‘Pa,’ Sweet Mother said, when he and Gran-ma were sitting opposite her on stools, ‘this is Ghana and you know as well as anyone, that you shouldn’t harass a chief backed by big politicians and businessmen.’
‘Are you saying, my daughter, that the rule of law no longer applies to every citizen of our land? Are you telling me, your father, that we should no longer follow our ancestors and husband our resources and use them well?’
‘Anyone would think to hear you talk that our ancestors were perfect. They were not!’ Sweet Mother cried.
Gran-pa covered his weathered face with a hand and sighed. Gran-ma, her eyes downcast, straightened the faded cloth she was wearing and glanced at my mother. The more father and daughter argued, the more eloquently Gran-ma’s eyes spoke of her devotion to Gran-pa and her alarm at the trail he was following.
‘Listen, Pa,’ said my mother. ‘Have you given any thought to what Ma and Adoma will do, if, God forbid, the worst happens to you?’
My fingertips tingled at the boldness of my mother’s tongue, its ability to probe and hurt anyone who crossed her, even my grandfather. And when Gran-pa winced, I was minded to spring to his defence, to channel energy from the earth and sky through my fingers, bind it to the fury coiled within me and then release it in a seamless blast from my mind. I was sorely tempted to strike Sweet Mother down, but with Gran-pa’s lessons weighing on my conscience, his reminders not to use my talent in anger but to be strategic and tactical in all that I did, I refrained.
Even though my fingers twitched, hungry to act, and I flexed my wrists in readiness, I held back while Gran-pa looked down at a pair of worn leather sandals that had been mended many times. Every day, without fail, he polished them to a shine because his sandals were faithful friends who did what they were meant to do: they kept dust off his feet.
Once she had started, Sweet Mother wouldn’t let go. She was wild, I tell you, her teeth sinking through hide and flesh, to the jugular. And like the wildcat she was, she assailed Okomfo Gran-pa from every direction: it wasn’t just Gran-ma and me he should think of, she said. What about those clients who depended on him for counsel and advice? Not to mention her family in Accra, her children with Pastor Elisha, who she had named after Esther the Beautiful Queen and God’s most favoured one, King David.
‘And here’s another thing,’ Sweet Mother said. ‘I have it on the highest authority from a member of our church, that no good will come from pointing fingers at what they’re doing. Pa, you know they have the backing of everyone necessary, so stop it! Stop what you’re doing.’
Sweet Mother readjusted her buttocks and with a finger wagging in the air, was leaning forwards when Gran-ma interrupted: ‘Daughter, I asked you here to talk to your father, not to scold him like a small boy.’
Eyes shut tight, Sweet Mother squeezed her face, then with a finger on her lips refrained from talking until, having drained poison from her tongue, she said: ‘Pa, I apologise. I don’t mean to disrespect you, but before you continue your crusade against bribery and corruption, let me remind you of the country we live in. This be Ghana-oh! And everyone from the Big Man up top to the smallest pickney down below, we all dey chop-chop.’
Gran-pa snorted in disgust: ‘Does your husband chop-chop?’ he asked. ‘Do you take bribes, my daughter? Does he? Because even if you and your husband choose to follow the crowd, I do not.’
‘Have mercy, Pa!’ Sweet Mother wailed. ‘Why are you so stubborn?’
Gran-pa smiled as Gran-ma brushed away a tear. She moved quickly but not before Gran-pa had seen it. He placed a large hand over her smaller one and embraced it in a gesture of affection I’d witnessed only once before. On the day they’d celebrated their fortieth year of marriage, he’d proclaimed to the assembled guests that if he were to live his life again, he’d choose Gran-ma for his wife a second time. And if, after he died, he found himself back on earth, he would travel the highways and byways of the world until he found Gran-ma and married her once again.
That morning my chest tightened as I watched them.
And when Gran-ma looked up at Gran-pa and said: ‘Husband, I know it’s not easy for you but please, for all our sakes, listen to our daughter,’ Gran-pa raised her hand to his cheek and kissed it.
