“I can’t relax around you. I never know what accusation you’re going to throw at me.”
But he held himself less stiffly, more conversationally. He was not afraid of our eyes meeting. Despite all he had done, Kofi’s gaze was open, almost innocent. My pencil traced the curve of his lips, the depression of his sockets, the wrinkles like a fine mesh thrown over his face.
“Hurry. We still have far to go.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“For what?”
“For this. This trip.”
“I wanted to show off something I had built. Something Francis the visionary had built, but even this does not meet with your approval. It is the obroni way—to always find African attempts wanting. You said something earlier, that you are not my daughter in the way Afua is my daughter. What did you mean by that?”
“I didn’t know you as a child. I’m not afraid of you.”
“My children are not afraid of me.”
“Are they not?”
He smiled. “Always stirring up trouble. You should have been a revolutionary.”
“In London I’m a nobody.”
“I find that hard to believe. A woman bold enough to fly all this way to meet me, to stay on alone at the request of a stranger, to challenge me at every turn.”
“Sometimes I can go a week without speaking to anyone.”
“It is lonely over there?”
“Yes.”
“I can understand that. Before I befriended Thomas, I was very lonely in London.”
“I’m done,” I said.
“Let me see.”
He came and stood beside me.
“It’s a good likeness. Too many wrinkles but a good likeness. You have talent.”
He placed his hand over mine briefly and then walked across to the driver’s side.
We drove until late afternoon without stopping. Kofi put on music, a jazz hybrid with piano, double bass, and African drums.
“Will you tell me about the Kinnakro Five?” Despite my earlier resolution, I could not leave it alone. It was no longer about the boys. I just wanted Kofi to confide in me, to glimpse a secret part of him as I had glimpsed many secret parts of Francis Aggrey.
“Thomas Becket,” he said.
“Who?”
“Archbishop of Canterbury, saint of the Anglican and Catholic Church. You didn’t study him in your school history of the British Isles?”
“Yes, but I don’t understand.”
“His is the story of the Kinnakro Five. When one is in power, one must be careful with one’s words, even those spoken in jest. There will always be those who rush to fulfill your whims out of a perverse understanding of loyalty. ‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?’ As I remember, Henry the Second regretted his words also.”
“But what—”
“It is enough, Anna. We must move forward.”
It was not enough, but it would have to do. None of his other children, not even Afua, could have gotten as much. He turned up the volume and I fell asleep to the offbeat rhythm, each stroke arriving unexpectedly.
When I woke, the car had stopped. We were outside a bungalow built in the same colonial style as Kofi’s show home. We were not in the bush. There were distant buildings on either side of us, but it felt isolated. The house was the lone structure on a large plot of land surrounded by trees and tall grasses. It was growing dim. No lights were on inside.
“Where are we?”
“We’ve come to see an old friend.”
Kofi opened his door and got down. He had stiffened during the drive.
“Who is this old friend?”
“Come. You have trusted me this far.”
I got down. He knocked on the front door and pushed it open. I followed into a living room with chairs upholstered in velvet, faded antimacassars draped over their headrests. There were photographs on the walls, portraits of long-dead people. I glimpsed a young man in a morning suit and top hat, holding a pipe and silver cane, his fine possessions on display for the lens. Kofi crossed the room to a doorway with no door. A rectangle of blue fabric covered the opening. The breeze blew through, swelling the fabric like a sail.
Kofi drew it aside and we walked into a courtyard. An open fire burned in the center. A woman sat beside it on a low stool. She was wrapped in a white, faintly luminous cloth. Her shoulders and chest were bare, except for a red beaded necklace, each bead the size of a pigeon egg. The fire gave off a thick smoke, heavy with fragrance, rich with bitter notes.
“Daasebre,” she said, but did not rise.
“Wuyo,” Kofi replied, and he bowed. She was the first Bamanaian to whom I had seen him show deference.
“This is Wuyo Ama. She was our spiritual guide in the bush,” he whispered to me.
“What brings you here, Daasebre?”
“I have come with my daughter.”
“The one from over the water?”
“Yes, Wuyo.”
“Come, daughter,” she said, beckoning to me.
Kofi nudged me forward. I crossed the steps towards her on my own. She was very old and fat. Her skin hung loose from her neck like peeling plaster. I bowed like Kofi had done.
“Daughter, what is your name?”
“Anna.”
“Daasebre, what name did you give her?”
“Nana.”
“Your new name is in the old one.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Have you played Scrabble before?”
“Pardon?”
“Scrabble. The game. Daasebre, I thought you said she is from Europe.”
“Yes, I’ve played Scrabble before.”
“If you move the tiles one way, you get A-N-N-A. If you move them another, you get N-A-N-A.”
Anna was an anagram of Nana. I was close to the fire. Its smoke filled my lungs and fogged my mind. My eyes stung with tears.
“Daasebre, wait outside until I call you. Come, let’s go,” she said to me. She stood up slowly but without assistance.
“Go where?”
“Kofi, you didn’t tell her?”
“Remember when I said that girls here undergo an initiation rite to become women? You are a woman already, of course, but you are not yet a woman in this culture.”
