Tag Archives: nigerian writer

ISSUE 1, Non-Fiction

Grieving Without Borders – Nwajesu Ekpenisi

30 Comments

Grief is like the ocean. It comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.
—Vicki Harrison.

The humid Saturday morning’s chilling breeze slapped me beneath the cashew tree where I stood waiting for a motorcycle, and my skin prickled with goosebumps. My eyes drank in the sight of the leaves rustling on the tree and the red fruits draping over its branches.

Like a sentinel, the tree lined the main road leading into the driveway of a nearby hospital. I massaged my arms, dispelling the tingling sensation that caressed my skin like a lover’s steamy kiss. But I knew what it meant. This sensation that had become all too familiar—this feeling that often preceded an experience, so poignant, I know will linger with me for a while.

Behind me, the slapping of slippers against the tarmac driveway grew louder. I whirled around to see two women halt at a palm tree close to the hospital gate. One of them suddenly began to scream. The goosebumps returned, this time, pervasive, accompanied with a sting in my eyes. I blinked, and kneaded my arms again.

Sighting an approaching motorcyclist, I flagged him down; and as soon as we started to bargain, an ambulance zapped past us. My skin erupted in more goosebumps. The woman’s bawl intensified. In sync, the motorcyclist and I were lost in the gaze of the screaming woman.

There was something eccentric about the way the woman wept and screamed. Clad in a black sleeveless button-down shirt on black trousers, she stood beside the other woman, who I assumed was her sister, who was similarly garbed in black. The woman’s sister took a few step forward, phone pressed to her right ear, and sat on a hedge next to the palm tree. She was mumbling with a breaking voice, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying.

Unlike her sister who wasn’t screaming but had eyes flooding with tears, the weeping, screaming woman’s face showed no evident sign of one who had been crying—or was crying. For one who was as fair as she was, it was puzzling to see that her face betrayed no hint of her distress—her face was ‘unreddened’, her nose ‘unrunny’, her eyes ‘unsunken’, with no tears cascading down.

Yet, she bewailed repeatedly in her native dialect—“My lovely mother is dead o! Death, why did you take my mother?”—and her voice was laden with a dolefulness that melted my heart as I hopped on the motorcycle.

A man was ambling by, whose appearance I didn’t quite capture. He gawked at this woman, a look that passed for a glower. Or so I perceived. The disdain in that look was palpable, one that showed how contemptuous he was of the manner the woman screamed and wept.

When he sighed, and our eyes met, I saw the detestation on his face. I imagined this man repeating in his heart the question the motorcyclist hurled at me as we veered into the main road, the same question someone had asked my friend, Evans, at his father’s funeral, where we sat under a canopy.

“How can anyone claim to be mourning a loved one with no tears in their eyes? How can people know that they are truly pained by the loss when their body language shows no intimation of sadness?”

At Evans’ father’s funeral, after the corpse had been laid to rest and candles lit upon the grave, as it was their custom, we sat together, laughing, as we recalled beautiful moments we had shared with his late father—those days he would regale us with stories of the Nigeria-Biafra war—and how we would miss his jokes.

While at it, our sorrow momentarily fading, replaced by warm glows, a young lady, one of his cousins, walked up to us. She glared at us for a while and then said, “Evans, you don’t look like someone who is grieving. How can someone claim to be mourning a loved one with no tears or sadness in their eyes?”

“But I’m mourning,” Evans said.

“Like this?” His cousin cocked a brow. “Since your father died, your body language has been saying otherwise. Are you truly pained by this loss?” She hissed and beat a hasty retreat as soon as she lobbed the question at him.

First, I shook my head at how benighted—of grief—she was, or anyone could be. “Why did she say that?” I asked Evans. “What does she mean by ‘your body language has been showing otherwise’?”

Evans shrugged. “This is the second time she is saying this.”

“Really?” I sighed. “What gave her the impression that you are not mourning like everyone else in the family? You must have done something for her to think that way.”

“I guess it is because I have been hiding my pain.”

“What do you mean by hiding your pain?”

“At school, when I received the call that Papa had died, I was very calm. I maintained that calmness, that composure, when I visited the village and was taken to the morgue to see his corpse. I have been calm till this day. But my cousin thinks that I haven’t been grieving because I didn’t react the way she expected, you know, crying like other members of the family. She thought I was just being a strong man or being impish, but, to be honest, I have been holding back from exploding.”

“She should have known that this is how you grieve,” I said.