My friend, believe me when I tell you that in this my country, Ghana, we do not do what they do in Linet’s land. We do not kiss-kiss and touchy-feel every minute of the day. Apart from a few people who walk around hand in hand, just about everything else takes place in darkness. So believe me when I say that I have never, my whole life long, seen Okomfo Gran-pa kiss any part of Gran-ma’s body. Never! And yet I witnessed it that morning with my own eyes filii filii! My mouth opened. My jaw dropped and my heart swelled, convinced that if my One and Only and I could be as true and kind to each other as they were, if we could follow the path laid by Gran-pa and Gran-ma, maybe one-day, one-day, Kofi Agyeman and I would be fortunate enough to taste their happiness.
Gran-pa nodded and listened, his eyes half-closed like an old lizard basking in the sun, while he attended to what Gran-ma was saying: ‘I asked our daughter to talk to you today because I have never, in all our time together, husband, seen you behave in this manner. Our chief, who was once our friend, is now your enemy. Our neighbours no longer go out of their way to talk to me. Why? On the chief’s orders!’
‘You see!’ Sweet Mother cried, standing up. ‘You see, Pa!’ she said bounding towards him with the speed of a tigress about to pounce. ‘This is all your doing. Leave this nonsense behind you! Walk away from it. If not for me, for Ma and Adoma’s sake at least!’
My mother had a point. Her fervour prompted Gran-pa’s question about what each of us would do should danger knock on our door to clamour in my mind. And in my heart I felt a fierce scratching, a snarl of alarm as I recognised that this was Gran-pa’s moment, his future in the balance.
He lifted his eyes to the ceiling as if begging a superior being for assistance in withstanding Sweet Mother’s attack: ‘Am I to blame,’ he asked, his gimlet gaze piercing hers, ‘if our chief behaves foolishly and rattles like groundnut shells in a broken calabash? Is it my fault if our countrymen upriver have to buy water to drink now? My fault that our fishermen no longer find fish to feed their families?’
Their fingers still entwined, Gran-ma laid Gran-pa’s hand against her cheek. My mouth opened again.
‘You are not to blame,’ said Gran-ma. ‘Nevertheless, I’m begging you, husband, do not make me a widow while our bones are yet strong. Do not make me grieve while we can still relish this life of ours. Husband, do not leave me to gaze in my pot of pebbles alone, for what I have seen in it does not bode well.’
Gran-ma’s words snuffed the last flickers of anger from the conversation but as her premonition fluttered like a moth in a corner of the room, I held my breath. We all did because in our different ways we each of us felt the shiver of the moth’s wings flitting closer.
Gran-pa sighed. Then with his eyes dancing with hers, he replied: ‘Wife, would you have me behave in a way that I cannot? Would you have me be other than what I am?’
Gran-ma shook her head. Between one moment and the next, the tilt from one side to the other, her face quivered and time froze. In that second I glimpsed Gran-pa’s fate and trembled. Danger was at his door and he was opening it.
‘And you, Adoma?’ Gran-pa asked. ‘Would you have me behave otherwise?’
For a moment I was tempted to side with Sweet Mother and force him to change course. Avoiding the delve of his eyes, the deep dive of them that exposed my soul to his, I looked at my feet, praying that Kwame, the creator of all creatures in this world and the next, would do everything in his power to prevent Gran-pa venturing outside and thereby keep us safe. In that instant I was almost persuaded to lie. But I could not. Even after what I’d glimpsed, after Nana Merrimore’s voice came back to me and I heard her say: ‘Whatever’s coming our way will be here soon,’ what else was there for me to do but to stand firm as tendrils of fear slithered around my ankles, binding me to the floor?
I shook myself, stamped on my terror and met Gran-pa’s gaze: ‘I’m with you Gran-pa,’ I said. ‘I’m with you all the way.’
As the words left my lips, Sweet Mother hissed.
*
Gran-pa and I would have reached the chief’s palace within the hour if my One and Only hadn’t met us at the gate of our compound. Kofi was with his mother. Felicia, known as Auntie Feli, the sole provider for her family, a market woman cursed with a cauldron of ailments that needed constant attention – which she received at a cheaper price from Gran-pa than from a medical doctor. If it wasn’t the wheeziness in her chest, her stomach would be hurting her. And if not her stomach, it was rheumatism in her joints or excruciating pain in her legs, the result of long hours on her feet at the market.
