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Speak the truth, even when your voice shakes.

—ANONYMOUS

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 CHAPTER 1

“I’m not going. Nothing you can say will make me change my
mind.” Amorkor’s breath hitched as she tried very hard to keep the tears
from flowing down her face. She folded her arms and turned her face away
from me. Though she had bathed, she was still in her house clothes.
Tsotsoo’s lower lip had begun to tremble. She scrunched up her face and
let out a wail. “Sister Amerley, me too, I won’t go. They’ll just send us back
for school fees.”
We were in front of our single room in the compound house we shared
with nine other families. The compound was made up of three
semidetached one-room buildings along each of the three fence walls. Our
landlord’s three-bedroom house, complete with indoor bath, kitchen, and
toilet, made up the last wall. Each of the single units was the same: walls
badly needing paint, torn mosquito nettings, warped front doors opening
onto the one room for living, sleeping, and storage. We all shared a
communal bathroom. There was no toilet.
A cashew tree stood in the center of the compound. It served as our
community center. It was where the landlord met with our parents,
neighbors caught up on gossip and life in the evenings, and the children
played in the afternoons. All around us, our neighbors were in various
stages of getting ready to leave for school or work. Chickens were foraging
in the red soil for insects. Someone had cut plantain leaves for the goats and
hung them on the cashew tree.
Earlier, I’d been admiring the swirly pattern our brooms had made on
the red soil. It was our week to sweep the compound, and though my sisters
and I had done a good job, goat droppings now littered most of the
compound. I rubbed my forehead. My head was pounding and it was just
seven in the morning. I couldn’t seem to focus on anything with this
headache. I’d been up since dawn fetching water for my family and one of
the neighbors. The taps had been off for five days. Our neighbor had given
me five cedis for the fifteen buckets I’d carried to fill the water drum in the
corner of her veranda. Since my mother, Amerley-mami, no longer worked,
we couldn’t afford to buy water from the water tankers.
I’d used that money I’d earned to buy koko, a thick maize porridge, and
koose, fried bean cakes, for my sisters. My head was threatening to split
open, the pounding in tandem with my heartbeat. The left part of my head
felt like it was caught in a vise. My sister’s cries were making it worse.
“Listen, today is the first day of school. No one will send you back
because of school fees.” I shut my eyes and tried to will the pain away.
What I’d said was the truth. No one would send my sisters home for fees on
the first day of school. I knew that firsthand. I’d been sent home for school
fees all my life. Never on the first day, though; it was usually during
midterms or just before our end-of-term exams.
Amorkor lost the battle with her tears and they flowed down her face as
if a dam somewhere within her had burst open, and maybe it had. We had
had a terrible Christmas. There’d been no new clothes or shoes. No cookies
or soft drinks. No jollof rice or chicken. Nothing. Christmas had passed like
any other day. New Year’s Day had been better. We had heard one of the big
churches was sharing packed lunches for kayayei and their children. We’d
joined the thousands of street children and head porters on the streets that
morning and had come home with mismatched fos clothes and packs of
fried rice with three pieces of gizzard and a bottle of Coke each. It didn’t
matter that the clothes were used, were several sizes too big, and smelled
like mothballs, or that the fried rice had begun to go slimy. I was just
thankful that we’d had food to eat that day. As for our clothes, I was good
with a thread and needle—I would do the necessary adjustments and at least
my sisters would have decent clothes to wear.
“I’m not going,” Amorkor said again.
Tsotsoo’s wails went up a notch higher in solidarity.
“What is going on here? Can’t we have any peace in this house? What’s
all this crying for?” Nuumo shouted from his home across the courtyard. He
was in a pair of khaki shorts and an undershirt that looked more yellow than
white. At the sight of Nuumo, both Amorkor and Tsotsoo stopped their
tears. He broke off a twig from the neem tree beside his house, stripped the
bark, and stuck it into his mouth.
 “Aren’t you girls going to school? What are you still doing here when
your friends are already on their way? Do you want to be late on the first
day?”
My sisters scurried off to get dressed before Nuumo was even done with
his questions. He was walking toward us. He had softened the ends of the
neem twig and was using it to clean his teeth.
“Good morning, Nuumo,” I greeted him.
“Don’t ‘good morning’ me. Where’s my money?”
He had stopped asking where my parents, Amerley-mami and Ataa,
were months ago.
I stood there silent. I’d run out of excuses and he knew it.
“If I don’t have my money by six p.m., I’ll have no choice but to evict
you tomorrow. There are two families who are ready to pay me two years’
advance. I also have a family to feed. Tonight. Six p.m.” He hacked up a
glob of yellowish phlegm and spat it at my feet.
I sank onto a stool by our door and rested my head on the wooden pane.
Where was I going to get the rent money from?
My three sisters came out. They were all dressed and ready to go.
Though their uniforms were old, they were clean and ironed. I sat up
straight and forced a smile onto my face. I don’t know where Amarkai had
managed to get the stale bread from, but she held a piece in her hand. The
minute the animals saw her, they ran toward us. She broke off pieces of
moldy bread for the chickens and goats. The dogs just wanted to be petted.
“I’ll get the money for your fees by the end of the week.”
My sisters had skeptical looks on their faces. Even Tsotsoo, who was
only six.
“I promise.”
“That’s what you said before Christmas,” Amorkor said.
“It’s true. Madam Fosua owes me money. When I went to her house,
they said she’d gone to her hometown for the holidays. She should be back
this week.”
Amorkor sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Tsotsoo
was looking at Amorkor to decide what to do next. I gave them each a one-
cedi note as their lunch money. Amorkor picked up her bag and walked out
of the courtyard. Tsotsoo did the same.
“What about the rent?” Amarkai asked when Amorkor and Tsotsoo
were out of hearing range.
 I offered her a weak smile. “I’ll figure it out. Don’t worry.”
“But Nuumo said—”
“Don’t worry about Nuumo. You’ll be late if you don’t hurry.”
There was still a look of doubt on her face as she chased Amorkor and
Tsotsoo. Tsotsoo turned and gave me one last wave before the three of them
disappeared from view.

Tsotsoo is still the baby of the family. She almost lost her place six
months ago when Mama delivered a baby girl. Unfortunately, the baby was
stillborn. If she had lived she would have been called Fofo. I think Fofo is
such a lovely name. Both my parents are Ga, so there was no dispute over
our names. My clan has two sets of names that male members use
alternately between generations for their children. Because of this, every
man knows the names of all his prospective children. A man takes his
grandfather’s names for his children, and his grandsons take his name for
their children. We are also named according to our positions of birth. I’m
Naa Amerley because I’m the first girl. Next is Naa Amorkor, then Naa
Amarkai, then Tsotsoo, who really should have been called Naa Amatsoo.
Naa is because we are female. A boy would be Nii. The suffixes -ley, -okor,
-kai, -tso, and -fo for the first five females, and the suffixes -te, -tei, -twei, -
ai, and -yi for the first five males. It’s a bit confusing, but among Gas, once
you mention your name everyone knows which clan you’re from and your
hierarchy in the birth order.
If Fofo had been born a boy, she would have been called Nii Armah.
Ataa, my father, did not hide the fact that he’d hoped Fofo would be a boy.
In fact, he’d hoped we all had been born boys. When he’d been told the
baby was a stillborn girl, he’d slammed his fist into the wall at the maternity
clinic. Ataa used to be a bodybuilder when he was younger. He had let
himself go and had developed a paunch but he was still strong. He’d done
some major damage to that wall, but the nurses were too scared to say
anything. I’d thought he’d been upset that the baby was dead. I was wrong.
He’d stormed into the ward where my mother was lying in bed. I had
followed from a safe distance—crossing my father when he was angry was
never a good idea.
 “What’s wrong with you?” he’d screamed. “What type of woman are
you? Why can’t you give me sons?”
Amerley-mami had sobbed into her pillow. Everyone calls my mother
Amerley-mami, even me. That’s also a Ga thing. A woman becomes known
by the name of her first child after birth. It was while I was standing there
that I remembered what had happened six years earlier. I’d been at school
when my aunt, Auntie Odarkor, had come for Amorkor, Amarkai, and me.
“You have a new sister,” she had said, her eyes sparkling. She had taken
us to the maternity clinic where Amerley-mami was cradling Tsotsoo in the
crook of her arm. My sisters and I had watched our beautiful baby sister as
she slept. Amorkor and Amarkai soon lost interest in Tsotsoo and went out
to play.
In no time at all I heard Amarkai shout, “Onu mars, get set, pi.”
Almost immediately Amorkor started shouting, “Cheater! Cheater! You
started running before you said ‘pi.’ I won’t play again.”
I stayed by Amerley-mami’s bedside watching her and my new sister
sleep, so it was I who saw Ataa when he walked into the room. He reeked
of cigarettes and akpeteshie. He hadn’t come bearing gifts, but I was sure he
had already spent a small fortune on the locally brewed gin. Ataa is a
fisherman, so he walks with a rolling gait even when he is on land. His
movements that day were more clumsy and unsteady. He took two steps
into the room and stopped in front of the door.
“Look, a new baby,” I’d squealed.
“Another girl!” he’d slurred, and lumbered out of the room. He hadn’t
even gone to see Tsotsoo. He hadn’t come home that night. He hadn’t come
home a week later when it was time to name Tsotsoo, so her naming
ceremony was postponed. Ataa didn’t even send her a cloth. In our culture
when a baby is born, the father has to send the child a cloth to keep it warm.
Sending a cloth demonstrates that he is ready and willing to take on the
responsibility of looking after the child. I’m not sure anyone sticks to that
anymore, so Ataa could have been forgiven for not sending a cloth. What he
shouldn’t have been forgiven for was not showing up on the day of
Tsotsoo’s naming ceremony.
Because he didn’t show up, the ceremony wasn’t performed and Tsotsoo
was not named Naa Amatsoo. And because we couldn’t just keep calling
her “Baby” forever, my grandmother, whom we all call Awo, started calling
her Tsotsoo. It was only Ataa who had the right to name her Naa Amatsoo.
He never did. He came home two months after Tsotsoo’s birth. When
Amerley-mami asked him about Tsotsoo’s naming ceremony, he hit her so
hard she couldn’t walk for two weeks. She never brought it up again.
Ataa took to disappearing for months on end when Fofo died. Even
when things had been good between him and Amerley-mami, we were used
to him being gone days at a time on his fishing expeditions. Most of the
time my sisters and I were glad that he was gone. When he was home, we
had to be extra quiet because he slept during the day. He didn’t pay any
particular attention to us when he was awake. He only took notice of us
when he needed someone to send a bucket of water to the bathroom or to
buy him cigarettes and akpeteshie from Daavi’s kiosk down the road. We
heard he was shacked up with a divorcée who had twin boys in the next
town. Some also said he had moved in order to become a land guard for
some chiefs at Kasoa. Wherever he was, he hadn’t sent word to us. We
didn’t even know if he was still alive.

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 CHAPTER 2

I sat back on the stool and tried to figure out what to do. It
was true Madam Fosua owed me money. I had done her laundry for her a
few months back. But the money she owed me wouldn’t be enough for the
rent, let alone my sisters’ school fees. Now that school had reopened, there
were all these other costs that came with it—books, classes fees, feeding
fees, money for Wednesday worship, and who knew what else.
On days like this, it was easy to feel overwhelmed. It was easy to want
to give up and just stay in bed and pretend our problems did not exist,
which was exactly what Amerley-mami was doing. I felt tears burning in
my eyes but I blinked them back. Crying was pointless. I had to do
something and I had to do it fast. I couldn’t go to any of our neighbors.
Now that schools had reopened, none of them would have any money to
spare, let alone to pay rent for six months. I pushed myself off the stool and
went inside the room. It took a minute for my eyes to get accustomed to the
darkness. The girls had rolled up our mattresses and stacked them in the
corner. The four armchairs that made up our living room set were still in the
other corner, where we had pushed them to make way for our mattresses the
night before. I found some acetaminophen tablets they had given Amerley-
mami when she first came back from the hospital. I took two of them and
chased them down with a cup of water.
My sisters and I slept on two mattresses on the floor of our living room.
A curtain separated the living room from my parents’ sleeping area. When
Ataa was at home, the curtain remained down at night and Tsotsoo and I
shared one mattress and Amorkor and Amarkai the other. We heard, or
rather I heard, since my sisters were always fast asleep by that time,
everything that went on behind the curtain when my father was home.
Everything. Ataa being away meant that Tsotsoo and Amarkai got to sleep
on the big bed with Amerley-mami, which also meant that Amorkor and I
had our mattresses all to ourselves. When it was just Amerley-mami and us,
we would leave the curtain open so that what little breeze came into the
room from her side of the room would circulate in the living room where
we slept.
Amerley-mami’s still form lay on the bed. She had been in the same
nightie for almost a month. She sometimes got out of bed at night to pee
and drink some water and to eat whatever food I’d left her. Her hair was
matted and it stank. I don’t remember the last time she’d had a bath. She
avoided our neighbors. No one came to check on her anymore.
“Amerley-mami, Nuumo asked for the rent again,” I said, shaking her
when I got close to her bed. She was lying on her side with a faraway look
in her eyes. She gave no indication she had heard me.
“Amerley-mami, say something. He said he’ll evict us if we don’t pay
him by six tonight.” Tears had pooled in my eyes but again I refused to cry.
“You have to do something. I’m tired of begging him. I don’t know what to
do anymore. It’s not just him. We owe almost everyone in the house and the
girls haven’t paid their school fees. They started school today and Amorkor
is already asking for her fees. Don’t you care anymore? Don’t—”
Amerley-mami turned away from me and faced the wall.
I couldn’t keep it in any longer. I burst into tears beside my mother but
she didn’t budge. The pounding in my head got even worse. I wished my
parents cared just a little bit. I wished my relatives didn’t have their own
problems and could help us. I lay on the floor beside my mother’s bed for
about an hour hoping she would say something. Do something. My mother
didn’t move a limb. A heaviness had settled on my chest: if I didn’t do
anything, my sisters and I would end up as street kids. I don’t think
Amerley-mami cared if she lived or died. Sometimes I thought we’d come
home to find her lifeless body on the bed. I thought she’d given up.
I got up and checked on my mother. Her eyes were closed and she was
breathing evenly. I envied her ability to sleep in the midst of all we were
going through. I envied how she could just shut everything out and pretend
nothing was happening to us.
I went out of the room. The yard was quiet. The animals lay under the
cashew and neem trees. Nuumo had his radio tuned to one of the morning
shows and they were discussing corruption in the current government. I
went out of the compound and down one of the alleys. There were few
streets in our part of the neighborhood; the houses were built so close
together that only footpaths separated them. The houses were all badly in
need of paint, with rusted corrugated roofing sheets that leaked when it
rained, torn mosquito netting, and verandas that served as both storage areas
and kitchens. Most of the compounds had fruit trees—usually mango or
orange, in which chickens roosted. Makeshift pens were made for sheep and
goats. During the day they were set free to roam for their food. At night
they made their way back to their homes to sleep. Life in this community
was a struggle for all living creatures, not just humans.
I took a shortcut through someone’s compound and arrived at Madam
Fosua’s house. She lived on the other side of town, which was a little more
affluent than where we lived. That neighborhood had well-demarcated
streets, and a few of the homeowners even had their own cars. She lived in
a two-bedroom self-contained house with her husband, three kids, and a
house help. She had been a good customer of Amerley-mami, who used to
supply her with the fresh fish Ataa caught. Though she had a house help,
she agreed to pay me to wash her clothes and run errands for her when I
first went to ask her for a loan. I think she felt sorry for us.
“Agoo,” I called out.
“Amee,” Madam Fosua called from inside the house.
I sighed in relief. At least she was back from her hometown.
“Amerley, it’s you,” she said, coming out. She was an obese woman and
she was always in a boubou. Her house help came out as well, with Madam
Fosua’s toddler son strapped to her back. The help looked at me like I was a
nuisance. I ignored her and turned to Madam Fosua, who was locking their
front door.
“Good morning, auntie.”
“Good morning, my child. How are you?”
“I’m fine.”
“And your sisters?”
“They’re fine, auntie.”
“And your mother?”
“She’s there. Auntie, please, do you have a job for me?”
Madam Fosua turned to look at me. I don’t know what she saw in my
face, but I felt like she was looking right through me. Like she could tell I
was about to ask her for a loan.
“Sorry I couldn’t settle with you before going to the village.” She
opened her handbag, took out her purse, and pulled out a twenty-cedi note.
“Now is not a good time for me. Schools have reopened and I have to buy
fresh stock for my shop.”
“Thank you,” I said, taking the money and stuffing it into my bra.
“Auntie, our landlord is evicting us. We have nowhere to go.”
“Amerley, I’ve already told you, now is not a good time. Where do you
want me to get money from to pay rent for your family? Where is your
father?”
I had no answers to her questions.
She opened her purse and pulled out another twenty-cedi note. “Manage
with this okay? I’ll ask around and let you know if anyone needs help with
anything, but don’t get your hopes up. Times are hard.”
I nodded and thanked her again for the money.
“Greet your mother for me when you go home.”
“Yes, auntie.”
I walked beside her to the sidewalk where her help had flagged down a
taxi. Madam Fosua climbed into the front seat. The car dipped visibly when
she sat down. The help, with the child still strapped on her, settled in the
back.

Next stop was the trotro station where my best friend, Sheba, and my
boyfriend, Nikoi, worked. It was rush hour and long lines of people were
waiting for the rickety commercial buses. Hawkers peddled items from
handcarts or trays balanced on their heads to the early morning commuters.
I waved at the koko seller I had bought my sisters’ maize porridge from.
Hot beverage, waakye, and kenkey sellers did a brisk business as people
bought their breakfast. In one corner of the station, a preacher had set up a
speaker and an offertory basket. Some people dropped money into it as they
walked by him.
Nikoi and Sheba were both school dropouts like me. Nikoi worked as a
driver’s mate. Sheba hawked whatever fruit was in season—orange,
pineapple, banana, pawpaw, mango, sugarcane, anything that she could sell
and make a reasonable profit on. At night she sold pure water packets at the
night market. She was pregnant and had been sick for a couple of weeks.
 I spotted Sheba right away. You could already see her baby bump. She
saw me and headed over.
“Amerley, what is wrong?” She lowered her tray of pawpaw from her
head and sat beside me on a bench beneath a mango tree.
“I need money, Sheba. Nuumo says he’ll kick us out of the house if we
don’t pay our rent by this evening.”
“How many months do you owe?”
“Our two years were up in December. He says he has people willing to
pay him two years’ advance. Last year he told me we could pay six months’
advance instead of the two years when I went to beg him to consider our
situation.”
“How much is it?”
I mentioned the amount.
“Buei!” Sheba shouted, and put her hands on her head. A few people
threw curious glances in our direction. “Where are you going to get that
type of money from?”
A lump formed in my throat and my vision got blurry. “I’m so scared,” I
sobbed as my best friend drew me in for a hug. “What are we going to do?
We have nowhere to go.”
“Have you tried calling your father?”
I nodded. “First his phone was always out of coverage, and then the last
two times I tried, they said the phone number doesn’t exist.”
“Do you want us to go and look for him in Nungua? I heard he’s staying
with some Ewe woman there.”
“Nikoi went to look for him before Christmas. He couldn’t locate the
house and no one seemed to know of him.”
“How about Kasoa?”
I shook my head. “What’s the point? Do you think he’ll suddenly grow
a conscience when he’s abandoned us for six months? He knew the tenancy
agreement would expire in December before he left. He knew the girls were
in school. He didn’t even leave chop money for us to buy food. How does
he think we’re surviving?”
“How about your mother?”
“She’s nothing but a coward,” I said, my temper rising. “All she does is
stay in bed. At night when she thinks we’re all asleep, she wakes up and
drinks soakings. She just ignores us during the day.” I didn’t mind that she
soaked gari in water for her meals, but the amount of sugar she used was
more than my three sisters consumed for their morning porridge. She knew
we had to be frugal with everything. Even sugar.
Sheba continued rubbing my back. “I thought she was sick.”
I sniffed and dried my face. “I used to think so too. But she isn’t. I
mean, she doesn’t have a fever and doesn’t vomit or anything. I thought she
was just sad when she lost the baby, but it’s been six months. Does the dead
baby mean more to her than us, her four healthy children?”
“Last time at the prenatal clinic, they were telling us some mothers get
depressed after they have their babies. They can even get sad when the baby
is healthy and fine and everything is all right. They said it’s a mental illness.
Maybe that’s what is wrong with your mother. Maybe she should see a
doctor.”
I laughed. It was a laugh full of bitterness. “Will she pay the doctor with
mango leaves?”
Sheba was quiet for a moment. “How about the alterations you do?”
I earned money by doing alterations to clothes, sewing on buttons and
mending socks for our neighbors. It was tiring work since I didn’t have a
sewing machine and had to do it all by hand. On good days when I had
customers I stayed up all night sewing. Amerley-mami couldn’t sleep with
the lights on, so I had to make do with candles. I pricked myself with the
needle so many times that my fingers became numb, and some nights I had
to force myself to stop because my eyes hurt. I was far cheaper than the
seamstresses and tailors in the neighborhood, most of whom hated doing
alterations to clothes. I accepted whatever money I was given. Sometimes
people even gave me their used clothes, which I altered for my sisters and
me. That saved me from worrying about how to clothe my sisters.
All my life, my dream was to become a seamstress and have my own
shop. After junior high school, I’d done one term of senior high school
before I dropped out because Amerley-mami had said there was no money
to pay my fees. I’d asked to be enrolled as an apprentice to one of the
seamstresses in our neighborhood. The woman operated out of a used metal
shipping container and had a glass display with two mannequins. Anytime I
had to run an errand, I made sure I passed in front of her shop just to see
what styles her mannequins were wearing, even though it meant jumping
over a large, stinking gutter filled with black polyethylene bags and pure
water and yogurt packets, all of which swam in a river of black water.
 When Amerley-mami had asked about enrolling me as an apprentice,
the woman had given her a list of things I was supposed to buy and a cash
amount. The items included a Singer sewing machine, a pack of twelve
different-colored spools of thread, five pairs of scissors, three tape
measures, ten yards of brown paper, five packs of pins, and five packs of
needles. In addition to that, I was supposed to pay for two uniforms to be
sewn for me. There was no way Amerley-mami could have afforded those
items. She had told me to ask my father for the money the next time I saw
him. I knew better than that. Ataa had stopped giving me money from the
time Tsotsoo was born.
“I just do simple alterations. The money I make is not enough to pay six
months’ rent or school fees. That’s what I use to feed us.”
Sheba was quiet for a moment as she considered my options. She
brightened and said, “You can sleep on our veranda. I’ll ask Maame. I’m
sure she wouldn’t mind. They gave me a mosquito net to use when I went
for my prenatal visit. We can string it up on the veranda for you guys.”
“Does she have a kiosk now? Where will she run her business from?”
Sheba’s mother was a hairdresser. She braided and permed hair on her
veranda.
“When she finishes with her customers, we’ll just move all her things to
one side and then you can sleep on the other side.”
I sighed. Sleeping on Sheba’s veranda was not the best option, but it
beat sleeping out on the streets. At least we’d have a roof over our heads
and we’d be safe. The tightness in my chest eased, and for the first time that
morning I felt a ray of hope. I’d just have to work harder at finding a job. I
stood up and scanned the trotros in the yard. Nikoi’s was not among them.
“Nikoi’s not back yet. His trotro was one of the first to load this
morning,” Sheba said, following my gaze.
“I better go and start packing. When the girls come home, we’ll start
moving our things.”
Sheba gave me a last hug. “It will all work out. You’ll see.”

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 CHAPTER 3

I ignored Amerley-mami when I got home and upended our

“Ghana-must-go” bags onto the center table. The bags got their name in the
eighties when a Nigerian president ordered Ghanaians living in Nigeria
without the necessary documentation to leave the country or be arrested.
Most of the returnees returned to the shores of Ghana with their possessions
packed into cheap nylon bags. The blue and white or red and white checked
bags have no brand name and come in all sizes.
We didn’t have any dressers. We kept all our clothes in the bags. We just
stuffed them in after taking them off the beach sand, where we spread them
out to dry after washing. I began folding the clothes into tight bundles and
packing them in. Sheba’s veranda was their kitchen as well, so we would
not have enough space for all our things. Maybe I could ask Madam Fosua
to keep the bigger items like Amerley-mami’s bed and mattress and our
living room furniture for us, or maybe we could sell them if we found a
buyer—they weren’t in very good condition.
I was so engrossed in my task I didn’t notice our door had opened and
someone was standing in front of me. I stifled a scream before I realized it
was Nikoi. No one would call Nikoi good looking. He was taller than me
but had an unremarkable face. But what he lacked in looks he more than
made up for in the way he cared for my sisters and me.
He jerked his head in the direction of Amerley-mami’s bed. A question.
The curtain separating the two halves of the room was down and he
couldn’t tell if she was in or not. I nodded. Yes, she was in.
“I came as quickly as I could, but I have to get back soon,” he
whispered, and offered me his hand. A big callused hand that was spattered
with what looked like engine oil. I took it anyway and let him lead me out
of the room. The relief I felt was immediate. For the first time the entire
day, I felt sure things would work out. Nikoi did that to me. He always put
things into perspective and gave me hope.
“Sheba told me what happened. Today has been crazy. Schools have
reopened and the traffic is terrible. Sorry I couldn’t get here sooner.”
“It’s okay. Sheba sorted us out. We’ll sleep on her veranda until . . .” I
shrugged. I didn’t know what the next step would be.
He squeezed my hand and led me out of the compound and through the
narrow alleys that ran between the houses, toward the beach. We didn’t
speak as we headed to our spot—an isolated grove of coconut trees on the
far side of the beach. Fishermen worked beneath some trees mending their
fishing nets and tending to their canoes. The fishmongers were long gone,
the day’s harvest of fish having already been haggled over and sold. The sea
sent out a salty spray as waves crashed onto the beach. Seagulls squawked
as they chased each other above us. Young children who had skipped school
played, turning cartwheels or competing in races. They didn’t seem to mind
that their hair and bodies were covered completely in the white sand. A
group of young men harvested coconuts. Two of them had climbed the trees
and were hacking off the fruits with cutlasses, while the others were filling
their wheelbarrows with the greenish-yellow fruits. It was windy and I had
to keep one hand on my skirt to keep the gusts from lifting it up and
flashing my underwear. Nikoi’s T-shirt billowed behind him like some sort
of cape.
Nikoi kept turning to look at me, as if to make sure I was all right. Each
time he turned, the sun glinted off the simple gold necklace he wore around
his neck. It was the only thing he had left of his mother. She had died giving
birth to his brother. His brother had survived the birth but died of malaria at
age five. It wasn’t something Nikoi talked about much.
I squeezed his hand to let him know I was all right.
We sank onto the sand when we got to our spot. He held me against him
and kissed my forehead. Then he put his hand into his pocket and handed
me an envelope. I opened it to find a bundle of money.
I looked up at him in confusion. “Nii, what—? How?”
“I’ve been saving to buy you the things you need so you could start
your apprenticeship with that lady. I was hoping to have the full amount by
Easter. Use that for the rent.”
For the third time that day, I broke into tears. The tears came hot and
fast down my face, and all Nikoi did was hold me and stroke my back just
like Sheba had. I was not a pretty crier. My eyes always got red and my face
got blotchy. I knew I looked a sight.
“Thank you,” I said finally. I wiped my nose with the hem of my dress.
“I didn’t even know you’d been saving for me. I’ll pay you back. I promise.
One day I’ll pay you back.”
Nikoi tipped my head up so I could see into his brown eyes, and the
corner of his lip lifted in a smile. “You’re my girl. If I don’t look after you,
who will?”
I shook my head. “My sisters and I are not your responsibility. You
shouldn’t be sacrificing so much for us.”
He shrugged. “You’re my family. You’re all the family I’ve got, and one
day this will not be our life. I promise.”
Nikoi’s father was alive but they were estranged. Most of the time, he
was dead drunk in the corner of the akpeteshie kiosk. Even when he was
sober, he was always at the akpeteshie kiosk calculating lotto numbers and
drinking the gin on credit. On one occasion when he’d been sober, he had
thrown Nikoi out of the house after Nikoi had gotten into a fight with his
stepmother.
I buried my face in Nikoi’s chest and tried to will that future to come as
soon as it could. That day when we would be in our own home with our
own family. When I wouldn’t have to worry about rent or school fees or
where our next meal was coming from. When I’d have my own
dressmaking shop and several apprentices and Nikoi would own a fleet of
taxis.
Nikoi was the first to pull apart. He wiped the tears from my face with
his greasy hands. “I have to get back now. I’ll see you in the evening.”
“Okay,” I whispered as he slipped away.

