Between Sisters Page 2

I wanted to believe that everything would change, that suddenly I would receive a letter from the Examination Council saying they had made a mistake and that I had actually passed. Then come September I would be heading off to Accra Polytechnic to study fashion and dressmaking.

  Brother Divine spoke on the topic of hope. We prayed for the needy to have jobs, schools, healing, visas and money. Many of us received words of encouragement. Some broke down weeping. I began to feel hopeful. But through all this, Effie leafed through a magazine, unconcerned.

  Effie and I walked with Akos, Sofia and Kofi Dapaah. Around us other groups formed as people made their way home. Our chatter and laughter carried though the night.

  A red Mitsubishi saloon car stopped some distance ahead of us, hazard lights flashing. A sharp blast of the horn was followed by a shout — “Effie!”

  “Who is it?” I asked. Perhaps someone was going to give us a ride home.

  A look passed between Sofia and Effie. Then Effie said, “Gloria, wait for me at the kelewele curb, okay?”

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “Nowhere.”

  “Effie,” I shouted. But she laughed and ran off with Sofia in tow.

  “Just wait for me, okay?” she yelled. And they were gone.

  Akos and Kofi walked on with me. Akos was in her final senior secondary year, and Kofi was studying to become a guild certified electrician.

  A small group of people had gathered by the popular kelewele stand. Kofi had some money, and so we waited while he bought kelewele.

  From her low stool by the fire, Daavi stirred the large pan of frying plantains. Then she turned to her customers, counting spicy plantains into squares of old newspaper.

  “Look, I’m giving you extra for the sake of friendship,” she said, dropping in four or five more small pieces. We thanked her profusely. Then we all sat there on the curb and ate together.

  It was dark, but the flames from Daavi’s open fire gave us light, along with the headlights of the few cars that snorted down our narrow street.

  “I hope Effie comes soon,” I said.

  “Sofia has found Effie a boyfriend,” said Akos.

  “Oh,” I gasped. “Daa is against us having boyfriends.”

  Kofi rolled the greasy newspaper wrapper into a ball and threw it into Daavi’s fire. We watched it burn.

  “Don’t worry, she’ll be fine,” he said. “Effie is smart.”

  “So long as she’s careful,” said Akos. “I agree with Brother Divine. I don’t want any boyfriend problems. I want to finish school well.”

  “Who is her boyfriend?” I asked.

  “He is a seaman,” said Akos.

  “Seamen are very generous,” said Kofi, laughing.

  “Seamen are also notorious for having many girlfriends,” Akos retorted.

  I heard a dog howling from afar. Then all the other neighborhood dogs began to howl, too. Perhaps a ghost was passing.

  “Unlike some of you, I have guild exams to write,” Kofi said. Then he left.

  Akos waited with me, but half an hour later there was still no sign of Effie.

  “I’m going home, too,” said Akos.

  I sat by myself on the curb by Daavi, unable to go home to answer questions about Effie. I scratched the mosquito bites on my legs and wondered why Effie no longer shared her secrets with me.

  • THREE •

  “Auntie Ruby is here. She’s asking for you,” said Effie, opening the door to our room.

  I stretched and let out a great yawn. Effie wrinkled her face at my morning breath but I ignored her. There was no reason for me to wake up early anymore.

  The week after the publishing of the JSS results was painful. I had never felt so stupid in my life. I felt as if everyone was talking about me behind my back. Even my friends seemed to lapse into silence whenever they saw me. I feigned a stomach ache and missed the special celebration at school. I wasn’t getting any prizes and I didn’t want to be remembered in any photos. Then I dropped out of school altogether.

  “Maa told me to get you,” Effie said.

  “Is she feeling better?”

  “Yes,” she replied. Maa’s coughing had been terrible during the night.

  My dress hung on the back of the only chair in our room. I took off the faded T-shirt that passed for a nightie and reached for my dress. I pulled it quickly over my head.

  “Gloria, wear a bra!” Effie said.

  I hated the way she called my name when she was bossing me around.

