King Peggy

by Peggielene Bartels

  Peggy took one look at her lopsided umbrella and huffed. That’s another two hundred dollars Kwame Lumpopo owes me.

  Cousin Charles gently placed the umbrella on the ground, rubbed his chin thoughtfully, and looked around. He snapped a long twig off a nearby tree and jammed it in the clip. Then he ripped a long, thick string hanging off the unhemmed edge of his cloth and tied the twig in place. He raised the umbrella and grunted in approval. African engineering at an African price.

  Two younger men held the goat up by its front legs, forcing it to walk on its rear legs, though it balked and baaed angrily. Ahead of them, drummers banged their drums. The entourage walked down the path, entered the Hall of Chiefs, and took their seats in front of the wide platform where thirty kings and five queen mothers sat regally in traditional robes and ornaments. A hundred or so other observers sat in plastic chairs facing the platform. Uncle Moses tied the goat to a pillar on the platform.

  Since Nana Tufu was officially sponsoring Peggy, his tsiami, little Papa Adama, had to make the introductory address. “The king of Otuam, Nana Amuah Afenyi V, having gone to his village, the elders and the ancestors selected his niece, Peggielene Bartels of the United States of America, to be the king,” Papa Adama cried in ringing tones. “She is of greatly virtuous character, as strong as a lion, as patient as a turtle, as wise as an elephant, honest, compassionate, sober …”

  When Papa Adama finished, Tsiami stood up and cried out, “Our new king, Nana Amuah Afenyi VI, was chosen according to custom with no dispute among the family or witnesses.” He walked to the stage and handed over a bottle of the best whiskey and an envelope of money and gestured to the goat. “To show our gratitude to the council of chiefs, we have brought you these gifts.”

  Both tsiamis, as a sign of respect when addressing such an honorable group, wore their cloths around the waist, like a bath towel, exposing the entire chest and shoulders.

  Sitting on a thronelike chair in the front of the platform, the president of the council was a handsome man of indeterminate age, lithe muscles, and astonishingly glorious bone structure.

  “The candidate will address the council of chiefs,” he said in a ringing voice.

  Peggy stood and, adjusting her cloth over her left arm, gave a slow and regal smile in return. During those long months in Washington, she had had plenty of time to practice her speech and her intonation—loud enough for all in the large room to hear without straining her voice, full-bodied with confidence and pleasantly courteous.

  “It is a great and unexpected honor that I have become a Ghanaian king,” she said slowly, for kings should never rush. “I, a woman, the first woman of our family to ever become king. I vowed at my enstoolment, and I make this vow again to you now, to devote myself to the prosperity of my people. I have come all the way from America to be gazetted, and I will use everything I have learned in my thirty years there to rule wisely, with compassion and justice, and to spare no effort in helping Otuam. I thank the council of chiefs for this great honor of my gazetting. Thank you, and may God and your ancestors bless you all.”

  The president gestured for Peggy and her entourage to walk toward the door through which they had entered. On the side of the door there was something bright red and sticky on the floor. It looked too red to be blood, almost fluorescent. But it was indeed blood, the blood of the goat sacrificed for the king before Peggy. The sacrifice of a goat kept the ancestors happy all day, so Peggy’s goat would be spared for now, perhaps used for breeding, or sacrificed for another ceremony. The tsiamis chanted and poured an entire bottle of schnapps to the side of the red stuff.

  They smeared the schnapps on Peggy’s forehead and neck. Suddenly ecstatic, she smiled and nodded in acknowledgment of the pivotal moment of the gazetting ceremony. Now she had real power to rein in the corruption of Otuam. Now, no matter how much her elders complained, they couldn’t stop her. Though it had been almost exactly a year since her enstoolment, this was her first moment of complete power, and she was flush with the exciting knowledge of all she could achieve—water, education, medical care, prosperity—for the citizens of Otuam.

  Thank you, God, thank you, she said silently. I promise I won’t let you down.

