Excerpt from Walking on Cowrie Shells by Nana Nkweti, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

She eyes the proffered plate of scones or perhaps my use of "grammar"—standard English—suspiciously.

"You be na Belinda ee cousin," then switching to English, "Chambu, right?" "Yes, I'm Chambu, uh, Genevieve Chambu Johnson from New York—"

"The language professor?"

"Sort of, not quite. I'm a linguistic anthropologist." I hurry forward at her blank stare. "I study the relationship between languages and culture."

"Belinda said you study pidgin . . . but you don't know how to speak?"

"I do, I do. My pronunciation is just kind of slow, very old mami." I smirk at my own joke.

She smiles. It is not a nice smile.

I think of the gray-haired mamas I had spent my summers with in the village, mumbling our dialect and pidgin to me as they chewed kola nut—their tongues heavy with its bitter juices, with their bitter tales of feckless husbands, of jealous co-wives, of babies forfeit.

"But you grew up in Cameroon, no be so?"

"Yes, but I'm Halfrican. My dad is American—Brooklyn, born and raised. So he wanted us to go to the American school. No Pidgin 101 classes there. More like people asking me did I speak 'African.'" I smile.

"Hmmph, an akata." She says the last word with emphasis. Like my father's African American otherness explained any and all alleged shortcomings. I find myself wanting to champion my dad—a man who'd so wholeheartedly embraced his wife's homeland as his own that our village had given him the honorary title Nwafor.

But I don't. Instead, I turn away and find myself absently nibbling my scone again. Damn.

Across the room, Belinda stands in the gaggle of acolytes that always seems to spring up around her at these affairs. I feel the weight of this woman's gaze on the side of my cheek, my bare shoulder— scanning me to the bone. I turn to face her. There is a knowing half smile hooked crookedly on her lips. I've seen that look before in all its presumptuous incarnations. She's figured me out, got my number like some scratch-off lotto ticket, laid bare by a grubby coin rub. Pennies for my thoughts.

I put the scone down, my chin up. "What's your name, again?"

"Catherine Etuge—" "Well, Cath-er-ine. I'm an a-ka-ta." I say the last word with emphasis, scone crumbs flying from my gesturing hand. "My two sisters and my brother are a-ka-tas." My voice and color are rising. "And you're living in a city full of a-ka-tas, making good money and a living because a-ka-tas died and fought for all Black folks' rights to—"

"Chambu. Cata. You two have met," says a cheery Belinda. Her handmaiden, the normally dour Helena, is in tow, eyes gleaming. "Chambu, Catherine is Phillip Nyami's sister."

Belinda is eyeing us both now. Me: flushed of face. Catherine: slittyeyed, mouth agape, gulping in air like a new brand of toddler, tantrum pending.

Phillip Nyami? Ahh. That explains Helena's gleam, Belinda's cheer—a man. My cousin fancies herself a matchmaker. Under her roof, her tutelage, I will finally find a husband—correction—make that a Cameroonian husband, a father for my children, a man who will settle down and claim me—unlike my "useless" akata ex. She still doesn't know it was I who was the restless one.

I shake my head, my anger on mute.

Last night, I'd been shaking my head in refusal. I was in the car with Belinda, driving home from dropping her son off at peewee soccer practice and her daughter at ballet, when she pounced. She caught me unaware, distracted by my meditations on the radio dial, by the rare opportunity to control the music selection.

"Phillip is a good man," she began. "Don't you want children? Louchang and Meka ask me all the time, 'Mommy, when is Aunty Chambu going to have babies?' They want cousins.

Excerpt from "The Baby Shower," from Walking on Cowrie Shells (Graywolf Press). Copyright © 2021 by Nana Nkweti.