I too. So Auntie Araba said that in that case, there was no problem. Mansa was a good girl. Not like one of these yetse-yetse things who think putting a toe in a classroom turns them into goddesses. The child and mother should go on living with her until Ato finished his education. Then they could marry properly.

‘Our Auntie Araba is going to heaven.’

If there is any heaven and God is not like man, my sister.

‘What did Mansa’s parents say?’

What else could they say? Her mother was very happy. She knew that if Mansa came back to live with them she would always remind her father of everything and then there would never be peace for anybody in the house. They say that from that time, the baking business grew and grew and grew. Mansa’s hands pulled in money like a good hunter’s gun does with game. Auntie Araba herself became young again. She used to say that if all mothers knew they would get daughters-in-law like Mansa, birth pains would be easier to bear. When her husband Egya Nyaako died, would she not have gone mad if Mansa was not with her? She was afraid of the time when her son would finish college, come and marry Mansa properly and take her away. Three years later, Ato finished college. He is a teacher, as you know, my sister. The government was sending him to teach somewhere far away from here. Then about two weeks or so before Christmas, they got a letter from him that he was coming home.

‘Ah, I am sure Mansa was very glad.’

Don’t say it loudly, my sister. The news spread very fast. We teased her. ‘These days some women go round with a smile playing round their lips all the time. Maybe there is a bird on the neem tree behind their back door which is giving them special good news,’ we said. Auntie Araba told her friends that her day of doom was coming upon her. What was she going to do on her own? But her friends knew that she was also very glad. So far, she had looked after her charges very well. But if you boil anything for too long, it burns. Her real glory would come only when her son came to take away his bride and his child.

‘And the boy-child was a very handsome somebody too.’

And clever, my sister. Before he was two, he was delighting us all by imitating his grandmother and his mother singing the bread-hawking song. A week before the Saturday Ato was expected, Mansa moved back to her parents’ house.

‘That was a good thing to do.’