by Kwei Quartey
Osewa looked away.
“And that evening you were collecting firewood and you saw Isaac and Gladys standing together talking,” Dawson continued, “they stood closer together than was comfortable for you. You couldn’t bear it. Too much pain, too much.”
The other two men were watching, transfixed.
“Once Isaac had left,” Dawson continued, “you caught up with Gladys on her way back to Ketanu and lured her to the plantain grove in the forest.”
“Darko,” Osewa said softly “You are wrong. I already told you. I last saw Gladys with Samuel. She went into the forest with him, not me.”
“You saw them from the firewood spot, not so?”
“Yes, that’s what I said. I don’t know what’s going on, Darko. Is something the matter?”
“Auntie, what I’m getting at is how you knew Gladys’s skirt and blouse had Adinkra symbols on it?”
Osewa shrugged. “Because I saw it. What do you mean, How did I know?”
“You could see the pattern on her outfit from where you were at the firewood spot. That’s what you’re saying?”
“Yes.” But he could see she was suddenly wary.
“Auntie, it’s not possible. From that distance, you couldn’t see the Adinkra symbols.”
A wave of puzzlement and uncertainty passed across her face like a shadow. “What do you mean?”
“The symbols are too small to be seen from where you were. We’ve tried it ourselves, Chikata and I.”
“What?” she said.
“It’s true,” Chikata said quietly. “It’s impossible even for me, and my vision is better than normal.”
“Then how did I know Gladys’s dress had Adinkra on it?” Osewa challenged.
“You saw it only after you got close enough to see the pattern, but your mind played a trick on you and made you think you had also seen it from far off. You wanted to be sure we believed your story, so you gave us that detail and it was one too many.”
Osewa swallowed. She stared at Dawson without blinking, and he stared back. “And you led Gladys to the plantain grove. Maybe you told her you had some special herbs to show her. How long did you wait before you killed her, Auntie?”
Osewa recoiled.
“She didn’t do it,” Isaac said suddenly.
Dawson’s head turned. “What did you say?”
“Osewa didn’t kill Gladys,” he said. “I did.”
“Isaac Kutu, are you confessing to the murder of Gladys Mensah?”
“You’re right that Osewa lied about Samuel and Gladys going into the forest, but it wasn’t herself she was trying to protect, it was me.”
“How did she know you were the murderer?”
“She didn’t know it for sure. She suspected it because she knew I was angry with Gladys for trying to steal from me, and then she got worried when she learned how you were after my skin. And as for the Adinkra symbols, that was easy. She simply asked me what Gladys had been wearing.”
Osewa put her face in her hands and shook her head in disbelief.
Chikata stepped forward, cuffs in hand. “Isaac Kutu,” he said, “I am Detective Sergeant Chikata. I am arresting you for the murder of Gladys Mensah. Please turn around and put your hands behind your back.”
Osewa stood dumbfounded as the handcuffs clicked shut with staccato precision. Isaac bowed his head.
“Auntie Osewa,” Dawson said, “are you really going to let Isaac be taken away to prison like that? Do you really love him if you can stand there and do nothing? After all he’s done for you? Alifoe is your son with Isaac. He’s the father of your child. You’re going to let him go like this?”
Osewa’s eyes had gone wide. “Who told you Isaac is Alifoe’s father?”
“No one. Come on now. Kweku the father of a boy as beautiful as Alifoe? I don’t think so. Kweku is, and always has been, as infertile as the Sahara desert. You know that, and so do I.”
Osewa was looking from Isaac to Dawson and back again. She was torn.
“He loves you, Auntie,” Dawson pressed. “But do you really love him if you can let him take the blame for what you did?”
“Don’t judge me,” she said coldly. “You have no right to judge me.”
Dawson said nothing and waited. Chikata turned Isaac to face Osewa, and their eyes locked.
“Let him go,” she said resolutely. For the first time, she shed tears. “He didn’t kill Gladys. I did.”
Chikata, confused, looked to Dawson for guidance. Dawson nodded his permission to unlock the cuffs.
“You’ve done the right thing, Auntie,” he said. “Now tell me everything. I’m ready to listen to you.”
