Between Sisters Page 3

  It seemed so easy to me, sitting in a beautiful room, eating cake and drinking Fanta. No more selling oranges in the afternoons. No more studying math and English and failing exams. No more homework or punishment from teachers.

  Best of all there would be no more questions about the future. Everything was as simple as Dr. Christy had said.

  I listened to Dr. Christy’s voice rise and fall softly. I couldn’t imagine her yelling at me.

  I picked up the boy, Sam. He didn’t struggle.

  “Milk,” he said, offering me his bottle.

  “He likes you,” said Auntie Ruby, beaming.

  I laughed. Sam laughed, too. I felt as though I had passed a test. I put Sam on my lap. He smelled sweet, like Johnson’s baby powder. Everything smelled sweet in this house, and I ate three large pieces of cake. Nobody said gyae!

  By the time the taxi dropped us back home, my mind was made up.

  •

  A week went by, and the day of my departure came. This time Effie made the fire and cooked the koko. We even had Ideal milk, condensed and evaporated, with the sweetened corn porridge. Daa bought fresh tea-bread from the bread seller, and Maa did not complain when we plastered our slices thickly with Blue Band margarine.

  We ate in the living room, our spoons scraping the bottoms of pink plastic cereal bowls.

  Afterwards Daa gathered us into prayer, committing my life and my future to God with many supplications.

  All that was left now was the parting.

  “If she doesn’t treat you well, come back home,” said Effie. “Run away.”

  She was sitting on the green loveseat next to me. She was the one person who had asked question after question. What is she like? Does she shadda in designer wear? Is she pretty?

  Effie was the only one who had grumbled and said, “Only the poor give away their daughters like this.” Everyone else thanked God for this miracle.

  “Nonsense,” said Daa. “Dr. Christy is an answer to prayer. She’s a good woman and she will treat you well. I pray you behave while you’re with her.”

  “Yes, Daa.”

  “Remember this is also about your future,” Maa said. “Dr. Christy has assured us that she will do her best to establish you as a seamstress. And I feel that there are many other things you will learn from her. How to be a lady, for instance.”

  “No boy-matter. Understand?” Daa added sternly. “Remember, a boy is never a friend to a girl. Never!”

  Effie giggled.

  I turned around and tried to silence her with a look.

  I worried about Effie because of her boyfriend. I worried that I had accepted her bribes of kelewele, giving the impression to our parents that we’d been together with friends, when she had gone off on her own. All I knew of her boyfriend was that he was a seaman from Tema, the neighboring port city. I didn’t even know his name.

  “I hope you didn’t fill your bag with junk,” Maa said. She was looking quite well since she’d started taking some pills that Dr. Christy had sent. Thank God for Dr. Christy.

  “Write,” said Effie.

  Had she forgotten that I didn’t like to read or write? I stood up. Effie stood up, too, and we hugged.

  “I’ll see you soon. Dr. Christy comes to Accra every month,” I said.

  She nodded. Her eyes filled suddenly with tears.

  Through the open window, we saw Auntie Ruby arrive in a taxi. I checked my face for the last time in Effie’s mirror. I was wearing my favorite yellow dress, silver stud earrings and a silver necklace. My legs shone with shea butter. My face was powdered lightly, and beads of sweat were forming on the ridge of my nose. I wore my white strappy sandals, which I usually saved for church on Sunday, and all my good possessions were packed neatly in my bag.

  “Bye, Daa, bye, Maa. Bye, Effie,” I said, looking away from the loss in their eyes. I put my bag in the trunk of the car and shut it with a bang.

  One of Adama’s children twisted the tap of our communal standing pipe. It gurgled and water gushed out, spilling over the concrete stand.

  “Water!” he shouted.

  “This means good luck,” said Adama.

  “Bye, everyone,” I said. Then I sat in the back of the taxi next to Auntie Ruby and off we went, blowing dust behind us.

