Beneath The Yellow (a novel): 1

Beneath the Yellow

Nii Ayikwei Parkes

'Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there in the night, By the sea under the yellow and sagging moon, The messenger there arous'd, the fire, the sweet hell within, The unknown want, the destiny of me.' – Walt Whitman from Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking

Folio 1: For I Have Many In This City “The most important question in the world is, 'Why is the child crying?'”

– Alice Walker

i I walked through the middle of the road. Because of the bustle of Accra Central, the sheer number of people in the area around the market and the commercial centre, we shared the road with vehicles. My head and body were angled towards Kingsway Store, where I was to buy ham and baking soda for my mother. A screeching sound. I turned to see a Bedford truck with a locally-made wooden wagon hurtling towards me. The driver’s mate was leaning at an acute angle outside the doorless passenger side, making pre-flight wing motions with his arms, shooing people. Screaming, No brake, no brake, a djei gbɛ lɛ mli, while the driver wrestled with hoarse gears to bring the vehicle under control.

I jumped out of the way and felt a severe back spasm as I landed on the pavement side of the gutter beside the road. I fell on my rear, groaning. When I looked back at the road, a muscled, bare-chested man was walking directly into the path of the lorry.

His eyes were fixed on me. I waved to indicate I was OK but he didn’t seem to notice. His face was composed.

The entire crowd yelled at him to move; Buulu, djei gbɛ lɛ mli; Kwasia, you no go move? It was clear he had more than enough time. I was paralysed as I watched him amble to the middle of the road and smile at me as the truck struck him clean in the back. His head exploded in all directions, unfettered as air, fleet as a scream. People dodged out of the path of his airborne blood as the truck careered into the side of the police barracks and stopped. The driver’s mate himself was tossed out by the impact and was rescued from the top of a bright purple bougainvillea hedge by some men in the crowd. The driver slumped over his wheel, alive but shocked. The truck was

juxtaposed between the gutter and the low wall of the police barracks, one rear wheel still spinning, the imprint of the man marking its front.

The image of the man’s smile turning to blood taunted me, but he wasn't the first person I had seen die. There were eight other deaths before. Indeed, I had grown used to death. Its weight surrounded me, its company was constant. But the death of the girl never settled with me, resisted easy assimilation. Like a vine around her mother, her bones visible yet insignificant, her eyes fixed on mine. The memory clung.

I was silent in the back of our car, the seat fabric soldered to my thighs by heat and pressure. My stomach was anchored with the mass of GeeMaa’s cooking. GeeMaa was my father's mother, and she lived with us. I had devoured the white tenderness of her banku with pepper-sharp okro soup, just hot enough to burn the fingers but not to deter the hungry. My sister sat beside me clutching a book she had covered in brown paper, mainly to hide the title from me, but also to keep the cover clean. We were on our way to see my mother’s parents – Grandma and Grandpa. Outside the car, the hum of engines was stilled by the traffic light. Ignitions off, everyone was saving petrol. Two lanes of trauma-worn cars waiting at the Times/Ring Road junction. Waiting to spring to life.

In the lull, boys who looked no older than eleven, my age, wove between cars selling dog chains, ice lollies, air fresheners, bread, biscuits, PK chewing gum, windscreen wipers, handkerchiefs, shoe polish and clothes pegs. They moved with confidence, shouting out their wares and making sudden dashes whenever a hand

was raised from the pit of a car, their eyes and ears attuned to the elusive melody of sales. They leaned into windows without intruding and did sums without calculators.

Dust hovered just above their chalewote-clad feet. The sun was intent on making itself heard. It darted in bright shafts off tyre rims and windscreens. On the side of the road were six emaciated sheep for sale, tethered to stunted yellow-leafed trees yet to make up for years of unquenched thirst.

We had survived a period of drought. Survived by being still. Holding ourselves like indrawn breaths. The country was as stretched as the skin over a boil. Nigeria had deported millions of Ghanaians at the onset of the drought. They arrived mainly by road, in hired trucks sent by the Ghana government. Descending in waves of thousands, bearing all they were allowed to take on their heads, they were teachers, dancers, nurses, hustlers, doctors, mechanics and traders. They were hounded out on the grounds of increased criminal activity in Nigeria, but crime didn’t reduce in Nigeria after they left. Regardless, they continued to arrive. The silhouettes of human cargo became familiar on our cross-country roads. Children screamed Agege at them as they rode the spits and spurts of the vehicles that carried them. Our dust embraced them with its pervasive red span. Libations were poured, revolutionary speeches were made, and they were welcomed home. Almost every family had more mouths to feed on less food than ever, yet somehow we all survived.

I only tell the survivors’ story. Somewhere, I imagine, a woman, or another man, is telling the story of the dead – a story that may not have traffic lights, thirsty trees, cars stalled in unison waiting for something to happen. What I remember most is the inside of the car. My mother’s hair in braids with wooden beads dangling from them,

making a rattling sound each time she moved. My father beside her, his hands poised to bring the car back to life. And by the pillar of the traffic light, the girl, secured to the cloth-wrapped frame of her mother, staring at me.

“Daddy, where are they from?”

“Chad.” My sister jumped in with seventeen-year-old know-it-all speed. She didn’t even look up from her book. “They walked.”

My father looked at me through the rear-view mirror and nodded.

“That doesn’t make sense,” I protested. “Why here? They could have gone to Nigeria or Cameroon, they’re closer.”

My mother turned to me, making bead-music as she did so.

“They’re running from civil strife, Ebo, and none of those countries is stable. In fact, they’ve probably gone to those countries and been kicked out.”

“Like the Nigerians kicked us out.” Naana added with a smirk.

I looked at the girl. Her skin hung loose and what remained of her hair was in random discoloured patches. I could only tell she was a girl because she was wearing a skirt and earrings with pale blue pendants. The earrings looked out of place, glowing like eyes at the side of her cheek.

“Should we give them some money?”

“Son, it would be rude offer them money when they haven’t asked us.” My father swivelled round briefly to look at me.

“But they need help.”

“They do. But we don’t know what kind of help they need.”

Naana held her book to her chest. “I heard the government was setting up camps for them.”

The girl raised a gnarled hand, smiled and waved at me.

“She’s dying,” I said, as the car lurched forward.

The traffic lights had turned green.

The food in my stomach lost its anchor and rose suddenly. I put my head outside the window and unloaded the banku and a green and red sea of okro, tomatoes and palm oil onto the dual carriageway and the side of our car as we streaked along.

“Ebo!” My mother’s hair played a frantic rhythm. She placed a hand on my side.

“Kai!” My sister moved further into her corner of the back seat.

“Water,” I choked.

My father glanced through the mirror again. “Breathe, son, breathe. We’ll be in Kokomlemle in no time, then you can have some water.”

On our way back, we saw the girl’s mother wailing on the opposite side of the road. I felt her scream in the tender space behind my ear. She was no longer carrying the girl. In front of her was a heap, something covered by the cloth she had around her shoulders earlier. Her arms were in the air, as though she was calling on something beyond the city of Accra. A voice that could explain why she was so far away from home with nothing.

The girl clung because I never understood how life could give someone so young the responsibility of dying. She was no older than seven; the age I was when I first encountered grief, when I first knew death.