Beneath The Yellow (a novel): 9

At ten a.m. the entire congregation relocated to the Osu Presbyterian Church. We travelled in waves of sound and dust: The hearse leading the way with its horns blaring like a faulty ambulance; the family thrown together within the confines of two Peugeot 504 caravans; followed by the guests – some on foot, some in a bus hired for the occasion.

On the bus, the guests sang local spirituals at the top of their raspy morning voices, drawing eyes as the cortège wound its loud progress around Kwame Nkrumah circle and swept down the dual carriageway of the Ring Road. The family was silent. I sat sandwiched between Naana and my mother, my hands stuffed between my legs. Occasionally I glanced in the driver’s mirror to catch my father’s eye and to make sure that my face was as composed as a fourteen-year-old’s should be in a situation like this. I felt no identifiable emotion; every pure emotion was countered by a conflicting one. A giggle of relief burgeoned just below the surface of my grief, a part of me wanted to jump for joy. In the midst of the chaos, I thought of Mr Trabb in Great Expectations arranging Mrs Gargery’s funeral; grateful that we didn’t have anyone like him to push us around. I wouldn’t have refused Joe’s company though. I imagined him saying “she were a fine figure of a woman.” I couldn’t cry. My throat felt two sizes too big. The world felt too small.

The preacher extolled the virtues of giving. Spoke of the grace that comes from living a selfless life, and then decided to “take advantage of the passing of our sister” to address the “lost sheep” amongst us. “There are no second chances. The good book says it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle…”

I took a picture of his mouth – a non-symmetric oval with white spittle framing his coloured utterances – and lost myself in the loneliness of things I couldn’t speak of. I thought of the discussions I had had with GeeMaa about my gift – what she preferred to call my sensitivity – and wondered if I had let her down by my unwillingness to embrace it, my isolation when she encouraged engagement. I replayed my encounter with the wide-eyed old man at Kaneshie Market where I went to buy yam for a feast of Otɔ to celebrate my fourteenth birthday. Belatedly. My birthday had come during the school year so I was in the boarding house on the day itself. Still my mother refused to break the tradition that our family had kept up ever since Naana started eating solid food. Generations of my paternal family had done the same thing for years. GeeMaa supported her loudly.

“You can’t be a man if you haven’t eaten your Otɔ.”

Her slanted walk was then smoother. Almost seductive. Her curly white hair was a mute admonition for me not to argue any further. The unblemished ivory of each strand glowed with an inner darkness of a kind that defied logical explanation.

I gave in with a smile. “As long as you all remember that I’m a man now!”

Naana stuck her head out from the living room. “Yes, but a little man…”

They all laughed. My mother holding her side, Naana shaking her head, GeeMaa clucking deep within her throat, mother hen style. Three generations of OppongRibeiro women. Shaking like tambourines, but producing the more melodic music of mirth.

I decided to lose the battle to save myself from torture. I took the money my mother had placed on the kitchen table and left the house chuckling to myself. The

sky had the look of a pale blue cloth someone had spat on. It was difficult to look at.

It seemed to be having a joke at my expense too. As I headed out, I greeted Auntie Aba the waache seller and the shoemaker with his rickety workbench.

“Ayekoo.”

“Yaaye.”

Our ritualised greeting required nothing more to be said. I was warmed by the simple call and response.

I walked with an energetic swing in my stride, staying on the shady side of the street whenever I could. Especially by the cemetery at Awudome with its profusion of well-nourished neem trees. When I got to the market, my feet were dusty. I stamped a few times before going to seek out Sister Joy – my mother’s preferred yam seller. I was almost at her corner when I stumbled and stepped on a tomato. Its sweet juices spread like thinning blood across the dirty floor.

“Bɛlɛoo ei! Wɔsɛɛ e baa tɔ o ŋa. I pity your future wife.”A tomato seller had dropped some of her merchandise. I apologised to her and offered to pay for the tomato but she laughed it off.

“It’s nothing. I was only joking.”

I smiled.

“Ayekoo.”

It was another voice: familiar yet completely new. I turned to see an old man leaning against a pillar with a box of sweets and lollipops.

I had never seen him in the market before so I frowned before I answered.

“Yaaye.”

He smiled. Offered me a sweet. I hesitated, and then reached out. As my hand reached the box he stopped me and closed the box. I noticed two deep scars on his leathery face. He pointed to a hand-sized hole in the top of the box indicating that I should pick a sweet by chance. I reached in. The belly of the box felt like a damp sponge. It was warm and there was nothing solid in it, yet when I took my hand out I realised I was holding a round black-and-white mint. A solid mint.

“Harmony,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Harmony. A circle. Black and white. There will be some changes in your family to preserve harmony.”

He walked towards an exit.

“What kind of changes?”

“You know.”

I stood in the same spot until a trio of market porters bumped into me.

