Still stunned, she slipped out of the car and turned to look at the gleaming mansion. In addition to the new paint, columns, railings, and windows, the palace had a new room in the front. The old patio where she and her elders had met was now part of a much larger enclosed room, with an elegant covered entranceway supported by two pairs of white columns. Peggy rubbed her eyes. It was nothing short of a miracle.
Nana Kwesi’s men were still working on it, some on ladders painting the trim or washing the windows in preparation for the funeral. A woman was mopping the step to the new entrance, and when she saw Peggy she bowed low.
Nana Kwesi took Peggy’s arm and gently guided her to the entrance. “Now you see why I have become thin,” he said. “There is so much pressure to get ready for the funeral. I wanted so much for it to be perfect. It’s not perfect, but I think it will not embarrass you in front of your guests.”
At the threshold he turned to her and said, smiling shyly, “This new room is a present I built for you. It is not finished yet.”
Peggy followed him in and gasped. It was a throne room, a long room with a concrete platform at the end, one level for her elders and the higher, central level for her stool. Here she would adjudicate disputes, issue orders, hold town meetings, and receive dignitaries. The walls were unpainted; the two large window frames held no windows; the cement floor was bare of tiles, and wires hung from the ceiling where the fans and light fixtures would go, but she could tell it was going to be a beautiful room. Uncle Joseph had never had a throne room, but Nana Kwesi had built one for her as a surprise.
She was so overcome with emotion that she couldn’t speak or move. “Come see the other rooms!” Nana Kwesi said. “The living rooms and bedrooms are finished, but the kitchen and bathrooms are still lacking fixtures.” He gently tugged her elbow but she pulled back, afraid that if she went with him she would degenerate into a blubbering mess of a king.
“No,” she said, as her eyes filled with tears. “No. I will see them later. It is getting late. We should go to Winneba. The road will be even harder to navigate in the dark.”
For an instant Nana Kwesi seemed offended and opened his mouth as if he were going to say, You don’t even want to see all the work I did for you? But then his eyes searched her face, and he seemed to understand. “Yes,” he said with a smile, “I think you must be very tired after your long flight.”
She stumbled outside, turned around, and looked at the palace once more. It was the most beautiful building she had ever seen, far more beautiful to her than Buckingham Palace or Versailles. Now she could see why she had ruined her credit and suffered every day since she had become king. Now she knew it was all worth it.
Because this building wasn’t just for her or her elders to enjoy. Nor was it just a dignified backdrop for the funeral. This building was for the people of Otuam. It was a sign, in bricks and mortar, that their new king would bring them schools, jobs, water, and medical care. The palace was a promise of prosperity. And every one of her people who saw it would understand the unspoken covenant she was making with them.
Suddenly she couldn’t hold back the tears anymore and she started to sob, heart-wrenching sobs of joy and gratitude. A gaggle of curious children had congregated near the van, and two women holding fufu pestles cautiously approached. Peggy was worried that they would see the king cry, which was not allowed and might even be taken for womanly weakness. She threw herself into Nana Kwesi’s arms so they couldn’t see. “Thank you,” she said into his shoulder. “It is beautiful. Thank you.”
Suddenly she realized that her effort to avoid public comment by throwing herself into Nana Kwesi’s arms might not have been the best choice. She pulled away and walked regally back to the car.
They drove to Winneba, a thriving town of about forty-five thousand halfway between Accra and Cape Coast, known for fishing and pottery, where Peggy would be staying. It had been founded in the late fourteenth century by King Osimpam Bondzie Abe I and later became a major port of call for British traders, who had once operated a huge slave castle there.
It was a pleasant place to live because it had no water problems, like Otuam, which had no running water at all, or Accra, which had so many people using its running water that the government simply turned the overburdened taps off several days a week. A breezy, cheerful town built on a series of gentle hills, Winneba boasted countless bustling, tiny businesses such as the Abundant Grace Wine Shop, the Anointed Holy Hands Hair Salon, and the Christ Is Lord Dressmaking Enterprises. Up and down the streets, vendors sat by little tables selling coconuts, papayas, and pineapples.