“Let’s go,” she said again.
“I want my father to come with me.”
“Men cannot take part. It is taboo. But do not be afraid. I did the rites for Kofi’s other daughters. Are you coming?”
I could not refuse her. I could not refuse any experience offered to me in Bamana. There were multiple doors leading off from the courtyard and I followed her through one, into a room empty except for a bed.
“First, you must change.”
A white cloth was laid out for me. There were no holes for my head or arms.
“I’m afraid I don’t know how to wear this.”
“Why are you afraid? Just wrap it like a towel and remove your shoes.”
She sat down on the bed.
“Is there somewhere I can change?”
“What is wrong with here?”
“I’m not used to changing in front of people.”
She laughed. She didn’t have many teeth but the sound was not unpleasant.
“What do you have that I haven’t seen before? Okay, I am closing my eyes, o.”
I changed with my back to her. The cloth stopped at my knees and bunched under my armpits. I felt exposed.
“Wuyo Ama,” I said when I was done. There was no answer. I drew close to her. She sat very still, like a statue in a game. Her eyes were closed. Her lips had withered away into lines as fine as wrinkles. They stretched into a faint smile. “Wuyo.” I touched her arm. Her flesh was cold. She opened her eyes and looked at me blankly. I felt her body grow warm under my palm.
“Sorry, my daughter. I shouldn’t have traveled. Come with me.”
We stepped through another door and into a forest. It was morning. The air was fresh and crisp. Birds twittered i
n the canopy, piercing the silence. The grass was damp with dew.
“What’s going on?”
“What do you see, my daughter?”
“Is this a trick?”
“There is no trickery here. Describe what you see.”
“We’re in a forest.”
“What type of trees?”
“Just trees. Very tall. They look old.”
“You are in Abbana’s land. Abbana reveals what he chooses to reveal. We must go to the stream.”
There was no stream when we arrived, only a carpet of short grass and wildflowers. Now there was a stream, freshly sprung from the earth, running fast and clear. Wuyo Ama waded up to her knees and motioned to me.
“Come, my daughter.”
It was some sort of hallucination. The fire in the courtyard, the thick smoke: there must have been a drug released by the flames. I stepped in the stream. The water was cool. There were tiny pebbles on the streambed and they slid between the gaps in my toes.
“Come deeper, daughter.”
It was too shallow to float but with each step I felt lighter until, when I stood in front of Wuyo Ama, it seemed I would drift away.
“Don’t travel, daughter. Stay with me.”
She bent and scooped water in her palm.
“Bend, please.”
She drizzled the water over my head. It ran down my face like cold tears.
“Water for the washing away of childhood. We thank our mothers for bearing us, for suckling us, for teaching us strength.”
She splashed water on my shoulders, on my arms, on my chest. It seeped through the cloth to my skin.
“Thank your mother,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
She motioned with her head in the direction I should look.
My mother stood behind me. My mother as I had never seen her, light and unworried, on the verge of breaking into laughter. She wore a red dress, fitted at the waist, with a full flared skirt. She gave a twirl, one full revolution, so I could admire her, so I could see the pearl buttons that ran to the base of her spine. It was the dress from Francis Aggrey’s diary.
“Is she real?”
“Am I real? Thank her.”
“Thank you, Mum.”
“For what?” Wuyo Ama asked.
“For the time you came into school and told Ms. Fenton that she couldn’t stop me from auditioning to be Mary in the nativity, and you came home and cried because you were scared to do it. I didn’t get the part but you stood up for me. And thanks for leaving me the flat. You did your best, Mum.”
She waved.
“Why doesn’t she speak?”
“The ancestors speak only when they have something to say. Face me now, please, my daughter.”
But I could not turn from my mother. I took a step towards her and she took one step back.
“Do not follow her unless you want to remain in Abbana’s land. Face me, my daughter. Many have gotten lost in this way.”
I faced Wuyo Ama.
“At this point, usually the girls will sing a Fanti song from their childhood, but we must improvise. What song do you know from when you were a young girl?”
“‘Dancing Queen.’ It was always on in the flat. She never danced to it.”
“That’s a new one,” she said. “Sing it.”
I began softly, growing louder with each line until I was belting it out, then she stopped me.
“That’s okay, my daughter. We must return soon. Now I will sing a song for you in Fanti. The meaning is: The season for blooming is here. Bear life in due season. Bring forth.”
Wuyo Ama held my hands and sang. Her voice was feathery and weightless. The melody was high.
“Today, Nana, you have become a woman. Your ancestors congratulate you. Greet them.”
I turned. There was a crowd on the bank stretching as far as the eye could see, a chain of people linked by their hands. My mother held hands with Grandpa Owen as I had never seen him, straight and broad with a full head of black hair, and Grandpa Owen held the hand of my grandmother, Esther, who I knew only from a photograph, and she held the hand of an African woman in a white blouse and blue wrapper, a headscarf covering her hair and a slim gold chain on her neck, tall and powerful, like Kofi, Kofi’s mother. So they were mingled, black with white, a woman in Victorian dress in bonnet and gloves, next to a man in kente, next to a peasant in a smock and bare feet, and there were surprises, four rows deep—a petite woman in a sari. How did she come to this bank?
