No Sweetness Here and Other Stories

by Ama Ata Aidoo

  ‘You are a brave woman.’

  ‘Life has taught me to be brave,’ she said, looking at me and smiling, ‘By the way, what is the time?’

  I told her, ‘It is six minutes to six o’clock.’

  ‘And Kwesi has not yet come home?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Mama, here I am,’ a piping voice announced.

  ‘My husband, my brother, my father, my all-in-all, where are you?’ And there he was. All at once, for the care-worn village woman, the sun might well have been rising from the east instead of setting behind the coconut palms. Her eyes shone. Kwesi saluted me and then his mother. He was a little shy of me and he ran away to the inner chamber. There was a thud which meant he had thrown his books down.

  ‘Kwesi,’ his mother called out to him. ‘I have always told you to put your books down gently. I did not buy them with sand, and you ought to be careful with them.’

  He returned to where we were. I looked at him. He was very dirty. There was sand in his hair, ears and eyes. His uniform was smeared with mud, crayon and berry-juice. His braces were hanging down on one side. His mother gave an affectionate frown. ‘Kwesi, you are very dirty, just look at yourself. You are a disgrace to me. Anyone would think your mother does not look after you well.’ I was very much amused, for I knew she meant this for my ears. Kwesi just stood there, without a care in the world.

  ‘Can’t you play without putting sand in your hair?’ his mother persisted.

  ‘I am hungry,’ he announced. I laughed.

  ‘Shame, shame, and your chicha is here. Chicha, you see? He does not fetch me water. He does not fetch me firewood. He does not weed my farm on Saturdays as other schoolboys do for their mothers. He only eats and eats.’ I looked at him; he fled again into the inner chamber for shame. We both started laughing at him. After a time I got up to go.

  ‘Chicha, I would have liked you to eat before you went away; that’s why I am hurrying up with the food.’ Maami tried to detain me.

  ‘Oh, it does not matter. You know I eat here when I come, but today I must go away. I have the children’s books to mark.’

  ‘Then I must not keep you away from your work.’

  ‘Tomorrow I will come to see you,’ I promised.

  ‘Yoo, thank you.’

  ‘Sleep well, Maami.’

  ‘Sleep well, my daughter.’ I stepped into the open air. The sun was far receding. I walked slowly away. Just before I was out of earshot, Maami shouted after me, ‘And remember, if Kwesi gets his sums wrong, I will come to school to receive his lashes, if only you would tell me.’

  ‘Yoo,’ I shouted back. Then I went away.

  The next day was Ahobaada. It was a day of rejoicing for everyone. In the morning, old family quarrels were being patched up. In Maami Ama’s family all became peaceful. Her aunts had – or thought they had – reconciled themselves to the fact that, when Maami Ama’s mother was dying, she had instructed her sisters, much to their chagrin, to give all her jewels to her only child. This had been one of the reasons why the aunts and cousins had left Ama so much to her own devices. After all, she has her mother’s goods, what else does she need?’ they were often saying. However, today, aunts, cousins and nieces have come to a better understanding. Ahobaa is a season of goodwill! Nevertheless, Ama is going to have a formal divorce today. . . .

  It had not been laid down anywhere in the Education Ordinance that schoolchildren were to be given holidays during local festivals. And so no matter how much I sympathised with the kids, I could not give them a holiday, although Ahobaa was such an important occasion for them; they naturally felt it a grievance to be forced to go to school while their friends at home were eating so much yam and meat. But they had their revenge on me. They fidgeted the whole day. What was worse, the schoolroom was actually just one big shed. When I left the Class One chicks to look at the older ones, they chattered; when I turned to them, Class Two and Class Three began shouting. Oh, it was a fine situation. In the afternoon, after having gone home to taste some of the festival dishes, they nearly drove me mad. So I was relieved when it was three o’clock. Feeling no sense of guilt, I turned them all out to play. They rushed out to the field. I packed my books on the table for little Grace to take home. My intention was to go and see the divorce proceedings which had begun at one o’clock and then come back at four to dismiss them. These divorce cases took hours to settle, and I hoped I would hear some of it.

