Homegoing(67)

“I’ll tell you about your mother,” the Missionary finally said. He dropped the switch to the floor and walked toward Akua until he was standing so close she could smell the faint stench of fish on his breath. For ten years, he had come no closer to her than the length of that switch. For ten years he had refused to answer her questions about her family. “I’ll tell you about your mother. Anything you want to know.”

Akua took a step back from him, and he did the same. He looked down.

“Your mother, Abena, she wouldn’t repent,” the Missionary said. “She came to us pregnant—you, her sin—but still she wouldn’t repent. She spit at the British. She was argumentative and angry. I believe she was glad of her sins. I believe she did not regret you or your father, even though he did not care for her as a man should.”

The Missionary was speaking softly, so softly that Akua couldn’t be certain that she was hearing him at all.

“After you were born, I took her to the water to be baptized. She didn’t want to go, but I—I forced her. She thrashed as I carried her through the forest, to the river. She thrashed as I lowered her down into the water. She thrashed and thrashed and thrashed, and then she was still.” The Missionary lifted his head and looked at her finally. “I only wanted her to repent. I—I only wanted her to repent…”

The Missionary started crying. It was not the sight of tears that caught Akua’s attention so much as the sound. The terrible sound, the heaving sound, like something wrenched from the throat.

“Where is her body?” Akua asked. “What did you do with her body?”

The sound stopped. The Missionary spoke. “I burned it in the forest. I burned it with all of her things. God forgive me! God forgive me!”

The sound returned. This time, shuddering came with it, a shaking so violent that soon the Missionary fell down to the ground.

Akua had to walk over his body to leave.

—



Asamoah returned at the end of the week. Akua could hear him with her growing ear, though she could not yet see him. She felt weighted to the ground, her limbs heavy logs on the floor of some dark forest.

At the door, Nana Serwah was sobbing and screaming. “My son-o! My son! My son-o! My son!” Then Akua’s growing ear heard a new sound. Loud step. Space. Loud step. Space.

“What is the Fat Man doing here?” Asamoah asked. His voice was loud enough that Akua considered moving, but it was as though she were in the dream space again, unable to make her body do what her mind wanted it to.

Nana Serwah could not answer her son, so busy was she in her wailing. The Fat Man moved, his enormous girth a boulder rolling to reveal the door. Asamoah entered the room, but still Akua could not get up.

“What is the meaning of this?” Asamoah roared, and Nana Serwah was shaken from her wailing.

“She was sick. She was sick, so we…”

Her voice trailed. Akua could hear the sound again. Loud step. Space. Loud step. Space. Loud step. Space. Then Asamoah was standing in front of her, but instead of two legs, she only saw one.

He crouched down carefully so that their eyes could better meet, balancing so well that Akua wondered how long it had been since he’d last seen the missing leg. He seemed so well acquainted with the space.

He noticed her swollen belly and shuddered. He reached out his hand. Akua looked at it. She had not slept in a week. Ants had begun to pass over her fingers and she wanted to shake them off, or give them to Asamoah, lace her small fingers between his large ones.

Asamoah stood and turned to his mother. “Where are the girls?” he asked, and Nana Serwah, who had started crying anew, this time at the sight of Akua trapped on the ground, ran to fetch them.

Ama Serwah and Abee came in. To Akua they looked unchanged. Both girls still sucked their thumbs, despite the fact that Nana Serwah put hot pepper on the tips of them every morning, noon, and night to warn them away. The girls were developing a taste for heat. They looked from Asamoah to Akua, holding hands with their grandmother, thumbs in mouths. Then, wordlessly, Abee wrapped her entire little body around her father’s leg as though it were a trunk, as though it were the fufu stick she was so fond of holding, stronger than she was, sturdier. The toddler, Ama Serwah, moved closer to Akua, and she could see that she had been crying; a thick line of snot trailed from her nose to lick her upper lip, her mouth gaping wide open. It looked like a slug exiting a cave in order to enter a cavern. She touched her father’s knee, but kept moving to rest where Akua was. Then she lay down beside her. Akua could feel her little heart beating in time with her own broken one. She reached out to touch her daughter, to pull her into her arms, and then she stood and surveyed the room.

*

The war ended in September, and the earth around them began to register the Asante loss. Long fissures in the red clay formed about Akua’s compound, so dry was the season. Crops died, and food was limited, for they had given all they had to the men who were fighting. They had given all they had, assured that it would come back to them in the abundance of freedom. Yaa Asantewaa, Edweso’s warrior Queen Mother, was exiled to the Seychelles, never to be seen again by those who lived in the village. Sometimes Akua would walk by her palace in her wanderings and wonder: What if?

The day she had gotten up from the ground, she had not wanted to speak, nor would she let her children or Asamoah leave her sight. And so the broken family nestled into one another, each hoping the others’ presences would fill the wound their personal war had left behind.