Yellowbone

by Ekow Duker

  ‘You will come with me,’ the officer said. ‘I have to charge you.’

  He took Karabo by the elbow and steered her back inside the hall. She tried to shake free but he was much stronger than she was. The babble of voices around Karabo grew louder and louder with everyone speculating as to what she had done. It was as if she’d fallen down a rabbit hole and into a raucous game show with a cash prize for the correct answer.

  ‘Cocaine! Cocaine!’ someone shouted.

  ‘Officer! There is speedball in her bag!’

  Then a large, blowsy woman stepped forward and barred Karabo’s way. She looked Karabo up and down, her lips contorting with scorn.

  ‘Ashawo!’

  Karabo had no idea what that meant but from the venom the woman placed on each syllable, she guessed an ashawo must be something or someone horrible. Something out of Madina maybe. Her eyes prickled with tears and a hot wave of shame broke over her as the officer escorted her away.

  They took her to a small room with no windows, just a metal table, two matching chairs and a grey filing cabinet. Every item of furniture had a stock number stencilled along the edge in sloping white letters. Either Ghanaians were fastidious book-keepers or people stole a lot here, Karabo thought. The room was so small, the trolley with her baggage took up most of the space. Beate Neumann, with typical Dutch efficiency, had thought to push it back inside for her. The officer settled himself on one side of the table and glanced up at the white woman. He seemed surprised to see she was still there.

  ‘I’ve finished with you,’ he said.

  ‘What will happen to her now?’

  ‘I will hand her over to the police and she will be charged.’

  ‘And the violin?’ she asked. ‘What will happen to the violin?’

  The tag on the officer’s chest said his name was K.K. Dougan. Beate Neumann’s questions were obviously starting to irritate him.

  ‘You said you are a lawyer. You should know that is for the courts to decide.’

  He leaned back in his chair and strummed his fingers on the table top, looking at both of them with undisguised suspicion.

  The Dutch woman knelt next to Karabo. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a low voice, ‘but I really must go now. Is there anyone I can call for you? Your father perhaps?’

  Karabo was still in shock and, try as she might, the words would not find a way out of her throat. Beate Neumann placed a comforting hand on Karabo’s shoulder and Karabo covered her hand with hers. Karabo must have held her hand for far too long because Beate Neumann had to wriggle it quite hard to get it out of her grip.

  CHAPTER 38

  The two K’s in immigration officer Dougan’s name stood for Kweku Kakraba but everyone called him KK. He seemed quite proud to tell Karabo that. He’d grown up in Saltpond, a small fishing village on the Atlantic coast, thirty kilometres east of Cape Coast. Karabo told him that was where Ma’ama and Paa Kofi lived but he wasn’t interested in that. He was the second of three brothers and two sisters. His elder brother worked on a ship. He was a seaman, KK said. KK hadn’t seen his brother for many years and the last he’d heard of him he was in Odessa. Karabo told him Odessa was a seaport on the north-western shore of the Black Sea but he wasn’t interested in that either. One of his sisters lived in Italy but KK glossed over her and wouldn’t say what she did for a living. His other sister sold groundnuts in the market at Kasoa, just outside Accra. His younger brother was an illegal miner, a galamsey, who worked for a Chinese man called Kenny. He brought home good money, much more than KK earned as an immigration officer. KK told Karabo all this in between taunting her and making vague threats.

  ‘You think you are clever, eh?’ he asked her. ‘You think you are more beautiful than the rest?’

  These weren’t really questions he was asking her. Karabo had already established that he had no interest in anything she might say. His goading was the verbal equivalent of the touching of gloves at the start of a boxing match. But she didn’t play along and that made KK very angry indeed.

  ‘Do you even know what tuntum means?’

  Clearly, the word had offended him and she wasn’t sure why. When Teacher had taught the word to her, there’d been no innuendo attached to it. Tuntum simply meant black.

  ‘I want to call my father,’ Karabo said.

  KK lowered his head and glared at her from under the overhang of his brow.

  ‘What work does your father do?’

  ‘He’s a teacher.’

