Suddenly, before she could get to Togbe’s hut, Ama came running out. Her mouth was open in a silent scream against the storm. Her top was torn. Her skirt was tangled and pushed up and some of her thigh was exposed. Efia knew immediately what had happened, and it stabbed her in the heart and seared clear to her back in between the shoulder blades.

She caught Ama in her arms. The girl was shrieking. Efia held her tight and cradled her head. Ama wanted to collapse, but Efia wouldn’t let her fall. They stood in the rain until Ama was still, and then Efia took her to the wives’ hut.

Nunana came to them. Efia looked at her in a special way, a way that said, The worst thing possible has happened, and Nunana nodded. She understood.

“Sit down with her and hold her,” she told Efia.

Nunana turned around and ordered the other wives and all the children out.

“In the rain?” they said, incredulous. She must be crazy.

“Get out, now!” Nunana yelled furiously. “Go to the other hut. You can come back later.”

They left hastily, crying children and all.

Efia was sitting on the floor holding Ama tightly, gently rocking her. Nunana knelt down and put her arms around both of them as they began to cry.

After a while, Efia stopped, and then so did Ama.

“Ama,” Nunana said, “did he make you bleed?” She spoke above the noise of the storm, but her voice still sounded gentle.

Ama nodded.

“We’ll wash it with rainwater,” Nunana said. “Did he go inside you?”

“I don’t know. I… I’m not sure. I think so.”

“I have to touch you, Ama,” Nunana said. “I won’t hurt you.”

The girl cringed, but she let Nunana check her by lantern light while Efia held her tight and talked soothingly into her ear.

Nunana looked at Efia and shook her head. “There’s blood,” she said, “but no seed.”

Efia kissed Ama, and into her ear she whispered, “It will never happen again, Ama. I promise you that.”

The storm quieted down to a steady light rain, and finally everyone could get some sleep. Keeping her arms around Ama as she slept, Efia waited two hours. Her eyes never closed in that time. She was extra alert, her mind bright and clear.

She shook Ama gently. “We have to leave.”

“Eh?”

“Shh. Come.”

They stepped over the sleeping wives and children and went outside. A feeble flash of lightning lit up Togbe’s hut for a moment, showing the way.

Ama wiped rainwater away from her eyes. “What’s wrong, Mama? Where are we going?”

“Togbe will try to hurt you and me again. We’re going to run away to Ketanu, and from there maybe someone can take us to another town far away, where Togbe will never find us.”

Lightning illuminated Ama’s face, and Efia saw how fearful she was.

“Wait for me here,” Efia said, but thunder drowned her out and she had to repeat it.

“I have to get something from Togbe’s hut first,” she explained. “Don’t come to look for me, do you hear? No matter what, you must not come looking for me. You understand?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“But when I come out, we run, okay?”

Ama nodded. She was shivering from cold and fear.

Efia knew about how many steps it was to Togbe’s house, and she found the edges of the doorway and went in. She waited for the next bit of lightning. It was less bright, but still enough to see Togbe sleeping on his right side the way he always did. He was a heavy sleeper and slept even better when it rained and when he was sleeping off his drunkenness.

Efia knelt down behind him and gently tapped his left shoulder. He grunted, moaned, and rolled onto his back, and she waited a few moments until she was sure he had settled back into deep sleep. Efia fumbled around for the bottom edge of his sleeping cloth. Some of it was tangled under his weight, and she had to gently peel it up and out. She looked nervously up at the door to make sure Ama wasn’t there. Good girl. Just a few minutes more.

She had almost all of Togbe’s lower section uncovered. He was wearing trousers, but she was still worried the exposure to the air would wake him. Now she had to be quick.

One burst of lightning, and then thunder. Good.

One button. The others had fallen off long ago.

Lightning. She spread the fly open. Thunder.

Don’t wake up, please.

Her knife, the one she used to cut goat meat with, was under her cloth. She took it out. He stirred.

No, no, don’t turn over.

Knife in her right hand, left poised steady over his penis like a runner on his mark.

A brilliant flash of lightning, and she saw it clearly, grasped the shaft, and pulled up. The knife blade arced silently through the dark, so sharp she did not feel it cut the flesh, but she felt his penis come cleanly up and away from his body in her left hand. He writhed like a worm on a stick and sat up, but she was already at the door, and she never heard his first scream.

For a moment she didn’t see Ama. Where was she?

They bumped into each other.

“Run!” Efia shouted.

In pitch darkness, they held hands and ran over ground they could not see into a future they did not know.

46

“DARKO? DARKO, WAKE UP.” He started and opened his eyes. Auntie Osewa was gently shaking his shoulder. “Good morning. I hate to wake you, but you have a visitor.”

She left him so he could get dressed. He pulled on his jeans, threw on a shirt, and went outside, where he was surprised to find Elizabeth waiting for him. She looked grim and anxious.

“Morning, Inspector Dawson. Can you come quickly?”

As Dawson hurried with Elizabeth to her house, she explained what had happened. She had been in the shop early to set up for the day. Glancing out the window, she had spotted Efia and Ama walking by. Elizabeth did not know them well, but she recognized Efia as one of the Bedome traders with whom she had good-naturedly haggled at Ketanu’s big market day a couple of months ago. Efia had struck her then as an extraordinarily lovely woman in pitiful tattered clothing, but this morning there was a special distress to her bearing as she led her trailing daughter by the hand. Sodden and miserable from last night’s rain, they were looking around with wondering, confused eyes.

It took time and skill to get the whole story, but once Elizabeth found out that Efia and her daughter were on the run from Togbe Adzima, she didn’t have a second’s hesitation in taking the two women into her home for safety, a bath, and a change into dry clothes.

When Dawson and Elizabeth got to the house, Ama had fallen asleep in Gladys’s room, but Efia was in the living room wide awake, tense and nervous. Dorcas Mensah was cooking breakfast, and Elizabeth joined her, leaving Dawson and Efia to talk.

“Are you all right?” Dawson asked.

“I’m better now, thank you, Mr. Dawson.”

“You spent the whole night in the forest?”

“Yes, but as soon as it started to get light, we came to Ketanu. I didn’t even know what we were going to do when we got here. The gods will bless Madame Elizabeth for what she has done for us.”

“She’s a very good person,” Dawson agreed. “What made you decide to escape from Togbe?”

Efia cast her gaze down. “For a man to rape his own daughter…” Her voice trailed off. Tears welled up in her eyes. She shook her head as if she still could not believe it.

“It happened last night?”

“Yes, and I promised Ama it would never happen again. Nor will it happen to any other woman. Because I took away his manhood forever.”

Dawson was uncertain what she meant. “You mean you put a curse on him?”

“No, I mean I used a knife to cut his manhood off.”

Dawson’s jaw dropped and he gazed at Efia with new awe, and then he smiled inwardly. Sweet vengeance.