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 4

Though our rent had been paid up for the next three months,
Nuumo reminded me every week that he expected the payment for the next
one and a half years by the end of April. It was a worry I pushed aside. The
more pressing issue for me was how to pay Amorkor and Tsotsoo’s school
fees. I did all the odd jobs I could find in addition to the alterations on
clothes the neighbors brought in.
“You’ll go blind one day if you keep doing this,” Sheba remarked one
evening when she saw me sewing by candlelight. She’d come to borrow
some corn dough. Going blind was out of the question, so I cut back on the
night sewing.
Every morning when I woke up I thanked God that at least I didn’t have
to worry about Amarkai’s fees. Amarkai and Tsotsoo looked nothing like
Amorkor or me. They both got our mother’s beauty (though if you looked at
Amerley-mami now, you couldn’t tell how beautiful she had once been),
whereas Amorkor and I would be mistaken for boys if we didn’t wear
earrings. We looked like Ataa would have looked if he were a girl. Amarkai
wasn’t even a teenager yet, but boys turned and stared whenever she walked
past. Fortunately, she had no time for boys. Yet. All she cared about were
animals. If there was a wounded cat or dog, a crippled chicken, or any sick
animal, it was Amarkai people brought it to. When strands of wig blew
from Sheba’s mother’s veranda as she braided rasta for women in the
neighborhood, Amarkai chased their chickens and removed the strands
from around their feet. The hairs would circle the chickens’ feet and make
them swell up. Sometimes they could even lose a foot.
Amarkai used to spend her weekends driving away the neighborhood
boys who shot down birds with their catapults. Now she spent her weekends
working at the veterinary clinic at La. She walked to and from the vet’s. She
didn’t even get paid for the cleaning she did, but the vet paid her fees and
bought her school supplies. Even if the vet was not taking care of her
education, Amarkai would still have done the cleaning up just so she could
watch while the vet took care of the sick animals. Amarkai and her animals
were something out of a fairy tale. At around 3 p.m. all the animals in the
neighborhood, both the strays and those with owners, marched to the
roadside to wait for her. It became so normal that only visitors to the
neighborhood got alarmed at all the different kinds of animals waiting at the
bus stop in the afternoons. Usually by 3:15 p.m., Amarkai alit from the
trotro.
As soon as she got off the bus, the animal chorus began. The dogs
barked in greeting, the cats meowed in welcome, and the chickens and
ducks did a welcome dance by ruffling their feathers. There used to be a
sheep and he bleated anytime he saw her, until he was killed for Eid al-
Adha. Because of this, people in the area brought her leftovers for the
animals. At first, some mothers refused to let their children play with her
because they said she had magical powers, but as time went on people
realized that she just really, really loved animals. A TV station carried a
story on her after someone saw the animals still waiting for her even though
it was raining. People had gotten so used to seeing her with them that it
wasn’t a big deal anymore.
No matter how little her pocket money was, she always reserved some
to buy a cob of maize or kanzo for the animals from the rice and waakye
sellers. The food vendors had come to know her so well that they
sometimes gave her those burnt portions for free. She held the food and
stood there while the animals ate straight from her hand. I sometimes
wondered how we could even be related!
Two years ago when Amarkai was attending the same school as my
sisters and me, we came home to find Sheba and her little sister, Vashti,
waiting for us on our veranda. Vashti had a Key Soap box on her lap, and
we could see she had been crying. Sheba pulled Amarkai and me aside.
“It’s her kitten; it’s not eating. When we force-feed it, everything just
comes out. It can’t swallow. I think it’s going to die,” Sheba said.
Amarkai dropped her bag onto the ground and walked to where Vashti
sat. She knelt in front of her and picked up the kitten.
“She’ll be fine, she’ll be fine,” Amarkai said, stroking the brown and
black ball of fur.
 “I didn’t know where else to go. Vashti has refused to eat anything. She
just cries and cries and my mother is getting annoyed.”
I saw how Vashti looked at Amarkai with wide eyes full of hope. You’d
have thought Amarkai was one of those televangelists who make cripples
walk. Tears streaked down Vashti’s face and snot ran out of her nose. She
was the same age as our Tsotsoo. She was nodding at something Amarkai
was telling her. She wiped her nose and her face with the back of her hand.
“You leave her with me and go home. Make sure you eat because when
she comes back she’ll want to play with you. And feed her mother too; this
little kitten will be starving when she gets better,” Amarkai said.
“You promise she’ll be fine?”
“I promise.”
A wide smile broke out on Vashti’s face. She stroked the kitten once
more and put her hand in Sheba’s. “Let’s go, I’m hungry.”
As I watched them walk away, I wondered what Amarkai was going to
do. She had obviously bitten off more than she could chew this time. I knew
she could splint broken legs and wings, but how could she make an animal
eat that was refusing to?
I had left Amarkai with the kitten and went indoors to change and get
supper ready. Amorkor had milled the maize we had soaked in the basin
overnight, but instead of mixing it with water she had left the milled bowl
of maize like that and had probably gone off somewhere to read. I didn’t
even bother looking for her. No one knew her hiding place. When Amorkor
began reading a book, she wasn’t any good to anyone until she was done.
Amarkai had found an eyedrop bottle, which she was washing out.
“What’s that for?” I asked as I poured water onto the maize powder and
kneaded it. I loved the feel of the warm corn powder on my hands as I
mixed it.
“To feed the kitten.”
“What’s the point of having a bottle if you don’t have milk?” I asked as
I patted the dough and covered the bowl with its lid. It would ferment for
two days and then we could begin using it for banku.
Amarkai rolled her eyes and showed me a packet of powdered milk. I
didn’t even know when she had gone to buy it. She mixed a quarter of the
contents and put it into the eyedrop bottle. She tried feeding the kitten but
the milk came back out a minute after it had swallowed it.
 “Some of the milk stays down. She doesn’t vomit it all. At least some
stays in her stomach,” she said after examining the milk.
Two days later the situation hadn’t changed. The kitten’s meowing was
driving us crazy. Its cries were weaker and it wasn’t moving at all.
Amerley-mami told Amarkai to return the kitten before it “died on her.”
After school that day, Amarkai took the box and disappeared. I’d thought
she had gone to return Vashti’s kitten, so at 6 p.m. when she wasn’t back I
went to Vashti’s house to look for her, only to be told she hadn’t been there
the entire day. I went back home, but didn’t tell Amerley-mami. Amarkai
came home at 7:30 p.m. with the kitten in the box.
When I asked where she’d been, she said she’d walked to the La
Veterinary Center to beg the doctors to operate on the kitten. They’d told
her the cost of the surgery would be one hundred cedis. She’d sat in the
reception area and refused to leave until the security men had thrown her
out and locked up.
I thought that would have put some sense into her head but it didn’t. For
the next two days, as soon as we got home, Amarkai would change, pick up
the box with the sick kitten, and walk to the veterinary clinic. On the third
day, when she wasn’t home by 7:30 p.m., I couldn’t cover for her anymore.
I told Amerley-mami where she was. We waited until 8 p.m., and when she
didn’t come home, Amerley-mami and I walked to La.
On the way, Amerley-mami kept cursing her luck. How could she have
such stupid daughters? How could she have a daughter who cared more
about a cat than her own welfare? How could I, who was the oldest and was
supposed to have more sense, have known where she was going and kept
quiet? She said if anything happened to Amarkai it would be on my head. I
prayed and prayed to God that my sister would be well and promised that I
wouldn’t be so stupid the next time. I’d take better care of all my sisters.
The veterinary clinic was closed when we got there. We were about to
leave when we saw a security guard patrolling the yard. Amerley-mami
asked if he had seen a girl with a kitten in a Key Soap box. The man asked
us to follow him to the back of the building. He told us one of the vets, Dr.
Lutterodt, had taken pity on her and the kitten and agreed to do the
operation for free after working hours. Amarkai had begged to watch, so he
had allowed her to assist him.
We entered through the back door and went to a room marked
Operating Room. Amarkai, whom I had given up all hopes of finding alive,
was still in her school uniform. She had a green face mask and wore
goggles over her eyes and gloves on her hands. She was assisting a white-
haired man who was operating on Vashti’s kitten. Amarkai was in charge of
pumping an inflatable ball connected to a mask over the kitten’s face. She
waved when she saw us. I saw the blood on her gloves and grew dizzy.
Neither Amerley-mami nor I could stand the sight of the blood, so we
waited in the dark reception area. Amarkai’s eyes were shining when she
came out to join us after the procedure. Though she knew she would get
beaten that night, nothing could steal her joy—not even the murderous
glances Amerley-mami kept throwing her way. Dr. Lutterodt called
Amerley-mami to his office, where they spoke for a long time. When she
came out later, something about her demeanor had changed. The three of us
walked to the bus station and got a trotro that was going to Teshie. Amarkai
fell asleep on the bus. Amerley-mami was lost in thought. That night she
didn’t whip Amarkai as I thought she would. She didn’t whip her the next
day either. Instead, on the third day, she told her Dr. Lutterodt had offered to
sponsor her education and wanted her transferred from our school at Teshie
to a private school at La. As her punishment, she would spend her
weekends cleaning the clinic. Amarkai was delirious with joy.
Vashti was over the moon when her kitten came back two weeks later
and started drinking milk from both the eyedrop bottle and its mother’s
teats. And I, I wondered how something so insignificant as helping a little
girl’s kitten could change your life forever.

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 5

A minute before my life changed forever for the first time, I

was kneeling in the cooking area with my face on the ground and my butt in
the air. The side of my face lay flat on the smooth earth, and my cheeks
were full of air as I blew my lungs out onto the damp wood between the
three red clay mounds of our tripod stove.
Our cooking area was a shed made up of a thatched roof propped on
four thick branches behind our building. Others cooked on their verandas
on either gas or kerosene stoves, which we didn’t have. Instead, we erected
the shed behind the building and built the clay tripod stove. We put
firewood between the clay mounds and balanced our pots on the tripod. It
was almost as good as a coal pot. The only problem was that the firewood
produced a lot of smoke.
“Whoo.” I blew another lungful of air onto the logs, but instead of them
catching fire, the newspaper I had lit between them smoldered and the
flame died. Clouds of black smoke flowed into my eyes. I sat back and
coughed. It looked like my sisters and I would have to make do with kenkey
and shitɔ six days in a row.
It was already the middle of April and I knew Nuumo was just waiting
for the last day of the month to come pounding on our door. Amorkor and
Tsotsoo had been sent home two weeks earlier for not paying their school
fees. Amarkai was the only one who kept going to school. Amorkor had
forgotten to collect driftwood the day before. Instead of going to the beach
behind our compound house for the driftwood, as I had asked, she had
walked four miles to the library to return a book and borrow a new one. On
her way back it had started to rain; she had forgotten all about the wood and
rushed home with her book—The Prison Graduate by Efo Kodjo Mawugbe
—tucked, snug and dry, underneath her blouse. Any other person would
have been miserable that she was the main reason her family had had to eat
kenkey and shitɔ for the fifth time that week, but Amorkor is not any other
person. After she had eaten her ball of kenkey with shitɔ, she disappeared
into the room and began reading her book. My sisters did not really mind
that we were going to have kenkey. Our diet rarely varied. It was either
kenkey, gari, or banku, and fried fish on the days when Nikoi gave me more
than two cedis so we could eat a decent meal. Amerley-mami did not notice
whether we had eaten or not, though I noticed that the portion of food we
left for her every night was eaten by morning.
I would, however, give credit where credit was due, and before I even
got off my mattress that morning, Amorkor had been to the beach and back:
driftwood was stacked by one of the walls in our cooking area. The only
problem was that the driftwood was damp. I’m sure Amorkor had made the
effort because she felt bad about the names Ofoe-mami, the kenkey seller,
had called us before giving us the four balls of kenkey and six tablespoons
of shitɔ on credit. By my calculations, we owed her fourteen cedis and fifty
pesewas. Ofoe-mami’s tongue is sharper than a scorpion’s sting, but I didn’t
let her insults hurt me. They’d rolled off my skin like water off the feathers
of a duck. Last night she had ranted and raved as usual.
“I’m not Papa Bronya! Do I look like Father Christmas? I also have
children to feed! How can I feed them if I have to give away everything I
make for free? Where is your mother? Is she not a woman like me? Why
can’t she cook for her children? And you, are you not grown enough to
cook for your sisters? Are you not a woman?”
I had stood looking at my feet while Ofoe-mami rained insults on my
mother, my father, my grandparents, my sisters, and finally on me. I hadn’t
dared look her in the face for fear she’d think I was being defiant or
disrespectful. Afterward, when she had ranted and raved to her satisfaction
and within hearing of all our neighbors, she had walked to the table. The
kenkey was kept in a basin in a thick transparent plastic sheet to keep it hot.
She drew the basin toward her, opened the sheet, dipped her hand into a
bowl of water by her side, and picked out four balls of steaming fermented
corn dough wrapped in corn leaves, one after the other. My stomach had
rumbled. I had only had gari soakings to eat the whole day and I was
hungry. She had placed the balls of kenkey in a black plastic bag and retied
the knot on the sheet over the kenkey.
She had moved over to the wooden platter on which crisp fried shrimps
and fish had been stacked like towering pyramids. I began to salivate and
my stomach rumbled once more. Ofoe-mami took a smaller plastic bag and
opened it and the bucket of shitɔ by her side. I had watched as she scooped
two tablespoons of the spicy black pepper sauce into the bag, added four
tablespoons of ground red pepper with tomatoes and onions, and deftly tied
it. She placed it on top of the kenkey in the black plastic bag and dropped it
into my waiting hands.
I had been about to ask if we could have some fish as well, but I’d seen
the look on her face, and anyway, I had been insulted enough for one night.
One day, I had sworn to myself, one day I’ll buy kenkey with enough fish
and shrimps and I won’t even eat the heads or tails.
As if that had not been enough, on my way home Nuumo, our landlord,
had met me at the gate.
“Tell your mother if I don’t get the rent by the end of this month, you’ll
have to leave.”
He didn’t even wait for me to make my usual excuse of how she was
sick and not feeling well. He just stormed off.

“Whoo.” I blew on the logs again. Nothing happened.

“Sister Amerley! Sister Amerley! A car has stopped in front of our
house. It’s posh! When the door opened, cold air like the Harmattan wind
came out, and the woman inside must be Miss Ghana or something.”
Tsotsoo said all this without pausing for breath. One hand covered her
mouth.
I turned and looked around the cooking area. “Where’s the lizard?”
She pointed to the rafters. I looked up and saw an extra large gray,
black, and blue lizard with a red and orange crest sunning itself on one of
the planks. I picked up a stone, aimed, and threw it. The lizard ran a few
steps and then stopped to bob its head up and down. I shook my head;
nothing I could say would make Tsotsoo remove her hand from her mouth.
Her two upper front teeth had fallen out one after the other two weeks ago.
Her playmates had told her that if a lizard saw the space where the teeth had
been while she was talking, the new teeth would never erupt. Since lizards
were a common sight on the walls and roofs of our house, Tsotsoo’s hands
were now permanently glued to her mouth.
 “Sister Amerley, come and see!” Tsotsoo insisted, pulling me to my feet
with her free hand.
Amarkai hurried into the cooking area. “The woman wants to see
Amerley-mami.”
“Sister Amerley, won’t you go and greet the woman in the car?” Tsotsoo
asked with her hand still over her mouth.
Vashti’s cat came into the cooking area and rubbed its body around
Amarkai’s legs.
“Sister Amerley, if you don’t go she’ll think we’re disrespectful,”
Amarkai said.
I looked from one sister to another. I wasn’t going to fall for their prank.
They’d been trying to trick me into going to see Amerley-mami the entire
morning.
“Oh really,” I said, pouring some kerosene from a green beer bottle onto
the damp wood. “Tell her Amerley-mami is asleep.”
“We already did. She said we should wake her up,” Amarkai said, and
from the look on her face I could tell she was serious.
I struck a match against the box and held it to the damp wood, knowing
even as I did so that I was wasting both my time and the wood’s.
“If this is a prank, we’ll all eat kenkey this evening. I won’t even try
lighting this wood anymore, and I’ll send both of you to get the kenkey from
Ofoe-mami.”
“Sister Amerley, we’re not lying to you. Just come and see her,” Tsotsoo
said, dragging me out with one hand.
I followed Amarkai and Tsotsoo, though I expected them to start
laughing about how I had fallen for their prank when we got to the main
compound. To my surprise, there was indeed a black Jeep parked under the
cashew tree. I could see movement behind our neighbors’ curtains as people
spied on us. I didn’t blame them. I would have done the same if the
situation had been reversed. This being a Sunday, almost everyone was
home. But there would be no gossip tonight because there was no way the
occupants of that car knew any of my family members. The car looked like
it had just been oiled with shea butter. It gleamed and sparkled in the
sunlight. A woman dressed in a rich green and gold lace kaba and slit stood
by the back door. I could see why Tsotsoo thought she was Miss Ghana—
she was beautiful. She was even more beautiful than the current Miss
Ghana, and she was here to see Amerley-mami? Surely there must have
been a mistake. This woman must have gotten our Amerley-mami mixed up
with some other Amerley-mami. There was no way my mother knew
someone this posh.
The woman had “fancy” written all over her. She had gold jewelry on
her neck, ears, wrists, and fingers. Huge sunglasses hid her eyes and almost
half of her face. When she used a hand to position her sunglasses properly,
the gold bracelets on her wrists sparkled. I could see she felt uncomfortable
as our neighbors came out of their rooms to stare at her. No longer satisfied
with spying from behind their windows, all of the adults suddenly found
reasons to be outdoors. The children openly gawked. Most of the older kids
carried their younger brothers and sisters on their backs. I could count four
children with runny noses, including Tsotsoo; two others had conjunctivitis.
They had been rubbing their red eyes the entire day.
I walked quickly to where she stood. Amarkai and Tsotsoo were close
on my heels, their curious eyes fixed on the woman.
“Good afternoon, madam,” I said.
“Oh hello, you must be Naa Amerley.”
I gasped. How did she know that? A part of me was thinking, if she
knew my name, that meant I also knew someone posh. I couldn’t quite
process that at the moment.
“Yes, madam,” I stammered.
So she really did know my mother. How? Were they classmates? I very
much doubted that since Amerley-mami had dropped out of school when
she was ten. How did they know each other? A ripple of excitement went
through me as I noted everything about her. I’d have a lot to tell Sheba
when I saw her next.
“My! Look how you’ve grown,” the woman said, taking a step toward
me and reaching out as if she wanted to hug me. At the last minute she
withdrew her hands and looked at me from head to toe, but not before I had
caught a whiff of her perfume. She smelled like jasmine and orange
blossoms. As she put her arms back by her side, I realized how dirty my
sisters and I looked. We had not had a bath in four days. The taps had gone
off a week ago, even at the church down the street. Though we had a drum
full of water, we had begun rationing our supply, and bathing daily didn’t
feature high on our list of priorities.
“I’m Rosina, your mother’s friend. Tell her I’m here.”
 Your mother’s friend kept playing through my mind as I hurried to do as
I was told. So Amerley-mami did know posh people. If Amerley-mami
knew this woman, were there others we didn’t know about? Amerley-mami
had never mentioned a friend called Rosina. I hadn’t even known Amerley-
mami knew anyone who owned a private car. I didn’t remember ever
meeting this Rosina woman. There was no way I’d have forgotten her face,
her clothes, or her smell.
It was a bad time to notice Amarkai hadn’t swept in front of our room.
Goat droppings lay scattered everywhere. I wiped my feet on the shabby
welcome mat. Out of the seven letters only three remained—E, L, and M.
Various mismatched charley-wotes lay scattered on and around the mat. I
kicked them to the corner of the veranda and opened the screen door with
the torn mosquito netting. I quickly rolled up our mattresses. I swept aside
the faded curtain to Amerley-mami’s sleeping area, where she lay on the
bed. I nudged her, she groaned and asked me to go away, but I persisted.
“There’s a woman here to see you. A posh woman. She’s called Auntie
Rosina.”
Amerley-mami woke up instantly and sat upright. “Rosina?”
I nodded.
“Here?”
Another nod.
“Are you sure?”
Third nod.
She got out of bed and quickly changed out of her faded nightgown into
an equally faded blue and purple tie-dyed boubou. She rinsed her mouth
with a cup of water that was on a table by the bedside and spat the contents
into the chamberpot we kept under the bed. Last night’s urine was still in it.
I didn’t think now was a good time to go and empty it into the gutter in
front of our house. She spread some Maxam toothpaste onto her finger and
smeared it around her teeth and tongue and rinsed her mouth again. She
washed her face, tried to comb her hair, but she hadn’t retouched it in
months so the comb couldn’t run through it. She gave up and tied a scarf
around it instead.
“What are you still doing here? Go and ask her to come in!”
I went outside to Auntie Rosina, who was still by the car.
Amarkai and Tsotsoo had joined some of the other kids and were
gawking from underneath a nearby neem tree.
 “Please, she says you can come in.”
Auntie Rosina followed me into our room, and I stood watching in
shock as she and Amerley-mami embraced.
Though I wanted to stay, I knew Amerley-mami would ask me to leave.
In our neighborhood, children were to be seen and not heard. We were only
to speak when we were spoken to. Aunty Rosina had come to visit
Amerley-mami, so I was not needed. I went outside, where all the children
gathered around me wanting to know who Auntie Rosina was, where she
was from, what she wanted. I shooed them all away and went back to our
cooking area.
My three sisters followed me there. Amorkor, who had disappeared
somewhere so she could read her book in peace, reappeared.
“Is it true?” she asked me. “Tsotsoo says Miss Ghana is talking to
Amerley-mami.”
“She’s not Miss Ghana,” I said, because if Amorkor knew her books
and Amarkai knew her animals, I could confidently say I knew my beauty
queens. I could recite the names of the winners and runners-up of all the
beauty pageants in Ghana for the past six years. I could even describe all
the outfits they had worn. I have an excellent memory for details like that.
Kofi-papa, our neighbor, bought his TV set six years ago. That was when I
began watching the beauty pageants. At night he brought it out of his room
onto his veranda and we all gathered at the feet of the adults to watch
whatever was showing. Miss Malaika, Miss Ghana, Ghana’s Most
Beautiful, Miss Excel Plus—you name them, I knew them. I also knew
Auntie Rosina hadn’t participated in anything. Besides, she looked to be in
her late forties.
“Take some water to her,” I said to Amorkor, “but wash your hands first
and be careful with the glass.”
As Amorkor got up, I remembered she was the one who had broken
three out of the six drinking glasses we had had. Amarkai had broken one
and Tsotsoo had broken another.
“Never mind, I’ll do it myself.” I took out the last glass. There was a
small chip on the rim. I hoped Auntie Rosina wouldn’t notice.
“How about the driver?” Amarkai asked.
I looked through the plastic bowl we kept our dishware in. There were
three stainless steel cups, four plastic cups, and two enamel cups. The
stainless steel cups were all blackened, the plastic cups were just not
presentable to an adult, and the enamel cups had chipped in various places
and rusted metal showed through in others. I chose the one that had the
fewest chips, filled it with water from the clay water-cooler, placed it on a
plate, and handed it to Amarkai.
“Take it to the driver,” I said.
I filled the glass with water, placed it on a second plate, and went back
to our room. Amerley-mami and Auntie Rosina were seated side by side on
the sofa. Amerley-mami’s eyes were as red as ripe tomatoes. Tears flowed
down her cheeks like a tap that had been turned on. Auntie Rosina looked
distraught. I went up to her, offered the glass of water, and caught another
whiff of the jasmine and orange blossom fragrance.
“Oh, you shouldn’t have,” she said, but she took the glass. Her
fingernails were long and painted a deep red. Just as she was about to put
the glass to her lips, she saw the chip and turned it away from her. She put
the unchipped side to her lips and took a small sip. When she put the glass
back down on the tray, there was a bright red lipstick mark on it. I could
have stood there watching her all day but I was brought up better than that,
so I turned and left.
Outside, my sisters and some of the neighborhood kids had surrounded
the car and were making funny faces at their reflections. The tires of the car
almost came up to Tsotsoo’s shoulders. I went to join them. It was only then
that I noticed I had sand from our kitchen floor on my left cheek and in my
hair. No wonder Auntie Rosina hadn’t wanted to hug me. I looked like a
street child. In fact, all the children around me looked like street children.
Most were barefoot. The boys wore shorts and the girls oversized blouses or
T-shirts; most of the toddlers were naked. The few who were clothed wore
only cotton underwear.
The driver was on the other side of the car wiping it with a duster. He
looked quite young. I was guessing he was probably a few years older than
Nikoi, who was nineteen. When he saw the children making funny faces
and touching his shiny black car, he didn’t chase them away like Bro
Laryea does.
Bro Laryea drives a taxi and it’s not even his, but he treats the car like
it’s alive and has feelings. He used to be a trotro driver and was Nikoi’s
former boss until he got the taxi. Every Sunday morning, rain or shine, he
buys a packet of Omo powder and washes the car. Then he spends an hour
polishing the dashboard and mirrors. You’d have thought the president or
someone important was going to sit in it. He never gives any of us lifts.
Never. Not even when it’s raining and the car is empty and he’s going in our
direction.
Auntie Rosina’s driver reached for something in his car and came out
with a bag of toffees. He gave one to each of us, including the
neighborhood children. Many of the children checked to see if their sweet
was the same size as the others’. The driver was lucky there, for if the
sweets had been of different sizes, there would have been chants of: Woasisi
me. Me ne panin or Ofainε miji onukpa and so on. When it came to the
sharing of sweets and other goodies, the older children in the house were
always quick to point out that since they were older they deserved a bigger
share. Unfortunately, the same could not be said when it came to household
chores. I was given a toffee. It had some red goo in it that stuck to the roof
of my mouth and the backs of my teeth, but I loved the taste. It was a cross
between alasa and mango.
Auntie Rosina and Amerley-mami came out. Amerley-mami called my
siblings and me. As she stood beside Auntie Rosina, I saw how old she
looked. She looked like she was Auntie Rosina’s grandmother. They looked
nothing like age-mates. She introduced each of us in turn. It must have been
my imagination but I thought Auntie Rosina’s gaze lingered on me longer
than on my sisters. Tsotsoo went to stand by Amerley-mami’s side and hid
her face when it was her turn to be introduced. She had suddenly been
overcome with shyness.
“So I’ll come for her . . . I’ll come back over the weekend,” Auntie
Rosina said.
The driver opened the door for her and she took out a large purse. A
draft of cold air blew onto those of us standing by the car.
“Sorry I didn’t bring you anything. Amerley, buy your sisters some
toffees, okay?” She peeled off three five-cedi notes from a bundle and gave
them to me. My eyes opened so wide I thought they’d fall out of their
sockets. Fifteen cedis to buy toffees with?
“Oh no, auntie, it’s okay,” I said, though my fingers were itching to
snatch the money from her hands. It was good manners to refuse money
when it was first offered to you. Only after the person offered it a second or
third time was it acceptable to collect the money.
“Oh come on. Get some ice cream or something. I promise, next time
I’ll shop for you. Here, take it.”
 I looked at Amerley-mami, who nodded her head, and I accepted the
money. I turned to give it to her but Auntie Rosina stopped me. “No, that’s
for you and the girls.”
She gave the rest of the wad to Amerley-mami, who went through the
same refusing-the-money routine as I had before finally accepting it and
tucking it into her bra. Auntie Rosina sat in her car, which was as cold as
the deep freezer in the cold store down the road, and waved at us one more
time before the driver took off. My sisters and I followed Amerley-mami to
our room. Amerley-mami bolted the door behind her, pulled the curtains
down over the windows, took out the bundle of money, licked a finger, and
quickly counted it. I counted alongside her but got mixed up when she went
above one hundred. Amerley-mami was still counting the money when we
heard a knock at the door. She quickly hid the money under her mattress.
“Amerley-mami? Amerley-mami?” It was our landlord. He had no
doubt heard about our posh visitor and the money that had changed hands.
There were a lot of “okro mouths” in our compound. In our neighborhood,
gossip spread faster than the wind.
Amerley-mami took out the bundle, counted out forty of the notes, and
stuffed them into my hands.
“Give this to him. Tell him I don’t feel well.”
I went out to give the money to Nuumo, who counted it quickly and left.
I was glad to see him go, and so relieved that we wouldn’t have to worry
about rent for another year and nine months. When I got back inside,
Amerley-mami had counted a few more bills and given them to Amorkor.
“Tomorrow, you and Tsotsoo will go to school. Go and give this money
to Teacher Mensah. Tell him to pay your fees for you tomorrow. Go now
before other people come to collect what I owe them.”
Amarkai and Amorkor left the room together. Teacher Mensah lived in
Madam Fosua’s neighborhood. He was the assistant headmaster of their
school. As my sisters left, I realized the cloud of fear and heaviness that had
hovered over me since January was gone. It had completely lifted.
She looked at me. “What are we having for supper?”
I tried to hide my disappointment. I’d been expecting Amerley-mami to
settle the cost of the apprenticeship with the seamstress so that I could start
as well. She still had a lot of money in her hands.
“What are we having for supper?” she repeated.
 She hadn’t asked about our food ever since Ataa left. Maybe she’d go
and see the madam and pay the bill herself.
“Kenkey.”
She made a face and asked, “How much do we owe Ofoe-mami?”
I told her the amount.
She handed me a twenty-cedi note. “Go and pay that bush woman
before she comes knocking on our door. Add the change to what Auntie
Rosina gave you. I feel like domεdo and rice. Use whatever change is left to
buy malt for you and your sisters.”
Tsotsoo gasped and opened her mouth wide. For once she forgot to
cover her mouth and I could see the pink gum where her front teeth had
been. The area looked red. Her eyes were shining as she imagined herself
drinking a whole bottle of Malta Guinness. In the past, the only times when
bottles of Malta Guinness were opened in our house were when Amerley-
mami and Ataa got important visitors and sent us to buy the drink for them.
We only got to taste the drink if the visitors were kind enough to leave some
of the dregs in the glasses.
“Can I have some kelewele too?” Tsotsoo asked with her mouth still
uncovered.
“You can have anything you want,” Amerley-mami said, smiling.
Despite not knowing the fate of my apprenticeship, I couldn’t keep the
smile off my face. I felt like Christmas had come in April as I practically
ran to the night market. So this was how it felt to not have to worry about a
thing. I felt lighter. I was sure if you had weighed me before Auntie Rosina
showed up and if you weighed me now, there would be a significant
difference. I felt like I was floating. I loved this feeling and I hoped it would
last forever. Tsotsoo was on my heels, pulling up her shorts as she followed
me. I made a mental note to buy an elastic band and sew it into her shorts.
The smile on her face was one I would never forget. I’m sure even if she
saw a hundred lizards she could not keep her mouth shut. She was
practically glowing.
We made our way to the night market, which was what part of the trotro
station became after sunset. In the evenings, people set up their wooden
stalls in one corner of the station and sold all manner of foods straight from
the fire. It was a pedestrian open-air market with space for one person at a
time to walk between stalls. Kerosene lanterns and single electric bulbs
provided the light. Benches and plastic chairs and bowls of water for
washing hands had been provided for customers. The air was filled with the
smells of different foods. Music blared from speakers that had been set up
in front of a stall that sold CDs and DVDs.
We waved at Sheba, who was selling pure water near the fried yam and
chofi stall. Even though I could smell the fried turkey tails, I didn’t look at
the sieve with the meat arranged in it—it would only whet my appetite even
more. The oil sizzled as the seller dropped pieces of peeled yam into the hot
oil. We were not even deterred by the smells of fried eggs coming from the
tea seller. I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten an egg. In addition
to Milo tea and Lipton tea, she now also had moringa tea. We ignored the
tantalizing whiffs of banku and okra soup when we passed by Daavi’s stall.
Though we could see crabs, wele, and chunks of meat floating in the soup,
we walked on. Next to Daavi was her daughter, who was grilling big fat
tilapias on a coal pot. Hawkers like Sheba walked between the stalls and
sold everything from chewing gum to fruits to ice-cold drinks.
Ofoe-mami frowned when she saw me approaching. “As for this credit
business, deε, no wonder I’m not progressing! Do you people think I pluck
leaves from trees to pay for the maize I buy from the market?”
I greeted her and paid her what we owed. She took the money, gave me
my change, and stuffed the rest into her bra. A huge smile was on her face
when she asked, “Ei, Amerley, is your father back?”
I shook my head.
“Then where—”
Before she could continue, a customer came to stand in front of the
wooden tray on which she had piled her fried fish.
“Please, how much is this one?” the woman asked. She had tied a piece
of cloth around her body. The straps of her bra showed above the cloth. She
wore mismatched charley-wotes on her feet.
“Five cedis,” Ofoe-mami said.
“Ei,” the woman said, and walked away.
“Bo diεŋtsε kwεmɔ! If you know you won’t buy, why do you come and
waste my time?” Ofoe-mami shouted after the woman’s departing figure.
The woman turned and shouted, “Are you talking to me? When did it
become a crime in this country to ask the price of something?”
Ofoe-mami tightened her own cloth around her waist and marched in
the direction of the woman. I pulled Tsotsoo’s hand. I didn’t want us to be
caught up in the fight. We made our way through the tightly packed stalls to
the domεdo and rice sellers. I bought boiled perfumed rice for each of us.
She dished it out expertly into plastic bags. Then she ladled out the stew.
She seemed disappointed when I said I wouldn’t be buying any meat or fish
to go with the rice. Tsotsoo and I practically ran to the Pork-show stall. The
fat from the pork sizzled as it hit the charcoal beneath the grill. Black
smoke rose up and bathed the meat. It was what gave the meat its nice
flavor. I ordered some and asked the seller to add more pepper when he
turned the meat on the grill.
We joined a short line at the kelewele seller’s stall. Eventually it was our
turn and I bought some of the spiced fried plantains and fried groundnuts. I
used the change to buy three bottles of ice-cold Malta Guinness.

