Peace

by A. D. Koboah

  Everything about me had changed over the past few years. I was different on the outside and on the inside. But the one constant through all these changes had been my hair, which was resilient and beautiful, a lot like me.

  When I heard the doorbell, I pulled myself away from the mirror and picked up my carry case. I stopped to linger at the door before I tore myself away from the room for the last time.

  The sound of a male voice coming from the living room reached me as I hurried down the stairs and grabbed my jacket, calling out to Barbara who was still in the kitchen. When I walked into the living room, three pairs of eyes turned to meet mine but I only had eyes for one person.

  “Jason!” I cried, breaking into a huge smile when I saw him sitting in the armchair.

  The last time I had seen him was when he had driven me home the morning after I had turned up at his workplace unexpectedly. We had talked regularly by phone since then and I had spoken to him the day before, promising to call him from the airport to say goodbye. My mother and Eva were sitting next to each other on the sofa and Eva had her hand on my mother’s. They were so comfortable with each other and she looked as if she belonged with us, like the younger sister we never had, but probably needed.

  “Morning,” Jason said with a smile.

  “Your friend’s coming with us to the airport. He’s already taken all the suitcases out to the car,” my mother said.

  “That’s so sweet, Jason,” I said shyly.

  I saw my mother look from me to Jason and then to Eva before they both smiled like co-conspirators.

  “Let me take that to the car,” he said and stood up, coming to relieve me of my case.

  We made our way to the front door and stepped outside into brilliant sunshine.

  During the long winter months, it had seemed as though summer would never return but at last she was here, as welcoming and generous with her affection as always.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming today?” I asked as I watched him load the small suitcase into his car.

  “I thought I’d surprise you.” He smiled gently down at me before growing serious. “You didn’t really think I’d let you go without saying goodbye, did you?”

  He put an arm around my shoulders and squeezed gently.

  “It means a lot that you’re here,” I said sadly.

  We turned at the sound of the front door opening and saw Barbara standing there watching us, or rather watching Jason warily. I let my arm fall away from him as she bore down on us like a guard dog.

  “Barbara, this is my friend Jason. Jason, this is my sister Barbara.”

  “Hi, Barbara. Nice to meet you.” His smile was met with an icy stare and cool nod.

  “Jason’s gonna help us with all the suitcases and stuff,” I said looking up at him and smiling appreciatively.

  “We really didn’t need your help. We could have managed by ourselves,” Barbara said.

  I gasped and looked at her sharply.

  Jason merely smiled. “Well, Peace is a good friend of mine and I didn’t want her to leave without saying goodbye properly.”

  She stared at him blankly, the hostility coming off her in icy waves whilst I looked anxiously toward the front door, willing my mother and Eva to hurry up and leave the house.

  “Where do you two know each other from?” Barbara said finally, obviously having no intention of ending her interrogation. We glanced at each other, unsure of what to say.

  “Through a mutual friend,” Jason said after a brief pause.

  “And what do you do?”

  “Barbara...” I said sharply.

  Thankfully my mother and Eva chose that moment to join us and I was grateful when Eva walked straight over to Barbara and took her arm as my mother took one last look at the house before she closed and locked the door.

  “Come on, Barbara,” Eva said and pulled at her arm.

  “Aren’t you riding with those two?” she asked Eva, whilst Jason walked over to the driver’s side of his car.

  “No, I need to give you directions to the airport.”

  “I don’t need directions. What would you know—?”

  “Barbara, come on or we’ll be late,” I heard my mother say as she walked over to Barbara’s car.

  Having no option but to relent, she gave Jason one last disapproving glance before she let Eva pull her away from us.

  Once in the car I said to Jason, “Sorry about Barbara, she’s like that with everyone.”

  “That’s all right. Compared to how my sisters carry on, she was kinda nice.”

  “Seriously?” I said incredulously, and we both laughed as he pulled away.

  We sped away through built-up urban areas which were soon replaced by green fields as we sped toward the airport. I looked out at the scenery, knowing that this time tomorrow I would be looking out at a completely different scene, seeing red earth instead of brown and the untamed tropical landscape of my home.

  When we got to the airport, my heart got heavier and heavier as we checked in our suitcases and I thought about the new life I would have to craft for myself in Ghana. I also thought about the new friends I would be leaving behind, and when it came time for us to leave them and head for the departure lounge, I asked myself again whether or not I had made the right decision to leave everything I knew behind.

  Trying not to let my apprehension show, I gave Barbara a brief hug, still annoyed at her behaviour. But I was also surprised to realise that I was really going to miss her.

  “I’ll see you soon, Peace,” she said as we pulled away from each other.

  I moved to Eva then and asked myself how on earth I was going to be able to leave her behind. She smiled a sad, lopsided smile before she hugged me.

  “I’ll make sure I bell you soon as the plane touches down, yeah?” I said when I was finally able to let her go. She nodded, her eyes already beginning to film over with tears. “I also want you to have this.” I handed her a white envelope. “Don’t open it now. We’ll talk about it when I call, okay?”