Osewa turned to one side, arms folded across her chest. Dawson watched her in profile as she stared at an unidentified point somewhere in the distance. She was silent for a long time, and the calls of forest birds filled the void until she began to speak.
“I was collecting firewood when I saw Gladys and Samuel talking to each other at the edge of the forest,” she began. “Then I heard Isaac calling out and saw him walk up to them and begin to argue with Samuel. I heard their voices, but from where I was standing, I couldn’t hear much of what they were saying. Still, I guessed he was telling Samuel to go away and leave Gladys alone.”
Osewa turned back to face Isaac, and now she addressed him directly.
“I didn’t know why you told Samuel to go away, Isaac. Maybe you thought he was dangerous or troubling Gladys. But I was worried, because Samuel was not really a bad person, and so I was thinking to myself, Why has Isaac told the boy to go away? Is it because he likes Gladys and doesn’t want another man near her?
“So I just watched you and Gladys talking and talking, and I was wondering what you could be conversing about for so long. And sometimes you were smiling, Isaac, as though you were enjoying her company so very much. I saw how close to you she was standing. One time she touched your arm, and another time I saw her laugh and I knew it was a laugh of desire for you, because I too am a woman.
“Then you left her and went back to your compound, and she went on her way back toward Ketanu and I was still wondering, wondering, because you always told me you were only working with Gladys on your medicines, so why did it seem that the two of you were so attracted to each other? When you had returned to your compound, I went after Gladys. I had to run because by now she was far ahead on the footpath to Ketanu.
“When I caught up with her, I greeted her and she was nice to me. And while we were talking, I kept thinking how beautiful she was. And I asked her how everything was going in her study of natural medicines. She told me everything was fine. And then she told me something I didn’t like at all. She said she was trying to convince you, Isaac, to go to Accra with her to work with those doctors there. But really, I knew what she was trying to do. She was trying to take you away for herself and keep you in Accra.”
“Osewa, no,” Isaac said sadly. “She wasn’t trying to do that.”
“Maybe you didn’t know that, my love. But that was what she was trying to do and I had to stop her. While I was talking with her, I was thinking to poison her. Maybe just to make her sick enough to want to leave Ketanu and never come back. I told her I could show her a place in the forest with some medicinal herbs, and I’m sorry, Isaac, I lied and said I knew which one you used to cure the AIDS. She was very eager to see it, and I took her to the plantain grove.
“When I got there, I was trying to think of a way to poison her, but time was going, the sun was about to sleep, Gladys wanted to leave, and she kept asking me which was the medicine to cure AIDS. I showed her a plant I didn’t even know, and she began to laugh at me, saying that she didn’t think that was it. And the more she talked, the angrier I became that she was telling me all these things she was planning to do for you. She even said she was going to make the Ministry of Health get you a nice guesthouse, and that’s when I knew for sure that she wanted to live with you in that house. I wanted to tell her that you belonged to me, n
ot to anyone else, that she couldn’t have you.”
Osewa turned to Dawson. “Isaac is everything to me in this world. He gave me everything. His very touch the first day I met him was like nothing I had known. He gave me the love I never had from Kweku or anyone else, and most of all he blessed me with a beautiful son. Do you know how much I wanted a son, Darko? Do you know how I felt when I saw women with two, three, four beautiful children while I had none?”
“I know it was painful for you, Auntie,” Dawson said. “What did you do to Gladys?”
“I attacked her. I wanted to hurt her. We fell on the ground and she started to scream. I squeezed her neck to make her quiet, and she was looking up at me while I was doing it. She was struggling and I wanted her to stop, so I kept squeezing. Her neck was very soft. And when she stopped breathing, I felt sorry for her, and I didn’t know what to do, so I just tried to make her more comfortable by moving her underneath a palm tree. And I rearranged her skirt and blouse so they were nice and neat again.”
Osewa turned her palms up and looked at them as if she was seeing them for the first time. “I couldn’t let her take away my treasure, that’s what you have to understand. Not Gladys, nor any other woman.”
“Even your own sister,” Dawson said.
