Folio 2: Listen to All my Words
“Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me” – Job 42:3
i
The changes came slowly. I was the same incurably curious boy, same over-loud voice, same stamping laugh, but I felt a shadow over me. It started with a stabbing pain in my chest the night after GeeMaa spoke to me in the kitchen, a woodpecker drilling into the forest of my being. I woke up, clutching my left breast and screaming. My father burst into the room; he arrived in his halfclosed dressing gown, his penis dangling in the pale light streaming in from the corridor. My mother trailed in after him, a tie-and-dye cloth wrapped expertly around her chest. She fixed the belt on my father’s gown for him. Naana was already by my side, holding my hand, wide-eyed and trembling. “What’s wrong?” My father’s voice was deeper than it was during the day. “I’ve had a heart attack.” “Ebo,” he glanced at my mother, who had taken Naana’s place beside me and put my head in her lap, “you can’t have a heart attack. You’re ten…” “What happened?” Everyone turned. GeeMaa stood at the door in a faded green and orange cloth tied round her body and knotted behind her neck. One of her arms was rested against the doorframe. The now-flaccid flesh from her triceps was made sharp again by the light in the corridor behind her. My father responded. “Ma, he said he’s had a heart attack, but…”
“It’s OK, Kojo.” She waved my mother and father towards the door, but my mother didn’t move. Her grip on me tightened. “Sarah, I’ve seen this before. I’ll look after him.” My mother caressed my forehead. My father stopped near GeeMaa and said my mother’s name softly. “Sarah…” I felt her look up, heard her inhale. “Sarah, she’s a nurse.” My mother exhaled the breath she had taken, smoothed my cheek with the back of her hand and eased my head back onto my pillow. I still had a hand on my chest but I could no longer feel any pain. I watched my father put his arm around my mother’s waist and rub her side like a good luck charm as they went back to their room. GeeMaa turned to my sister. “Naana, please get me some hot water from the kitchen.” “Yes, GeeMaa.” I shifted to lie on my side and looked up at GeeMaa. She leaned over, rubbed my back and started talking. “Oh, mi bi, did it hurt badly?” I nodded. She sat where my mother had been and looked around the room. Nobody had thought of turning on the light so the room was in half-darkness. The ceiling fan hovered like a bored watchman. My mounted spider was a stain on the wall.
GeeMaa started humming then stopped. “Sometimes you can stand in a storm but it won’t rain until you notice the clouds.” I shifted my head to peer at her. My eyelids felt like clay. GeeMaa made another statement. “Sometimes you make a new friend and then begin to run into them everywhere you go.” I latched onto the familiarity of this new observation. “Yes, that’s how it was with Ato Table. After I played football with him for the first time I started seeing him at the plantain seller’s and Auntie Aba’s, even on his way to school. Then I found out we lived on the same road.” I paused. “GeeMaa?” “Hmm?” “GeeMaa, what’s wrong with me?” I put my right hand on my left breast. My mother had warned me several times about leaving the fan on and not wearing a shirt, but I wasn't wearing one. GeeMaa took my hand away and put hers there. I heard the kettle's whistle in the kitchen. “There’s nothing wrong with you; your uncle Narteh had this before he started working, then it stopped. I peered into the shimmer of GeeMaa’s pale brown eyes, confused. “Who is Uncle Narteh?” “One of my cousins’ sons. In the mountains.” She sighed and held my face, her fingers below my chin. “Did it hurt badly, mi bi?” “Yes, GeeMaa.” “Oh, maybe I shouldn’t have told you…”
Naana arrived with a bucket of hot water. GeeMaa didn’t speak after my sister returned. Naana stood by the blue plastic bucket, framed by the corridor's rectangled glow, until GeeMaa waved her to her bed. She wrapped her covers around her and watched us. A grating sound cut the silence as GeeMaa pulled the bucket closer. She reached into its depths, with her back turned to me, until her elbows were covered. She stayed hunched over the heat for a while without flinching, then took her hands out and turned me onto my front. Naana sneezed. GeeMaa turned to her. “Naana, lie down. You’ll catch a cold sitting like that under the fan.” Naana burrowed into her bed and GeeMaa placed her hand on my back. Under the coaxing of GeeMaa’s hot palms I hovered on the borders of sleep. She massaged the area between my shoulder blades slow and hard, so that, although it was comforting, it was impossible to fall asleep. She hummed as she briefly placed her hands back in the bucket to warm them, then kneaded my lower back and the area of my back directly behind my left breast. Her arms were heavy, her hands nimble. A floating image of my heart appeared beneath my eyelids and I drifted into a mild slumber. I saw a self-lucent ferruginous diamond of pain eject from my heart in slow motion and parachute its way down. I followed it by flying with my mind until I got caught in a tree awash with webs and red ants. I started screaming. GeeMaa slapped my back, waking me. She put her finger to her lips and inclined her head towards Naana who was curled up like a chameleon’s tail, snoring softly. GeeMaa turned me onto my back again and put her hands in the blue bucket. I
