Black Volta

By Pete KJ

"Lingers in the mind long after the reading." (D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review)

"A highly accomplished cultural novel with plenty of intrigue and strong character plot arcs to keep readers thrilled from beginning to end. 5 stars!" (K.C. Finn, Readers' Favorite)

A murderer returns to Africa, seeking atonement for killing an innocent.

Now that Carlos has emptied out his life, his past torments him. He can't go forward until he goes back—to Ghana—to own up to crimes he committed as a young man.

A woman escapes poverty in Africa, but is trapped in a life supporting those she left behind.

Liz left Ghana and is now a successful career woman in the USA. Freed from the daily oppression of scarcity, she remains under the vice-grip power of her hoarding mother and needy siblings.

Their lives cross…

and each are drawn back to the Black Volta River, to relive harrowing events that transformed them.

The River knows their secrets…

but can it transform their lives again?

Deeply embroidered, utterly believable, the rich tapestry of Ghana—and its startling evolution over three decades—serve as the backdrop for this powerful story about race, love, patriarchy, and personal identity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pete KJ
• Release date: Oct 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393921288

Book preview

Chapter 1

Carlos

September, 2016

"CADA VEZ más lento," Carlos Mario sang as he pulled his aqua-blue Mini Cooper into his usual spot at the bakery in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico. It was time for his daily post-surfing toasted ham and cheese.

As he got out, he pinched his flab roll and gave it a shake. Surfing every morning helped to keep the belly down, but it wasn’t doing the whole trick. Half a sandwich, he told himself, eyeing his love handles beneath his sweat-dampened tee shirt.

Checking his reflection in the car window, he pressed on the side of his still-wet hair that always stuck up. Grains of sand fell as he examined the white glint of facial grow-out in the glass. It was also time for his biweekly shave. If only his face would behave like his scalp, and grow in mostly dark! The white-tipped whiskers made him look like somebody’s granddaddy.

He opened the jingling bakery door to warm aromas of yeasty dough, brewing coffee, and simmering pork meat. Two children rode in the red coin-operated car next to the glass storefront. Yanira was sliding a square pan of frosted white cake into the display case as he approached.

Good morning, Carlito! she said. A whole sandwich today?

Make it a half, my love.

As Yanira worked the toaster press, Carlos gazed at the white cake in the case, its thick frosting glistening beneath a sprinkling of rainbow flecks. The children got out of the car and followed their mother out the door, which shut with a thump and a jingle.

Anything else, Carlito? Yanira asked as she handed him his brown-bagged sandwich. The door jingled again.

What the hell, he said. I’ll take a piece of that white cake with sprinkles. His love handles could handle it. The surf had been big that morning.

Boss! said a voice behind him.

Shit.

Carlos turned to see Rogelio Hernandez, one of his former direct reports, standing and grinning in a purple polo shirt and belted Bermudas. It was a look that screamed corporate dude on weekend even though it was Tuesday. His gelled hair was combed back beneath pushed-up sunglasses, and on his face a manicured string of beard created the illusion of a chin.

Hey, buddy, said Carlos. They shook hands and did the half-hug thing. How’s life?

Great! I’m with GenBiozyme now, in Rhode Island. I’m just here for a week visiting my mom.

Cool, said Carlos.

Yes! I am an Executive Director of QC there.

That’s great. How’s Rhode Island?

Not so bad, Rogelio replied. It gets freaking cold there, but it’s okay. How about you? What are you doing now?

Surfing.

Rogelio laughed. I mean, where do you work?

I don’t.

Two full seconds went by, during which Carlos watched his former employee scan his sweat-spotted shirt, his messy hair, and his facial grow-out with an expression that went from smiling to concerned to sort-of smiling again.

That’s great! said Rogelio. Taking a break. I wish I could do that.

You should try it sometime.

I wish. Hey boss, if you need a job, we’re hiring in Rhode Island. The site is expanding and we need some good guys. I know it’s Rhode Island, but—

Fuck that shit.

Carlos watched a ripple go over Rogelio’s face, and laughed. I’m just messing with you, buddy. Thanks. I’ll keep it in mind. He pressed his warm sandwich to his chest and made for the door.

Carlito, don’t forget your cake! called Yanira.

He’d come back for it later.

Get me on LinkedIn, called Rogelio, just before the door thump-jingled shut.

