I pushed the thoughts out of my mind and walked into the dance section. I was late. Again. Maa Sarfoa was sitting by herself on the steps. Traditional Akan music was still playing from a corner of the room where a CD player had been plugged in.

Nana was on the phone. She smiled when she saw me and waved. I waved back. I was glad she was on the phone. No awkward questions about how we were, if we had heard anything, when Mom would be coming back. Sarfoa picked her backpack up and came straight to me.

She turned to me with a genuine smile on her face. We follow the same pattern every week but she always hopes. Her level of optimism is always at an all-time high on Saturdays. She keeps asking for a visit to the zoo week after week after week.

I was prepared to answer “No” even before she asked the question but that would have been just cruel, plus this time I actually had a good reason. It had begun drizzling. Even she could see that. I hurried out of the Cultural Centre. She skipped behind me.

At the gate instead of turning left to the zoo, I turned right to the bus stop.

“Gyikua . . .”

I ignored her.

“Gyikua?”

A whine was creeping into her voice.

“Gyikua?”

“What?” I asked, whirling around to face Sarfoa who was now a few steps behind me. She pointed in the opposite direction, the direction of the zoo. An expectant smile was on her face, as if the zoo had been in our plans all along. As if the whole point of me picking her up today was to take her to the zoo. As if I’d merely forgotten and she was just reminding me.

I didn’t even bother asking her if she couldn’t see it was about to rain. A small crowd had gathered at the bus stop. Three people rushed after an empty taxi as it came to a stop. The crowd surged again as a trotro came to a stop. I clutched my handbag closer under my armpit. I held Sarfoa’s hand and we stood apart from the crowd.

Sarfoa’s lower lip had begun to tremble. I ignored her. I put the shopping bag down and tried to flag down a taxi.

A family of five came to stand close to where we were. The father had a toddler sitting on his shoulders. The mother had some sort of picnic baskets. Two older boys, one older than Sarfoa, the other younger, both held stuffed animals—one lion, one elephant—they had probably picked up from the gift shop at the zoo. They all had that we’re-a-happy-family look on their faces. A year ago that had been our family.

“Daddy, did you see how big that elephant was?” the older boy said.

The father nodded and smiled. “He was bigger than a tree.” “And the crocodile was like he was sleeping but he swallowed that chicken when the man threw it in,” the younger boy said. Just what I needed. There was no way I was taking Sarfoa to the zoo. No way.

I turned away from the family and glanced at Sarfoa. There was a look of pure jealousy on her face. She saw me looking at her and took out her hand which had been in the pocket of her jeans trousers. She opened it to reveal two crumpled, dirty one cedi notes.

“Gyikua, please, you don’t even have to pay for me. Mefia said children pay one cedi and big people pay five cedis. So the two of us will be two cedis. Gyikua, please.”

“Gyae mmoasɛm no! Can’t you see it’s about to rain?” A few heads turned in our direction.

Sarfoa hung her head but not before I had seen the tears well up. If I hadn’t been so upset with Dad this morning for asking me to pick her up because he had to go for hospital visitation, I might have noticed she was wearing her favourite T-shirt. The one that had a picture of a lion on it. The one she had worn only three times before—on her sixth birthday, to an Our Day and to last year’s Christmas party—but which she took out at least once a week so she could stroke the faux mane.

Last week, I’d told Dad that I had too much on my plate and he’d offered to drop off and pick up Sarfoa from her classes. Then he’d told me this morning that someone had fallen sick and he had to be part of the hospital visitation team that went to see the sick person, so of course it fell to me to pick Sarfoa up. I don’t know why people never realize that Dad has a family of his own and that he has to spend time with us too. His work is never done. They think being a pastor is a full-time job.

“Maybe next time, okay?” I said, offering her my hand. She turned away from me and pretended to study the bats that were hanging in the trees. I turned to flag down another taxi when I felt something heavier than a raindrop land in my hair. I put my hand in and it came back with a slimy, grey substance. The walls under the trees were covered in it. Guano. Bat poop.

Great. Just what I needed. As if my day couldn’t get any worse.

But it did. A few minutes after I flagged an empty taxi and Maa Sarfoa and I were on our way home, the heavens opened and it started raining really hard. The taxi driver rolled all the windows up and in no time at all the mist from our breaths had clogged up the windows. As I rubbed the mist off the window I was closest to, I saw the boy with the bushy hair. He was thoroughly soaked, hands in his pocket, head bent down and shoulders hunched together as he plodded through the little river that had formed on the sidewalk.

***

Tell us: What do you think has happened to Gyikua’s mother? What is hard about being a ‘mom’ to her younger sister?