That was her hour, the hour when no one looked at her sideways, the hour when she could simply exist. Her father, Fotso, was waiting for her on the veranda, a cup of coffee in his hands, his face hollowed by a night of little sleep. “You don’t have to get up so early just to avoid people,” he said softly.
“I’m not avoiding them, Papa. I’m enjoying the quiet,” Foussa replied with a smile she had learned to make for him. Fotso looked at her for a long moment. This man, who had built his house with his own hands, who had never cried, not even the day his wife left, lowered his eyes that morning because he knew. He knew his daughter was lying out of love for him.
At the market, things happened as usual. An old woman pulled her child by the arm when she saw Foussa approaching. Two young men changed direction while laughing together. A vendor covered her cloth wrappers with a nervous gesture, as if Foussa’s hands might unroll by themselves and devour her merchandise.
Foussa walked on, head held high, eyes fixed on her list. That was when she heard Rachelle’s voice. Rachelle was beautiful like a festival poster. She always wore the brightest dresses, the loudest jewelry, and a smile that never quite reached her eyes.
She was surrounded by three friends who laughed at everything she said more out of reflex than sincerity. “Look,” Rachelle said loudly enough for the whole market to hear, “the witch-handed girl has come shopping. Did someone warn the tomatoes?” Laughter burst out. Foussa stopped for a fraction of a second, just one, then kept walking.
Then Ina appeared, arms full of plantains, eyes blazing. “Rachelle, honestly, don’t you have anything better to do with that pretty mouth of yours?”
“I’m just saying what everyone thinks,” Rachelle replied with a shrug. Ina turned to Foussa and slid her free hand into the crook of her arm on the side wrapped in cloth, without hesitation, without fear.
“Come on, we still have okra to buy.” Foussa followed her, but deep inside, something warm and sad was burning in silence. Not anger, not yet. More that question that returned every day like the tide: Why does God give hands to someone no one wants to hold? Farther away, near an artisan’s stall, a young man looked up from his work and watched Foussa walking away.
His name was Esama, and unlike everyone else, he was not looking at her hands. He was looking at the way she walked. Straight, dignified, silent. Like someone carrying something heavy but who had decided never to put it down. The harvest festival in Bancomo only happened once a year. It was the kind of day when the whole village wore its finest clothes, when the women competed with embroidered wrappers and the men talked loudly to drown out the drums.
The great central square was decorated with palm branches and bright cloth. Children ran everywhere. The elders sat beneath the palaver tree, dignified as judges. And Ganou, the village chief, presided over everything with his carved cane and spotless white robe. Foussa had not wanted to come.
It was Ina who convinced her with arguments impossible to defeat. “If you stay home, you prove them right, and I refuse that.” So Foussa came, beautiful in her ochre dress embroidered with gold thread that her father had given her for the occasion. Her hands were carefully wrapped in long gloves of fine fabric specially sewn by Fotso, who spent his evenings sewing so his daughter could live like everyone else.
For the first two hours, everything went well. Foussa and Ina ate mbongo chobi, applauded the dancers, and laughed sincerely for the first time in a long while. A suspended moment, almost normal. It was when the village youth formed a circle for the storytelling game, a tradition where each person told something funny or true about their life, that things changed.
Rachelle spoke with the ease of someone who loved hearing herself talk. “I’m going to tell you something true,” she said with a smile. “This morning, my mother asked me why I still don’t have a husband. I told her, ‘At least when a man takes my hand, it doesn’t turn to dust.’” The circle exploded with laughter.
