Eddie Signwriter by Adam Schwartzman Read Free Book Online Page B

the air. At the gates to the gardens the teacher had a word with the guard and they were let through.
    Emperor palms, twenty feet high, lined the graded sand path up which they walked. Grass stretched to the side into the garden. There were hills, and trees, on their own and in groves. They stayed close to the boundary fence. The sound of a lawn mower buzzed somewhere.They approached a series of sheds. One of the groundsmen saw the teacher and joined them. The groundsman and the teacher spoke. The groundsman led them to a gate in the fence. He opened a large padlock and let them pass through. The boy could see that the building separated from them by a stretch of grass was the same one they had tried to enter from the road.
    They approached. It was a low structure, but with a tall pitched roof made of zinc. They walked up a set of red stairs and through a covered portico onto a restaurant floor, the other side of which was open through a series of large ceiling-high windows to a verandah out front with a view over the flank of a deep, long valley. A waiter was arranging glasses at a bar as they passed through the rest house. The waiter nodded at the teacher. He ignored the boy’s nod.
    The floor was made of polished gray concrete, and their shoes made a squeaking sound above the heavy fans in the ceiling, turning the slow cool air round. The verandah had chairs and tables arranged on it. All of them were empty except for one, at the front, where a woman was seated with her back to them. She was large, and the boubou flowing over her made her seem even larger. That’s what he noticed first, and the elaborateness of her braids, which were woven in patterns in her hair.
    The teacher approached. The boy followed a few paces behind. Before the teacher reached the table Nana Oforiwaa turned and saw the teacher, and she smiled and she said, “John.” He had not ever heard anybody call the teacher by his name before, nor address him with the warmth that there was in her voice.
    “Nana Oforiwaa,” the teacher said, and there was a shuffling of his feet, and it looked for a moment like the teacher was bowing to her from the waist.
    From behind the teacher he looked at Nana Oforiwaa. She had a high, wide forehead and large eyes that curved exceptionally.
    “Oh, John,” she said, laughing.
    The teacher gave a small smile, and introduced the boy.
    The woman continued to laugh. They were still standing. Then she put out her hand to him. It was warm and strong and she held hishand firmly, and there was a lot of power in this woman, he knew it immediately, in the strength of her hand, and in the strength of her presence.
    “This is Nana Oforiwaa,” the teacher said, “a very important woman.”
    He said, “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.”
    “Hoowh,” she said, the end of her laughing coming out in a breath.
    Then they sat down.
    He had no part in the rest of the visit. The teacher briefly said who the boy was, that his father had sent him here into the care of the community, and that this was why he had brought him to visit. Nana Oforiwaa asked the boy a few questions about himself, nodding as he answered, as if he were confirming what she already knew, but soon she and the teacher were talking of things that did not concern him.
    When he understood that he would not be called on to say anything more, he grew more relaxed. He watched Nana Oforiwaa and the teacher talking. He drank a cold drink. He liked being in such a fancy place, with the view, and the tables, and all the fine things inside. He turned to his own thoughts as he looked around and observed for the first time things at the rest house that would later become very familiar.
    It seemed, from the lip of the spur where the rest house stood, that they were poised on the crest of a wave. The rise of earth from which they’d been lifted trailed back beneath them in a shifting patchwork of greens crossed by olive shadow. The sound of insects around them seemed at once to