by Yaba Badoe
‘You mean use magic openly?’ I shook my head. ‘Gran-pa’s right to be cautious. Nothing would please me more than to blast those miners to pieces. But we took an oath to protect life. What comes naturally to us is scary to outsiders.’ I clicked my fingers. ‘They’d kill us just like that if they saw us use magic.’
‘That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t change tack,’ Zula replied. ‘Our teachers are Sankofa. They returned to their roots to teach us what they know. They’ve helped us grow into nsoromma. Maybe when our time comes, we’ll find another way to protect our sites.’
A possibility seized me. ‘What about a squad of sky-warriors?’ I clapped my hands. ‘With the right contacts, we can connect, pool our gifts and use them to defend our sanctuaries.’
‘We’ll be different,’ Linet added, her face still flushed from the lake. ‘We’ll find a way to replenish your river, Adoma. We can’t make the trees grow back quickly, but once we’ve forced those miners out, we can clean the river, help it flow again and plant more trees.’
‘We should do it!’ I cried.
The lock on her forehead gleaming moonstone bright, Zula took Linet and I by the hand. ‘Listen carefully. Before Grandma died she said to me: “Tell your sisters, unless the three of you use every morsel of what’s inside you, we shall never defeat today’s skin-walkers.”’
A wolfish shine entered Zula’s eyes. Ears pricked, her gaze fixed, I felt a sensation of ice creep over my skin as her excitement gripped me.
‘All those years ago, when we first met at the Giant’s mouth,’ she went on, ‘I sensed others with us: creatures and birds that open us up to greater insights. Have you noticed any changes in you recently?’
I remembered the image of a leopard flashing through my mind as the river goddess’ shrine was destroyed. And, the last time we’d met at the Giant’s mouth, I recalled that when I placed my brow against Zula’s, I’d felt the leap of a leopard in my heart; not to mention the strange sensations I now experienced during my night travels. Eager to understand, I answered, ‘Yes…’
While Linet, rubbing her chest, replied: ‘There’s a bird in me. Only today on the moor, when I needed a cloak of feathers to keep out the wind, I called on it.’
‘I saw the cloak,’ I confirmed.
I placed Linet’s fingers against my cheek, relieved we were talking about a transformation we’d both sensed but hadn’t been able to put into words. The more I thought about it, the greater a recollection of animal warmth surfaced: a shadowy creature with paws that clawed the bark of trees whenever I set foot in the forest.
‘Mine’s definitely a leopard,’ I admitted. ‘Sometimes it slides between my legs as if it wants to trip me over. It craves my attention.’
‘Of course it does! Our spirit creatures are a part of us, our special gift. I am wolf.’ Her grey eyes sparking yellow as her spirit shone through, Zula smiled. ‘Come, my sisters.’
17
Adoma
I woke up, pulse racing, Zula’s revelation buzzing in my ears, eyes, heart, my everything. Acknowledging our spirit creatures was all very well but displaying them could be lethal.
For an instant my senses grappled with what I’d experienced that night. Before I could take stock and delve deeper, I sniffed, suspicious of a change in the atmosphere. The hair in my ears bristled, identifying a strange jarring vibration. I sniffed again and as my nostrils inhaled the cloying scent of incense, my heart hammered faster than a starving man pounding fufu. Boom! Boom! The mother of all dangers was upon me! A menace I was familiar with had entered Gran-pa’s house!
Anyone watching would think as I sprang off my sleeping mat that the mat and my cover cloth were on fire. Yet there was no smoke to be seen and no fire to speak of. What convinced me was the smell wafting through the house.
It seeped beneath the doors: the door to the corridor and the one that opened into my grandparents’ bedroom. It meant one thing alone. My mother was home. Whenever she returned to visit us, Sweet Mother, as she insisted I call her, burned incense to rid the house of spirits: evil spirits.
I tied my sleeping cloth around me and ran into the courtyard. I ran to embrace the only creature I knew, apart from Gran-pa, who understood what it was like to be separated from a mother at a tender age. Standing at the bottom of a wizened, old neem tree, I yelled: ‘Milo! Milo! Are you there?’
Milo showed his face and then hid behind one of the tree’s towering boughs. He didn’t enjoy my mother’s visits any more than I did.
‘Come down, Milo,’ I pleaded.