expected the water to be cold, but when she laid her hands on my chest they were hot. I shrank into the mattress in surprise. GeeMaa shook her head and smiled. Her teeth shone. In the murkiness of the room the glow from her ivory hair looked like it was suspended in air. Her eyes were drugged fireflies. Outside, an owl hooted and I tuned into a wealth of nightlife I had never explored: the muted beats of dogs prowling the street seeking challenge, chickens sleeping beneath bushes and on low branches, cockroaches scouring kitchens, trees swaying, worms and snakes sliding across the earth, tides in, fishermen out to sea. Everything was alive and vital, assaulting my ears and skin. I felt like I was dreaming again, but GeeMaa was right there in front of me holding my eyes with hers. She removed her hands from my chest, and the night turned quiet again. She stood up, held out her arms, then reached across with her left hand to pinch the flesh under her right arm. My right arm jerked and I winced in pain. I looked at GeeMaa, puzzled. She approached my bed again, leaned over, hugged me and whispered. “Remember, your father is my son; he is also your mother's husband.” I frowned, uncomprehending. “Tomorrow, when you go to pass water there’ll be some blood. Don’t worry.” She straightened up and left.
I woke up disoriented and hungry. Sunlight had invaded my room from the windows on the side wall and through the open door. For a while I looked around me, seeing nothing. Eventually, the pale blue expanse of wall above Naana’s bed gained
definition. The periodic table she had stuck on it when she moved in became a clear block with individual squares. Naana’s bed looked as though a pack of dogs had ran through it. I heard her voice from the kitchen, singing, If you leave me I go die oh, in harmony with GeeMaa, trying to drown out my father’s Sunday jazz record, which was all horns, bass, keys and drums. I knew without moving that this was not one of the Sundays when we went to church. On church Sundays, my mother shook sleep out of us with firm hands and hounded us with toothbrushes and spoons. We brushed our teeth with the enthusiasm of zombies and sat at table to eat our rice or maize porridge with two thick slices of sugar bread. We rushed to the bathroom – Naana first because she spent more time picking clothes – then got dressed and piled into the car. By 7.40 am the Datsun was on the road, streaking a navy blue gleam across the streets of Accra to Adabraka, where the church was. There was no banter, no cross-house battles. There was no music – for the tuneless singing of the Methodist old ladies could not be called music – and no dancing. I preferred the no-church Sundays, when my father got up early to clean the inside of his car and then went to turn on his jazz. Head bopping, he jived to the kitchen to make freshly squeezed orange juice for my mother who emerged on cue, waved good morning to my father, then went to the toilet to urinate. She returned to hug him, jive with him to the living room where he handed her the juice and sat beside her with his eyes closed. Then GeeMaa, Naana and I woke up and the music battles began.
Of course, it wasn’t always like that. Sometimes my misdeeds were uncovered. Like the time when my father decided to have a brandy while listening to jazz and found the bottle’s contents to be lower than his last mark. That Sunday I got a resounding beating from a father who claimed he was doing the Lord’s work for him. But this Sunday was fine. I could tell by the intensity of the sun that it was about 10 am, and no one seemed rushed. I stretched and swung my legs out of the bed. I reached for the yellow T-shirt I had dumped on the little table between Naana’s bed and mine and headed for the living room. I didn’t wear the T-shirt; I just held it. The living room was small. A black three-seater cane settee and two small matching armchairs on a woven raffia carpet. My father’s record player was to the right of the door by a bookcase and a drinks cabinet. The armchairs faced the door and there were three sheepskin cushions that lay at random on the floor beside them. The settee was to the left. That’s where my parents sat, holding hands in stillness. “Morning Dad, morning Mum.” “Morning Son.” “Are you feeling better?” “Yes, Mum, GeeMaa gave me a massage. I feel fine now.” “Your eyes are red again.” “I’m OK. I feel fine.” My father hadn’t opened his eyes. A Yusuf Lateef sleeve lay on a coffee table beside him. I stood for a moment as a sign of respect; so he wouldn’t think I didn’t appreciate his music. But I was famished so I couldn’t hold on for long. He spoke as I turned to go, his eyes still closed.
“So, no more heart attacks?� I smiled and kept walking. I heard him chuckling as I went. My mother slapped his arm. He turned the music up as Naana and GeeMaa broke into a new song. I headed outside, towards the orange tree, where I offloaded the rose urine GeeMaa had warned me about. I stood watching the pool gather at my feet wondering what it all meant.