“We had left the house probably at midnight. By the moon in the sky, I would guess we sat and waited for another hour or so. I began to yawn, and Ti Me reached out her arm, so I could lie against her shoulder.

“Then the music began—you haven’t heard it yet. It’s like the drums of heaven.”

“There are no drums in heaven,” I said.

“You’re wrong, Libertie.” Emmanuel still was not looking at me. He still was speaking to the sky.

“I saw the men and women in white walk in a circle around the pole, swaying in time, the women each holding a lighted candle. Sometimes, in their march, they would stop to twirl. Sometimes, a man would come up to them and press his forehead to theirs, and then both, man and woman, would twist around each other, only their brows touching.

“I watched it all,” he said, “but Ella hid her face.”

“They had a brown-skinned kid goat and a speckled hen. They slit the throats of both and then cooked them, and then put them in a jug with three mouths and offered it to the Marasa. These are the spirits of twins.

“When the spirits had eaten, a woman came and gathered up the meal and put it in a wooden basin. She balanced the basin on the top of her head and walked around the pole three times. Then she took the basin off her head and showed it to each of us, to all the children sitting around. She kept asking us, ‘Èske li bon?’ When she got to me and Ella, I nodded.

“When she’d showed the food to all the twins present, she took the basin off her head, cast it down, and commanded us to eat. Ti Me told us to eat as much as we liked, until we were satisfied, but just to be sure we did not break any bird or goat bones with our teeth.

“It was a mass of all us children, pulling the food up with our hands, pushing it into our mouths. Ella, though, refused to eat. She was too scared to defy the adults outright, but she spit the food into her hands when they weren’t looking. In the frenzy, I ate double her portion, to help her out.

“ ‘Èske ou te manje ase?’ they kept asking. Have you eaten enough? There were many children, but the kid goat had been fat, the hen, too, and the juice ran down my chin. Every other twin’s face shone with grease in the moonlight.

“All during this, they sang a song. It is the song of the twins,” Emmanuel said. “Should I sing it for you now?”

The only sound was the two of us, shifting slightly in the water.

“Yes,” I said.

He took a deep breath and began.

Mwen kite manman m’ nan peyi

Gelefre

Marasa elou

Mwen kite fanmi m’ nan peyi Gelefre

M’ pa gen fanmi ki pou pale pou mwen