She never made it to the nearest town, whatever it was called. Instead, before her feet took her there, she turned and walked into the bush. She stopped walking when it was nearly too dark to see. She cleared a spot in front of a tree and used some large old palm fronds to make a dry place. Then she curled up on them and fell right into a deep dreamless sleep.
When she woke the next morning, she remembered what happened and she started crying before she even opened her eyes. And when she finally did open them, they were gummy with dried tears and dirt. Eventually, she stopped crying and hunger pushed away her grief. After a search amongst the peaceful trees and bushes, she located a mango tree heavy with ripe fruit and a small secluded stream; her food and water concerns were solved.
As she bathed in the stream, she looked up and there was the fox who’d been skulking around her town. “You’re alive, too!” she’d whispered happily. It stood on the other side of the stream staring at her, water dripping from its narrow muzzle. Then it trotted from the shallows into the bushes, disappearing into the shadows with a swish of its luxuriant red-orange tail. Even after it was gone, the forest felt that much friendlier and welcoming. Sankofa stayed in that forest for a week.
She spent most of her days rereading and rereading her mythology book and watching for the fox, whom she’d spotted another two times. Once, at dusk while she’d prepared her spot for sleep, she saw it peeking at her from behind a nearby tree. The second time was on her last night in the forest. At the time, she was sure she’d live in that forest forever, despite the fact that eating a diet of mangos, bananas and water grass gave her horrible diarrhea that kept her near the stream washing and washing after each bout.
She’d been so happy in that forest, away from everyone, not having to speak, being unseen, living in the moment and turning her back on the past. However, all of that day, the protective wall of denial she’d managed to put up had been gradually crumbling. She’d heard an especially loud truck pass on the nearby road and she started thinking about the man she’d killed. The man who’d slapped her and had been preparing to slap her again. He’d been a kind Muslim on his way to work and her presence had somehow changed him into a raging beast.
Soon she was constantly thinking of her family, her town, her home, all dead. She started to glow that night. And in the brightness of her heated body, she saw the fox looking at her, feet away. She was resting on the tree against which she liked to sleep. Her head on the tree’s rough trunk, her mind unsettled.
“Hello,” she said to it. The fox didn’t move, though its pointy ears pricked and turned toward her. “You should have a name.” She thought for a moment and smiled as the name bubbled up from her anxious memory. “Movenpick,” she said. She’d seen a commercial for the Accra hotel on the news feeds and she’d always liked the sound of the word. “Movenpick,” she said again. “That’s your name.” The fox licked its chops and looked around with its large gold-red eyes. “Do you want the box back, too? If I find it, will you then steal it from me?” she laughed, tired, a drop of sweat tumbling into her eye. “Will you eat it? Swallow it whole? I’ll get the box back, if you come with me.”
The fox turned and trotted off and Sankofa’s smile dropped from her face. She crawled to her bedding, slathered fresh shea butter on her skin, and lay on it. It was another hour before she fell asleep and when she did, she dreamed about her mean old auntie Nana.
Her mean old auntie Nana had been educated in the West, made lots of money there and rarely visited Sankofa’s father, her younger brother. However, when she did, she liked to sit in the main room with a steaming cup of coffee in the morning and talk at Sankofa and her brother about mean things in a mean way. In Sankofa’s dream, it was one of those times, except her brother was not there, nor were her parents, and the main room was empty. Her old mean auntie Nana sipped from her large cup of boiling coffee and glared at Sankofa. “What kind of human being lives in the bush like an animal?” she asked in her nasally American English. “Stinking of shea butter over dirty skin.”
Sankofa’s voice was small. “Here I won’t hurt anyone like I hurt Mommy and Daddy and Fenuku,” she responded.
Then her old mean auntie Nana said what she’d said to Sankofa’s father many times. “If I thought like that, I’d have never gone on to earn my PhD and become a physicist. I’d have been one of the sad bush women here, shackled to a husband and children.” She slurped her coffee loudly. “If you hide forever, you’ll never find anything. And there is one thing you know you want to find. Go and find it, stupid nonsense child.”
When Sankofa awoke, her body was cool. And instead of fear of her mean old auntie Nana, she drew strength from the woman. She rubbed her eyes, got up and looked down at her dirty purple dress. Then she went to the stream and washed it as much as she could, laid it out to dry and then went back in to wash herself. She ran her hand over her bald head and told herself, I will steal a wig that fits. And some part of her was sure her old mean auntie Nana would approve and this made her feel stronger.
And so, while rubbing her bald head with shea butter, she tried. She shut her eyes, took a deep breath and reached out. The seed in the box had been long gone for two years, sold and then stolen and then who knew what, but it knew her and she knew it. She was sure. She gasped. It was like a point of green light in a dark familiar space. She couldn’t see where it was, but she knew. She could find it. It’s far, but it’s not that far, she thought to herself. A few towns away. Somewhere cool, dry, dark. Inside something?
Sankofa opened her eyes, tears rolling down her cheeks. Then she had another thought, though she wasn’t quite sure what she meant by it. I will stand up straight. And in that stream, all alone and naked, with no family or loved ones, Sankofa stood up straighter.
Over the weeks, Sankofa learned that she couldn’t drive in vehicles or touch digital windows or mobile phones, she couldn’t even touch jelli tellis because something about her killed technology. She was young and alone, yet she was dangerous. It was mere nights after leaving the forest that she had to kill another man who first tried to take her satchel of things and then tried to drag her into an alley. Some people may have seen it happen because the next day, strangers started giving her things. Some gave her money and asked her to pray for their loved ones. Some of the market women gave her food (boiled eggs, sacks of plantain chips, groundnuts) if she promised to “keep death away.” Most people simply avoided her. Word about Sankofa traveled fast, though it was never connected to Wulugu.
And she also learned that the seed kept moving, always one or two steps ahead of her. She arrived in the market where it had been kept in a refrigerated truck full of vegetables and meat for days before the truck left. “How did you know they parked and did their business right in this spot?” the old man who brought her here had asked.
“The seller’s auntie told me,” Sankofa lied, smiling to hold back her frustration. She’d have been here sooner if it weren’t for the torrential rains that had turned the roads into shallow rivers of mud. Then she’d been a day late finding whoever had it again two towns away. Then a week later, learning that whoever had it took it towns away. And so on. She tracked it and followed, tracked it and followed. It was almost as if the seed had a will of its own and was playing with her. But she refused to believe it could be so malicious. One day, she would catch it.