“Mother Africa will wait for you to return. Don’t worry,” a voice announcd behind me as I looked out of the window after boarding the plane. I turned to see a slender, dark brown man, dressed in a navy blue business suit seated next to me in the aisle. He was handsome and I could tell by his accent that he was Ghanaian.
“I hope so,” I said weakly and praying he would just leave me with my thoughts. I didn’t feel like talking. I looked back at the gate door outside of the window.
“Oh, I see this all of the time—people crying as they lift off. Thinking this lovely place will just disappear. Just die. But no worries. Your mother is stronger than time. She has a secret and she is the only continent that can survive a living death. She’ll survive forever. She’ll always be here for you.” He sounded eloquent and melancholy, like a poet. Through the corner of my eye I saw him ease back in his seat and put on his seatbelt as the flight attendant walked by.
“You must fly a lot then,” I said.
“More than I’d like to. But it comes with the job.” He extended his hand to shake mine. “Kweku Emmanuel Onyeche, attorney at law.”
“Journey Cash. And I’m…just…living.”
It takes sixteen hours to get to the United States from Ghana—and that doesn’t include the layover. When I first got on the plane on the way over to Ghana with Dame, I wasn’t even worried about the time. Others had Sudoku and laptops and DVDS and iPods, anything to keep them busy. All I had was my hand in Dame’s and a smile plastered on my face. We’d laugh and joke and touch the whole way and even when we slept, we’d still be together. It seemed then that that was all that mattered.
Now I was two hours into my return flight and with only my mind to occupy me, I was feeling restless and burdened by my sadness. A baby, who’d been wailing during takeoff, probably because of the air pressure building up, had finally been calmed and the flight attendants were busy serving drinks in the aisles, so I couldn’t get up to walk around. Kweku, who I could tell was a bit older than me by his graying, distinguished side burns, was reading a magazine and clearly avoiding a stack of papers he’d set on the table in from of him. I looked out of the window at the blueness surrounding the plane and thought of Dame. Of our poem.
“I am worried about what people will say,” I heard Kweku say. I turned to see him still looking at his magazine, so I didn’t say anything. Perhaps he was reading aloud. “I wonder what they will say if I let you return to the U.S. looking so sad, ‘Journey Cash…just living.’”
“I stopped caring about what people had to say a long time ago,” I said, looking back to the blueness.
“Point taken. But this is my homeland we’re talking about here. And I can’t have them thinking it was Ghana that gave you such a sad face. So I’m thinking, “Kweku, how do you get rid of this sad face to ensure the positive image of your country?’ Ah! I must cheer up this pretty girl.” He wagged his index finger in my face knowingly and we both laughed. “Now I could turn on my lethal charm and romance her like any true Ghanaian man would…but something tells me that perhaps it is not the attention of a man she needs.” He tilted his head toward me for a response.
“No,” I said with sadness infiltrating even this single syllable.
“So…then I think, perhaps it is an ear she needs.”
“No, not that either.”
He slid the magazine onto the pile of papers and folded his arms across his chest as we sat there in what seemed an unexpected silence. A man seated behind me began coughing and wrestled to clear his throat.
“Look,” I started, “I’ve been through some crazy stuff and now I just want to go ho—” I couldn’t finish my sentence. My voice splintered and I knew not to keep talking or I’d begin to cry.
“Easy,” he said calmly. And when he moved to pat my knee, I could smell jasmine and oak. It was soft, yet masculine, a familiar scent I’d gathered in sniffs surrounding most of the well-to-do men I’d met in Ghana.
“I just—” I whispered. “I can’t.”
“We have a long time together. And nowhere to go. So we might as well talk. Now, I could talk about myself, but my life is all contracts and reports.” He pointed to the pile. “It would bore you to death. At least it did to my last wife.”
“She left you?”
“No, she died. Literally…was listening to one of my stories from work one day and just died.”
I wanted to laugh, but the solemn look on his face was so serious. And I didn’t know if he was kidding or not.
“Just fooling with you,” he said finally and we both laughed. “But I am making a point. No one wants to hear about my life.”
“Fine, but I don’t know if I’m ready to talk about what happened.”
“Well, maybe you don’t have to. If you don’t want to talk about what’s wrong now…maybe start with when everything was right.”
“Right…my life…when everything was right?” I exhaled and looked at him. Even in my gloom, pictures, moments came and I felt silly for even pulling them toward me. I had no clue who the man was sitting next to me. But something about him relaxed me. His confidence, the sincerity in his voice. He had the patience of my grandfather in his eyes and somehow I felt I could trust him. I had to trust somebody. I looked at the time. More than twelve hours to go. “Are you serious?” I was feeling weakened and wanting to embrace anything that would quiet my sadness. If for just a moment.
“Yes! Start wherever you like. When times were good—great.” He looked off as if he was imagining my doing something fun. Dancing. Canoeing. Camping. “Before any of this thing that’s troubling you even began.”
“But that was a long time ago.”
“If we have nothing, we have time,” Kweku said, pushing back his chair to relax. “And if we run out of stuff, I guess we’ll talk about…the contracts.”
“Funny,” I said, looking to the other side of the plane and wondering where I could begin to tell my story to this stranger. “Well,” I began, “and I still don’t know why I’m telling you this…but,” I took a deep breath, “if I had to start with when everything seemed good—great, I’d have to begin with my wedding.”
DAFINA BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2007 by Grace Octavia
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ISBN: 0-7582-4543-2
Take Her Man Page 31