“I don’t think she has an idea,” he added, eyes glued to the DJ at the other end, who cued up a
song. The air came alive.

Sadly, in my hometown, rigid expectations are imposed on people on how they should express their sorrow, and how a person’s grief should be measured. We are told that a man overcome with sadness is the one who tearfully expresses his pain for others to understand the depth of his grief.

We are told that grief is something that is visibly written on the face and must be evident in one’s voice. We are told that the ones who hide their emotions behind a mask of stoicism, who put on brave faces, despite being deeply affected, are simply pretending or just being impish or have a skeleton concealed under their cloaks.

We are also told how to grieve here; it is read out to us like a code of conduct in funerals and family meetings after the death of a loved one: The men are to cry to show they are pained, but not too much—because masculinity demands them to be stoic and strong, and not be too loose.

If a man shows too much emotion, he is labeled as “one who weeps like a woman”. Then, to the women, it is expected they show too much emotion. Their cries must burst forth like stormy sea. Their screams must be loud enough to deafen ears. If these are not done, their grieving is incomplete.

“How do you grieve?” he asked, our eyes locking.

The question clinched a chuckle out of me. “You don’t want to know.”

“I’m interested,” he smiled. “Tell me.”

The question made me recall things that I had bottled up inside me. The first time I knew what grief is, the first time it shook me to the core, and left me profoundly shattered for days, I was seven. We had just lost our Landlady. The news of her death, when she was brought back in a coffin two weeks after she left home sick, wrung my innards like strings knotted together.

I didn’t wait to see her corpse in order to confirm that she was dead, I could tell from the weeping faces of her daughters and grandchildren, the groaning of her sons, the silence of her husband, and the solemn mumbles of other tenants and neighbours.

As soon as the funeral hearse hauling her corpse barreled into the compound and everyone rushed to welcome it with broken hearts, I ran inside with my broken heart, huddled beside our bed, and bawled my eyes out. I cried because such a good woman had finally left us. I cried because she was a mother after my mother. She was ‘love’. She was ‘kindness’ cloaked in human flesh. I let the pain stewing inside me to win. I was helpless. I let it sear my eyes, until my tears poured like a libation. I let it drain my strength until I slept off.

Later in my dream, in my subconsciousness, while the funeral dirges played in the compound, I was with her in a garden of beautiful dandelions, gaping at her in a glowing robe.

“I’m not strong in the face of grief,” I replied after a long silence. The DJ spun a new track.

“I’m a weakling.”

Being a weakling is not the same as cowardice. To be a weakling doesn’t mean you fear what you appear weak against; rather, you acknowledge your limitations, you recognize that resistance sometimes is futile, you understand that your efforts would be in vain, and that even trying wouldn’t change the outcome.

Evans let out a croaky laugh.

“But I know that no one is strong in the face of grief, no matter how we choose to hide or express it,” I added.

Grief comes with a raw and scraping vulnerability—a ‘vulnerability’ so strong it claws your heart apart, so strong that it feeds on your strength until you are left bare. It’s in the failure that comes after an exam, the pain of losing a lover to a total stranger, a betrayal from a friend. It is in the act of loving the wrong partner, in unrequited love. It is in the face of rejections, even when you know you are good at something, yet you are still turned down. It is the pain we don’t speak about, the pain that burgeons underneath our skin after a loved one’s death—the worst kind of pain.

“We are never strong in the face of grief,” Evans concurred. “No matter how we exude strength.” I nodded.

The next time I lost a loved one after my father and before my grandmother, who I loved so much—which prompted me to beg God for pardon, for healing from these losses—was in 2014.

Charles was his name. A dear Christian brother from my local church. We were both transitioning out of teenage phase, but he was older than me. When I got to know him, he was the sweetest soul one could have as a friend. I loved him deeply, just as he loved me. He taught me the raw beauty of selflessness, of putting others before oneself. Unfortunately, at the peak of our blossoming friendship, he was diagnosed with a kidney disease.

The morning I learned of his death, I didn’t leave the house for two days. I prayed fervently for his resurrection, the way we were taught to pray in church when we desired something. I desired to have my friend back. I went without eating. But as I prayed, I felt the futility of it all. It was his time to rest. At the end of the second day, I burst into tears. I bit my skin, my lips, until I tasted blood.

“But this how I grieve,” I started. Evans braced up to listen. While the late gospel artiste, Mrs. Nwachukwu Osinachi’s song, ‘Ikem’, blared from the speakers stationed close to the DJ’s canopy. “My grieving knows no border.”