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 6

That night, after our feast of rice, domεdo, and kelewele

washed down with cups of Malta Guinness, Amerley-mami asked me to
stay behind while my sisters went to watch Efiewura on Kofi-papa’s TV set.
She had been on her way to the bathroom. Amorkor had already put a
bucket of water in the bathroom for her. I’d noted that the metal bucket
needed scouring and had told Amorkor to do it the next day with pawpaw
leaves, ash, and lime juice. She had grumbled but I knew she would do it.
Amerley-mami had wrapped her cover cloth around her body. She held the
pail we shared and her red sponge in one hand. In the other was the ball of
alata samina, the local soap, we used for bathing.
“Tidy up the room,” she said as she went out.
“Amerley-mami, I’ll do it when I come back,” I grumbled.
“Do it now and don’t go anywhere. I want to talk to you.”
While she took her bath, I tidied our room. I was certain she was going
to talk to me about my apprenticeship, or she was going to give me a lecture
about how I was to apply myself and learn all I could and not be lazy so as
not to waste the money she was spending on me. I took my sisters’ dirty
clothes and stuffed them into the basin. We’d have to go and wash them at
the beach tomorrow. I emptied the chamberpot into the gutter behind our
house and swept out the ash from the mosquito coils.
There wasn’t much I could do about the curtains. We washed them once
a year at Christmastime, when we also scrubbed the mosquito nets. I was
still grumbling when Amerley-mami walked in after her bath. She smelled
fresh and nice. The lemony smell of the alata samina filled the room. She
poured some Saturday Night powder into her hands and smeared it around
her neck, between her breasts, and in her armpits.
“There’s no need to grumble so much. I asked you to stay behind
because I want to talk to you,” she said as she handed me the threadbare
towel we shared. I took the towel and added it to the dirty things in the
basin.
I knew my mother well enough to know that she was not to be rushed.
Whatever she had to say, she’d say it in her own good time. She removed
the bedsheet from her bed and dumped it into the basin. I don’t think it had
been changed for six months. She looked in her suitcase and brought out the
spare bedsheet. It had blue and white stripes and she only used it when Ataa
was home. I looked at her in surprise.
“There are going to be some changes around here,” she said as she
tucked in the corners around the mattress. I went to the opposite side of the
bed and tucked the sheet under the mattress. Afterward we straightened the
corners until the blue and white stripes ran parallel to the headboard. She
took a mosquito coil out of its box, placed it on the metal stand, and lit it.
“Come, sit by me,” she said, indicating a space on the freshly made bed.
I looked down at the dirty clothes I was wearing, at the dirt on my body,
and then at the neat bed.
“It’s just a bedsheet. Come and sit.”
I sat beside her.
“Rosina wants you to live with her and help her with her house chores.”
My heart fell into my stomach. I looked down at the glowing red tip of
the mosquito coil.
“I thought you’d be excited,” Amerley-mami said.
I couldn’t look at her. I felt tears sting my eyes.
“I thought you were going to talk to me about the apprenticeship. I
thought you were going to give me the money to pay the madam.”
“I’m coming to the good part,” Amerley-mami said, taking my hand. “I
told Rosina you want to be a seamstress. She’s asked that you work for her
for two years, and after that she’ll enroll you in one of those big fashion
schools. Isn’t that fantastic? She told me those people sew clothes for all the
big-shot women in this country. You’ll learn so much more there than you
could ever learn from this woman in her container store.”
I didn’t know how I felt. On the one hand I was thrilled at the prospect
of going to a more prestigious fashion school, but on the other hand I was
scared of leaving home. I had never been away from home before. Never.
Not even for a night.
“So she wants me to be her maid?”
 “No, no, not a maid. How can you say that? We’re practically related,
I’ve known her since we were children. Her grandmother’s grandmother
and Awo’s grandmother were sisters-in-law. She’s your aunt, besides; she’s
already got two house helps, so I don’t think the work will be a lot.”
“But—”
“Look, I will not lie to you. I don’t have anything to give to you and
your sisters. And your father . . . only God knows where he is. This is your
chance to leave this place and make something of yourself.”
I continued watching the glowing tip of the mosquito coil as a thousand
and one thoughts ran through my head. What my mother was saying was
true. All my life I’ve wanted to be a seamstress. Yesterday, when I had gone
to Ofoe-mami to buy kenkey on credit, one mannequin in the local madam’s
container shop had been in a kaba that had lace sleeves and frills around the
neck. I recognized the style. It was something Akushika Acquaye had worn
two weeks ago while she reported the news. The second mannequin was in
a pink caftan. White shiny thread had been used for the embroidery. It was
very pretty.
“She just wants to help us,” Amerley-mami said.
“Then why can’t she pay for me to be an apprentice here, like what Dr.
Lutterodt does for Amarkai? Why do I have to work for her for two years?”
“She’s agreed to pay Amarkai and Tsotsoo’s school fees for the next two
years and to give me some money to trade with in exchange for your
services.”
I started to cry. How could she even agree to something like that
without asking me? How could they have settled everything between
themselves, as if I were a goat being traded at the market? Why couldn’t
she have even asked me if I wanted to go? I wasn’t afraid of the work. I
could cook, clean, sweep, wash, scrub, and weed in my sleep. But I was
afraid that everything I wanted for myself would disappear if I agreed to
become Auntie Rosina’s maid. Would Amerley-mami be happy with
Amorkor and Tsotsoo’s fees being paid for just two years? What if they
later decided between themselves that I’d work for Auntie Rosina for the
duration of Amorkor and Tsotsoo’s schooling? What if Auntie Rosina
decided she didn’t want to send me to the fashion design school anymore?
The more I thought of these things, the harder I cried. The lightness I had
felt earlier that evening was long gone. The heaviness was back. I know she
hadn’t done anything to warrant my distrust, but I didn’t trust Auntie
Rosina. I trusted my mother even less.
“Look at me, Amerley, look at me. I’m not working, where am I going
to get the money to keep paying the rent, to keep feeding and clothing you
and your sisters? If Rosina hadn’t come today, we’d have been out on the
streets by the end of the month. As for that father of yours, deε, the least
said about him, the better!”
I cried even harder.
Amerley-mami was getting angry. “Amerley, why are you so
ungrateful? Do you know how many girls would gladly exchange positions
with you? Do you know what opportunities you’ll be getting? This is your
chance to do something with yourself and you sit here crying! Do you want
to end up like me? There’s nothing here for you—nothing for you and your
sisters. If you don’t get out now, the next thing is that you’ll get pregnant, or
do you think I don’t know about you and Nikoi? Do you want to end up like
Sheba?”
I took offense at that. Due to the dumsor dumsor situation with the
electricity, Sheba’s pure water business was not doing too well. Power
supply was erratic and all those in the frozen food sector complained. But in
the last few months, Sheba had helped feed my sisters and me while my
mother had lain in bed. The only reason why I wasn’t doing the same thing
as Sheba was that I knew she’d eventually end up like my mother,
depending on her man for her daily sustenance. I wanted more than that for
myself. Way more than that. And Nikoi? How dare she judge Nikoi? Did
she not know what he had done for us?
“Don’t talk that way about Nikoi. He paid our rent and he’s saving to
buy me a sewing machine,” I said, my confusion and disappointment giving
way to anger.
“They say, ‘If a naked man says he’ll give you clothes, you should ask
him what his name is.’ ”
I rolled my eyes. I didn’t think now was the time for her to be telling me
local proverbs.
“But Amerley-mami, it’s true. If it hadn’t been for the money he gave
us, Nuumo would have kicked us out in January.”
“If he has money to spend, he should look after his family.”
It was true that Nikoi’s family was no better off than ours, but that
didn’t give Amerley-mami the right to talk about him that way. Nikoi might
not have met her criteria for a suitable boyfriend for me, but she lost her
right to complain when she stopped being a responsible parent. Nikoi was
an honest man, he worked hard as a driver’s mate, and if it hadn’t been for
him, we’d have been sleeping on Sheba’s veranda.
“The way you have looked after us these past months? He’s been giving
me money to feed us while you’ve lain in bed pretending to be sick.”
The next thing I knew there was a throbbing pain on the left side of my
cheek and I was sprawled flat on Amerley-mami’s bed. I hadn’t even seen
her raise a hand. I tasted blood in my mouth and I wasn’t sure where it
came from. Either my cheek or my tongue.
She was furious. Her breath came out in spurts and her nostrils were
flaring.
“You think you can insult me because of those dirty one-Ghana notes he
gives you, eh? And what do you give him in return? He’s buying you a
sewing machine and giving you a few measly notes in exchange for what?
Your body? Have you become an ashawo?”
I held my palm to my cheek and said nothing as the tears streamed
down my face.
“Oww!” The shouts of disappointment rose as one from outside our
room as we were all plunged into pitch darkness. The blackouts were
almost as frequent as the water shortages. We shouldn’t have been surprised
by it, but we still shouted whenever the lights went out.
“Wipe your tears before your sisters come back, and prepare to leave on
Saturday,” Amerley-mami said as she struck a match to light a candle.
I knew this was the last time we would be discussing this. My mother
had found a way to make money for herself, to be independent from her
husband, and she wasn’t about to give it up. I was her one-way ticket out of
poverty. I pushed aside the furniture in the living room and rolled out the
mattresses. I lay down and pretended to sleep as my sisters walked in, but
my mind was spinning. If I didn’t accept Auntie Rosina’s offer, it wouldn’t
be long before we were back where we had started—struggling for rent
money, school fees, and money for our basic upkeep. What if Auntie Rosina
was trustworthy? What if she stuck to her word and enrolled me in that
fashion design school? Was I on the verge of throwing away a golden
opportunity? Did I want to spend the rest of my life being responsible for
my sisters?
 “As for the electricity company, paa, they wait until we’re watching
Efiewura before they know they have to take away the power,” Amarkai
said, changing into an undershirt. Later in the night it would become too hot
to wear our cotton nighties.
I heard Amerley-mami’s bed creak as Amarkai and Tsotsoo climbed
into the bed.
“Amerley-mami, can I use the candle?” Amorkor asked.
“Are you going to read in this darkness? You’ll spoil your eyes. Go to
sleep,” Amerley-mami said as she propped open the windows with a plank
of wood.
Amerley-mami pulled down the mosquito net and tucked it around her
mattress. She lit another mosquito coil and placed it between Amorkor’s
mattress and mine. She blew out the candle and climbed in beside Amarkai
and Tsotsoo.
Amorkor, lying beside me, pulled her cloth over her head and pretended
to sleep as well.
I lay listening to the night sounds as one by one my family fell asleep.
Tsotsoo was the first to go. Then Amarkai. Then Amerley-mami. When
Amorkor was sure my mother was asleep, she climbed out of her bed,
groped for the candle in the dark, and struck a match.
She pulled out her book and began to read while cupping the flame with
one hand. I was looking the other way and watched as the flickering flames
threw dark shadows on the wall. About an hour later, she blew out the
candle, covered her head with her cloth, and fell asleep in minutes.
I couldn’t sleep, and it wasn’t just because of the stifling heat. The open
window barely let in any air. There was another building directly in front of
it, and it blocked the breeze coming from the sea. Tsotsoo mumbled in her
sleep and flung an arm over Amarkai. Amorkor swiped at a mosquito and
rolled over.
I got up. Though it was pitch dark, I knew my way around. My mattress
was right by one of the armchairs. I held on to it as I got out of bed and felt
my way toward the rough surface of the center table. From there it was
three toe-to-heel steps to the front door. I put my hand out and lowered it to
hip level, where my fingers traveled along its length until I felt the handle
and the lock. Fraction by fraction, I turned the key in the lock and eased the
door open. The difference in temperature was marked. The cool air breeze
dried out the beads of sweat on my body.
 The compound was silent. Some of the older children from the
surrounding rooms had spread mats under the cashew and neem trees and
were fast asleep. One of the landlord’s dogs raised his head as I came out of
the room. When he realized it was me and not Amarkai, his tail drooped
and he went back to sleep. I slipped out of the compound and walked past
the cooking area, where another dog had her nose in one of the baskets that
held our utensils. I shooed her away. Even if I left her, she wouldn’t find
anything there apart from gari.
I could hear the waves even before I got to the sea. I chose the path that
would keep me away from the rocks. I walked past the stretch of beach
where the fishermen kept their canoes and to an abandoned shack where
some of the men in the area were living. I wondered if Nikoi was asleep or
if he had gone out with his friends. A light flickered in the shed. I crept
toward the open door and looked in.
Inside, hip-life music played from someone’s phone. A kerosene lantern
sat on an upturned carton. It cast a dull glow on the room, and thick black
smoke billowed from it. I doubted if anyone trimmed the wicks. Some
people were asleep on mats. Girls lay entwined in the arms of their
boyfriends. Two boys were huddled in a corner sharing a cigarette and
arguing about a soccer match. Around their feet were chewed sticks of
sugarcane. The room smelled of stale sweat, cheap beer, and cigarette
smoke.
“Ei, Amerley, come in and greet us,” one of the boys called out. He was
in an undershirt and a pair of shorts. A dirty bandage was tied around his
left knee. Even from where I stood by the door I could see the gap where a
front tooth had once been. The tooth next to it had turned brown.
I tiptoed through the tangled mass of bodies and sometimes had to step
over people as I went closer to where they sat.
“Good evening, Tsina,” I said, and shook his hand. I didn’t know the
other guy’s name. I nodded in his direction. He nodded back. Tsina was
Sheba’s on-again, off-again boyfriend. He was also the father of her unborn
baby. They were in their off phase. Tsina had always wanted to be a boxer
and he used to train really hard at it. When he was sixteen he had entered a
juvenile boxing competition at Bukom. Unfortunately for him, he had been
knocked out in the third round by a fifteen-year-old. It was in that same
fight that his front tooth had been knocked out. Sometimes when he laughed
and threw his head back I could see bits of the broken root in the gum.
Sometimes the gum around it got swollen and dirty water came out.
A knee injury, the result of falling out of the ring in another fight, put an
end to his boxing ambitions. Now he was a truck pusher if there was no
other work to be done.
“Ei, lai momo. So if I don’t ask of you, you won’t ask of me, eh?”
I smiled. “I’m busy. You know my mother is not well.”
“Busy for the where? But you always make time for Nikoi.”
I smiled again. “Where is he?” Just hearing his name made my heart
beat faster.
Tsina shrugged. “Where else?”
I thanked him and left the shack.
I loved the beach at night. I loved the serenity and calmness I felt when
I walked there, and I loved that there were fewer people there. As I got
closer to the grove of coconut trees, I could hear the gentle strumming of a
guitar. My feet quickened of their own accord. I could make out the
silhouette of a person sitting at the foot of one of the trees. A lit stick of
cigarette was at his lips.
I slid down the tree and sat next to him. I pulled the cigarette out of his
mouth and ground it into the sand. I didn’t fancy dying of lung cancer from
cigarettes I didn’t even smoke. I settled my head on his shoulder, and all the
anguish I’d been feeling in my heart floated away with the notes he played.
He played for a few more minutes before placing the guitar aside and
pulling me close to him.
“I thought you weren’t coming,” he said.
“I couldn’t get away.”
I wound the gold chain he wore around his neck on my finger.
“But the lights went off hours ago.”
“Amorkor was reading.”
“Ei, that’s your ‘book-long’ sister! I’m sure if she had her way we’d
have twenty-three hours of daytime and only one hour of darkness so she
can read all day long.”
I smiled and snuggled closer into his side.
“I heard you got a very important visitor today.”
I groaned. Was there anyone who hadn’t heard about Auntie Rosina’s
visit?
 “She’s related to my mother. Their great-grandmothers were in-laws or
something like that.”
“I didn’t know you knew any important people.”
“I didn’t know she existed until today.”
“I hear your mother has paid your rent and your sisters’ fees in full.”
I sighed. How many “okro mouths” were there in that compound house?
I’m sure Auntie Rosina’s visits provided fodder for all the gossips in the
neighborhood.
“Yes.”
Nikoi pushed me away from him. I looked down but he lifted my chin
up and in the moonlight he stared into my eyes. He knew me well enough to
know I was worried.
“Amerley, what’s wrong?”
My throat felt sore and again I felt tears prick behind my eyes.
“Everything.”
I buried my face in his shoulder and told him everything that had
happened.
“You’re leaving?”
“I don’t have a choice!”
“We could run away.”
“To where? Where would we go? I don’t have any money and I don’t
want to be a kayayo.” Everyone knew that the life of head porters was
tough.
We lay on the cold sand together. Nikoi stroked my arm
absentmindedly. I could tell his thoughts were miles away, and I could
almost hear the wheels in his head turn as he weighed the pros and cons of
my options.
“Maybe it’s not a bad thing,” he said at last.
I looked at him through my tear-stained eyes. “What do you mean?”
“I mean don’t they say every cloud has a silver lining? I think you
should go.”
“What? Are you crazy?”
“Amerley, look at it this way: you work for her for two years and she
enrolls you in a prestigious fashion design school afterward, all expenses
paid. It’s far better than working with that too-known madam on the next
street. She is proud and she behaves as if she knows everything and looks
down on the rest of us.”
 “Nikoi, what’s wrong with you?”
I shrugged his hand off my shoulder and jerked away from him when he
tried to touch me.
“Amerley, it took me almost a year to save the money I gave you. When
will we ever finish buying the things on that list? When will I save enough
money to buy my own taxi? And come on, we both know that our madam
doesn’t know as much about sewing as she pretends to. She only specializes
in slit and kaba. I’ve heard people say if you take designs out of a magazine
or catalogue, she just spoils your material for you. Last month she had to
refund the cost of a wedding gown to one of her customers. Do you really
want to be like that, or do you want be an expert in all types of clothes—
skirt suits, dresses, evening gowns, wedding gowns, whatever is in style?”
“I can’t believe you’re saying this.”
He stroked my cheek. “I’m looking ahead, Amerley. If this woman
takes you in, she pays your sisters’ fees, they go to school, make something
of themselves, and become independent. If you stay, they’ll continue being
your responsibility for the rest of our lives and we’ll end up like our parents
—barely making ends meet, living from hand to mouth each month, always
worrying about bills and where our next meal is going to come from. I’m
tired of living like that.”
“I’m sorry you have to worry about me and my sisters. We’re not your
responsibility.”
“Stop that foolish talk. You’re my girl. If I don’t look after you, who
will? Besides, it’s only for two years. By the time you’re done, I should
have my own taxi. It doesn’t even matter if it’s just a secondhand one. I’ll
work night and day to make sure we don’t have to beg for anything.”
“But what if Auntie doesn’t do what she says? What if she does not
enroll me in that fashion design school?”
“But what if she does?”
We were both quiet while I thought things through.
“She gave Amerley-mami money to start her own business.”
“Yes. You already told me.”
“Do you think Amerley-mami would run a good business?”
“Well, she had better. I don’t think an opportunity like this will come
her way again.”
“Plus we paid the rent in full for the next one and a half years, so she
won’t have any major expenses for some time. I think if she puts her mind
to it she can start earning some money.”
Nikoi nodded while I sorted through my thoughts.
“This is what I’ll do,” I said finally. “I’ll go to Auntie Rosina’s for the
two years. If she does enroll me in the school, then that’s a bonus. If she
doesn’t, I’ll just come back. You’ll have saved enough for my
apprenticeship with the madam here, right?”
“Right.”
“And if Amerley-mami manages her business well, my sisters will not
be my responsibility anymore. The only thing I’d have to think about would
be us.”
“Exactly,” Nikoi said, drawing me in for a hug.
Though I’d spoken the words as if I had everything figured out, I was
still scared. Just thinking about it made my heart beat faster and made me
feel anxious. I wondered how I was going to survive two years without my
sisters, without Sheba, and without Nikoi.
“I’ll miss you,” I whispered.
A shiver ran down my body but it had nothing to do with the weather.
Nikoi thought I was cold and pulled me closer to him, and the heat from
his body warmed me up.
“I’ll miss you too, but you’ll still be in Accra. East Legon isn’t in the
Northern Region. It’s just an hour’s drive away.”
“But I won’t get to see you every night like this.”
“I’ll miss this—sitting and talking with you,” he whispered as his hand
snaked underneath my blouse.
Though my skin tingled and I felt electric shivers creep down my spine,
I swatted his hand away.
He groaned. “Amerley, you’re leaving on Saturday.”
“I told you I’m not having sex until I get married.”
“Yeah, I know.” He sighed and pulled me back into his embrace.
“Will you wait for me?”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“There are other girls who . . .”
He laughed. “I should be the one asking you that. You’ll go to East
Legon and see all those boys who have so much money they don’t even
know what to do with it. I should be the one worried that you won’t want to
come back.”
“I will, I promise.”
 He kissed me. “I know you will, and I’ll be waiting when you come
back.”
“Play something for me,” I said, snuggling close to him.
He picked up his guitar and began strumming. I fell asleep in his arms
listening to him play the chorus of Raquel’s “Candyman.” He woke me up
just before dawn and walked me home. I crept back into our room and went
back to sleep. I was no longer afraid of leaving. Everything would work out
and Nikoi would still be waiting for me when I got back.

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 7

Saturday morning dawned bright and clear. The previous day

I had gone with Amerley-mami to Makola Market to buy the plastic cups
and bowls she was going to sell. I still didn’t know exactly how much
Auntie Rosina had given her, but she had gone to the wholesalers and
bought five hundred plastic cups and bowls. I hadn’t said a word to her
since the night she slapped me. It still hurt that she wouldn’t use part of the
money for my apprenticeship. She had bought me three blouses, three
skirts, three dresses, one pair of dress shoes, one pair of sandals, and a
towel. They were all fos, but even though they had been used before, they
still looked new. She also bought five panties, three brassieres, one sponge,
and a pair of charley-wotes. Those were brand new.
At home my sisters watched with envy as I packed the things into a
small secondhand suitcase. I had had my bath by the time they woke up.
Amerley-mami had gone out to buy them koko and koose. Amorkor
sneaked out to buy some more sugar. The sugar was tied in sections in a
long plastic bag. They looked like large rosary beads. Each of us got two of
the tied bags.
“Sister Amerley, I can’t believe you’re going,” Amarkai said, stroking
one of the blouses.
“I’ll come and visit.”
“You’re so lucky,” Amorkor said, scrubbing her teeth with the kotsa
she’d been chewing. “Just imagine, you might meet some rich guy and fall
in love.”
I snorted. “Those things only happen in books. Do you think rich guys
want girls like us?”
“If you don’t have faith, it won’t happen to you. It’s almost like a
Cinderella story and Auntie Rosina is the fairy godmother. Now you just
have to meet Prince Charming and fall in love and live happily ever after,”
Amorkor said, clapping her hands in delight.
I snorted even louder. I enjoyed a good story as much as anyone else,
but I had the sense to know where fairy tales ended and the real world
began. Amorkor read everything—books, scraps of newspapers that the
sellers wrap fish in, inscriptions on T-shirts, labels on
bottles . . . everything. She’d read the Bible cover to cover three times.
Sometimes I thought her body needed words to live, the way the rest of us
need water. If she didn’t have anything to read, she became cranky. She
owned eight books. She had received five from speech- and prize-giving
day at school, got one as a birthday gift when Amerley-mami and Ataa
were on better terms, had found one just lying there on the street, and had
stolen one from the library. She had liked The Jasmine Candle so much she
hid it under her blouse when no one was watching and walked out of the
library.
I liked to read too, but practical things like newspapers, the Bible,
textbooks, and recommended literature books like The Blinkards and The
Merchant of Venice. I’d started reading both of them in senior high school,
before I got sent home for not paying my fees. I hadn’t finished reading
either book, but the little I had read, I had enjoyed. While Amorkor read
anything and everything, it was books about princes and princesses and
silly stories like that she absolutely loved.
“Ah beg, tell me, who in their right minds would fall in love with a
beast?” I asked.
Amarkai was giggling when she said, “Or speak to a mirror and stand
there while it answers. Ei, that one is like juju, the way the wulomei look
into a calabash of water and see things.”
“Oyiwa, tell her. As for being a mami wata and coming on land, deε,
don’t even go there,” I said, laughing.
“Well, if you put it that way, it does sound scary. It’s true if someone
came here and waved a wand and changed mice into horses and made my
dress change into a glamorous gown, I wouldn’t stand there and talk to her,”
Amorkor said.
“I tell you no lie, I’d probably run to a church and ask for deliverance or
something. White people, don’t they fear anything? I mean, why would you
kiss a dead body? And if the person came back to life, would you stand
there and watch?” I asked, giggling.
 “Sister Amerley, I’d run even faster than the wind,” Tsotsoo said from
behind her covered mouth.
“I prefer Ananse stories. There’re no tolis in those ones,” Amarkai said.
“But if a prince on a white horse came and said he wanted to marry you
and he changed your life forever, wouldn’t you like it?” Amorkor asked.
“Get your head out of the clouds and stop dreaming,” I replied. “If
anyone is going to change your life, it’s you. No fairy godmother or Prince
Charming or rich aunt or anyone else is going to do that. I’m glad Auntie
Rosina is helping us, but she won’t do it forever. You girls have to study
hard when you go to school. Don’t wait for anyone to change your lives for
you. If you don’t like the life you’re living, change it yourself.”
My sisters sat at my feet, and I sat on my suitcase.
“You, Amorkor, you love reading and that’s good, but you’ve got to
love your schoolwork as much as you love your storybooks. You’ve got
your exams coming up soon. Amarkai, you’re lucky Dr. Lutterodt is paying
for you to go to a good school, so you really have to study hard next year
when you start JHS. Tsotsoo, you’re six and you still don’t know your two
times tables. If you don’t learn, you won’t become anything. Don’t you all
want to be ‘big’ women like Auntie Rosina and ride in posh cars?”
My sisters nodded.
“If I were as rich as Auntie Rosina, I’d have a library in my house,
which would be bigger than our room, and I’d just spend every minute in
there,” Amorkor said.
“But Sister Amorkor, won’t you come out and eat?” Tsotsoo asked, her
eyes opening wide but her hands still over her mouth.
“No. I would only read and read and read. I wouldn’t ever feel hungry.”
Amarkai snorted. “You’d end up dead beside your books. If I were as
rich as Auntie Rosina, I’d open a veterinary clinic for people who can’t
afford treatment for their animals.”
I could see Amarkai doing just that—starving while she fed some
mangy animal.
“If I were Auntie Rosina, I would eat cake and meat pies and drink malt
every day. I wouldn’t ever eat gari soakings or kenkey again,” Tsotsoo said.
My sisters were still chattering when we heard a knock on our door.
Nikoi peeped through the torn netting. Tsotsoo got up and ran to him. “Bro
Nikoi!” She hugged his legs. He put his hand into his pocket and brought
out five condensed milk toffees. Tsotsoo got two. The rest of us got one
each.
I got off the suitcase and followed him out of the room. I didn’t want
Amerley-mami to come and meet him there. We walked hand in hand to the
beach. On the way he cut a young branch off a neem tree, stripped off its
bark, and began to clean his teeth. We didn’t say anything. We didn’t have
to. Everything that needed saying had already been said. We walked past
the line of canoes, past the ramshackle hut, and past the grove of coconut
trees; we would have walked to the moon if we could have.
When we were out of sight of all the other people, Nikoi stopped and
just stared at me. I had the feeling that he wasn’t just memorizing the details
of my face, he was looking deeper into my eyes—into my very soul.
Despite the warmth of the air, I shivered.
He spat the stick out, cupped my face, and kissed me. Nikoi had kissed
me many times before, but this—this was unlike anything I’d ever
experienced. It was almost like he wanted to possess me, to enter my body,
to become me.
When we pulled apart he slipped his hand into his pocket and brought
out a ring. It wasn’t like the ones they showed on the soap operas—the
types with the huge diamond in the center that sparkled when it caught the
sun’s rays. Where would he have gotten the money to buy me a ring like
that? The ring was white, carved out of some type of bone. I’d have liked to
think it was ivory but I knew better. I’d seen thousands of them for sale by
the side of the street.
“I know it’s not much. It’s only temporary. One day I’ll get you the real
thing. I promise. This won’t be our life anymore.”
I might not believe in fairy tales, but here was my very own Prince
Charming, and I believed everything he said.
He took off the gold chain he wore around his neck. He slipped on the
bone ring and clasped it around my neck. The ring lay in the hollow
between my breasts. Nikoi didn’t have to say anything for me to know how
important that act was to him. I twirled the chain around my finger. I’d
never worn gold before. I didn’t know the right words to thank him, so I
kissed him back instead and let it say everything that needed saying.
An hour later I got home to find Auntie Rosina’s driver had been waiting
for me. Amerley-mami’s face was tight with anger but I didn’t care. She
pushed the plastic bag containing my porridge and bean cakes into my
hands. The driver put my suitcase in the trunk. I hugged each of my sisters
goodbye. All three of them were crying. Sheba and Vashti had also come to
say bye. Amarkai’s retinue of animals stood by her side, sniffing her hands,
rubbing her legs, trying to get her attention.
Amerley-mami stuffed a ten-cedi note into my hand. “You’ll not get
another opportunity like this one. Don’t mess it up.”
I climbed into the front seat beside the driver. It was so cold I shivered.
He rolled the windows down and turned the air conditioner off.
I didn’t look back as we drove away. I was afraid I’d jump out of the car
and run back home. When he drove on the beach road, I swear I heard the
strumming of a guitar above the roar of the ocean. It couldn’t have been my
imagination.
For most of the drive out of Teshie my mind wasn’t on the scenery. My
mind was in a thousand different places at once—at the beach with Nikoi, at
the cooking area behind our house, in our one-room home, at the La
Veterinary Center—everywhere but in the car.
The next thing I knew we were in East Legon. How was it possible to
have lived all your life in a city and never seen the other side? The houses
were larger than any I had ever seen. Their gates and walls were twice my
height. Most had electric fences. There were hardly any people on the
streets. Just lots of four-by-fours with tinted windows, which disappeared
into the walled houses. There were no choked gutters, no trotros on the
street, no hawkers or peddlers.
The driver pulled up in front of a gate. The gate slid open by itself. I
took a deep breath as he drove into the compound. Day one of the next two
years had begun.

