Wolf Light

by Yaba Badoe

  Those of us who’ve guided you, who’ve helped to forge and teach you, will be gone by the time you read this letter. All three of you will come into your own now. You’ll grow and learn from your mistakes. Never forget, this isn’t about you, Linet, but a greater good that links every living thing to the source we come from – water: the element that connects each of us through rivers, streams and wells, to the womb of Mother Earth.

  Don’t be afraid, Linet. I’ve asked Rosie and Redwood to stay with you whenever they can and watch over you. I’ve noticed, recently, you’ve taken a shine to Lance Gribble. If that’s indeed the case and he’s fond of you as well, don’t be surprised if Mrs Gribble pops in from time to time. But remember, always be circumspect about your gifts, and be careful whom you take into your confidence.

  Finally, I’ve left Carbilly in trust for you, and asked Rosie and Redwood to be executors of my will.

  My dear, beautiful, wonderful grandchild, I wish you long life and every happiness imaginable. Keep faith in the old ways. May the earth nourish and bless you and your sisters. May the sun smile on your faces and the fair wind that blows behind us all, carry you safely to your resting place.

  Your devoted grandmother,

  Grizelda Merrimore

  25

  Adoma

  My friend, when wahala comes to a house, it is like a bush fire that devours everything in its path: a fire that burns until nothing is left but ashes. Wahala sparks gossip at every corner. It catches, blazes down corridors, razes reputations, reveals secrets hidden behind doors, in floors, and walls. Last of all, when what is concealed is exposed, the roof caves in and everything is lost, I tell you! Everything!

  This is how it was after Okomfo Gran-pa’s murder.

  Come and see Gran-ma crying.

  Sweet Mother screaming, shaking, running in circles wailing: ‘He is dead! He is dead! Our father is dead.’

  Wahala when they carried Gran-pa’s body inside.

  Wahala as panicking street vendors cried: ‘Did you see? They shot the old man and straight away the killers’ motorbike crashed. That priest, his ju-ju must have been powerful – oh!’

  Pandemonium. Through the shouting and jostling, I strode to the vehicle I’d dashed to the ground and removed the helmet of Gran-pa’s assailant. Eyes still open, life, having fled him, had left in its place a mask of fear. Blood trickled from the side of his mouth.

  Even so, I recognised him. His slender face, dark as mahogany, had running down the left side three thin scars.

  ‘I am Inspector Kaku from Kumasi,’ he’d said in the forest. Inspector Kaku, Mr Lamptey’s escort. Now I heard him speaking again, only this time, his voice, a faint hiss in my ear, was that of his frightened shadow:

  ‘My gun! Where is my gun?’

  I placed the gun at his side on his chest.

  ‘I am Inspector Kaku of Kumasi,’ he said once again. And then remembering those he was leaving behind, he added: ‘I have a wife and children to feed. Who will feed them now?’

  The shadow sighed, and fading, began his long journey home to the village.

  I closed the inspector’s eyes and turned as someone called my name.

  ‘Adoma, quick!’ The street vendor, who moments before had been roasting corn, was trying to lift the motorbike off the inspector’s driver. I grabbed hold of the rear wheel.

  ‘One, two, three,’ she said. On the third count, we shifted the mass of tangled metal off the man underneath.

  He groaned. I carefully took off his helmet revealing his face. My eyes flared, my jaw fell.

  More wahala. Mega-full-blue-moon wahala as the crowd jeered: ‘Nana Junior! What? How be? Eeh! Eeh! Small boy like you dey kill the old man, your uncle? And you the chief’s son! Aba! Ghana-folk paaa!’

  Nana Junior, my senior at school, was Gran-pa’s nephew. He opened his eyes and tried to sit up. Collapsed, his head knocking against my knee, I laid him out flat.

  A pimple-faced man flung insults at him, calling him the lowest of the low, a disgrace to every family in the village and nation.

  Another shook his fist, dashing a foot on the ground as if to grind Junior’s spirit to dust. I heard smatterings of lips squeezed in disgust, loud mutterings followed by a cry: ‘Let us finish this cockroach off. Because once the police have him the chief will bribe all of them.’