When grief pummels me—especially the sudden, unexpected, searing kind—this is how I utterly unravel: First, I go numb. I feel disconnected from the world. But I try not to crack a tear in public, in the presence of people, be they loved ones or strangers. My eyes may glaze over with tears or even flood with them, but I will not let them all out until I am locked up in my room, where I can drown the floor with them, where I can embrace my sorrow, where the walls can witness my irrepressible insanity.

I withdraw from everything, from everyone; I isolate myself from the world, from its noisiness. I get lost in thoughts, shrugging incessantly, staring into space for too long. Moving with a languid pace as if I’m a leaf blown by the wind, I talk to myself too often, to make sense of my emotions, of reality. I saunter out of my room only at night, when the world sleeps, my pregnant eyes goggling at the night sky, beseeching God to see my crushed and bereaved heart, to teach me the precise language to still the gale rippling inside me, to illuminate the darkness inundating my soul. I trawl for beautiful memories I know will never come forth.

And even when I will myself to sleep in order to escape the depressing reality, I end up in a forest brimmed with ‘frigid’ memories, the melancholic memories I have always wanted to escape from. They come for me like armies besieging a city, like a termite’s relentless gnawing, and I’m jerked awake with wracking sobs.

When I’m exhausted, I let my body succumb to its weariness—for it is what grief is: an unending weariness, a stubborn scar, a memento of lost love, a gaping hole that can never be filled, a suffocating cloak, a tangled forest where the barbed branches of sorrow and the shadow of loss enshroud the route to healing. Time and memories do not heal this wound; they can only mask the pain and fester it.

“I wish I were like you,” Evans said.

“You don’t have to wish to be like me,” I said. “We are wired differently.”

I, too, did wish I was like him, that I’m like him—one who is like a rock in turbulent times, unflappable in the face of adversity, one who wears the mask of stoicism and exudes startling strength in the sea of sorrow; but then, the truth be told, those who don’t express their grief are often the ones whose sorrow has drained their joy. They may appear strong, but they are actually the most vulnerable. I’m not saying people grieve better than others; we all grieve differently because we are wired differently.

If expressing your grief through screaming will bring you solace, go ahead; scream it all out. If you prefer to go stoic, go on, process your emotions in silence. Everyone must be allowed to express their grief, their sorrow, the best way they can authentically do so—without restraint, reserve, ridicule, remorse.

Author’s Bio

Nwajesu Ekpenisi is an Ika writer from Delta State in Nigeria. He placed third in the 2023 Alika Ogorchukwu International Poetry Competition and has forthcoming publications with Brigids Gate Press and other publishers. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter): @E_Nwajesu.

ISSUE 1, Fiction

In the House of Small Silences – Rigwell Addison Asiedu

2 Comments

He told you to consider him as a brother since you were going to live with him for the next 12 months. Abrantie had noticed your discomfort when you alighted from the tro-tro at St. Theresa’s School and that was the first thing he said.

“You’re welcome, Nyamekye. Please, take me as your brother and feel free wai.”

You smiled and thanked him as he offered to take one of your travelling bags, and your legs followed his lead like a sheep being led to slaughter. North Kaneshie was new territory for you and, as you looked around that day, you had no idea that your life was about to change. 

You crossed Palace Street and headed towards Lampado Street with your new roommate. As you both walked, you wondered what his impressions about you were; you were desperate for his approval like a farmer waiting for rain after the dry season. That was the only way this could work. The National Service Secretariat had posted you to Ghana Prints, a publishing house at North Industrial Area. Although your parents had tried working it out for you to be reposted close to home in Dodowa, their efforts had proved futile.

What was the will of man worth in the face of fate custodians like us? We wanted you here and so our spinnerets wove the kente that draped you in this reality. Finally, your parents had to make calls to get an accommodation close to your workplace. A family friend contacted Abrantie, a deacon of your church’s branch in North Kaneshie, and arrangements were made. Now, you were here, exactly where generations of pain and joy had led you to, where you should be for what came next.

As you drew closer to your new home, you saw a woman walking her daughter from a store to a brand new Jeep. Their hands moved in the air and you recognised the sign language, even though you didn’t understand it. The orange rays of the sunset cast a sepia hue on the neighbourhood and as you looked around, you knew you would always remember this day. Your mind was taking in so much at once: the string of stores that sold everything from electrical wares to fried yam, the church with the stained glass windows and the numerous hotels. There was a pull in this environment that you couldn’t comprehend just yet. Even right then, you could feel tongues of fire on your head but you hadn’t grown to understand the language of providence. 