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 8

Auntie Rosina’s compound was vast. I couldn’t see the entire

fence wall though I knew it was present. We could have fit the compound
house in Teshie into it four times over. The grass on the lawn was greener
than any I had ever seen. All types of flowers and plants grew around the
well-cut lawn. Pink and orange hibiscus hedges and red ixora hedges lined
the driveway to the front of the house. Flowerpots filled with roses, lilies,
marigolds, orchids, and numerous green leafy plants were all over the
compound. Beyond the gate, we drove for about three minutes before we
got to the house itself. The house was huge. It was painted cream and
brown. The windows and doors were all brown. Decorative bricks had been
used in some places. Creeping plants—morning glory, passion fruit, and a
vine with yellow flowers—grew on a trellis attached to one wall. More
plants hung from balconies and ledges. We didn’t stop in front of the
massive wooden doors, though, but drove to the back, to the kitchen.
“Madam will see you when she wakes up,” said the driver, who had
introduced himself as Nii Okai. It was the same driver who had brought her
a week ago to Teshie. My eyes might have betrayed the surprise I felt. It
was almost noon. Who slept until twelve in the afternoon?
“She gets migraines if she wakes up before twelve. A word of warning:
Never, ever wake her up before twelve, not even if there’s an earthquake or
a tsunami. She’ll never forgive you if you do. The last house help who did
that got fired.”
A knot formed in my stomach. She fired someone for waking her up
before twelve? What sort of woman was this?
“I’ll send your things to the servants’ quarters. Go through that door to
the kitchen. Magajia, she’s the boss around here. She’ll tell you what to do.”
I nodded and walked up to the kitchen. I knocked on the door. I didn’t
get a response. I knocked again and waited. There was no sound coming
from behind the door. I tried the handle. It wasn’t locked. A blast of cold air
hit me when I entered the room. I stood there amazed by its size. It was
massive. It was four times the size of our room in Teshie. Sunlight streamed
in from the open windows and played hopscotch on the walls. The
countertops were all marble and they shone. Two fridges and one very long
freezer hummed in their corners. The stove—I’d never seen a stove like that
before—it gleamed. It looked like they had just had it delivered from a
shop. On one of the burners was a pan of boiling palm fruits. There were
two ovens on the wall. I hadn’t seen anything like those either. The
cupboards were so shiny you’d have thought they had just been
sandpapered and lacquered. Everything was clean. There were no basins
with utensils and cups or anything of that sort. No black cauldron filled
with water to soften the burnt banku crust at the bottom.
A bowl of big red apples stood in the center of the table beside a vase of
freshly cut sunflowers. The only apples I had ever eaten were the green
ones. Usually we got two small apples for one cedi when they began to turn
yellow and spoil. The only flowers I’d seen inside people’s homes were the
plastic ones, and usually those were faded and covered in so much dust that
you couldn’t even tell the colors.
An open door led away from the kitchen. I followed it to a hallway. I
didn’t understand how there could be so much space with nothing in it. No
suitcases, no drums of water or water containers, no red and white or blue-
and-white checked Ghana-must-go bags, nothing. Just a vast space with
paintings on the walls. One of the paintings was of a bustling local market
showing market mammies in their broad cane hats sitting behind their
wares. Another was of the beach: a single canoe with the inscription Jeee
nyεhe sane was tied to a coconut tree. All the other paintings were of dogs
—different breeds of dogs.
I heard a sound and followed it to a living room. A woman, older than
my mother but not as old as Awo, was arranging white lilies on a center
table. There were plants growing in pots all over the room, ferns and other
very leafy plants. The woman was in a shapeless black skirt and an
oversized white shirt. Her hair was plaited with black thread. She wore no
earrings or jewelry. On her feet were brown sandals.
Big cream leather chairs were arranged around the table. Various
candles and figurines were on a shelf on one of the walls. On another wall
was a painting of the back of a naked woman. A third wall had photos—a
few of them were of Auntie Rosina and a man I assumed was her husband.
Most of them were of children, charting their growth from when they were
babies to what I was assumed were their current ages. There were two
children—a boy and a girl. The boy looked to be the same age as me,
sixteen. The girl looked younger, maybe twelve or thirteen. She looked
younger than Amorkor but older than Amarkai.
“Good afternoon, auntie,” I said.
The woman gave a small yelp of fright and turned in my direction.
“Who are you? How did you get in?”
“My name is Amerley. Auntie Rosina sent for me. Nii Okai said I could
come in.”
“Nii Okai said you could come in and so you just walked in. Don’t you
have the sense to see the floors are still wet? Look at the mess you’ve
created!”
I turned to look at what she was pointing at. It was only then that I
noticed the floors had just been mopped. I had left a track of dirty shoe
prints leading from the corridor to the living room.
“Take that mop and clean it right this minute!”
I looked where she pointed. A mop and bucket lay there. I just stared at
her.
“Ah ah? Are you deaf? Didn’t you hear me? The floor won’t mop itself,
you know? Take that mop and get to work right this minute! And next time
don’t use the kitchen door. I don’t want the likes of you hanging around my
kitchen. Use the side door.”
She left me standing there and walked out. I felt tears prick my eyes. I
didn’t even know why I wanted to cry. It certainly wasn’t because she had
asked me to mop. I could do more strenuous things than mopping. It was
just her whole demeanor—the way she had spoken to me with no dignity, as
if I was not human.
I mopped the living room, the hall, and the kitchen, then I went and
threw out the dirty water on the patch of grass behind the kitchen. I was
rinsing out the mop at the outside tap when she appeared behind me.
“Heh! Who asked you to throw the dirty water on the grass? Don’t you
know there is bleach in it? Do you know how much we pay to keep this
grass like this? Bush girl! Do you think this is your dirty village where you
do things any which way? Look here, if—”
“Magajia, what is it?”
 I looked away from Magajia to the tall boy who had appeared behind
the house. He was in a pair of white shorts, a blue polo shirt, and white
sneakers. He had a tennis racket in one hand.
“Isn’t it this new girl who just came here? Amerley or whatever it is she
calls herself! She’s been here not even ten minutes, yet she’s provoking me.
She messed up the kitchen, the hallway, and the living room with mud, and
then she came here and poured bleach on the grass!”
While she was talking and pointing at the patch of grass, the boy looked
at me and smiled. He put a finger to his head and rolled it, indicating she
was crazy. I smiled. Magajia turned and caught me smiling.
“Eh? So now I’m a comedian, eh? This is all funny to you—I’ve
become a comedian! I’ve become Funny Face, eh? Master Zaed, warn this
girl, warn her or else I won’t be responsible for my actions!”
She turned away from us and marched back into the kitchen.
The boy turned to me and offered his hand. “I’m Zaed. I see you’ve met
Magajia.”
I wiped my wet hands on the back of my skirt. A mistake I realized too
late. I’d later have white streaks on my blue dress.
“I’m Amerley, and I’m sorry about the grass. I didn’t know there was
bleach in the water.”
He shrugged. “It’s just grass. No one even comes here anyway. So
you’re the new girl.”
I nodded.
“Magajia was my dad’s nanny. She thinks she’s God around here. My
dad keeps her around because they’re sort of related. You know, mother’s
cousin’s nephew’s friend’s grandmother’s uncle’s . . .”
I laughed. It was just like with Auntie Rosina and me.
“Don’t take her seriously. Her bark is worse than her bite.”
I nodded. I liked Zaed. He was funny.
Nii Okai appeared. “Master Zaed, Timothy is ready to take you.”
“Tell Magajia I’ve given Amerley the rest of the day off. Then show her
around and take her to her room,” Zaed said to Nii Okai.
“Yes, sir,” Nii Okai said.
“If you can’t do it, get Priscilla to do it when she comes back.”
“Yes, sir.”
I stood there watching a sixteen-year-old instruct someone who had to
be at least twenty.
 “I’ll see you around,” Zaed said.
“Yes, sir,” I said. My place in the household had become very clear to
me.

Nii Okai had to take one of the dogs to the vet, so it fell to Priscilla, the
other help, to show me around. She came in with another one of the drivers
just when Nii Okai had been taking the dog out. Priscilla wasn’t as tall as
me, though she was nineteen.
She was short and stout. She had on a long weave, which she held in a
ponytail on the top of her head. She was in stylish black trousers and a
white blouse, which were the colors of our uniform. It was a good thing
Amerley-mami had bought me a black skirt and a white blouse.
“Ei, so you’ve come?” she said when she got out of the car. She didn’t
wait for me to reply before adding, “Help me get these things out, will
you?” She instantly reminded me of Sheba. I could tell she was one of those
people who say whatever is on their mind.
She had been to the market, but the types of food she brought back told
me it wasn’t the type of market where traders displayed their wares on the
ground and there were piles of garbage on the pavement. Magajia wasn’t in
the kitchen when Priscilla and I unpacked the things. There were four
different types of cereal, Ovaltine, packs of fruit juices, sardines, sausages,
different types of cheese, condensed milk, corned beef, spaghetti, rice,
pancake mix . . . it was almost like Priscilla had walked into a shopping
mall and picked some of everything. The vegetables and meats were a
whole thing unto themselves. I didn’t know half of their names.
Priscilla laughed when she saw the look on my face. “That was how I
looked the first time I came here too. Can you believe this is only for one
month?”
My eyes opened wider, though I didn’t want to appear to be “bush.”
She just laughed and began putting things away. “Have you met anyone
yet?”
“Nii Okai, Magajia, and Master Zaed.”
“Ei, you’ve met ‘the enemy of progress’ already? What did she do to
you?”
 I narrated what had happened with the mop water.
“That’s how she is to everyone, don’t mind her. But Nii Okai is nice.
He’s Madam’s driver. As for the others, I don’t really like them. They don’t
talk to me and I don’t talk to them.”
“I thought Nii Okai was the only driver.”
“No. There’s Timothy, he’s Miss Zarrah and Master Zaed’s driver. Mr.
Iddrissu’s driver is Abdul. General has been driving himself since he turned
eighteen and got his driver’s license.”
“Who’s General?”
“Mr. Iddrissu’s adopted son. His real name is Omar, but his father was a
general in the army. He died when General was small and Mr. Iddrissu
married his mother, but they divorced. The mother also got sick and died.
By that time Mr. Iddrissu had already met and married Madam. General
didn’t have any relatives, so Mr. Iddrissu adopted him. You can’t miss him.
He walks around without a shirt on to show off the lion tattoo on his chest.”
“I didn’t know Auntie Rosina had a stepchild.”
“It’s only in name. He doesn’t listen to anything she says. He’s the
reason most of the house helps don’t stay. I think he just thinks up things to
torment them and make them quit, and I hear he’s hit some of them before.”
“How long have you been here?”
She scrunched up her face in concentration. “Sixteen months next
week.”
“Why have you stayed?”
“The pay is good and there really isn’t much work here. Some of the
other places I’ve worked—my sister, don’t go there. So how much are they
paying you?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. The money has already been paid to my
mother.”
“Ei, so don’t you get anything? It’s you who will be working.”
I thought of the ten-cedi note Amerley-mami had thrust into my hand.
“No, nothing.”
“Hmm. This one, deε, true monkey de work, baboon de chop. Why
should you be doing all the hard work while someone else enjoys the fruits
of your labor?”
“Auntie Rosina has promised to enroll me in a fashion design school
when I finish.”
Priscilla snorted and continued putting the things away.
 “Besides, I don’t mind working so my sisters can get a better life. It’s
only for two years.”
“As for me, what I earn is mine. The agency takes ten percent but I keep
the rest.”
“What about your family?”
“What about them?”
“Don’t they get anything?”
“I beg, am I the one who asked my parents to have children they
couldn’t look after? In my family, it’s everyone for himself, God for us all.
My younger sister has a sugar daddy; one of my brothers is an apprentice
fitter; and as for the two older boys, they went to Tarkwa to do galamsey
two years ago, no one has heard from them since. Everyone warned them
against going to mine illegally, but they just followed some boys from my
village and now no one knows where they are.”
I liked Priscilla even though I didn’t know her well, but I couldn’t get
over how she didn’t care what happened to her siblings. A sister who was
younger than her already had a sugar daddy? And she was standing here
saying it the way someone might say their younger sister was in junior high
school, like it was normal. I couldn’t understand that.
“So is Madam really your aunt? Do she and your mother have the same
parents?”
“No. My mother’s grandmother and her mother’s grandmother were in-
laws or something like that. I’m not very sure of the connection.”
“I beg, if you know what is good for you, don’t go about calling her
Auntie Rosina in front of guests or even in front of her children, especially
Miss Zarrah.”
“What are they like—the family?”
“Oh, Master Zaed is okay. He even talks to me from time to time. Miss
Zarrah is like this, like that,” she said, flipping her hand back and forth.
“Sometimes she’s very nice, other times you won’t believe she’s only
twelve. And when I say she’s nice, I don’t mean to me. She pretends I’m
invisible. The first time I came to the house, she asked me what my name
was. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even finish class four before I dropped
out of school. All my life everyone had called me Princilla. So when she
asked I said, ‘Princilla.’ She asked me to spell it. I said—P-R-I-S-C-I-L-L-
A.”
 Priscilla paused, and even though the incident had occurred over a year
ago, I knew she was still hurt.
“Do you know what that nyatse nyatse girl told me?”
I shook my head.
“ ‘You must be dumber than you look. You can’t even pronounce your
name right.’ ” She shook her own head as she spoke.
“What did her mother say?”
A bitter look came into her eyes. “Her mother? What will she say? You
think that woman cares that I was humiliated and made to look stupid by
her daughter?”
If my sisters or I talked like that to anyone who was older than us,
Amerley-mami would have given us a dirty slap.
“Look, I know you say you’re related, but let me tell you the truth.
Madam has no control over her children. She can’t tell them what to do. If
she does—trouble!”
“How about their father?”
“What father? Is he ever around? He leaves home by six in the morning
and comes back after ten at night if he’s in Accra, but most of the time he’s
not even in the country. He’s away on business. He’s just an ATM, giving
them money, money, money. That Miss Zarrah, you should see the clothes
she has, she wears them once and gives them away. You’re lucky you’re
almost the same size. You can get some nice things.”
I glanced at the blue fos dress I’d worn. That morning in our room at
Teshie, it had appeared pretty and I’d seen the looks of envy on my sisters’
faces, but standing here in the opulence of the Iddrissu household, I could
see what it actually was—a faded blue secondhand dress.
“As for—” Priscilla began saying, but Magajia chose that moment to
walk into the kitchen.
“Always gossiping! Always gossiping and yet you wonder why you’re
not progressing in life,” she said as she walked past Priscilla.
“You”—she pointed at me—“Madam will see you now. She’s in the
living room.”
“Thank you, auntie,” I said.
“Hey wait! What would make you think that you and I share the same
blood? Never call me that again, you hear?”
I nodded. I had only said “auntie’ as a sign of respect; I hadn’t meant
anything familial by it. Priscilla rolled her eyes and continued unpacking
the groceries.
“Are you a lizard? I open my mouth to speak to you and you nod.”
“I’m sorry, Magajia, I won’t call you that again.”
“And you, I hope you know the palm fruits will not pound themselves,”
she said to Priscilla as I walked out of the room.

I found Auntie Rosina in the living room, just as Magajia said. She was
lying on the sofa with her feet up and was going through the newspapers.
She was in an African print dress. The dress was well above her knees. Her
face was made up and her hair cascaded down the sides of her face. I knew
it was Brazilian hair. I’d seen it so many times on TV. The curly, silky hair
framed her face. She still smelled of jasmine and orange blossoms.
“Oh, Amerley, I’m so glad you could come.” She sighed and laid the
newspapers aside. “I’m sorry I couldn’t meet you when you came in, but I
get these terrible migraines in the mornings and the doctors say the best
thing to do is to sleep them off. How are you?”
“I’m fine, auntie,” I said, forgetting all about Priscilla’s piece of advice.
“Ah ah, that’s another thing. I know we’re related but you can’t call me
‘auntie’ in this house. The others will think I’m favoring you, so you’ll call
me ‘madam,’ okay?”
“Yes, aun—madam.”
“Good. Magajia will show you what to do. It’s not easy. There’s so
much to do and no one appreciates the effort I put into running this
household. They think it just happens by magic.”
She put a well-manicured hand to her chest and took in a deep breath.
Her fingernails were painted baby pink. She wore three rings on one hand
and a gold bracelet dangled from her wrist. She exhaled noisily and
repeated the process three more times.
“Amerley, get me my pills, they’re over there in that cabinet.”
I went to the cabinet and opened it. Bottles of pills lined the shelves.
“Bring the one with the green cap and the other one with the pink cap.”
I took the bottles to her.
“Madam, should I get you some water?”
 “Yes, yes, and tell Magajia to make some light soup for me, I’m really
not feeling well today. Tell her to use goat meat.”
I went to the kitchen and relayed the message to Magajia. Priscilla got
out a glass. She put it on a tray and added a bottle of Evian bottled water.
“Don’t open it till she asks you to,” she whispered.
I nodded and took the tray back to Auntie Rosina. She held two blue
pills in her hand and one white one. She swallowed the pills, lay back on
the sofa, and closed her eyes. Her dress rode up another two inches. If it
went up any more, I’d be able to see her underwear. I stood there holding
the tray and wondered if I should take it back to the kitchen.
“Pour me a glass, will you?” she said after about five minutes.
I set the tray down and poured the water into the glass and offered it to
her on the tray. She took a sip of the water and gave it back to me.
“Tell Magajia to prepare some apem and abom with a little mankani and
some boiled koobi for my lunch. Ask her to add some smoked herrings,
salmon, two boiled eggs, and a lot of kpakpo shitɔ.”
She lay down and her eyelids fluttered shut. “These days I have no
appetite at all, hmm. Tell her not to use so much palm oil like she did last
time. The doctors say I have high cholesterol.”
“Yes, madam.”
“You may go now, Amerley. I think I’ll just lie down for a bit.”

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 9

I began working the very next day. My duties in the Iddrissu

house included scrubbing the bathrooms once a week. In Teshie, scrubbing
the bathhouse we shared with the nine other families had also been my duty
when it was my family’s turn. The bathrooms in the Iddrissu household
were paradise in comparison. For one thing, there was no green mold or
algae on the walls. There were no worms between the tiles on the floor, as
there had been between the oyster shells on the floor of the Teshie
bathhouse. People didn’t pee in their baths or defecate there, as they did in
Teshie when the line in front of the public toilet was too long. I could sleep
on the bathroom floors of East Legon and not fear I’d pick up an incurable
disease.
I started with Zarrah’s room first. Priscilla had already been there to
vacuum the carpet and dust the furniture. I was amazed at how large her
bedroom was. It was bigger than our single room back home. Her bed was
bigger than Amerley-mami’s. I was told to change the bedsheets every
week. Her favorite color was lavender, and everything in the room was a
shade of it—from the curtains to the carpet to the walls.
I paused in front of her walk-in closet to marvel at her clothes, bags,
belts, and shoes (Zarrah could have filled a department store with what she
owned). Afterward, I went to the bathroom. Her bath products filled two
shelves in the cabinets. Most smelled like fruits and flowers. I was still
cleaning her bathroom when she came in and lay on her bed. She switched
on the flat-screen TV and began watching a movie.
I greeted her, walked to the main door where I had left the bleach, and
returned to the bathroom. As soon as I closed the bathroom door behind me,
she got up and sprayed air freshener in the room. On my way out twenty
minutes later, she said, “You smell so much, use a deodorant. Next time,
come and clean when I’m not around.”
 Madam, who had been passing outside her door, heard what she said
and entered the room. “That’s not a nice thing to say.”
“But it’s true! She smells! Kristin and Aseye will be coming here later.
Imagine how they’ll feel if she comes in. It will be so embarrassing!”
Madam sighed and said, “Amerley, you can go now.”
I went to Zaed’s room next. I didn’t linger there for fear of him coming
in and also telling me that I stank. I tried not to stare at the posters of tennis
stars that lined the walls of his room or at his bookshelf that was bulging
with books. I just walked through the door and headed straight to the
bathroom. Zaed was neater than Zarrah. I’m sure he rinsed his walls after
each bath. He also had bottles of shampoo, liquid soap, and shaving cream
in a cabinet.
Omar’s—General’s—room was painted black. On the walls were
pictures of lions. There was one picture of a roaring lion. You could even
see the tongue and fangs. I didn’t venture anywhere near his bed. Priscilla
told me she had cut herself once when she had been vacuuming. She’d not
been wearing any shoes. Omar had broken a glass and had not cleaned up
the pieces. She had also warned me about Omar’s tendency not to flush the
toilet after using it, so that no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t avoid
looking into the bowl. I don’t think the smell bothered him.
That night as I took my bath, I scrubbed my armpits with lemon, hoping
that whatever smell I had would disappear. The next morning as I set the
breakfast table, Zarrah whispered to Zaed, “I have to hold my breath
anytime she comes around.”
After that first meal experience, I begged Priscilla to take my place
whenever it was mealtime. At the end of the month when Madam gave me
my first pocket money, I used it to buy the same brand of deodorant Zarrah
herself used. Zarrah stopped complaining.

“What am I going to do?” Priscilla said, coming into the room we

shared in the servants’ quarters. Nii Okai had a room to himself. The other
driver, Timothy, didn’t live on the property. Abdul only came around when
Mr. Iddrissu was in town. He didn’t live on the compound either.
 “Magajia will kill me for sure when she finds out I didn’t get this blouse
altered for her.”
Priscilla and each of the drivers were given a day off once a week.
Priscilla usually spent hers at the hairdresser’s getting her hair and nails
done. She had left the house at 4 a.m. that morning and was just coming
back home. It was a little past 10 p.m. She had micro braids that reached all
the way to her waist.
I didn’t have a day off, but weekends with the Iddrissus were typically
not busy unless they were hosting a dinner or had friends over. I usually had
the day to myself once my chores were done. The best thing about the
weekends was getting to speak to Nikoi. There was a landline in the
servants’ quarters, but since Nii Okai and Priscilla had their own phones, I
was the only one who waited for calls on it. I couldn’t make any calls, but I
could receive calls. Nikoi called me every Saturday night at 8 p.m. from a
phone booth at a filling station not too far from our house in Teshie.
Sometimes he had my sisters and Sheba with him. Tsina had a phone, so I
could reach Nikoi, but I preferred waiting for him to call me on Saturdays.
The one and only time I had used Priscilla’s phone to call Tsina so I could
speak to Nikoi, Priscilla had made me pay her for the phone credits I had
used. Nikoi’s calls on Saturdays were the highlight of my week. They were
also the only way I kept up with what was happening in Teshie.
“I totally forgot. Where am I going to get someone to do what she
wants?” she moaned as she dropped onto her bed.
“Your hair looks nice,” I said, both in a bid to console her and because it
was true. The braids were very neat and even. Not a stray hair in sight.
“I know, right? she said, swinging her head. The motion made the braids
swish like a curtain around her. “This is the style Nana Ama McBrown had
on her show last week.”
“Isn’t it painful?” I asked, looking at the fine partings they had made on
her scalp.
“Not one bit. The woman who does it has soft hands. You hardly feel a
thing. It’s just that she takes forever to do them. And she works alone. I had
to sit for twelve hours. That’s why I went early, so we could start and finish
early, and in my haste to leave I forgot Magajia’s blouse.”
“What does Magajia want done to her blouse?”
Priscilla took out one of the shapeless blouses Magajia favored and
brought it to me. “She says the armholes are too tight. She wanted the
seamstress to loosen them a bit.”
I took the blouse from Priscilla and examined the sleeves. There was
enough material for me to make the necessary adjustments. “If you’d like, I
can do the alterations.”
“Do you even know how to sew?”
“Yes. I’m quite good.”
“Are you sure? Magajia will have a fit if she finds out I forgot to take
the blouse to her seamstress, but she’ll skin me alive if she finds out you did
it.”
“She won’t know if you don’t tell her. I can do this. It’s quite simple
actually. I’ll be done in no time. If I finish and you don’t like it, you can
send the blouse to the seamstress tomorrow and tell Magajia the seamstress
couldn’t finish it because their lights went off.”
Priscilla didn’t look convinced but she allowed me to proceed. While
she took a shower, I unpicked the stitches around the armhole and held the
fabric together with pins. I threaded a needle and was done with one sleeve
by the time Priscilla got out of the bathroom.
“Let me see,” she said, coming to stand behind me as I worked.
I showed her what I had done.
“My goodness, you can really sew. It looks just like machine stitches.
Wow. You’re really gifted.”
I shrugged. “I used to do alterations for people all the time when I was
in Teshie.”
“Did they pay you?”
“I didn’t charge them. Most of them were my neighbors and I let them
give me what they felt was enough.”
Priscilla sucked her teeth. “Why? Don’t you like money?” She picked
up her phone and started texting. “I’m going to tell all my friends about
you. Anytime their madams or daughters need alterations, they’ll bring
them to you. We’ll run a business. You’ll do the alterations and I’ll get us
customers. We’ll keep ten percent of our earnings to buy new needles and
thread and whatever else you’ll need, then we’ll give ten percent of what
we charge to the other house helps who bring us their madams’ things, and
we’ll split the eighty percent fifty-fifty. Agreed?”
“But will we make enough?”
“Of course we’ll make enough. Magajia gave me fifty cedis for this
thing that you’ve done.” Priscilla took her purse and gave me twenty-five
cedis. “As for rich people, they don’t value money. You wait and see the
money we’ll be making.”
“But won’t the madams be angry when they find out the jobs are
coming to me?”
“They won’t know. They are all like our madam. ‘Priscilla, send this to
my seamstress, let her take in the waist by an inch. It isn’t tight enough,’ ”
Priscilla said, imitating Auntie Rosina perfectly. “When I bring it back and
it’s the way she likes, do you think she’s going to call the seamstress and
ask her if I really did bring the things to her?”
“I’m not sure about this.”
“Don’t worry about anything. I’ll handle it. Just imagine, you might
even be able to buy your own sewing machine from the money you make.”
It was the thought of owning my own sewing machine that made me
agree to her plan. “I’ll do it on one condition.”
Priscilla frowned. “What condition?”
“We’ll give ten percent to the house helps who bring us the clothes, but
we’ll save all of the ninety percent and use it to buy the sewing machine
and other items I will need. Only after that will we start sharing the eighty
percent fifty-fifty.”
Priscilla’s frown deepened. “That’s not fair, at the end of the day you get
to keep the machine and I get nothing.”
“Yes, I will get to keep the machine, but we’ll be able to double or triple
the clothes we do if we have a sewing machine. I could have been done
with the alterations on this blouse in five minutes instead of the one hour I
spent using a thread and needle. And just think, we could offer a same-day
service and charge double.”
Priscilla bit her bottom lip as she thought about what I had just said.
“Okay, that makes sense,” she said, offering me her hand to shake.
There was a glint in her eye when she said, “But since I brought this first
customer, I keep my ten percent.”
She took five cedis off the twenty-five cedis she had kept for herself and
gave me the twenty-cedi note. And just like that I began saving for my own
sewing machine.