  I dragged the dress over my head. It was my favorite linen dress, bright yellow with rows of silver embroidery covering the neck and two large pockets. I loved to sink my hands deep into the pockets when I was standing with nothing to do.

  I groped for the pail beneath my bed and took out my toothbrush and paste. I stopped on the veranda to scoop some water from the huge barrel we kept outside our room. Our standing pipe had died again and we had returned to fetching water from the hotel.

  I crossed the compound to the bath house, washed my face from the tiny pail and brushed my teeth, spitting into the gutter. Globs of foamy toothpaste floated into the large drain.

  I wrinkled my nose. No matter how often we scrubbed the bath house, I couldn’t stand the smell of wastewater stagnating inside the concrete-lined drains. In school my teacher had taught us about bacteria. I imagined millions of them growing in the gutter, feeding on toothpaste and early-morning-mouth sourness.

  On the other veranda, Eno and Asibi were cracking palm nuts with stones, filling a large white enamel basin with palm kernels. The two women traded in palm nuts and palm oil. Their clothes were always heavily stained, and they smelled of smoke and burnt oil. They looked as dirty as the garage mechanics who spent their days beneath broken-down cars in the lot, rubbing their clothes in dirt and grease.

  I could never do a job like that, I thought. Yet Effie had said that I could end up like Eno and Asibi.

  I was clear eyed, fresh mouthed and moving more quickly. The sun was up, the day was bright and the flies were buzzing around, giddy from the heat. On our aging concrete wall, red-headed lizards sunned themselves.

  I opened the door to the living room and found my mother sitting with Auntie Ruby.

  “My dear,” said Auntie Ruby. She laughed, and her eyes crinkled at the corners. Auntie Ruby was always happy. “Come, my friend. I hope you’re not sick to be sleeping so late, hm?”

  I had just enough time to shake my head before she was up on her feet and coming toward me. Her large arms circled me in a big hug. She smelled of Zenata and camphor. I could imagine hundreds of those little white camphor balls in her clothes trunk, deterring cockroaches from laying eggs around her bubus and kaba-slits.

  For a short while I suffocated in her embrace. At last she pushed me back, keeping her hands on my shoulders.

  “You’re growing like Acheampong weed,” she said, delighted. “Every time I see you, you’re that much taller.” She raised an upturned hand to show me just how fast I was growing.

  “Yes, she’s growing quickly but not as resistant as Acheampong, I hope,” said Maa. It was good to hear the humor in her soft voice. The lines on her forehead were less harsh when her eyes smiled.

  I thought about those weeds that grew carelessly in the bush, so tough to cut down that Ghanaians had named them after an ex-military head of state. I laughed.

  My mother looked on, smiling. She wasn’t the kind who spoke much. She just went about her life, cleaning and cooking when she was home. When she wasn’t at home, she was dealing in traditional healing herbs made from bark and leaves — the kind they soaked in alcoholic bitters or mashed with ash and water to heal fractures, skin diseases, infertility, paralysis and headaches. Effie said it was impossible for one mixture to cure everything, but Maa said black-people knowledge was different from white-people kno
wledge. White-people knowledge was in books, but our wise men and women were privy to the speech of the plants.

  “So, what’s happening with you?” Auntie Ruby asked. She patted the arm of the red armchair, and I went over and sat down.

  Our living room was small and crowded. There were two armchairs that stood opposite each other on either side of the green loveseat. Three side tables filled in the gaps between chairs, and a coffee table occupied the center of the room. The rest of the space was taken by a large cupboard where all the plates and cups were kept.

  With each passing Harmattan season, more of the plywood surfaces lifted off the tables at the edges. In frustration Effie had stripped the surfaces completely off two of the side tables, leaving unvarnished wood.

  A musky scent came from the old thick curtains and the threadbare armchairs that we had owned as long as I could remember.

  “I have finished JSS,” I said.

  “With distinction, I hope.”

  I grimaced. I was sixteen, and yet I could barely read.

  “So what are your plans?” Auntie Ruby asked. “Which school did you choose for SSS?”

  “I’m not going to SSS. I want to learn to sew.” I hoped I sounded confident.

