Homegoing(54)

“What if this doesn’t work? What if I can’t sell them?” he asked, his head buried in her bosom.

“Shh! Stop that talk,” she said. “They will sell. They have to sell.”

But he kept crying and shaking so that she could not hear him when he said, “I’m afraid of that too,” and she would not have understood even if she had.

He was gone by the time she woke up the next morning. The villagers had found and killed a scrawny young goat in preparation for his return, cooking the tough meat for days as best they could in the hope that it would turn tender. The younger children, thinking they were fast and clever, would try to snatch small pieces of partially cooked meat from the animal when their mothers weren’t looking, but the women, born with a sixth sense for children’s mischief, would swat their hands, then clutch them at the wrists, holding them over the fire until the children cried out and swore to behave.



Ohene Nyarko did not come back that night or the next. He came back in the afternoon of the third day. Behind him, being led by rope, were four fat and obstinate goats, bleating as though they could smell the iron of the slaughter knife. The sacks he had carried out, full of cocoa beans, had come back to them filled with yams and kola nuts, some fresh palm oil, and plenty of palm wine.

The villagers threw a celebration the likes of which they had not thrown in years, with dancing and shouting and bare, jiggling breasts. The old men and women danced the Adowa, lightly swaying their hips and bringing their hands up and over, as though ready to receive from the Earth and then give back to her.

Their stomachs had grown smaller, it seemed, and so the food they ate filled them quickly, and they filled the crevices that were left between the food with sweet palm wine.

Unlucky and Akosua were so happy the bad years had finally ended that they held each other close, watching the others dance, watching the children drum against their full bellies in time with the music.

In the middle of all the celebration, Abena looked over at Ohene Nyarko as he surveyed the people of the village they all loved so fiercely, his face full of pride and something she couldn’t quite place.

“You’ve done well,” she said, approaching him. He had kept his distance all night, and she thought it was because he didn’t want to draw attention to the two of them in the middle of the celebration, didn’t want the villagers to start wondering what this meant for Abena’s exile. But the meaning was all Abena was able to think about. She had not told anyone yet, but she was four days late. And though she had been four days late before in her life, and imagined that she would be four days late again before she died, she wondered if this time was the time.

What she wanted was for Ohene Nyarko to shout his love for her from the rooftops. To say, now that the whole village has been fed and feted, I will marry you. And not tomorrow, but today. This very day. This celebration will be for us.

Instead, he said, “Hello, Abena. Did you get enough to eat?”

“Yes, thank you.”

He nodded and drank from a calabash of palm wine.



“You have done well, Ohene Nyarko,” Abena said, reaching out to touch his shoulder, but her hand grazed nothing but air. He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Why did you move?” she asked, stepping away from him.

“What?”

“Don’t say ‘what’ like I am crazy. I tried to touch you and you moved.”

“Quiet, Abena. Don’t make a scene.”

She didn’t make a scene. Instead, she turned and began walking, walking past the people dancing, past her parents crying, walking until she found the floor of her hut and lay down upon it, one hand clutching her heart and the other clutching her stomach.

—

This was how the elders found her the next day when they came to announce that she could remain in the village. The bad years had ended before her seventh year of adultery and she had not yet conceived a child. And, they said, Ohene Nyarko’s harvest had been so profitable that now he could finally fulfill his promise.

“He will not marry me,” Abena said from her spot on the floor, rolling this way and that, one hand on her stomach, the other on her heart, holding the two places that hurt.

The elders scratched their heads and looked at each other. Had she finally gone mad from all the years of waiting?

“What is the meaning of this?” one of the elders asked.

“He will not marry me,” she repeated, and then she rolled away, giving them nothing more than her back.

The elders rushed over to Ohene Nyarko’s hut. He was already preparing for the next season, preparing and separating the seeds so that he could pass out a share to all of the other village farmers.

“So she has told you,” he said. He didn’t look up at the elders, just continued to work on the seeds. One pile for the Sarpongs, one for the Gyasis, one for the Asares, another for the Kankams.

“What is this about, Ohene Nyarko?”

He had made all of the piles, and in the afternoon, the head of each family would come to collect them, spread them onto their own small plots of land, and wait for the strange new trees to grow and flourish so that soon the village would be restored to what it once was, or surpass it.



“To get the cocoa plants, I had to promise a man in Osu that I would marry his daughter. I will have to use all of the leftover goods from my cocoa trade to pay her bride price. I cannot marry Abena this season. She will have to wait.”