‘I think she is a witch,’ the youngest sister said.

‘Oh, that she is. Anyway, only witches have no brothers or sisters. They eat them in the mother’s womb long before they are born.’

Ama’s aunts and cousins had said nothing so far. They were inclined to believe Ama was a witch too. But Maami sat still. When the comments had gone down a bit, she resumed the conversation with me.

As I was saying, Chicha, he also reckoned the price of the trunk he had given me and all the cost of the medicine he gave me to make me have more children. There was only the Cooking Cost for me to reckon against his.’

‘Have you got money to pay the debt?’ I asked her.

‘No, but I am not going to pay it. My uncles will pay it out of the family fund and put the debt down against my name.’

‘Oh!’

‘But you are a fool,’ Maami Ama’s eldest aunt shouted at her.

‘I say you are a fool,’ she insisted.

‘But aunt . . .’ Maami Ama began to protest.

‘Yes! And I hope you are not going to answer back. I was born before your mother and now that she is dead, I’m your mother! Besides, when she was alive I could scold her when she went wrong, and now I say you are a fool. For seven years you have struggled to look after a child. Whether he ate or not was your affair alone. Whether he had any cloth or not did not concern any other person. When Kwesi was a child he had no father. When he nearly died of measles, no grandmother looked in. As for aunts, he began getting them when he started going to school. And now you are allowing them to take him away from you. Now that he is grown enough to be counted among the living, a father knows he has got a son.’

‘So, so!’ Kodjo Fi’s mother sneered at her. ‘What did you think? That Kodjo would give his son as a present to you, eh? The boy belongs to his family, but he must be of some service to his father too.’

‘Have I called your name?’ Ama’s aunt asked the old woman.

‘You have not called her name but you were speaking against her son.’ This again was from Kodjo Fi’s youngest sister.

‘And who are you to answer my mother back?’ Ama’s two cousins demanded of her.

‘Go away. But who are you people?’

‘Go away, too, you greedy lot.’

‘It is you who are greedy, witches.’

‘You are always calling other people witches. Only a witch can know a witch.’