At the sight of her the fear creeping through my veins eased somewhat. Kwame, the creator of all creatures great and small, was smiling on us at last! Because with Auntie Feli at our house, there was no chance of us leaving the compound before nightfall.
She hauled Kofi into our yard by the neck, pushed him down the path past the neem tree to a grove of fruiting lemon, orange and guava trees overshadowed by a huge mango. Beneath its branches, Auntie Feli shoved her son on to a stool.
‘Okomfo!’ she cried. ‘Help me! Help my son. Cast out this nonsense of football that’s taken hold of his mind. Make it so he can study with a clear mind and pass his exams! Okomfo! Help us!’
Kofi glanced at me making it clear that if I so much as tittered, if I so much as remarked on the events I was about to see, I would score an own goal and lose his friendship. The smile on my lips shrivelled.
‘Feli, bring your boy another time,’ said Gran-pa. ‘You’ve caught us on our way out.’
Another time? Auntie Feli had no intention of leaving and barrelled on: ‘Okomfo, someone has cursed us with football madness because this boy of mine thinks and dreams about one thing alone. Football! His dreams are wild, I tell you. So wild he wants to travel to abrokyire on a football scholarship. If he’s not playing with your girl-child over there, he’s practising with his team. Make him stop, Okomfo. Make him drink one of your concoctions to purge him of this illness. And then make him sit down and study. Okomfo, I beg you!’
Arms outstretched, Aunt Feli fell onto her knees. She flinched. I shook my head. Rheumatism.
‘Please, Okomfo, please!’ she grovelled.
I helped her back to her feet and into a chair beside Kofi’s stool. When she was safely ensconced I slipped behind the guava tree and, hugging my ribs, heaved with silent laughter. The pungent scent of ripening fruit tickled my nostrils, while I listened, squatting beneath the tree.
‘He never studies,’ Auntie Feli said of Kofi. ‘Kotoko! Chelsea! Everything’s Kotoko or Chelsea! He used to talk about Michael Essien morning, noon and night. Now, every day: Pogba! Pogba! Pogba!’
A hand on her hip, she swung around to glare at my One and Only as if she was on the verge of throttling him.
‘Okomfo, what am I to do when this my eldest, the only one of my three with the brains to elevate us, won’t do what he’s told and concentrate on chewing his books?’
Having already thanked Kwame for delaying our departure, I urged him to cancel our outing completely.
‘Please,’ I said to him, ‘make Auntie Feli talk so much about her problem with my One and Only that before we know it the morning is over and we have to visit the chief another day.’
‘Feli,’ said Gran-pa, ‘what you believe to be a curse may be a blessing in disguise. Does your boy respect you?’
Kofi’s mother grunted.
‘Does he steal?’
‘No, Okomfo.’
‘So your problem is that he doesn’t work hard enough?’
She grunted again.
‘Kofi, are you willing to change your habits and spend more time with your books?’
Gran-pa’s question was met with silence.
I turned as my grandfather repeated it. Kofi’s face was as dark as an afternoon sky in the rainy season, the first drops about to fall. My heart heaved, almost capsizing as I felt the weight of his humiliation followed by a twinge of tenderness so intense it hurt. I tell you, my friend, we Asante are a proud people, none more so than a boy raised by a woman on her own; a woman who lives in the hope that her eldest, a boy, will excel.
I got up from the ground and, crouching by Kofi, whispered his name: ‘Okomfo Gran-pa’s talking to you. Answer him.’ I nudged him by linking my little finger with his and felt him shiver, felt his tears slide down his cheeks as if I was crying myself. Kofi placed a hand over his face and half-sobbing, waited until, able to speak once again, he told his version of the football story. And all the while, as Gran-pa, Auntie Feli and I listened, a sun lark in the guava tree, having satisfied her hunger, lit up the sky with a bright new song.