  ‘Kill him,’ another yelled. ‘Kill him quick.’

  Having already destroyed someone that day, I chose not to do so again.

  ‘Help!’ I yelled. ‘He needs help.’

  I looked from face to face searching for a hint of loving-kindness but saw nothing but contempt for the young man who’d helped take Gran-pa’s life. I wanted justice as well, but not like this: not street justice, not the lynching of a wounded man. For if Junior were killed, how would I ever find out who had ordered Gran-pa’s murder? Inspector Kaku had fired the gun, yet to identify the mastermind behind the plan, I needed Junior alive.

  Just as I was about to shield his quivering body from the crowd’s blows, someone I recognised elbowed through the crush.

  ‘Kofi, get help,’ I bellowed. ‘Junior’s dying.’

  Kofi disappeared.

  The mention of death stopped the crowd’s advance. Their eyes fixed on Junior’s face, they watched him grasp at life’s thread with all his strength; watched his fingers slipping, his breath stuttering. Seconds turned to minutes.

  ‘Help!’

  Kofi barged forwards, escorting a large woman in a nurse’s uniform. Beside her was the street vendor. She bent over, panting.

  ‘Make way! Make way!’ my One and Only cried, creating a corridor for Auntie Mina, a district nurse who ran the only clinic in our village.

  ‘You two, hold his shoulders and back,’ Auntie Mina commanded. ‘I’ll take his head. And you,’ she said to me, ‘take his feet. Lift him carefully! Slowly! Slowly.’

  We obeyed and within minutes, thanks to the speed of Auntie Mina’s Toyota, Junior was at the clinic. Luckily for him, the doctor on call was nearby, and once I’d told him that Junior was the chief’s son, he did everything he could to save him.

  *

  Seven days later, the chief visited our home to grace the one-week anniversary of Okomfo Gran-pa’s death. The chief came as a relative, the most prestigious of Okomfo Gran-pa’s mourners. And how he came, arriving at dusk with an entourage accompanied by drummers.

  We heard them advancing in procession down our road, the drummers marking their progress while the chief’s retinue sang a praise song hailing Gran-pa. The song proclaimed Gran-pa’s skill with herbs and his knowledge of Ashanti lore that weaves this side of the grave with the one beyond; knowledge that spins a thread back in time to our ancestors.

  The head drummer announced the chief’s arrival with a drumroll followed by a mighty thump at our gate and a shout of: ‘Ago!’

  ‘Amie,’ I replied, unlocking our gate and pushing it open.

  My task for the evening, Sweet Mother had told me, was to be an errand-girl, a fetcher and distributer of water for our guests. Above all, Sweet Mother said, I was to keep my okra mouth zipped and desist from asking awkward questions relating to Gran-pa’s death. We would find out in due course, she claimed. In the meantime I should behave.

  Eyes lowered in deference, I nodded meekly when she gave me her instructions. I would have been a fool not to. There had been enough wahala already without sprinkling more kerosene on the fire.

  As I escorted the chief and his retinue to their seats, as I led the drummers to their positions and handed each of them a sachet of drinking water before the ceremony began, I had a clear idea of what I would do that night, and so did my sisters. Our intention was to identify the spider at the centre of a web of deceit and lies that, having desecrated our shrine, had so inflamed the rage of the goddess of the river that her anger glittered like fireflies around us. Tonight, we’d decided, I would finger the culprit.

  My sisters flitted in the shadows around me, slipping between our
visitors as nimbly as I did. While up in the highest branches of the neem tree, Milo chattered, peering at those assembling beneath him.

  Despite the chief’s noisy arrival, from start to finish, Gran-ma was the beating heart of our seven-day anniversary of Gran-pa’s death. She was his wife and his business partner, the love of his life, his everything. Seated around her were traditional priests, members of Gran-pa’s fraternity, alongside his relatives: his brothers and sisters, their children and then Gran-pa’s four children with Gran-ma, Sweet Mother, the youngest, perched on a stool at the end. Gran-ma, alone on Old Freedom, was queen for the night.

