“Ken, there’s bottled water here,” another uniform called after him.
“Wonim mpaboa yi?” the officer named Ken asked, pointing to the table where the boots rested.
“Do I know boots?” she repeated, dumbly.
“Do you know these boots? There’s a name on them. Charles Gyampoh.”
She swallowed her panic. “No.”
“We know he was seeing a few of you kayayei.”
Asana’s knees trembled as a kayayo coming from Mr. Selifu’s passed them, her pan heavy with meat. Another followed two paces behind.
“I don’t know the boots.”
Walking away, her ears pricked at the officer’s words to his colleagues: “We have to turn this market upside down. Charles is too big to just disappear. It would take several strong men to overpower him or move him somewhere if he is dead. If he died in Mal’ Atta last night, his body is in this market or close by.”
* * *
Limah stopped at the butcher’s stall behind the madam who had hired her. The woman momentarily removed the sugarcane cob from her jaw to order oxtail.
When the meat was weighed, wrapped, and placed in Limah’s pan, she announced playfully, “Mr. Selifu, that’s it. You’ve taken all my money.”
The butcher chuckled. “You and your mountains of money? Madam, how can I take all?”
The madam tipped her head at Limah in a let’s go gesture, and resumed sucking the cob she had long drained.
Limah trailed her, her head heavy with meat, yam tubers, tomatoes, onions, ginger, okra, and garden eggs, and her neck straining as Adama drooped with sleep on her back. Her body was ready to drop, but her mind was awake. She could still see Charles’s blood caked under her nails, could still hear Ibrahim chopping him into steaks.
“We can’t let anyone buy this thinking this is goat or cow,” Limah had said.
“I will drop small bits to the floor, add it to the slop people request for their dogs, maybe add some when someone orders a lot of meat,” Ibrahim conceded.
“The main thing is, there will be no body,” Asana had said. “While they are watching Ahmed Razak, while they are giving us meat to kaya, one by one, we—they—will be removing Officer Charles.”
Limah almost dropped her pan when the madam stopped short.
“This Munhwɛ thing is blocking everything. Look at this nonsense.”
A corpulent woman on all fours was onstage. Her buttocks facing the crowd, she jerked to the rhythm the deejay spliced. Ahmed Razak was on his feet on the dais. Praises, insults, and howls erupted through the assembly of two hundred or so packed on the pink chairs, and from those watching from the periphery.
When she finished displaying her gluteal muscle control, lifting and dropping each cheek to the staccato track, the contestant leaned into the microphone and asked coyly, “Am I your size?”
Razak raised two thumbs and the crowd roared. “FAT-ULOUS!”
Limah followed the madam around the stage, passing the public toilets and a man urinating against a wall dripping red with the painted directive, Do Not Urinate Here, by Order of AMA.
It was now nine a.m. and National Sanitation Day was effectively over, AMA inspectors conceding the mess inherent in human exchange and the special case of the Munhwɛ event. Limah felt discarded water sachets crunch under her chale wote as she stepped gingerly over gutters oozing with runoff from washed hands, cups, and hair.
When they reached the market exit on Adomi Street, Limah motioned for help. Two small girls ran up as she lowered herself carefully so they could lift the pan and put it on the ground. The madam yelled into her phone—“Peter, ah! Where are you?”—as an ancient bottle-green Mercedes slowed in front of them.
Limah and her helpers unloaded into the Benz’s trunk.
When they were done, the madam, now seated in the vehicle, searched her bag. “One for you, you, and you.”
Limah glared at the coin in her hand.
“Hwɛ! You won’t be grateful?” The madam threw her desiccated sugarcane cob through her open window.
Clutching her pan at her side, Limah watched the madam roll up her window, a hairline fracture tracing an arc in the glass that separated them. A small smile surprised Limah as she imagined the madam preparing the meat she’d just bought. She retreated as the car slowly pulled away.
Shape-Shifters
by Adjoa Twum
Pig Farm
The hawker points wildly toward a crowd forming on the other side of the road. Intrigued, I find myself joining the throngs of people from the night market who have abandoned their stations to investigate the source of the commotion. I elbow my way through the sea of onlookers, too entranced by the hum of suspense to protest. I end up at the entrance of a large storm drain. Children love rummaging through the sewage for discarded tires to play with, more often emerging with used condoms that they gleefully blow up like balloons.
In the belly of the drain, two uniformed men intensely dig through its rotten contents. They heave something out of its crevices and deposit it gracelessly onto the road. The crowd steps back, permitting the headlights of a passing car to illuminate the object—a corpse. Its throat has been slashed, the blood coagulated around its neck like a grotesque pendant. Its coarse hair shrouds its face. Its body is bloated from marinating in the dank water. Some spectators clasp their hands on their heads and wail. Others kneel in prayer against whatever evil is responsible.
I disengage. I cautiously approach the body. I nudge its shoulder with my toe, the force causing it to roll back slightly, exposing its face.
“No . . . no . . . no . . .” I moan softly, recoiling from those familiar vacant eyes. I let out a guttural cry. I scream until I’m hoarse, until I have no air left to form another sound. “Help! Somebody help me, please!”
No one does.
⚜
A firework rocket announces its launch, rousing me from a violent sleep. I sit up, perspiration binding my thick coils to my forehead. I do not recall my dream, but the terror lingers. Disoriented, I tilt my head toward the dusty screened window. Outside, the starless sky bursts in breathtaking hues of crimson, sapphire, and gold. A typical Pig Farm New Year’s Eve celebration rages on. Melodic highlife music blares from one of the many open-air bars. From the raucous laughter and effusive banter that occasionally cut through the musician’s nasal vibrato, I can tell that libations are flowing. A prophet clangs a bell up and down the street. His voice quaking with urgency, he warns of the end of days and calls for all to repent. His premonitions are met with indifference by people too consumed with the night’s shenanigans to worry about the Rapture.
I know how it feels to be unacknowledged. I have gotten used to reintroducing myself to people I have already met. I no longer take it personally. My own parents admit they did not enroll me in nursery school on time because they had simply forgotten. This particular transgression broke my heart. These days, I use my lack of presence to study people intimately in plain sight; their fears and inspirations. I come alive when I embody their greatest desires.
I have parlayed this skill into a career as a “good-time girl.” But like all other mistresses, sycophants, and bottom-feeders, during the holidays I am without purpose. I spend most days languishing on my mattress, comforted only by the scent of past lovers trapped within its fibers.
A sudden coughing fit breaks my sober reflections. I wheeze until my throat is raw. I decide