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eyes on Effia, his Fante an ugly sound in her ears. He held her gaze for what seemed like minutes, and Effia felt her skin grow even hotter as the look in his eyes turned into something more wanton. The dark brown circles of his irises looked like large pots that toddlers could drown in, and he looked at Effia just like that, as though he wanted to keep her there, in his drowning eyes. Color quickly flooded into his cheeks. He turned to the other white man and spoke.
    “No, she is not my wife,” Abeeku said after the man had translated for him, his voice not bothering to hide his annoyance. Effia hung her head, embarrassed that she had done something to cause Abeeku shame, embarrassed he could not call her wife. Embarrassed, too, that he had not called her by name: Effia the Beauty. She wanted desperately then to break her promise to Baaba and announce herself as the woman she was, but before she could speak, the men walked away, and her nerve faded as the white chief looked over his shoulder at her and smiled.
    —
    His name was James Collins, and he was the newly appointed governor of the Cape Coast Castle. Within a week, he had come back to the village to ask Baaba for Effia’s hand in marriage. Cobbe’s rage at the proposal filled every room like hot steam.
    “She is all but promised to Abeeku!” he yelled at Baaba when Baaba told him that she was considering the offer.
    “Yes, but Abeeku cannot marry her until her blood comes, and we have been waiting years now. I tell you, husband, I think she was cursed in that fire, a demon who will never become a woman. Think about it. What creature is that beautiful but cannot be touched? All of the signs of womanhood are there, and yet, still, nothing. The white man will marry her regardless. He does not know what she is.”
    Effia had heard the white man talking to her mother earlier that day. He would pay thirty pounds up front and twenty-five shillings a month in tradable goods to Baaba as bride gift. More than even Abeeku could offer, more than had been offered for any other Fante woman in this village or the next.
    Effia could hear her father pacing all throughout the evening. She even awoke the next morning to that same sound, the steady rhythm of his feet on the hard clay earth.
    “We must make Abeeku think it was his idea,” he finally said.
    And so, the chief was called to their compound. He sat beside Cobbe as Baaba told him her theory, that the fire that had destroyed so much of their family’s worth had also destroyed the child.
    “She has the body of a woman, but something evil lurks in her spirit,” Baaba said, spitting on the ground for emphasis. “If you marry her, she will never bear you children. If the white man marries her, he will think of this village fondly, and your trade will prosper from it.”
    Abeeku rubbed his beard carefully as he thought about it. “Bring the Beauty to me,” he said finally. Cobbe’s second wife brought Effia into the room. She was trembling and her stomach pained her so much that she thought she might empty her bowels right there in front of everyone.
    Abeeku stood up so that he was facing her. He ran his fingers along the full landscape of her face, the hills of her cheeks, the caves of her nostrils. “A more beautiful woman has never been born,” he said finally. He turned to Baaba. “But I see that you are right. If the white man wants her, he may have her. All the better for our business with them. All the better for the village.”
    Cobbe, big, strong man that he was, began to weep openly, but Baaba stood tall. She walked over to Effia after Abeeku had left and handed her a black stone pendant that shimmered as though it had been coated in gold dust.
    She slipped it into Effia’s hands and then leaned into her until her lips were touching Effia’s ear. “Take this with you when you go,” Baaba said. “A piece of your mother.”
    And when Baaba finally pulled away, Effia could see something like relief