He peeped out again and with a glum expression on his face, shook his head.
‘Coward! You want me to face her alone?’
Gnashing his teeth, Milo produced the screeching noises he makes when he’s scared and wants to terrify those who would prey on him. He had every reason to be wary of my mother. On a previous visit, she’d dared Gran-ma to cook her favourite bush stew, insinuating that what she hankered for most in the world was monkey meat. To make matters worse, to rub pepper in the wound of Milo’s hurt pride and my open-mouthed horror, she found the incident so entertaining she couldn’t stop laughing at us for days.
‘OK,’ I said to Milo. ‘Stay up there if you have to, but the least you can do is come down and greet me.’
As stubborn as a child who’s never had to fill his belly with water to help him sleep, but has been raised to eat jolloff rice his whole life, Milo hissed at me and shook his head.
‘Let’s hope her visit isn’t long, otherwise…’
‘I take it you’re talking about your mother.’ Gran-pa, already dressed for the day, placed a hand on my shoulder. I turned to face him and, linking his fingers in mine, smiled.
His hands were gnarled and rough – the hands of a man who works on the land nurturing seedlings and plants, a man who cultivates food to eat: yam, cassava, plantain and bananas. My grandparents and I grew most of the food we ate and yet Gran-pa still made time to see clients who came to him for healing and advice.
I nodded. Yes, I had been talking to Milo about my mother. ‘Why’s she come to visit us this time?’
‘Your grandmother wants her to talk sense into me.’
‘Gran-ma’s worried,’ I said. ‘And so am I, Gran-pa.’
‘Well you shouldn’t be. I haven’t believed – all these years – in what I do, what I’m about, to back down now.’
‘But Gran-pa…’ I wanted to let him know that I understood his resolute stand was about more than belief and principle. He was hurt, deeply hurt by the behaviour of our fellow citizens and their foreign partners. So was I.
I continued holding his hand until, unable to find words that said what I wanted to say, Gran-pa hushed my stuttering. He told me to hurry up and take my morning bath because on that day, a Saturday, he wanted me to accompany him on yet another of his visits to the chief’s palace.
‘I need you to be with me as a witness, Adoma,’ he said, ‘in case the unexpected happens.’
‘What do you mean by “unexpected”, Gran-pa?’
He wouldn’t say. He simply shook his head before stating that he planned to leave for the palace as soon as I’d welcomed my mother home and made breakfast for her.
*
I quickly fetched water and bathed. I pulled on a pair of jeans and t-shirt and, eager to jump the hurdle of my mother’s homecoming and land safely on the other side, I filled a pail with water from our well for my mother to use. It was then, and only then, that I knocked on the door of my grandparents’ bedroom.
No response.
I knocked a second time and detected movement on the other side.
I was about to knock again when the door swung open. Vapours of incense enveloped me as through a thick haze of grey, my mother emerged.
I’ve been told that I resemble her. She is almost as tall as Gran-pa. Athletic in build, she has a striking ebony face graced with almond-shaped eyes. Her hair, bundled in a hairnet, is long and jet-black, while mine, cropped short, has a
dark reddish tinge to it.
‘Adoma, come in,’ she said smiling. ‘Let me pray for you, child.’
I remained at the doorway. ‘I’ve fetched water for your bath. I’m making your breakfast right now.’
She beckoned me closer: ‘Come,’ she insisted, offering her hand. ‘I’ve got a present for you.’
I took a step back. ‘Breakfast now, prayers later?’ I turned and ran down the corridor shouting: ‘Welcome home, Sweet Mother!’
Back in our outdoor kitchen, I stirred cornmeal dough and liquid in a bowl and then adding it bit by bit to a pan of boiling water, made porridge on a charcoal fire. I covered the pot to keep it warm, then cut and buttered two slices of bread in which I inserted a hastily fried egg. And all the time as I cooked and laid a breakfast tray for my mother, while I placed a large side table in front of Old Freedom and put a spoon on it, I allowed myself to hurl silent abuse at the woman I called Sweet Mother after her favourite hi-life song – a song she used to play again and again on Gran-pa’s radio cassette player.
