He drove me home, went into the kitchen and took four dessert bowls and spoons. Dad begged off dessert and went to take a nap. Sarfoa and I got changed and came back downstairs where he’d put on the TV and settled comfortably into one of the sofas.

Sarfoa got a stool from the kitchen and brought it to the living room. I got a comb, Bergamot hair pomade and the container in which we kept her hair beads. She chose to have blue and yellow beads in her hair. I sat in the sofa. She sat on the stool with her head between my thighs and I began parting her hair into sections and twisting them into strands.

For the first time in a long time, probably because Chidi kept filling her ice cream bowl, Sarfoa sat quietly while I braided her hair.

“Your ice cream’s melting,” Chidi said to me.

“Later,” I said.

He came to sit by us and fed me the ice cream. I thought it’d be awkward but it wasn’t. For every two mouthfuls he took, he gave me one. If it didn’t bother him, I wasn’t going to make it bother me.

“Do you do cornrows too?”

“Everything. She can do everything,” Sarfoa boasted. “And she can really sing. She and Ntiriwa used to sing all the time at church and I know all my times tables up to 15 times 15.”

I rolled my eyes.

“She’s good at maths because she’s always calculating how much money she has in her susu box. You should ask her to spell something or write an essay. She can’t even read from her class 2 textbook.”

Sarfoa’s eyes fell and she remained quiet but what I had said was the truth. If I didn’t force her to study or do her homework and to at least practise her reading and writing, no one would.

“That’s okay. Everyone learns to read at a different pace. I couldn’t spell my name until I was in class 3 and that was when I learned to read,” Chidi said.

“Really? I can spell my name,” Sarfoa said perking up.

“See, you’re a smart girl. And I still can’t say my times tables past 5 times 5. I use a calculator if I have to multiply.”

Sarfoa giggled and went back to eating her ice cream. When her attention was on the TV screen Chidi said to me, “Someone said ‘Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb up a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid’. She’s only seven and I really can’t say my times tables past 5 times 5.”

I rolled my eyes. When I was done with Sarfoa’s hair and she took the stool away, Chidi took her place with his head resting on my thighs. “I’ll give you an extra day on the Sudoku if you braid my hair for me. Cornrows. All back.”

Rather than admit defeat, I accepted the extra day and braided his hair. I’d never thought of natural hair, mine or Sarfoa’s or anyone else’s as black cotton, but with his, the analogy just fit. I was one of a handful of girls in KICS who wore our hair short. In Tamale and in all government and most private schools in Ghana short hair is a requisite for girls. When we transferred to KICS it had seemed easier to leave our hair short so Ntiriwa and I had continued with short hair.

I finished braiding Chidi’s hair twenty minutes later. He spent ten minutes inspecting it in the face mirror Sarfoa brought him.

“Satisfactory. I’ll give you an extra day with the puzzle. You can hand it over on Wednesday.”

I rolled my eyes.