  • FOUR •

  I first met Bea near the doctors’ flats at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital. We lived in one of the three-story doctors’ flats, and she lived in the adjacent compound where the nurses’ houses stood like matchboxes in a rectangle. The dividing milk-bush hedge separated the doctors from the nurses.

  On the far side of the doctors’ flats, the bushes grew wild around a variety of trees. Once upon a time all of Kumasi had been nothing but forest. I could imagine what manner of snakes and scorpions might live there still, undiscovered in the undergrowth. Only the street-boys followed their footballs into the bush.

  Around the flats, life was carefree. Water flowed in the water pipes and fed the taps in every apartment. The doctors were always chatting and eating at each other’s homes, their laughter bouncing off the rough cement-sprayed walls. They didn’t seem to care about money. Thick wads appeared out of their pockets and wallets for every favor and purchase.

  I remembered my days selling in Accra. It would have been so much easier selling here at the doctors’ flats. They didn’t even care that dirty street-boys ate all the mangoes off their trees.

  Christine was away on duty at the polyclinic. Going to work was tricky because Sam was always alert for his mother leaving home. I would take him out for a walk or to visit another of the doctors. We usually went to see Dr. Mimi, who had cool cartoons on video. We would spend an hour watching Tom chase Jerry, a thing that made Sam gurgle with laughter.

  But by that afternoon, Sam was catching on. Tom and Jerry were no longer so funny.

  “Mama,” Sam said tearfully, pointing at the door. “Mamama.”

  I had enough money for a drink at the clubhouse.

  “Come, Sam. Let’s go and buy Sprite. Then we can sit under an umbrella and watch the doctors play tennis.”

  “Sprite, Sprite,” he sang. Sam understood a treat. I wondered if he understood a bribe.

  “Sprite, Sprite,” I sang back.

  Sam was beautiful. Each morning I bathed him, and if it was a particularly hot day I bathed him again in the afternoon. I floated his yellow rubber ducks in the bathwater for him. I put his tape in the tape player and we sang along with the songs.

  “Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”

  Sam couldn’t really speak but he could sing, and he loved that song.

  I didn’t mind washing Sam’s diapers or feeding him. I didn’t mind cooking or cleaning, and I loved walking with him and watching the tennis at the clubhouse. Whenever we went out, I made sure Sam looked fine.

  “So handsome,” I would say, just like the lady on the TV advertisement for A1 Spice. That advert gave me hope that some day I could be as fine as the woman who cooked delicious meals for her beautiful family.

  “So handsome,” Sam would say in return.

  I always wore my good yellow dress. Then Sistah Christy would call me Sunshine Girl.

  We had to pass the nurses’ quarters on our way to the clubhouse. The driveway curved widely around the bushes, and I wondered whether to walk along the road or cut through the bushes where a dusty-red path had forced itself through.

  It was Sam who decided on the path, and he pulled me along to where three girls stood.

  “Hello,” one of the girls said. “I’m Bea. What is your name?”

  “Gloria.” I was feeling fine in my Sunshine Girl dress and white strappy sandals. Those girls were still wearing their cream and brown school uniforms, with dirty sandals covered in red dust.

 
Only last month I, too, had been a schoolgirl in Accra, wearing the same shabby cream and brown uniform.

  Bea had very short hair, tightly curled and crawling on her scalp. Her eyes slanted upward, giving her a mischievous look. Her soft full lips hid a very determined jaw. I was only slightly taller than her, and I thought she might be fifteen years old.

  “What’s the baby’s name?” Bea asked.

  “Sam.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “D4, with my sister, Dr. Christine Ossei.” Auntie Ruby had suggested that I call Christine Sistah Christy instead of Dr. Christy. “She’s like your big sister,” Auntie Ruby had said.

  “That’s your sister with the silver Toyota Corolla?” Bea asked. “I like that car.”

  “Yes.” Christine had a really nice car. It was silver and shiny, without a dent or a scratch, and she was proud of it. It was fully air-conditioned.