I shook a broom in her face, cackling at the prospect that although I was not quite as tall as she was, I soon would be. And when the moment came and I was able to glare at her, eyeball to eyeball, I promised myself that I would tell her exactly what I thought of the prayers she bombarded me with; prayers she believed would save my soul even though I helped Gran-pa at our shrines – the one that used to be in the forest, the other at the back of our yard.
Simmering with rage, I allowed ancient memories to fan my frustration. For example: after she left me with my grandparents to forge a new life for herself, my mother married the leader of the Church of Spiritual Redemption, Pastor Elisha, and was admitted into his church and embraced it whole-heartedly.
With her new faith came problems I sensed long ago, when I was small as a chick scampering in Gran-pa’s yard. Time after time through insinuation and sneers, I noticed my mother’s contempt for what Nana Merrimore calls the Old Ways. Gran-pa, Sweet Mother declared, perhaps with Gran-ma at his side, was certain to writhe in the flames of hell for eternity.
Imagine someone telling you that as a child! And when that someone is your own mother… I bit my lip to taste the memory again. With it came a stab of irritation as I remembered what I’d done after she explained the difference between heaven and hell to me. I’d crawled beneath Old Freedom and, rolling in dust, wept tears of fury.
Sweet Mother? Once I started thinking about her, there was no end to it. It was like scratching a scab that never comes off, rubbing a sore that cannot heal.
I was still picking at it when I knocked again on my grandparents’ door. ‘Sweet Mother, your food is ready,’ I said.
‘Coming,’ she replied.
A few minutes later she strolled into the sitting room wearing a vibrant yellow bou-bou, a long, flowing robe that flattered her figure. On her hair was a matching head wrap that flapped up and down the way a frightened cockerel does when it’s determined to fly. By the time Sweet Mother had bustled over to Old Freedom and planted her behind on it, I was ready with a pot of hot water for her tea. She poured herself a cup and started eating.
Before she was halfway through the porridge, I was fidgeting, itching to be on the road with Gran-pa. I tried to exercise patience by counting to myself. When that didn’t work, I decided to place a bet. I bet you, Adoma, I told myself, before you reach thirty Sweet Mother will have told you off.
I began counting, but as I did so, I wriggled and twisting my fingers behind my back, rose up and down on my heels as if an ant had found its way into my pants.
Sweet Mother glanced in my direction and I savoured a gleam of disappointment in her black coral eyes: ‘Adoma, what is the matter with you?’
‘Gran-pa told me to hurry,’ I confessed. ‘He’s asked me to accompany him to the chief’s palace.’
‘Is he involving you in his nonsense as well? I forbid it!’
There it was – the first lash of disapproval and I hadn’t got up to twenty! I struggled not to smile.
‘You think I’m joking do you? Then think again! You are not going anywhere with your grandfather.’ My mother pushed her empty bowl of porridge to one side and took a savage bite of egg sandwich.
I waited until her mouth was full, waited until she was chomping heartily, before I raised the question I’d been asking my age-mates at school to rally support for our cause: mine and Gran-pa’s: ‘Don’t you care when trees are cut down in the forest and cyanide and mercury are used in a sacred river to mine gold? Don’t you care that most of the river’s fish are dead or not fit to eat? And that now it’s poisoned, no one upstream can use its water: not for drinking, washing or farming.’
Sweet Mother sighed. ‘Of course I care, Adoma!’
‘You don’t care enough. If you did you’d help Gran-pa and me do something about it.’
Sweet Mother shook her head. ‘This is Ghana, Adoma, and your grandfather is going about this business the wrong way…’
Before I could answer back, Gran-ma, behind me, interrupted: ‘And what would you say is the right way, daughter?’
‘Indeed,’ chuckled Gran-pa. ‘Tell me what I’m doing wrong and I’ll heed your advice. I may be old, but I’m willing to learn new tricks if it’ll help our cause.’
‘In that case, Pa, sit down and listen.’
18
Adoma
‘Pa,’ Sweet Mother said, when he and Gran-ma were sitting opposite her on stools, ‘this is Ghana and you know as well as anyone, that you shouldn’t harass a chief backed by big politicians and businessmen.’
‘Are you saying, my daughter, that the rule of law no longer applies to every citizen of our land? Are you telling me, your father, that we should no longer follow our ancestors and husband our resources and use them well?’
‘Anyone would think to hear you talk that our ancestors were perfect. They were not!’ Sweet Mother cried.
