That’s a new one,” she said. “Sing it.”
I began softly, growing louder with each line until I was belting it out, then she stopped me.
“That’s okay, my daughter. We must return soon. Now I will sing a song for you in Fanti. The meaning is: The season for blooming is here. Bear life in due season. Bring forth.”
Wuyo Ama held my hands and sang. Her voice was feathery and weightless. The melody was high.
“Today, Nana, you have become a woman. Your ancestors congratulate you. Greet them.”
I turned. There was a crowd on the bank stretching as far as the eye could see, a chain of people linked by their hands. My mother held hands with Grandpa Owen as I had never seen him, straight and broad with a full head of black hair, and Grandpa Owen held the hand of my grandmother, Esther, who I knew only from a photograph, and she held the hand of an African woman in a white blouse and blue wrapper, a headscarf covering her hair and a slim gold chain on her neck, tall and powerful, like Kofi, Kofi’s mother. So they were mingled, black with white, a woman in Victorian dress in bonnet and gloves, next to a man in kente, next to a peasant in a smock and bare feet, and there were surprises, four rows deep—a petite woman in a sari. How did she come to this bank?
“Greet them,” Wuyo Ama said.
“How?”
She curtsied and I copied her.
“It is time to go, Anna. Time is far spent. Come with me.”
We waded to the opposite bank, away from my mother. There was a door in the forest, set in the air, standing with no support. We stepped through into the courtyard. It was dusk. The sun was setting. I gasped, and the smog of Bamana rushed into my lungs, the air as heavy as lead. I felt like a fish reeled out of water, thrashing on the shore. The fire had dwindled to embers. Red coals glittered in the low light.
“Easy, my daughter. Just breathe.”
Wuyo Ama seemed unaffected. She waited until my breathing returned to normal.
“Last, it will be sealed in blood.”
She held a knife in her hand firmly by the hilt. The blade was long, more dagger than knife. Its tip pointed at me.
“Papa!” I screamed.
It was over before he arrived, a swift nick on my arm, just below my biceps.
“What is it, Anna?”
Kofi was in the courtyard, approaching briskly. Wuyo Ama was laughing.
“Daasebre, see you daughter, o. She thought I was going to kill her.” She cackled. “The knife is sterilized. I did it with alcohol myself.”
I laughed unsteadily and then I began to cry.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s come over me.”
I made a fist over my mouth, but the tears came anyway, until I began to shake from the effort of trying to stop them.
“It is the river inside you that was blocked. You and your father like to build foolish dams. Cry, Nana. When Abbana cried he made the oceans.”
There was nowhere to sit so I sat on the ground and wept until I was heaving air. In my mind, I saw the ancestors on the bank, stretching from my mother to the horizon. I felt a hand on my shoulder, like a large bird perching. It was Kofi. No one spoke until I had gathered myself, until I stood and dusted my white cloth, now stained with earth.
“Come, let me bless you,” Wuyo Ama said. “Your going and coming is blessed. There is no split in you. Anna is in Nana. Nana is in Anna. Two streams came together and formed a mighty river.”
Her palm was warm on my forehead.
“Thank you. My clothes, please?”
“You cannot take them. They are from your old life. Okay, my daughter. I must rest now from our journey. Daasebre, you can see yourself out.”
We drove back to Segu without stopping. It was cold in the car. I was still damp from the stream.
“You called me Papa.”
“You answered.”
We passed a billboard with Papa’s face on it, the slogan chief servant of bamana below his wide smile.