“Small, why?”

“Are you OK?” I shook my head apologetically and went to buy the yam.

At home GeeMaa insisted on cooking the Otɔ for me. Said she was getting old and might not have the strength to do it again. She poured some palm oil carefully into a small pan as the yam boiled, lit one of the gas hobs and put the palm oil on it to heat. She seasoned the oil with onions and pepper and some leaves she picked from the courtyard. When the yam was cooked she put fourteen eggs in a saucepan to boil as she told me stories of more soothsayers and medicine women and men in

her family. It was a noble calling; there was more pain in watching others suffer than suffering yourself.

“That’s what I was taught. It’s not surprising I became a nurse,” she smiled.

I wasn't convinced.

She mashed the yam with a pestle and mixed it with the seasoned palm oil. Soon she had an orange mountain of palm-oil-coloured yam, which she put in a large wooden bowl. An edible volcano. Then she took the eggs off the boil.

I helped her shell them and place one egg for every year of my life on the orange mountain. When the mountain came down, we couldn’t stop licking our fingers.

Naana had two eggs and told us that the rest of us would have flatulence because three eggs each was well over our daily protein requirements. Twelve eggs disappeared like alien moons down our throats. We didn’t care how they came out.

It was hard to imagine GeeMaa gone within two weeks of that meal. I was angry. I was angry when the hearse left the church to lead us back to Awudome Cemetery. I was angry as I tossed dust onto the roof of GeeMaa’s ambulance. I was angry at the sight of the woman wailing and being held back from jumping into GeeMaa’s grave.

Producing sounds so outrageous that the over-abundant bats that rested upside-down in close-by neem trees during the day dispersed – briefly darkening the sky. She sounded like a djama chant, two beats out of step, and one note out of tune. I knew she was a professional mourner. My father had told me at Aunt Dee Dee’s funeral when I asked why she was so hysterical. I would recognise that wail anywhere. I was angry when we returned to our house for refreshments: The catering company

blocked off the entire road in front of our house to make space for canopies and chairs. They didn’t care that they were causing a minor traffic jam. They revelled in the society’s acceptance of funerals as a reason to do as you please. Live as you wish. For a moment at least. Mostly I was angry because I hadn’t understood the old man at the market. I was angry because the rectangular-lipped earth had just swallowed the only person I could talk to about my confusion. I was angry because on the morning of her death I ran away and missed her last words. I kept a straight face and said little. I overheard people whispering. Saying I was odd.

“There’s something wrong with that kid.”

Of course there was something wrong with me. I had lost my grandmother. And she may have “done her duty on earth,” or “gone to help HIM,” but I wanted my grandmother to be with me.

Night fell and my spirits fell with it. I went to my room and turned off the lights.

My father came in and hugged me and cried.

My mother came in and hugged me and cried.

I didn’t cry. I just stared at them like I was looking at a painting of life.

Naana came and sat by me in my bed. Her eyes were like pimples – pointy and swollen.

“I’m tired of crying,” she said.

I lay down. “I want to cry. I just can’t.”

“Why?” “I think was my fault.”

“That’s nonsense. She was old.”

“But she was strong.” I didn’t say that I thought GeeMaa had become ill because I went to boarding school and stopped chewing my neem sticks. I didn’t say I thought that GeeMaa had died because I had become a man.

“I know. Did you hear about FatherGrandpa?”

“No. Is he dead too?”

“No, silly. He couldn’t come because he was too sad.”

“Good excuse.” I sat up again. “He didn’t care about her.”

“No. No. Daddy went to see him; every time he looked at Daddy he would start sobbing. He couldn’t control himself.”

Naana had a pained expression on her face. I laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation. All I could see was an image of FatherGrandpa slapping his left shoulder to kick-start his faulty laughter and finding only tears. Naana pushed my head and laughed too.

“Daddy said he just has a great capacity for love. That’s why he never stays with one woman.”

“Poor fool!”

We laughed and laughed. Then I cried. All the tears I’d carried since GeeMaa died came rushing down my cheeks. Then I bawled. Loud enough for the dead to hear.

Our parents came back to the room and sat by Naana and I. The walls were covered with photographs and captions I had put up. Naana’s periodic table had gone when she went to live on the university campus.

“It’s hard…” I tried to speak but felt a fish-bone of grief rising up my throat. By now my whole body was racked with sorrow. I shook like a sapling in a storm.

My mother held me and started crying.

My father always cried when my mother cried.

Naana couldn’t help herself.

Within minutes we were a wet huddle. A rock hollowed out. GeeMaa took a part of us all with her and left us all with a part of her. I was uncomfortable with the part I thought she had left me.

“Mum, do you believe some people can read the future?”

“I don’t know. I suppose there are prophets… Why?” “Nothing.”

There was nothing to be said.

Uncle Sanjit wrote to the family to extend his condolences.