Summary

Sissie asks for water and Marija offers her black currant juice instead. Sissie recalls that her mother also grows and cans black currants. Marija explains that she cannot have more children and is therefore grateful that Adolf is a boy. Marija asks Sissie about her time in Nigeria, and Sissie says that a first-time visitor to Africa should see Nigeria first. Sissie recalls a trip that she took with two female friends in which they passed through the Upper Volta region in Ghana. They criticized the government’s Ministers and their European wives, who get richer even as the people get poorer. Yet, Sissie reflects, the people do not complain because, “There is ecstasy/ in dying from the hands of a/ Brother/ Who/ Made/ It” (159).

Sissie remembers that she once thought she and Marija could have a “delicious love affair” (61) if either of...