  The envelope contained six hundred pounds I had taken out of the money in Dante’s savings account and which I hoped Eva would use to come to Ghana once term ended. It was the only thing that would make it possible for me to get on the plane without her. Feeling my eyes beginning to moisten, I quickly looked away to Jason and wrapped myself in his strong arms.

  “I’ll keep in touch,” I said, reluctant to let him go.

  “Make sure you hurry back, all right?” he whispered in my ear before we pulled away from each other.

  I smiled at him, hopeful that we would become more than friends one day and I wasn’t afraid to let myself dream.

  Eva was crying as we walked away and when I allowed myself one last look back at the three of them, I saw Barbara put a comforting arm around her as they walked away. Jason stayed where he was for a while, looking after me with an enigmatic expression before he too moved slowly and reluctantly away out of my view.

  Feeling completely bereft, I linked my arm through my mother’s as I felt my eyes prickle with tears. She patted my hand gently with her free hand and I could see that she was also fighting hard to keep her composure as we walked away from our old lives to start new ones.

  It was only after we boarded the plane and were seated awaiting take off that I allowed myself to cry. Wiping the streams that came down my cheeks as the plane slowly started to roll down the runway, I let out a shaky breath whilst the roaring of the engines got louder and we gathered momentum and speed. When we were pushed back against our seats and the plane lifted abruptly into the air, I felt the heaviness I had been carrying over the past two weeks drain away to be replaced with a lightness I hadn’t felt in a long time. And as I looked out of the window, watching the land beneath grow farther and farther away, I thought about the last time I had made this journey, having no way of knowing at that time that one chapter of my life was closing and a new one was about to open.

  I didn’t know what life had in
the offing for me in Ghana, but I knew I had good people to come back to if I ever chose to return to England.

  Things had been very dark for a long, long time. But somehow, I had pulled through and I knew now that I was going to make it.

  THE END

  Also by A. D. Koboah

  DARK GENESIS

  The Darkling Trilogy

  Book 1

  Life for a female slave is one of hardship and unspeakable sorrow, something Luna knows only too well. But not even she could have foreseen the terror that would befall her one sultry Mississippi evening in the summer of 1807.

  On her way back from a visit to see the African woman, a witch who has the herbs Luna needs to rid her of her abusive master’s child, she attracts the attention of a deadly being that lusts for blood. Forcibly removed from everything she knows by this tormented otherworldly creature, she is sure she will be dead by sunrise.

  Dark Genesis is a love story set against the savage world of slavery in which a young woman who has been dehumanised by its horrors finds the courage to love, and in doing so, reclaims her humanity.

  Visit the author at www.adkoboah.com

  Read on for an excerpt of Dark Genesis.

  Dark Genesis Excerpt

  My name is Luna and my tale begins on a dry summer evening in 1807.

  I was walking quickly along a dusty country road, my shoes stirring up a small cloud of dust that turned the hem of my faded violet dress a muddy brown. The trail of dust I left in my wake soon settled. But the pressing need that had me make this two-hour journey in beaten shoes and a broken spirit, in the midst of a particularly merciless Mississippi summer, would not be settled as easily. Wiping the sweat from my brow and waving away the flying insects that droned lazily near my face, I wished for some respite from the relentless heat but found none. Although the sun hung low in the topaz blue sky, it felt as if I were walking through warm soup and it was likely to stay like this long after the sun went down.

  I would have found some relief from the pitiless sun if I had chosen to walk through the woods that rose up on either side of the road like a green and brown wall. But green woody spaces such as those have been a deep source of fear for me since I was a child and I imagined that they would continue to be so long past what I guessed was my twenty-second or twenty-third year on this Earth. So I clutched my lantern and small cloth bundle and walked on in the heat, listening to the birdcalls punctuate the otherwise still air.

  I was lucky to be able to make this journey during the summer months as the previous two trips had been made in the dead of winter when night gathered up the day long before I could finish serving the family’s supper and slip away, leaving the other house slaves to do my share of work and conceal my absence. That small mercy meant that I didn’t have to walk alone in the dark, afraid to light my lamp in case the solitary glow brought unwanted attention my way, or have to dive into the trees every time the sound of a horse’s hooves disturbed the sweet melody of the crickets. It also meant that when I turned the corner and saw the woodland give way to cotton fields, marking the beginning of the Marshall plantation, there was still roughly two hours of daylight left, which meant I would be able to finish my business and be back before dark, hopefully before I was missed by my hawk-eyed mistress.

  I stopped for a second to gaze at the rows of cotton up ahead. I have always thought that there was something heavenly about cotton fields, which looked like row upon row of fleecy white clouds caught up in brown nets. But I’m sure that the brown-skinned figures bent double between those rows would have disagreed. For them, there was nothing even remotely celestial about the cotton fields in which they had been toiling since sunrise. And they were likely to still be working in them when the sun set. Even from this distance I could see that most of them were wretchedly thin, their few flimsy items of clothing in tatters. And although I wasn’t close enough to see their faces, I was sure that they all wore uniform expressions of misery and fatigue.