★

In the car, toasted bread crumbs fell into Carlos’s lap as he bit into his sandwich. I need to get out of here, he said with a full mouth.

It wasn’t just the ghosts of ProLaurentis haunting him. It was more.

I need to get away from Puerto Rico for a while.

The dash clock read 11:13. The empty day stretched before him, as usual. He pulled into the street and drove beneath shady mango trees of the island he’d lived on most of his life. Sure, he’d had plenty of experience off the island too. There was the year he spent at Cornell as a spoiled kid doing drugs and screwing up his life. There were also the years at the University of Minnesota, followed by working in Boston. And then there was that year in between: that infamous year when his parents shipped him off to Ghana for a hardship punishment.

West African poverty and missionary work will straighten you out, said Dad.

It’s for your own good, said Mom.

The parking lot at Econo supermarket baked in the sun. Carlos parked and walked through the automatic doors, where cool interior air slapped him in the face. Scents of damp cardboard and ripening fruit pervaded as he grabbed a cart with a bum wheel and forced it over worn floor tiles. As he pushed, he thought back over the years. As he often did these days.

After he escaped from Ghana, he didn’t waste the chance he’d been given. He went on and did everything he was supposed to do. He checked off all the boxes.

Excelled at university? Check. Put himself through in fact—the Minnesota part anyway, since Dad didn’t know where he was by then.

Married a beautiful woman? Check.

Had kids? Check. Two wonderful boys, Lorenzo and Amado, who’d grown up mostly on the island, who were now young men, doing great at universities on the USA mainland.

Gotten a good job with a company on the island? Check. After four years with BioPharmGen in Boston, he scored the job with ProLaurentis at its Manatí site and moved Ana and the kids to Puerto Rico. And over the next sixteen years, he worked his way up to the position of Site Head of Quality Control.

Nice house? Check. In San Juan’s Caimito urbanization no less, plus the beachfront apartment in Cabo Rojo where he now lived, which was all paid off just like Caimito.

Lived well? Check. Loved his job? More or less. Were you supposed to?

And things had run their natural course, as best he could tell. Had he always been faithful to Ana? No. There’d been other women from time to time; it was the same way with almost everyone he knew. Is that why he and Ana split? Hardly. She’d been aware of his proclivities, vaguely. It wasn’t until he quit ProLaurentis that things soured between them.

He force-veered the grocery cart into the breakfast aisle, where brightly cartooned cereal boxes sang out in Spanish. The rich aroma of locally-grown coffee washed over him as the bags came into view, stacked tightly on their shelves. He picked two bags of his favorite brand and tossed them in the cart. What else did he need? Just some rice and dish soap.

Yes. Quitting his job was what had changed things with Ana. It shifted her attitude toward him in a way that was so concrete he could almost reach out and grab it. ProLaurentis shut down the Puerto Rico site, and no way was he accepting a transfer to North Carolina. That was when Ana turned against him. Within a few months, he couldn’t say or do anything correctly. Eventually she stopped speaking to him altogether, coming home and greeting only Amado—Lorenzo was at Tulane by then—and heading to her side of the house. Her side of the mansion. Her side of the paid-off mansion.

The funny thing was, in the midst of this, he felt like he’d dodged some kind of bullet. Like ProLaurentis had done him a huge favor by leaving Puerto Rico, because otherwise he might never have left ProLaurentis. He’d still be living in a cube. A glass-walled cube. A frigid, sterile, glass-walled cube.

And he’d probably still be with Ana.

Now it was better. Now he got to be outside a lot, more than in the previous twenty years combined. And after dividing everything up with Ana and walking away with less than half, he was still okay. More than okay. Two years earlier, he wouldn’t have believed this could be possible. He’d have said no way, that he needed more more more like everyone else did.

Like Ana did. Ana always needed more. For Ana, there was no such thing as enough—of anything. He’d gladly given her the Caimito house, but she’d also wanted the Cabo Rojo apartment. And he didn’t agree to it, so he was forced to buy her a beachfront condo in Aguadilla as part of their divorce settlement.

Bag of rice and quart of dish soap in cart, Carlos headed to the only open register, where a lady in a blue smock rang up a line of three customers in no apparent hurry. An older man stood in front of him wearing a panama hat. The man held a plastic shopping basket containing a small bag of rice, a can of tomato paste, two envelopes of seasoning, and a frosted-over package of meat. Bachelor’s groceries.