Osewa drew in her breath so sharply it made a sound of asphyxiation. Her right hand, fingers spread, went to her chest. She stood frozen. Dawson moved in close.
“Where did you bury my mother?”
He grasped her arm, but she threw it off and sprang away like a bush rabbit.
“Don’t touch me!” she snapped. Her eyes blazed like red-hot embers. “You’re just like her. Even your laugh is like hers. She was always better than me, that woman. Ever since we were children. And then she would rub it in my face. She had everything. She lived in Accra, she was more beautiful, she had you and Cairo while I was barren, and then she wanted Isaac for herself as well.”
Her chest was heaving and her hands were trembling.
“Isaac looked at Mama that day we came to see you,” Dawson said, “and she looked back at him. I saw it, and so did you, and you knew what it meant.”
“Yes. That she wanted him. She was going to get him.”
“When you said you had been outside setting the traps for the rabbits,” Dawson said, “you really went to see Isaac, because you were afraid that something was going on between him and Mama, and you desperately wanted Isaac to reassure you that it wasn’t so.”
“Yes.” She looked admiringly at Dawson for a moment. “How do you know everything? Then, when your mother came to see us just after Alifoe was born, a farmer mentioned to me that he had seen Beatrice go into Isaac’s compound and that she had spent a long time there. And then I knew Beatrice was in love with Isaac, because if that wasn’t the case, she would have told me she had gone to see him, maybe for some healing, but she didn’t. She did not say one word about it.
“She came back to Ketanu again, and this time I challenged her. I asked her, ‘Beatrice, I know you have been secretly going to see Isaac Kutu. Why are you doing that?’ She told me she feared that she might have offended the gods in some way and that’s why they had taken Cairo’s legs away, that perhaps she needed to be purified, and so that was why she had visited Isaac’s compound. And I asked her, Why not just find a healer in Accra to purify her? Do you know what she answered? She said that no one made her feel the way Isaac did. She said she just felt so happy when she was with him.
“And then your mother confessed something to me and begged me never to tell anyone. And I said, All right, I won’t tell anyone. She told me she often dreamed that she was standing with seven or eight women who were Isaac’s wives, and one by one they died around her. They just fell down on the ground one after the other and left only Beatrice standing. Once they were all dead, she became Isaac’s new wife.” Auntie Osewa shuddered. “That’s when I realized.”
“Realized what, Auntie Osewa?”
“Boniface Kutu had been right that one of my sisters was a witch, only he chose the wrong sister. It wasn’t Akua who needed to be tried. It was Beatrice. She was the witch. It was Beatrice who had stolen my womb from me.”
“Oh, no, Osewa,” Isaac said, dismayed. “That’s not the way it was.”
“She had stolen my womb. Isaac got it back, and now Beatrice wanted to steal him. How dare she? What gave her the right to take so much away from me?”
Dawson’s bottom lip was quivering. “Auntie, how did you kill Mama?”
“You already know,” she said, suddenly weary. “You held the weapon in your own hands.”
Dawson felt sick.
“Yes, Darko. It was the rope we make from elephant grass, the same kind I made for you when you were a boy.” Tears streamed down her face. “I planned it. I knew I couldn’t do it with my bare hands. Your mother was too strong.”
“And when it came time for Mama to return to Accra,” Dawson said softly, “you walked with her toward the tro-tro stop, but you never got there, did you? You led her to the grove—just like you were to do with Gladys twenty-three years later—and you killed her there. You told everyone the lie that you had seen Mama board the tro-tro, but this last time, when I was having dinner with you and you were telling us about it, you made another mistake. It’s always in the lying that a mistake is made.”
“What mistake?”
“Mama would never have sat near the front seat, even if it was the last tro-tro on earth.”
“Oh,” Osewa said dispiritedly. “I didn’t even know that.”
Dawson took her gently and held her close.
“Detective Sergeant Chikata is going to arrest you now, Auntie, and then he will be taking you away. Okay?”
“I love you, little Darko. I will always love you.”
IT WASN’T A FETISH priest who had built the juju pyramid at the plantain grove. It had been Osewa’s creation. Maybe it would indeed serve to keep evil spirits away, but its main purpose was to hide what was underneath.
