Beneath The Yellow (a novel): 5

GeeMaa took the onions I chopped and put them in a pan of warm palm oil. She turned the heat up on the hob and turned to look at me. Most people have eyes the colour of their skin or slightly darker; GeeMaa’s were a light shade of brown.

Lighter than her skin. They had a hypnotic quality about them.

“When was the first dream?”

She didn’t seem as surprised as my father was to hear about the dreams. In her right hand she held a wooden spoon steady over the pan of whispering onions, but her attention was rooted on me.

“After Auntie Dee Dee died. I saw her cooking on a kind of stage.”

“Hmm.” She turned to stir the onions. She was making kontomire stew with agushi.

“Sit down,” she said.

I pulled a kitchen stool and sat down. She took an earthenware grinding bowl full of melon seeds, placed it on the floor, pulled another stool and sat facing me. She sprinkled some water on the seeds and began to crush them with a wooden pestle.

She exuded the silent calm of Jaggers’ Molly – Estella’s mother.

“My child, a crab does not give birth to a bird.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Do you know who an okomfo is?”

“Like Okomfo Anokye?” I knew the name from my history lessons. He was the sorcerer who helped build the Ashanti Kingdom. Like Merlin of Camelot he had rooted a sword that could only be removed by a chosen person.

“Yes. Like Okomfo Anokye.” She paused.

“The dreams are signs.”

I shook my head. “Daddy said it was shock.”

“Hmm. What about the dream with the empty plates?” She continued to crush the melon seeds into a fine paste. I scratched my head and looked at the pan on the stove.

“I didn’t tell him about that.”

“And after that the drought came.” She smiled, catching my eyes.

It was like a secret code. It unlocked me. Scattered points of confusion began to stand in line. All I had to do was join the dots. Straighten the question marks. Make them point somewhere. Like Pip finally making the connection between Jaggers, Molly, Magwitch, Miss Havisham and Estella over dinner. I considered myself smart for a ten-year-old but it had never occurred to me. Foresight. I felt GeeMaa stand up and tip the crushed seeds into the muttering oil. Heard the hiss of the union of oil and water. Saw her reach for the chopped kontomire and tuna. Smelled the fusion of sweet aromas as she stirred the stew and lowered the heat on the gas cooker. New questions simmered in my mind.

“It’s from my mother’s side of the family. The mountain dwellers.” GeeMaa spoke as though she could hear me. “The gift is stronger in some than others.”

She looked at me as though she was telling me something with her eyes. All I saw was the pale brown ring around her pupil changing colours with the intensity of her thoughts. Her pupils widened as she broke a smile.

“We all have it… but to get the best fruit from a tree you must shake it.”

I nodded. Speechless. Still puzzled. Stumped by the way answers to old questions brought new uncertainties with them. Like a price to pay for answers; was it worth knowing the truth?

GeeMaa continued. “It’s up to you how much it will affect your life. There are those who make a living from it.”

“I want to be a journalist, not a fortune teller.” Petulance crept into my voice.

She laughed. Loud. Bubbling like stew as she reached out to hug me. Her white hair was tied back in a bun; her skin yielding beneath the faded orange and green tie and dye cloth wrapped around her waist.

“Mi bi. The gift is strong in you. You may not pursue it but you will always have premonitions about the people you love.”

My grandmother was a big woman and I was a small ten-year-old; I heard her through the vibrations of her rib cage. She held me close to her chest. The dark brown skin of her arms had begun to sag.

“So I will always have these dreams?”

“People may think you're odd, but remember that everyone is odd – otherwise we would all be the same. You're not odd, you're sensitive.”

I sighed. “Will I always have the dreams?”

“Oh no! Not always dreams; anything that happens in your life could be a sign.

Anything.”

She hugged me tighter, then held me away, her upper arms rippling with the sudden motion.

“Go and play with your friends. I have worried you enough.”

I walked towards our burnt orange metal gate to look for Tom Brown and Table.

Kofi Fagan, the last of our four-corner fraternity, was a year older than us and was away at boarding school in Cape Coast. We had begun to splinter. Partly because of the drought, which had rationed our energy for boyish exploits and made us still.

