Perhaps I should not go and fetch her some red earth. But the twins will come. . . .

Yaaba rose and went into the outer room. There was no door between the inner and outer rooms to creak and wake anybody. She wanted the apampa and a hoe. At ten years of age, she should have had her own of both, but of course, she had not. Adwoa’s hoe, she knew, was in the corner left of the door. She groped and found it. She also knew Adwoa’s apampa was on the bamboo shelf. It was when she turned and was groping towards the bamboo shelf that she stumbled over the large water-bowl. Her chest hit the edge of the tray. The tray tilted and the water poured on the floor. She could not rise up. When Maami heard the noise her fall made, she screamed ‘Thief! Thief! Thief! Everybody, come, there is a thief in my room.’

She gave the thief a chance to run away since he might attack her before the men of the village came. But no thief rushed through the door and there were no running footsteps in the courtyard. In fact, all was too quiet.

She picked up the lantern, pushed the wick up to blazing point and went gingerly to the outer room. There was Yaaba, sprawled like a freshly-killed overgrown cock on the tray. She screamed again.

‘Ah Yaaba, why do you frighten me like this? What were you looking for? That is why I always say you are a witch. What do you want at this time of the night that you should fall on a water-bowl? And look at the floor. But of course, you were playing when someone lent me a piece of red earth to polish it, eh?’ The figure in the tray just lay there. Maami bent down to help her up and then she saw the hoe. She stood up again.

‘A hoe! I swear by all that be that I do not understand this.’ She lifted her up and was carrying her to the inner room when Yaaba’s lips parted as if to say something. She closed the lips again, her eyelids fluttered down and the neck sagged. ‘My Saviour!’ There was nothing strange in the fact that the cry was heard in the north and south of the village. Was it not past midnight?

People had heard Maami’s first cry of ‘Thief’ and by the time she cried out again, the first men were coming from all directions. Soon the courtyard was full. Questions and answers went round. Some said Yaaba was trying to catch a thief, others that she was running from her mother’s beating. But the first thing was to wake her up.