  “You’d make a good seamstress,” Auntie Ruby said. “You have style.”

  I smiled. What I really wanted to do was sing highlife. But when I had confided in my daa, he’d replied, “Nonsense. If you want to sing, join the church choir.”

  My father took his position as church elder as seriously as he’d taken his driving career. Once upon a time he had chauffeured important people in our government. He boasted of meeting foreign heads of states. “Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Mobutu Seseku of Zaire, Houphoët-Boigny of Ivory Coast and Sékou Touré of Guinea — I drove them all,” he would say, checking them off his fingers. And his eyes would light up.

  Two and a half years ago, he lost his job driving the secretary for information. Effie said that Daa had dropped off the minister at a state function and then wandered off with the minister’s car on his own errand. He had kept his boss waiting at the end of the function. They gave him the sack right away.

  Since then, Daa had found church in a big way. He was there so often, they put him in charge of visiting the sick. Effie said he might as well have been called into the priesthood. At least then he would be paid for all his devotion.

  Although Daa’s unemployment frustrated us all, I didn’t like it when Effie spoke badly of him. He was trying and at least, unlike Eno’s husband, he had not abandoned us. And unlike James the cobbler, Daa did not drink.

  So I joined the church choir as Daa suggested. But I’d noticed that although everyone considered highlife singing a poor choice for a career, everyone had their radios tuned to Radio One all the time. We sang along when the songs of Daddy Lumba and Nana Tuffuor and all the other stars were played on the radio. I even caught Daa humming along.

  But when people asked me what I wanted to do now, I said I wanted to sew. I loved clothes, too. I knew the latest fashions, and sometimes I changed some of the clothes we bought at Auntie Ruby’s second-hand clothing shop to make them more fashionable. But we had to watch what we wore around Daa. He hated thin straps and bareback dresses. He hated high-riding slits along the sides of our skirts.

  “The trouble with today’s world is licentiousness,” he would say with disgust. “Small-small girls are looking for sugar daddies to feed off! Gloria, Effie, don’t become like one of them. Money is the root of all evil.”

  Effie and I laughed at this, though of course we did not dare laugh to his face.

  “Gloria, Auntie Ruby wants you to meet her cousin who has just come from England and is looking for someone to help with minding her baby.” It was my mother speaking.

  “Christy is a doctor and she’s so generous. That girl is an angel,” Auntie Ruby declared. “She won’t treat you harshly and I know she’ll sponsor you through sewing school. If I’d had someone like her to raise me, I would have ended up Somebody.”

  Life seemed to be made up of Somebodies and Nobodies. Auntie Ruby looked like a Somebody, in her flowing burgundy bubu and huge Anago head tie. But I knew that by Somebodies she meant the rich men and their wives who lived in the estates, owned cars and worked for the government or big businesses. Their children wore socks and Achimota sandals to school and tied ribbons in their braided hair. The reason we went to school was to turn into Somebody. Sometimes I thought the reason we went to church was the hope that, with God’s help, we would become Somebody.

  Maa sat with her stained hands folded in her lap, her bare feet on the worn linoleum. Suddenly she looked tired, and the creases on her forehead became more obvious. I wondered how old she was. It struck me that unless she’d had her children late she was probably only as old as Auntie Ruby. Life had worn my mother out.

  Maa caught me staring and smiled. I knew then that she had already accepted Auntie Ruby’s suggestion. I felt the sting of tears in my eyes, and I looked away.

  What could I do? In a matter of weeks, I had run out of choices and all that was expected now was my obedience.

  “Auntie Ruby, if it is okay with Maa and Daa, I’ll go with you to meet your cousin,” I said.

  Suddenly, with a loud ripping sound, the rain let itself loose upon our house. I rushed through our small home shutting windows and placing containers here and there to catch the drippings from our rusted aluminum roof. It was easy to spot the leaking places from the brown edges of the watermarks on the ceiling.

  Maa chose the same moment to begin a series of breath-stopping coughs. Loud, hacking and frightening. Auntie Ruby was on her feet but didn’t know what to do.

