“But you can’t eat like that,” he fussed, and when I tried to rest the bowl on the wall, said: “Let’s sit.”
Lamin and Hawa stayed resting against the wall, while we lowered ourselves on to a pair of slightly wonky homemade stools. No longer under the eyes of every soul in the yard, Hawa’s brother relaxed. He told me he had gone to a good school in the city, near the university his father had taught in, and from that school had applied for a place at a private Quaker college in Kansas which gave ten scholarships a year to African students, and he had been one of them. Thousands apply, but he got in, they liked his essay, though it was so long ago now he barely remembered what it was about. He did graduate work in Boston, in economics, later he lived in Minneapolis, Rochester and Boulder, all places I had visited at one time or another with Aimee, and none of which had ever meant a thing to me, yet now I found I wanted to hear about them, perhaps because a day spent in the village felt, to me, like a year—time radically slowed there—so much so that now even Hawa’s brother’s tan slacks and red golf T-shirt could apparently inspire an exile’s nostalgic fondness in me. I asked him a lot of very specific questions about his time spent in my not-quite home, while Lamin and Hawa stood next to us, frozen out of the conversational picture.
“But why did you have to leave?” I asked him, more plaintively than I’d intended. He looked at me shrewdly.
“Nothing compelled me at all. I could have stayed. I came back to serve my country. I wanted to return. I work for the Treasury.”
“Oh, for the government.”
“Yes. But to him our Treasury is like a personal money-box . . . You are a bright young woman. I’m sure you probably heard about that.” He took a strip of gum from his pocket and was a long time removing the silver foil. “You understand, when I say ‘serve my country,’ I mean all of the people, not one man. You’ll understand, too, that at the moment our hands are tied. But they won’t always be. I love my country. And when things change, at least I will be here to see it.”
“Babu, right now you are here one day!” protested Hawa, throwing her arms around her brother’s neck. “And I want to talk to you about the drama in this yard—never mind the city!”
Brother and sister inclined their heads affectionately toward each other.
“Sister, I don’t doubt the situation here is more complicated—wait, I would like to finish this point for our concerned guest. You see, my last stop was New York. Am I correct in understanding that you’re from New York?”
I said yes: it was easier.
“Then you will know how it is, and how class works, in America. Frankly it was too much for me. I’d really had enough of it by the time I reached New York. Of course we have a system of class here, too—but not the contempt.”
“The contempt?”
“Now, let’s see . . . This compound you are in? This is our family you are among. Well, actually, a very, very small portion of it, but it will do in this example. Maybe to you they live very simply, they are rural village people. But we are foros, originally, nobles, through my grandmother’s line. Some people you will meet—the headmaster, for example, is a nyamalos, which means his people were artisans—they come in different varieties, blacksmiths, leather workers, etcetera . . . Or, Lamin, your family are jali, aren’t they?”
An extremely strained look passed over Lamin’s face. He nodded in a minimal way and then looked up and away, at the huge full moon threatening to slot itself into the mango tree.
“Musicians, storytellers, griots,” said Hawa’s brother, miming the strumming of an instrument. “While some people, on the other hand, are jongo. Many in our village are descended from jongos.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“The descendants of slaves.” He smiled as he looked me up and down. “But my point is, the people here are still able to say: ‘Of course, a jongo is different from me but I do not have contempt for him.’ Under God’s eye we have our difference but also our basic equality. In New York I saw low-class people treated in a way I never imagined was possible. With total contempt. They are serving food and people are not making even eye contact with them. Believe it or not, I was sometimes treated that way myself.”
“There are so many different ways to be poor,” murmured Hawa, in a sudden leap of inspiration. She was in the middle of collecting a pile of fish-bones from the floor.
“And rich,” I said, and Hawa’s brother, smiling faintly, conceded the point.
Six
The morning after the show the doorbell rang, too early, earlier than a postman. It was Miss Isabel, distraught. The cashboxes were gone, with almost three hundred pounds in them, and no sign of a break-in. Someone had let themselves in, overnight. My mother sat on the edge of the sofa in her dressing gown, rubbing her eyes against the morning light. I listened in from the doorway, my innocence presumed from the start. The discussion was what to do about Tracey. After a while I was brought in and questioned and I told the truth: we locked up at eleven-thirty, stacking all the chairs, after which Tracey went her way and I went mine. I thought she’d posted the key back through the door, but of course it’s possible she pocketed it. My mother and Miss Isabel turned to me as I spoke, but they listened without much interest, their faces blank, and the moment I had finished they turned away and returned to their discussion. The more I listened, the more alarmed I became. There was something obscenely complacent to me in their certainty, both of Tracey’s guilt and my innocence, even though I understood, rationally, that Tracey must have been involved in some way. I listened to their theories. Miss Isabel believed Louie must have stolen the key. My mother was equally sure he’d been given it. It didn’t seem unusual, at the time, that neither of them considered calling the police. “With a family like that . . .” said Miss Isabel, and accepted a tissue to dab at her eyes. “When she comes into the center,” my mother assured her, “I’ll have a talk.” It was the first I’d heard of Tracey going to the youth center, the one at which my mother volunteered, and now she looked up at me, startled. It took her a moment to regain her cool, but without looking me in the eye she began to smoothly explain that “after the incident with the drugs” she had naturally arranged for Tracey to get some free counseling, and if she hadn’t told me that was because of “confidentiality.” She hadn’t even told Tracey’s mother. Now I see that none of this was especially unreasonable, but at the time I saw maternal conspiracies everywhere, manipulations, attempts to control my life and the lives of my friends. I made a fuss and fled to my room.