  It felt good to be associated with nice things. My daa, the great chauffeur, had never owned a car. We had never even owned a TV — only the small wireless radio that stood on our windowsill.

  “I want you to be my friend,” Bea said.

  “Okay,” I replied coolly. I wondered what her friends were thinking. “We have to go now. I’m taking Sam to the clubhouse to buy Sprite.”

  “Can I come, too?” Bea asked.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Serwaa, Cynthia, later,” Bea said. To my surprise she abandoned her friends right there and followed us.

  At the clubhouse, I bought a bottle of Sprite for Sam and me. Bea did not order anything so I asked for three glasses. We sat out by the tennis court and shared our first drink, and Bea became my friend.

  •

  Christine called me Singing Glo because I was always singing. Sam changed the name to Go-go because it was the best he could do. And the rest of our world called me Glo or Glo-glo.

  D4 was a two-bedroom flat on the second floor of a three-story block. Christine and Sam slept in one room and I slept in the other, except when Christine was on night duty. Then I slept in her room with Sam. Our two best possessions were a TV and a CD/radio player. In Christine’s bedroom there was a radio that doubled as an alarm clock. Up in our apartment we could not hear cockerels crowing at dawn.

  Sam also had a destruction-proof Fisher-Price tape player, so all day I could listen to my favorite highlife singers unless Sam demanded his tape music — “Hoki-poki-poki” and “Row, row, row your boat.” When Christine came home, she played American pop music and R and B. I liked the Spice Girls.

  The living-room wall held pictures of people dear to Christine. There was a picture of Sam’s dad, as well as pictures of Sam, Christine and Christine’s parents. Each morning Sam demanded to be held up to the picture of his dad, and he would point to it and say Dada. He was a doctor, too. Christine called him JB, and he was studying in England. He called often to speak to Christine and Sam.

  Sam was always mystified by the voice coming through the phone. Although he clamored for the phone, he never said a word into it in spite of all the encouragement we gave him.

  I took to practicing phone manners with Sam on his toy telephone.

  “Hello, Sam?”

  “Ha-yo Sam?”

  “How are you?”

  “Ha ya you?”

  I loved TV. In the evenings I watched video upon video of highlife stars singing of heartbreak and love. Then there were the Nigerian films, stories of witchcraft and women marrying for money and men cheating on their wives.

  I lived on stories, music and fashion. TV was more real, with men in fancy cars and fashionable women taking more out of life than their true share.

  My daa would have judged them all with one word: licentiousness!

  Sam and I were watching the latest music video of the Daughters of Glorious Jesus when Christine’s phone rang.

  It was JB, Sam’s dada.

  “Is that Gloria?” JB asked, electricity crackling over his voice.

  “Yes, Daddy,” I gushed into the phone. My voice returned to me hollow and distant.

  “Gloria, you are looking after some very precious people,” he said. “Treat them well. If you do a good job, I’ll have a surprise for you when I return.”

  I liked Daddy JB at once. His warm voice and hearty laughter made it so easy to like the man whose handsome photo was framed on our living-room wall. Christine called it her wall of fame. She had many more pictures in photo albums and on her dresser.

  In my bag was the only photo I owned: Effie and me at the gates of our church, one Christmas when I was about ten.

  One day, I thought, I would have albums and picture frames full of my photos to look at and enjoy.

  At first I thought about Effie every day. But Bea came by often after school. She would greet Christine with a curtsy and that good-girl voice that we kept for our teachers. Sometimes we went for walks with Sam.

  Life had become so much simpler and easier with Christine, and I felt very lucky. It was like having an older sister for a mother — all the care without the bossiness. I ate better than I could ever remember. Sometimes we ate cake for no reason other than dessert.

  Effie would have loved it!

  • FIVE •

  On Saturday we woke up bright and early, long before the full strength of the sun beat hard on us and caused us to perspire.

  “Don’t bother to shower. The market stinks anyway,” said Christine. “I will drop you off to buy the foodstuffs and vegetables while I shop in town for provisions.”

