When he was born he came out of his mother’s womb backwards. The doctors said that he would be the last. Leah was born the next year, but already it was too late. “This will be the naughty one,” his mother said as his father handed him to her in his blanket. His father chose the name Edward, after the doctor who saved his mother’s life. His mother chose Michael, after Saint Michael, protector of the holy church, the children of Israel, and patron saint of sick people, mariners, and grocers. Born on a Sunday, he was Kwasi. Kwasi Edward Michael Dankwa, the naughty one—every one of his mother’s children had to be something. A mistimed somersault in utero sealed his fate. His father, however, hardly distinguished among his five offspring. Without particularly knowing them his father looked on his children with benevolent, distant affection. They were his people. Every Sunday morning, while his father read his newspaper on a chair in the sun, the children would line up before him, scrubbed, polished, and ready for church.
