We were in school together, during our SHS days. He was a loud boy. I avoided him because everyone around him got into problems. Anytime a group of guys had an issue with a teacher, Bilson would be the leader of the group. In JHS one, he brought his parents in to sign a bond of good behaviour. In JHS two he was suspended from school for two weeks. When he came back, he signed another bond of good behaviour.

When I was elected school prefect instead of his friend, he walked up to me and asked how much I paid before I was given the position. When I didn’t answer his question, he whispered, “Or you’re sleeping with the headmaster?”

I threatened to report him to the headmaster, a move if I followed through, he would have been expelled from the school. When I told him I was going to report him, he said, “Go. I’m waiting for you here. Maybe you’ll come back with the headmaster and he himself will answer.”

I hated him but I loved his fearlessness. If I had an ounce of it, I would rule the world. I didn’t report him but I kept avoiding him until we wrote our final exams and left the school.

I didn’t set my eyes on him again right after school. I heard from my mates in different secondary schools but it looked like no one knew his whereabouts.

Eleven years later on an Easter Monday, I was at the beach with friends when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and saw this gentleman with a broad smile on. I hesitated for a few seconds before asking who he was. “Jennifer, You say you don’t know me?”

I squinted to take a critical look at his face. I imagined his face without the beard. I looked at him from sideways and said, “Of course I know you. Bilson…”

I started snapping my fingers, trying hard to pronounce his surname. He added it for me and I repeated it loudly, “Of course I know you. Who would ever forget someone like you?”

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We took a seat under a coconut tree and recounted the days when we were young. He looked healthy and learned. Judging from who he was when we were young and who I was looking at, he had done a lot for himself. I asked where he had been and he told me the places where life had taken him to. He went to Togo to continue his education and came back to Ghana. It was the reason no one heard from him after school.

He had come back to town to visit his grandmother just like I’d also come to town to see my parents. We exchanged contacts and said goodbye just before the sunset.

When he was leaving town, he called to tell me. When I eventually left, I called to tell him. The conversation between us grew longer each day until we started telling each other sweet nothings. “If I knew you would grow up to be this beautiful, I wouldn’t have bullied you in school,” he told me. I answered, “If I knew you would appear out of nowhere to sweep me off my feet like you’ve done, I would have gotten closer to know you better.”

Our relationship was three months old when he decided to travel to Accra to come and see me. He was working between Togo and Ghana so he chose to settle in one of the border towns. It was far from Accra but right after the first visit, he made it a weekly affair. One day, I took some days off work and went to visit him.

While crossing the Togo border with him, he asked me, “Have you ever travelled abroad before?” I shook my head. He said, “Write it down. I’m the first guy to take you abroad.” He jumped over an imaginary line and jumped back while saying “Togo. Ghana. Togo. Ghana” depending on where his feet landed.

I spent a week with him and each evening, he took me to a different place in Togo. It was like he was showing me the whole of Togo in one week.

The day I was on the bus leaving Togo, he sent me a voice note. I listened keenly, trying to grasp every word and make meaning out of them. He was speaking French. I didn’t understand French. I texted, “What do you mean?” He answered, “What happened to the French you studied in JHS, dear girls SP?”

He didn’t explain the French but kept sending me French Voice notes whenever he had to send me a voice note. With time, I listened to them and recorded gibberish of my own, filled with ‘pardon’ and ‘je suis,’ the only French words that stuck in JHS.

On our one-year anniversary, we found ourselves back in the town where it all started. He was there to visit his grandma and I was there to visit my parents but most importantly, we were there to celebrate the moment when the universe decided to bring us back together.

When we got to the beach that day, the brass band had already assembled and was playing the best tunes. He held my hands and squeezed a dance from my feet. He was erratic, like a kid with a new toy. He laughed as if something big was happening in his life. We had some food and bought some drinks. We sat on the cloth I spread on the sand.

All of a sudden, he got up and started removing his shirt. I asked, “What are you doing?” He responded gleefully, “Going to swim of course.”

He folded his shirt and shorts and placed them on top of his slippers in front of me and started running backward to the sea. He was laughing and winking at me. I smiled back. He ran until he went missing in the crowd. I continued drinking, watching passersby and judging people in skimpy dresses.

A few moments later, I saw a group of men rushing to the sea while the women were screaming, “He’s going. He’s drowning.” The screams got louder and louder until almost everyone’s focus shifted to where the men were running. I stood up and watched what was going on. It looked like a frantic search for someone who was drowning. It happens every year. It’s either the person drowns or gets lucky and is rescued.

But this one looked like he/she wasn’t getting lucky. I started looking around for Bilson, screaming out his name and searching frantically for him. I rushed closer to the beach and a lady pointed at me, “This is the lady he was with.”

I was dazed.”You mean…? No.” I kept screaming until she told me, “He’s the one they are searching for. He went too far and the waves swept him away.”

Over an hour later, they were still searching for him. I was standing there crying and praying it should be a dream. “How am I going to report this?”

The sun turned orange and slowly went back to its sleeping place. It was getting darker so the searchers gave up. It took three days before his body was finally found. By that time I’d given up hope and turned pale. I couldn’t look at his body. Pictures were taken but I couldn’t watch them. He was buried like a nobody.

Two weeks after his burial, I found out I was pregnant. I fell on my bed and cried as if it was just yesterday that Bilson died. I was asking questions. “What am I going to do with this? A dead man’s child? When he grows up, what am I going to say to him about his father?”

I would open my WhatsApp and listen to the voice notes he sent me. I still didn’t understand the French but I found it consoling. While it plays, I said, “If you can hear me, I have news for you. We are pregnant. What do you want me to do with it?”

One day I decided I wasn’t going to have the child. He’s gone and it will be too much pain for me to harbour something that will remind me of him every day. Before I gathered the courage to do it. I forwarded the voice note he sent me the day I was leaving Togo to a friend who could speak French to interpret it for me. What the friend said was, “I can’t wait for the day you’ll be my wife so you don’t have to leave again. Safe journey and see you soon.”

I cried while smiling. I said, “I’m keeping it. It’s my child too. I’m keeping it.”

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I gave birth to a boy. He’s four years old now. Bilson’s family came to name him. They gave him his father’s name because they believed it was his father who had come back as a child. The resemblance is striking. He took everything and left nothing.

If what they believe is true, then Bilson gave himself to me as a gift before drowning that day. One day this boy will grow up and ask about his father and I’ll show him all I have left of him; his folded shirt on his shorts, his slippers and a phone he left in his pocket. I hope that will be enough to show him who his father was.

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—Jennifer

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