Much of Winneba’s commerce consisted of providing goods and services to the students and teachers at the prestigious University of Education. The Lagoon Lodge where Peggy, and soon her church donors, would be staying was just past the university, a ten-minute walk from the beach, with a view of marshland, palm trees, and large hills rising majestically in the distance.
The lodge was a U-shaped building, painted beige with blue trim, with eighteen rooms on two levels of balconies. In the center there was a cool, canopied veranda where guests could dine. Peggy and Nana Kwesi sat down and ordered fried snapper.
She tried several topics to engage him in the friendly conversation they used to have, but he seemed tired, unwilling to talk much. He hung his head, and she noticed new lines around his eyes.
Once this funeral is over, she said to herself, it will be like old times with Nana Kwesi. It has to be.
Papa Warrior arrived in Winneba the following morning, jaunty in jeans and a jean jacket, a gold hoop earring in his left ear and a gold chain around his neck, with Ekow in tow. Peggy welcomed her brother warmly, fussed over how thin he had become, and advised him not to drink too much during their stay. Then she looked her nephew up and down to see what he had done with the fifty dollars she had wired him. She was relieved to see that he had eaten it rather than drunk it. His face seemed less like a dried prune and had filled out a bit to meet his ears. His legs and arms and chest were fuller, more muscular.
Better yet, there was something clearer, steadier about the gaze that met her eye with warmth and deference. As she and Papa Warrior chatted on the veranda, Ekow listened carefully, without interrupting, and when it came time for him to reply, his comments were sensible, his questions thoughtful. It seemed, indeed, that Ekow had stopped drinking and, moreover, was returning to his right mind. Peggy decided it would be all right to let him sleep on his mat on the floor of her room as the attendant guarding her spirit.
Though Peggy’s elders peppered her with calls to come to Otuam, she was in no hurry to get there. During her previous two visits, she had let them fraternize with the king a bit too much, dropping by whenever they felt like it, plopping themselves down in a chair, drinking her liquor and eating her fish.
This year she would be much more difficult to approach. She even told her council she would be staying in Accra, which was such an expensive and arduous journey by their standards that she knew they wouldn’t try to find her there. If they had known she was staying in Winneba, they would have pooled money for cab fare and shown up every evening at the Lagoon Lodge for dinner and drinks on her tab.
The following day, Ebenezer drove Nana Kwesi, Papa Warrior, Ekow, and Peggy to the kingship store in Accra to buy funeral cloths, jewelry, and sandals. Peggy was smitten by a glorious shimmering stool with golden disks embedded all over. Her public stool must have been fifty years old, and the white paint on the tiger in the center portion was peeling in some parts, faded in others. As an important king who brought water to her people and provided her predecessor with a sumptuous funeral, she could hardly be seen sitting in her majestic new throne room on a rotten old stool. Though money was tight, she gave in to the temptation to splurge on the golden stool, which she would unveil the day of the borehole ceremony when the Shiloh Baptist group would be there. She also bought a new kente in a pattern of gold, red, green, and purple called Obama, created for the president�
�s visit to Ghana the year before.
Two days later, when Peggy, Ekow, Papa Warrior, and Nana Kwesi rolled up in front of the palace for her first official visit, the courtyard was filled with people sitting comfortably in the red and black plastic chairs she had bought for the funeral. There were more than fifty of them waiting, a far cry from the five or six who had attended Peggy’s town meetings in the past two years.
Peggy suspected that many people had come because they were impressed with her rebuilding of the palace and the two new boreholes; they were also excited about the magnificent royal funeral she was holding and all the Americans she would be bringing. That was probably why many more people were now willing to take the time to listen to her and to contribute their thoughts during a town meeting.
