Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi Read Free Book Online

unique form of protection against the dangers of home, e.g., splinters and bacteria and harm caused to wood, i.e., hand-scraped oak floorboards, fifty dollars per square foot. He’d visit other houses and take notice first and foremost of whether the family “practiced” slippers, all other judgments from there. And if anyone came to visit—God forbid, Taiwo’s friends, the teeming hordes of high-pitched classmates who had crushes on her twin—there he’d be, at the ready, in the doorway, “Do come in!” Gesturing grandly to the basket that he kept by the door.
    Like a bin of rental ice skates.
    Every style of slipper. Thick quilted-cotton slippers from fancy hotels, brilliant white with padded insoles and beige rubber treads; shiny polyester slippers bought in Chinatown in bulk, electric blue and hot pink, embroidered dragons on the toes; stiff, Flintstones-looking flip-flops from the airport in Ghana (whence the crazy MC Hammer pants in
gye nyame
print). Kehinde’s blushing stalkers almost always chose the dragons, glancing encouragingly at one another as they kicked off their Keds, pledging silent solidarity as they bravely marched in to this strange new world smelling of ginger and oil.
    “Omigod, Taiwo, your dad’s so
adorable
!” one would giggle, reaching into her uppermost register for
adorable
.
    “Omigod, Taylor, you’re so
artificial
,” she’d be mocking when Kehinde appeared at her back. Materializing out of nowhere as only he could, without sound, entering the foyer in Moroccan babouches.
    “Hello,” he would greet them, sounding shy, speaking quietly. Not really shy, Taiwo knew. Not really interested was all.
    Hi
was a three-syllable word in their mouths.
Hi-i-i
. As they caught sight of Kehinde, and blushed. Taiwo would observe this in Westin Hotel slippers. Four blond ponytails bowed in reverence before her brother’s babouches. Jealousy and bemusement would tangle, a knot. When the girls looked up Kehinde was gone.
    Ninja slippers.
    •   •   •
    A religion or a fetish, like a form of podophilia—or so it suddenly seemed to Taiwo, encountering the word in eighth-grade Classics. Rather,
auto-podophilia
. She wrote this neatly in her notebook, shading the
o
’s in with her pencil while someone asked, “Then what’s a pedophile?”
    The teacher’s nervous laughter was a distant sound in Taiwo’s head, the shading of the
o
’s her more immediate concern. She was thinking of her father and the lavish care he gave his feet: the salt scrubs and the peppermint oils and the vitamin E before bed.
Love of feet.
But later they’ll return to her, this laughter and its nervousness, the tension in the teacher’s face, the classroom air, the titters, every movement, sound, and image, every instant of that moment, plain: precisely the kind of moment one never knows for what it is.
    An end.
    A warning shot.
    A boundary mark. Between “the way things were” and “when everything changed,” a moment within which one notices nothing, about
which one remembers all. Which is the point. The difference between Taiwo’s life at twelve, before everything changed, and the life that came next is this: not noticing. Not having to notice, not knowing to notice. That she never looked out. Not “innocent” as such—she’s never thought herself innocent, not as Kehinde was innocent, of judgment, distrust—but
insular
, contented in the world in her head, a whole life taking rise from her dreams, her own thoughts.
    She was thinking just then of her father’s “love of feet,” of his love of
his
feet, when someone asked about pedophiles and, half paying attention, she wrote the word down. A person who loves children. Who loves his own children.
    Pedophile.
    Auto-pedophile.
    Auto-podophile.
    And then. That familiar tingling in the pit of her stomach, the butterflies she felt when she knew she was right. Excitement and comfort and satisfaction mixed together with a touch of something heavier,