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 10

I finished scrubbing Zaed’s bathroom and toilet and lingered

to read the titles of books on his shelf. Amorkor would have drooled if she
had been here. I had never met a boy who loved to read as much as Zaed
did. The truth was, apart from Amorkor, I hadn’t met anyone else who
loved to read just for the sake of reading.
I noticed The Blinkards on his shelf and pulled it out. The copy was
brand new—it was nothing like the tattered copy they had given us in
school. I opened it to one of my favorite pages and was reading when Zaed
walked in.
I was so surprised I dropped the book. I thought he’d gone to his tennis
lessons. What would Madam do to me if she heard I had been snooping in
his room? Magajia would give me a good scolding, that was for sure.
“I didn’t touch anything, I was just looking at the book.”
Zaed looked from me to the carpeted floor where the book lay.
“The copy we were given in school was very old and some pages were
missing. I was checking to see what parts I’d missed.” I picked up the book
and tucked it back into its place on the shelf. “I’m sorry, sir. It won’t happen
again, I promise.” Please don’t report me to Magajia.
Zaed walked past me and took the book off the shelf. “Here, you can
have it. Just return it when you finish.”
I stood there just looking at him. Not only was he not going to report
me, but he was also actually giving me the book to read.
“Thank you, thank you, sir.”
He smiled as if he were very tired. “If we’re going to be friends, you
can drop the ‘sir, sir’ thing. Just call me Zaed.”
I shook my head. “I can’t. Magajia will kill me, but thank you for the
book.”
I turned and was about to leave when he called me back.
 “Sit, talk to me.”
“I have work . . .”
He picked up the intercom and told Magajia he had work for me to do.
He told her to assign my duties to either Priscilla or Nii Okai.
“Sit,” he said, waving to one of the chairs. He lay on the bed. “Talk to
me about anything. Just keep talking, don’t stop.”
“What about, sir?”
“Anything. Tell me about your family.”
My family? I didn’t know where to start. I told him about how
sometimes I wished I had been a boy so that Ataa could have stayed home
and I could have continued my education.
“Do you believe in karma?” Zaed asked.
I shook my head. “I believe God has a plan and a purpose for
everyone.”
He sat up on his bed and looked at me. “Please don’t tell me you’re one
of those born-again people. I don’t need that right now, someone preaching
at me.”
“I am.”
He laughed but there was no humor in it.
“So you read your Bible and go to church and believe that ‘all things
work together for good’?”
I nodded. I had lived in the Iddrissu household long enough to know
that no one there took religion seriously, apart from Magajia, who spread
out her prayer mat in her room and prayed five times a day. Mr. Iddrissu
was a lapsed Muslim. Auntie Rosina was a lapsed Christian who never
made it to church on Sunday mornings because of her migraines. None of
the three children went either.
“You know what the white men who brought Christianity to Africa use
their church buildings for now? Discos and clubs. And we have taken their
religion and swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.”
I shrugged. That made him angry. He went to his shelf and pulled out
two books. One was on evolution, and the other was on the big bang theory.
“Science proves that this is how we came into this world! What proof
do you have? If he’s there, prove it!”
I didn’t know why he was angry with me. What had I done?
“I can’t see the wind either, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”
 He covered his face with his hands. “My goodness, I can’t believe how
naïve you are! The wind? That’s your proof?”
“It’s not just the wind, it’s everything. The stars in the sky, a smile on a
child’s face, flowers and trees and animals. The sea, the beach—everything
around me proves to me that there is a God. These things didn’t just
happen.”
“What good does believing in God do you? Does he hear your prayers?
Is this what he wants for you, his ‘children’? To be poor? To be a maid? To
serve other people?”
“I might not like my present condition, but that doesn’t mean God
doesn’t care or that he doesn’t hear me when I pray.”
“If there is a God, where is he when bad things happen to innocent
people?” he said, and I could see tears in his eyes. “My best friend got shot
yesterday. I didn’t even know. I showed up at the tennis court and he wasn’t
there. I called the house and someone told me armed robbers broke into
their house and shot him, just like that. He died before they could get him to
a hospital. If there’s a God, where was he when that happened? Why didn’t
he save him? Jeremy never hurt anyone. He was a good guy. He never did
anything bad. He was like you, born-again. Where was God? Why didn’t he
save him?”
“I’m sorry he died, but if he was saved, then he’s with God right now.
He’s in heaven.”
“And if there’s no heaven?”
“Then he didn’t miss out on anything.”
He turned away from me and banged his fists on the wall so hard they
began to bleed. He started to cry. I didn’t know what to do. I slipped out of
the room. It was almost 11 a.m. I put my ear to Madam’s door. Migraines or
not, her son needed her. I hoped cutting her sleep time short by one hour
wouldn’t cost me my job.
There was no sound coming from inside Madam’s room. I knocked
twice. Nothing. I turned the knob and entered her room. The cold air hit me
like a force. The curtains were drawn, but fingers of sunlight stole between
gaps in the curtains and lit up portions of the room. I tiptoed to her bed. She
lay on her back, a black sleep mask over her eyes. A bottle of Evian water
was on her side table. She was snoring softly.
I called her name but she didn’t budge. I reached over to her shoulder
and gently shook her.
 She snapped off the mask. Her eyes struggled to focus on me in the dark
room before recognition broke through her sleep-filled mind.
“Madam, it’s Master Zaed, he’s crying. His best friend died.”
She was out of her bed and out the door in a flash. I sighed in relief. I
had done the right thing by waking her.
As I went back downstairs, I peeked into Zaed’s room. He sat crouched
in a corner of the room, his head buried between his legs. His body was
racked with sobs. Madam was kneeling by his side. She had her arms
around him. She was whispering something into his ear and rubbing his
back. Whatever she was whispering only made him cry harder. I slipped
away before either of them noticed me.

That night when Nikoi called, I told him what had happened and how
I’d been scared Madam would scold me for waking her up, but how later
that evening she had come to thank me instead.
“Her child was hurting, of course she’d want to know about it,” Nikoi
said.
“It just struck me how different she and Amerley-mami are, that’s all.”
“Don’t go making comparisons, Amerley. You have enough to eat, a
roof over your head, and clothes on your back. Your sisters have the same.
Be content with what you have.”
I twirled the cord around my finger and sank to the floor beside the
phone side table. “I’m not being ungrateful, I just . . . Sometimes it’s hard
not to be bitter, you know?”
“I know,” Nikoi said. “But if you think about the unfairness of life—
what did your madam’s kids do to deserve an easy life, what did we do to
deserve ours—if you keep thinking about things like that, you’ll just be sad
and bitter all the time. It’s hard to believe, but we’re better off than some
people.”
I knew what he said was true, but living with the Iddrissus had opened
my eyes to so many things. It just didn’t seem fair.
“How are my sisters?”
“They are fine. Amarkai boarded my trotro on her way to school on
Wednesday. She said Amorkor will get a prize at the end of the term in
English literature.”
My heart warmed. “That’s not surprising. All she does is read. How is
everyone else?”
Nikoi chuckled and I could hear the laughter in his voice as he said, “I
think Ofoe-mami misses you. She keeps complaining that your sisters don’t
buy her kenkey anymore. She asked when you’d be back.”
I laughed. “The girls are scared of her. She’s too harsh.”
“Speaking of harsh people, how is your Magajia?”
“She’s the same. Always finding work for you to do if she finds you
idle.”
“How’s the business going?”
“Not bad. I fixed two buttons on a shirt for one of Priscilla’s friends’
masters today. The shirts were not even torn. One button had come off and
the other was hanging by a thread. The man was going to pay one hundred
cedis to a tailor to fix the buttons for him.”
“Ei. One hundred cedis?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So no one in their house had a thread and needle?”
“Nii, I don’t know for them.”
“I’m happy for you. At this rate, you will get your machine in no time,
and then you can help me buy my taxi.”
I laughed. “It’s not really my doing. It’s Priscilla. She’s a very shrewd
businesswoman. I don’t even know how she knows so many people. Some
of her friends have started bringing me their own clothes as well.”
“Drat,” Nii whispered.
“What is it?”
“I have one minute remaining on this calling card.”
“Say hello to my sisters for me when you see them, and please
congratulate Amorkor for me.”
“I will. I’ll call you next Saturday.”
“I’ll be waiting. Have a good week.”
“Have a good week too.”
“I—”
Beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep, the dial tone sounded in my ear.
“I love you,” I said into the disconnected earpiece at the same time that
I saw the door handle to our living room turn.
 Priscilla and Nii Okai had both gone out and I had locked myself in.
The door handle turned again.
“Who’s there?” I called out as I went to the window. We had an
intercom, and if anyone in the main house needed us, that was what they
used.
I pulled the curtain back and looked out just in time to see the retreating
figure of Omar. What did he want? Why was he leaving? Why did he not
knock? He and his siblings had never set foot in the servants’ quarters since
I had been there. Maybe he had been coming to see Nii Okai and just
realized it was his day off. That was the only explanation that made sense. I
double-checked the locks on the door and went to bed.

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 11

The Iddrissus threw a surprise birthday party for Zarrah when

she turned thirteen. It was Madam who threw the party; Mr. Iddrissu was
out of town. That morning, Timothy took Zarrah and Zaed to the dentist.
Zaed needed a filling and Zarrah had an appointment with her orthodontist.
When Priscilla told me Zarrah’s braces cost almost eight thousand cedis, I
thought she was joking until she showed me the receipt, which she’d found
in the garbage can. Eight thousand cedis just to have your teeth
straightened! I still couldn’t believe it.
By the time they came home, Zarrah’s friends from school had arrived.
The decorators and caterers had turned the lawn into something straight out
of TV. I had never seen anything like it in real life. The DJ had already set
up. We could hear Zarrah’s screams from inside the car before she even got
out.
Madam went to hug her. A few aunts and uncles also fussed around her.
Her friends soon surrounded her, and she was shrieking in delight as she
saw who had shown up.
“You! You! I can’t believe you didn’t say a word! I was so surprised!”
she said, punching Zaed’s arm playfully.
“Ouch,” he said, rubbing his arm. “Mom said I wasn’t to say anything.
Besides, isn’t that the point of a surprise birthday party?”
She screamed when the video guy came to stand in front of her. “I’ve
got to change!” She ran into the house and her friends and relatives
laughed. She came down twenty minutes later, all glammed up in a short
sheath lavender dress and nude heels. She even had makeup on her face.
Madam had hired a makeup artist for the occasion. This time when the
video guy stood in front of her, she smiled and posed for him.
I stood near the doors and directed people to the bathrooms. It was my
job to make sure the toilets were clean, that there was enough toilet paper
and soap, and to mop the floor after a guest came out. I missed out on most
of what happened outdoors, but from time to time I snuck over to the
windows to look through. The music was so loud it made the windows
rattle. Everyone seemed to be having a good time. Madam was in her
element, throwing her head back and laughing and demurely accepting
compliments on how she looked “not a day above thirty.” You’d have
thought it was her birthday. The birthday girl herself came indoors to
change three times into different lavender-colored outfits before the day
ended.
Almost everyone who came brought her presents. It was Priscilla’s job
to receive them and give the guests a souvenir in exchange for the gift.
Zarrah’s friends received a bottle of designer perfume. The adults each got a
bottle of champagne.
Later, after Zarrah had made a wish and blown out the candles on her
cake, I saw Zaed come in through the front door. I took up my position in
front of the guests’ bathroom. He noticed me and said, “You should get
something to eat. Aren’t you hungry?”
“I’m fine, sir,” I said.
“Go on . . . go and get a snack or something, I’ll show people the way.”
I smiled and shook my head. My job didn’t only entail showing people
the way. Somehow I couldn’t picture him with a toilet brush scrubbing the
toilet. Anyway, Magajia would have my neck if she saw me anywhere other
than where she had designated.
“I ate before the party started,” I lied.
“You sure?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Should I get you anything? A Coke maybe?”
I shook my head. Even drinking water on the job was a cardinal sin in
Magajia’s eyes. Anyway, who would want to eat or drink while standing
outside a bathroom?
“I’m fine, sir, thank you.”
“Well, okay, see you later then.” He walked past me and hopped up the
stairs.
A few minutes later Magajia came to me with a well-dressed young
woman who was carrying a crying baby.
“Take her for a walk outside; the music here is too loud,” Magajia said.
 “Are you sure that’s why she’s crying?” the woman asked. She looked
really worried and was reluctant to hand over the baby. “Shh, Aseda, it’s
okay,” she cooed to the baby.
“She’s just sleepy, and all this noise isn’t helping,” Magajia said, taking
the baby away from the woman and handing her to me.
“Miss Fanny, go and eat some food, relax and enjoy the party. Aseda
will be fine,” Magajia said as she led the anxious young woman back to the
party. Even though the woman allowed herself to be led away, she kept
turning to look at me and her daughter.
The baby’s face was scrunched up as she kept screaming. She was
dressed in a pink dress with yellow sunflowers, matching pink shoes, and
had pink baubles in her hair. I jiggled her as I walked toward the gate. I had
gone only two houses away before the baby stopped fussing and fell asleep.
The minute I turned and started heading back to the house, the baby began
whimpering. I had no choice but to keep walking to the end of the street,
where there was an uncompleted house. I wished I had taken a cover cloth
so I could have strapped the baby onto my back.
When we got to the uncompleted building, which was only five houses
away and still within sight of the Iddrissus’, I sat down on a stump under a
mango tree a little distance from the road. A gentle breeze kept the weather
cool, and the leaves of the tree shaded us from the sun. The street was
empty. Though I had lived with the Iddrissus for almost six months now, it
never failed to surprise me how different their neighborhood was from
Teshie. There were no children running up and down the streets pushing old
truck tires, no groups of women going to or from the market, no hawkers,
no stray animals, nothing.
Even this mango tree I sat under was an anomaly. There were ripe
mangoes on the branches, and so many of the fruits had fallen to the ground
and begun to rot. I smiled to myself. This could never happen in Teshie.
Mango fruits mysteriously disappeared from the trees when the first streak
of yellow appeared. I shook my head and looked down at the baby, who
was fast asleep. Her mouth was open and she kept making suckling noises. I
wondered if she was dreaming of her bottle. I admired her curly black hair
and the pretty dress she wore. She was one of the lucky ones. One of the
ones who would never go to bed hungry, wear fos clothes, be sent home for
school fees, or worry whether her parents could afford the rent for their
house. I rocked her as she began to whimper and wondered about Sheba
and her baby boy. The last time Nikoi called me, he’d told me Sheba had
given birth.
I was still under the tree when the baby’s mother came looking for us.
Did she think I was going to run away with her baby? The other house helps
who brought me clothes to be altered always had horror stories about some
of the people they worked for. One girl said a tracker had been put on her
phone so her madam always knew where she was, even when she
accompanied the children to school. Another one said she was made to
sanitize her hands before touching any of her madam’s children. Another,
who worked for a minister of state, said there was an armed security guard
with her anytime she was around the children.
The baby’s mother was far younger than Madam. She looked like she
was in her late twenties. Even though she had makeup on her face, I could
see the circles under her eyes. She was in a pretty yellow fitted lace dress
and blue high-heeled shoes.
“She’s finally asleep, huh?” she said as she approached, and sat beside
me on the tree stump. She didn’t even wipe the stump or anything. She just
sat down and kicked off her shoes. I hoped her dress didn’t get stained.
I began handing the baby over to her mother but the woman shook her
head. “No, you hold her. I just wanted to get away from the music. It was
giving me a headache.”
I wondered if she also had pills in bottles like Madam.
“My name is Fanny Mills. I don’t think I’ve seen you at Rosina’s
before.”
“My name is Amerley, and I’m new.”
“Naa Amerley, that’s the first girl, right?”
I nodded.
“It’s a pretty name.” She yawned and stretched. Her rings glinted in the
sunlight. Both her engagement and wedding rings were silver. I’d thought
they were made only in gold.
“I think I’ll just rest my eyes a bit.” She leaned against the tree trunk,
and in seconds she was asleep. No one had ever told me my name was
pretty. It shouldn’t have meant much but it did. I was surprised at how good
that simple compliment made me feel. I took the opportunity to stare at
Auntie Fanny as she slept. She was beautiful, but her beauty was unlike
Madam’s, which made you want to stop and stare. Hers was a simple, plain
beauty, or maybe I was just biased because she had said something nice to
me. Though there were bags under her eyes, there were no wrinkles on her
face. Her skin was smooth but she had a scar above her left eyebrow.
The sun began to set and still mother and daughter slept. Guests were
leaving the Iddrissu compound in their big four-by-four cars. I didn’t know
what to do. Would she be upset like Madam if I disturbed her nap? Would
waking her up cost me my job? Even though I had initially been reluctant to
work for Auntie Rosina, I loved it here. I had more than I’d ever had to eat,
I slept in a comfortable bed, I was given good clothes, my mother and
sisters were doing well, and I almost had enough money to buy my sewing
machine. It was a good life and I didn’t want to throw it away.
I thought about taking the baby to Magajia, but what if Auntie Fanny
woke up and discovered we were gone? Would that upset her? Besides, I
couldn’t just leave her sleeping by the side of the road like this, could I? I
was still thinking about what to do when an extremely good-looking man
walked out of the Iddrissus’ house. He scanned the street, spotted us, and
started walking toward us. The man was fine. He was tall but not overly
built. His head was bald but he had a thick beard. He was in a blue-black
caftan and trousers and a pair of leather slippers. He smiled when he was
close enough to see that both Auntie Fanny and Aseda were asleep. When
he smiled, dimples appeared in his cheeks.
“My sleeping beauties,” he whispered. He took his phone out of his
pocket. “Is it okay to take a picture?” he asked.
I nodded. He took several pictures of his “sleeping beauties” and put his
phone away.
“I’m Joojo Mills. Thank you for looking after them. I’ll just get the car
and tell Rosina we’re leaving.”
I nodded again. Joojo Mills was a dream. A few minutes later he drove
down to where we were in a black four-by-four car. Auntie Fanny woke up
when the car came to a stop.
“It’s time to go,” Mr. Mills said, helping her to her feet.
“I was just resting my eyes,” Auntie Fanny said.
“You were fast asleep,” Mr. Mills said with a chuckle, and his dimples
made an appearance.
“I’d just closed my eyes,” Auntie Fanny insisted with a smile.
“I have evidence to prove otherwise,” Mr. Mills said, taking out his
phone.
 Auntie Fanny laughed so hard she slapped her thigh when she saw the
pictures, but then she clamped a hand over her mouth and turned to make
sure she hadn’t woken up Aseda. Mr. Mills just stood there grinning. Auntie
Fanny took Aseda from me and strapped her into her car seat and climbed
into the back with her. Her handbag and Aseda’s diaper bag were also in the
back. Mr. Mills climbed into the car and opened the passenger door for me.
“Come on, we’ll drop you.”
“No, it’s okay. I’ll just walk.”
“We’ll feel better knowing you got home safe,” Auntie Fanny said from
the backseat.
I climbed in beside Mr. Mills, and in no time at all we were at the
Iddrissus’ house.
“Thank you so much for your help,” Auntie Fanny said.
“Yes, thank you for looking after my girls,” Mr. Mills added.
I got out of the car and waved goodbye as they drove away. I wanted
what the Millses had. Not their money and possessions—though that would
be a bonus—but the relationship between Auntie Fanny and her husband. It
was so clear that Mr. Mills treated his wife as an equal. I desperately
wanted that for Nikoi and me.

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 12

Later that night, after everyone had left, Zarrah opened her
presents. Priscilla and I stood to the side to collect the discarded wrapping
paper. Zarrah had received a kente cloth from Auntie Rosina and Mr.
Iddrissu. We all knew it was Auntie Rosina who had chosen it. Mr. Iddrissu
had probably forgotten it was her birthday. The cloth was woven with
lavender and gold threads. I was sure it was custom made for her. Kente
cloths in lavender were not common. The cloth came with a lavender
handbag and wedge shoes made with pieces of African print cloth. Both of
them bore the label House of Style, the fashion design school I hoped to be
enrolled in.
Zaed had given her the Twilight Saga book set. “Seriously, Zaed?
Books?” she said, and rolled her eyes.
“I thought you loved the stories,” Zaed protested.
“Duh, I loved watching the DVDs but I don’t want to read the stories. I
have enough reading from school.”
“My bad,” Zaed said, popping the bubble wrap that had been around the
handbag.
General hadn’t been home the entire day, but he’d left her a card.
She tore it open. A ten-cedi note fell to the ground. “Seriously, what am
I supposed to do with this?” she asked, picking the note up from the ground.
“Why? Does he want me to buy two sticks of kebab or what?”
“Give him a chance, he’s trying,” Zaed said.
“Trying would be if he had bothered showing up for the party,” Auntie
Rosina said, snatching the card out of Zarrah’s hand and throwing it into the
growing pile of garbage. “I reminded him about the party this morning, but
what does he do? He gets her a cheap card and puts ten cedis in it. For
what? I’ve had it with that boy! Amerley, get me my pills!”
 By now I knew which pills to get depending on Auntie Rosina’s mood.
By the time I came back with the tray with the bottle of Evian water, a
glass, and the pills in the green and brown bottles, Zarrah and Zaed had
gone to their rooms. Zarrah was probably on her phone with a friend, and
Zaed was probably playing a video game or reading a tennis magazine or
one of the new books he’d bought. There was a pile of items at the foot of
the sofa—T-shirts, a necklace made with local beads, plastic bangles, a pair
of sandals, and all four of the Twilight books. Priscilla was gathering the
torn wrapping paper, the ribbons, and the card from General.
“Thank you,” Auntie Rosina said, taking the tray from me, “and get rid
of those things there,” she said, pointing to the pile of items. “She doesn’t
want them.”
“You mean I should throw them away?”
She shrugged. “Take what you want and throw the rest away.”
When I went out with the things, Priscilla was waiting for me.
“I want the necklace and the sandals.”
I handed them over to her, thinking of how Amorkor would love the
books, how good Amarkai would look in the T-shirts, and how Tsotsoo
would be delighted with the plastic bangles.
“Come, let’s go and have our own party before Magajia comes to look
for work for us,” Priscilla said, leading the way to the servants’ quarters.

The servants’ quarters were far enough from the main house for us to
play the music loud without disturbing anyone. Even before we opened the
door we could hear D’banj singing “I like Nadia Buari cuz she no de eat
gari . . .”
“Ah ah! Me, I’ve started without you! Why did you keep long like
that?” Nii Okai asked when we entered the room.
“Ei, money is sweet!” Priscilla said, taking a samosa off the tray and
stuffing the whole thing into her mouth.
The leftover food was on the center table in the living room. Nii Okai
had heaped his plate full of food. There was a bit of everything on it—jollof
rice, meatballs, coleslaw, waakye, a ball of banku, grilled tilapia, samosas,
and two chicken drumsticks. A generous amount of shitɔ capped the
pyramid on his plate. By his side were a bowl, a bottle of Guinness, a can of
Coke, and a bottle of Alvaro. He had poured all three drinks into the bowl
and he drank deeply from it.
“Rich people are enjoying life,” he said, sucking the marrow out of a
chicken bone.
Priscilla lowered the volume on the CD player and tuned in to TV3,
where a soap opera was showing. She took a ball of banku, two grilled
tilapia fish, and some shitɔ and settled in to watch the TV.
“Is that all you’ll eat?” Nii Okai asked, staring at her plate in surprise.
“Take your time. This one is only going to prepare the way. This oyibo
food, if you don’t take care, it will deceive you. You’ll think you’ve eaten
ah-mah, but then in the night you’ll get nketenkete and will have to wake up
to eat something.”
My plate was a miniature version of Nii Okai’s without the banku and in
reasonable portions. I sat cross-legged on the floor beside Priscilla, who
was chewing the tilapia bones. On the soap, the heroine of the show came
out of a club. The guy she had been flirting with but whose advances she
had rebuffed followed her and kept to the shadows.
“Woaa hwε! As for girls, you look for your own trouble. See this yεyε
girl. Where is she going in the night dressed like that?”
“Shut up your dirty mouth!” Priscilla said, only it came out sounding
like “Sharrap your dery maf” because she had her mouth full of food.
On the TV screen, the man grabbed the woman from behind. He stuck a
knife at her throat and threatened to kill her if she shouted. He laid her on
the ground and raped her.
Priscilla swallowed her banku and turned to Nii Okai. “Are you saying
it’s her fault she got raped?”
“Eleven p.m. at night—any decent girl would be in bed. What is she
doing out of her house? And dressed like that too! She only got what was
coming to her!”
“Idiot,” Priscilla said. “She said ‘no’ when the man asked her if she
wanted to sleep with him.”
“Ho! But everyone knows that when girls say ‘no’ they actually mean
‘yes,’ and look, she’s just lying there. She’s not even screaming or fighting
back. It’s not rape if you don’t scream or fight back.”
When Nii Okai finished talking, he put the bowl to his lips, took a large
gulp, and burped loudly.
 “She’s just lying there because she’s in shock. When you’re in shock,
you freeze. Don’t you know anything?”
“Eh koraa, it’s not real rape. She knows the man and was flirting with
him. Real rape is when a stranger does it.”
“So you think she’s lying there enjoying the fact that the man is
violating her simply because she knows him? Amerley, please talk some
sense into this fool for me!” Priscilla said, drawing me into their argument.
I didn’t know what to say. In Teshie when someone got raped, most
people shared Nii Okai’s views. They would say she should not have been
out late or worn whatever it was she had worn. They said only “loose” girls
got raped.
“Mr. Mills’s wife, Auntie Fanny, came to talk to us at the agency. She
said we were to report to them if anyone touched us without our permission
or harassed us and they’d take the person to court for us, free of charge,”
Priscilla said.
“As for those women lawyers, they’re taking this ‘human rights’ thing
too far, but we all know nothing will come out of those cases. The families
always settle out of court,” Nii Okai said.
“But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t report.”
“God considers people, paa,” Nii Okai said, talking with his mouth full.
“If I were him, women who wear shorts, leggings, tight pants—no heaven.
Women who paint their faces and nails—no heaven. Women who wear
bikinis, G-strings, and see-through clothes—no heaven. Short skirts and
dresses—no heaven. Sleeveless clothes and any clothes that show breasts—
no heaven. Women who insist their husbands wear condoms during sex—
no heaven. Condoms are abortion.”
Priscilla watched him with her mouth wide open. Then she shook her
head.
“If you believe all of that, you are dumber than you look.”
I smiled to myself when I realized where her line had come from. It was
the same thing Zarrah had told Priscilla when she asked Priscilla to spell her
name.
Nii Okai went on eating as if Priscilla hadn’t said anything. On TV the
woman had gone to a hospital. The doctors had informed the police about
the rape.
“How about the men?” I asked.
“What about them?”
 “What would they have to do for God to deny them heaven?”
“Ah ah! Isn’t it women who cause men to sin? Right from Eve till now,
women have been tempting men!”
“What she means is, what about men who walk around bare-chested and
show off their six-packs and things? Aren’t they tempting women?”
Priscilla asked.
Nii Okai snorted. “The Bible says the man is the head.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Priscilla asked.
But Nii Okai hadn’t finished talking. “Woaa, look, now she’s going to
talk to the police! Who will want her when people get to know about it?
Who will want her now that she’s been spoiled?”
Nii Okai’s views surprised me. Even though he was a city boy, and
supposedly enlightened, his thoughts mirrored those of people, like my
father, who blamed all their woes on women. The girls in my neighborhood
who had been raped quietly disappeared to other places. People used to
point at them and warn children about what staying out late and drinking
and smoking would lead to. On the one hand I believed it wasn’t their fault
they had been raped, but on the other hand I blamed them for putting
themselves in situations that had led to their rape. But saying God should
punish women for wearing pants and insisting on the use of condoms was
too much. I avoided the discussion and continued eating my food. I pitied
the woman who would make the mistake of falling in love with Nii Okai.
No wonder he was still single.
Priscilla couldn’t take it anymore. “Nii Okai, if you can’t talk sense,
SHUT UP!”
The landline rang and I jumped up to answer it. I had missed Nikoi’s
call at 8 p.m. It was now 9 p.m.
“Hi! Nikoi?”
“Where were you?” he shouted. “You know I always call at eight on
Saturdays.”
“It was Zarrah’s birthday. Auntie Rosina threw a big party for her. We
just finished cleaning up.”
He was silent.
“Nii?”
“So were there a lot of people?”
“About a hundred. Kids and their parents. You should have seen the
food. They—”
 “So all those rich kids came with their drivers, huh?”
“Yes. Some parents dropped off the kids themselves. Some had their
drivers bring them and—”
“And what were you doing?”
“I was in charge of keeping the toilet clean, and then I had to babysit
someone’s child. Why all these questions?”
He was silent for a while, then he sighed. “I just keep thinking you’ll
meet someone else. Someone better than me.”
“Oww, Nii, that’s not going to happen. Everyone was tidying up. I
couldn’t get to the phone at eight.”
He sighed again. “There are a lot of people waiting to use the phone
booth. I’ll call you next week.” He didn’t even wait for me to say “bye”
before hanging up.
I replaced the phone in its cradle and took my plate of food to the
kitchen. I didn’t want to hang out with Priscilla and Nii Okai anymore. I
had lost my appetite. I went straight to my room. Nikoi’s phone calls were
the highlight of my week. I missed him so much. I missed talking to him
and cuddling up with him on the beach. How could I get him to understand
he had nothing to fear?

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 13

“You went to bed before you could tell me about Mr. Mills last
night,” Priscilla said. Priscilla and I were cleaning the kitchen. We had
cleaned the entire house. Magajia said all the people who had walked in and
out of it the day before had left their germs behind. I was on my knees
scrubbing the floor. Priscilla was mopping up behind me.
I yawned. I hadn’t slept well. I was worried about Nikoi. Something
was off with him. Last night when he called it was as if he wanted to pick a
fight with me. I didn’t know what to do.
“So?” Priscilla prodded. “What did he say when he met you?”
I told her what had happened when Mr. Mills came to check on his
family last night.
Priscilla had a huge crush on Mr. Mills. I might have had one too, but
mine was just a little, teeny-tiny crush. He was gorgeous, but more than that
he was such a nice person. He and his wife both were.
“He’s so, so cute. I wonder if he has a brother.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“What? A girl can dream.”
I snorted and went back to my work.
“As for their baby, she is too spoiled. They never put her down. When
she does kε and opens her mouth to cry, her parents jump like the world is
going to end. They pamper her too much. Someone is always carrying her.”
“She’ll grow out of it. They should have begun leaving her to lie down
on her own when she was younger. Now she’s used to people carrying her.”
“I feel sorry for Auntie Fanny. She’s clueless when it comes to that
baby. You should have seen her when she first had Aseda. She was even
afraid to put her down to sleep by herself. Her parents are in the UK and
Mr. Mills’s mother wasn’t in favor of their marriage. When Aseda was
born, she didn’t even go and visit them until the baby was two months old.
And when she did visit, she refused to hold the baby.”
I didn’t know how anyone could look at Aseda and not instantly fall in
love with her. “How do you know this? Were you there?”
“Their house help, Jennifer, is my friend. She told me. We’re both
registered with the same agency.”
It was a pity that neither Auntie Fanny’s mother nor her mother-in-law
were there to help her with the baby. In Teshie, when a woman had a baby,
she and the baby went to live with her mother. If her mother was dead, then
they went to live with her mother-in-law or an older aunt or female relative.
“No wonder Auntie Fanny was so tired. She slept under the mango tree
when she came to look for me.”
“But she’s a lucky woman. Her husband adores her.”
I nodded. That was true. He had seemed like a nice man. We were still
working when General walked into the kitchen. He didn’t even spare us a
glance. I don’t know where he had gone or how he’d managed to get mud
stuck to the soles of his sneakers. He walked straight to the fridge, opened it
and took out two cans of Coke and a plate of cold pizza, and went up to his
room.
Priscilla was fuming. I kept my mouth shut tight. The kitchen floor was
tiled; it would be easy to mop. It was the fact that he had tracked mud right
through the living room, up the stairs, and to his carpeted room that
infuriated us.
“Dear Lord, you have to prepare a special place in hell for people like
that boy,” she said, looking up at the ceiling as if she could see God.
“Let’s just get this done before Magajia comes back. You know how she
gets.”

“Guess what?” Priscilla said, barging into our room two months later.
The smile on her face was from ear to ear. The only thing that made
Priscilla this excited was money. We almost had enough saved to buy an
electric sewing machine. I was teaching myself to sew by watching videos
on her phone. Of course, Priscilla being who she was, she charged me for
each video I watched. She didn’t agree to my suggestion that we treat it as a
business expense. I paused the video I’d been watching and looked at her.
“Ehhh, have the Iddrissus offered you a raise?”
“I wish.”
“We’ve got a big order?”
“Nope. Something even better.”
What could be better than money for Priscilla?
“I give up.”
“The Millses are coming for dinner on Friday!”
I shook my head. “You do realize he is already married, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know, but—”
“A girl can dream,” we said together.