It’s you and me, bud, thought Carlos, as he watched the old guy shift the basket handle to his elbow and examine the contents of his wallet.

Was this it? Carlos wondered. Was this him in twenty, thirty years? Single, and shopping for bachelor’s groceries?

Would that be so bad? The old guy looked content. Peaceful.

After paying, Carlos headed out the automatic doors, where thick warm air hit him like a wave of pillows. A beat-up red Nissan booming reggaeton music glided by, and then the road pulsed in near silence. He swung his rustling white grocery bag from his fingertips and stared across to a vacant lot, where tall green grasses swayed in the breeze.

Peaceful.

But he didn’t feel it. He would never feel it.

Because he’d gotten away with murder.

★

In the evening, in his hammock on the veranda of his third floor apartment, Carlos strummed his guitar and watched the sun set over the Caribbean. When the last sliver disappeared over the deep blue curve of the horizon, he set his guitar aside.

What next? he wondered. He and Carmen didn’t have a date that night, and he didn’t feel like reading any more Dostoyevsky.

He didn’t have to think long about what to do. In times like these, he always had his journal.

He took a sip from his can of Medalla beer, reached for the blue notebook half-filled with his even scrawl, and began to write.

Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016

Evening, Veranda

I know I did some horrible shit.

It was a long time ago, and I’m kidding myself if I think it all happened exactly the way I remember it. But I know I did some horrible shit.

It was a lot easier to avoid thinking about this when my life was full, when I spent my days running around busy, always busy like a good person. When I think back on ProLaurentis and family life, I do not know how I did all that shit all at once. Back then, I could only think about the things that were right in front of me. But now here I sit, with plenty of time to think about everything.

Which is a luxury—I get that—so long as it’s not accompanied by regrets over the past, and also by stressing and freaking out about the future.

Time is going by and I need to DO something, and that thing isn’t what I used to do, and I don’t know what it is going to be. I walked away from all the corporate shit willingly, and I’m sure as hell not going back. But the problem is, when I look ahead to my next thing, I can’t see what it is.

I need to figure out what to do with my life.

At least I have the deadline. And shit, it’s less than a month away: October 4th, the two-year anniversary of the end of my career, and the one-year anniversary of the end of my marriage. On October 4th, 2016, I am going to decide what to DO.

I still have time to figure it out. Enough time.

Which means I also have time to think. And to remember.

And one thing is for damn sure: those old Ghana memories haven’t faded away. They’re alive and well. In fact they’ve only gotten stronger this past year.

They’ve come back to bite me in the ass.

Chapter 2

Liz

October, 2016

REMEMBER HOW EXCITED we used to get in Africa when we had popcorn to eat on the way home from school?

Liz switched her phone to her other hand and reached for some more popcorn as she drove along the interstate.

Popcorn? her friend Sophie asked through the line.

Yes, popcorn, said Liz. Brake lights gleamed in front of her as the evening traffic slowed on the bridge in downtown Pittsburgh, and she downshifted her white Ford Explorer. Those little bags of popcorn ladies sold from tables by the side of the road. There’d be five or six of us walking home from school together—walking a long way!—but if one of us had ten cedis for a bag of popcorn, we’d be so excited. We’d walk and pass the bag between us, and we’d each take only one kernel at a time.

I remember, said Sophie.

Excited about a little bag of popcorn to share between five or six girls, said Liz, grinning. Her deep-brown cheeks grinned back as she looked into the rearview mirror to remove a kernel fragment from between her teeth. We’d walk and laugh and talk, and eat one kernel at a time. Okay Sophie, here comes the tunnel. I’ll call you back.

The Fort Pitt Tunnel allegedly had cell phone reception but Liz had never experienced it. This interruption was part of the ritual of her daily drive home from Allegheny Mercy General Hospital, where she worked as a senior administrator. She always broke her call with whatever girlfriend into two segments.

As she rolled through the belly of Mount Washington, she ate another handful of popcorn. A fragment caught in her throat and burned, and her stomach pains kicked up. She lifted her foil pouch of cherry beet chia smoothie to her lips, took a sip through its straw, and returned it to the cup holder. Then she reached into her purse for antacids. As she did this her Explorer swerved, and she swerved it back, and the smoothie toppled and squirted bright red liquid all over the gearshift.

