King Peggy

by Peggielene Bartels

  “What are they saying about you?” Peggy asked.

  Nana Tufu sighed and ran a hand over his grizzled, close-cropped gray hair. “They are running through the town and standing outside my house banging their drums and crying, ‘We don’t want Nana Tufu to be the royal mediator! He has stolen the stool from his cousin. Nana Tufu is a thief!’ Things like that. Wherever I go they follow me. It’s horrible. Especially that hundred-year-old little man without teeth who whistles and spits when he talks.”

  “Uncle Fitter?” Peggy asked.

  “Yes, their leader. He sprays all over me when he calls me liar and thief.”

  “Why don’t you pay them to stop?” Peggy knew that Nana Tufu was rather well off. She had heard that he had a good-sized house on a busy street in Winneba, over a prosperous pharmacy, where his sister was the pharmacist.

  He shook his head. “They want a lot of money to stop.” He took off his wire-rim glasses, polished them with the edge of his cloth, and glanced at the door.

  It was very bad news that the Asafo were after Nana Tufu. They couldn’t have harassed him if he had been enstooled—nobody would have dared do that because the ancestors in the stool would kill the harassers or at least give them illness and very bad luck. But since he wasn’t enstooled, they could treat him as if he were an average citizen. His stool had been loaned, merely, and he was holding on to it unjustly, his cousin believed.

  Peggy realized her house was popular with Nana Tufu because it was the only place in Otuam safe from the harassment of the Asafo as it was the residence of an enstooled king. Poor Nana Tufu was tired of hearing them outside his own house chanting “Nana Tufu is a thief!” She could certainly understand that. But the situation was costing her a lot of money, which wasn’t really fair because she hadn’t stolen anybody’s stool. Maybe it would be cheaper if she paid the Asafo off herself rather than sending Nana Kwesi back and forth to the Winneba liquor store. No, this wasn’t her business. Nana Tufu and his family would have to sort out the dispute themselves.

  She decided she would have to be blunt. “Nana Tufu, I am sorry for your situation, but I must ask you not to come back here and drink my whiskey every day, unless, of course, you have some Otuam business to discuss. It is getting very expensive, you know, because you and Papa Adama drink a lot.” She wanted to add, You could at least have brought a couple of bottles when you visited me instead of draining me bone-dry, but she thought that might be a tad rude.

  Nana Tufu nodded sadly, and a few minutes later he and Papa Adama stoically walked back through the bush to Main Street, and into the drum-banging, insult-chanting harassment of the Asafo.

  Cousin Comfort was right: after the revelation about his shotgun in the bathroom, Uncle Moses was much better behaved in council meetings and far more respectful of Peggy. The shotgun seemed to hang in the air between them; when they looked at each other they both saw it, and it certainly gave Peggy the upper hand.

  Uncle Moses’s deference came at just the right time because Peggy’s next duty was to settle her people’s disputes. The king and council were to present a dignified, united front to those citizens who came pleading for justice or mercy.

  One case involved the owner of a canoe who had refused to drop his net and meet with Peggy when she called the town’s fishermen together to discuss the new tax collection process. Peggy believed this disrespect was because she was a lady king; a fisherman would never have so blatantly disobeyed a male king. To punish him for this insult, she sent word that he was not to cast his nets for three days, not counting Tuesday, which was sacred to the sea god. (Any fisherman out on a Tuesday would likely be pulled beneath the waves by a giant watery fist.) But, not wanting to lose the income, he still disrespected her and cast his net anyway. When Peggy heard about this, she sent a message to the chief inspector to arrest the fisherman.

  That evening Peggy and the royal council held court in the dining room. She sat at the head of the table, her elders in chairs on the sides, and townsfolk with civil disputes against family members or neighbors sat on handmade benches set against the walls. Peggy noticed a young woman enter the house, pregnant and with a baby strapped to her back, evidenced by a tiny pink sole and five tiny toes that seemed to emerge from each hip.

