I got up and went in the direction of the music. I heard Uncle Larweh telling Mama about his fish farm. The music led to a room with a poster of a skull with headphones on the door. A notice in a scrawny scrawl said ‘BOYS ZONE. NO

GIRLS ALLOWED. NO TRESPASSING’. Another notice, this one done with a black marker proclaimed ‘DJ SAMSIZZLE’.

I knocked twice on the door. I didn’t hear a response. I knocked a third time but even if there had been a response, I wouldn’t have heard it above Edem’s rapping.

I turned the handle and pushed open the door. The sound almost blew me away.

There were two mega sound speakers stacked one on top of the other in a corner of the room.

Clothes spilled out of awardrobe in another corner.

There were clothes everywhere—on the floor, over the doors of the wardrobes, draped over the chair by the desk and on the bed—or rather under the prone figure of DJ Samsizzle, who was fast asleep. An Aki-Ola core mathematics textbook covered his face.

No wonder he was asleep. How do you read mathematics?

If his strategy for learning maths was to ‘chew and pour‘ the examples in the textbook, it was no wonder he was failing. Maths was logical, step A followed by step B.

You just had to understand the steps. Emanating from underneath the textbook were gigantic snores.

I took the chance to look around DJ Samsizzle’s room some more. Amidst the clothes were a couple of textbooks that looked like they hadn’t been touched throughout the holidays. They were covered in a film of dust. A stack of dirty plates lay beside the bed. There were two things that were perfectly arranged. One was a shoe rack. On the top rack were four pairs of sneakers that had been placed in transparent polythene bags. The second rack had three pairs of scuffed sneakers.

On the third rack were one pair of black and one pair of brown dress shoes. Not a speck of dust was to be seen on either. There were four pairs of sandals on the last rack. Two black, two brown. The second thing that was well arranged was a CD rack that occupied one wall of the room. I went closer to read the labels. DJ

Samsizzle had more CDs than I had seen in any music shop. On the desk was a desk top computer and beside it sat—I couldn’t believe it, a device like Mama and Daddy’s old gramophone. Seriously, who used records in this day and age? My parents had old Osibisa and Wulomei records that they used to play on a gramophone when I was younger. But the stylus had broken and they hadn’t got anyone to fix it. I put my finger on the record and it stopped spinning and made a screeching sound. The snoring stopped immediately.

“Hey, don‘t touch that! Didn’t you read the sign? No girls allowed!” Samuel said, springing up and appearing by my side.

He stopped the machine, held it up to the light and examined it. When he was satisfied that I hadn’t damaged the record he put it down gently like it was an egg.

Then he turned to look at me.

“How did you get in anyway?”

I pointed at the door.

He rubbed the stubble on his chin then his eyes lit up in recognition. “Hey, you’re the Accra chick, my cousin, right?”

I rolled my eyes. In Accra, they called me ‘Losty’. In Sogakofe were they going to call me the ‘Accra chick’? “My name is Yayra and I . . .”

“I know who you are,” he said leading the way out. “I’m sorry about your father.”

He didn’t make the pity face, so I was emboldened to ask. “Did you know him?

He was here last Easter.”

“Yeah, I met him a couple of times like at funerals and things but never at Easter and not in Sogakofe.”

“That can’t be right. He’s been coming to spend Easter in Sogakofe for as long as

I can remember.”

Sam shrugged, obviously not interested in the conversation. “Whatever. I’m hungry, let’s go and get something to eat.”

I followed him to their kitchen. He opened the fridge and brought out two bottles of coke. He stuck the mouth of the bottle into his mouth and a second later he had uncorked it with his teeth.

“Uh, Samuel, you really shouldn’t use your teeth . . .”

“The name is DJ Samsizzle or just DJ. No Samuel. No Sammy. No Sam. I’m going to be a turntablist.” He handed me the bottle, repeated the process with the second bottle and took a big swig.

“What? Haven’t you seen anyone do that before?” He reached back into the fridge and brought out two bowls. One had aboloo, the other had one-man- thousand fish. He didn’t look like he was going to offer me a glass. I wiped the mouth of my bottle with a corner of my T-shirt and took a swig. “What’s a turntablist?”

He had been in the process of putting a piece of aboloo smothered in one-man- thousand fish in his mouth when he stopped.

“You don’t know who a turntablist is? What hole did you crawl out of?” At the confused look on my face, he shook his head and said, “The Asantes say their ancestors crawled out of a hole. You do know that, don’t you?”

I shook my head.

He looked at me like I was from another planet. “Ei, Accra chick, don’t you know anything?”

He heaped a plate with cold aboloo, one-man thousand fish and some shito from a jar on the kitchen cabinet and led the way back to his room.

“This here is a turntable,” he said putting the plate on the desk. “A turntablist is someone who uses turntables to make music.”

“You mean like a DJ?”

He lifted his hands in frustration. “A DJ just plays music. A turntablist makes music. There’s a huge difference.” He wiped his hands on his shorts, put the stylus back on the record on the turntable and turned the volume up. Edem’s voice filled the room once more. Just before he got to the chorus, ‘I no dey fear what they say, anything I go pay . . .’ DJ put two fingers on the record and started sliding them across. It was almost as if DJ had added more percussionists and drummers to the song just by sliding his fingers across. It was amazing.

“How do you do that?”

DJ looked at me and I could tell he was proud. “A turntablist uses the turntable like it’s a musical instrument.”

In-between mouthfuls, he spent the next ten minutes explaining the basics of scratching, drumming and beat juggling. I just watched with my mouth wide open.

“Wow, I didn’t know any of this even existed.”

“I used to spin for people—you know parties, out-doorings, those kinds of things but my parents said I was not focusing on school work and made me stop.”

“That’s too bad, you’re really good.”

“Nah, you should hear some of the guys from Tema. They’re wicked and they’ve got more sophisticated machines. They can scratch two or three records at a time.

They are like absolutely wicked!”

“I’d love to see that.”

He looked at me out of the corner of his eye, like he was debating whether or not to tell me something. He walked over to his bed and lifted the mattress. He dug his hand underneath it, brought out a flyer and handed it to me.

“There‘’s a competition in two months. It’s in Tema. My parents would kill me if they find out I’ve entered. Popee says no more spinning till my grades improve and

I’m trying, I really am, but I just keep failing maths.”

“I can help you.”

He looked at me. “I know you’re doing add maths, but Popee says you spent only two months in school last year. He says you have to repeat Form Two.”

“I do have to repeat Form Two but I’m really good at maths. I’ll teach you if you stop calling me ‘Accra chick’ and if you’ll take me to this Tema competition.”

He looked at me as if he was having a hard time deciding but I knew he would agree.

“Okay, deal.” He offered his hand and I shook it.

Afterwards we went to join our parents by the riverbank where Uncle Larweh was showing Mama their fish farm. Auntie Cee sent us home with five fresh tilapias from their farm.