by Adwoa Badoe
I started to shout in the car, “Let me out of here.”
But one man reached across and slapped me. “Listen, we are only going to question you but if you make noise I shall knock you out.”
Tears sprang to my eyes, but I didn’t want to sob. I began to say the Lord’s Prayer under my breath.
They took me to a house behind tall white walls. They shut a heavy black gate behind us. And when the car stopped at last, they took me to a room which was quite empty except for a desk and two chairs. My captor shoved me into a chair and locked the door, leaving me by myself.
I looked around me. I tried to take comfort in the fact that I wasn’t tied up and this was not a barracks. Then it occurred to me that it might have been better to be in some barracks or government institution where records might be kept of my presence.
The door opened, and another man came in. He was tall and skinny. He had a tribal mark cut into one cheek, and small beady eyes that had ice in them. So far nobody had introduced themselves and neither did this man.
“Charlotte Adom? I am from National Security,” he said stiffly. “Can you answer these questions?”
And with that he sat down and opened a file. And the interrogation began.
‹•›
Someone was shaking me awake. I opened my eyes with difficulty as if my eyelids were weighted with bricks.
It was the man who had kidnapped me in the taxi. He was the worst of the lot, so angry and fierce. This time there was a grin on his face that made me cringe. I could tell that something had happened.
My dream was not just a dream. I had said things. The interrogator must have mixed something with my drink. What had I said? Who had I put into trouble?
Worse, I could smell the urine which had now dried on my clothes.
“Get up,” commanded the officer.
“Can I leave now?”
“You want to go where?” he demanded, and his laughter grated on my ears.
He grabbed my elbow, marched me out of the room to the next room. There was only a mattress there. And dirty shutters for windows. The windows were closed and it was dark and stuffy, even though it was still daylight.
“Wait here,” he said.
He left me for hours inside the room. I heard cars start up, I heard the gate open. Sometimes I heard talk and even laughter. Once I banged on the door and a man came to the door.
“What?”
“I want to go home,” I said.
“Lady, just be quiet. It’s better to be quiet. They will take you home,” he said.
I thought there was a trace of kindness in his voice.
“Help me, please. I want to urinate,” I said.
“Wait.” And he brought me a Milo tin. “Just urinate here, lady. Don’t make these people angry,” he whispered. Then he locked the door again.
After I urinated in the tin, I set it in a corner of the room. Then I sat down on the dusty floor and waited. Perhaps they wanted to interrogate me again. Various scenarios rushed through my mind, and I wondered if I would be tortured or killed. I began to pray in feverish whispers.
The hours passed. Then the door to the small room opened. Perhaps they were ready to release me at last.
My captor came in again. He came towards me, and an unfriendly smile stretched his face taut. Grasping my upper arm, he yanked me to my feet. All of a sudden he was pressing me against the wall, and his harsh breath reeked of alcohol.
Half staggering, he steered me towards the dirty mattress on the floor. It had no sheets but it had a pillow that was stained with what could have been sweat, saliva or even vomit. His big rough hands pulled at me. He fell on top of me. Big hands held me down while I struggled. My skirt was already riding up. With one hand he pushed my thighs apart and straddled me. With his other hand, he pulled my underwear down. Then with one hand against my mouth, he entered me, smothering my cries back down my throat. I gagged and added my vomit to the stained pillow.
I wondered if anyone could hear my heart thumping against my chest. The hand that had smothered me fell away from my mouth, plastered with vomit. I heard him swear. Then he smeared his hand against the wall just above my head. My mouth was free but the desire to scream had abandoned me.
It was too late. I had already died many times, and to be found now was of little benefit.
Strangely, it flashed through my mind that I would turn nineteen in another week. But for me, the world ended right then.
At last he rolled off me, pulled up his pants and staggered out of the room. Slowly I got up and adjusted my clothes as best as I could. I tried the door. To my surprise, it opened. When I got to the gate, the man who had brought me the Milo tin obliged me by opening it. He could not look at me. I kept on walking until a taxi driver honked hard behind me.
“Drop in?” he asked.
“Achimota,” I replied. All I could think of was running water and soap to scrub the filth away.
‹•›
I got home as the clock in the dining room struck six o’clock. I showered and went to bed. I told my mother I wasn’t feeling well. I refused my dinner but I took some paracetamol with a glass of Fanta. I drifted in and out of sleep all through the night, waking up more than once with a scream in my throat. Each time I stifled it, and I tried to block the memory of what had happened to me. I woke up late the next morning, still feigning sickness. Mama wanted me to take a chloroquine treatment course but I declined.
“I think it’s just exhaustion. I should be okay if I just rest,” I said.
“You will have all the time to rest, it seems,” said Mama. She brought both the Daily Graphic and the Times with headlines screaming: Universities Closed by Order, PNDC. Universities in Accra, Kumasi and Cape Coast Closed Indefinitely.
I thought about my passport and all Asare’s money given to me for safekeeping. They were in my closet at Africa Hall.