  In the rare case when an offender was already in jail, the court allowed his relatives to plead for leniency and offer surety for future good behavior, usually by paying a fine. When Uncle Moses called the case of the disrespectful fisherman, the woman launched herself from the bench onto the floor. Scrabbling abjectly on her knees before Peggy, she cried out in one long, screeching wail, “Let him out let him out let him out let him out! ”

  Peggy couldn’t bear to see a woman cry. It reminded her of her mother, crying bitterly when she handed Peggy the little gold bracelet, tears of powerlessness and failure, tears that broke the heart. Of her own tears, rivers shed after each miscarriage, at the irrevocable loss of a beating heart, a human soul. It reminded her of the loss of William, the husband she would always love and never again have. Of the loss of her mother, that tower of strength and wisdom, vanished from the earth. Looking at this young woman, abjectly begging for mercy, Peggy was speechless, crushed into silence by all the losses and all the sadness in the world.

  The fisherman’s wife made as if to tear her hair, her two clenched fists pulling on her gray cloth head wrap. Then she threw both arms straight up in the air, shaking her head violently from side to side, howling like a wounded animal, as many Ghanaian women did when emotion overcame them.

  “Please, Nana! Let him out!” she cried again.

  Peggy knew that although words were powerless to bring back her children, or her marriage, or her mother, as king she could utter one word to turn this woman’s pain into joy. I could fix her broken heart, Peggy thought, end her grief immediately. But then I would be seen as a weak king, the kind of king people could take advantage of because I am a woman. What should I do? I like to think I’m so tough, so smart. But right now I don’t feel tough or smart. I just want to cry and run out of here, run into the bush and not deal with this. I don’t mind dealing with corrupt old men, that’s easy, but handling this poor woman’s husband, how do I do that? Look at her. Her heart is breaking because of something I have done, because of something I can’t undo.

  Peggy felt tears stinging her eyes. But it was not permissible to see a king cry. She blinked rapidly and passed a hand across her face. I can’t look at her, Peggy said to herself. Poor woman. I don’t know what to do.

  Her elders were waiting for a decision, but Peggy was paralyzed, knowing that whatever she did, it would be wrong. Finally, seeing her unwillingness to render judgment, they decreed that the man should be released immediately and pay a monetary fine after he had had a week to bring in fish and sell it. They looked expectantly at Peggy to see if she disagreed, but she said nothing and remained motionless, which was consent in itself.

  Then Uncle Moses said, “This is our decision. You may go now to the jail and tell the chief inspector to release your husband.”

  The woman stood up crying out her thanks, arms high in the air. In this posture she ran from the house. Through the open front door, Peggy could see the shrieking figure disappearing into the trees. She realized the woman was running all the way to the jail to bring home the stupid man whose blatant disrespect of his king had made such trouble for his poor pregnant wife.

  Yet it had been handled perfectly. It was her council who had given the order to release the man, not Peggy. The fisherman’s wife was happy; her family reunited. The fisherman had been taught a lesson; surely he would never again disrespect his king. And Peggy had done nothing to make herself look weak.

  She cleared her throat. “Let’s move on to the next case,” she said.

  Peggy’s strict approach had immediate results. From then on, whenever she sent word that she wanted to talk to the fishermen, they dropped their nets, raced to the palace, and respectfully saluted her, so she wouldn’t throw
them in jail.

  The most interesting case Peggy adjudicated involved a fishmonger, Madame Awortor Kokugah, who claimed to be bewitched. Well into her seventies, Madame Kokugah was a large woman with a square dark face, made squarer and darker by the enormous black turban perched on top of it. Peggy asked who she was accusing of witchcraft, and Madame Kokugah gestured to a lithe, muscular man, obviously a fisherman, standing at the end of the table a few feet away from her. Normally his face would have been easy, pleasant, but today it was furrowed into thick brown pleats, and his eyes were bleared with crying. He was wearing baggy black pants and a faded long-sleeved blue cotton shirt that hung limply on his powerful frame. His employer and fellow tribeswoman, Daavi, was there to help negotiate a settlement for him.

