In the twilight of my grandma’s life, she came to live with us. She was always sick but never took the doctor’s advice. “Don’t eat sugar.” She would hide sugar under her pillow and eat it at dawn when everyone was asleep. When you catch her eating what she had been told not to eat, she would tell you, “I’m eighty years old. What else do I need in this world that they will tell me not to eat my favourite? I will eat. If I die I die.”

She was very stubborn towards everyone but for some strange reason, she listened to me. She told me she listened to me because I was a nurse and also her favourite granddaughter. She would wait for me in front of her door at night. Until I come back home, she won’t sleep. Sometimes, she would wait for me to give her her drugs. She won’t take it from anyone.

In her bad moments, she would pick on me. She would scream at me to go to my husband’s house. One day she sat in front of my gate to prevent me from going in. When I pushed, she screamed, “Go to your husband’s house. What are you doing here? When I was your age, I had three children and was married to my second husband. What are you doing here.”

I was very hurt. She had done a lot of mean things to me but none got to me like the way she treated me that evening. I didn’t provoke her or anything. All of a sudden, my existence got her angry and decided to shout at me.

In the morning, I went to her room to have a conversation about the way she treated me. She was sleeping when I got in there. My shadow might have fallen on her or she instinctively felt someone was in the room so she opened her eyes to see me.

She couldn’t lift herself up from the bed. I helped her up and she asked me softly, “Are you coming to check if I’m dead?” I answered, “No, I came so we talk about what you did to me last night?” She made a surprised face. “Last night? What happened?”

I narrated everything to her and smiled. I did that to you? No, it wasn’t me. You might have dreamt it or it’s someone else who did that to you. I love you so much I can’t be this mean to you. What did you do to me to deserve that?”

I sat next to her and she put her head on my shoulder. She continued, “Whoever said those mean words to you, God will punish her but before he does that, he will give you a beautiful husband to shame her.”

I wasn’t surprised she didn’t remember. At eighty-something years, a lot can happen in a person’s brain. When I told my mom about it she laughed and said, “It’s old age. Don’t mind her.?”

A few weeks after that, I went to her room to say goodbye to her. I was going to work. I entered, opened the curtains to allow some light in and turned off her fan to stop her from catching cold. She woke up and asked me to sit next to her. She said, “I saw your husband last night. Where were you when he came around?” I was like, ‘My husband? Who is my husband?”

She slapped my thigh with her feeble hand as if to say, “Don’t be silly, I know what I’m talking about.” She smiled softly. “I’m talking about Bebee,” she said. I responded, “I don’t know anyone by that name. Maybe, you’re talking about someone else. I live with you and you know I’m not married.”

She went quiet for a while and later put her head down on the pillow. I said goodbye and I left. From that day on, anytime I went to see her or anytime she saw me around, she would ask me, “How is Bebee? I hope you’re not giving him trouble.”

Her memory was failing. She was becoming bedridden. My mom would look at her and say, “Asor, don’t die right now. We don’t have enough money for your funeral.” Somedays she would respond feebly. On other days, she would just ignore her and sleep.

One day I met a guy who was so determined to make me his girlfriend. He came to visit a patient at the hospital and he saw me. He took my number and for the days ahead, I regretted giving him my number. At some point, I refused to pick up when he called. He would come to the hospital because of me. He would wait until I handover so he would walk me home. His name was Boakye.

One day I said yes to him and our love story began. He was too good to be true so I was careful with him. I was wondering why such a good man would be single for that long. “Maybe there’s a lady in the dark somewhere. He’s trying to use me and leave me for that lady.”

For a long time, I didn’t give him sex but it never pushed him away or made him love me any less. About five months after dating, he asked me to take him home so one day after work, I held his hand and took him to meet my mom and my aunt. Before taking him home, I warned him about my grandma, “I don’t know the mood she will be in by the time we get there but whatever she says, don’t say anything or don’t get offended. Her mouth grows sharper every day while everything about her is dying.”