“I have to go back to school and pack out,” I said to my mother.
“Wait for your father to come home,” she said.
I scoured the newspapers. All the stories were about unruly students who had refused to go to lectures and who were instead demonstrating unlawfully and destroying public property.
Another article described the confessions of student activists from all three universities. The confessions included the spreading of lies and misinformation, leading to sabotage and subversion of the government. Someone confessed to smoking marijuana, and another to cocaine dealing. I knew that those students had been beaten or tortured to write those confessions. Who knew what else could have happened to them? It seemed like they had been on to us all even before the meeting at Madina. There was no word from Banahene or Jordan, and I prayed that they had escaped.
Dad came home for supper. He had already decided I was staying home.
“I’m sure your roommate will move your things to her home. Wait a while, and when things have died down you can return to Kumasi to get your things. It may be providence that brought you home safely,” he said.
This time it was easy to obey my dad’s instruction to lie low and stay home. I swallowed my pain. I buried my memories, and I would never have spoken of my ordeal because the shame was too great.
‹•›
I became obsessed with washing. I wanted to believe that nothing had happened to me — that nothing had changed, but I had a strange suspicion that everyone could see what I had endured. As the days passed, I helped Mama around the house and tried to be normal.
Two weeks later, Jordan came to visit. He had missed the Madina meeting because his friend’s car had broken down on the way to Accra. They had spent two days on the road.
He said that Banahene had left the country the very day we were scheduled to meet. His parents had sent him away, driving west through La Côte d’Ivoire. They had learned that his life was in danger. We could only h
ope to hear from him once he was safe.
Jordan said the NUGS secretary had been arrested and taken to Ussher Fort. He had been released after three days. Two other student leaders from Legon and Cape Coast had been taken to Gondar Barracks. They’d come out subdued, with heads shorn, after promising to be supportive of the government and the good people of Ghana. Sharon was safe in England. Because she was writing an exam, she had stayed in Cape Coast during the NUGS meeting. Jordan told me he would leave the country, too, if he got a chance.
20
My sister came home for the holidays and soon started vacation classes. My nights were filled with strange dreams and my days with the effort of being normal. I helped in the house as much as possible, and six weeks went by before I noticed that I had missed my period. I increased my exercise, running up and down the stairs several times a day. I also chewed kola nut and drank Coca-Cola whenever I could. A long time ago someone had told me that the sugar and the fizz were enough to reset delayed menses.
I started skipping. I did jumping jacks and pushups, all in an attempt to shake the pregnancy loose from inside me. I had the scientific picture of pregnancy in mind from my dad’s textbooks of human biology. If the pregnancy was on my skin, I would have dug it out with a fingernail.
Secondary schools opened again but the universities were still closed. Accra became very hot, and weeks passed on end with no rain. Dad said even the skies were protesting the government’s wrongdoing. The drought had brought famine, and famine had brought a new term — Rawlings Chain, referring to the knobbly bits of rib bones that showed through starved and tightly stretched skin.
We were sitting around the dining table eating my mother’s strange pawpaw stew, when all of a sudden Mama looked at me. She did not say a word until dinner was over.
After dinner I cleaned the kitchen, and then I went to my room.
After a while she knocked on my door.
“Charlotte, are you pregnant?” she demanded.
Shock was what made me admit it instantly.
“How far?” My mother’s voice was low, scraping the belly.
“Three months.”
“And by whom?”
I wanted to say something, but the words just would not come out of my mouth. Not even when my father was involved in the questioning, could I tell the story.
How would they believe that I really did not know if it was the soldier, or Banahene? And my pain at Dad’s disappointment made me hold out like a dam.
‹•›
Dad would not look at me directly. And I stayed in my room all day unless I was commanded to come down to eat. I was not sulking, nor was I crying. I was searching for something — my own soul.
Then, one evening, I suddenly understood that I was lost to everyone whom I had loved — lost even to myself, for someone had stolen me away. This thing that separated me from those I loved would also separate my child from me.
Mama brought up the idea to send me to the Catholic convent at Kwahu-Tafo. There I could be well hidden until I delivered the child safely and quietly. Nobody would have to know apart from us, so long as the universities remained closed. Mama said if the universities reopened before the baby was born, we would figure out what to do.
I awakened before five o’clock and lay there listening to the sounds of dawn. A bird was tweeting incessantly just outside my window. I heard the first cock crow, and after that the other cocks struggled to catch up with protests of their own. A late mosquito sang in my ear, and I brushed it away. It floated on, too drunk on my blood to move any faster. I got up, followed it and smashed it against the wall, smearing the wall with blood.
Outside, someone was sweeping the yard. Then I heard footsteps in the kitchen. Mama would be cooking koko or rice-water for breakfast.
I looked at my suitcase. There were few clothes in it — mostly Mama’s. She also handed me a prayer book and her rosary.
A few hours later, Dad, Mama and I sat in our Peugeot 404 on the road to Kwahu-Tafo. I watched the bush pass by, interrupted by the usual look-alike roadside villages. A few months ago, I had traveled this way to salvage cocoa from the bush. Everything was the same, and yet life would never be the same again.