  Madame Kokugah explained that she was the proud owner of several nets, each one about three hundred feet long. Perhaps the new king, being an American, didn’t understand how the Otuam fishermen used their nets? In the middle of the night, she explained, men on a canoe took the net far out into the ocean to catch the schools of fish that would come with the dawn. For the next eight hours, a couple dozen men on the beach would pull the net in, heavy with fish, while a little boy, sitting in the shade of the bushes, would carefully coil it. It took a fisherman years of hard work to save up enough money to buy a net, so the loss of one was no joke. And recently, one of Madame Kokugah’s nets had gone missing.

  Madame Kokugah looked straight at the fisherman, pointing an accusing finger, but he couldn’t return her gaze. “J.J. is new in town,” she said. “He’s been here only a month. He is not Fante like us. He is Ewe, from Eweland.” This seemed to be a damning accusation, and Daavi, resplendent in orange robes and a matching headdress edged with silver lace, stiffened.

  Since all the Otuam fishermen knew one another, Madame Kokugah continued, her son thought the thief must be the newcomer and told several people that J.J. had taken the net. One evening, J.J. walked into her house as she was eating dinner, took off his clothes, and uttered a curse, imploring the local fishing god Tantum and the god of Eweland to curse him with death if he took the net and to make whoever stole it suffer unspeakable cruelties.

  Peggy tried to picture herself sitting down to a pleasant dinner when a strange man came in, took off his clothes, and jumped up and down with his penis and balls dingle-dangling and bouncing all around, while he uttered a curse. She would have immediately lost her appetite and pushed her plate of fried fish away. In fact, the unexpected sight of such a disgusting thing would have been more disturbing than the curse itself.

  Madame Kokugah paused dramatically. “My nephew died the next day,” she said. “He was twenty-one.”

  A murmur of shock and fear went around the council table. Peggy shook her head. Dingle-dangling aside, this was very serious business. In the United States, Peggy thought, angry people say Screw you, but in Africa they say You are going to die. And people die. If she uttered a curse against someone in Silver Spring, would it work? Would the person sicken and die? She didn’t think so. Evidently there weren’t as many gods and spirits floating around the United States, waiting to hear a curse and act on it. Why was that? Since Americans didn’t pour libations to them, maybe they had become so thirsty they went somewhere else, to Africa perhaps, land of liberal libations.

  “Your nephew had a fever for four days before he died!” J.J. protested. “He was sick well before I uttered the curse! ”

  “And the day after you uttered it, he died!” Madame Kokugah retorted. “Maybe he would have recuperated otherwise.”

  “There will be no curses uttered in Otuam!” Peggy cried. “When you invoke a god, you don’t know what you are dealing with. Some gods take the time to fully investigate a dispute before punishing the wrongdoers. But others don’t take the time. Madame Kokugah is right. Mischievous gods dive down as soon as they hear spirits being called and harm anybody associated with the curse.”

  “Perhaps it won’t rain in the next rainy season, and the borehole, the pond, and the crops will dry up,” Uncle Moses said.

  “Maybe the fish will find new migration paths and the people will have nothing to eat,” Isaiah the Treasurer added. “A strange sickness could take Otuam, with people and animals falling over dead.”

  “And you, J.J., stripped naked to make sure that your curse was doubly effective. Everyone knows a naked curse is the most dangerous kind,” Peggy pointed out.

  Tears were streaming down J.J.’s face. His eyes darted right and left. “I am so sorry I uttered the curse. But I never touched that net, Nana,” he said. “They are just blaming me because I am Ewe. I have worked hard all my life. I am working hard here in Otuam. It was not right to accuse me of theft. Ewes are known to be the most honest tribe in Ghana.” Daavi nodded emphatically.

  That was true, Peggy knew. Although there were bad apples in every lot, it was widely known that an Ewe couldn’t tell a lie if his life depended on it. No matter what you asked them, they opened their mouths and the truth tumbled out, even if it was an awful truth that condemned the speaker. Even now, J.J. could have denied uttering the curse in front of only one witness, and many in his position might have done so. Then the case could have been a he said, she said situation, creating doubt among the judges about what exactly had happened. But J.J., a true Ewe, freely admitted his guilt and stood prepared to take the consequences.