Crap! she said, reaching to upright it.

Outside the tunnel, Liz crunched on fluorescent pink antacid tablets and redialed. But all she got was a recording that said the cellular subscriber she was trying to reach was unavailable. Being in Morocco probably had something to do with it, and Sophie had said the Holiday Inn she was auditing there was full of dead spots. Liz decided to try again in a few minutes, and flicked on the radio.

Sophie still hadn’t answered by the time Westland Meadows Mall came up on the right, and Liz took the exit. There was no need to rush home. Ken wouldn’t be getting off from work at the grocery store until eight, and he had his driver’s license now and didn’t need her to pick him up anymore. Mumma was no doubt still at church. The mall didn’t look very busy; Liz could see plenty of parking spaces near the southwest entrance, where two of her favorite shoe stores were.

She pulled into an angled spot near the doors and sipped more cherry beet chia smoothie. Her stomach felt soothed by the antacids, but her scalp hurt like hell from getting pulled tight into micro-braided extensions over the weekend. Amani and her girls had done a good job and the braids were going to last, but the pain was throbbing and constant. Liz reached into her purse for some naproxens, and took two with the last sips of her smoothie. Then she touched up her mauve lipstick, smacked her lips, and got out.

As she approached the glass mall doors, she assessed her reflection. Her braids looked good, flowing over the shoulders of her flared peach blazer. Her gold hoop earrings caught the light just right. Pivoting slightly, she examined her skirt and her shape within it. As ever, she could stand to lose six pounds. But she’d never be able to lose the natural muscle, and that was fine by her. Your booty is from here to Philadelphia, her ex-husband Hank used to joke in admiration.

Forty minutes later, Liz stood at checkout and paid for two pairs of black knee high boots that were buy one get one half off. Her phone vibrated and lit up with an incoming text: Sophie. Carrying her boot boxes in a big plastic bag, Liz made her way to the cushioned sofa encircling the water fountain in the lavender-scented atrium. All the fountain’s micro sprays were on, creating shimmering globular formations beneath a towering white ceiling. The hiss of the sprays combined with the hum of the escalators, the muted gaggle of voices, and the faint beat of a pop tune emanating from somewhere. A baby whimpered in a passing stroller.

Sorry, just got off work. Crazy day—week, read Sophie’s text.

What time is it there? Liz texted back.

Almost midnight.

You’re crazy.

The audit has been extended another week. You should come over.

I wish, wrote Liz.

I miss you. Want to see you, read Sophie’s reply.

Liz didn’t know what to type next. Before she could come up with something, another text arrived from Sophie: Flights are cheap right now. And you can stay with me here at the hotel.

Can’t. Used up all my sick leave and barely have any vacation days left, wrote Liz.

I’ll be here until the 15th if you change your mind.

Liz stowed her phone and leaned into the cushions. A familiar ache, deep inside her forehead, rose up and throbbed. It was a distinct pain from the ache of her scalp, which had subsided a little. She reached for her sumatriptan, a new prescription that came in a nasal spray, and applied some to each nostril. Then she closed her eyes, drew some deep breaths, massaged her forehead, and let the gentle mall sounds wash over her.

Casablanca. It sounded nice.

She sat up and her shopping bag fell over. A box lid came off, and a boot skidded across the floor. As she reached for its smooth faux leather upper and ran her fingers along the edge of its four-inch heel, a waft of buttery popcorn aroma drifted from the vending cart next to the specialty soaps kiosk.

Popcorn.

Liz closed her eyes and pictured herself walking home from school, eating popcorn with her girlfriends. On her feet were a pair of humiliating black loafers, the only shoes she owned. They looked like they’d been made from used car tires and probably had been. As she walked in them, she wanted to hide her feet. If she could have curled her toes beneath her heels to conceal them, she would have done it.

Liz blinked the memory away, and her thoughts returned to Sophie and Casablanca. What was she thinking? If she was going to travel, it would have to be to Ghana, where she needed to restart the house she was building for her sister. Magdi lived near the construction site, in a townhouse Liz rented for her and her daughter, but she’d been useless in supervising the project. All Magdi cared about was living in the house once it got completed. After the fiasco last year, when the contractors stole thirty-seven bags of her cement, Liz had to put the project on hold while she saved up more money. Now she had some money, but no time.

