Wife of the Gods (6 page)

Papa watched while they got the fence patched up.

“Much better,” Cairo said, beaming at the finished product.

They talked awhile longer, until it was dusk and the mosquitoes
began to attack like dive-bombers.

“I’d better get going,” Dawson said, slapping his forearm where
he felt a mosquito attempting to steal his blood. “I’ll need to get
ready for tomorrow.”

“Good luck up there, Darko. Be careful, eh?”

He hugged Cairo, but for Papa it was the usual handshake.

♦

It was now fully dark, and Dawson headed for Nima, one of
Accra’s
zongos
. Nima Road was a vibrant thoroughfare, with
Oxford Street’s energy but none of its riches. The pedestrians who
tramped the dusty roadside crossed the street willy-nilly, weaving
in and out of stop-and-go traffic. With long stretches without
streetlights, a visitor might find it unnerving, but Nima people
knew how to make it work, even if with the narrowest of close
shaves.

Dawson parked the Corolla beside a gutter filled with trash. He
locked up and then walked several meters along a twisted, uneven
walkway to a dense cluster of ramshackle houses. It became
pitch-black as he got farther away from the lights of the main
road. Good thing he had come armed with his small flashlight. He
hopped over a pungent, dark-colored effluent trickling along the
ground.

The man he was looking for lived in the back of one of the
decrepit dwellings. The door was coming off the hinges, and Dawson
didn’t knock for fear that it would fall off completely.

“Daramani!” he called.

“Who dey?”

“Dawson.”

“Ei! Dawson!”

The door went through several readjustments before Daramani
could get it open.

“Hey,
chaley!
How you be?”

Dawson came in, and Daramani gave him a hearty handshake, ending
with the customary mutual snap of thumb and third finger.

The room was tiny and cluttered. The single dangling, dim
light-bulb was very likely using electricity siphoned off from
someone else. In the gloom, Daramani was blacker than charcoal.
When he grinned, his white teeth were blinding. He was thin and
straight as a bamboo stick, but he could consume more food than two
grown men put together. He was from Ghana’s Upper East Region, and
his mother tongue was Hausa, which Dawson didn’t speak. Daramani in
turn spoke Ga badly and Ewe not at all, so the two men had fallen
into the habit of communicating in Ghanaian-English street
slang.

Daramani had been a petty thief with a violent streak. Dawson
had taken him down one night three years ago. His room had been
full of stolen and contraband items that he had not yet sold, as
well as a bountiful stash of weed. Dawson hadn’t been able to
resist and had pocketed some of it.

Marijuana was Dawson’s Achilles’ heel. He loved the stuff.

At his hearing, Daramani had stared at Dawson across the stuffy
courtroom with a small, knowing smile on his face:
I saw you
take the weed
. And Dawson had stared back:
And so
what?

The so-called justice system moving at the snail’s pace that it
did, Daramani had already served most of his prison time when he
was finally sentenced. When he got out, it could hardly be said he
was rehabilitated. Once a thief, always a thief. Dawson had picked
him up again one night hanging around Makola Market. Daramani had
acted quickly to avoid seeing the inside of a jail cell again.

“Dawson, I know people,” he’d said. “Make I he’p you, you he’p
me.”

Half an hour later, Daramani was spilling the beans about a
serial burglar working in the affluent airport residential area. As
Dawson thanked him, Daramani slipped him some marijuana. It was
just a little bit, but the quality was excellent.

“How much?” Dawson asked, avoiding Daramani’s eye.

“No, I dey make give you.”

Dawson became an ordinary citizen for a few seconds and stuffed
some cedi bills in Daramani’s pocket despite his flimsy objections.
Now it didn’t feel so much like bribery and corruption. What a
joke. It was illegal any way you sliced it.

Now Daramani opened a large portmanteau on the floor and pulled
out a green bottle.

“You wan’ schnapps, my brodda?”

“You wan’ waste my ear or what?”

Daramani grinned. “Yah, I know. Okay, I dey get dat ting wey you
like am.”

Daramani produced a small paper bag and held it to Dawson’s
nose. He nodded. Very good.

“Make same price?” Dawson asked.

“Dis one be too good for ol’ price, my brodda.”

“Den how much you dey make am?”

When Daramani told him, Dawson laughed and handed the weed back.
“You craze.”

“How much you pay?”