Gran-pa covered his weathered face with a hand and sighed. Gran-ma, her eyes downcast, straightened the faded cloth she was wearing and glanced at my mother. The more father and daughter argued, the more eloquently Gran-ma’s eyes spoke of her devotion to Gran-pa and her alarm at the trail he was following.
‘Listen, Pa,’ said my mother. ‘Have you given any thought to what Ma and Adoma will do, if, God forbid, the worst happens to you?’
My fingertips tingled at the boldness of my mother’s tongue, its ability to probe and hurt anyone who crossed her, even my grandfather. And when Gran-pa winced, I was minded to spring to his defence, to channel energy from the earth and sky through my fingers, bind it to the fury coiled within me and then release it in a seamless blast from my mind. I was sorely tempted to strike Sweet Mother down, but with Gran-pa’s lessons weighing on my conscience, his reminders not to use my talent in anger but to be strategic and tactical in all that I did, I refrained.
Even though my fingers twitched, hungry to act, and I flexed my wrists in readiness, I held back while Gran-pa looked down at a pair of worn leather sandals that had been mended many times. Every day, without fail, he polished them to a shine because his sandals were faithful friends who did what they were meant to do: they kept dust off his feet.
Once she had started, Sweet Mother wouldn’t let go. She was wild, I tell you, her teeth sinking through hide and flesh, to the jugular. And like the wildcat she was, she assailed Okomfo Gran-pa from every direction: it wasn’t just Gran-ma and me he should think of, she said. What about those clients who depended on him for counsel and advice? Not to mention her family in Accra, her children with Pastor Elisha, who she had named after Esther the Beautiful Queen and God’s most favoured one, King David.
‘And here’s another thing,’ Sweet Mother said. ‘I have it on the highest authority from a member of our church, that no good will come from pointing fingers at what they’re doing. Pa, you know they have the backing of everyone necessary, so stop it! Stop what you’re doing.’
Sweet Mother readjusted her buttocks
and with a finger wagging in the air, was leaning forwards when Gran-ma interrupted: ‘Daughter, I asked you here to talk to your father, not to scold him like a small boy.’
Eyes shut tight, Sweet Mother squeezed her face, then with a finger on her lips refrained from talking until, having drained poison from her tongue, she said: ‘Pa, I apologise. I don’t mean to disrespect you, but before you continue your crusade against bribery and corruption, let me remind you of the country we live in. This be Ghana-oh! And everyone from the Big Man up top to the smallest pickney down below, we all dey chop-chop.’
Gran-pa snorted in disgust: ‘Does your husband chop-chop?’ he asked. ‘Do you take bribes, my daughter? Does he? Because even if you and your husband choose to follow the crowd, I do not.’
‘Have mercy, Pa!’ Sweet Mother wailed. ‘Why are you so stubborn?’
Gran-pa smiled as Gran-ma brushed away a tear. She moved quickly but not before Gran-pa had seen it. He placed a large hand over her smaller one and embraced it in a gesture of affection I’d witnessed only once before. On the day they’d celebrated their fortieth year of marriage, he’d proclaimed to the assembled guests that if he were to live his life again, he’d choose Gran-ma for his wife a second time. And if, after he died, he found himself back on earth, he would travel the highways and byways of the world until he found Gran-ma and married her once again.
That morning my chest tightened as I watched them.
And when Gran-ma looked up at Gran-pa and said: ‘Husband, I know it’s not easy for you but please, for all our sakes, listen to our daughter,’ Gran-pa raised her hand to his cheek and kissed it.
My friend, believe me when I tell you that in this my country, Ghana, we do not do what they do in Linet’s land. We do not kiss-kiss and touchy-feel every minute of the day. Apart from a few people who walk around hand in hand, just about everything else takes place in darkness. So believe me when I say that I have never, my whole life long, seen Okomfo Gran-pa kiss any part of Gran-ma’s body. Never! And yet I witnessed it that morning with my own eyes filii filii! My mouth opened. My jaw dropped and my heart swelled, convinced that if my One and Only and I could be as true and kind to each other as they were, if we could follow the path laid by Gran-pa and Gran-ma, maybe one-day, one-day, Kofi Agyeman and I would be fortunate enough to taste their happiness.