If it wasn’t scarcity in one pot it was scarcity in another.

★

Darkness fell as Liz pulled up outside her house. What the hell? she said out loud.

A blue pickup truck was backed into her driveway, blocking her garage. Two older men in baseball caps were unloading a large mattress from the back of it.

Liz parked at the curb and approached.

Well, hello there! one of the men said, setting down his end of the mattress and extending his hand. I’m bettin’ you’re Elizabeth. I’m Roy.

And I’m Earl, said the other man. We attend church with Aye-oo-oh.

I call your mom Lillian, said Roy. I have a heck of a time pronouncing that African name of hers.

Nice to meet you, said Liz, eyeing the mattress: king size, old, wavy, with a stain on it.

We’re sure blessed to have Aye-oo-oh in our congregation, said Earl. What a wonderful and interesting lady she is.

A woman of God, said Roy.

Yes, she is, said Liz. You’re bringing us a mattress?

Lillian said she could find a use for it, and so we said, great! said Roy. So much better than throwing it away.

Because the landfill would have charged you, thought Liz. Where’s my mom? she asked.

She’s inside.

Liz found Mumma in the kitchen, getting a plastic bottle of vapor distilled smart water from the fridge. On the table sat a cardboard box full of used dishware and utensils they didn’t need, presumably compliments of Roy and Earl.

Another mattress, Mumma? said Liz. Where are they going to put it?

In the basement, Betti. There is room.

Not the last time I checked, said Liz. And that mattress is ratty and old!

Mumma took a sip of her smart water and said, Someone’s delicacy is the intestines of an odompo.

Liz left her mother to her proverbs and went to sit in her Explorer and wait for the men to leave so she could pull in. Her two car garage barely had enough room for one car to park in it anymore, thanks to Mumma’s stuff taking up so much space.

Liz sighed and leaned into her steering wheel. She needed to let Mumma be Mumma, but another mattress, really? Already there were two stacks of mattresses in the basement, piled to the ceiling. What was Mumma planning to do, put them in the hotel or orphanage or whatever it was she was angling to build in Africa someday, on the land she was purchasing with her USA Supplemental Security Income checks? And who did Mumma think was going to haul those mattresses out of the basement, up the L-shaped staircase, and load them into a shipping container and pay for the shipping to Ghana when that day arrived? Liz had one guess who, and her back ached at the thought of it.

She lifted her head and watched her mother come out the front door, leaving it open. Mumma wore a hand-knitted shawl over her African print dress, and a matching head wrap that covered her high forehead and most of her thinning bob of perm-straightened, jet black dyed hair. She gestured to the men to carry the mattress inside, and proceeded toward the curb in her wide-hipped hobble. Her yellowed eyes flashed in the light of the streetlamp. Liz could tell something was wrong.

"There you are! Mumma said as she arrived outside Liz’s window. We have an emergency."

What is it?

Magdalena did not text you? She and Joyce are getting evicted!

But I paid the rent! said Liz. I know I did.

The rent has been increased. All of the Lemon Townhouses have gone up by 400 cedis per month as of October. If the funds are not wired to the realtor’s account by tomorrow at 5 p.m., Magdi and Joyce will be locked out and all their things will be placed on the street.

Liz pressed her forehead into her steering wheel. Okay, Mumma. I’ll take care of it.

With her niece Joyce away at boarding school until Christmas break, Liz had half a mind to let Magdi get evicted.

★

Later that evening, after a microwaved dinner of Light&Lean gluten-free chicken carbonara, Liz sat in her easy chair in the front room with her laptop and waited for a neighbor-friend in her old home town of Wa to e-mail her back and confirm the rent at Lemon Townhouses had really gone up and Magdi wasn’t lying. While she waited, just for kicks, she checked the air ticket prices to Casablanca.

Sophie was right. The fares were really cheap, especially if she flew that coming weekend on Royal Air Maroc.

Wait, she thought. Royal Air Maroc? Didn’t they also fly to Accra? For more kicks, Liz checked the price all the way to Ghana.