  After seven days without Gran-pa, she seemed to have shrunk with grief. So much so, that her eyes drifted, searching for the face that would never smile at her again, while her head turned, listening to a voice only she could hear. Restless, she kept dabbing at her tears with a white handkerchief. Gran-ma was distracted. Or so it seemed, until the chief, advancing while dancing majestically under a ceremonial umbrella, paused to acknowledge her. His greasy, boflot smile gone, a solemn expression was fixed on his face.

  I held my breath, as did everyone present. Having heard the rumours leaping from house to house in the village, how could we not be intrigued? Heads turned as the drumming paused. And when all eyes were on her, Gran-ma shivered as if repelled by the chief’s presence. Then, instead of bowing her head to demonstrate that she was filled with gratitude at the sight of him, as a loyal subject should be, Gran-ma snapped into focus. She glared.

  My friend, when Gran-ma glares it is not a pretty sight. Her eyes give you a slap you will never forget. A mighty slap, like that of a whip on the cheek; a slap with such fire behind it that grown men feel the sting of tears in their eyes and begin to weep.

  She glared, I tell you! Then she slowly stood, shuddered and snubbed the chief by retreating into the house.

  Agitation every bit as troubling as an infestation of ants, blighted the proceedings as a chorus of mouths opened and gasped. Like a sudden gust of wind from deep within, disapproval rustled through the gathering.

  ‘Why did she do that?’ Linet whispered.

  ‘I think she suspects what I do,’ I replied.

  ‘How?’ asked Zula.

  ‘Gran-ma’s not stupid. She may look it when she stares into her pot of pebbles, but she sees things in it, and more often than not comes to the right conclusion.’

  I felt the turbulence in the gathering deepen, settling into our bones as the fracture in the family widened.

  I heard someone say: ‘This is Junior’s fault. This is all his doing!’

  Others, grunting in agreement, shook their heads, while to my sisters I said: ‘By the time we’re done tonight, unless we mess up big time, everyone will know exactly what Gran-ma’s thinking, and they’ll know that she’s right.’

  *

  I’d spent the first two days and nights without Gran-pa taking turns with my One and Only in haunting Auntie Mina’s clinic, keeping an eye on the comings and goings of the only private room available there; the room in which Junior, according to Aunt Mina’s nursing assistant, Sister Mabel, slipped in and out of consciousness. He was so ill, in fact, no policeman came to interview him about what he was doing driving the man who murdered Gran-pa on the back of his bike. No, instead Junior’s mother, the chief’s third wife, kept guard over him. But even the most watchful of guards, like the hardiest of warriors, has to respond to nature’s call eventually.

  By the second day when it was my turn to be on the look-out and Kofi returned home to sleep for a few hours, it became clear from the gossip we’d gleaned that the chief was about to have his son whisked to Accra for an operation Junior needed urgently. Death, an elephant pounding at his door, was about to rush in and crush him. Or so Sister Mabel told me.

  ‘What should I do?’ I asked my sisters.

  ‘Stay put,’ said Linet. ‘Something will give soon.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Zula. ‘The fish sees the bait not the hook. Try to be as patient as a fisherman, Adoma.’

  I took their advice and with Kofi’s help waited. The more I waited, the greater my suspicion that Junior’s family wanted him out of the way. Having an accomplice to murder for a son is embarrassing. Rumours spread like an attack of fleas through the village: fleas that jumped from house to house, body to body, leaving everyone scratching, while a cauldron of anger about what was happening to our river started tipping over.

  ‘Have you seen them?’ people asked. ‘The chief and those galamsey strangers from out of town?’

  ‘They’ve destroyed our shrine and now the river goddess is angry,’ grumbled another. ‘Now we have to buy water. That boy, the chief’s son, Junior, is rotten to the core!’

  Just before midday on the second day, Junior’s mother left his side.

  I slipped into his room, turned the key in the lock, and bolted the door.

  Junior was wide awake, lounging on the bed, sipping from a can.

  If this was indeed a man on the verge of death, I was worse than stupid. I was a downright fool with a brain smaller than a grain of rice.

  Junior was so absorbed in playing with his phone that he didn’t even notice me.

  ‘Hi, Junior,’ I said.

  He managed to tear his eyes from his device and froze.