  They went back to their seats. The president of the council congratulated her on joining their hallowed ranks and offered advice on how to be a good king. He enumerated the virtues of a wise ruler on one hand: The thumb represented Peace, the first and foremost virtue of kings. The forefinger stood for Truth, for a king must never tell a lie. The third finger symbolized Carefulness, as a king must take time to make decisions and never act in a hurry. The ring finger stood for Fear of God, which was shown by helping needy people. Listening to these virtues, Peggy thought proudly, I exemplify all of them. And then he got to the pinky finger. This one, he said, represented the need for the king to forgive and forget all the wrongs done to her. Peggy almost choked on that one. Oh, she thought. I suppose four out of five isn’t bad.

  There were a few more speeches as Tsiami and Papa Adama honored the council of chiefs for its virtue and wisdom, and the council of chiefs honored Tsiami, Papa Adama, Nana Tufu, and Peggy for their virtue and wisdom, and then it was over. Peggy was directed into a tiny office on the side of the council chamber to fill out the official paperwork. She sat down at a small desk and wrote her name, address, date of birth, the name of her kingdom, how she came by the throne (through the death of her uncle), and the date of her enstoolment (September 27, 2008).

  Then she came to a line that read King’s Occupation. She looked up and saw a list on the wall of all the current members of the Essuehyia Council of Chiefs, and by each name was either Fisherman or Farmer. Many of them, she knew, had been government employees when called to their thrones and, having moved to their villages, managed farms or fishing canoes as a means of support. But there were no secretaries on the list. With a proud little flourish, she wrote Secretary.

  Although it was the beginning of the dry season, when the Otuam entourage left the Hall of Chiefs they saw towering black thunderclouds rolling toward them. A stiff wind was blowing dozens of little empty plastic water bags up and down in the dust. The trees were thrashing violently, bending at the waist, their long branches sweeping the ground like village women tidying their yards. Peggy’s elders closed her huge royal umbrella with difficulty as the first fat drops of rain plopped down. Everyone ran to their cars, Cousin Comfort grabbing her head wrap so it wouldn’t blow off.

  Peggy, Cousin Comfort, and the elders crammed into the van. As they bounced over the dirt roads, it began to pour. They passed villages where naked children were dancing in the downpour, hopping up and down, swinging their arms and rolling their heads, delighted to feel beautiful cool rain on hot and dusty skin. Their parents were quickly putting out buckets and pans to collect the precious drops.

  A lively song was playing on the radio, heavenly African voices singing happily as Peggy and her elders bounced over the potholes, keeping close rhythm to the beat. Ebenezer swerved around the largest ones the size of bathtubs, brimming with water now, bright red from the coppery soil.

  The rain tapered off as the caravan approached Otuam. They were on Main Street when Tsiami barked, “Stop the van and let me get out here. I want to see a girlfriend in town to have a quickie.”

  Sitting between Peggy and the driver in the front seat, Cousin Comfort put her face in her hands and clucked. Peggy’s mouth dropped open: Tsiami was seventy-seven. In the United States, some men in their forties had to use Viagra because all the stress and preservatives had turned their private parts to mashed potatoes. But in Otuam, eighty-year-olds walked around with an eternal hard-on. Peggy thought it was the food they ate—fresh fish, fresh vegetables, and fresh fruit with no chemicals—and they were always walking miles and miles every day because they had no cars, or were hauling in heavy nets of fish, or working in the fields. These fit and healthy penises were aided and abetted by tiger nuts, which Tsiami must have been eating quite reg
ularly.

  She replied, “Tsiami, you are so old, this is ridiculous. And it hasn’t stopped raining. Get back in the van.” But he was already halfway out the door, clutching his robes so he wouldn’t trip.

  “I know those girlfriends of yours are young,” she called out the open window, “and they don’t do it with an old man for free. It is well known that your pineapple fields don’t generate enough for you to pay for all those young women.” Tsiami closed the door, turned around, and grinned at her like a naughty boy.

  Peggy found his sly smile upsetting. Instead of helping the children, her town’s funds had gone to pay for foolish things like this—a few minutes of selfish pleasure with an immoral woman. Here was the very essence of Otuam’s problems, staring her in the face with an impish grin. She suddenly felt a crude thing percolating deep down in the place where crude things originated and rising rapidly up her throat. Conscious of the honor so recently accorded her by the council of kings, feeling the weight of the crown on her head, she found the restraint to tone down a bit what she wanted to say.