  KK looked strangely pleased to hear that. ‘Teacher Bentil,’ he said to himself. ‘Teacher Bentil.’

  Then he roused himself and went back to spouting abuse.

  ‘You yellow girls,’ he said. ‘You think you can just open your legs and money will come, eh?’

  So now she was a human cash register with the till engineered into her vagina.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  KK put on a mincing falsetto and mimicked Karabo’s words. ‘I beg your pardon?’ His head wobbled obscenely as he mocked her. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  When she didn’t respond he reverted to a peevish growl.

  ‘Don’t come and speak your big English here.’ He jabbed his index finger down at the floor. ‘You are in Ghana now!’

  Karabo ignored him and took her phone out of her pocket. She scrolled downwards for Teacher’s number and had just pressed dial when KK snatched the phone out of her hand.

  ‘No phone calls. I have to charge you first.’

  Karabo leaped up and pounded both fists on the table. ‘Then charge me!’ she screamed.

  She fell back into the chair and covered her eyes with her hand. Her outburst must have alarmed KK because he eyed her warily. Then he left the room, returning after a few minutes with a police officer, a woman. Her uniform was as crisp as KK’s except hers was dark blue instead of olive-green. She asked KK something to which he replied, ‘South Africa.’

  ‘These are her things,’ he said, pointing at the luggage trolley.

  The police officer leaned over Karabo and peered into her face. ‘Do you speak English?’

  Karabo sighed tiredly. ‘Only big English.’

  The police officer looked quizzically at KK. ‘Has she been taking drugs?’

  KK pulled a face and shrugged. He was better at asking questions, not answering them.

  ‘I am taking you to the police station,’ the woman officer said. ‘Do you understand?’

  Karabo shrugged as KK had just done. What was there to understand? She’d been arrested because of the Guadagnini but they hadn’t asked her about it. Not even once.

  It took ages for the police car to arrive. By the time the policewoman announced the car was there, the airport was almost deserted. As Karabo followed her to a gravel-strewn carpark, her eyelids sagged with fatigue. The policewoman opened the door for her and motioned that she should sit in the back. The driver, a young male officer, turned and gave Karabo a long, hard look.

  ‘It will be okay,’ he said, showing her his teeth. ‘Give everything to God.’

  Karabo thought she detected a flicker of compassion in the driver’s eyes. Perhaps he really meant it.

  They could have walked to the police station, it was that close to the airport. Karabo’s only view of Accra so far was of an empty tree-lined avenue and a brightly lit Shell filling station with articulated trucks parked in the forecourt. The base of the tree trunks had all been dipped in white paint and stood in the centre island like crooked soldiers on parade. She thought of Teacher and tried not to cry. They still hadn’t let her call him. She could die here and nobody would be any the wiser.

  ‘How far is it to Labone?’ Karabo asked the driver.

  He looked up and spoke to Karabo in the rear-view mirror the way Teacher used to do. It was bizarre, but his voice also sounded like her father’s. She was going crazy. She was hearing Teacher’s voice everywhere.

  ‘Labone?’ he asked. ‘It’s not far.’

  Teacher had often told her that Ghana
ians braced themselves to answer a question by first repeating the question they’d been asked. And given a choice between a vague response and a more precise one, a Ghanaian invariably went for ambiguity. It wasn’t because Ghanaians were dodgy, Teacher had said with a chuckle. It was because they were pre-programmed not to offend.

  ‘How far is not far?

  ‘Oh, okay. It’s about seven kilometres from here. Why? Do you have relatives there?’

  Karabo had no time to answer because the car was already slowing to a stop. The driver jumped down and opened the door for her. He really was very sweet. He even carried Karabo’s bags inside. She might have been checking into a five-star hotel where they already knew her name.

  ‘Karabo? Karabo Bentil?’

  The voice belonged to a busty policewoman with feet encased in heavy black boots. She took an immediate dislike to Karabo and shoved her roughly in the back.

  ‘Go.’

