Somebody's Heart Is Burning by Tanya Shaffer

Author:Tanya Shaffer
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780307427878
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

The days went quickly. We spent them with the children, sitting on the steps of Billy’s house when he was out, playing clapping games, braiding hair, trading Fanti and English words. One of our favorite activities was a verb game in which we took turns giving each other orders in Fanti. The children would call out words like “cry,” “laugh,” “dig,” or “dance,” and Katie and I would act them out, prompting wild laughter. Then we’d switch and have twenty criers, dancers, and laughers going at it with gusto in response to our commands.

Every day I dropped in to see Yao. He was crawling now, and he’d acquired a couple of single syllable words, which he shouted upon occasion. It was wonderful to see him healthy, his extraordinary eyes alight with intelligence. Although he didn’t remember me, we soon renewed our friendship, and he would climb straight into my lap when I arrived.

Repairing things with Minessi was not so easy. Although the tensions between us had eased, our relationship lacked the camaraderie of our early days. I tried to initiate a conversation with her about the hospital, asking her if I had done something to make her angry, but she either didn’t understand or didn’t want to engage. I soon abandoned the effort. Because of the strain, my daily visits were much shorter than they had once been.

The other children followed Katie and me around every moment that they were not in school or asleep, which for the littlest ones meant every moment of daylight. Among the company were Minessi’s neighbor Amoah’s three children: Baba, Kwesi, and Essi, and his niece, Mansah. Eight-year-old Baba had a smile that could light a dark cave to its unknown corners. With her laughing eyes and wide, flexible mouth, her entire face reflected an irrepressible joy that was absolutely contagious—you had to smile back. She was quick, too, remembering English words with astonishing precision. She never seemed to forget anything, from songs and phrases to hand gestures and dance steps.

Baba was the primary caretaker of her one-year-old sister Essi and her three-year-old brother Kwesi. Essi rode most of the day in a sling on Baba’s narrow back, while grave-eyed, dimpled Kwesi toddled beside her, hanging onto her arm as though it were a life buoy and the world a lake. Ten-year-old Mansah was more reserved. She was upright and slender as the millet stalks in the fields outside of town, her face long and foxlike, with the kind of elegant bone structure that telegraphs the shape of the adult face to come. She supervised her younger cousins like a cautious mother, the sober counterweight to Baba’s bubbling exuberance.

Also among our youthful entourage was thirteen-year-old Essi Abokoma, my personal sponsoree and language instructor. Essi Abokoma had luminous almond eyes and a deep, resonant voice, which consistently surprised me when it emanated from her small frame. Whenever she shouted I jumped a little, and this soon became a running joke between us. When she wasn’t at

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