  “If it’s your own money you’re using, I don’t care,” she said, shaking her finger at him out the window. “But if you are using the town money to have sex with girls, taking water away from Otuam’s children, taking medicine away from the clinic, I will make sure your balls shrivel up to nothing. You know how I’m going to do it? I am going to lock up those fishing fees so you can’t get your hands on them anymore, and without them, those girls won’t give you the time of day.”

  All the other elders in the van laughed, and Tsiami laughed, too. But Peggy could tell by the look in his eyes that he was worried. He had been stealing a lot of money, and as soon as she locked up the money, his penis would be dead, despite all the fresh fish in the world. He knew it, and Peggy knew it, and all the elders in her royal council who had probably been doing the same thing knew it, and they were rightly scared that Peggy would force their penises into early retirement.

  After dropping Tsiami off on Main Street for his quickie, the van reached the royal palace and swooped around the ancient tree again. Uncle Moses tooted the cow horn out the window to let the ancestors know that the gazetting had been a decided success. Their king had been accepted into the council of chiefs.

  They pulled up in front of the house and dashed inside. Peggy had had a local woman cater fifty carryout dinners of rice, chicken, and steamed vegetables in white Styrofoam clamshells, which she had neatly tucked into plastic bags with a paper napkin and plastic fork. Aggie gave these out as visitors arrived, though some turned around to take them home. Most stayed, however, sitting on chairs and benches, drinking beer and minerals, and enjoying a rare dish of juicy, meaty chicken. Otuam chickens were used mostly for laying eggs. Their meat was stringy and dry. But this chicken had been imported from the eastern shore of Maryland, in the United States and was sold in modern grocery stores in Ghana’s large cities.

  Tsiami ambled in about a half hour later, looking refreshed. It had, indeed, been a quickie. He sat down at the table and poured himself a glass of whiskey, which he downed quickly. But his left hand stayed firmly attached to the bottle, a thin, dried brown claw that warned off any intruders. Peggy cocked an eyebrow. Tell me, she said to herself, that he is not planning on drinking that entire bottle by himself.

  Uncle Moses started to reach for the bottle, but something about Tsiami’s possessive grip made him change his mind. He pulled a new bottle out of the crates next to the fridge. Pouring himself a drink, he said to Peggy, “Several of those kings at the Hall of Chiefs said you were very beautiful.”

  She smiled. Despite the heat, she had felt truly beautiful at the ceremony, lush and strong, in the prime of her life, being honored by kings.

  “Although when you first walked into the hall under the umbrella they didn’t know if you were a man or a woman,” Tsiami chimed in shrilly, pouring himself another drink. “They thought you were probably a man.”

  If this had been intended as an insult, it didn’t bother Peggy. The whole world could think she was a male king, for all she cared. Maybe it would be better that way.

  “But when they found out you were a woman, Nana, they said you were beautiful,” Isaiah the Treasurer added. “And they said you spoke very well, as indeed you should, being an American.”

  Little did they know that most Americans didn’t speak nearly as well as most Africans.

  “They also said they were afraid you were going to fall in love with some man who would take your power away from you and rule for you,” Baba Kobena added. Everyone burst out laughing at that.

  “Not very likely,” Peggy said, chuckling, too, at the image of her meekly handing over her royal power to some ridiculous man. But then a stab of pain sliced through her mirth as she thought of William, who wasn’t here to share with her such an important day.

  Another man who stayed away from Peggy’s gazetting party was Kwame Lumpopo, a sensible decision on his part. Yet he haunted her even there. Several relatives came up to congratulate Peggy on her gazetting and express their concern about her rift with the man who had told her she was king. Had she divorced him? they asked.

  In Ghana, if the head of a family divorced a family member, it meant no one in the family could ever treat him as a relative again. He would no longer benefit from any family ties, nor would he be invited to family meetings. Being divorced from your family was the worst thing that could happen to a Ghanaian. He became an outcast, an orphan alone on the earth without hundreds of outstretched arms to embrace him.