It wasn’t just the Millses who showed up on Friday night. There must
have been fifty other people at the cocktail reception the Iddrissus hosted in
honor of one of Mr. Iddrissu’s South African partners. Magajia had made
sure every surface in the house had been scrubbed or polished to perfection.
Priscilla and I had been on our feet all day. A live band had arrived earlier
and set up by the pool. Madam had hired a catering firm and they came
with their own waiters. Magajia was in charge of helping the caterers set up
and get whatever they needed from the house. Priscilla was on bathroom
duty, and once again I was in charge of Aseda.
“I’m so glad to see you, Naa Amerley,” Auntie Fanny said, transferring
Aseda to me. Auntie Fanny was in a short black dress. She had on red high-
heeled shoes and bright red lipstick. Aseda was in a blue and white romper.
“The night of Zarrah’s birthday, she slept through the night. We didn’t hear
a squeak out of her.”
I positioned Aseda on my hip. She was chewing on a bunch of plastic
keys.
“I hope the music doesn’t disturb her,” Mr. Mills said, coming into the
guest room with Aseda’s diaper bag. He was in a black caftan and black
loafers. “How are you, Amerley?”
“Fine, thank you.” They both remembered my name. It was such an
insignificant thing, them calling me by my name, but it meant a lot to me.
 “I’ll come back to feed her in about an hour. We got here before we
realized someone had forgotten to take her milk out of the fridge,” Auntie
Fanny said, looking at Mr. Mills.
“Good thing Mummy’s equipment is always ready, right?” Mr. Mills
said, putting his arms around his wife and planting a kiss on her lips right in
front of me.
“My lipstick,” Auntie Fanny protested, but she leaned into her husband
and they continued kissing.
I averted my gaze. Had they forgotten I was there? I cleared my throat.
They broke apart like two children who had been caught doing something
naughty and stared at me with sheepish smiles.
“We’d better join the others,” Mr. Mills said, taking Auntie Fanny’s
hand. “See you later, Amerley.”
I put Aseda on the bed when her parents left, but she scrunched up her
face and started crying. I shook my head. Her parents had spoiled her too
much. She was one of those babies who want to be held all the time. She
didn’t know how to be on her own. I picked her up and sat down. She
started crying again. She only stopped when I got up and started walking
around the room.
“Hey, I can’t be walking up and down with you for two hours! We’ll
have to sit at some point.”
She gurgled and blew a spit bubble in my face.
“Nope. You can’t bribe me with air kisses.”
Aseda pouted. She dropped the plastic keys, grabbed onto the bone ring
on Nikoi’s mother’s chain that I still wore around my neck, and put the ring
in her mouth. A stream of spittle trickled down the side of her mouth. I
balanced her on my hip and opened her diaper bag. It was packed with three
changes of clothes, toys, rattles, and two books. You would have thought
they were staying for the entire weekend instead of just two hours. I found a
packet of wipes and cleaned her mouth.
I had practically raised Tsotsoo by myself, so I knew a lot about babies.
But Aseda had decided I could not lay her down on the bed or even sit with
her in my lap. After another failed attempt to sit down with her, I lifted her
up so we were eye to eye and said, “You’re too little to be this wicked.” She
smiled and stuffed a fist into her mouth. I couldn’t even be angry at her, she
was so cute.
 Auntie Fanny knocked on the door in an hour’s time as promised. Aseda
started whimpering and struggling to free herself from my arms, holding
out her hands to her mother. She must have known it was time for her
feeding because she didn’t even fuss once when Auntie Fanny sat in the
same armchair I had tried sitting in. She kicked and flung her arms while
Auntie Fanny unzipped her dress.
“Patience is a virtue,” Auntie Fanny said, smiling at her daughter. Aseda
latched onto the breast and sucked like she had been starved for a week. I
used the time to slip away to my room to get a cover cloth. Auntie Fanny
was burping her when I came back. The minute she left, I strapped Aseda
onto my back. Her hands and legs were both covered by the cloth. She
wriggled in protest and began fussing, but I jiggled her up and down and in
minutes she was fast asleep.
I unstrapped her from my back and with great care laid her down to
sleep on the bed. She scrunched up her face when her back touched the bed,
but I rubbed her tummy and cooed at her and she settled back to sleep. I lay
beside her, grateful to be off my feet, and arranged pillows on her other side
so that she didn’t roll off. I closed my eyes, intending only to “rest” them,
as Auntie Fanny had the night of Zarrah’s party. I don’t know when I dozed
off.
I woke up to the smell of cigarette smoke. I knew right away that
someone was in the room with us. I stiffened and tried to pretend I was still
asleep, but my heart was beating so hard I could barely breathe. Sounds
from the reception drifted into the room, so I knew people were still
outside. Aseda’s steady breathing assured me she was still asleep. I
wondered if one of the guests had come into the room. What did they want?
Didn’t they know cigarette smoke was bad for babies?
I forced my eyes open. General was sitting in the chair Auntie Fanny
had sat in when she had breast-fed Aseda. His eyes were expressionless as
he stared at me. The hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood up.
He continued staring even when I sat up and straightened my clothes. I
didn’t know what he wanted. Would he report me to Madam for sleeping?
He blew a puff of smoke in my direction. I coughed and waved it away.
“The smoke is not good for the baby.”
His expression didn’t change. He continued sitting there, smoking,
flicking cigarette ash on the carpet and staring at me. When the cigarette
was down to its nub, he ground it on the wooden arm of the chair, stood up,
and walked out.
I leapt up and locked the door behind him. Then I opened the windows.
I didn’t like General. No one did. Well, maybe Zaed, but Zaed liked
everyone. The rest of his family just tolerated him, Auntie Rosina barely.
She often took her pills when he was around. She and Mr. Iddrissu argued
constantly about him but nothing changed. General came and went as he
pleased and did what he wanted. No one could discipline him. There was
something about him that made me uncomfortable. Thankfully, he stayed
out of my way.
I got a washcloth from the bathroom and cleaned the ash from the
carpet. I had just finished washing my hands when there was a knock on the
door.
“Amerley?” Auntie Fanny called out, and there was a hint of worry in
her voice.
“Just a minute,” I said, hurrying to unlock the door.
She had a frown on her face. “Why was the door locked?”
She entered the room and checked on Aseda.
“I didn’t want people walking in and disturbing her. Someone came
wanting to use the bathroom.” I had no idea where the lie had come from or
why I was protecting General.
Mr. Mills, who had come in behind Auntie Fanny, sniffed the air. “Is
that cigarette smoke?”
I opened my mouth, prepared to tell another lie, but Auntie Fanny lifted
Aseda and cradled her. “It must have come from outside. Those South
Africans smoke like there’s no tomorrow.”
“Think she’ll sleep through the night again?” Mr. Mills asked, running a
finger over Aseda’s chubby cheeks.
“I hope so. Amerley seems to have a way with her.”
“I wish she’d take to Jennifer the way she’s taken to Amerley,” Mr.
Mills said.
They thanked me and left the room. I straightened the bed and was
taking the soiled washcloth to the laundry room when Madam sent Priscilla
to get me.
“What did you do?” Priscilla asked. “Mr. Mills and Auntie Fanny were
standing with her. I heard them mention your name but I couldn’t hear what
they said.”
 My heart thrummed. Was I in trouble because I had locked the door? Or
was it because I had left their baby in a room filled with cigarette smoke? I
left the washcloth on one of the washing machines and went outside, where
indeed the Millses were standing next to the Iddrissus. Most of the guests
had left, though a few were still standing around with drinks in their hands,
talking and exchanging business cards.
“Madam?” I said, standing with my hands behind my back.
Dear Lord, please don’t let them send me back. I like it here. I really like
it here. I promise not to complain about how unfair life is. Please let them
not sack me. Please.
Madam was in high spirits. I’m sure the reception had been a raving
success. She’d be the talk of her peers for the next few weeks, and that
made her happy. She was in a shimmering gold gown that clung to her
curves in all the right places. The only pieces of jewelry she wore were a
pair of dangling teardrop diamond earrings and her engagement and
wedding rings. Mr. Iddrissu stood next to her looking immaculate in a black
suit.
“The Millses have something to ask you,” Madam said.
I turned to Auntie Fanny and Mr. Mills. They didn’t look angry. Mr.
Mills was actually smiling.
“Would it be okay if you watched Aseda, maybe once or twice a week?”
That was it? That was all they wanted? They just wanted me to babysit
Aseda?
“Jennifer’s no good with her. Anytime we leave them together, we come
back to find Aseda has been crying the entire time we were away. Fanny is
going back to work. It’s part time for now, but we’ve been worried about
leaving Aseda with Jennifer.”
I was so relieved, I was speechless.
“We’ll pay you for your time, of course,” Auntie Fanny said.
“Of course,” Mr. Mills said like it was a no-brainer. The thing was, I
would have agreed to babysit Aseda even if they did not pay me.
I looked at my madam and her husband.
“It’s your decision,” Madam said.
“Okay,” I agreed.
“Super! We’ll send Raul to pick you up. It will just be two times a week
for now. From nine a.m. to noon. I don’t think I can bear to be parted from
her longer than that,” Auntie Fanny said, kissing the still-sleeping Aseda’s
rosebud lips. Mr. Mills put his arm around Auntie Fanny, and they beamed
at me like I had just turned water to wine.

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 CHAPTER 14

I began waking up earlier on Mondays and Tuesdays so that

I could get all my chores done before Raul, the Millses’ driver, came to pick
me up. Their house was not as large or flamboyant as the Iddrissus’, but
anything larger than a single room impressed me. The house was painted
the same cream and brown colors as the Iddrissus’. Instead of flowering
plants, they had a big vegetable garden in their backyard where tomato,
lettuce, cabbage, okra, onions, mint, and cocoyams grew. There were a few
plantain, orange, lemon, and avocado trees at the borders of the vegetable
garden, and just next to the kitchen window the vines of a passion fruit
plant climbed up a trellis.
Their living room was like a shrine to Aseda. Pictures of her were
everywhere. I was surprised to see I was in one of the pictures—it was the
one taken on the day of Zarrah’s birthday when both Auntie Fanny and
Aseda had been asleep beneath the mango tree. It was a beautiful picture.
Though I was in it as a blurry person holding Aseda, I was honored they
hadn’t thought anything of including the help in a picture on their walls.
Jennifer was also in two of the pictures with Aseda. A plaque on one of the
walls read:
Speak the truth, even when your voice shakes. —Anonymous
I wanted to ask Auntie Fanny what the quote meant, but I was too shy.
Though she was nice and approachable, I was still aware of the gap in our
social levels. I wouldn’t want her to think I thought of her as an equal and
could converse with her about normal, everyday things like quotes on her
wall, so I concentrated on what I was there to do—look after Aseda.
The Millses were right. Aseda just did not like Jennifer. She could be
snoring in my arms, but the minute Jennifer picked her up to put her in her
cot, she woke up and began screaming.
 “I must have been her wicked madam in a past life or something,”
Jennifer once told me as she shelled boiled groundnuts and popped them
into her mouth. She was taller than me and wore a nose ring. When she was
done with her chores, she spent her time on the couch in the living room
watching Nigerian movies. She had a room in the main house. The Millses’
servants’ quarters served as a storage unit. No one lived there.
Jennifer was not bothered that the Millses had brought me in to help
out. “It’s their money and I’m still getting paid in full, so why should I
care?” she said when I brought it up.
Aseda’s room was the prettiest room in the house. It was twice the size
of our room in Teshie and was done in shades of pink and cream. Flowers
and butterflies were painted on the walls. A wind chime hung by a window
and twinkled when the wind blew. Her crib had a sheer pink canopy around
it. A plaque bearing her name in cursive print was on one wall. She had a
dresser of clothes, baby booties, shoes, and hair accessories that had been
organized by color. Four picture albums were already full with photos of
her, and she was just five months old. Stuffed animals filled two cane
baskets. One wall of her room had a shelf full of baby books. A bamboo
rocking chair with a couple of Ankara throw pillows was propped up by one
of the windows, which overlooked the garden. Auntie Fanny usually sat
there to nurse her.
Taking care of Aseda was a breeze. In her home, she often allowed me
to put her down for minutes at a time or hold her on my lap when I joined
Jennifer to watch her movies. I don’t know what Jennifer did in the Millses’
home; it was always a mess and no one seemed bothered by it, least of all
her. Sometimes I’d come in the morning to find the sink full of breakfast
dishes and Jennifer already at her post in front of the TV. Other times
there’d be a pile of laundry for washing, and all she would say was that she
was too tired that day. She was never too tired to eat, though, she was
always snacking on something—plantain chips, boiled groundnuts,
popcorn.
Jennifer was a terrible cook. She couldn’t even boil rice properly.
Usually on Mondays and Tuesdays, Auntie Fanny bought food when she
came home from work. She always bought some for me. Though she
invited me to eat with her and Jennifer, I always refused. I took my food
back to the Iddrissus’ and sometimes shared it with Priscilla and Nii Okai.
Sitting down and eating with Auntie Fanny seemed too weird.
“Are you avoiding me?” Nikoi asked when I picked up the phone the
next Saturday.
I sighed. It was going to be one of those nights. He was in a bad mood
and I was in no mood to coddle him. It was past 9 p.m. At ten minutes to
eight o’clock I’d been called to the main house to clean up Zarrah’s
bathroom. She was in a body-care phase and was trying out new bath
products. She had filled her bathtub with water, then poured in about half a
bottle of some new product that had made bubbles and overflowed the tub. I
had spent thirty minutes mopping her floor.
“I was called to the main house to clean up a bath spill, that’s why I
couldn’t be here at eight.”
Nikoi was silent. I couldn’t tell if he believed me or not, and frankly, at
this point, I didn’t care. I was tired and all I wanted to do was to go to bed.
“Are you sure?”
“Nii, I’ve told you why I wasn’t here at eight. Whether you believe me
or not is your problem.”
He sighed. “I’m sorry. This is harder than I expected.”
My heart melted. “I know. We have just a little over a year to go and
then I’ll be done. And guess what?”
“What?”
“Remember that babysitting job I told you about?”
“Uh-huh.”
“It pays so well that I have enough to buy a sewing machine!”
“Really? That’s great news! Well done!”
I could hear the smile in his voice, and that made me happy.
“Are you still coming home next week?”
“Yup. I’ll be there in the flesh, live and colored,” I said with a huge
smile on my face.
The Iddrissus had given me two weeks off to go and visit my family.
Secondary schools were on holiday and Madam and her kids would be out
of the country for the next month.
“I still can’t believe it.”
“Me neither. I can’t wait to get back. I miss you so much.”
“I miss you too.”
 We chatted until Nikoi ran out of credits. I climbed into bed and dreamt
of him and of my family.
After eight months, I was finally going home.

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 CHAPTER 15

“Sister Amerley! Sister Amerley!” Tsotsoo cried, running

toward the car. She was followed by five of her playmates. I was pleased to
see she was fully clothed. She even wore clean charley-wotes on her feet. In
a corner of the yard, a group of boys who had been playing stopped to
watch the car drive up to our door.
“Ei, see how you’ve become a small madam. I’m sure your sisters will
do all the work in the house. You can sleep and wake up at twelve if you
want to,” Nii Okai joked when more of our neighbors came out of their
homes to watch me get out of the car.
Amorkor got up from the veranda where she had been cooking banku
on a coal pot. When the wind blew, it sent embers dancing around the black
pot. She hugged me so tight I almost stopped breathing. The wooden paddle
was still in her hand, and some of the hot maize and cassava dough mixture
dripped down my arm.
“Go and finish cooking the banku or else lumps will form in it,” I said.
“Ah, Sister Amerley, do you want to eat banku? Let’s go and buy fried
rice for you,” Amorkor said.
“No, I want it. I’ve missed eating banku with pepper.”
“It will be ready soon,” she said, sticking a finger into the cooking
dough to check its consistency.
“Ei, so you don’t use the cooking shed at the back anymore?” I asked as
I noticed the new shelves on the wall that housed most of our cooking
utensils. Two sacks of charcoal had been placed in the corner of the
veranda.
“No, not anymore. Nuumo has even converted it into another goat pen.”
“Good for you guys, then, cooking in the rainy season was always a
bother.”
 Nii Okai took out my bags from the trunk, and the children scrambled to
pick them up and carry them to our room. He walked back to the car.
“Won’t you stay and eat?” I asked.
“Magajia wants me to pick something up from Spintex for her. Maybe
in two weeks when I come to pick you up.”
“I hope the next two weeks don’t come quickly,” I said as he climbed
into the car.
“It’ll come, you watch and see. When you want time to stand still, that’s
when it flies, and when you want it to pass quickly, that’s when it slows
down,” Nii Okai said, and drove away.
I went around the entire compound greeting all our neighbors and
giving them fake smiles because I knew most of them had expected me to
come bearing gifts.
“Ei, Amerley, is that you?” Ofoe-mami asked on her way to her stall.
She was walking behind two men who were pushing a truck loaded with
basins of her kenkey, cane baskets of fried fish and shrimps, and paint
buckets of red and black shitɔ. “Ei, see how you’ve become a fine girl like
that.”
I smiled blandly at her and mumbled something about God’s grace. One
of the neighborhood girls came to pour dirty water into the gutter in front of
where Ofoe-mami was standing. Some of it splashed onto her leg.
“Heh! Olu? Kwεmɔ buului anii ni ofee,” she shouted, turning toward the
girl.
I used the opportunity to slip away and returned to our room. Knowing
Ofoe-mami, she wasn’t going to stop until the whole neighborhood had
heard what had happened.
“Where’s Amerley-mami?” I asked as I pulled out a stool and sat by
Amorkor on the veranda. She sat on a short stool in front of the coal pot.
Pieces of charcoal burned bright red in the pot. Blue and red tongues of fire
licked the bottom of the black cauldron. Amorkor’s feet were positioned on
the metal rods that supported the pan on the coal pot. As the mixture
thickened, her whole upper body and arms moved in a rhythm of its own to
get the banku smooth and soft. I was proud of her. I had taught her well.
“She’s still at the market. Now she leaves by five a.m. and comes back
at seven p.m. Sometimes eight. By the time she comes back, she’s so tired
she just eats and sleeps,” Amorkor said, molding the banku in a calabash.
 “So her business is going well, eh?” I was glad to see the netting on the
screen door had been replaced. A new welcome mat with all the letters lay
in front of the door.
“Very well. Now she goes to buy the goods from Togo. They’re cheaper
there.”
“So who’s home when Tsotsoo finishes school?”
“Tsotsoo has French classes three times a week. On the other two days
she has computer classes. When I finish school, I pick her up and we come
home together.”
“Ei.”
“Yes, Amerley-mami says one of her customers told her all the big-shot
children know French and computer.”
“How about Amarkai? What does she do after school? Why isn’t she
back yet?”
“Sister Amerley, do you even have to ask? She spends all her time at the
clinic.”
Tsotsoo emerged from the room with a glass of cold water.
“Ei, do we now have a fridge?” I said, accepting the water from her. I
noticed it was a new glass. There were no chips or cracks in it. I drank all
the water.
“Yes, a tabletop fridge. Amerley-mami makes stew and soup for the
week on Saturdays,” Amorkor said.
“Sister Amerley, look,” Tsotsoo said, smiling at me.
“What?” I asked.
She smiled even wider. It was then that I noticed her teeth. The two
front ones had grown in. They were big. About twice the size of the ones
she had lost.
I chuckled. “The lizard didn’t get them after all, huh?”
She shook her head.
“Tsotsoo, bring a glass plate for Sister Amerley.”
“No, it’s okay. Let’s all eat together. Like we used to.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I said.
She molded a big ball of banku and upturned it into a bowl. She dished
out two smaller balls into two different bowls—one for Amerley-mami and
the other for Amarkai. Then she put the banku pan in a corner of the
veranda and poured some water into it. Tsotsoo cleared a wooden table and
put a cup and a bottle of water on it. She brought me a bowl of water to
wash my hands. Amorkor heated some bɔbi tadi on the stove. The smell of
the bɔbi made my mouth water. I hadn’t eaten bɔbi since I moved to East
Legon. Amorkor got out the asanka and quickly ground some kpakpo shitɔ,
one tomato, and half of a small onion. I had sent Tsotsoo to buy a tin of
sardines. We opened it and poured the contents into the asanka. The sardine
oil floated on top of the pepper.
“That reminds me, Sister Sheba brought us some avocados,” Amorkor
said, disappearing inside. She returned with two and sliced them onto the
pepper.
As soon as Amorkor put the stew on the table, I took a ball of the
banku, molded it, dipped it into the bɔbi tadi, and picked up some bɔbi.
Banku with anchovy stew was one of my favorite meals, but no one ate
anchovies in the Iddrissu household. The ball of banku burned the roof of
my mouth and my throat as it went down. I could feel the hot ball when it
finally settled in my stomach. I used my fingers to fan my mouth and drank
some more water from the glass, which Tsotsoo had refilled. I took it easy
after that and blew on the banku before swallowing it.
Amarkai came home while we were still eating. After nearly toppling
the table as she leaned over it to hug me, she washed her hands and joined
us. After supper my sisters followed me into the room. I was surprised to
find it had been painted and Amerley-mami had bought a standing fan. I
opened my suitcase and took out the Twilight Saga books and some others
Zaed had given me, as well as a pair of sandals Zarrah had thrown out, and
gave them to Amorkor. I gave Amarkai a pair of shoes and an old book on
dogs Mr. Iddrissu had thrown out. Both of them got to share a ton of
Zarrah’s clothes. Tsotsoo got Zarrah’s old dolls, toys, and plastic jewelry.
She shrieked in delight and started jumping up and down.
I put three of Auntie Rosina’s dresses, two handbags, a purse, and a pair
of low-heeled slippers on the bed for Amerley-mami. While my sisters
rejoiced over their gifts, I took out my towel and sponge. Amarkai fetched
water out of a drum on the veranda and carried it to the bathroom for me.
Amorkor had already spread out her mattress and begun reading the first
book in the Twilight Saga. Tsotsoo was on Amerley-mami’s bed talking to
her new toys.
I nearly fled the bathroom when I set foot in it. I’d forgotten about the
green mold on the walls, the smell of urine, and the earthworms that
crawled between the oyster shells. Some things had changed, but other
things remained the same. I would need gallons of bleach to properly clean
it.
“Don’t you guys clean the bathroom? It’s so filthy,” I said as soon as I
got back to our room.
“Ei, it’s not even a year yet and you’ve gone high and mighty on us,”
Amerley-mami said. “Be careful or people will say you’ve become too-
known.” She had come home and was eating her banku and bɔbi tadi.
“Good evening. I didn’t see you.”
Amerley-mami hadn’t seen or spoken to me in eight months. I had
thought she’d be more welcoming. I was wrong. I wondered if she still
hadn’t forgiven me for the fight we’d had before I left.
“So how are you?” she asked, shaping the last ball of banku in her hand.
“I’m fine.”
She nodded and went outside to wash her hands. Then she came back
inside, took her towel, and went to bathe. While she was bathing, the lights
went off.
“Ah ah, I thought they rationed light only during the day,” I said. The
Iddrissus had a backup generator. The lights never stayed off for longer than
thirty seconds in their house.
“Sister Amerley, paa, this one is normal lights-off,” Amorkor said,
switching on a rechargeable lamp that she placed by her pillow, and
continued reading.
When Amerley-mami came back, she went straight to bed. I didn’t
know why she was being so cold toward me. She didn’t even pretend to be
interested in the work I did for the Iddrissus. Was I not doing what she
wanted? Couldn’t she see all I was sacrificing for the family? What more
did she want me to do? Even though I pretended not to care, it hurt me a lot.
I lay on my mattress in the heat and waited for sleep to come.

By the time I woke up the next morning, everyone was gone. It was
almost 9 a.m. I was surprised I hadn’t heard them as they got ready for
work and school. I took a cup of water, went behind the house, and brushed
my teeth. I was on my way back to the room when someone called my
name from across the compound.
“Ei, Amerley! Amerley! So it’s true.”
I turned to see who it was. It was Sheba. Her son was strapped to her
back.
“Atuu,” she said, hugging me. I hugged her back. She smelled of
woodsmoke and urine. There was a wet patch on the cover cloth she had
used to strap her baby onto her back. She unstrapped her son and thrust him
into my hands. He had white beads around his wrists and legs and was in a
white undergarment and cotton underpants, which were still wet with urine.
He didn’t have on diapers like Aseda. His nose was runny and mucus
dripped down onto his undergarment. Sheba used the hem of it to wipe his
nose.
“Ah ah! Sheba, are you pregnant again?”
She giggled. “Can you tell? I thought I wasn’t showing yet.”
“But he isn’t even nine months yet.”
She giggled some more. “It just happened. Virgin Mary, how about you
and Nikoi? He won’t wait for you forever. You be there, someone will
snatch him from you.”
“Sheba, I don’t even have a proper job. Where will Nikoi and I live?”
“Oh, if you’re waiting for a house and a proper job, then, my sister,
you’ll wait forever . . .”
Just like Aseda, Sheba’s baby grabbed the bone ring around my neck
with his grubby hands. It went straight into his mouth. He drooled saliva
and snot onto my neck.
“Aww, he likes you,” Sheba cooed, and used the ends of her cloth to
wipe the saliva off my neck.
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“Guess,” she said, giggling.
“Nii . . .”
She shook her head before I even finished. “It’s a Bible name.”
“Peter?”
She shook her head.
“Paul?”
Another shake of her head. “It’s an unusual name.”
“Bartholomew?”
She rolled her eyes.
 “Jericho?”
“Ah ah! Why would I name my child Jericho?”
“I give up. What?”
She smiled so wide I could see the spot where she had had one of her
molar teeth taken out. “Hosanna.”
I looked at her. “What does it mean?”
“Why are you asking me, aren’t you the Osofo Maame? It means
‘deliver us.’ ”
I looked at Hosanna, who was busy sucking on the bone ring, and hoped
he wouldn’t end up like me—having to work somewhere to make ends meet
for his family.
“You should have been here for the naming ceremony, it was
spectacular! We blocked the street from here to there”—she turned to show
me—“we had a live band. I sewed kaba and slit, the fashionable style with
the lace sleeves, and wrapped my head with a gele. You should have seen
me, I looked muuaah”—she put all five of her fingers to her lips and kissed
them.
“But how did you pay for all that?”
She shrugged. “Tsina borrowed money for it. I said I wanted a big
naming ceremony or else the baby wouldn’t carry his name. After all the
suffering I went through at the maternity clinic, that was the least he could
do.”
I stood there gaping in disbelief. They couldn’t even afford two meals a
day, yet she had a big naming ceremony for her baby.
“What? Yɛbɛwu enti yɛrenna? Amerley, you should have been there! We
had so much fun. That day when I danced, people put money on my
forehead. By the end of the day I had one hundred and twenty-five cedis.”
I smiled. Knowing Sheba, she’d kept all that money for herself. I doubt
Tsina even got a pesewa.
“How’s work?”
“It’s okay apart from those aaba ei people, but if you give them one
cedi they won’t worry you again.”
“I brought you some clothes.”
Her eyes lit up as she followed me into our room.
Hosanna chose that same moment to pee on me.
“I told you he likes you! When a baby pees on you, it means blessings,
sɔɔ!”
My next visitor that day was Nikoi, and I was glad I had showered and
changed clothes by the time he got there. I threw my arms around him and
clung to him.
“I thought you were at work!”
“I told my master I ate some roadside food that didn’t agree with me. I
told him I’d been ‘running’ since dawn.”
“What if he finds out? I’m sure people have seen you here. People talk,
you know?”
“Let them talk,” he said, and carried me to Amerley-mami’s bed. When
he put me down, he slipped his hand under my blouse. I swatted it away.
“I had to try,” he said, grinning.
“It’s not going to change, no matter how many times you try. What’s
with the beard?”
He was growing a beard and mustache but hadn’t bothered shaping it.
The scraggly hair just grew in all directions and was longer in some parts
and shorter in others.
“You like it? I hear it makes me looks sexy,” he said, stroking his beard.
“It makes you look unkempt,” I said, pushing him away from me, “and
it itches my face.”
He lifted my necklace off my chest. “You still have this?”
“You didn’t think I was going to throw it away, did you?”
“It’s my promise ring.” He kissed me. “I thought of you every single
day.”
“Me too, I thought of you day and night. I missed you so much,” I said,
hugging him tighter.
He smiled. “I thought you’d have forgotten me by now.”
“But we speak every week when you call.”
He raised his hand and tucked it under his head. The smell from his
armpit hit me. Was that how I’d smelled when I first went to the Iddrissus’?
I took a closer look at his black T-shirt. It stank and there were dried crusts
of saliva and kenkey on it.
“Did you use deodorant today? When was the last time you washed that
shirt?”
 His arm snapped back to his side and he withdrew from me. “Why? Am
I smelly?”
“I don’t mean it in a wrong way,” I said, snuggling close to him. “You
do smell a little strong.”
He moved away from me. “ ‘A little strong’ was fine for you before.
I’ve always smelled like this.”
“Nikoi, please, I’m only here thirteen more days. Please don’t let us
fight.”
I got up and went to my suitcase. “Here, I brought you some things,” I
said, taking out some of General and Zaed’s old clothes and shoes. Nikoi
looked at me like I had insulted him and walked to the door.
“I don’t need your handouts.”
I followed him out the door and down to the beach where he was
headed, sidestepping the clothes people had left to dry on the sand. I had
missed the ocean, hearing the waves roar and the salty smell of the air. I had
missed the sounds of the gulls screeching, the cacophony of voices as
fishermen and fishmongers haggled over prices, and the feel of the sand on
my toes, but I didn’t dwell on any of these as I ran to catch up with Nikoi.
“Nikoi, wait, please wait,” I said, grabbing onto his arm.
He flung my arm away and stalked down the beach.
“Nikoi, I didn’t mean to insult you. You’ve done a lot for my sisters and
me. I wanted to show my appreciation.”
He turned to look at me and he looked hurt.
“My friends were right; this is not going to work.”
“Nikoi, what isn’t going to work?”
“We . . . Us. You’ve been gone only eight months and you’ve already
changed so much.”
“Me? I haven’t changed. I’m still me.”
“Really? I’ve been with you for only ten minutes and you’re already
criticizing me!”
“I wasn’t . . . I’m not criticizing you.”
“Really? First you pretend to be surprised to see me—”
“I wasn’t pretending . . .”
“Yeah? So what was the interrogation about my not being at work for?”
I looked at him in surprise.
“Then you say I look ‘unkempt.’ Then you say I smell, and then you
bring me a rich boy’s clothes because suddenly the way I dress isn’t good
enough for you anymore.”
“Nikoi, that’s not true!”
“Isn’t it? If you still love me, how come you never called me, not even
once!”
I had tears in my eyes. “You know I don’t have a phone. The landline
you call me on is only for incoming calls!”
“You want me to believe those rich people didn’t give you any of their
old phones when they seem to have given you everything else? My friends
were right!”
“Will you stop talking about your friends? This is about us!”
“I know. That’s why it’s best we end it now. There’s no sense in
prolonging this. Once you start going to your fashion school and meeting
important people, it will become even worse.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Nikoi, I love you. I’m sorry if I
hurt you, but—”
He grasped my arms. “If you love me, quit the job and come back here.
You’ve got your sewing machine now. I’ve got some money saved up. We
can use it as a deposit with the madam here. I’m working on a deal with a
financial institution in Accra Central—if it goes well, I’ll be driving a taxi
soon and I’ll get you the rest of the things you want. Don’t go back. Stay
here with me, Amerley.”
“I can’t. I have to think about my sisters. I can’t break Amerley-mami’s
arrangement with Auntie Rosina. Besides, aren’t you the one who said
working there was a great opportunity for me?”
“I did, but it’s changing you.”
“No it’s not!”
He dropped his hands. “You can’t even see you’ve changed. What will
happen next time you come back? You’ll think you’re too good for me and
dump me. There’s no sense in continuing this. Let’s end it now.”
“Just like that?”
He looked away. “It’s for the best.”
Long before I’d even met Nikoi, I’d made up my mind that I’d never
beg a man to stay with me if he didn’t love me. I’d never be one of those
girls who stopped living because a man left her.
He turned and continued walking down the beach. My hand went
around the bone ring he had given me. Never in a million years had I
thought it would come to this. I stood there watching him go—watching as
my heart broke in two.