The comprehension would come weeks later, but for now, your eyes were focused on Abrantie. He was wearing a white singlet that dulled to a muted brown and you tried as much not to marvel at the dark skin that glistened with sweat, the toned muscles that were taut under the weight of your bag. You squeezed your eyes shut to block out the sexual thoughts creeping through your web of denial. Even at 22, you still imagined your parents had access to the crevices of your mind and that they could sense you were one of those people. There were many things you didn’t want Abrantie to find out about you. Even right then, you were already making a plan to hide your medications from him. You had learnt your lesson on campus.

If you were expecting a posh bungalow, you would have been surprised when Abrantie led you to a compound on Lampado Street with roughly arranged one-room apartments. However, you had kept your mind open and so were not surprised when you both entered one of these rooms at the far end of the compound. A few people sat outside and exchanged greetings with you.

“Is he the one you mentioned this morning?” a woman you would later know as Aunty Gifty, asked Abrantie in Twi, taking a cursory look at you. Her cornrows were tied up in a tight bun that made her forehead jut out like a louvre slat.

“Yes, please.”

“Akwaaba,” she welcomed you.

The surprise came when you met someone inside the room you entered. The man sat on the bed reading a copy of Ola Rotimi’s The Gods Are Not to Blame. There was something about his relaxed presence that made it register that he also lived here. No one had mentioned another person. Even the family friend had said Abrantie lived alone.

“That’s my brother, Odeneho,” Abrantie said with a dismissive tone, “And this is my humble abode. You are welcome.”

“Oh, I didn’t know you had a brother or lived with someone.”

“Yeah, we didn’t mention him. He doesn’t matter. Just ignore him.”

You were taken aback by the vileness; how could one speak of his brother in such a dismissive manner? Your three younger siblings at home, the triplets—the holy trinity as you called them—meant everything to you. You could never speak ill of them. Soon, you settled in the room after drinking water. The room was small and stuffy, as though it had held its breath for a long time and didn’t know how to exhale anymore. The wooden walls echoed when you tapped them with your knuckles and you heard someone tap them back; there was someone in the other room. Apart from the enthusiastic wave Odeneho gave you, he said nothing. Only his eyes tore into your flesh with a mysterious glint.

“Well, we are all young men here so I guess we can all get along,” Abrantie said, peeling off his singlet with a sharp throw of his hands. You dropped your gaze and your mind fed on the shirtless image you had just been offered. The way those muscles rippled on that ripped body like the surface of a lake penetrated by a paddle. That body…his body. You wondered where you could be alone and stroke yourself with that image imprinted on your mind.

“Please, Bro Abrantie, is there a washroom outside?”

Abrantie snickered and offered to show you around. The compound had a public toilet with five pit latrines. Each visit cost 2 cedis.

“First, it was 1 cedi but Nana Addo and this economy happened,” Abrantie quipped.

The toilet was mainly for releasing one’s bowels. The men peed in the gutter at the other end of the street. You swallowed and wondered how you could live here successfully with the public display of private parts on the street where people went about their business. Shame seeped into your bloodstream and threatened to make your bladder full. The bathhouse at the other end of the compound was walled with roofing sheets and a wooden door that creaks when you pushed it in. It was unroofed and there were many mornings when you would watch the stars disappear from the brightening morning sky and fingerlings of the sunrise’s fire steal across the big blue expanse as you bathed. Fetching water from the compound’s tap cost 80 pesewas per bucket but the second tank with the cleaner water cost 1 cedi. Everyone preferred the 80 pesewas tap. The water wasn’t any much different, Abrantie explained. However, you would quickly realise that there was a clear distinction: the water from the cheaper tap was sometimes brown and you had to wait for particles to settle underneath before using it. 

You finally had the chance to properly meet Odeneho when Abrantie left for his night shift at the pharmacy in North Industrial Area. 

“Hello, they call me Nyamekye. You are Odeneho, right?”

Odeneho made some sounds that confused you and then reached for a small board and marker. Your eyes narrowed in confusion as the young man scribbled words and it finally clicked when you saw the board.

Can’t hear you. Welcome.