  “Breathe, Akua. Breathe.” Daa stepped into the living room, and his instructions seemed to help Maa as she took in strange-sounding gurgling breaths.

  “Gloria, fetch Maa’s medicine,” Daa instructed. I dashed into their bedroom and brought one of Maa’s bottles of bark bitters. Daa opened it and filled the bottle cap. Maa was wheezing.

  “Gloria, fetch the ginger paste,” she managed between breaths. She had me mix some ginger with a cap full of bitters. She drank it. Then she breathed slowly and deliberately, settling her hurting lungs.

  “Ei, Akua,” said Auntie Ruby at last. “You have to see a doctor. Maybe Christy can help.”

  “Christy?” Daa repeated. Auntie Ruby told Daa all about my soon-to-be employer. Just like that, without even trying, she won my father over with the thought of free medical care.

  Nothing could save me now.

  Half an hour later the rain stopped. Auntie Ruby chartered a drop-in all the way to Labone Estates and paid a lot of money. In my family we never took drop-in taxis. We would make several changes between tro-tro and buses to get wherever we needed to go.

  The taxi stopped at the gates of a large house. It was one of the modern square types with a large upstairs balcony.

  “This is my uncle’s house,” said Auntie Ruby proudly. At least her uncle was Somebody.

  We let ourselves through the gate to the sound of a dog barking loudly in the back.

  “Don’t worry, he’s chained,” said Auntie Ruby.

  I hoped so. That deep throaty bark would not come from a regular scrappy Accra mongrel. It had to be a big guard dog, the kind that was fed only meat and marrow.

  Large flower pots boasting red and yellow roses hugged the sides of the paved walkway that led off the main driveway.

  We rang the bell and someone came to let us in through sliding glass doors. Inside, a welcome breeze met us from a hidden air-conditioner. A young woman opened the door and gave Auntie Ruby a hug. Then she turned and shook my hand.

  “You must be Gloria,” she said. “I am Christine Ossei.”

  “She’s Dr. Christine Ossei,” said Auntie Ruby, as though she was correcting her. Not everyone had a doctor cousin.<
br />
  She looked too young to be a doctor. She could have been one of Effie’s mates at catering school.

  But she wasn’t. She was a doctor and a mother, an adult.

  We sat down and Auntie Ruby began to talk about me and my parents. She said we were like her family. She said she had carried me on her own back as an infant and that I was always very well behaved and obedient.

  Her praises were endless. She even said I was smart.

  My eyes wandered around the room — the plush green carpet, the beautiful olive leather furniture, the glass curio displaying fine glassware, soft music playing from a stacked sound system.

  A houseboy brought in some drinks and cake. I watched his hands as he flicked the tops off the bottles with a bottle opener. Auntie Ruby drank her beer from a glass, but I took my Fanta from the bottle through a drinking straw. I munched on a generous piece of cake.

  Then Dr. Christy said, “Gloria, what are your plans for your future?”

  “I want to sew.”

  “That’s all she ever talks about,” said Auntie Ruby, her famous laugh washing all over us.

  “That shouldn’t be hard to do in Kumasi. There are many fine dressmakers there,” Dr. Christy said.

  “Kumasi?”

  “You know I live in Kumasi, don’t you?” It was her turn to be surprised as she turned toward Auntie Ruby.

  Auntie Ruby had forgotten to tell me. Kumasi was five hours away by bus. It scared me that I might not be able to see my family for long stretches of time.

  Dr. Christy was watching me.

  “Don’t worry. I come to Accra often to see my family,” she said. “I would bring you along, too.”

  The baby came in holding a bottle of milk.

  “This is Sam, my son. He’s one and a half,” Dr. Christy said. “If you decide to stay with us he will be your charge while I’m at work. I just need someone I can trust to look after him till he can go to nursery school in about two years. Then you could go to sewing school.”

  “In just two years,” said Auntie Ruby, smiling at me. “See, Glo, it couldn’t be easier than this. Only one small baby to look after, and Kumasi is nicer than Accra in every way.”