  Karabo had no idea where she was meant to go. She looked helplessly at the policewoman, who simply shoved her in the back again. She felt like an animal being herded to god knew where. The policewoman pushed and prodded Karabo down a dimly lit corridor with one ineffectual lightbulb in the ceiling. The air was thick with the smell of ancient bodies. In the dim light Karabo could make out cells on either side.

  ‘You will sleep here,’ the policewoman said, kicking her boot at a barred door.

  Karabo looked around in bewilderment. ‘Where?’ There was nothing in the cell. Not even a bed. Just a crumpled blanket on the floor and a red plastic bucket in the corner.

  The policewoman shoved Karabo again and she stumbled inside. A sharp smell of piss rose up to greet her.

  ‘Wait!’ she cried.

  The policewoman sneered. ‘For what?’ She had her fists planted on her hips like she was about to do the haka. Then she said something in a language Karabo didn’t understand but it didn’t sound anything like, ‘Give everything to God.’

  Sobbing, Karabo slumped to the floor. Thankfully, it was not cold in the cell and somehow she managed to sleep, in fits and starts, with the mosquitos whining all around her. There must have been a whole squadron of them. In the morning when she awoke, she noticed that the front of her T-shirt was spattered with specks of blood. She needed to pee but she wasn’t sure if she was supposed to use the bucket. In the end she couldn’t hold it any longer. She pulled down her pants and squatted over it with her back to the bars. As she stood up, Karabo caught a fleeting glimpse of a dark uniform and a pair of shiny black boots darting out of view. Horrified, she pulled up her pants as quickly as she could.

  She cried out as Mrs Summerscales had done. ‘Who’s there?’

  There was no answer. It couldn’t be any worse if she were an animal in a zoo. Had it really been only two days since she’d taken the violin? It felt much longer than that. She thought of Simba all of a sudden. If he were here he’d turn his nose up at her current accommodation. But Karabo felt so lonely and afraid that she’d have given anything to have the fat, surly creature in the cell with her right now.

  Karabo had no way to tell the time but she reckoned it was Sunday. Teacher would be waking up to go to church. He’d be dressed like a chief, in the resplendent cloth she’d seen displayed in the airport mural. She pictured him driving out of his big mansion in Labone, with dispatch riders doing crazy eights on either side.

  The driver who’d brought Karabo to the police station came later with breakfast. She must have looked atrocious because he started when he saw her slumped against the wall. He approached the cell cautiously and rapped on the bars.

  ‘Obroni.’

  Karabo was too exhausted to argue that she wasn’t white.

  He held a small loaf of bread out to her. ‘Take it,’ he said gently. ‘This is for you.’ It sounded like a benediction. All that was missing was a goblet of wine and soft strains of organ music.

  The bread was warm and soft with a lashing of margarine pressed into a gash running down the middle. Karabo stuffed it greedily into her mouth while the man watched her eat with boyish glee. He’d also brought her some tea in a plastic bowl. The tea was cold and of an indeterminate colour but Karabo gulped it down anyway.

  She handed the bowl back through the bars and their hands touched briefly.

  ‘I’m off duty now,’ he said. ‘I will check on you this evening.’

  ‘How long will they keep me here?’

  ‘How long? Oh, I’m sure you’ll go to court this week. Tomorrow is Monday, not so? Maybe tomorrow.’

  ‘Will you take me?’

  He was kind and Karabo needed to see a friendly face even if he was only the driver. The man looked pleased that she’d asked. He smiled at her and stood up a little straighter. Karabo had already noticed a marked difference between how the men and women here treated her. With the exception of KK, the men were generally friendly. They wanted to do things for Karabo and seemed genuinely sorry for her plight. The women, on the other hand, regarded her with varying degrees of hostility and scorn, and took it upon themselves to inflict small punishments on her whenever they could. A harsh word here, a shove in the back there. Making a show of making her wait. It was as if Karabo was personally responsible for whatever trouble they’d experienced in their own lives. It wasn’t that different in South Africa. Yellow girls, as KK had called her, seemed to carry a special curse.

  ‘Can you call my father for me?’

  ‘Your father? No problem. What is his number?’

  Karabo stared at him. ‘I don’t know. They took my phone.’

  ‘Your phone? Don’t worry, I can get it for you.’