  “I know you didn’t steal the net,” Peggy said, “but you did utter the curse. So there will be consequences for that. I want you all to sit on the porch while my elders and I discuss what is to be done.” J.J., Daavi, Madame Kokugah, and her relatives obediently shuffled out to the porch.

  After much discussion, it was decided that the elders would sacrifice a goat at the woodland shrine to appease the angry spirit who had killed the fishmonger’s nephew, and any other spirits who had been floating around and heard the curse. J.J. would have to pay for the goat, and the bottles of schnapps, and the fee to perform the rituals. The total came to about seventy dollars, a huge amount for a fisherman, which he would have to pay off over several months.

  Though J.J. winced at the fine, he agreed to pay it. His spirits improved somewhat when Baba Kobena said consolingly, “And J.J., once the curse has been lifted, we will invoke the spirits to find out who really stole the net. All of us know that you didn’t steal it, and we want to make sure we find who did.”

  It was only after Peggy returned to Silver Spring that Tsiami conducted the rituals to find out who really stole Madame Kokugah’s fishing net. The answer he received from the stool was shocking: no one had stolen it. Her son, who disliked J.J., the newcomer from Eweland, had hidden it and blamed J.J. When hauled before the council of elders, the son admitted it. It was no use to call the stool a liar when you knew it was telling the truth about your guilt. If you were foolish enough to do so, it would come and get you. As a fisherman, he knew he would probably be drowned very soon if he continued to lie about it.

  Peggy’s elders made Madame Kokugah’s son pay J.J. back the seventy dollars they had fined him. J.J. was gleeful, his reputation intact. Madame Kokugah hadn’t known about her son’s lie, and she was very angry with him for making such trouble. In this way J.J.’s curse—that whoever stole the net would suffer greatly—came true, as Madame Kokugah made her son suffer her tirades every day for a very long time.

  And so, finally, justice was served.

  For almost a month, Peggy had been so busy with cleaning up corruption, appointing new council members, untangling the fishing fees and land sales, and adjudicating civil disputes that no one had said a word to her about Kwame Lumpopo. She was very happy about it. Perhaps that would be the end of it, and she would never have to hear his name again or see him swashbuckling toward her radiating saintliness in white. But no, that was wishful thinking. He was a family member, and this was Ghana.

  And, indeed, the day before Peggy returned to Washington, she had one last embarrassing meeting regarding the need to forgive Kwame Lumpopo.
The family had sent none other than his ex-wife, Agnes, an attractive woman in her late thirties with a shy smile. Peggy remembered her from some family events in the 1990s.

  Agnes sat down at the table and sipped her Coke politely. After the usual chitchat, she nervously cleared her throat and said, “I have heard that you are very angry at Kwame Lumpopo. I am here to ask you to forgive him.”

  Peggy said, “Hmm. You have divorced him. Why do you seek this favor? ”

  Agnes replied, “It is not good for families to be divided.”

  “You divided your family when you divorced him,” Peggy pointed out.

  Agnes didn’t know what to say.

  “Did Kwame Lumpopo and his family put you up to this?” Peggy knew they had but felt she should ask.

  Agnes nodded.

  Peggy stifled a laugh. They must be desperate indeed to put his ex-wife up to begging for forgiveness. Poor woman. She was obviously uncomfortable making the request.

  “Well, I’ll tell you what,” Peggy suggested brightly. “There is something you can do that would make me forgive him completely and take him back into my royal council.”

  The woman’s face brightened. This would greatly impress the entire family, if she could pull it off. “There is? What? I will do it!”

  “You are right that rifts in families are very bad. Divorce is a very great rift. I want you to marry him again, and then I will take him back as an elder. It is a fair deal. You take Kwame Lumpopo back as your husband, and I take him back as my advisor. Agreed? ”

  Agnes was horrified. “But … but … but he stole all my money!” she sputtered.

  “And he stole mine, too,” Peggy said briskly, nodding. “I think you and I are in the same boat. So let’s not hear any more about it.”

  Agnes quickly finished her Coke and left, afraid perhaps that if she stayed longer the king would force her to remarry Kwame Lumpopo, who had stolen all of her money when they were married and would then be in a position to steal whatever she had amassed since then.