With Constable Gyamfi’s help, Dawson removed the rocks one by one from the pile. He felt a certain closeness to the constable. With Inspector Fiti and Constable Bubo suspended pending the investigation into alleged police brutality, Dawson had offered to stay in Ketanu and help at the station until a replacement inspector could be sent in.
All the rocks were down now, and the soil was exposed. Gyamfi had brought a shovel, and Dawson thrust it into the ground. Even though the soil was soft from the recent rain, it was hard work digging. Dawson had insisted on doing it without any help. When he got three feet down, he stopped and wiped the sweat streaming from his brow.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to take over for a while?” Gyamfi asked.
“I’m sure.”
As he continued, the shovel struck something hard, and he stopped and knelt down. Gyamfi moved closer to see. It was about the size of a thumb. It looked light in color but stained by the dark earth. Dawson used his bare hands to clear more soil away. It became clear that they were looking at a human bone.
Thirty minutes later, Dawson had the full leg and part of a pelvis. He freed the other leg and the feet, then moved up the spine. The body had been laid at a slight incline, so again he had to use the shovel carefully until he reached another level of bone.
He freed the arms. The skeleton was mostly intact. Around the bones of the neck, Dawson removed the soil in careful, thin layers until he found something again. It was coated with mud and the chain had been broken, but it was there—the gold necklace with its butterfly pendant.
“Mama,” he whispered.
When her head was exposed, Dawson gently touched her skull.
Gyamfi turned away and retreated quietly. Dawson brushed soil out of his mother’s head and eyes. In his mind, he didn’t see her skull, he saw her face and her smile and felt her skin.
“I’ll give you the burial you deserve, Mama,” he said, “and Christine and Hosiah will be there. At last you’ll see them and be proud
. And then, Mama, you can finally rest.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you is a sufficient expression when someone holds a door open for you, but it is inadequate to express the depth of gratitude I feel for those who have in various ways helped me to write this book.
No one deserves the crown more than Marly Rusoff, my agent. When I first presented this novel to her, it was so roughly hewn I wonder how on earth she saw any potential shape in it. Marly not only has keen perception, she brings warmth and humanity along with it. She is a tenacious advocate for her authors. My tremendous thanks also go to Michael Radulescu and Jacqueline LeDonne in Marly’s office, who worked magic with foreign sales of this novel.
I would never have come upon Marly Rusoff had it not been for Beverly Martin at Agent Research and Evaluation. An accomplished writer herself, she searched tirelessly for agents who might take me on, and she was really the first person to teach me how to write a good query letter. I am very grateful to her.
I was fortunate to meet yet another wonderful person in this process: Judy Sternlight, my editor at Random House. She infused me with excitement from the very start. She has an amazing grasp of character and story, seeing many things that did not even occur to me as the author. I consider myself privileged to have worked with someone of her caliber and brilliance. My thanks also go to production editor Vincent La Scala, sharp-eyed copy editor Susan M. S. Brown, and the marketing and promotion personnel.
I must not forget the first readers of the manuscript—Julie Mosow, in Marly Rusoff’s office, and Mary Logue, both of whom gave me such invaluable guidance that I would not have been able to produce the second and third drafts without them.
Many thanks to Ken Yeboah, assistant commissioner of police and deputy director general at the Central Investigations Department in Accra. He was extremely helpful and patient with me in response to the scores of questions I had for him about police procedure in Ghana. Likewise, I would like to thank Edmond Vanderpuye and Patience Vormawor at International Needs in Accra for being so accommodating. I also thank Kofitse Ahadzi of Afrikania Mission; Moses Sowah, M.D., for getting me in touch with detectives and officers at CID; the incomparable and unflappable John Nkrumah Mills, M.D., at the Volta River Authority Hospital in Akosombo; Adukwei Hesse, M.B., Ch.B.; and Nii Otu Nartey, M.D. Many thanks to the always brainy Audrey Quaye for helping me make contacts in Ghana. I am very grateful also to Kwasi Asiedu, attorney at law, for his terrific assistance with tricky legal questions, and to David Asem for expert assistance with English-Ewe translation.