  Nor was such a thing undertaken lightly. The head of the family would call the family elders for discussions, and if they were agreed, the matter would proceed to a trial, where the person to be divorced would be given a chance to defend himself, with witnesses and supporters permitted to testify in his behalf.

  “We have not divorced him,” Peggy said, and her listeners sighed with relief. “He is still a family member and can attend family meetings. But I have cast him out of my council. He stole a lot of my money and I won’t forgive him for that, family member or not.”

  “You must forgive him!” cried an older cousin of Peggy’s whose name she had forgotten. “Families must always resolve their disputes.”

  But the man’s wife shook her head in disagreement. “Nana is right,” she said. “He is dishonest and doesn’t belong on the council. You men always expect forgiveness for your crimes and get very upset when it doesn’t come.”

  Another woman agreed. “Times are changing. We don’t want thieves on the council stealing the town’s money.” The older man flinched. Good, Peggy thought, the women will be fully behind me on the changes I want to enact.

  By this point 120-pound Tsiami had drunk the better part of the whiskey bottle. He sat in his chair, swaying slightly, eyes almost closed, hand still glued to his glass. Then, as the noble Nana Tufu was discoursing on some aspect of Otuam’s history, Tsiami stood up and cried at the top of his lungs for no apparent reason, “Be quiet, Nana Tufu! It is time for you to go home! ”

  Uncle Moses was furious. “How dare you tell Nana Tufu to be quiet and go home!” he thundered, slamming his whiskey glass down on the table. “When it is time for him to go home, his tsiami will tell him. It is not your place to tell him.”

  Everyone looked at Nana Tufu’s tsiami, who was swaying slightly from side to side as he stared deep into his empty whiskey glass. Papa Adama didn’t seem to be in a condition to tell anybody anything. He opened his mouth as if to speak but belched instead.

  But Peggy’s tsiami was in fighting mode. “You can’t tell me what to do, Uncle Moses!” he cried in his ringing tsiami voice. “I am tsiami of this family.”

  “I can tell you when your behavior is impolite! I can tell you that!” Uncle Moses replied, banging his hand on the table.

  Suddenly everyone was yelling at once, a great chorus of voices, male and female, young and old, arguing or crying Ah-go for permission to be heard. Throughout it all, Nana Tu
fu sat with quiet dignity, pretending nothing untoward was happening as the room descended into chaos around him. Nana Kwesi, sipping his Coke and sober as a judge, finally burst out laughing at all the drunks.

  Peggy, too, was amused by the scene, and a smile twitched on her lips. Finally, she put a stop to it. “I am king,” she said loudly, and the cacophony quieted. “And I will tell people to be quiet or go home, and no one else will tell them. Enough of this argument. Tsiami, sit down and be quiet. Perhaps it is time for you to go home.”

  Tsiami sat down, his face puckered with irritation. He nursed the remains of his whiskey. The party resumed its cheerful nature. Finally, Tsiami stood up to go but was having difficulty turning around to face the door. Once he managed that, he couldn’t seem to put one foot in front of the other. Cousin Charles put his strong arms around him and guided him toward the door. But then Tsiami collapsed entirely, so Cousin Charles had to pick him up like a baby and carry him the rest of the way home in his arms. Tsiami’s head, eyes closed and mouth open, rested on Cousin Charles’s right shoulder, and his skinny legs hung over his left elbow, flapping up and down with every step.

  When it came time for Nana Tufu to leave, his tsiami had to be carried to the car by his driver and one of his elders, one holding up Papa Adama’s shoulders, the other his feet. Nana Tufu politely pretended not to notice as he swept his own tall form into the front passenger seat of the silver SUV and adjusted his elegant robes around him while Papa Adama was loaded into the backseat like a box.

  A relative later told Peggy that Nana Tufu, despite his dignified appearance, had been as drunk as anybody. He had passed out in his throne room with his robes and shoes on and slept on the concrete floor, his face mashed against his royal beads, which left marks for most of the following day. Papa Adama hadn’t even made it inside the house; he had collapsed just outside and slept snoring loudly on the patio.

  It had been, everyone later agreed, a wonderful gazetting party.