Partly because Tom Brown’s father didn’t like him to play with us because we spoke a mixture of Ga and Twi with Pidgin English. His father only wanted him to speak English. He had come to drag Tom Brown home on several occasions. He always stopped to serve me a special reprimand.

“And I don’t understand how you, a son of such educated people, can be allowed to speak as you wish!”

My father laughed when I told him about it. He said it was sad that some people thought that education meant renouncing your own culture. You couldn’t build real knowledge if you destroyed your foundation.

When I reached the gate I looked back towards the kitchen. GeeMaa was silhouetted in the window. Stirring food and humming away. The image reminded me of Auntie Dee Dee. Our street was deserted. No children running about. No boys beside our wall eyeing the stunted oranges on our tree. No shoemaker. No Yaw Table. No Ato Tom Brown. Only Auntie Aba sat in her usual spot; presiding over her large basin of waache with faraway eyes. It was a strange moment in a normal day. I decided not to go looking for Tom Brown or Table. I wasn’t in the mood for play. I yelled ayekoo to Auntie Aba and sat on the edge of the gutter in front of our house. The sun was still

high in the sky, accentuating the deep greens and rooted browns of the trees. Bearing down on homes. Slanting off aluminium roofing sheets in random shafts. Blinding all who dared to stare. Shadows played a game of catch with the objects that cast them. It was hard to believe that it would be dark in two hours. Four o’clock flowers had begun to withdraw their red petals for the night. There was an uncommon precision to our sunsets; the equator kept a mathematical balance. It was impossible to grow up with sunsets like ours and know nothing of change. Before your eyes, what was green turns black, invisible light become miniature beacons, what was shadow is swallowed into the whole.

I swung my growing legs inside the gutter and considered my life. I was conscientious about the thinking process. I didn’t want to be light-hearted. I wanted to write down everything, explore myself. Like James Baldwin in Nobody Knows My Name. I had read the book two months earlier. I didn’t understand all that he wrote but I liked the serious passion of his writing. The desire to delve deeper than ever before. I pasted an intense look on my face and tried to become like him. With each new thought I inclined my head at a different angle.

I thought about MotherGrandpa – Grandpa – who like my mother was an accountant – very shrewd, very observant. Could he tell there was something different about me? Would he treat me with the same indulgence if I were an okomfo? Would he encourage me to develop the gift? Had he already noticed something different about me? Did he already treat me accordingly? What about Grandma? Or FatherGrandpa? Maybe FatherGrandpa wouldn’t care; I had only met him twice.

My legs oscillated with increased ferocity; the questions multiplying as the sun set. But what about my father? And my mother? And Naana? Naana who had no time for anything that did not have a life in books. She would probably laugh and make a joke out of the idea of my having premonitions; ask me the name of her husband or first child. The moon shifted into view, pale yellow in the wake of the retreating sun.

I wondered if I could talk to the dead. If I could ask what the inside of a coffin looked like when it was covered with at least ninety-six cubic feet of soil. I delved until I could delve no longer, stood up with a handful of loose stones and threw them across the undulating brown expanse that was our street.

Then I asked myself the obvious question. Did I want to be able to tell the future?

Did I want to be an okomfo? If I knew the future whom should I tell? What could I change? What would happen if I told someone? Changed something? It was all too much. I didn’t want to know.

I looked up to a horizon with pale saffron eyes – one moon, one sun – and remembered GeeMaa saying, you will always have premonitions about the people you love.

My interpretation of GeeMaa’s message was to be my burden for many years.

Like the signature in my passport, it would define the tone of my adult life. Maybe it is our nature to interpret what we hear in a way that appears to give us some control.

Nobody likes feeling helpless. Pip assumed Miss Havisham was his benefactor because it made it easier for him to accept his fortune. It reinforced his belief that he would end up with Estella, and influenced his decisions until he knew the truth. To

free myself from my gift, I resolved not to love anymore. Be immune. Be free from premonitions.

Night embraced the sun like a fat relation; the moon hung alone.