Yefon: The Red Necklace (21 page)

“Birds fly, not swim,” I argued.

But she just laughed, “Yefon, I am telling you that you will feel like you are swimming in the air.”

I dared her to prove me wrong, and that was how I
smoked
kaya
for the first time. I sat at the back of our compound with Kadoh and smoked the green leaf. I soon discovered that Kadoh was right. I felt like I was swimming in the air, not the ocean. I remember feeling that I was seeing everything in sevens, and I had to pinch myself and inhale deeply to keep myself from attempting to fly.

Ta Mbu kept yapping about my lush buttocks when something grabbed my attention and stopped me in my tracks, completely muting Ta Mbu.

My eyes were glued to a girly-looking Volkswagen coming to a halt right before my eyes. My chest was burning and I touched my
sha
η
g
as I watched. It wasn’t the car. I had seen a car before at the parish, so that couldn’t be the reason why my heart was throbbing so loud in my chest and why my
sha
η
g
was warming me up.

It was the 6-foot-tall, skinny but curvy, beautiful black woman with single braids in a side bun that stepped out from that car that day that got me. A few other laborers stood up from the grass to watch the spectacle. Some of them used their hands to protect their eyes from the sun, while others just squinted. With a childish squeal, a girl pinched her friend. Her excitement was the outward gesture of the exact thing I was feeling inside.

The shapely woman swooshed her hair to one side, took off her sunglasses, and looked around. She was wearing a long teal wrap dress with fancy black heels and a tan handbag. I can say to you with conviction that if there was such a thing as a girl crush, she would be mine. How could any woman own such indescribable confidence? I wondered as she beckoned to Ma Berka, an obese tomato vendor at the side of the street who also braided hair on the side.

Ma Berka was simply one of the best at braiding hair, and way before Ma resolved to begin braiding my hair, Ma used to take us to Ma Berka to get our hair done. I would tell you that sitting down in between her legs when she braided my hair was tantamount to suffocating. No matter how long I held my breath, the various eye-watering odors I had to endure in the name of plaiting
bakala
, or
rasta
braids were nothing to write home about.
Simply put, Ma Berka’s private areas smelled like sharp-caked pee.

That is why I would never buy tomatoes from her. But the woman! She spoke to Ma Berka with a voice like the purr of a rich man’s cat.

“Two baskets, please. This way, thank you.”

All of us stared. Our eyes going from the lady to Ma Berka’s large smile. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. A woman from the city! Ma Berka happily carried a basket of tomatoes into the car, her luscious backside swaying from side to side as she returned flashing a brand new note to her friends and to us.

The vehicle drove off towards the direction of the parish, leaving a trail of dust in the air, a dry cough in my throat, and a memory in my heart that I would never disregard. As I stood there watching the space where her car had been, my chest burned with heat and it seemed like my
sha
η
g
was glowing and then it hit me! That was IT!

The answer to all my problems! The thing within me that I had always wanted, but never known. The big city! That was where I had to go! My heart began to sing, and my
sha
η
g
beamed. Suddenly, I felt my spirit come alive again. It was so overwhelming that I did a little dance. I walked back home talking to myself that night. I can imagine how crazy I looked.

Kadoh said people in the city ate
ngwv
∂
v
every day not just on Christmas. The roads were long and unending, covered with a grainy gray substance on which you could scratch your itchy back. Buildings were so tall that they touched the sky. The girls there were tall and beautiful and some of them rode in cars. There were many schools, many churches, and life was good. The city was the place to be! I was out here withering in this village when my mates in the city were earning big money and doing big things.

The idea of the city sounded to me like a better, justifiable bargain. I didn’t know anyone there, neither did I have any particular reason to go out there, but I just knew I would be better off there.

I spoke about the woman from the city to anyone who would listen—which meant my
sha
η
g
, Kadoh, and the air.

“She was beautiful,” I repeated for the umpteenth time.

“We have heard, now plant that
nyoosji
,” Ma said, cutting
me off rudely.

“The money was so shiny I could see my face,” I said to a visiting Yenla who actually smiled. I smiled back, glad that someone got me, or it,

She said, “You are crazy.”

I was used to that line from everyone, but it had never dampened my mood as it did this time.

I didn’t want to feel the way I did, but I couldn’t help myself. I thought about the city when I farmed
nyoosji
in Ma’s farm on
Kaavi
. I visualized myself next to tall buildings when I was listening to stories by the fireside. I even thought about the woman when I rubbed my
sha
η
g
before bed. The city and the woman were my new addictions. I dreamed, breathed, and ate those mental pictures. The big city!
Chai
!

I was a dreamer—there is no lie about that, and Pa’s words guided me a lot more those days. The words ‘strength’ and ‘fighter’ were always on my mind, and I had come to the conclusion that my
sha
η
g
had some type of magic. It always knew when something significant was on its way, and it signaled me so I could pay close attention to it. Was that what Pa intended, or was I just convincing myself of some imaginary thing?

Whatever the case, in the year 1958, my red
sha
η
g
helped me find my purpose.

-12-

A NEW JOB

The next few moons saw a focus and determination stronger than that of a bumblebee. I was busy and people would say, “Yefon has something up her sleeve.”

Ma said it all the time and Kadoh joked about it. Whenever Yenla was around, she knew it instinctively, even though she never said anything to me.

They were right. I did, but they never had a clue about what it was.