“Same like before.”

“Chaley you dey touch?” He was asking,
Are you insane?
“No fo’ dis one. No you fo’ do me like dat.”

“Den forget.”

“Okay, take am. Reglah price. I dey like you, dass why.”

Dawson paid him. He took a couple of steps to the portmanteau
and yanked the lid open.

“Wey ting?” Daramani said, surprised.

With the vision of a hawk, Dawson had caught a glimpse of
something glittery in there. He reached in through the mess of
plates, shoes, and other junk, and pulled out a gold watch. He held
it up.

“Where you get am, dis watch?”

Daramani looked at him straight and steady in the eye.
Too
steady. “My friend gimme to make keep am fo’ him.”

Dawson felt Daramani’s voice vibrate like a taut rubber band.
“You lie.”

“Oh, no, my brodda, I no lie.”

Dawson flipped the watch over. It was engraved with someone’s
name and the inscription “M.D.”

Dawson put the watch in his trouser pocket. “I dey make you one
more chance. Where you steal am?”

“I tell you I no steal it, brodda
.”

Dawson kicked a stool out of the way as he closed in on Daramani
so quickly the man barely had time to shriek and recoil. Dawson’s
long fingers encircled his neck, and he slammed Daramani up against
the wall.

“Where you steal am?”

Dawson shook him like a doll and rattled his head against the
wall.

Daramani screamed. “Abeg, abeg! Dawson, stop, please.”

“Tell me now or you go for jail.”

“Den where you go get good weed from?” Daramani said, eyes
dancing and flashing with mischief. “Deh best weed, remember? And
who go tell you where all dese bleddy fockin’ criminal dey for
Accra?”

Daramani grinned even as Dawson increased the grip on his
throat. A smile crept to Dawson’s face, and Daramani giggled.

“Steal anything more, I go kill you,” Dawson said.
“Understand?”

“Oh, chaley, no can kill me. You love me toooo much.”

“I no love
you
, I dey love your weed.”

He tried to keep a straight face, but at the very moment
Daramani snorted, Dawson burst out laughing. He released Daramani
from his grip.

“I go find dat person wey you dey steal dis watch and give am
back,” Dawson said, patting his pocket.

Daramani, chastened, was rubbing his neck. “Okay, my brodda.
Sorry. I swear, never again.
Ei
, you break my neck,
Dawson.”

“Next time I go take your head with it.”

Daramani began to giggle again.

∨
Wife of the Gods
∧

D
awson heard
conversation coming from the kitchen, and he knew Christine and
Hosiah were already home. He was much less excited about the third
voice – that of Gifty, his mother-in-law. Squashing his inner groan
and making yet another failed attempt to persuade himself that she
was really not so bad, he called out, “Hello!”

“Hi, Dark,” Christine said in reply.

Hosiah came running out of the kitchen. “Daddy, Daddy!”

He stopped where he was, and Dawson smiled as the boy prepared
to perform the customary welcoming exercise.

“Okay,” Dawson said. “Ready?”

The boy leaned forward in the on-your-mark position, one leg
forward and the other back. “Yah, Daddy, I’m ready.”

“Set…
go
!”

Hosiah exploded into a run, his little feet pounding the floor
with miniaturized power. Close to Dawson, he launched himself as
high and far as he could into his father’s waiting arms.

“Oh, that was a good one!” Dawson said.

“Yes!” Hosiah said, laughing. “I jumped higher than yesterday,
didn’t I, Daddy?”

“You certainly did. Getting better and better at it.”

But in fact Hosiah was breathing more heavily than a boy of his
age should for such a short burst of energy. Dawson kissed his
son’s perfectly round head. He had bright, shining eyes and a smile
that could soften even the hardest heart.

In the kitchen, Christine and Gifty were at the table sharing a
beer. Dawson put Hosiah down.

“Hi, sweetheart,” he said, kissing Christine on the cheek. He
smiled the best he could at Gifty. “Hello, Mama.”

He kissed her with barely a touch of the lips.

“Hosiah had a nice day at Granny’s, didn’t you, Hosiah?” Gifty
said without so much as returning the greeting.

“Yes, Granny.”

“Where did Granny take you?”

“To the new zoo!” Hosiah said.

Dawson’s jaw tensed, a tic matching the stab of irritation. He
had planned to take his son to the brand-new and improved zoo this
weekend, and Gifty knew that. She simply had to be one up on
him.