This was amazing. She’d never seen fares to Ghana this cheap. The lowest-priced itinerary left on Friday night, included a day and night’s stopover in Casablanca, and returned the following Sunday. If she remembered correctly she had six vacation days left. This was just enough time to run to Ghana and get the house construction going again. Then she’d be that much closer to not having to deal with this Lemon Townhouses nonsense anymore. She could even visit Sophie along the way, and—

Mama!

Into the living room bounded Ken, smiling, arms spread, tall and lanky in his skinny jeans and bright yellow hoodie.

Liz moved her laptop to the ottoman and stood to receive her son. She had to go on tiptoes as they embraced and kissed each other on the cheek. Though they did this every day, she swore each day he’d grown a little taller.

Chapter 3

Carlos

ON OCTOBER 4TH, deadline day, Carlos Mario got up early, fastened his surfboard to his Cooper, and drove across the island toward San Juan. He didn’t take the fast coastal route. Rather he drove the winding road that followed the island’s mountainous spine. He hoped some time and curves would give him some insight. Any insight.

He hadn’t planned to stop at the Toro Negro Forest, but when he rounded the bend and the trailhead appeared, he veered into its empty little parking lot like in a reflex. A white Pan Pepín bread van careened around the curve ahead of him as he did this, and screeched past, leaving him in shady silence.

How perfect it would have been, he now realized, to make the two mile hike up to the tower. To walk and think. But his surfboard was tied to his car, and he didn’t want to leave it unattended.

He gazed into the forest and pictured the higher switchbacks leading to the little stone tower on the grassy hilltop. It had been a private castle for him and his boys. So many games of hide and seek they’d played up there amid the bushy brambles, so many epic imaginings they’d acted out in the tower, of King Arthur and Narnia and Transformers and the rest. The only thing missing had been the princess. Ana almost never came with them on these trips, and when she did, she stayed in the car since she wasn’t big on hiking. No matter. Carlos and Lorenzo and Amado invented an imaginary princess to rescue.

All grown up now, he thought with a smile. Don’t need me so much anymore.

He pulled into the road and continued driving.

He sensed that his boys were worried about him, and he couldn’t blame them. Here he was: their former corporate executive go-getter dad, spending his days surfing and reading. But Lorenzo and Amado were probably too busy at their universities to worry too much about him, and that was a good thing. Or perhaps they were planning to perform some sort of intervention when they came to visit him at Christmas, to try and snap him out of it. Ha! There’d be no need for that. He’d have his life figured out by then.

Figured out today, he reminded himself.

By nine o’clock he was in Barranquitas, and he reached Aguas Buenas before ten. He continued driving the long way, popping out of the forest into the metro area, and continuing past posh gated communities with steep entrance drives, guardhouses, gardens, and manufactured waterfalls. Traffic wasn’t too bad in the city since most people were at work or at school, and soon he was cruising down the arc of shoreline by the airport. And so far, no insight had arrived. What didn’t count as insight was the nauseating idea of revamping his resume, contacting people like Rogelio Hernandez, and heading back out into the Big Pharma world as if he could think of nothing else to do with himself.

He hoped the surf would bring him some insight. Past the airport he entered the throwback world of trees, sandy dirt, and beach shacks known as Piñones. He pulled into the dirt parking lot of Social Place, his old standby bar haunt. Through its open doors he spied one of the two fat black brothers who ran it, standing behind the bar as always. The joint looked the same as always; the only detectable difference being the hand-painted sign nailed to the telephone pole outside. It was two dollars now, instead of one, for surfers to park. Carlos remembered when it cost a quarter.

The breaks were great that day, and he enjoyed them with a dozen or so other people. This had always been one of his favorite surfing spots, though for decades he’d seldom come here. When he was a corporate guy he never had the time; now it felt like too far to drive. After a mid-afternoon siesta, and a couple of Medalla beers and a chat with the Social Place brothers, Carlos rode the waves until evening light ripened the bottoms of the clouds into purple.

And he still didn’t know what he was going to do. A flash of inspiration came to him as he ran, barefoot and dripping with his surfboard over his shoulder, across the road toward his car: Open a bar?

Nah, he told himself. He’d rather hang out in bars than run them.

But couldn’t he just hang out another year, surfing and reading?

No Señor, he said to himself.

He finished fastening his board to his car and went into Social Place for two Medallas to go.