The first thing I did was ask Kadoh what she knew about Bamenda. Pa used to say it was one of the last stops in his travels. The last major city before one travelled a lengthy number of kilometers to Nso through Ndop, Babungo, and other smaller villages.

Kadoh always seemed to blurt out my thoughts, almost as if she knew what I was thinking, but then another blurt would seem as though she was innocent of the knowledge in my head.

I pondered this as I walked into her side of the compound where she was drying clothes on a sunny day. A bluish fabric hung loosely on a tired dirty looking rope. I often wondered if drying laundry on that rope would dirty it rather than clean it, but it was what we had in those days.

The compound was empty, as our older brothers had gone to a youth meeting at the palace—a place one would never catch me in. I could care less about those spoilt rich people.

I snuck in behind Kadoh and bucked her on the knees. Her knees uncontrollably wobbled forward and she burst out laughing. Giggling myself, I didn’t fight back as she tackled me on the now muddy spot beneath her newly washed clothes that dripped water on the ground.

A dollop of mud splashed on one of her white clothes, and I opened my eyes in fear that she was going to be upset. Not Kadoh. She was the only person I knew who was always slow to anger despite the place where we found ourselves. Like two sumo wrestlers, we wrestled playfully in the mud until I was on top of her. In the awkwardness of the moment, our bodies
uncomfortably touching each other, I used the opportunity to pop the question. “How far is Bamenda from here?”

I don’t think she was expecting to hear such an abstract question, and if she was, then she hid it well. Her face squeezed into a fist, and then with a serious expression plastered on her face, she pushed me off her.

Whenever Kadoh was serious, it was a call for concern. I fell to my back, groaned a little then looked up at her to see her eyes piercing at me from beneath her muddy face.

“Why exactly are you asking me this question?”

“No reason, really.”

She was quiet for a minute then looked at me straight in the eye. “About three days on foot.”

My eyes widened. “Three days?”

She nodded slowly. “But once you arrive there, your tired feet will sing alleluia. The city is very clean and beautiful. Life is very expensive out there. It’s survival of the fittest.”

Survival being the operative word, I made and sold baskets until selling baskets was not enough. The city was going to be expensive, and I couldn’t afford to go there with no savings of my own.

At the end of the month, with nothing but candlelight for assistance, I counted my savings eagerly in the privacy of my room. All I had saved was a little under two pounds. My face dropped, I was disappointed. How was I going to leave for Bamenda? My two pounds would pay for my transport, and then what? I walked to the window and looked outside.

It was a full moon, and the light shone brightly in my face. The moon looked back at me with no answer for my problem. I would need money. Baskets were no longer enough. I needed something more substantial.

I waited for an answer until it came around six a.m. one morning when a bunch of Christians passed in front of our house heading to church. They were singing a song.

“Blow, blow, blow till I be, but the breath of the spirit bloweth in me.”

With the influx of their accent, it sounded more like this, “blu blu blu till I bee, bot tha brith of di spee-reet blu-wet in meee.”

I cracked a soft smile as I listened, and then suddenly my
sha
η
g
began warming up. What is it,
sha
η
g
, I asked. Allow me to listen to this song in peace, but my
sha
η
g
warmed up so much that I looked up, and it hit me! The church on top of the hill! They were always hiring. I could speak English. I was perfect!

That’s how I became the translator, guide, and help at the parish, a building I had always looked at from a distance, but now finally walked into because of my insatiable need to move to the city.

The first time I entered the parish, I was truly impressed. It was a nice brownstone. The early Basel missionaries had built it in the early 1800s. It had now become somewhat of a historical landmark, and a few Indian contractors were renovating it.

It would be my first time to see Indians, and they were truly as peculiar looking as Kadoh had described to me one day when we were in
Mbam
.

“They look like the white man, but much darker, like the color of
kiban
when is almost about to burn,” she said. We called fufu cooked like that
kiba
, and many people loved eating it as biscuits.

I studied one of the Indians in a blue jacket giving orders to the rest of the black men. I couldn’t understand what he was saying. He did look like a
kiba
with shiny, curly hair. Noisy bricklayers cracked stone, faces shining with sweat from the tropical sun. Most sang, others told filthy stories, as they worked.

As I passed by, I eavesdropped into one of their rotten tales. One that particularly caught my thirsty ears was the story of a man who was sleeping with his master’s wife. He would come around when no one else was home, and pass a broom under the door to alert her. I grinned, and I think it was too loud because they caught me, I don’t mean catch, as in catch a person doing something bad. I mean they noticed me, characterized by a brood of hungry eyes piercing through my skull. One of them with deep blue skin whistled at me first. I could almost perceive the lecherousness in his spine.

“
Ei
!” the man called out.

I kept on walking. I was used to men like him hissing like a coyote in heat at girls half their age. I can’t accurately express my disgust.

“Buttocks o! Hein? See her back side!” he called out again.

Some of the younger ones chanted after him. I ignored him till I felt a short, instant tap, more like a grope, on my behind. Looking back one last time, I rolled my eyes and sped off yelling insults at him

“Stupid man! Useless man!” I yelled at him and turned around to leave. A stupid man caused my derailment. I didn’t make it into the parish and I kept on selling my baskets for another month.

One day, I was selling baskets when a white man of God beckoned me to come to him. I was afraid, and was about to run away when my
sha
η
g
started burning on my chest, and I touched it. By now, I knew that it meant something important, so I approached the preacher, timidly wondering what I would say to a white man. He looked like he was in his early fifties with the tanned skin, which was common among whites who lived in the tropics for a long time.