My mother was pregnant with me when my father died. The story of his death is very sketchy. Some say it’s a snake bite that killed him. Some also say they used juju to finish him off because of family litigation about a piece of land. My grandma had the full version of the story. She said the piece of land was given to my father and his siblings by their father. And then one rich came to the scene to buy the land. His siblings wanted to sell but my dad didn’t want to. One day he went to the farm and felt that something has bitten him. He didn’t see what that was. It could be anything but because it didn’t give him much pain, he treated it lightly. He came home and slept as if nothing had happened. He woke up the next day with a swollen leg. A week later, he was gone. He was only thirty-five. 

My mom had to come back home to her mother to help her with her bread business. I was five years old when my mother traveled with me to Bekwai to work with a cocoa company. I was very little then but I saw the transition. One day we were working next to my grandma in front of her oven. The next day, we were in a place where my mother was in wellington boot roaming from farm to farm. It was a new house in a new place and a new beginning for us. I found myself in a new school and started making new friends. Life was a little bit better. At least, we didn’t wake up at dawn slaving away next to my grandma’s oven. 

My mother started leaving me with a woman who was living in our house. She would be gone for days and come back later for me. She didn’t tell me anything. Maybe she thought I was too young to care. When she was traveling and that woman wasn’t around, she would take me to another woman who lived in a house not too far from ours. I was always alternating between these two women until one day my mom came home with a man. Mr. Gyamfi. He didn’t explain their relationship but the man came around often. Sometimes he comes and sleepover. When he sleeps over, my mom would send me to the other woman. We were living in a single room. I was in class six or so. I could put one and one together to understand what was happening.

My mom had found a new man. What made me like this man was that he had a car. One rickety car that brought a new sense of pride in me. You could hear the approaching sound of the car from a kilometer away. Its sound was one of a kind. Immediately I hear the sound of the car approaching in the night, I will take my cloth and walk to the other woman’s room and knock. “Yes, who is there?” I will respond, “It’s me Dufie. Mr. Gyamfi has come so my mother says I should come and sleep here.” Maa Gladys. She was never angry with my incessant intrusion into her life. She always welcomed me with a smile. 

I was in Junior high school when Mr. Gyamfi and my mom got married. At first, I wasn’t happy about their marriage for one reason. I thought Mr. Gyamfi would come and live permanently with us and push me to sleep permanently in Maa Gladys’ room. It turned out differently. After marriage, we packed our things and left our single room to live in Mr. Gyamfi’s house. The joy was different. I had my own room with a small radio. The house had a big hall with a big TV. It was my first time seeing a fridge in a kitchen. Where I came from, a fridge was a decorative object. You leave it in the hall so it becomes part of the decoration. But this one was in the kitchen, closer to the sink. I said in my head, “This could be the paradise we heard about in Sunday school.”

I called him father and he called me daughter. Someday, he would drive me to school in his rickety car and I would make sure all my classmates see me coming to school in a car. Those I saw on the road, I screamed their names, stuck my neck out, and waved at them. Those I met at the school compound, I made sure I called their attention to me so they would watch me walk majestically out of the car. I forgot about my dead father. Mr. Gyamfi was the father I ever needed. He was kind I must say. He never treated me like a stepchild or someone who was a distraction to his marriage. He even attended my PTA sometimes. When he did, he came to my class to ask the teacher how I was doing.

My mom got pregnant a year after they got married. She told me, “You’re going to be a big sister very soon.” I couldn’t wait. I’ve always been alone in that big house. I couldn’t live as a child because I had no one to play around with. I was eager to meet whoever was coming to take that boredom away. One dawn I heard the roaring sound of Mr. Gyamfi’s car engine. I woke up but I was still in bed. I heard voices in the house murmuring things I had to strain my ears before I could hear. One said, “Slowly, don’t rush her.” Another said, “Be careful not to touch her stomach, she’s already bleeding.” They kept saying, “Slow, don’t rush her.” I came out to see my mom in the hands of neighbors who were helping her into the car. “Her time is due,” I said in my head. Mr. Gyamfi saw me and asked me to go back to sleep. He wasn’t looking cheerful. His mustache was standing straight as if they were being blown by invisible air.

I went inside, doing all my best to sleep. I woke up in the morning and saw a lot more strangers in the house. These ones were no close neighbors. They were community people. Mr. Gyamfi was wearing only nickers and had tucked himself at the corner of the veranda, crying. “Did the baby die?” I asked myself. If it did then where’s my mother? Still at the hospital?” But something didn’t look right. It wasn’t likely that a baby’s death would be mourned the way I was seeing. Then it hit me that it could be my mother who was dead. I tried rushing to Mr. Gyamfi and I was held back by one of the strangers in the house. He said, “Go inside. This is not the time to wake up.” 

What’s this man talking about? It’s already daybreak and you’re telling me to go back to sleep? I screamed, “What’s going on here? Where is my mother?” I looked at Mr. Gyamfi’s face. The crying had intensified. The women there started wailing, mentioning my mother’s name in their wailing. A dirge was being sung with my mother’s name but I still went around asking where my mother was. Nobody told me. I got it. I’d lost my mother too. I’d become a fresh orphan in the morning I expected a new sibling. I wrote the date down; “17th August 2011.” It was a Wednesday. My mother went to the hospital with pregnancy complications and never came back.