  The can dropped to the floor. I picked it up and sitting on his bed, placed it on a locker beside him.

  ‘Yes, it’s me,’ I said. ‘Okomfo Gran-pa’s shrine-girl. Chale, how be?’ I forced a smile, assuming a friendship that had never existed.

  ‘Adoma. What are you doing here?’

  He looked at the door.

  I showed him the key in the palm of my hand. As he lunged for it, I closed my hand and smiled.

  ‘Foolish girl!’

  ‘After what you did, you call me a fool, Junior? You’re the only fool I see here.’

  ‘You this small girl, leave me in peace, Adoma.’

  ‘My friend, I saved you!’

  ‘And so?’

  ‘My brother, if it hadn’t been for me, the crowd would have lynched you. You owe me, Junior. If you don’t tell me what I want to know…’

  ‘You’ll do what, Adoma? Small fry like you, breasts as flat as your back – you think you frighten me?’

  His mouth open, he laughed like a self-important beetle that laughs so much it topples onto its back. Except Junior didn’t topple. He crumpled onto his pillow, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes.

  I stared at him. ‘I may be smaller than you. My front may look the same as my back, but you should not laugh at me, my friend.’

  I felt a tingling in my fingers and as fury coursed through my blood to my brain, I flexed my wrists. ‘If you don’t want me to run outside and tell everyone I see how well you are,’ I said, ‘so very well and hearty, in fact, that you can’t stop laughing at me, you’d better talk to me, Junior.’

  His eyes hardened.

  ‘You want me to curse you for my grandfather’s death?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Then tell me what I want to know! The river goddess demands it. And so do the gods of the forest. Gran-pa’s spirit won’t rest until you tell the truth. And if you don’t tell me, I shall hurl a curse on you so powerful that within a few hours you shall be talking to Okomfo Gran-pa himself.’

  A teenager against a young man such as him, the chief’s youngest son, should have been no contest. But a guilty conscience can make all the difference. Remember I told you that I only have one friend? Kofi Agyeman is my One and Only for a reason. You see, we Ghanaians are a superstitious people and if there’s a single lesson that Gran-pa taught me well, it is that fear of death can be used to powerful effect. Psychology, Gran-pa called it.

  So I did what I sometimes do when anyone is tempted to laugh at me. I gave Junior my most ferocious shrine-girl stare, the one that glazes my face with an otherworldly sheen and suggests that if the person I’m looking at is not careful, I shall become possessed. In which case, the spi
rit of the goddess will rush out of me and claim my intended victim.

  And so it was that slowly, slowly, I began to sway and then totter as my eyes swivelled up revealing the whites. I raised my hands. The curtains billowed as circles of air spun through the room filling it with wind magic. The windows shook, wood in the frames creaked. Papers flew off Junior’s locker. A book rose in the air and then crashed at the foot of his bed as a stench of fear saturated the air.

  ‘In the name of Jesus!’ Junior screamed. ‘Go away, Adoma. Go away, you devil! In the name of Jesus…’

  My eyes back to normal, I kissed my lips: ‘You think Jesus hears the cries of a coward such as you, when like me you never set foot in church? No! You believe in the river goddess, Antoa Nyamaa, and she’s angry, very angry at the damage you and your friends have done to the forest and her river.’

  My hand raised, I directed a blast of wind at Junior’s face. He quaked.

  ‘Tell me! If you want to live, tell me now, who was behind Gran-pa’s murder?’

  Like the coward he was, Junior told me everything.

  26

  Adoma

  Sometimes, when the intent behind a deed is too sinister to put into words, the only way forwards, the only way to breach a web of lies is through action. My sisters beside me, I waited patiently for the right moment to reveal what I knew.

  While I waited, I ran back and forth from the kitchen fetching and handing out soft drinks and beer. I ran to and fro carrying paper plates loaded with small chops: fried plantain and roasted peanuts, biscuits and cakes. I gave extra portions to Kofi and his mother, who halfway through the event, passed by to pay their respects.

  ‘Are you going to go through with your plan, Adoma?’ Kofi whispered.

  ‘Of course, I am.’

  ‘Be careful,’ he said, squeezing my hand.