“Oh—“ The sound escaped your mouth before you could stop yourself. An onion of emotions made your eyes water. First, there was a layer of shame that it hadn’t occurred to you earlier. But underneath the layers of shame and a sense of uncertainty was a swelling anger. You now understood Abrantie’s statements about his brother. All the desire you had for the elder brother withered away. You sat on the second student bed that had been placed on the floor just beside Odeneho upon your arrival. You took the new roommate’s board and wrote on it.

I am Nyamekye. You are Odeneho, right?

Odeneho nodded with tears glistening in his eyes and tapped your shoulder. He made some signs with his hands that you didn’t understand.

“Oh, I don’t understand sign language,” you mouthed with a sense of failure. You understood various languages: Twi, Ga, French, English, Spanish, and Ewe. And you never bothered to take your ASL classes seriously. 

“We are never going to need that,” you had agreed with your course mates. You were all people who didn’t need a language that transcended sounds and that privilege made you complacent. That night, we bound sleep from enticing you into depths of the unknown. After turning and tossing about the bed, you gave up and watched Odeneho sleep. The young man was well-built with a thicket of hair all over his body. Your fingers pulsated with the urge to stroke the glistening hair that shook under the breeze of the standing fan that hovered over your beds. Your new roommate intrigued you. There were so many questions you wanted to ask but the words you were familiar with were useless here. You thought about your differently abled ancestral matriarch, that strong woman whom your mother had told you countless stories about. 

During the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, the richest chief of their village kept selling the men and women of families who owed him debts to European powers. It was a never-ending horror, families torn apart, bound in castles and later on ships to new worlds. To prevent the chief from taking people from her family any longer, Adwoa Serwaa visited him one night and made her plea. She was hard of hearing and unable to speak, so she made her body do the negotiation. She stripped off her lappa and straddled the chief. The man sat in his chair, shocked into silence by the brazenness of a woman deemed useless by everyone. 

He whimpered when she took him in and grinded her hips against his. Her eyes spoke volumes as she moaned. The strangeness of it all excited the chief; she made him whimper, moan, and groan. By the time his water rose to the tip, he had made two decisions: he would leave her family alone and forgive the debts they owed him. But Adwoa Serwaa is his now. And that was how the story went: in a twist of fate, the deaf-mute girl whom no one regarded was the one who saved her family. She would go on to raise sons and daughters for the sadistic monster; your bloodline was part oppressor, part liberator. 

You reached for your phone and tapped on the lengthiest YouTube video on American Sign Language. Your fingers awkwardly moved around as you tried mimicking the teachers. 

The next seven weeks were a blur between getting acclimated to North Kaneshie and Ghana Prints where you worked as an Assistant Editor. During your breaks, you stood before the washroom mirror and practised the signs you had learnt. Your fiery obsession with mastering ASL had pushed you to stay up many nights when Abrantie and Odeneho were both asleep, or other nights when Abrantie was on his night shift.

On one of such nights when you were alone with Odeneho, you heard a snicker that made you pause your YouTube video. You switched on the light and saw your roommate looking at you. Odeneho’s hands danced in the air.

I have been watching you all this while. You are a fast learner.

You shifted your weight from one foot to another. It was hard to understand why you felt so embarrassed, as though you had been caught masturbating to gay porn. What were you worried about, that the guy could tell that underneath the obsession with mastering ASL was a growing, burning desire that was considered unnatural by mere mortals? What do ephemeral creatures know about nature?

You moved your hands in awkward choreography, trying to use what you had learnt.

I’m sorry if this makes you uncomfortable. I wanted to learn it so that I could communicate with you. I want to know you beyond words.

Odeneho smacked his lips and tapped the space beside him for you to come sit. 

I am not uncomfortable. I am rather pleased. Abrantie never bothered to learn sign language. That one, he is full of himself. Don’t you see how he walks?

You laughed with the awkwardness of a teenager alone with his crush. Odeneho stood up to mimic how Abrantie walked, stomping his feet on the ground in an exaggerated way and you threw your head back in laughter. It erupted like the crash of ceramics on tiles. A knock echoed on the wooden wall that separated you from Aunty Gifty in the next room.

“Please keep your voices down, young men,” she said. 

Odeneho somersaulted on the bed and tumbled over you; he had to cover your mouth because you were laughing hysterically. In spite of your mirth, you were keenly aware of your warm breaths on his palm. You wanted this moment to last forever, Odeneho crouched over you, collapsed in a shoulder-shaking orgasm of laughter. You laughed yourselves to sleep, still in a tight embrace. It was only when Abrantie came knocking at dawn that you peeled away from each other. In the silence that followed, you were keenly aware that the merriment last night had been a consummation of some sort, albeit sexless. It was still an acknowledgement of the desire you had for each other.