When we entered the compound, guess who we met. My grandma. She was at her gate, looking at passers-by and receiving greetings from strangers. When she set her eyes on us she said softly, “You’ve brought Bebee home today? Come here, my grandson. I’ve been meaning to meet you.”

Boakye looked at me wondering if I had a boyfriend called Bebee. I whispered to him, “Don’t mind her. She’s like that. She gives names to people she had never met so she can talk to them as if she knows them from time immemorial.” She beckoned Boakye to step towards her and he did. She shook his hand and said, “I hope she’s being a good wife. We trained her well so she has no option but to be a good wife. If she misbehaves, tell me and I’ll discipline her for you.”

My mom entered the scene and said, “Abrantie, please come this way.” The conversation was short and straight to the point. My mom encouraged him to be a good man and asked him to come home as often as he wished. When he was leaving, my grandma waved and said, “Bebee, visit me often before I die OK? You’re a family.”

Two years later, my grandma was totally bedridden and was not able to speak clearly but she never stopped talking about Bebee. She would summon her last strength and ask me, “Why is Bebee not coming around these days? Are you two fighting?” Meanwhile, Boakye was around in the morning and she saw him.

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All along, I knew he was Benjamin Boakye but one day, while making preparations for our wedding, we met his secondary schoolmate in town and he shouted, “Heerh BB, are you still in the country? It’s been ages!” While the two of them stood there talking about memories of the past, I stood aside thinking about what I just heard. “He’s BB? How different is BB from Bebee?”

When we were going I said, “He called you BB?” He responded, “Yeah. Back in school, that’s how everyone called me, BB. My initials. Even my own family started calling me BB until it changed at some point.”

All of a sudden, I felt like somebody was walking over my grave. “Grandma might be right but how did she know?”

At this point, Grandma was too sick to speak freely. She had been bed-bound for over a year and was waiting for her time to come. I knelt in front of her bed and whispered, “How did you know about Bebee? Did you dream about him? Someone mentioned the name and you heard it? Did you have a friend in your younger days who was called Bebee? Boakye is BB. Was that what you wanted to say but couldn’t say it well?”

She lay in bed looking at me with her eyes wide open and her lips shaking like a machine struggling to manufacture words. She was saying something but she was the only one who could hear what she was saying. I told her, “Anyway, our wedding is very soon. I pray you get better so you come to our wedding.”

A day before our wedding, I went with Boakye to see her. She was sleeping. She didn’t open her eyes to see us. I asked Boakye, “Do you remember she called you Bebee the first time she saw you? I think she was trying to say BB.”

He smiled at the coincidence of it and said, “How is that possible?” I answered, “I don’t know but old age is made of memories with a dash of nightly dreams. She might have seen you in a dream or something. It’s weird the way she told me I had a husband called Bebee even when I didn’t have a boyfriend.”

The next day we got married. Grandma wasn’t there. It saddened my heart. I wanted her to see me in my wedding gown so much so that after everything, we went home in our wedding dress to see her. She couldn’t talk but she could see us. Her lips were still shaking but no sound came out of it. We spent about ten minutes by her side and later said goodbye.

On early Sunday morning, around 5:30 a.m., the sound of my phone woke me up. It was my mom. She was crying. She said, “Asor is gone.”

She was eighty-five but her death felt like the death of a woman in her teens. I cried on the phone. Mom was wailing. I could hear from the background that others were also crying loudly. I woke Boakye up with the name my grandma used to call him, “Bebee, wake up. My grandma is dead.” He buried his face in his palm. When he lifted his face off his palm, there were tears in his eyes.

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We packed our things and went home, never to return to our honeymoon. Grandma is dead and gone but the name she called my husband still exists. Bebee. I believe it’s BB. Maybe she dreamt about it but couldn’t grasp the name right so BB became Bebee.

I call him Bebee now. People think it’s a corrupt version of Baby, an alluring name I call my husband. It’s not. It’s a way to keep my grandma’s dream alive. She’s gone but she’s with us anytime we mention Bebee.