  Christine was right about the market. They all smelled the same. The odors of smoked and fresh food mingled with the strong smells of decomposing vegetables and not-so-fresh meat and fish.

  I didn’t bathe, but I took a little time over my face and my hair. I used some face powder and, for the first time, a black pencil on my eyelids.

  Not bad, I thought.

  “Who will take care of Sam?” I asked Christine.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll take him with me. Kumasi town is small. I’ll just push him around in his stroller.”

  Sam loved his stroller. He didn’t get to sit in it often because Christine said strollers were made to be used on smooth sidewalks and in Kumasi there were none. Pedestrians stole what walking space they could from the dusty sides of the narrow tarred roads. When Sam sat in his stroller, he felt like a king.

  Christine had said from the beginning that she did not like the Kejetia Market. She hated the mud, the smell of rotten vegetables, the clogged drains and the dense crowds that squeezed and pushed their way through the narrow alleys. So I alone did all the shopping at the market, week by week. She went shopping only once a month when she bought provisions — sugar, tinned milk, uht milk and other supplies.

  I didn’t mind the market. In Accra I had often gone to Mallam Atta Market where Maa traded, only one tro-tro ride away from our home. Here in Kumasi I could browse through merchandise, especially the clothes, and then take a taxi home. Christine let me ride taxis once my basket was full.

  Just by the main road we saw Bea with a basket in hand, walking toward the bus stop. Christine stopped for Bea, who ran to the car.

  “Are you going to the market?” Christine asked.

  “Yes, please. I’m so lucky you saw me,” she said, panting.

  “And Glo will be happy to have you for company.”

  Traffic was thick around the Kejetia Circle, and Christine concentrated hard.

  “The drivers here have no sense of traffic rules.” She shook her head and laughed. “Kumasi can be such a lawless place. But I love it.”

  Bea leaned forward. “Auntie, that’s exactly what my dad says, too. My dad is Dr. Kotoh of obs and gynae.”

  “Your dad is Dr. Kotoh?” Christine seemed surprised. “I thought you lived at the senior nurses’ complex.”

&nb
sp; “Yes. I live with my mother, Sister Janet of C1. My dad is married to a German woman.”

  I didn’t know Bea’s dad was a doctor. I thought doctors were rich, and Bea was not. Suddenly I felt irritated that she was calling Christine Auntie. She had always called her Dr. Christy.

  “Auntie, one day I’ll be a doctor like you,” she said.

  “Good for you,” said Christine. “I’m afraid that means a lot of study, though. You’ll have to work hard and stop gallivanting like you do around the flats.”

  “I know,” she said confidently. “But it’s in my blood,”

  “I guess it is,” Christine said. They both laughed.

  Christine wouldn’t simply let us out on the street like the taxi drivers did. She wove her way carefully to the side of the road and stopped to let us out some distance away from the market entrance.

  “Bye, Sam,” I said, waving hard.

  “Go-go,” shouted Sam, reaching for me. But the car was already weaving back into the traffic.

  Bea reached for my hand and laced her fingers through mine.

  “Glo, listen. Once we buy our foodstuffs we’ll have to go straight home. Our baskets will be too heavy to wander around with. Let’s look around first before we shop.”

  “Where?” I asked. I was still a little irritated with her.

  “I’ll show you the Jeans-Jeans store. You should see the shadda styles they sell there.”

  It was as if my eyes were opened for the first time as we began to wander in and out of expensive shops. Madam Cee’s fabric store was packed from head to foot with bundles of fabric of all colors. The large woman sat behind an impressive table with the most awful scowl on her face. Her massive arms were crossed on the table where a meter ruler lay. She looked like she would use that ruler on anyone who provoked her.

  “Come on, let’s go in,” whispered Bea.

  I hesitated. I knew that kind of woman, face bleached red with deep pencil marks for eyebrows and blood-red lipstick and the look of absolute disdain for those of us who obviously did not have money to spend in her shop.