When Abrantie took his towel and a bucket of water to the bathhouse, Odeneho snapped his fingers at you. 

I have seen you taking meds at night when you think we are asleep. What are they for?

You grimaced. The last time you opened up to your roommates on campus, they had gone to the hostel manager and requested that you be moved to another room. Alas, you had to rent a hostel off campus where you lived alone. You became a pariah in your class, department, and faculty. Everywhere on campus, people whispered about your condition and became wary of you. It drove you to attempt suicide one Christmas when your wrists became festive gifts waiting to be unwrapped. You looked at Odeneho; you couldn’t afford to lose a new-found friend.

Oh, it’s just for migraines. I have these headaches from time to time.

You take them every day. Morning and evening. I don’t think it’s just migraines.

He moved closer to you and took your hands. You both trembled with the weight of your desires. Your tumescence drew stiff lines under your briefs. A moan escaped the prison of your mouth when Odeneho lifted his fingers to give your left nipple a squeeze.

You can talk to me.

You wanted nothing more than to be open to Odeneho in many ways. You wanted to tell him the truth; your lips quivered with the desire to merge with this warm man who had captured your heart. You lifted your hands to sign when you heard footsteps. By the time Abrantie opened the door, you had jumped away from each other.

“Aunty Gifty said last night she heard both of you making noise past midnight,” the elder brother said with a frown. He dropped the empty bucket beside the gas cylinder at the other end of the room and parted the curtain that divided the space into two compartments. His tall frame hovered over the both of you who were seated on the bed. He was naked save for the towel wound around his waist. 

“Oh, that was just me. I was watching some skits online and I didn’t know when I started laughing and disturbing everyone.”

Abrantie snickered. 

“Masa, now you’ve started lying for him. He’s a bad influence, this stupid boy.”

“Bro Abrantie, he didn’t do anything—“

“Why are you defending this idiot? Has he converted you to gayism?”

“What?” You swallowed and felt the air leave the room. Gayism. You were aware of many things at the same time: Odeneho scribbling STOP, BROTHER! on his board, Aunty Gifty playing Amakye Dede’s Dabi Dabi with her speakers, some neighbours having a funny conversation in Ga, the standing fan whirring with a frightening speed to keep the heat at bay, the aroma of waakye and shito wafting from the next house, the taste of bile in your throat. Has he converted you to gayism? 

“What are you talking about? I barely know him.”

“I told you to ignore this idiot for a good reason. This one, God knew he was a disgusting creation. That’s why he was born deaf and dumb. And this ingrate, after everything my parents did to make him comfortable, sending him to a school for kids with special needs, he still had the nerve to bring disgrace to the family,” Abrantie said, slapping his younger brother. 

“Stop hitting him,” you said, pushing him off Odeneho. The towel came undone and fell to Abrantie’s feet. The elder brother was possessed with a strange rage that didn’t pay heed to his nakedness that was now an exhibition to the other two. You noticed broken sores on his thighs that looked like peeling paint.

“Go on. Tell your new gay partner about the one they caught you with when you were 15. You haven’t told him about Efo, the one you allowed to tear your buttocks open,” Abrantie said, hitting his right palm against his clenched left fist to suggest penetrative sex. “He was caught with a boy just like him doing trumu-trumu. What even concerns a deaf and dumb with sex? With all your suffering in life, why should sex even occur to you? The news spread like wildfire in the school and they expelled him. After all the money my parents spent on this disgusting monster. They went to his school to pick him up but the demons in him caused an accident on the way back. My mother died on the spot and my dad is now in a wheelchair, in the care of a nanny at Dodowa. He did that to us! Bled us dry of our finances and dragged our name into the mud! Before he was born, we had everything. Now look at our predicament,” Abrantie said, throwing his hands around the room. “And even with this, you still want to seduce an innocent guy that has come to live with us? Kwasia!”

“Stop this, Abrantie. He’s your brother!”

“He’s a monster! All he does is sit in here with his stupid remote jobs and those perverted videos he masturbates to when I’m not around. You think I don’t know the smell of your semen. Ha! I know your intentions with this young man and I won’t sit here and let you turn this room to Sodom and Gomorrah. I pray here for God’s sake! Maybe if you rid your heart of those unnatural desires, God can have mercy on you and make you whole,” Abrantie spat.

