When my parents broke up and were going their separate ways, my dad chose me. He chose me out of three kids and decided I was the one he was going to live with. I thought he liked my junior sister more, the last born. He had spent most of his days drooling over her, giving her unnecessary attention. I thought if he had to choose, it would be her but he didn’t. He chose me and left the house with me. I remember him telling me; “If I leave you with your mom, you won’t be able to go to the university when your result comes. You’re the first child, and smart. You have to go to school.” 

I relocated to a new place with my dad to begin life again. The two of us became the best of friends. He had no choice because I was the only thing left in his life. He would go to work and come with yam. He’ll throw it at me and ask me to cook it. Both of us didn’t learn how to cook from my mom so we struggled. I’ll cut the peels of the yam and cut most of the food with the peels. It didn’t matter. In the end, we had some left to eat. Yam was his favourite so he bought it often and with time I learned how to peel it expertly. 

I’ll cut the yam into two halves and dad would put a stick inside the half we won’t peel and eat that day. He’ll tell me a stick in yam helps to preserve it. I’ll laugh at his archaicness. He’ll call me a child and life would continue. 

When my results came, I did very well and as he was determined to do, he bought forms for me and I later gained admission into the university. Leaving home was hard. It felt like I was leaving a relationship I’d nurtured all my life. I was losing a friend and a father and that pained my heart but I had to go. He told me to be a good boy and learn hard; the normal advice that fathers give when their child is leaving home. No one listens to advise anyway. They themselves didn’t listen when they were young but they’ll pass it on to their children who’ll also not listen. It’s a circle. No one listens but we keep the circle going. 

I went to school and fell in love. 

I broke my virginity in the hall I was sharing with three others. It was an unwritten code of the brotherhood. When the woman comes in, everyone will leave the room, giving us space and time to explore. In the first year, I had a girl but she left me before we went to the second year. While on vacation, I saw a lady in our vicinity. It was her breast that caught my attention. I’ve never seen anything that beautiful. She had also come home for vacation, an SHS student. I proposed and she accepted. I spent all the days of the vacation with her. She would come home and help me to cook. She saw a yam with a stick in it and thought it was a sacrifice. When I told her we were preserving it, she laughed. I told her, “Try it. It works.” She shook her head. 

A day before I went back to school, she came to visit. As usual, dad has gone to work so I had the whole house to myself. I was leaving for school the next day so we decided to have a special day together. We kissed a lot. We were sitting in the hall watching TV. She came to sit on my lap to make things easier. Before we knew it, we were on the sofa doing our own thing. 

We didn’t hear any footsteps and didn’t hear the sound of the door. All I heard was, “Herh Ansah, what are you doing?” I turned back and saw my dad standing at the back of the sofa we were in. We quickly sat up and started looking for our dresses. “Is this what you do when I leave you in the house? Herh Ansah!

Mildred was dressing up while I was looking back at my dad with dread in my eyes. I didn’t know what to say. He was so angry and visibly shaking. Mildred sneaked out of the door while I contended with my dad. His attention wasn’t on Mildred but on me. I thought he would hit me. I thought he would do something crazy to me. I was dead scared while watching him scream at me. 

I should have gone to school the next day but I couldn’t go. He didn’t give me money. He didn’t talk to me. I went to him and begged for forgiveness but he didn’t even look at me. He said, “If that’s what you’ll do with your education then it ends here. I’m not going to waste any more of my money on a porn star.” 

I wish he could slap me and leave my education alone. For days this man pretended I didn’t exist. My heart was aching. It felt like everything was ending for me. I called my uncles and my aunties. I could see him on the phone talking. I could hear the conversation was about me but he wouldn’t say anything to me afterwards. One day after such a conversation on the phone, he told me, “I won’t let this slip without doing anything. I know the girl. I know her home and know her parents. I know one day you’ll bring a woman home and ask for my blessing to be able to marry her. It better be her or no one else. If you could sleep with her in my hall, then you should equally be willing to marry her.”