“Really?” Dawson said. “And what did you see at the zoo?”

“Chimpanzees and monkeys and birds. And there was a leopard and
a turtle this big.” He spread his arms wide.

“Tortoise, Hosiah,” Gifty corrected him in a tone that irked
Dawson from his spine to his toes. He glanced at his wife, who was
thirty-two, and at his mother-in-law, who was sixty, and wondered
how they could look so alike yet be so dissimilar in character.
Christine had inherited her mother’s rich, dark skin, smooth and
flawless as the petals of a black orchid. Her forehead was high, as
were her lovely cheekbones, her nose straight yet flared, and her
lips were rich. She never wore makeup except for the odd social
gathering, and she had never relaxed her hair the way many Ghanaian
women did to make it “straight.”

Hosiah went back to playing on the floor with a model fire
engine while Dawson looked in the fridge for something to
drink.

“No more Malta?” he said, poking around.

Malta Guinness, Dawson’s favorite drink, was nonalcoholic and
made with malt, hops, barley, and too much sugar.

“Oh, Malta,” Christine said. “I knew there was something I
forgot. Sorry, Dark. I’ll get some tomorrow.”

“No worries.”

He settled for a ginger ale as a distant second choice and sat
down to drink noisily from the bottle. He knew that got on Gifty’s
nerves, so he did it deliberately and with gusto. She sent him one
of her sharp looks, which he ignored.

“How was work?” Christine asked him.

He didn’t want to talk about Ketanu with Gifty present, so he
simply shrugged and gave the standard male answer, “Same ol’
thing.”

“Time for your bath, Hosiah,” Christine said, clapping her hands
briskly. “Go and get your clothes off and call Mama when you’re
ready.”

“Okay. Can I have a bubble bath with plenty bubbles?”

“Yes, but we won’t spend too long, all right?”

“Okay.”

Hosiah scampered out of the kitchen.

“Did he get tired walking around the zoo?” Dawson asked
Gifty.

“He – ”

“Because if I’d been there, I’d’ve carried him on my shoulders
when he got out of breath.”

“He was fine,” Gifty said with a tense smile. “You know I
wouldn’t do anything to harm him.”

“Not what I’m saying,” Darko returned. “I’m saying as his
condition gets worse, we have to be careful.”

“I realize that. Darko, I care about Hosiah as much as you.”

“Of course, Mama,” Christine came in just before Dawson could.
“No one denies that.”

“Thank you, love,” Gifty said, looking satisfied. “So now, here
is my question: How are the savings going for the operation?”

Darko shook his head. “It’s a lot of money.”

“And meanwhile he’s getting worse,” Gifty said pointedly.

“We realize that,” Dawson said icily.

“I just want to know what you’re doing,” she said without
flinching, “besides sitting around waiting. Waiting never gets you
very far, you know?”

Dawson gritted his teeth and tapped his bottle on the table a
couple of times. He looked at Christine for inspiration, anything
to stop him from wringing her mother’s neck.

“Mama – ” Christine started.

“I’m not trying to cause trouble,” Gifty said quickly. “I
sincerely want to help, and I mean that from the bottom of my
heart. I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I have a suggestion
I’d like the two of you to seriously consider.”

Dawson looked at her sideways, skeptical and suspicious.

“What’s that, Mama?” Christine said.

“I think we should take Hosiah to my healer.”

“What healer?” Dawson said sharply.

“Augustus Ayitey He’s a famous traditional practitioner. He even
works with the doctors at Korle-Bu. He gives me medicine for my
arthritis, and he’s healed many people with heart problems.”

“Hosiah needs surgery,” Dawson said curtly.

“But just listen to what I’m saying, Darko,” Gifty said. “Hear
me out, for once. Maybe Hosiah won’t need surgery after he sees Mr.
Ayitey.”

“How would he know what Hosiah needs or doesn’t need?”

Christine was looking back and forth between her husband and her
mother.

“Look,” Dawson said, “traditional healers might have some good
herbal medicines for problems like your arthritis, but this is an
actual physical hole in Hosiah’s heart.”

Gifty recoiled. “Such a horrible way to put it. Hole in his
heart. Awful.”

“What do you want me to say? That’s what it’s called – at least
in layman’s language.”