  Karabo’s eyes lit up and he was quick to tamp down her expectations. ‘I can’t bring your phone to the cell but if you tell me your father’s name, I will call him for you.’

  ‘It’s Teacher,’ Karabo said.

  ‘Teacher what?’

  ‘Just Teacher.’

  He chuckled and said, ‘I’ll call him right now.’

  Karabo could have hugged him but that would have been inappropriate. Anyway, the bars were in the way.

  Karabo craned her neck and watched the driver go, his boots making no sound on the concrete floor. He hadn’t gone far when he doubled back.

  ‘Obroni,’ he said. ‘What is the password to unlock your phone?’

  CHAPTER 39

  If it was only seven kilometres to Labone, then Teacher should be at the police station in half an hour. Tops. Karabo couldn’t imagine him taking any longer than that. He should be leaping into his car and speeding to her rescue already. Yes, there’d be a little paperwork but she’d be out by lunch time. She was looking forward to a proper meal and a shower and not necessarily in that order.

  But the minutes passed and then the hours, and still Teacher didn’t come. In desperation, Karabo began to concoct stories in his defence. Perhaps an important chief had died and there was unexpectedly heavy traffic. Or maybe the officer hadn’t found her phone. Or he’d forgotten the unlock code and hadn’t come back to ask. Maybe he’d simply forgotten about her altogether. What if he’d been arrested and shot for going through her belongings without permission? They shot people here, didn’t they? She clutched at anything that might explain Teacher’s delay as her anxieties multiplied like the weeds at the back of their house in Mthatha.

  The officer didn’t check on Karabo in the evening as he’d said he would. Perhaps he really had been taken outside and shot. They brought in another woman and put her in the cell next to Karabo. The woman swore in French from the moment her cell door clanged shut and didn’t stop until her voice grew scratchy and hoarse.

  Only when the woman’s fury subsided did she tell Karabo she was from the Ivory Coast and that her name was Maria. She didn’t reveal much more about herself, not what she was accused of or what had brought her to Ghana in the first place. Karabo couldn’t see what she looked like, only her hands when she stretched them through the bars. They were dry and leathery and Karabo reckoned her to
be at least forty. She told Maria all about Teacher. She even told her about Nigel, Mrs Summerscales and the Guadagnini.

  Just relating her story to another person made Karabo realise how stupid she’d been.

  ‘Courage,’ Maria said to her as Karabo began to cry. ‘Courage, ma chérie. Il va venir, ton professeur. Il va venir.’

  But it was two days before Teacher came. Karabo heard the tell-tale shuffle of his footsteps long before she heard his voice. And when Maria called out excitedly, ‘Ton professeur, il est arrivé!’ she thought she was dreaming. But there he was, clutching the bars as if he were the one inside. Karabo scrambled to her feet and ran a hand through her hair in a futile attempt to make herself presentable.

  ‘Karabo?’ Teacher said in a hoarse voice. ‘Is it really you?’

  His face was a portrait of confusion. The tears spilled freely down his face and his stutter was more pronounced than usual.

  ‘I … I came the minute they called me. They said you’ve been here since Saturday night.’ He reached for Karabo through the bars and she came to him.

  ‘What happened, Karabo? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?’

  Karabo leaned into Teacher as best she could. He hugged her so hard, the metal bars cut painfully into her chest.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Karabo said through a barrage of muffled sobs. ‘I wanted to surprise you. I couldn’t stay in London anymore.’

  Teacher stood back and gripped Karabo by the shoulders. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  She felt terribly small in that instant. Like a forest flower must feel when it looks up at a baobab tree. ‘I did something terrible, Teacher. I stole a violin.’

  Teacher crinkled his nose as if he could smell something foul in the air.

  ‘A violin?’ It was clear that what Karabo had just said made no sense to him. ‘But you have a violin in Mthatha. Your mother could have sent it to you.’

  Karabo couldn’t bear to hear him scold her, not now, not like this. Somehow it was worse than Nigel calling her a fucking cretin. Every word from Teacher, no matter how gently he said it, was like a double-handed slap to her face.