Odeneho was crying at this point. His shoulders bounced like a tro-tro jerking on potholed roads. Abrantie cursed under his breath, dressed quickly and went out with the door banging shut behind him. You placed Odeneho’s head on your lap and stroked his hair. Thoughts circled in your mind like a murder of crows and something gnawed at the back of your throat. Abrantie had mentioned that their father was in Dodowa, the same place where your parents were at the moment. You also knew that your mother worked for a man whose spinal cord got damaged in an accident. One day your mother had become drunk and hinted at the fact that she shared history with the man she worked for. It was one of the reasons why she had chosen to be his nanny even though she was a retired nurse. 

You rushed to your phone and dialled her number.

“Mama, who was the family friend who directed me to come live here?” you asked after exchanging pleasantries. 

“Oh, that’s the man I take care of.”

“Oh‒”

 “Yes.” Her laughter tickled your ear like feathers brushing against skin. 

“Those are his kids. Are they treating you well?”

“Yes, they are.”

“I’m coming to Kaneshie market today to buy some things. I wanted to do that last week but I felt this strange fatigue that held me down. I am perfect now. I will pass by to see where you live.”

Mama’s presence filled the room when she entered. She was taller than the small door so she had to bend to enter the room. You sucked air through your teeth as you watched her taking stock of the room. For a strange reason, you wanted to defend the room and the standard of living here. It was home now.

“Obi nnim ɔbrempɔn ahyɛase,” she said with a shrug. “Nobody knows the beginning of a great man. You young men have started life. Little by little.” She sat on the plastic chair in the room and traded short stories with Abrantie who had since returned from his angry exit. You watched your mother move towards Odeneho who huddled up close to the wall in a corner of the room. You were shocked to see your mother’s fingers move in the air.

You must be Odeneho…

“You understand sign language,” you blurted. You were even more shocked to see the warmth your mother exuded towards Odeneho given that she knew the story.

“Of course, I do,” she said and smiled. Abrantie shifted uncomfortably as he watched his younger brother warm up to Mama and they spoke the language he never bothered to learn. Your eyes didn’t leave the elder brother and silently accused him of what happened earlier in the day.

Mama hugged the brothers before leaving and you followed her outside with her bag in your hand. 

“I never told you this. Hmmmm… but I was supposed to marry their father,” Mama began abruptly. “My mother was against our relationship because his mother was an Ewe and you know how many Ashantis are with Ewes. We planned to elope together. We were planning to go to the US. We almost succeeded, you know. My application for a visa was rejected and we agreed that he would go first and later I would join him. I didn’t hear from him for some time and I kept getting rejections. I finally succumbed to my mum’s wishes and married the man from our hometown. On my wedding day, I saw Odeneho’s father in the audience. He had been deported after his visa expired.”

“Oh,” you said and kicked a stone. You wondered what life would have been like, having Odeneho as a brother. 

“Yes, life is funny like that. Bringing people together, tearing them apart and bringing them together again. Fate works in mysterious ways. After the accident, I opted to oversee his welfare. I wanted to spend time with him… Everyone said Kojo was now a borga and there was no way he still remembered me in aburokyire. But he came to my wedding and watched me say those vows to a man I didn’t love…a man who didn’t love me.”

“A man who didn’t love you? You mean Daddy…”

“He is like you in many ways,” Mama said with a sad smile. You gasped and the veins in your neck became taut wires. You were beside Palace Street now. Mama dropped the bag she was holding and touched your face.

“There is no need to be afraid. I have always known. You came out of me. Of course, I knew you didn’t like your ex-girlfriend. Why do you think I was happy when you broke up with her?”

“I thought you didn’t like her.”

“No, my handsome son,” she said, stroking your face. “I didn’t want her to live my life. Be with someone who is not—can’t be—attracted to her. I wanted her to be with someone who loved her. I want you to be with someone you love. Your dad and I, we have our arrangement. But your life doesn’t have to be that way; it is not an ideal arrangement. I saw the way you looked at Odeneho—”

“We’re just roommates.” You scoffed and looked away. 

“I’m your mother, Nyamekye. You opened my womb when everyone wrote me off as barren and after you came the blessing of triplets. Of course, I know you. You’re God’s gift to me and I want to know you every day of my life.”

Emotions curled and twisted at your throat. Your mother caught you in an embrace as you cried.

“Thank you, Mama. Thank you.”

“I love you, son. Never forget that.”