After that event, Mildred and I didn’t talk much. She went back to school and I went back to school. She didn’t have a phone then so it was hard for communication to exist between us. Because of what happened, on every vacation, my dad sent me to my mom to live with her until school would reopen. With time, I lost my way back to Mildred and she lost her way back to whatever existed between us. 

I was doing my national service when my dad died. After his funeral, nothing else existed for me. I was totally broken. My life was lighter. Nothing got me interested in life again. I saw my mom mourning my dad deeply as if they didn’t break up. That brought some sort of healing to my heart, knowing everyone else was hurting just like I was. 

Life must go on. When things came back to normal for me, I met Linda and thought she was the one. A year later, I found out that I wasn’t the only man in her life. Even though I was ready to forgive her, she walked away. She went chasing after the other guy because he was the one for her. I met Efia. I met Cassandra. They were both good women but when the wind of change blew over our lives, it blew them away. Adjoa also came along. Mavis. Alberta. Eyram. Akweley. All of them didn’t work out. I came to accept that women were not good for me or I wasn’t good for women that was why they all left eventually.  I gave up on women and instead concentrated on my career and my mom and siblings. 

Mom started talking about grandchildren when I was thirty-three. “When are they coming? You should name a child after your dad. When are you going to do that? You’re waiting till I’m also gone before you do it?” 

Mom didn’t know my struggle. Women were not good for me. 

I was having a conversation with an old friend who reminded me of Mildred. We were all living in the same neighbourhood then so I asked if he knew her whereabouts. He said, “You’ll be shy to talk to her if you see her now. She’s been going abroad and back as if it’s local travel. She’s a big girl now.”

He couldn’t get me a number or anything but he told me he was friends with her on Facebook so I went to Facebook to look for her. I sent her a friend’s request and she responded. I sent her a message. It took weeks to get a response. She told me she wasn’t coming to Facebook often so I took her number and we talked. She was excited to talk to me and I was overly excited. We couldn’t talk so much about the past because there was nothing graceful there. She asked about my dad and asked if he still put sticks in yam. I told her; “Dad died. He died even before I could complete my national service.”

She sent her condolences and told me she would see me when she comes to Ghana. We didn’t stop talking. One day we found ourselves talking about relationships. Her first phrase was; “Men? I don’t want to go there. They never speak the truth.” She spoke about all her failed relationships and I spoke about mine to her. There seemed to be a pattern. We both couldn’t keep a relationship over the one-year line. 

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She came to Ghana and we met. We gathered courage and talked about that day; the day my dad caught us. She asked, “What did he do to you after I left?” I told her everything and his final words before he forgave me.” She said, “After that day, he came to my house. I thought he was going to tell my parents about what happened but he didn’t. He looked at me extensively before he left my house that day.” 

On the phone one evening I asked if she was seeing someone else and she said yes. “But you know men. There’s a reason the Bible said we shouldn’t put our trust in men. The Bible used men because God himself knows men can’t be trusted.” We laughed but that evening I put the stick in the middle of my yam to preserve my stand in her life. I said, “I pray it works but if it doesn’t, let me know. What I had for you didn’t die. We could nurture it again to prove that old love is the best form of love.”

He was in Ghana when Covid struck. She couldn’t travel back to see the man she was in a relationship with. I had the chance to make things happen for us and I took it. The distance between us was long but I travelled to see her every weekend, even during the lockdown. One day, she said yes to me. I asked, “How about the other man?” She answered, “It was going downhill and then Covid happened. Covid made it worse. I had to walk away to preserve the little sanity I have in these hard times.” 

That was April 2020. 

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On my father’s tenth anniversary, I went to his grave with her, carrying a boy we named after him. We went to give him flowers. I said, “I brought a girl who’s my wife. It’s her. Look at her, do you remember her? You know her face and you know her home. You know her parents and you know what happened on the sofa that day. We are here with a boy we named after you. We have come for your blessings.” 

He didn’t say anything. Of course, the dead don’t talk but I could imagine him smiling and I could imagine him saying, “Now your sins are forgiven. Go in peace.”

–Ansah

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