  I left that unhappy sight and ducked into the trees on my left, a necessary shortcut to the slave quarters. Although many slaves have used this shortcut on their way to see the African woman, I’m sure I’m the only one who ran all the way through the trees looking back over my shoulder even though I knew I wasn’t being followed. Only when I saw a flash of white through the trees did I slow down so my breathing could return to normal by the time I exited the screen of trees.

  The slave quarters were little white cabins made of wood, which lay in two long rows some distance from the Master’s mansion. Only a few children were around at this hour, some of whom recognised me and stopped what they were doing to stare with a quiet reverence that made me uncomfortable. It was the same reverence I had received from the grownups the last two times I had come here under the cover of darkness and they had not only stopped what they were doing to watch me pass by, but nodded or offered some sort of greeting, which I returned before hurrying on by. I didn’t have to endure that kind of scrutiny today, but I still hurried down to the lone cabin at the back of the clearing, which was nestled under the shadow of the trees some distance away from the rest of the slave quarters.

  Many slaves came to visit Mama Akosua for her medicines, and her skills were known far and wide. It was also rumoured that she dealt in more than just herbs and was actually a witch. Whether that was true or not, she was feared by many, even some of the whites, and few dared incur her wrath.

  As I got nearer to the cabin, I saw that the door had been left open and a light was burning inside even though the sun had yet to go down. I approached gingerly. Already feeling the unease that always possessed me in the presence of the African woman, I walked up to the door, and stopped.

  “Mama Akosua.”

  There was a short spell of silence and then her voice floated out to me.

  “I have been expecting you.” The voice was low and dry like the sound of rustling leaves.

  She probably said that every time someone came to her door, no doubt to help foster the belief that she was a powerful all-seeing, all-knowing witch. But the words still sent icy fingers trailing down my spine and I swallowed before taking her words as permission to enter.

  The cabin, which consisted of only one room, was rich with the slightly bitter, but not unpleasant, smell of dried herbs. Most of the room was taken up by a long wooden table, which held bottles, bowls and an assortment of other instruments that were used to prepare her concoctions. Every wall in the room was lined with shelves holding bottles, jars and baskets of fresh and dried herbs. The only evidence that someone lived in the cabin was the pallet in the corner. This was the most furniture I had seen in any slave cabin, but as her Master profited from the sale of her herbs, it was in his interest to make sure she had everything she needed. There was another smaller table in the centre of the room and that is where she sat, peering at me by the light of an oil lamp.

  She was a small lithe woman with delicate features like mine. Her head was cleanly shaven and she would have been considered beautiful were it not for the scars, rows of lines about an inch long, marking her forehead and cheeks. It was rumoured that those scars had been self-inflicted when she was first brought to America as a slave. Some people whispered that she had done it to honour the customs of her people, others, that the journey, the horrors of the middle passage, had driven her to scar her face in madness and despair. Although I would never dare to ask her, I didn’t believe she had been driven insane. The shrewd dark eyes that met mine belonged to a strong, sharp mind and I doubted that anything could, or ever would, be able to break it.

  “Evening, Mama Akosua,” I said as I walked into the circle of light.

  There was still daylight outside but it didn’t seem to reach the small window in Mama Akosua’s cabin and so it was always dark in here no matter what the time of day.

  She gestured to the chair opposite hers, her eyes never leaving my face. I moved to the chair and when I sat down, she pushed a small cup toward me.

 
“Drink,” she said.

  I picked up the cup and sipped the cool concoction, which tasted vaguely of mint leaves. Whatever it was, it seemed to have an immediate effect because I no longer felt as hot and the fatigue, which had been pulling on me like lead weights, seemed to evaporate.

  Feeling slightly better, I was able to meet the force of her gaze fully. She seemed to have aged a great deal since I last saw her, nearly four years ago. The lines around her eyes and the ones running from her nose to the corners of her mouth had deepened and although she was not yet forty years old, she looked much older.

  She studied me for a few moments and a soft sigh escaped her when she finally shifted her gaze away from my face.

  “It is as I feared,” she said and stood up, wincing from the small movement.

  “You hurt?”

  “It is a small price to pay,” she mumbled, more to herself it seemed.

  She reached into a basket on one of the shelves and pulled out a small black cloth bundle. Moving back to the table she placed the bundle before her and when she sat down again she closed her eyes for a few seconds. She was clearly in a lot of pain.

  “I have prepared what you need,” she said, pulling open the cloth bundle to reveal six paper sachets of herbs.

  There was no need for her to ask me why I was here. I would only risk making this dangerous journey for one reason.

  “Take this tonight.” She pointed to the larger of the bundles. “The rest is to be taken for five nights after, to stop the bleeding.”