  As I walked down between the rows of desks, I hit my leg against one. The books on it tumbled down. As I picked them up I saw they belonged to Kwesi. It was the desk he shared with a little girl. I began thinking about him and the unhappy connection he had with what was going on at that moment down in the village. I remembered every word of the conversation I had had with his mother the previous evening. I became sad at the prospect of a possible separation from the mother who loved him so much and whom he loved. From his infancy they had known only each other, a lonely mother and a lonely son. Through the hot sun, she had carried him on her back as she weeded her cornfield. How could she dare to put him down under a tree in the shade when there was no one to look after him? Other women had their own younger sisters or those of their husbands to help with the baby; but she had had no one. The only face the little one had known was his mother’s. And now . . .

  ‘But,’ I told myself, ‘I am sure it will be all right with him.’

  ‘Will it?’ I asked myself.

  ‘Why not? He is a happy child.’

  ‘Does that solve the problem?’

  ‘Not altogether, but . . .’

  ‘No buts; one should think of the house into which he would be taken now. He may not be a favourite there.’

  But my other voice told me that a child need not be a favourite to be happy.

  I had to bring the one-man argument to an end. I had to hurry. Passing by the field, I saw some of the boys playing football. At the goal at the further end was a headful of hair shining in the afternoon sun. I knew the body to which it belonged. A goalkeeper is a dubious character in infant soccer. He is either a good goalkeeper and that is why he is at the goal, which is usually difficult to know in a child, or he is a bad player. If he is a bad player, he might as well be in the goal as anywhere else. Kwesi loved football, that was certain, and he was always the goalkeeper. Whether he was good or not I had never been able to see. Just as I passed, he caught a ball and his team clapped. I heard him give the little squeaky noise that passed for his laugh. No doubt he was a happy child.

  Now I really ran into the village. I immediately made my way to Nana Kum’s house, for the case was going on there. There was a great crowd in front of the house. Why were there so many people about? Then I remembered that it being a holiday, everyone was at home. And of course, after the eating and the drinking of palm-wine in the morning and midday, divorce proceedings certainly provide an agreeable diversion, especially when other people are involved and not ourselves.

  The courtyard was a long one and as I jostled to where Maami Ama was sitting, pieces of comments floated into my ears. ‘The elders certainly have settled the case fairly,’ someone was saying. ‘But it seemed as if Kodjo Fi had no strong proofs for his arguments,’ another was saying. ‘Well, they both have been sensible. If one feels one can’t live with a woman, one might as well divorce her. And I hate a woman who cringes to a man,’ a third said. Finally I reached her side. Around her were her family, her two aunts, Esi and Ama, her two cousins and the two uncles. To the right were the elders who were judging the case; opposite were Kodjo Fi and his family.

  ‘I have come, Maami Ama,’ I announced myself.

  She looked at me. ‘You ought to have been here earlier, the case has been settled already.’

  ‘And how are things?’ I inquired.

  ‘I am a divorced woman.’

  ‘What were his grounds for wanting to divorce you?’

  ‘He said I had done nothing, he only wanted to . . .’

  ‘Eh! Only the two of you know
what went wrong,’ the younger aunt cried out, reproachfully. ‘If after his saying that, you had refused to be divorced, he would have had to pay the Ejecting Fee, but now he has got the better of you.’

  ‘But aunt,’ Maami protested, ‘how could I refuse to be divorced?’

  ‘It’s up to you. I know it’s your own affair, only I wouldn’t like your mother’s ghost to think that we haven’t looked after you well.’

  ‘I agree with you,’ the elder aunt said.

  ‘Maami Ama, what was your debt?’ I asked her.

  ‘It is quite a big sum.’

  ‘I hope you too had something to reckon against him?’

  ‘I did. He reckoned the dowry, the ten cloths he gave me, the Knocking Fee. . . .’

  All this had been heard by Kodjo Fi and his family and soon they made us aware of it.

  ‘Kodjo,’ his youngest sister burst out, ‘you forgot to reckon the Knife Fee.’

  ‘No. Yaa, I did not forget,’ Kodjo Fi told her. ‘She had no brothers to whom I would give the fee.’

  ‘It’s all right then,’ his second sister added.

  But the rest of his womenfolk took this to be a signal for more free comments.

  ‘She is a bad woman and I think you are well rid of her,’ one aunt screamed.

  ‘I think she is a witch,’ the youngest sister said.

