Somebody's Heart Is Burning by Tanya Shaffer Page B

the tables had turned. He was relaxed, content to disagree, while I was desperate to convert him to my point of view.
    “History is against you,” I told him angrily. “Women are rising all over the world.”
    “Ghana m-must not be part of the world, then,” he retorted.
    Santana rolled her eyes. “Let the man think what he wants,” she said, pronouncing the word “man” with visible disdain.

    In public, Santana treated me like a pet parrot. She’d taught me a few phrases of Fanti, most of them scatological, and as we made our daily rounds through town, she made me repeat them over and over, eliciting roars of laughter from everyone we met.
    “Santana, please,” I begged her. “Stop. Just stop for a while.”
    “Yes,” she would say, but within five minutes she’d demand that I do it again. “Why not make some laughter?” she asked.
    “Because I’m tired of being a sideshow.”
    “You are not side. You are the main show in Apam!”
    My body was another point of contention. Santana was obsessed with my skinniness. During meals, I sat on the floor around a low table with the adult members of the family, each with our ball of
fufu
or
kenke
, sharing a pot of stew. Santana watched me eat as though it were the most intriguing performance she’d ever seen. If I ate slowly, she berated me to speed up. If I ate quickly, she forced another ball of
kenke
or
fufu
on me.
    I’m not a large person, and in the heat, my appetite had diminished. Furthermore, in spite of years of feminist self-education, I have as much body image baggage as the next American female. Being forced to eat past the point of fullness brought up all my adolescent angst. My attempts to explain this to Santana played like a ludicrous cross-cultural Abbott and Costello:
    ME: Santana, please don’t pressure me to eat more. When I eat too much, I feel bad about myself. Do you understand?
(Santana nods.)
Good. Thank you.
(I finish
my ball of
kenke,
sit back, and relax. Santana shouts something to one of the young girls, who brings another ball of
kenke
and sets it on my plate.)
    ME: Santana! Didn’t you hear what I just told you? If I eat too much, I start to hate myself. I feel disgusting.
    SANTANA: You hate my food!
    ME: It has nothing to do with your food!
    SANTANA: It shames me to have a skinny guest. We must make you fat and beautiful.
    ME: (
voice rising in panic
) I don’t
want
to be fat and beautiful.
    SANTANA: They will say I am starving you. That I am a bad hostess. Eat!
    ME: I can’t eat another bite. I refuse to eat this
kenke.
    SANTANA: (shouting) Thank you for refusing what I give you!
    Meanwhile, the children hovered silently, eyeing the
kenke.
    But the biggest issue was money. Santana liked to keep me guessing. Here I was, staying in her family’s home, eating their food, going everywhere with her. When I offered direct compensation, she always said no. To make up for this, I went out and bought things—large bags of rice, tins of milk, packages of sugar—and brought them to her home as gifts. Periodically, however, she spontaneously commanded me to pay for something: a
tro-tro
ride, a shopping trip, a visit to the hairdresser.
    This irritated me beyond logic. I wanted consistency. The seeming arbitrariness of it made me feel off-balance, out of control. My feelings ricocheted wildly. One moment I was sure Santana was the most generous person I’d ever known. The next I had the distinct feeling she was taking advantage of me.

    One day we dropped in on the local dressmaker. It turned out Santana had already chosen fabric and engaged the woman to make matching outfits for us. The patterns were drawn up; we had only to be measured.
    The gesture moved me deeply. The fact that the material she’d selected was a neon green print with swirling yellow vines on it did nothing to dampen my enthusiasm. But when we went to pick up the finished dresses, Santana ordered me to “pay the woman.”
    Again the agonizing litany: Was Santana