Homegoing(84)
How could they refuse? Yaw and Esther had planned on going straight to Akua’s house to stay, but instead they walked the short mile’s distance from the town square to the Poku house. When they got there, Kofi Poku’s other children, three daughters and one son, were beginning dinner. One of the girls, the tallest and most slender, sat before a great big mortar. The boy held the pestle, which was nearly twice his height. He held it straight up and then would send it crashing down just as the girl’s hand finished turning the fufu in the mortar, barely escaping the impact.
“Hello, my children,” Kofi Poku called, and all of the children stopped what they were doing and stood, so that they could greet their parents, but when they saw Yaw their voices hushed and their eyes widened.
The one who looked like the youngest girl, with two puffs of hair on either side of her head, pulled on her brother’s pants leg. “Crazy Woman’s son,” she whispered. Yet still, all could hear, and Yaw knew for certain now that his story had become legend in his hometown.
Everyone stood there, embarrassed for a minute, and then Esther with her large and muscular arms snatched the pestle from the older boy and quickly struck the fufu in the mortar before anyone had time to think or react. The ball of fufu flattened, and the fufu stick fell with a thud against the clay earth.
“Enough!” Esther shouted once they had all turned to stare at her. “Has this man not suffered enough that he should come home to this?” she asked.
“Please excuse my child,” Mrs. Poku said, using her voice to speak instead of her husband’s for the first time since they’d met her. “It’s just that they have heard the stories. They will not make the mistake again.” She turned, allowed her gaze to rest on each of the five children, even the toddler at her feet, and quickly, without any need for further explanation, they understood.
Kofi Poku cleared his throat, and motioned for the two of them to follow him to their seats. As they did, Yaw whispered, “Thank you,” and Esther shrugged. “Let them think that I am the crazy one,” Esther said.
They sat down to their meal. The kids served them, frightened but kind. Kofi Poku and his wife told them what to expect from Yaw’s mother.
“She lives with only a house girl in that place your father built for her on the edge of town. She rarely goes out anymore, though sometimes you can see her outside, tending to her garden. She has a lovely garden. My wife often goes there to admire the flowers that grow there.”
“Does she speak when you see her?” Yaw asked Mrs. Poku.
The woman shook her head. “No, but she has always been kind to me. She even gives me some flowers to take home. I put them in the girls’ hair before we go to church, and I think it will bring them good marriages.”
“Don’t worry,” Kofi Poku said. “I’m sure she will know you. Her heart will know you.” His wife and Esther both nodded, and Yaw looked away.
It was dark in the courtyard, but the heat had not lessened, only transformed, buzzing with mosquitoes and humming with gnats.
Yaw and Esther finished their food. They said thank you. They were taken to their room, where Esther insisted on the floor while Yaw got the mattress, a tough, springy thing that fought his back. Like that, and there, they slept.
—
They spent the morning preparing, walking around Edweso, and eating many times. They had been told that Yaw’s mother rarely slept and seemed to prefer evenings to mornings. And so they bided their time. Esther had left Takoradi only once in her life, and Yaw loved seeing the wonder in her eyes as they took in the strangeness of this new town.
Everyone thought they were married. Yaw did not correct them, and, to his delight, Esther did not correct them either, though Yaw wondered if this was more a factor of her politeness than her desire. He was too afraid to ask.
Soon, the sky began to darken and with each new shade, Yaw’s stomach began to tighten. Esther kept glancing at him carefully, taking in his face as though it held instructions for how she herself should feel.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said.
Since they’d met five years before, Esther had been the one to encourage his homecoming. She said it had something to do with forgiveness, but Yaw wasn’t certain that he believed in forgiveness. He heard the word most on the few days he went to the white man’s church with Edward and Mrs. Boahen and sometimes with Esther, and so it had begun to seem to him like a word the white men brought with them when they first came to Africa. A trick their Christians had learned and spoke loudly and freely about to the people of the Gold Coast. Forgiveness, they shouted, all the while committing their wrongs. When he was younger, Yaw wondered why they did not preach that the people should avoid wrongdoing altogether. But the older he got, the better he understood. Forgiveness was an act done after the fact, a piece of the bad deed’s future. And if you point the people’s eye to the future, they might not see what is being done to hurt them in the present.
When it was finally evening, Kofi Poku led Yaw and Esther to Yaw’s mother’s house on the outskirts of town. Yaw knew it immediately from the lush things that grew in her garden. Colors that Yaw had never seen before bloomed off of long green stalks that rustled from the wind or the small creatures that moved beneath them.
“This is where I leave you,” Kofi Poku said. They had not even reached the door yet. For any other family, in this and many other towns, it would have been considered rude for a townsperson to be so close to a person’s house and not greet the master of the house, but Yaw could see the discomfort in the man’s face, and he waved to him and thanked him again while he made his way off.