I sat on a bus with my mom to our hometown. The bus was going to Kumasi from Accra. We would get to Kumasi, pick a trotro to the junction of our village, and then pick a rickety taxi to our village. My mom leaned on the bus seat and began sleeping even before the bus would move. I was reading when this gentleman asked me, “Is there someone seated next to you?”

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I looked up. Our eyes met. I shook my head. He said thank you before sitting down, as if the seat belonged to me and I gifted it to him. I was sandwiched between him and my mom. We sat in silence; mom sleeping, me reading my book, and him looking around and occasionally glancing at what I was reading. When the bus moved, he leaned back into his seat and breathed heavily. He started whispering his prayers. I didn’t hear a thing until he said Amen.

I was happy to sit next to God’s child. I felt safe, actually. If an accident happened and God had to save his own, I imagined he would extend his saving grace to me and my mom too, just because we were seated next to his child. His grace is that fluid. It flows and soils the dresses of those sitting close by.

God’s Child picked up a conversation with me about what I was reading. I closed the book for him to see the back cover. “Wow, that would be interesting,” he uttered. “Is it a romantic comedy? Or about love?” I told him it was about war, set in the 1800s when people didn’t have phones to play games with, so they played games with their own lives. He smiled, and the conversation started.

My mom woke up, looked at who I was talking to, and went back to sleep. She would open her eyes occasionally and shut them again. When we reached the Konongo traffic jam, she didn’t sleep anymore. God’s Child didn’t know she was my mom. Just when we were about to reach Kumasi, he asked if he could get my number. My mom heard it, so she leaned forward to look at his face. I was reluctant, but he kept pushing for it. My mom said, “If he wants it, give it to him. Is your phone going to call itself?”

God’s Child retorted, “Thank you, Mom,” and then he smiled, his eyes glowing. My mom started reciting my number for him to hear. I told him to save it because it was correct. “Anyway, that’s my mom,” I said. He sobered down. “Oh really? Mom, sorry, I didn’t know she’s your daughter.”

You could see he was embarrassed, but my mom only smiled. When we were in the rickety taxi entering our village, my mom asked if God’s Child had called me. When I shook my head, she wondered if she had given him the right number. “I always bring the 2 before the 7 instead of the other way around. I hope that’s not what I did,” she said. I asked why she cared about a stranger’s call, and she told me, “Didn’t you see his knees? You’re short. You deserve a tall man like him so your kids will be close to the grace of being tall.”

She said yes to my dad because of the family he came from, though he was short—something she said her peers mocked her for, that she wasn’t tall yet decided to date a short man. She was trying to correct her mistake through me. We spent four days in the village; God’s Child didn’t call. When we sat in the bus coming back to Accra, my mom asked again, “Nti abrantiɛ no anfrɛ wo?” When I nodded, she concluded that she might have given him the wrong number. She didn’t believe a man would insist on getting a lady’s number the way God’s Child did and then end up not calling.

He called a week later. I didn’t tell my mom. He asked about my mom, and I told him she had been worried about giving him the wrong number. He said confidently, “God wouldn’t allow that to happen.” I asked why God should care, and he answered, “Because he knows what he does, and he never fails.”

According to him, it was God’s plan for him to meet me. He told me after he took my number, he decided not to call, but each night when he slept, he had a dream about me. My mom was also in the dream, calling him an in-law.

He asked if we could meet, but I kept postponing until we met a month later. We met again the following week, and then he proposed. I responded, “The one who’ll say yes to your proposal isn’t here, so how are you going to win?” We burst out laughing, and he asked when he was going to meet my mom. I told him he couldn’t meet her unless he was ready to meet my dad too. He shrugged his shoulders and asked why not.

All this while, I hadn’t told my mom he had called. I guessed she had moved on, believing she had given him the wrong number. The day my mom saw him, she screamed and jumped, acting like a kid who had seen her favorite person. “I thought I’d given you the wrong number. I wouldn’t have forgiven myself. Come and sit down, my in-law.”

She shouted for my dad to come out and meet his in-law. I said, “Mom, what kind of embarrassment is that? Who said he’s your in-law?”

“Mmai!” She hissed at me.

When my dad came, she tried to jog his memory: “Do you remember the story I told you about the gentleman I said I gave Abena’s number to?”

“The one you met on the bus?”
“Yes! Here’s the gentleman.”
“I thought you said the number was wrong.”
“Oh, it wasn’t wrong after all. Abena didn’t tell me he called.”

Many great milestones had been achieved in my life, but none made my mom behave the way she did that day. In SHS, I was the best student in my class and came home with awards each speech and prize-giving day, but my mom never acted like that. I had straight A’s and one B in my final results. She looked at it and asked what I was thinking that I didn’t get an A in the one I got a B. I had a scholarship to the university, but my mom didn’t react like this to the news.

It made me wonder what she had seen in God’s Child. This time, she didn’t mention his long knees. She said, “I was happy he was fighting for your number even when you had said no. No is an embarrassing answer for a man, but he kept trying. That was a good sign.”

Three months after meeting my parents, God’s Child returned with his parents and family to perform the knocking rite. A month after that, I was standing in front of a giant mirror in a hotel room, looking at myself through a white veil, a veil my mom had placed over my head and had prayed over me. She whispered, “His hands will be on this marriage. You’ll be happy, my daughter.”

I choked with tears, but I blocked them from falling so they wouldn’t mess up my makeup. I walked the aisle with that assurance in my heart that God’s hands were on us, and we were going to be happy.

Have we always been happy?

No! No one stays happy every day for twelve years.

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That’s not how life was designed. A little up and down here and there, a feeling of fear when things go wrong, and that whispering doubt that makes you feel unsure of tomorrow. We’ve had it all, but regret? No.

We’ve had joy, we’ve dined with grace, and we’ve stared horror in the face and still moved forward. We’ve been joyful to have found each other. We have three kids. Yes, they are tall. Even my mom’s visceral dreams came to pass.

—Abena

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