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 CHAPTER 16

I spent most of my first week at home avoiding Nikoi. That

meant I didn’t go to the trotro station or the night market. It was terrible. I’d
vowed I wouldn’t cry over a man, but I couldn’t help it. Cry was all I did. I
wore a brave face in front of my sisters and pretended to be excited at the
stories they told me. I’d never known a breakup could hurt this much. My
heart felt raw, as if someone had taken a grater to it and then put salt on the
wound.
“Just give him time,” Sheba said to me as she bounced Hosanna on her
knee. I’d become Hosanna’s babysitter. Sheba left him with me in the
mornings before she left to hawk her goods. Sheba’s milk was not enough
for her son. She brought a flask of koko each morning when she dropped
him off, and I fed it to him when he was hungry.
“How much time do you think I should give? I have less than a week
left. And if he doesn’t call me when I go back to the Iddrissus’, how will we
talk?”
“I’ll talk to him. If that doesn’t work, I’ll ask Tsina to talk to him. He’s
just intimidated by how posh you have become.”
Me? Posh? That was not a word I would ever use to describe myself.
“I’m not posh,” I said.
Sheba rolled her eyes. “Yes you are. Look at your clothes and how you
speak. Even the way you walk has changed.”
I shook my head. “I’m still the same me. Nothing has changed.”
She looked at me and smiled. “That’s what I like about you, Amerley.
You’re not too-known.”
I didn’t agree with her but kept quiet. Arguing took too much energy.
After crying over Nikoi that night, I didn’t have any energy left.
“Is there . . . Does he have another girl?”
 “Who, Nikoi?” Sheba shook her head. “Of course not. What would he
want with another girl when he has you?”
“Maybe—”
“Maybe nothing. Do you know no one goes to use the pay phone when
it’s eight p.m. on Saturdays? Everyone knows that is the time Nikoi calls
you. When we see him walking toward the pay phone on Saturdays, we
know it’s almost eight. He’s devoted to you. I wish Tsina treated me the
way Nikoi treats you.”
If he was so devoted to me, how come he’d broken up with me?
“You getting your sewing machine probably made it worse.”
“What do you mean? He was happy when I told him I’d finally bought
the sewing machine. He’d been so supportive. How could it have made
things worse?”
Sheba shrugged and bounced Hosanna some more. “Men like to feel
needed. When he was the one providing for you and your sisters, he knew
you needed him, knew he was important to you. Now he’s not very sure
why you’re with him, when you probably meet drivers who are better off
than him every day.”
“That doesn’t make sense. I love him. I choose him.”
Sheba looked at me in surprise. “Are you just now realizing men don’t
make sense?”

I spent the next week trying to talk to Nikoi. He was never at the station
when I went there, and in the evenings he wasn’t at Tsina’s shack or at our
spot on the beach. On my last night I tried one more time.
I heard the strings of the guitar before I even got to the coconut trees. I
was so thankful I had finally tracked him down. That had to be a sign,
right? If what Sheba said was true, I needed him to know he was still
important to me.
I sank onto the sand beside him. He ignored me. When he finished the
song he was playing, I took his hand in mine.
“I’m sorry if I made you feel like you were not good enough for me.” I
forced the words out. It felt like a lump had formed in my throat, and my
tears were threatening to fall. “I just wanted to do something nice for you.
You’ve been so good to my family, so good to me. Nikoi, please just give
me a second chance.”
“Amerley, don’t . . .”
I could see the pain in his eyes. That made me feel better, but not by
much. At least I wasn’t the only one suffering. We could work things out.
We would work things out.
“Please, Nikoi. Just give me a second chance. Maybe we should shift
our calling time to nine p.m. No one has ever called me to go to the main
house at nine p.m. before. I just have a little over a year left. Next year by
this time, I will be almost done. Please, Nii, give us a second chance.”
He clasped my hand and a flicker of hope unfurled within me.
“I’m so scared of losing you, Amerley.”
“I’m right here. You’ll never lose me. I choose you, Nikoi. I’ll always
choose you.” The tears were coming down my face faster than I could wipe
them away.
Nikoi gave my hand one more squeeze and let go. In that instant I knew
I had lost him.
“Go back to the Iddrissus’,” he said without malice. “Enroll in the
design school and open your own shop when you finish. Find someone
who’ll love you and who won’t be a burden to you like me. You deserve a
good life, Amerley, and I don’t want to be the one who keeps you from
getting it.”
“No, Nii—”
“Shh.” He put a finger to my lips and kissed my forehead.
“Going back is the right thing to do, Amerley. It was selfish of me to
ask you to stay. Forget about me. You’ll meet someone better.” He stood up
and hoisted his guitar onto his shoulder.
I didn’t know it was possible for an already broken heart to break again.
The pain was so much deeper than the week before.
“Nii, wait,” I called after him.
He stopped and turned back. He was just a few steps away from me but
it felt like we were oceans apart. I put my hands around my neck to unclasp
the gold chain with the bone ring he had given me.
He put his hand on mine to stop me. “Keep it. Let it remind you of me
—of the love we once shared.”
When Nii Okai came for me the next day, I was glad to be leaving
Teshie. Maybe distance would make me forget Nikoi.
“He’s an idiot,” Priscilla said when I told her Nii and I were broken up.
She tried to get me to go out with her so I could meet her male friends, but I
just wasn’t interested.
Life with the Iddrissus continued as usual. I kept busy during the day,
and by night I was so tired I fell asleep the minute my head touched the
pillow. There was no time to think about Nikoi.

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 CHAPTER 17

“Ei, Amerley, look at my face, look.” Priscilla turned away

from the mirror to face me.
“Stand still so that I can finish what I’m doing.”
She stood still while I finished hemming the dress with the needle I was
holding. I snapped the thread with my teeth and spat out the bit in my
mouth.
“There, you’re all set now.”
She twirled in front of the mirror. “Today, deε, I look hot!”
I had spent the past three days altering one of Madam’s dresses to fit
Priscilla, and now I stood back to look at my handiwork and took pride in
what I had achieved. If I could do this with raw talent, what would I be able
to do once I got formal training? I hoped the next year passed quickly so I
could finally start schooling at House of Style.
“Amerley, look at this black face. Don’t say you don’t know me when
you become a big name.”
I rolled my eyes, put a hand on my heart, and with a straight face said,
“I promise I won’t forget you.”
She sucked in her tummy while I closed the zipper at the back of her
dress; I only hoped it wouldn’t pop open when she was out with her friends
from the agency. One of the madam’s friends was throwing a party for her
help. Priscilla had invited me and Nii Okai, but I had declined. Sheba and
my sisters had taken over calling on Saturdays. It was through them that I
heard about Nikoi and what he was up to. I knew it was pathetic, but
hearing about him made me feel better now that we weren’t speaking. It
was through them that I found out he was now driving a taxi.
Priscilla slipped her feet into an old pair of Zarrah’s blue heels. Priscilla
was nineteen, Zarrah was thirteen. The shoes were for a thirteen-year-old,
but Priscilla insisted, come hell or high water, those were the pair she was
going to wear. She cinched her look with a large blue belt and twirled once
more in front of the mirror.
“Say it,” she said, addressing my reflection in the mirror.
I laughed. “You look hot!”
She smiled and picked up her purse, another of Madam’s thank-you
items, just as Nii Okai called from in front of the door, “I’m not paying
extra for the taxi!”
She rolled her eyes but yelled, “I’m coming, I’m coming!”
She applied a bit more gloss to her lips and doused herself in half a
bottle of perfume.
“It’s not too late to change your mind, you know? Madam and Miss
Zarrah won’t be back tonight. They’ll stay with her sister after the wedding
reception tonight and go on to the thanksgiving service at the church with
the couple tomorrow. Magajia sleeps like a baby, she won’t hear anything
and we’ll be back way before dawn.”
I shook my head.
“Priscilla!” Nii Okai yelled again.
“Nii Okai, what do you want me to do for you? What? Are you the one
who got the invitation? Don’t rush me, I said I’m coming!”
She waved at me and walked out the door, with Nii Okai berating her
loudly as he followed closely on her heels.
I checked the time. It was only 7:30 p.m. I had thirty more minutes
before Sheba and my sisters would call. I lay down on the sofa and
switched on the TV. As I was flicking through the channels, my eyes fell on
the Lord of the Rings trilogy set I had borrowed from Zaed. I picked them
up and walked to the main house. I’d start a new book while I waited.

The Iddrissu household was clothed in darkness. I climbed up the

stairs and knocked on Zaed’s door, which was partly open. Music was
playing loudly from his surround sound home theater system. It was some
American rapping faster than Sarkodie. I knocked a second time and pushed
the door open.
Zaed and General sat side by side in front of the flat-screen TV playing
a car racing game. General saw me first and turned down the volume on the
stereo. He had a lollipop in his mouth and an amused look on his face.
“You have a visitor,” he said to Zaed.
General had never taken any notice of me before. If Zarrah behaved like
I didn’t deserve her notice, General behaved like I was invisible. Apart from
that night when he had stared at Aseda and me when we were asleep, he
didn’t pay any attention to me.
Zaed turned to look at me. “Oh, hi, just drop them there.”
I placed the books back on the bookshelf and turned to leave.
“Don’t go, sit down,” General said.
Then he turned to Zaed. “Your mother would be appalled at your lack of
good manners. Won’t you offer her a drink?”
Zaed glanced at General. He looked confused, then he pointed to one of
the seats. He got up and poured a creamy drink into a disposable plastic cup
and handed it me. Both of them had cups full of the drink by their sides. I
glanced at the bottle, which was by General’s feet. On it was written
Baileys. I took a sip of the drink. It tasted very creamy and nice but I could
still taste the alcohol. I sipped my drink and watched them play. Zaed was
making all sorts of contortions with his arms, but he was losing. General sat
still, elbows supported on his knees, moving his controller this way and
that.
After their first game, they asked me to heat some leftover pizza for
them. I went downstairs and did just that. I took along some paper plates
and napkins but they ate straight from the box. General refilled my cup,
which I had emptied without realizing it, and offered me a slice. Midway
through their second game, General got up and said he had to pee. He
handed me his controller and went into Zaed’s bathroom.
I had never played a video game before, so Zaed showed me what to do.
Even when General came back, he just sat back and watched me play.
Though I kept losing, I was enjoying myself too. I could now understand
why they both spent so much time playing games in their rooms. It was
addictive. By the end of my third game with Zaed, General had refilled my
cup two more times.
I heard the grandfather clock downstairs chime and remembered the
phone call I’d been expecting from Sheba and my sisters. I glanced at the
clock in Zaed’s room. It was 9 p.m. When had eight o’clock come and
gone? I jumped to my feet and swayed.
 “I . . . I . . . ha . . . ha . . . havetogo,” I said, and giggled when I heard
myself slurring the words.
“Go where?” General asked. “It’s only nine, or will you turn into
something at the stroke of midnight?”
For some reason I found that very funny and laughed loudly.
“She’s drunk,” I heard Zaed say. “She’s probably never had this stuff
before.”
General snorted, “Whoever heard of someone getting drunk on
Baileys?”
“Notever,” I agreed. “Dontdrinkalcohol.”
Zaed looped my arm around his neck and supported me with his other
arm. “You’re going to have a massive headache tomorrow.”
I found that even funnier and laughed.
“You won’t think it’s funny tomorrow when you’re throwing up in the
toilet. Come on, I’ll take you to your room.”
The next thing I knew I was lying on Zaed’s bed.
“What’s wrong with you?” I heard General say. His voice sounded like
it was coming from the opposite side of the room, though I could see his
face hovering over mine. “You have a drunk girl in your room and you’re
sending her away?”
Hands pulled down my skirt and ripped off my blouse.
“She wears waist beads,” General said. “Does anyone do that
anymore?”
I felt someone on top of me, then General’s face broke through the fog
in my brain. I heard him grunting. I turned my head and saw Zaed standing
by his side and watching us before I passed out. When I came to, General
was still on top of me. I felt like my insides had been ripped open. I felt my
waist beads tear. I passed out again. The next time I came to, I was in my
room, on my bed, naked except for the gold chain with the bone ring around
my neck and a cloak of shame.
General came back to my room about an hour later with my clothes. I
pulled my cover cloth tight around me and huddled as close to the wall as I
could get.
“If you tell, I’ll say you lied. I’ll say this wasn’t our first time. I’ll say
you agreed to it. And no one will believe you—you’re just the maid.”
He flung my clothes at me and left the room.
OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 18

General started calling me “mumu” a week after it happened.

It wasn’t that I consciously decided not to speak again, I just shut down.
Not all of me, only my voice box or voice container or whatever is in my
throat where the words are produced.
Sometimes I felt the words bubbling up, on the verge of spilling over,
like when you’d boil cassava for fufu and the steam would lift the lid off
and make the water spill over. Most times that’s how I felt. But just when
the words were about to spill out of my mouth, the temperature dropped and
my throat froze. The words froze with them and I just stood there—
speechless.
That afternoon, he was lying on a sofa watching TV with his family
when I walked in with a tray of fruit salad. On the TV screen, Nadia Buari
was shouting at John Dumelo, telling him he was a “good-for-nothing
bastard.” I envied her rage. I envied the way she jumped on John Dumelo
and punched him in his face, on his chest, on his stomach. I envied the
words pouring out of her mouth. I wished I could have done the same. The
only ones watching the movie were Auntie Rosina and Zarrah. General was
playing a game on his iPhone.
“Amerley, when you’re done with the dishes, come and join us. This is
the second part of the movie we watched two weeks ago,” Auntie Rosina
said when I offered her one of the bowls of fruit salad.
I nodded.
I offered the tray to Zarrah. She looked at it with disdain.
“Where’s the milk? I told you I wanted mine with condensed milk.
Where is it?”
I just stood there because the words “We’re out of condensed milk”
wouldn’t come.
“What’s wrong with you? Can’t you talk?”
 It never ceased to surprise me how this thirteen-year-old could speak to
me this way. Amorkor was fifteen. At home, she spoke to me with more
respect than this girl. It was Auntie Rosina who interceded.
“Priscilla says we’ve run out of condensed milk. I’ll pick some up
tomorrow. Try the fruit, it’s good.”
Zarrah muttered something under her breath and turned back to the TV
screen.
“You’re blocking my view,” she said to me.
Once I moved aside I became invisible. She had no more use for me.
I took the tray to Zaed, who shook his head even before I got to him.
His head had been buried in the pages of a book since I entered the room. I
didn’t bother trying to sneak a glance at the title, as I would have done a
week ago. I didn’t bother. I didn’t care.
I moved to General, who tore his gaze away from his phone screen to
look at me. He was bare-chested. His tattoo of a lion seemed to move as he
moved his arm. It was as if the lion were actually roaring. General winked
and took a bowl of fruit. He brushed his fingers deliberately over my hand.
Inwardly I was screaming. Outwardly I was still me. Speechless. Silent.
Mumu. No expression on my face.
“Is there any ice cream?”
I stared at him.
“I asked you a question.”
I dropped my gaze to my feet and noticed idly that I had a broken
toenail. I needed to cut my nails.
My silence seemed to infuriate him.
“Mumu! Answer me when I speak to you.”
When he got no reply, he rose and stood right in front of me. He tipped
the tray. The pieces of fruit dropped down the front of my white blouse. The
glass bowls smashed on the marble floor. Pieces of fruit and juice ran under
the sofa.
“Omar! Temper!” his stepmother cautioned, but General stomped out of
the room.
“Amerley, please clean up that mess,” Auntie Rosina said without
taking her eyes off the TV screen.
I picked up the broken pieces of glass and put them on the tray before
returning with the dustpan and mop. I could feel Zaed’s eyes boring holes
into my back. I didn’t look in his direction. He got up with his book and
walked out of the room. Auntie Rosina sighed. Family time had been
disrupted.
In school, when we used to write essays on the topic “The Day I Will
Never Forget,” it was mostly about happy days like birthdays or graduations
or Christmas. Sometimes it was about doing something stupid like giving
your money to a man at the trotro station who said he could triple it if you
closed your eyes and counted to one hundred. Sheba had been foolish
enough to fall for that. By the time she had counted to one hundred and
opened her eyes, the money-tripling man had disappeared, and so had her
market money. She had refused to go home that night; she knew what her
mother would do to her. Nothing my mother or any of our neighbors said
could get her to change her mind. She had stayed with us for three days
before going back home, and that was only because her mother had sent her
a message through Vashti: “Even if you move heaven and hell, you will still
come home and find me waiting.” Sheba finally decided to go home and
take what was waiting for her. You couldn’t throw away good money like
that and not get punished for it.
There were two days in my life I will never forget. The first was the day
Auntie Rosina came to our house in Teshie. The second was the day a week
ago here in East Legon. It surprised me how something that didn’t even last
ten minutes in the real world could turn my whole life around, could make
me feel like I had died and been born again into a crueler, sadder, uglier
world. In the real world, it was only ten minutes. In my new world, it took
forever for it to be over. I felt it was more like ten years. Maybe time
stopped. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe I just don’t know anymore.

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 CHAPTER 19

“Ah ah! Don’t you have work to do? What are you still doing
here?” Priscilla asked, coming into the kitchen, where I had been sitting and
staring into space. “Aren’t you going to get ready? Raul will be here soon.
If Magajia sees you sitting idle like this, she’ll find more work for you.
‘The bathrooms won’t scrub themselves, you know.’ ”
I got up from the chair. Last week I would have laughed at her for
imitating Magajia so perfectly. Today I didn’t think I would ever laugh
again.
“Amerley, what’s wrong with you? You’ve been so leemm lately. Why
are you so down?”
“Nothing,” I said, walking past her and up the stairs that led to the first
floor. I could feel Priscilla watching me as I climbed upstairs, but she didn’t
follow me. She had a ton of clothes to wash in the laundry room.
Today I didn’t pause in front of Zarrah’s walk-in closet to marvel at her
possessions as I usually did. I walked straight to the bathroom. Though she
had left for school an hour earlier, the bathroom windows and mirrors were
still covered in steam. Even when the sun was high in the sky and the
ground was so hot your feet felt like you were walking on burning coals,
Zarrah bathed with water that was so hot you could use it to pluck the
feathers off a chicken.
The next room was Zaed’s. I didn’t linger there either, not even by his
table, where I could see a stack of new novels waiting to be transferred to
his bookshelf. I had become numb enough that I just walked through the
door and headed straight to the bathroom. Tucked underneath one of the
bottles was an envelope. It had my name on it. I picked it up and opened it.
It contained some money and a letter that began with the words “Dear
Amerley, I’m so sorry . . .” I put the letter back into the envelope and placed
it back under the bottle. I didn’t even bother counting the money. Did he
think writing an apology letter would be enough? Or did he think if he gave
me some money it would magically make everything all right? I took out
the scrubbing brush. I scrubbed mechanically, thinking about nothing and
everything. When I was done, I left his room.
I walked straight to General’s room, and something caught my eye. My
string of waist beads dangled from the edge of his wastepaper basket. I left
it where it was, entered the bathroom, and scrubbed it.
Back outside, Priscilla had taken the first batch of clothes—the whites
—out of the washing machine and was hanging them on the clothesline.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Help me with this,” Priscilla said, unfurling a white and yellow
bedsheet. She gripped one end, I gripped the other, and we draped it over
the line. She clipped on the clothespins and came to stand in front of me.
“Did something happen over the weekend?”
I stared at her and felt the tears build behind my eyes. If you tell, I’ll say
you lied. I’ll say this wasn’t our first time. I’ll say you agreed to it. And no
one will believe you—you’re just the maid. I shook my head and looked
away from her.
“Did you receive some bad news from home?”
I shook my head again.
“Are you still upset about Nikoi?”
I shook my head a third time as I bent to pick up the pillowcases and
hung them out to dry. Priscilla continued looking at me for a minute before
she picked up Zarrah’s panties and hung them beside the pillowcases.
Priscilla and I had finished hanging the first batch of clothes when
Magajia stuck her head out of the kitchen.
“Amerley, Raul’s here. Don’t expect me to pound the fufu tonight. If
you’re not here to do it, Priscilla will do it all by herself.”
Priscilla walked with me to the gate. She had a partially ripe mango in
her hand. She knocked it on the wall a couple of times to get it to soften up.
The mango left a green stain on the white wall each time she hit it.
“Today is going to be a bad day. Magajia has been grumbling all
morning. When you leave, she’ll start mumbling that there’s work to be
done here and yet you chose to go for a ride. As if she doesn’t know it’s the
Millses who asked for you.”
 She knocked the mango some more. The green stain grew larger. She
took a deep bite out of it. Watching her eat the mostly unripe fruit set my
teeth on edge.
“What?” she asked, noticing the look on my face. “I have been timing
this mango for three days now. If I hadn’t plucked it, Nii Okai would have
eaten it—”
“Heh! Priscilla or whatever your name is! Who do you want to empty
the garbage can? Do you think it will empty itself?” Magajia called from
inside.
Priscilla rolled her eyes and sucked on the mango with gusto. “I think
she was an army sergeant in a past life. How can one person shout like that
from morning till evening? Look, you don’t have to come back early. It’s
only one tuber of cassava and one finger of plantain anyway. I can pound it.
If it was me, I’d spend every minute looking at Mr. Mills’s face.”
I didn’t bother telling her that by the time I got there Mr. Mills was
already at work. It was just Auntie Fanny and Jennifer.
“Priscilla!” Magajia screamed.
Priscilla pulled the mango seed out of its flesh. Mango juice dripped
down her arm. She twisted her hand and licked it off.
“Priscilla!”
Priscilla stuffed the entire mango seed into her mouth, waved at me, and
sprinted back to the house.

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 CHAPTER 20

I could hear Aseda’s screams from the Millses’ front gate. I

hurried up the front stairs. Just as I raised my hand to knock on the door, it
was flung open. Mr. Mills stood in front of me in a white T-shirt and a pair
of camouflage shorts. His eyes were bright red. His beard looked
ungroomed. They must have had a really rough night with Aseda if he was
still home at this time and wasn’t even dressed for work. He looked at me
with reverence—as if I had some healing power in my touch. As if I were
one of those preachers on TV who only have to speak and disabled people
begin walking and running on the stage.
“Please come in. We took her to the hospital yesterday. They said she
had a fever because she was teething—it’s crazy in there . . . I don’t know
what’s wrong with her.”
He led me to Aseda’s room, where she lay in her cot screaming her head
off. Auntie Fanny sat on the floor by the side of the crib. She was rocking
herself. Her eyes were shut tight. Each time Aseda screamed, she grimaced
and flinched. You’d have thought Aseda’s screams were hot needles that
were piercing her body.
Toys lay scattered all over the place—teddy bears, every stuffed animal
you could think of, rattles, sing-along books, and dolls. There was a laptop
on one of the tables; nursery rhymes played over and over. Beside the
laptop were two books. One was titled Your Baby and You, and had a
picture of a happy smiling mom and an equally happy smiling baby. The
second book lay open to a chapter on teething. So many paragraphs had
been highlighted in yellow that I thought it would have been better if the
entire book had been printed on yellow paper. Multiple Post-it notes had
been stuck to the pages of the books. Two feeding bottles and three different
pacifiers were on one of the tables. A bottle of acetaminophen syrup lay
beside the crib. Next to it was a tube of gum ointment.
 Aseda’s face was bright red and scrunched up to let out another scream.
When she opened her mouth, I could see two pink mounds at the front part
of her lower gums, and just visible were the tips of her front baby teeth. I
picked her up. She kicked and screamed even louder. I checked her diaper;
it wasn’t wet. Her temperature was up, so I stripped off her clothes and
walked to her bathroom. I ran some cold water in the bathtub and gently
washed her body. Her father hovered over me in the bathroom, handing me
a sponge and a towel when I needed them.
When I finished, I rubbed her dry. She was still crying but her cries
were not as high-pitched as before. I sprinkled some baby powder between
her legs, in her armpits, on her back, and around her neck. I dressed her
only in a diaper and strapped her onto my back.
Mr. Mills joined Auntie Fanny, who was now standing beside the door.
He put his arm around her shoulder They both watched me as if I was
performing a miracle. Auntie Fanny was still in her nightie. The area
around her nipples was wet. She was leaking breast milk but didn’t seem to
notice. Her hair was standing in all directions. She had bags under her eyes,
which were even redder than Mr. Mills’s. She kept a hand cupped over her
mouth.
Mr. Mills bent down and kissed Aseda’s head as I walked past him and
Auntie Fanny. I went downstairs and into the backyard. I jiggled Aseda as I
strolled through the garden, and gradually her screams grew quieter and
settled into whimpers. I felt her body go slack and I knew she had fallen
asleep. I stopped and sat on one of the steps leading to the kitchen, but she
began whimpering again, so I stood up and continued pacing. As I was
walking around the garden a third time, I noticed Auntie Fanny. She’d had a
shower and changed out of her nightie into a sleeveless boubou. She sat at
the top of the steps leading to the kitchen.
“I’m so jealous of you right now. You make it look so easy.”
I didn’t know what to say; no one had ever been jealous of me before.
“Come, sit by me. She’s asleep now.”
I unstrapped Aseda and handed her to her mother. Aseda pursed her lips
as if preparing to let out another scream, but she didn’t. Her mother gently
rocked her and she settled in her mother’s arms and went back to sleep.
“I never thought I’d be bad at this,” Auntie Fanny said, stroking Aseda’s
head.
 “My little sister was like that too when she was teething.” I forced the
words out of my throat.
“You have a sister?”
I nodded. “Three.”
“Three! I wonder how your mother managed. Tell me about them.”
My throat shut down again and I just sat by Auntie Fanny, not saying
anything. The words didn’t even bubble up in my throat as they had before.
My voice was all dried up.
“Amerley, it’s okay. By now you should know you can talk to me. I
know you’re not allowed to speak to guests at Rosina’s, but this is my house
and you’re my guest. Don’t feel shy.”
My throat was still clamped shut. Auntie Fanny waited but I still didn’t
talk.
“Let me put Aseda to bed. There’s some juice in the fridge, get a glass.”
I followed her into the kitchen and picked a glass from the counter.
Their fridge was a mess. There were leftover plates of everything—stews,
pizza, bread, yams, palm soup, cheese, jollof rice, and a head of tilapia with
all the bones from the body beside it. If Magajia saw this, I’m sure she’d
have a nervous breakdown. I took out a carton of fruit juice. I wasn’t very
sure if it was fresh or not. I sniffed it. It smelled okay. I poured less than
half a glass and took a small sip. It didn’t taste funny. Other people’s fridges
were not my business. I shut it and waited.
I wanted to tell Auntie Fanny I was ready to leave. I went to wait for her
in the sitting room. Mr. Mills was asleep on the sofa. He lay curled up like a
baby with his mouth partly open. I don’t think an earthquake could have
woken him up. Watching him sleep like that, I wondered if Ataa had ever
stayed up through the night with me or any of my sisters.
When I heard Auntie Fanny on the stairs, I went back to the kitchen.
“I don’t remember the last time the house was this quiet,” she said as
she quickly braided her hair and twisted it into a bun at the nape of her
neck. She washed her hands at the sink. “I don’t even remember the last
time Joojo and I had a decent meal.”
She opened the fridge and shut it quickly. She made a face and looked at
me.
“You know, it’s not always like this. I don’t know how Rosina manages
to keep your house so spotless. With Jennifer on leave, things have been a
bit hectic.”
 Our house being spotless had nothing to do with Auntie Rosina. It had
everything to do with Magajia ordering Priscilla and me to keep it spotless.
“I have to leave,” I said, rinsing out my glass at the sink.
“No, no, sit. How can I send you away without feeding you?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Nonsense. It’s almost lunchtime. You’re eating before you go back.”
I pulled out a chair and sat at the kitchen table as she opened the fridge
and emptied out half of its contents. The vegetables had turned to green
slime. I wasn’t sure I wanted to eat anything out of that fridge.
She put some rice into a boiling pot of water and went out to the garden.
When she came back, she caught me staring at the wall clock. She had a
head of lettuce, some carrots, bell peppers, and spring onions in her hand.
“You’re not leaving till you eat,” she said in a voice that left no room
for argument.
While the rice cooked, she washed the vegetables, then chopped and
stir-fried them with chunks of sausage, pieces of chicken, and mushrooms.
“Stop glancing at the clock, will you? Don’t you ever get out of the
house? Don’t you get days off?”
I shook my head.
“What agency are you with?”
I shook my head again. None.
Auntie Fanny took the veggies off the fire and checked the rice.
“Do you have a contract?”
She saw the look of confusion on my face.
“Do you and the Iddrissus have a contract? You know, an agreement
about how much you’re paid, how many hours you work, how many days
you get off, that kind of thing.”
“We’re related,” I mumbled.
She stared at me, then left me in the kitchen and disappeared upstairs so
fast I thought Aseda had woken up, but I couldn’t hear her crying. Auntie
Fanny came back clutching a sheaf of papers.
“All this time I thought you had a contract because I helped Priscilla
with hers. These are your rights as a domestic help. Read through this and
I’ll have a talk with Rosina . . .”
I was shaking my head before she even finished speaking.
“No, I’m a lawyer . . . it’s fine . . . this is my job. You have rights as a
help.”
 I shook my head and pushed my chair back.
“Amerley, wait . . .”
I was out of the kitchen and through the living room door. Auntie
Fanny’s calls woke up Mr. Mills. I ran to the gate and struggled to get it to
open. It had a complicated locking mechanism. I was still frantically turning
knobs when Auntie Fanny appeared by my side.
“I’m sorry. It’s okay if you don’t want to talk about how they’re treating
you, but please let Raul take you back. Please.” She looked like she was on
the verge of tears.
“I want to leave now.”
“Yes. Fine. That’s okay. Let me get Raul.”
She hurried past Mr. Mills, who was at the door rubbing his eyes and
trying to stifle a yawn. He looked very confused. I got in the car and waited
for Raul.
In minutes she was back out the door with her purse. Raul had gone to
open the gate.
Auntie Fanny came to the window and pulled out a card from her purse.
“Here, take this.”
I shook my head.
“Take it!” She threw the card through the open window and it fell on my
lap.
Raul came back and started the car.
“If you ever want to talk about it or about anything at all, call me or
come here, okay?”
I looked away from her without answering. Raul drove out of their
compound.