  ‘Oh, that she is. Anyway, only witches have no brothers or sisters. They eat them in the mother’s womb long before they are born.’

  Ama’s aunts and cousins had said nothing so far. They were inclined to believe Ama was a witch too. But Maami sat still. When the comments had gone down a bit, she resumed the conversation with me.

  As I was saying, Chicha, he also reckoned the price of the trunk he had given me and all the cost of the medicine he gave me to make me have more children. There was only the Cooking Cost for me to reckon against his.’

  ‘Have you got money to pay the debt?’ I asked her.

  ‘No, but I am not going to pay it. My uncles will pay it out of the family fund and put the debt down against my name.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘But you are a fool,’ Maami Ama’s eldest aunt shouted at her.

  ‘I say you are a fool,’ she insisted.

  ‘But aunt . . .’ Maami Ama began to protest.

  ‘Yes! And I hope you are not going to answer back. I was born before your mother and now that she is dead, I’m your mother! Besides, when she was alive I could scold her when she went wrong, and now I say you are a fool. For seven years you have struggled to look after a child. Whether he ate or not was your affair alone. Whether he had any cloth or not did not concern any other person. When Kwesi was a child he had no father. When he nearly died of measles, no grandmother looked in. As for aunts, he began getting them when he started going to school. And now you are allowing them to take him away from you. Now that he is grown enough to be counted among the living, a father knows he has got a son.’

  ‘So, so!’ Kodjo Fi’s mother sneered at her. ‘What did you think? That Kodjo would give his son as a present to you, eh? The boy belongs to his family, but he must be of some service to his father too.’

  ‘Have I called your name?’ Ama’s aunt asked the old woman.

  ‘You have not called her name but you were speaking against her son.’ This again was from Kodjo Fi’s youngest sister.

  ‘And who are you to answer my mother back?’ Ama’s two cousins demanded of her.

  ‘Go away. But who are you people?’

  ‘Go away, too, you greedy lot.’

  ‘It is you who are greedy, witches.’

  ‘You are always calling other people witches. Only a witch can know a witch.’

  Soon everyone was shouting at everyone else. The people who had come started going home, and only the most curious ones stood by to listen. Maami Ama was murmuring something under her breath which I could not hear. I persuaded her to come with me. All that time no word had passed between her and her ex-husband. As we turned to go, Kodjo Fi’s mother shouted at her, ‘You are hurt. But that is what you deserve. We will get the child. We will! What did you want to do with him?’

  Maami Ama turned round to look at her. ‘What are you putting yourself to so much trouble for? When Nana Kum said the boy ought to go and stay with his father, did I make any objection? He is at the school. Go and fetch him. Tomorrow, you can send your carriers to come and fetch his belongings from my hut.’ These words were said quietly.

  Then I remembered suddenly that I had to hurry to school to dismiss the children. I told Maami Ama to go home but that I would try to see her before night.

  This time I did not go by the main street. I took the back door through back streets and lanes. It was past four already. As I hurried along, I heard a loud roaring sound which I took to be echoes of the quarrel, so I went my way. When I reached the school, I did not like what I saw. There was not a single childish soul anywhere. But everyone’s books were there. The shed was as untidy as ever. Little Grace had left my books too. Of course I was more than puzzled. ‘How naughty these children are. How did they dare to disobey me when I had told them to wait here until I came to dismiss them?’ It was no use looking around the place. They were not there. ‘They need discipline,’ I threatened to the empty shed. I picked up my books and clock. Then I noticed that Kwesi’s desk was clean of all his books. Nothing need be queer about this; he had probably taken his home. As I was descending the hill the second time that afternoon, I saw that the whole school was at the other end of the main street. What were the children doing so near Maami Ama’s place? I ran towards them.

  I was not prepared for what I saw. As if intentionally, the children had formed a circle. When some of them saw me, they all began to tell me what had happened. But I did not hear a word. In the middle of the circle, Kwesi was lying flat on his back. His shirt was off. His right arm was swollen to the size of his head. I simply stood there with my mouth open. From the back yard, Maami Ama screamed, ‘I am drowning, people of Bamso, come and save me!’ Soon the whole village was there.

  What is the matter? What has happened? Kwesi has been bitten by a snake. Where? Where? At school. He was playing football. Where? What has happened? Bitten by a snake, a snake, a snake.