They took the body of my mother back to our hometown for burial. I went with it and I never went back to Mr. Gyamfi’s house again. I was back to where it all began, the heat of my grandma’s oven and the scent of fresh early morning bread. I had to go back to my old school, join the friends I left behind in their current class and pretend everything was a dream—a dream I just woke up from. I started living life again without Mr. Gyamfi and the roaring sound of his rickety car. 

I completed JHS and went to SHS. When life got harder for us, my grandma called Mr. Gyamfi to help and he helped. He sent money for my fees sometimes and also sent money for provisions. He was there to help if only my granny would call him and ask for help. I never saw him. He never came to visit me in school. As I was growing up, I figured he had moved on, married again, and was enjoying life in his rickety car. I thought of him sometimes. I missed the days I was with him. People move on so he would move on at some point. 

I completed SHS and had very poor grades. Everything in me wanted to go to the university but my grades won’t allow me. I did a resit twice before I was able to put my grades in a shape that would qualify me for nursing training. I got admission but the money to take me to school wasn’t available. While home, I worked and saved some money but it wasn’t enough. My grandma suggested, “Why don’t you call your father and see. He had been a great help in times of need and I believe he would come through for you again. For the first time in so many years, I called Mr. Gyamfi myself. I had to introduce myself before he could even remember me. I told him my problem and he sent me money. I was grateful. I thanked him profusely.

My grandma told me, “He will help you but don’t wait until you need help before you call him. Call him often and ask how he’s doing. Build a relationship with him before your needs arrive. That way, he will willingly help without feeling you’re only interested in his help.” I took Grandma’s advice. I called him once every week. I even called him on his birthdays. I called him on the 17th of August 2019. I told him, “Do you know it’s exactly eight years today since mother died? Yeah, I wrote the date down after I saw you at the corner there crying.” 

Obviously, I brought back memories of something he might have consciously blocked from his mind. He called my mom a great woman. He said he would never meet her type of woman. “I’ve tried it three times with different women but it didn’t work. Your mom was special. She was my soulmate—the only woman who could make it work.” And then he said, “Why don’t you come around one of these days? I’ve been speaking to you and your granny but I don’t know who you had become. Visit me sometime. We are still a family.” 

So in September 2019, I traveled to Bekwai to see him. He was so happy to see me. His mustache had been mowed down. He was looking a little bit slender. You could see intentions in his look. He was trying to stay younger. His rickety car was gone. He said, “When your mother died, that car didn’t work again. It started giving me problems so I sold it.” He had a new car. It looked modern. The house has had a facelift but it couldn’t erase the memories of my mom. I could see her walking in the compound in her wellington boot. The pictures of that dawn came flashing. Mr. Gyamfi was happy to see me and it made me proud. He didn’t stop telling me that I’d grown to look like my mother. It wasn’t strange to hear that because my grandma always said it to me. I spent a day there and left the following day. 

Weeks later he called me. He was struggling to say his reason for calling me. He said, “Ever since you came here, I’ve been having these series of dreams. Your mother appears in my dreams telling me to marry you. She said marriage won’t work with anyone except you. I’ve been disregarding the dreams but it keeps coming. Maybe she’s serious about it. The dead wants us together. I don’t know what you think about it.” I said, “Oh, but that’s just a dream. It’s because you saw me. Just try to forget about it and it won’t come again.” He said, “My dear, when the same dream comes more than thrice, you can’t ignore it. Think about it. It’s your mother’s call for us to be together.”

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I brushed it aside but the next thing I knew, it was my grandmother calling to tell me what Mr. Gyamfi had told her. I said, “It’s that man serious at all? Don’t mind him. Why didn’t he have that dream when he hadn’t seen me? If it’s indeed true then it’s his mind playing tricks on him. He saw me and all of a sudden the ghost of my mother started talking to him? How is that possible.” I told my aunt about it and she laughed. She said, “He saw you and all of a sudden devilish intentions have descended down his waist. Don’t mind him.” 

Covid happened and he mellowed on his request. He didn’t call often and I was trying every means not to hear from him again. Last year, he started again. I told him, “I’m in doing exams. Kindly give me some time to complete school so I can have a clear mind to think about things.” Since I told him that, he sent me money every month. 

I’m no longer in school. He has started calling again; “Do you want us to disrespect the wishes of your mother? The one person we both love and adore?” I asked him, “So if she asked you to kill me, would you have done it? It’s just a dream, let’s not act on it.”

The last time I had a conversation on this topic, my grandma said, “There’s a way we can confirm what he’s saying. We can also do our inquiries and see if he’s telling the truth. There’s always a way around things.” She wants us to visit a shrine. I don’t want to do that. I’m too young to be involved in such things. It was hard for me to do it but I blocked his number at some point. When he calls and he doesn’t get through to me, he calls my grandma. They both think I’m being ungrateful but I can’t live with the thought of sleeping next to a man who once laid with my mother. Nothing in this world would make me do that. Even if the gods decree, I still will disobey. 

Currently, I’m only bidding my time. I will start working soon and leave home. When I do, I will cut them off. I will call my grandma often and visit but she won’t get the chance to call to remind me of what Gyamfi has said. That’s my solution for now.      

—Dufie

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