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 CHAPTER 21

She was crazy. She didn’t know what she was asking. How
could I ask Auntie Rosina for a contract after all she was already doing for
my sisters and me? What did it matter whether or not I had a day off? I
didn’t know anyone in East Legon, where would I go, what would I do,
anyway? I knew Priscilla had a contract, her agency insisted on it. It was
why she got weekends off, worked eight hours a day, and got paid holidays.
Auntie Fanny! How could she even suggest something like that! It
would make me look so ungrateful. Auntie Rosina didn’t maltreat me. In
fact, she hardly took any notice of me, and she had given me so many
things—clothes, bags, shoes, jewelry, bottles of perfumes she no longer
wanted. Because of her, my sisters and my mother didn’t wear rags
anymore and had more than enough to eat.
When Raul showed up the next morning, I told him to tell the Millses I
wasn’t feeling well. I’d tell Madam I didn’t want to babysit Aseda anymore.
I’d lose the additional income, but at least I wouldn’t be pressured to ask
Madam for a contract.
I did my chores and went to report to Magajia when I was done. She
was not in the kitchen. Magajia was the only one of the servants who had
her own room in the main house. I knocked on her door and waited for her
to grant me permission to enter. There was no reply. I turned the knob and
entered. Magajia was lying on her bed drinking condensed milk straight
from the can. She was watching a Nigerian movie on Cine Afrik. She was
startled when she saw me.
“Wasn’t the door locked?” she asked, pushing the can of milk under her
bed.
So that’s where Zarrah’s condensed milk had disappeared to.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
“Please, I’ve finished my chores.”
 “Aren’t you going to babysit Aseda today?”
“No. I’ve quit.”
She nodded as if I’d finally come to my senses.
“The beans for the red-red tomorrow won’t pick themselves, you
know?”
I made my way back to the kitchen and poured the black-eyed beans
onto a tray. I went to sit in the summer hut behind the house. Next to it were
two jacaranda trees in full bloom with small purple flowers.
I’d begun sorting beans when I was three years old. At the time, I would
pick each seed, examine it carefully to make sure there were no holes with
weevils hiding inside, and set it aside. Amerley-mami was an expert at bean
sorting. Her fingers moved quickly through the pile, and in no time at all
she was done. Over the years I’d become an expert just like her. As I sat
under the jacaranda trees, my fingers worked while my mind wandered.
Though I had spent almost a year in this house, Auntie Rosina had yet
to introduce me to the proprietor of the fashion school, even though she had
visited many times. She always looked like she had stepped out of the pages
of some high-class fashion magazine. She treated me like everyone else in
that house. I couldn’t wait to leave the Iddrissus and begin living my own
life. I’d put this thing with General behind me. I would learn from it and
never go into the main house when his parents and Magajia were not there.
I would learn all I could from the madam at House of Style and open my
own business so that none of my sisters would ever have to go through what
I had been through. I still felt degraded and dirty and useless. The pain in
my heart was as raw as it had been that first night, but I made a vow to
myself that I would get over this. I was bigger than this. God has a purpose
for me, I repeated to myself as tears made their way down my cheeks.

I smelled him before I saw him. I tensed and felt the fear creep into my
bones. My heart began to pound. I sat still and hoped he would not notice
me. I hoped he’d just smoke his cigarette and go away. Not long after I’d
smelled the cigarette smoke, I heard gravel crunching on the path to where I
sat.
 He sauntered my way. I ignored him and with trembling hands
continued what I was doing. All my attention was now focused on the
beans. The pile with bad seeds remained small. Priscilla bought the black-
eyed beans from a supermarket. There were very few bad beans and no
weevils or stones. I didn’t really have to sort the beans at all, but Magajia
would insist on seeing the bad ones, so I had no choice but to sift through
them.
General came to sit opposite me and blew a mouthful of smoke into my
face. I held my breath and kept sorting.
“Why have you stopped talking? You’ll make people suspect
something.”
I ignored him.
“Look at me when I talk to you.”
I kept my head down. What would he do if I didn’t? Rape me again
when the house was full of people? He took the tray away from me and
placed it on one of the chairs. He forced me to stand up. With one hand he
tipped my chin back until our eyes met. He glared at me. With the other
hand he took the cigarette out of his mouth. I blinked back the tears that
were threatening to fall. I would not show him I was afraid. He brought his
head closer to mine and kissed me on the lips. I jerked away from his touch.
He gripped my jaw firmly, lifted the cigarette, and forced the lit end through
the bone ring that lay nestled between my breasts. I screamed but his hand
shot up from my jaw and clamped my mouth shut. The tears flowed down
my face. I started shaking. My heart started beating really fast.
“I just love a woman with hair on her chest. It’s so sexy,” he whispered,
and kissed my ear. “I’m going to take my hand off now. If you scream, I’ll
hurt you more. If anyone comes by, I’ll say we’ve done it before. I have a
witness, remember? Zaed will back me.”
I held back a scream.
“Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“Seriously, can’t you talk anymore?”
He took his hand away and pushed his body against mine. I stood rock-
still. He brought his hand to my face and ran a finger over my lips. His
tattoo peeked out from under his sleeve.
“Mumu, you’ll make some guy a good wife one day. Imagine this to be
your rehearsal. The old man is leaving tomorrow. His wife and Zarrah will
go to that stupid wedding on Saturday. It’ll just be you and me and Zaed.
He’ll swear I spent the night playing video games with him,” he whispered.
His parents and sister would be away, but Magajia and Priscilla would
be around.
As if he could read my mind, he said, “Magajia won’t hear a thing. She
sleeps like a dead person, and I heard Priscilla say she’s taking the day off.
Be at the side door at nine p.m. If you’re not there, I’ll come to you.”
This was a nightmare. Oh God, this can’t be happening. I can’t go
through that again. I can’t.
He threw away the cigarette, held my jaw, and forced his tongue into
my mouth. It tasted of ash. Zaed’s words played in my head. If there is a
God, where is he when bad things happen to innocent people?
He continued probing my mouth with his tongue and groping me. I bit
down hard until I tasted blood—his blood. He screamed and pushed me
away from him. A film of blood covered his teeth, and blood gushed out of
the cut on his tongue like a fountain.
“You whore! You filthy whore! How dare you?”
He put his hand to his mouth and it came away bloody. The blood
seemed to infuriate him further. He hit me and sent me reeling. I crashed
onto the chair with the tray of beans. The tray fell and sent beans flying in
all directions. He stamped his foot on my chest. The force of the stomp
broke the bone ring in two. He kicked me twice in my stomach. Then he
held my head and used it to hit the ground so hard I passed out.

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 CHAPTER 22

My entire body hurt but the pain in my lower abdomen was

brutal. It was the first thing I felt when I regained consciousness. It felt like
I was being stabbed with knives. I had to take shallow breaths. I tasted
blood in my mouth and spat it out. I didn’t know if it was my own blood or
General’s. I sat up gingerly. Every muscle in my body ached. I felt a sharp
pain in my abdomen and doubled over. General must have gone on kicking
me even after I’d fallen unconscious. I don’t think I had ever felt more pain
in my life, not even the night of the rape.
As I struggled into a sitting position, I slipped on some of the bean
seeds. Magajia would kill me for sure. I would have to gather the beans and
sort them all over again, but I hurt too much to do anything about it. She
would expect them to be soaked in water overnight. What would I tell her? I
struggled into a standing position and limped over to the servants’ quarters.
I’d worry about the beans later. Magajia couldn’t do any worse than what
General had already done to me.
As soon as I pushed open the front door, Priscilla shouted from our
room, “Amerley? Madam just gave me one of her dresses, I need you to—”
She came out of our room to meet me and froze when she saw the state
I was in.
“Oh my goodness. What happened to you?” she said, helping me over
to one of the sofas.
Even lying down was painful. Tears came into my eyes as she lowered
me onto the cushions.
Tears appeared in Priscilla’s eyes. “Who did this to you?”
I closed my eyes and drifted off into unconsciousness once more.
When I came to again, I was still on the sofa but Priscilla wasn’t the
only one standing by my side—Auntie Rosina, Magajia, and Nii Okai were
with her. Priscilla was using a damp towel to mop the sweat off my face.
 “Who did this to you?” Magajia asked.
“Do you even have to ask?” Nii Okai muttered.
“General,” I whispered.
“Oh, that boy will kill me!” Auntie Rosina said, collapsing into a chair
and burying her hands in her hair. “What does he want from me? What
haven’t I done for him? From now onward no one will clean his room,
leave it like that. I’m fed up!”
“Priscilla, help her up. I’ll get the car,” Nii Okai said, moving to the
door.
“Car for what?” Auntie Rosina asked, getting up.
“Madam, won’t we take her to the hospital?”
“Are you crazy? The doctors will want to know what happened. They’ll
call the police. We can’t make this a police case!”
“Madam, he does this every time,” Magajia said, speaking up for the
first time. “He always does something to the girls to make them leave. As
for this one, he’s gone too far. Madam, we have to send her to the hospital.”
“Magajia, are you talking back to me?”
“Madam, no, but Amerley doesn’t—”
“Don’t think because I let you have your way around here we’re equals.
Don’t you ever forget your place! I only tolerate you because of your
master!”
The room was deathly quiet apart from the sound of my labored
breathing.
“We’ll give her some painkillers and make her rest. I don’t think
anything is broken. She’ll be better in no time at all. Priscilla, get me my
pills.”
Priscilla just stood there looking at Auntie Rosina.
“Are you deaf? Get me my pills and a bottle of water.”
Priscilla went to do as she was told.
“Okai, heat some water for me. Magajia, get her a towel and some
antiseptic.”
Both of them left the room.
Auntie Rosina sat by me on the sofa. “Amerley, did he . . . did he rape
you? There’s no one here but us, you can talk to me. You can tell me.”
I nodded my head but had to stop because the movement made me
dizzy.
“Yes. Zaed was there too. He saw everything.”
 She covered her mouth with her hand. “What? When?”
“Last week.”
Tears sprang into her eyes. “Zaed? Are you sure Zaed was part of it
too?”
Again I managed a slight nod of my head.
Auntie Rosina shook her head. “No, you must be mistaken. Zaed would
not stand by and let something like that happen. You’re confused,
Amerley.”
“Just ask him,” I whispered.
I saw the look on Auntie Rosina’s face and knew her mind was made
up.
“Amerley, you are confused. General raped you but Zaed wasn’t there.”
There was no point in arguing. I didn’t have the energy to argue.
Auntie Rosina stroked my head. “You can’t tell anyone, okay? This will
ruin us if it gets out. Mr. Iddrissu’s business will be hurt. Please, keep it to
yourself. When you get better, I’ll enroll you in the fashion school.”
Priscilla came back with all of Auntie Rosina’s pills. Auntie Rosina
selected five different types of pill and forced me to swallow them. The
taste of blood in my mouth made me gag.
“Okai, carry her to her bed. Magajia, make some chicken soup for her.”
Priscilla screamed when Nii Okai picked me up. “There’s blood on the
cushions!”
I must have passed out again after that. When I woke up again, I was in
my own bed. Magajia was wiping me with a towel. She had tears in her
eyes. I could see the bruises—they were dark red with a purple tinge. They
were all over my abdomen. I saw Priscilla flinch every time Magajia
touched my body. She left the room sobbing. I passed out once more.

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 CHAPTER 23

The pain in my side was the first thing I felt when I woke up. I
couldn’t breathe deeply because it hurt too much. My head felt like it was
about to split open. The room I shared with Priscilla was quiet, but I could
hear raised voices coming from the living room.
“How can you even say that?” Amerley-mami said. She was sobbing.
“She’s still urinating blood! She needs to be in a hospital. She’s been like
this for a whole week! We have to take her away from here!”
“Are you blaming me for this? Am I the one who sent the girl here? Did
you ask my permission?” Ataa retorted.
“Ask your permission? Where have you been for over a year and a half?
What sort of man just gets up and leaves his family and doesn’t care what
happens to them?”
“Are you insulting me?”
“Look, this isn’t about us,” Amerley-mami sighed. “It’s about Amerley,
she needs help. She needs to be in a hospital.”
“You heard Rosina, the blood is not as much as it was before. She’s
getting better. In a few more weeks she’ll be fine. I’m sure she just did
something to provoke the boy.”
“Ataa, what are you saying? What gives that boy the right to beat our
daughter? What gives any man the right to beat a woman? Don’t you know
people go to jail for beating their spouses? And you want us to shield that
spoiled boy because his parents are rich. Does Amerley need to die before
you realize this is serious?”
“What do you want me to do now? I’ve already collected the
compensation money from Mr. Iddrissu, I’ve used half of it for a down
payment on a new outboard motor for my boat. I can’t give it back.”
The room went silent as the front door opened and someone walked in.
 “How is she today?” I heard Mr. Iddrissu ask, and they walked into my
room. I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep.
“There’s less blood today. She had a little soup in the morning,” Ataa
said.
I opened my eyes just a little and watched them.
“She’ll be fine. Don’t worry,” Mr. Iddrissu said, wiping his face with a
handkerchief. I wondered if he’d have said the same thing if it had been
Zarrah lying here instead of me.
“You know, ‘boys will be boys.’ If there’s anything you need, don’t
hesitate to ask.”
He slapped Ataa on the back and walked out. Ataa followed him out
with an idiotic look on his face.
Amerley-mami sat on a chair by the side of my bed and began crying.
The week before, she had told me what had happened. Auntie Rosina had
sent for her after the assault because she couldn’t be by my side 24/7 and
both Priscilla and Magajia were working overtime because they had taken
on my chores.
It was Amerley-mami who had taken care of me. Auntie Rosina had
loaned her painkillers and sleeping pills so that for most of the first week I
had been in a drug-induced haze. It was just as well because I couldn’t have
endured the pain otherwise. I didn’t have any memories of that week.
Auntie Odarkor had moved in to stay with my sisters. Ataa had shown
up unannounced one day, and she had been forced to tell him where I was
and what had happened. Ataa had marched straight to the Iddrissus and
insisted that I see a doctor, but it had all been a ploy. He knew that as soon
as I saw a doctor, the doctor would call the police, who would then involve
the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit, and the case would go to
court. He agreed to an out-of-court settlement with the Iddrissus, which had
been what he wanted all along. The Iddrissus had already paid him the
compensation money he’d demanded—ten thousand cedis. Ataa thought he
had gotten the better side of the deal, but I knew better. The bill for Zarrah’s
thirteenth birthday had come to eight thousand five hundred cedis. The
money the Iddrissus had had to pay to “compensate” us had barely made a
dent in their bank accounts.
I reached out and touched Amerley-mami. “It’s okay,” I whispered.
Amerley-mami shook her head. “No, it’s not okay. You’ve been hurt
and we’re just going to pretend like nothing has happened because of
money? And Rosina? She doesn’t even bother coming by to see you
anymore. She’s making plans to move out of the country with her children,
she says she can’t stay with that General anymore. I wish there was
someone who would fight for us. For you. I’d sell everything I have to
make sure that boy is punished.”
I looked at her in surprise. “Do you mean that?”
“Yes.”
“You’d go against Ataa?”
“He went against us first. He left us for over a year and a half. What
kind of husband or father does that to his family?”
“What about my sisters—their school and food? I’m sorry I let you
down.”
“Amerley, I know we’re poor, but that doesn’t mean we should let
people treat us any way they like. And I’m the one who let you down. I’m
the one who has failed you. I’m sorry. I put too much responsibility on you
—the house, the girls, this job. . . . The choices I made have led us here
today, not you. You’re not to blame for anything that’s happened.”
I took a breath. “I know a lawyer who can help.”
“But how will we pay her? Lawyers are expensive. They charge by the
hour.”
“Let’s just talk to her. Maybe I can work for her when I get better to pay
her back.”
She smiled through her tears and said, “We’ve gone to bed on only gari
before. We’ll go to bed on only gari again if we have to. If I have to borrow
money to get you justice, I will.”
I was surprised at the words coming out of Amerley-mami’s mouth, but
once I was certain she was not behaving like Ataa, once I knew she really
meant what she’d said about getting justice for me, I had her call Nii Okai,
who carried me into the car and drove us to Auntie Fanny’s house.

“Oh my goodness! Amerley, what happened to you?” Auntie Fanny

asked as she came down the stairs. “I was in your house twice last week but
Rosina wouldn’t let me see you. She said you were sick. What happened?”
 I was bent over. Standing up straight made my abdomen hurt more. I
felt an intense burning between my legs. That was a signal I had come to
know very well. It was time to pee. The pain would continue as the urine
came out and would stay for a few more minutes after my bladder was
empty. During those periods it was best not to even breathe.
I stood as still as a statue. I felt the warmth of the urine flow down my
legs. A bloody puddle formed at my feet. I grew dizzy again and slumped
against Nii Okai and Amerley-mami. Just before I blacked out, I heard
Auntie Fanny shout, “Nii Okai, get her back into the car. Raul, get my
purse. We’re going to the hospital!”

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 CHAPTER 24

I sat under the cashew tree in the center of the compound

house. All was quiet. The older children were in school, most of the adults
were at work, and the younger kids were sprawled on a mat by my side.
Fast asleep. The sun was just too hot to do anything but take a nap. I
occasionally swatted away the flies that landed on their seminaked bodies.
A few chickens scratched the ground, raising a cloud of dust as they
foraged for food. The goats were chewing their cud under the neem tree
where they were resting.
Auntie Fanny had already come to see me to prepare me for tomorrow.
Tomorrow would be my first day in court. I’d have to testify against
General. Once my story had appeared in the news, other girls—not just
other maids who had served in the Iddrissu house but girls and women in
offices and banks, schools and marketplaces, and even churches and
mosques—had come out of the woodwork to accuse their rapists and
abusers. They had been too scared to speak. They had been mumus, just like
me, but in finding my voice, I’d given them a voice too.
Auntie Fanny had made me understand that what had happened had not
been my fault. The fact that I had been drunk did not mean I was to blame.
Rape happened when people, male or female, made a decision to hurt
someone they thought they could control. She herself had been raped by
someone she didn’t know when she was at the university. She called me and
all the other women and girls “survivors.”
Rape is never ever your fault. Auntie Fanny had said it so many times
that it kept playing over and over in my head. Auntie Fanny and Auntie
Rosina no longer spoke to each other. Nii Okai had been fired when the
Iddrissus found out he had driven me to Auntie Fanny’s without permission.
Priscilla quit and the agency found her a job with another family. Ataa had
disappeared with all of the ten thousand cedis “compensation money.”
 I’d stopped peeing blood and the pain in my lower abdomen had
subsided. Some days I felt fine. “Fine” in this case was not the “normal” me
I had been before I moved to the Iddrissu household. That girl was gone for
good; nothing would bring her back. My “fine” meant knowing that I had
survived something and that I was now moving on. The days when I felt
fine were few and far between.
Most days I felt like a broken egg that was still intact. Like when hens
lay their eggs on the ground and the shell cracks but the pieces don’t come
apart, so the yolk remains intact, delicate and wobbly. I felt like if you
peeled away my skin, you wouldn’t find anything underneath it. Maybe
you’d only find air. I felt I’d finally become invisible even to myself. The
me I knew was gone. She’d disappeared. This new person who stood here
pretending to be me—I had no idea who she was, but I knew I’d like her
one day because she had found courage: the courage to live despite
everything that had happened.
I flipped to the next page of the Bible on my lap. Where had God been
when I was being raped? He had been right there by my side, and though I
hadn’t always felt him near, he had helped me survive the ordeal. I knew
that the same way I knew my name was Naa Amerley Amarteifio. The
same way I knew I’d get better. The same way I knew the wind existed. I
had no proof. I just knew.
A taxi drove up to our door. I couldn’t see who it was from where I sat.
The driver sat in the car for a long time. I wondered if it was Nii Okai.
Priscilla had told me he was now driving a taxi.
The driver finally got out. He walked up to our door and knocked. He
tried the knob, found the door open, and stepped inside. He came out less
than a minute later when he realized there was no one in there.
He put his hands on his waist and looked around. That’s when he
noticed me and walked over to where I sat under the cashew tree. He had
kept the beard and mustache but he’d trimmed and shaped them. He was in
an African print shirt and clean black corduroy pants.
“Hi,” Nikoi said.
I nodded. We were both silent for a very long time. He stood there
shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
Then finally he cleared his throat and said, “I heard about what
happened. I’m sorry.”
 I nodded and looked away. The story had made headlines in news across
the country. I wasn’t surprised that Nikoi had heard.
“I . . . I . . . also wanted to apologize for trying to get you to change your
mind even though you made it clear you didn’t want to have sex until you
got married. I should have respected your decision and not kept pressuring
you.”
I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat, willed myself not to
cry, and nodded again. I wished he would go away so I could cry and feel
sorry for myself, but he still wasn’t done.
“I . . . was wondering if . . . eh . . . if you would mind if I picked you up
and drove you to court tomorrow—that’s if you don’t have any
arrangements with anyone else. I mean even if you do have another
arrangement, I’d like to drive you. It’d mean a lot to me.”
Who will want her now that she’s been spoiled? Nii Okai had said about
the girl in the soap opera.
Inside me, I felt a tiny, tiny flutter. It was like when you light a charcoal
fire and see the first tiny red glow on the smallest piece of charcoal. It
would light up for just a moment and then disappear. But once you saw it,
you knew that next time the glow would be larger and in no time at all
you’d have a blazing fire. So you’d keep going. You’d fan that flame with
all your might. You’d give it all you’ve got.
I looked at Nikoi. Half of my mouth lifted up in a very poor imitation of
a smile. It was all I could manage for now.
“I’d like that. I’d like that very much,” I said.

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 EPILOGUE

EIGHT YEARS LATER

I had been sitting in front of my laptop for more than an hour,

staring at a document. Apart from the heading, the entire page was blank.
As part of the application process for the University of Ghana School of
Law, I had to upload an essay. I had begun the application process two
weeks ago. I had filled in forms, uploaded copies of all my certificates,
transcripts, and passport photos, and answered all the essay questions
except the one I was currently staring at. I took a deep breath and began
typing.

Why should you be selected for the First Degree Bachelor of Law (LLB)
Program for the 2020/2021 academic year? (Max: 500 words)

Law was not even a dream I had as a child. All I wanted to be when
I grew up was a seamstress with my own kiosk. Lowly ambitions,
some may say, but in a neighborhood where eight out of ten girls
dropped out of school and became mothers by the age of fifteen, this
was seen by almost everyone I came across as a lofty dream.
I did drop out in my first year of secondary school, not because I
was pregnant but because my parents couldn’t afford to pay my fees.
That same year, I was sent to live with a rich aunt as a domestic
worker, where I was raped by one of my mistress’s sons.
In the community I grew up in, rape was always the girl’s fault.
Always. It was either because she had dressed too provocatively, she
had gotten drunk, she was out at night when decent girls were
supposed to be in their beds at home, or because she had tempted a
 man. Rape was the price she paid for not conforming to what society
expected her to be. I believed this. For the first couple of weeks after
my assault, I was too ashamed to confide in anyone. What if people
thought I wasn’t “good” anymore? What if by reporting the crime I
had sullied my family name and ruined my sisters’ future?
I was determined to keep my reputation intact, and I chose not to
report the crime. One week later, that same son beat me until I
became unconscious. With the help of a lawyer friend, my case was
sent to court and my rapist was imprisoned.
The turning point for me, though, was when people started
speaking up after my case caught the attention of the media. Girls as
young as eight and women as old as sixty shared their stories. For
some it was too late to get them justice, as the perpetrators had died
or relocated or were untraceable. One thing we survivors all shared
was the initial conviction that the assault had been our fault. That it
was because of something we had done.
Today, with the help of like-minded people, I run an
organization for survivors of abuse. It’s hard for a victim to speak up
when her abuser is the one who clothes and feeds her. At the Truth
Speaks Foundation, in addition to teaching survivors vocational and
entrepreneurial skills, we have on-site counselors who help them
deal with their trauma and regain their sense of worth.
Like the lawyer who made sure I got the justice I deserve, I have
made it my life’s mission to get justice for victims of sexual and
domestic abuse. I, Naa Amerley Armateifio, have decided to speak
the truth, even when my voice shakes.

I read through the essay and hit the upload button to send in my
application.

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 GLOSSARY

aba-ei Ga for name given by porters to the Accra

Metropolitan Assembly Task Force, who keep
hawkers off the street. Literal meaning, “They’re
coming.”

abom a traditional stew made by grinding boiled

kontomire (taro leaves), onions, and tomatoes, and
adding a liberal dose of palm oil. Koobi, boiled
eggs, and/or smoked fish are the proteins of choice.
It is usually made and eaten in an asanka with
boiled yam, plantain, cassava, or a mix of the
above.

agoo/amee local call-and-response type of greeting

akpeteshie local gin

alasa African cherry

apem boiled green plantains

asanka local name for traditional earthenware grinding

bowl

banku meal made from cooking fermented corn and

cassava dough
Bo diεŋtsε kwεmɔ Ga for “You yourself, look at what you’ve done”

boubou long, loose-fitting dress

buei expression of surprise

bɔbi tadi dried anchovy stew

charley-wotes flip-flops

chofi local name for fried turkey tails

deɛ local term used for emphasis

domεdo spiced pork that is either boiled and fried or grilled

dumsor dumsor name given to frequent “lights-off” in Ghana

fitter roadside mechanic

fos used/secondhand clothing

fufu meal made by pounding boiled plantain and cassava

galamsey illegal gold mining

gari roasted grated flakes of cassava

gele elaborate Nigerian head wrap

Jeee nyεhe sane Ga for “It’s not your concern/It’s none of your
business”

jollof dish made from boiling rice in a meat or fish stew

juju spiritual belief system that incorporates the use of
objects, such as amulets, and spells used in religious
practice

kaba and slit traditional female attire consisting of a blouse, the

kaba, and a full-length skirt, the slit

kanzo scorched/burnt rice

kayayo/kayayei female head porter/porters

kelewele fried spicy cubes of plantain kenkey

kenkey meal made from first boiling and then steaming

fermented maize dough

koko porridge made from maize flour

koobi salted, dried tilapia fish

koose fried bean cakes

koraa used for emphasis

kotsa chewing sponge used for cleaning teeth

kpakpo shitɔ hot green pepper. Similar to Scotch bonnet pepper.

lai momo Literally “ex-lover” in Ga, but used as a term of

endearment

mami wata mermaid

mankani cocoyam tubers

mate local name for a bus conductor

Me ne panin/Ofainε Twi/Ga for “I’m the older one”

mi ji onukpa

mumu local derogatory Ghanaian name for a dumb person

nketenkete intense hunger pangs that wake one up from sleep

at night

nyatse nyatse small/young/little

Olu? Kwɛmɔ buului for “Are you crazy? See the foolish thing you’ve
anii ni ofee Ga done.”

Osofo Maame pastor/preacher’s wife

oyibo Igbo word used to refer to a Causasian

paa used for emphasis

red-red meal from boiled black-eyed beans, fried ripe

plantains, and palm oil. Gets its name from the red
color of the palm oil and the plantains.

saa/sɔɔ used for emphasis

toli a ridiculous made-up story

trotro commercial bus

truck pusher handcart pusher. They are usually found in markets

 and bus stations, where they transport various
items.

tuo zaafi meal similar to banku made from millet

Woaa hwε Twi for “Just look”

Woasisi me Twi for “You’ve cheated me”

wele cowhide

wulomei traditional priests

Yɛbɛwu enti Twi for “Will we refuse to sleep because of death?”

yɛrenna?

yεyε Nigerian pidgin for useless or senseless

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 AKPEDADA

It takes a village to birth a “book baby” and I have to say a

huge thank you to the following people for helping me with the delivery:
God almighty; the indefatigable Sarah Odedina and Deborah Ahenkorah of
Accord Literary; the amazing team at Norton Young Readers; my brilliant
editors, Jenny Jacoby and Amy Robbins; and Laylie Frazier for the
gorgeous cover illustration.
Thanks to CODE’s Burt Award for African Young Adult Literature for
launching me on my journey.
Thanks also to my family: Mama, Dela, Eli, and OP. And to friends who
have become family: Samuel Hayford, Nii Armah Tagoe, Laud Boateng,
Seli Deh, Elom Yarney, Julian Sowah, Michael Avorkliyah, Ken-Edwin
Aryee, Sheila Boyetey, Kwame Frimpong Boateng, and Peter Odei. Your
support has been a tremendous source of encouragement.
And finally, to all my readers, akpe kakaka, which is Ewe for “Thank
you so very, very much.” This whole journey would be meaningless if you
were not at the end of the road.

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 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ruby Yayra Goka is a dentist and a writer from Ghana. Six of

her young adult books have won awards in CODE’s Burt Award for African
Young Adult Literature in Ghana. She lives in Accra.

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 ABOUT ACCORD BOOKS

Accord works with authors from across the African continent

to provide support throughout the writing process and secure regional and
international publishing and distribution for their works. We believe that
stories are both life-affirming and life-enhancing, and want to see a world
where all children are delighted and enriched by incredible stories written
by African authors.

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 Especially for Maya, Selasie, and Elike

Even When Your Voice Shakes is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the
products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events,
locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2022 by Ruby Yayra Goka

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America
First Edition

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W.
Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact W. W. Norton Special
Sales at specialsales@wwnorton.com or 800-233-4830
Production manager: Beth Steidle

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

ISBN 978-1-324-01711-0

ISBN 978-1-324-01712-7 (ebk.)

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., 15 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BS

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