  Questions and answers were tossed from mouth to mouth in the shocked evening air. Meanwhile, those who knew about snake-bites were giving the names of different cures. Kwesi’s father was looking anxiously at his son. That strong powerful man was almost stupid with shock and alarm. Dose upon dose was forced down the reluctant throat but nothing seemed to have any effect. Women paced up and down around the hut, totally oblivious of the fact that they had left their festival meals half prepared. Each one was trying to imagine how she would have felt if Kwesi had been her child, and in imagination they suffered more than the suffering mother. ‘The gods and spirits of our fathers protect us from calamity!’

  After what seemed an unbearably long time, the messenger who had been earlier sent to Surdo, the village next to Bamso, to summon the chief medicine man arrived, followed by the eminent doctor himself. He was renowned for his cure of snake-bites. When he appeared, everyone gave a sigh of relief. They all remembered someone, perhaps a father, brother or husband, he had snatched from the jaws of death. When he gave his potion to the boy, he would be violently sick, and then of course, he would be out of danger. The potion was given. Thirty minutes; an hour; two hours; three, four hours. He had not retched. Before midnight, he was dead. No grown-up in Bamso village slept that night. Kwesi was the first boy to have died since the school was inaugurated some six years previously. ‘And he was his mother’s only child. She has no one now. We do not understand it. Life is not sweet!’ Thus ran the verdict.

  The morning was very beautiful. It seemed as if every natural object in and around the village had kept vigil too. So they too were tired. I was tired too. I had gone to bed at about five o’clock in the morning and since it was a Saturday I could have a long sleep. At ten o
’clock, I was suddenly roused from sleep by shouting. I opened my window but I could not see the speakers. Presently Kweku Sam, one of the young men in the village, came past my window. ‘Good morning, Chicha.’ He shouted his greeting to me.

  ‘Good morning, Kweku,’ I responded. ‘What is the shouting about?’

  ‘They are quarrelling.’

  ‘And what are they quarrelling about now?’

  ‘Each is accusing the other of having been responsible for the boy’s death.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Chicha, I don’t know. Only women make too much trouble for themselves. It seems as if they are never content to sit quiet but they must always hurl abuse at each other. What has happened is too serious to be a subject for quarrels. Perhaps the village has displeased the gods in some unknown way and that is why they have taken away this boy.’ He sighed. I could not say anything to that. I could not explain it myself, and if the villagers believed there was something more in Kwesi’s death than the ordinary human mind could explain, who was I to argue?

  ‘Is Maami Ama herself there?’

  ‘No, I have not seen her there.’

  He was quiet and I was quiet.

  ‘Chicha, I think I should go away now. I have just heard that my sister has given birth to a girl.’

  ‘So,’ I smiled to myself. ‘Give her my congratulations and tell her I will come to see her tomorrow.’

  ‘Yoo.’

  He walked away to greet his new niece. I stood for a long time at the window staring at nothing, while I heard snatches of words and phrases from the quarrel. And these were mingled with weeping. Then I turned from the window. Looking into the little mirror on the wall, I was not surprised to see my whole face bathed in unconscious tears. I did not feel like going to bed. I did not feel like doing anything at all. I toyed with the idea of going to see Maami Ama and then finally decided against it. I could not bear to face her; at least, not yet. So I sat down thinking about him. I went over the most presumptuous daydreams I had indulged in on his account. ‘I would have taken him away with me in spite of his mother’s protests.’ She was just being absurd. ‘The child is a boy, and sooner or later, she must learn to live without him. The highest class here is Primary Six and when I am going away, I will take him. I will give him a grammar education. Perhaps, who knows, one day he may win a scholarship to the university.’ In my daydreams, I had never determined what career he would have followed, but he would be famous, that was certain. Devastatingly handsome, he would be the idol of women and the envy of every man. He would visit Britain, America and all those countries we have heard so much about. He would see all the seven wonders of the world. ‘Maami shall be happy in the end,’ I had told myself. ‘People will flock to see the mother of such an illustrious man. Although she has not had many children, she will be surrounded by her grandchildren. Of course, away from the village.’ In all these reveries his father never had a place, but there was I, and there was Maami Ama, and there was his father, and he, that bone of contention, was lost to all three. I saw the highest castles I had built for him come tumbling down, noiselessly and swiftly.