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inside.
    “We’re coming, Mama!” Cairo yelled.
    ♦
    Dinner was delicious. The soft plantain fufu Osewa had prepared
was arranged in a bowl like a row of smooth, rounded pillows too
perfect to be disturbed. Steaming, fluffy white yam was piled high
on another plate. Chunks of goat meat, okro , and aubergine
lay in rich palm nut soup like islands in an ocher sea.
    As they ate, Mama and Auntie Osewa talked back and forth and
laughed together. Uncle Kweku joined in a little, but the
conversation still belonged to the women. Cairo and Darko sat next
to each other and were mostly quiet, the way children were supposed
to be in the presence of their elders, but they slipped each other
a few inside jokes and giggled in secret.
    A call came from outside the house, “Kawkaw-kaw!”
    “Come in,” Uncle Kweku said.
    A man entered. He looked about Auntie’s age – around twenty-four
or twenty-five. His physique was thicker than Uncle Kweku’s by far.
His face was angular, with high cheekbones as sharp as mountain
ridges, and his smoky black skin was as smooth as a woman’s.
    “Woizo,” Uncle Kweku said, getting up to shake hands with
him.
    “How are you, Kweku?”
    “Fine, fine.” Uncle Kweku was beaming. “Come and eat with
us.”
    “Thank you, my brother. I was passing by and wanted to greet
you.”
    Darko listened to his speech. It had an uneven rhythm. His voice
was not exactly rough, but it had cracks in it like the surface of
a badly tarred road.
    “Woizo, woizo,” Auntie Osewa said.
    She made space for him at the table and then introduced Mama,
Cairo, and Darko. His name was Isaac Kutu. He was one of the local
healers. He smiled at everyone. His eyes were dark and deep, and
sometimes he looked to the right or left without turning his
head.
    “Mr. Kutu has been helping us,” Auntie Osewa said, looking from
her husband to her sister. Darko didn’t know what she meant.
    “Oh, very fine,” Mama said.
    “How is Papa Kutu?” Kweku asked.
    Isaac looked troubled. “Not well at all.”
    “What a pity,” Osewa said. “I’m so sorry.”
    “I am doing most of the work now,” Isaac said. “He is too
tired.”
    Osewa brought him a bowl of water to wash because he preferred
eating in the traditional manner with his fingers – right hand
only, left hand tucked securely out of the way. As they talked, it
came out that the compound Mama and the boys had spotted on the way
in belonged to Isaac’s father. Papa Kutu apparently had great
prestige as a traditional healer.
    The discussion moved to farming and the price of cocoa and other
unbearably boring grown-up talk. Darko didn’t pay much attention to
what they were saying, but for some reason he kept stealing glances
at Mr. Kutu.
    At one point, Uncle Kweku cracked a rare joke and the grown-ups
burst out laughing. Darko didn’t get what was so funny, and maybe
Mr. Kutu didn’t either because his chuckle seemed halfhearted or
distracted. As Darko watched him, he saw something.
    Mr. Kutu’s eyes flashed sideways at Mama, who sat opposite him
at an angle. It was very quick – again without turning his head –
and Mama returned the look. But Auntie Osewa was quicker still, and
she caught that glance between Mama and Mr. Kutu. It all happened
in a tiny fraction of time, but Darko captured it like a photograph
and he reacted strangely to it. His stomach knotted up and he lost
his appetite and stopped eating.
    “What’s the matter, Darko?” Mama asked him.
    “Nothing.”
    “Eat up then,” she said briskly. “You don’t waste food, hear
me?”
    Darko felt Mr. Kutu’s gaze shift to him, but he never looked
directly at the man again. He couldn’t face the eyes.
    ♦
    Evening had arrived when Mr. Kutu left. Uncle Kweku brought out
a game of oware , and they played by the light of a kerosene
lantern. Auntie Osewa went up first against Cairo and was soundly
thrashed. Mama challenged Cairo and went down in flames in the same
way.
    “Okay, let someone else