After she left, you walked to a pharmacy to buy your medications. You had a spring in your steps that was new. You wanted to scream to the entire world that you loved men, and your mother loved you. You bought Olanzapine, Fluoxetine and Tegretol with the money your mother had given you. As you turned to leave, you bumped into a child. If you hadn’t been quick to catch her, she would have fallen.

“Oh please, I’m so sorry,” you said, crouching to the girl’s height and ensuring she was fine. The mother rushed in your direction and you apologised again. You watched with interest as the woman signed with her daughter. The woman had a bundle of locks whipped into a big bun and her nose ring glinted inside the pharmacy. The girl looked up and smiled at you.

I am sorry. Are you okay?

The mother looked up with a faint expression of surprise. It occurred to you that you had seen them on the first day you came to North Kaneshie.

“Oh, you understand ASL?” You caught the woman’s American accent.

“Yes please, I do. And I’m sorry once again.”

“Oh, it’s fine. I am Dolores. You can call me Dee,” she said, extending her hand for a handshake.

“I am Nyamekye.”

“Nice name. That means God’s gift, right?” 

“Yes, it does.” You looked at the girl.

What’s your name? I am Nyamekye.

Adwoa Serwaa.

“Oh, Adwoa Serwaa. That’s a beautiful name.”

“Yes, she was named after this woman in the stories that were handed down to us. She was the twin sister of our ancestor. According to family folklore, he was captured by a wicked chief because his family was indebted to the man. He was enslaved and taken across the ocean to work on a cotton plantation, but he never stopped worrying about his twin sister back home. He had been the one taking care of her; she was hard of hearing. He sang day and night about his family, especially Adwoa Serwaa. The songs have passed down through generations and I thought it was a fitting name for my daughter. This is actually my Year of Return visit. I’m hoping to locate family and stuff. I’m sorry I’m boring you with this unnecessary information. Americans, we can’t stop ourselves,” she said with a light laugh. You watched her brown skin shimmer with a thin layer of sweat, and a grand swelling of providence filled your belly.

“Oh, it is fine. Actually, I think I know who you are talking about—the Adwoa Serwaa you are talking about.”

“You do?”

“Yes, I do. She saved the rest of the family, you know. She married the chief and saved the rest of them. The rest of us.”

Dolores’ eyes moistened with tears.

“Wait, are you for real? You mean you are…a descendant of Adwoa Serwaa?”

“My sister is Adwoa Serwaa, too.” 

Dolores laughed and swirled around the room.

“Is this really happening?”

You laughed. “I don’t know. I’m not usually the best at telling what’s real and what’s not, but I think this is happening.”

Dolores jumped into an embrace and you held her steady to prevent her from falling. 

“Akwaaba,” you whispered.

“There is so much I want to ask you and confirm but I have to leave right now. My sister has a running stomach; she ate roadside kenkey and I have to get these meds for her. But this is my card. You live around, right? We have to meet and talk. In fact, let me get your number,” Dolores rambled with excitement.

You ran home with the speed of a leopard after she left. You burst into the room and quickly registered that Abrantie had left for work that evening. 

You have no idea what just happened this evening. In fact, so many things, Odeneho. Where do I begin?

Odeneho sighed.

Nyamekye, you were going to tell me something in the morning before Abrantie came in. Maybe start from there.

You swallowed.

Oh, that. I don’t want it to change things between us.

It won’t. Are you dying?

No! No, I’m not dying. I…have schizophrenia. It’s under control. I have psychiatrists that I meet for monthly reviews but it’s not something I tell people. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable around me because you see me as mad.

Odeneho walked towards the door and you heaved. Another person was leaving after finding out. You heard the key turn and you whipped around. He was locking the door.

I don’t see you as mad.

He hugged you and you remained that way for a long time, two bodies twisted into one, brought together by forces invisible to your eyes and bound by the desire in your hearts. In another universe, you could have been brothers. In this one, you were lovers. Either way, you are linked together in the web of this lifetime.

Rigwell Addison Asiedu is a Ghanaian writer. In 2019, he won the Dei Awuku Writers Contest, and was longlisted for the African Writers Awards (poetry category) in 2022. Rigwell’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Lolwe, Isele Magazine, African Writer Magazine, Kalahari Review, Akowdee Magazine, Musings Anthology, and KepressNG Anthology. He is an alumnus of the 2024 CANEX Creative Writing Workshop. He is obsessed with water, black cats, and crows. You can reach him via his social media handles: X @asiedu_rigwell, Instagram: rigwellasiedu, and Facebook: Rigwell Addison Asiedu