“Greet them,” Wuyo Ama said.
“How?”
She curtsied and I copied her.
“It is time to go, Anna. Time is far spent. Come with me.”
We waded to the opposite bank, away from my mother. There was a door in the forest, set in the air, standing with no support. We stepped through into the courtyard. It was dusk. The sun was setting. I gasped, and the smog of Bamana rushed into my lungs, the air as heavy as lead. I felt like a fish reeled out of water, thrashing on the shore. The fire had dwindled to embers. Red coals glittered in the low light.
“Easy, my daughter. Just breathe.”
Wuyo Ama seemed unaffected. She waited until my breathing returned to normal.
“Last, it will be sealed in blood.”
She held a knife in her hand firmly by the hilt. The blade was long, more dagger than knife. Its tip pointed at me.
“Papa!” I screamed.
It was over before he arrived, a swift nick on my arm, just below my biceps.
“What is it, Anna?”
Kofi was in the courtyard, approaching briskly. Wuyo Ama was laughing.
“Daasebre, see you daughter, o. She thought I was going to kill her.” She cackled. “The knife is sterilized. I did it with alcohol myself.”
I laughed unsteadily and then I began to cry.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s come over me.”
I made a fist over my mouth, but the tears came anyway, until I began to shake from the effort of trying to stop them.
“It is the river inside you that was blocked. You and your father like to build foolish dams. Cry, Nana. When Abbana cried he made the oceans.”
There was nowhere to sit so I sat on the ground and wept until I was heaving air. In my mind, I saw the ancestors on the bank, stretching from my mother to the horizon. I felt a hand on my shoulder, like a large bird perching. It was Kofi. No one spoke until I had gathered myself, until I stood and dusted my white cloth, now stained with earth.
“Come, let me bless you,” Wuyo Ama said. “Your going and coming is blessed. There is no split in you. Anna is in Nana. Nana is in Anna. Two streams came together and formed a mighty river.”
Her palm was warm on my forehead.
“Thank you. My clothes, please?”
“You cannot take them. They are from your old life. Okay, my daughter. I must rest now from our journey. Daasebre, you can see yourself out.”
We drove back to Segu without stopping. It was cold in the car. I was still damp from the stream.
“You called me Papa.”
“You answered.”
We passed a billboard with Papa’s face on it, the slogan chief servant of bamana below his wide smile.
“Afua told me she goes with you on campaigns,” I said.
“I would never expect that of you.”
“What would you expect?”
“I have always left my children free to choose. Some have followed more closely in my footsteps than others.”
The cut on my arm formed a scab. The trickle of blood dried up. It was night when we reached the gate of his mansion. It slid back electronically. Sule was waiting outside with a wheelchair.
“You are free to return to London now. No one will trouble you. You can go tomorrow if you want.”
“What if I’m not ready?”
“You can stay also. My home is forever open to you.”
“Was Sule in on the plot?”
“Yes, but you must n
ot blame him. He was strongly opposed to the whole thing.”
Sule opened Kofi’s door from outside.
“Welcome back, sir.”
“Thank you. Nana, go inside.”
I returned to my room. My things were as I’d left them, my new clothes strewn on the bed. There was a medium-size canvas on an easel, brushes and paint in a small bucket, and more blank canvases propped against the wall. Kweku had come through.
I was not sure what had happened with Wuyo Ama, whether it was hallucination or reality, but I felt at peace, as if indeed two warring streams had finally merged. The effort of the contest, the relief that a struggle was over and that there might still be time to rebuild. Tears rose to my eyes again. Anna Nana Bain-Aggrey. She would need a new passport.
Rose. She would be waiting to hear from me. We had spoken angrily on our last call, but we were bound together in a chain that linked generation to generation. The link would not break with us.
“Mum! I knew you’d call.”
“I’m fine. Everything is fine.”
“We figured you wanted to be left alone. Dad said we should give you space to work things out by yourself. He said we can’t understand because we’ve both always had a father.”
“I think I’m going to stay for a bit longer.”
“Take your time.”
“I have a new name. My father gave it to me. Kofi. That’s his name, even though everyone calls him Papa or Sir Kofi.”
“Sir? Sounds distinguished.”
“He is. He’s complicated. He called me Nana. It means Queen.”
“That’s pretty. Spell it.”
“N-A-N-A.”
“Clever. It’s an anagram of Anna.”
“I want you to come. I want you to meet him.”
“You think?”
“Yes. He’d love to meet you. You’re his eldest grandchild.”
“How many are there?”
“I’m not sure. I’m still discovering so much.”
“I’m proud of you for going. I think it’s really brave, and I’m sorry I didn’t see things like that before.”
“Thank you.”
“Tired? Long day?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll let you go, then, but call me tomorrow.”
“I will.”
“Love you.”
She dropped the call without saying goodbye. The door was ajar between us again. I took out my sketchbook and pencil and went to the empty canvas. It was linen, tightly woven, of very high quality. It smelled fresh, like new clothing, like a blank horizon at dawn. I made my first mark.
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