
“Yo! Our first volunteer! Clap those beautiful hands, people, as she comes forward!” The MC paces back and forth in the space between two canopies full of cheering people, chanting with a forced American accent, a girl from the canopy flanking him to the right approaching; a bright smile over her face.
Deaconess Rose, dressed in a Buba that drops to around her ankles, a headtie, like a turban, around her head, a half-empty bottle of Fanta hugged in her right hand, taps her husband’s thigh with her left hand, jerking her head forward in a gesture. A see-for-yourself-and-for-me-if-this-is-real gesture. Are my eyes deceiving me? What in the!?
Shock pulls down Deacon Adewale’s jaw when on looking in the direction of his wife’s eyes he spots their daughter, Abike, the meat in his mouth suddenly losing its texture and firmness and peppery taste, cold crawling underneath his white Agbada.
Abike is still smiling really hard, her hands hiding her teeth but not completely. There are three other girls around the chubby 17-year-old now, all of whom are dressed like hoeloshos before the eyes of Deacon Adewale and his wife.
Their daughter, the odd one out; dressed in a flowing skirt that should hide her butt but can’t, is getting ready to dance alongside these girls. For a prize that is a small but brand new smartphone whose box the MC waves in the air before telling the DJ to do his thing.
A screeching sound as the DJ gets to work.
The speakers scattered around the compound soon start to blare a song from one of these unmannered Afrobeat singers that has had his hair woven into large cornrows and has dyed each braid. The girls get to dancing. To bending their waists, to moving their butts, the crowd cheering.
Deacon Adewale can no longer watch this after it plays out for fifteen seconds. It’s sinful and worldly enough to even be seen here, in such a party as this, let alone be seen watching girls dance the dances of Satan. The Deacon squeezes his eyes shut, mumbling a prayer of forgiveness—for himself and for his daughter, like Job would have done should he have been in these shoes.
When Deacon Adewale opens his eyes, Dr. Hakim’s face is the first he sees. Dr. Hakim is the reason the Deacon is here, you see. It’s the brown man’s sixty-fourth birthday party, and there’s no way in the world Deacon Adewale could have missed it. Dr. Hakim is his boss. No one misses their boss’ birthday party. Especially when it’s a boss as Dr. Hakim involved: one who feeds on the loyalty and honor of his workers.
Rumors have it that this Hakim man has slept with half the women at the office, even though there’s not one unmarried woman who works there. They say that as a man, all it takes to get favors from Hakim, since you don’t have a vagina to offer him, is to show him excessive loyalty. To smile whenever your eyes meet his. To remove your cap and bow your head to him. To cover his tracks when he steals money. Do these, and you’d be his favorite worker. Your promotions would come quickly.
Deacon Adewale lifts his cap off his head, lowering his face. Dr. Hakim smiles and waves a hand in the air, then returns to watching the girls dance, the woman seated next to him rubbing his shoulders.
Seated beside her husband, whose head is now lowered, his eyes shut, Deaconess Rose has been watching the dancing. She shrugs for the umpteenth time when Abike lowers her butt and starts to twerk again, the crowd losing it. The woman’s heart is like a beast’s cage now, its walls pounded by a hand of anger. Disgust.
Deacon Adewale is not fast enough to pull his wife back after she climbs to her feet and moves forward, belligerently, towards the dance floor.
Abike does not see her mother. She’s having too much fun to even notice there’s someone behind her, to notice the confusion now in the air.
Deaconess Rose’s tugg is savage. Her daughter pales as her big hand yanks the girls left arm, pulling the child around. A scream: “Mummy, please!” pierces the air after the first slap. The music stops. A second slap follows the first and then a third.
“Mummy, ejor!” More begging as the girl is being dragged away. More confusion.
It’s going to be a spiritual night tonight at Deacon Adewale’s house. Demons would be cast out of their daughter, who has chosen to be an embarrassment to the family, with beatings and with prayers both. Tonight, Abike becomes the naive, xenophobic Nigeria of the past. And the demons her parents see, become Ghana. Ghana must go.