As he drove the coastal road back toward San Juan, music pulsating from roadside bar-shacks flowed through his open windows. Wood smoke flowed in as well, from the licking flames of cooking fires over which vendors deep fried their bacalaítos and alcapurrias, and roasted their pinchos. Unable to resist the aromas, Carlos pulled over at his longtime bacalaíto house. Here a copper-colored woman always stood on a smoky veranda and tended a big pot of oil over a fire, while a large milk-white lady sat on a sofa behind her, watching TV and collecting the money.

Both women were still there. Carlos obtained his warm bacalaíto from the cooking lady, paid the large lady, and headed back along the smoky veranda toward his car. When he got next to the crackling fire, he stopped and watched the woman pour batter onto the surface of the oil to prepare her next bacalaíto.

The scent of the bubbling oil merged with the aroma of the sizzling batter, and reminded him of something. As the woman poked at the flat, frying dough disc with her spatula, images appeared in Carlos’s mind. First it was orange finger-lets of plantain, called kelewele, frying in a pot of oil in Ghana somewhere. Then it was yellowish-white spears of frying yam. Finally the image morphed into nine bobbing brown spheres of sweet bread.

Dough foods, he breathed aloud.

He shut his eyes and braced himself for the memory, and for the one that would come after that.

It used to be easy to distract himself from the most damning of his Ghana memories. He’d long become an ace at this. Whenever uncomfortable recollections arose, he switched over to the good parts—and there had been many—as if he were a jujuman weaving a spell. Either that or he blocked the memories out entirely. But now the shit he’d done was bubbling back up, all of it, and it was never going to leave him alone. Unless...

Unless I go back, he said to himself. To see. To confirm what really happened.

He’d never been back to Ghana, though it had probably been safe for him to do so for years. And now he knew: if he was ever going to go forward, he was going to have to go back.

I got away with it. Didn’t I?

Wiping smoke from his eyes, he stared at the bobbing dough foods and watched them merge and flatten into a bacalaíto, which the woman nudged again with her spatula.

Holding his warm bacalaíto in one hand and his tepid can of Medalla in the other, he went down the steps, skirted the veranda, and continued through a cluster of trees to the beach. There he sat, and chewed, and watched the evening light fade on the crashing waves.

As he took his last bite, the roar of a jet engine emerged. He looked up in time to see an airplane lumber up over the palm trees. It banked, rose some more, and headed out over the ocean. Its little red wing and tail lights blinked as it moved across the water. And he wondered:

If I go, will I ever come back?

Chapter 4

Liz

HOW LONG WILL YOU BE in Morocco, Mama? Ken asked as he drove Liz to the airport in his green 1995 Corolla.

Liz smiled at her son’s profile, illuminated in the oncoming headlights. His narrow Anglo-Saxon nose and pointy chin, products of his father, mixed handsomely with her unmistakably African rounded forehead and full cheeks. He hadn’t shaved recently, she noticed. The thin fuzz of sideburns that had appeared in the previous year extended nearly to his jaw. His hair was cut uniformly short, something he’d had done in the past few days, which had eliminated his dark curls and made the remainder lie flat and straight in a browner tint. She noticed he’d fashioned a line of a part on the side.

Only a week, she said. I can’t get any more time than that off from my job.

Ken looked like such a near-man, filling up the space on the driver’s side with his sinewy arms and legs. He’d gained quite a bit in height in the past year, but had some filling out to do. And what a different body type he had from hers! All Liz needed to do was lift a dumbbell or two and do some lunges, and the muscles popped out on her arms and legs and derriere. And unlike Ken, everything she ate stuck to her hips. She was pretty good at keeping this in check, but it required constant effort.

Only a week? said Ken. Oh, well. I guess that’s enough time to get to know Casablanca. Are you planning on going anywhere else in Morocco?

"To tell you the truth, I am going somewhere else. But not in Morocco."

Liz held her breath as Ken zoomed up behind the car in front of them and swerved into the next lane. At least he had used his turn indicator.

I’m going to Ghana, she breathed out.

Ah, he said, rubbing his chin and looking in the rearview mirror.

Yes. And this needs to be our little secret. I didn’t want to tell Yaaba because—

Because she would have filled up your suitcase with all kinds of heavy stuff to bring to Ghana!

Thaz’ right, said Liz. "Not to mention make me buy a bunch of stuff to bring