‹•›
I embraced the quietness of the convent. It had to be peace I felt around me, if not inside. It was there on the thin mattress and the narrow bed. It was there in my work at the nursery where babies were nurtured, and in the garden where I was asked to grow some corn. Peace was also the daily Mass, and I rediscovered my rosary and the comfort of prayers muttered through quiet lips. And it was at the convent that I finally admitted in the confidence of the confessional that I had been raped by an unknown soldier. Even then I could not bring myself to confess that I had also been intimate with Banahene. That would be our secret, God’s and mine.
Time slipped away like sand in the hand. And Christmas came — dry and cheerless as the dusty harmattan winds that blew from the north.
Mama forwarded Mary’s letter to me along with a card. It had been sent care of my dad at Achimota School. It was just a note confirming that she had all my things. She had underlined all, and I knew what she meant — Asare’s package. She also said she was going to have a church wedding on the eighth of January — a Saturday. She wanted me to come.
She had no idea how a simple note like that, carrying her warm affection, could literally save my life.
Suddenly I felt loved. I started a letter to Mary and it grew longer and longer every day until I was sure I would not post it. I had till April to wait out my pregnancy, far from the eyes of anyone I knew. But I had Mary’s distant ear and in my letter I told her all those things I couldn’t tell God. Mary was my lifeline. Even from afar, perhaps she could save me.
Dear Mary,
I am pregnant and the shame of my family. I am waiting in a strange town to deliver this child, if only I survive. I am burdened not only in my womb but in my mind and soul. I have been looking for God but it is hard to see His face. In my dream, it is Banahene’s face I see, before the monster appears and eats him up. Then your letter came and rays of light entered my dream. Perhaps, I can have this child and live …
‹•›
I woke up with abdominal pain on Sunday, the twentieth of February. At first I thought it was that old pain I had fought on the day of the coup d’état. I told the Mother of the convent that I just needed to vomit to feel better, but she disagreed. She said it was labor pain.
The baby was coming prematurely at thirty-two weeks, and I was filled with anxiety.
The midwife came and I labored through the afternoon. I lay there in awe of the new depths of pain that washed over me in waves. From a haze of sweat I heard the encouragement of the sisters as I lay with legs wide apart, grunting and pushing.
Then came the crowning, and a different kind of pain superimposed itself on the former. I welcomed it all as the baby was born. I screamed from the anguish. I was glad for the blood and the waters that escaped — glad for the cleansing after the baby came.
And for the first time, tears trickled down my face for this baby whose conception lay somewhere between violence and love.
She was conceived as a child of the revolution, lost already at the point of her birth. I held her once and searched her face, looking for signs that she was Banahene’s. Finding nothing of him, I gave her to the nuns, never having put her to my breast to feed on her own milk. In my memory was the breastfeeding judge who had been kidnapped and killed one eerie night in June. Her baby, too, had lost her milk forever.
The nuns named her Esi because she was born on Sunday. They called her Nyamekye because even unwanted babies belong to God. I would always remember her face, an imprint of wetness on my memory.
Epilogue
My belly feels like pounded yam fufu with stretch marks radiating from a sunken belly button. It tells me I may never for
get the one who rested there for months and months.
The nuns have blessed me. The priest has absolved me, and I am told that I am free to get on with my life. But life is some distance away in a gray fog that I have come to know so well.
I pack my things. I leave a letter in my locker along with a small donation.
Dear Mother,
Thank you for caring for me for all those months. Please call my daughter Esi N. Gana, because her father is this bleeding land.
The convent Mother waits for me in the van. We don’t speak as she drives up the dusty road and turns into the transport yard. She stays with me until I have bought my ticket. Still she waits until I climb on the bus. Then she watches while the bus starts. She waves as we drive out of the gates.
I am gone out of their lives, having given them something of mine to hold.
On the STC bus, we are sitting six on a row meant for five people. The radio is blaring.
Ghana has become Rawlings’ country. He has done his worst but he is still lord. The people have weathered drought, famine and gas shortages, but they are still singing highlife songs.
I hear the talking drums, a signal for the news on GBC radio. It is noon hour and the bus is hot, even though the windows are open to the stirred-up wind.
The first thing I hear is “The Secretary for Education, Dr. Ampem, has announced that the universities will open in two weeks. On March 25, all students are to report to their places of matriculation.”
There is a burst of chatter on the bus. I look around. I wonder if there are university students on this bus. It is hard to tell because everybody looks worn out, and not at all like those people with whom I lived on Tech campus — daring, young, energetic and free — young people lusting to know their own voice and mind, and thinking they can change the world. Maybe I look tired, too.
I am thinking of Africa Hall. I’m thinking of Mary and Juaben. I’m wondering if the others think I have joined the refugees to Europe and America. I’m wondering what excuses my mother has made to all those who may have asked of me. What has she told my sister?