As Peggy went into the throne room she immediately noticed that the walls had been painted blue since she had first been there a few days earlier. She took her seat on the dais, Papa Warrior nearby, as the elders and townsfolk carried their plastic chairs in behind her. Most of her elders placed their chairs in front of and around Peggy—Nana Kwesi, Baba Kobena, Mama Amma Ansabah, Isaiah the Treasurer, and Tsiami—and the queen mother, looking more beautiful than ever, took her usual seat at Peggy’s left side.
But Uncle Moses sat facing Peggy, in the front row. He had lost weight and looked less like a walrus now, she noticed. Or perhaps he looked like a very old, toothless walrus. And he was wearing a purple and blue flowered woman’s gown. Clearly, Peggy thought, distressed at the sight, God has done this to him. It was hard to remain upset at a person whom the ancestors had so completely defeated.
But she couldn’t understand what the ancestors were doing when it came to Tsiami. He had stolen the fishing fees, and some of the land sales, and even the palace building supplies. When, only three days after his theft of the two-by-fours had been discovered, his wife had died, Peggy had been certain that this was the beginning of ancestral torments. She expected to see him skinnier than ever, bent with age, his face deeply lined, and relieved of several teeth. Perhaps his mind would have begun to wander and his speech to slur.
Therefore Peggy was shocked to see Tsiami looking at least ten years younger than he had a year ago. He had gained weight, at least fifteen pounds, she reckoned, which he had sorely needed. Gone were the dry stick legs and sinewy arms like braided rope. Now, in addition to bone and muscle, he had flesh. His skin was smooth, with a golden gleam to the mahogany. His chest was broader, though his washboard stomach remained flat as ever. His face shone with health and his white teeth were all still firmly attached to the gums. His hair, which had been gray at the temples, was now a shoe-polish black all over. Why would a man his age, a grieving widower, suddenly start dying his hair?
She wondered if this surprising rejuvenation in a man pushing eighty had to do with the death of his wife of fifty years. Perhaps it hadn’t been an ancestral curse after all, but a boon, and Tsiami was dallying with a woman in her twenties, planning to marry her. Baba Kobena had told her that one evening he went to visit Tsiami at his farm and through the window saw a young woman cooking him dinner. Tsiami was sitting like a king in a plastic chair looking very pleased with himself as she fussed over him. Unwilling to interrupt such a scene, Baba Kobena turned around and went home.
Peggy couldn’t imagine anyone that young marrying Tsiami now that he couldn’t steal any more fishing fees, but perhaps his large pineapple farm was temptation enough. Whatever his matrimonial prospects, she imagined he had been eating a lot of tiger nuts. Yes, the stools must have forgiven Tsiami for all his thefts as he was their favorite son, often indulging in long conversations with them, which no one else could seem to do. That was the only logical explanation for his exuberant good health and improved looks despite his multitude of crimes.
Peggy waited, shifting on her stool, as more people arrived and set up chairs. Soon there was no more space for chairs, and people stood against the walls, or leaned in through the large open windows, as Ekow did. Her elbows on the window ledge beside him, Aggie was barely recognizable, shorn of her braids and hornet-like turban and wearing a long, flat weave. Cousin Charles was on her other side, looking a bit thinner and older. Staying in Winneba with the Shiloh Baptist Church members, making occasional flying visits to Otuam, Peggy would hardly be able to say a word to them this time around.
Others pressed around Aggie and Cousin Charles from behind, hoping to get a view, too, of their new king. How many people were gathered now, she wondered. Eighty? A hundred? And at least half of them were women, who usually stayed away from the affairs of men. There seemed to be a buzzing excitement in the air that she had never noticed before at an Otuam town meeting. One of the older women ambled up to the dais and stood behind Peggy’s stool, fanning her with a towel, the kind specially made in Ghana to create a breeze or absorb perspiration.
Tsiami stood up and cried, “Nana, wonfreye!” Let’s call on the ancestors for good things to come!
“Yemrah,” the people said. Let them come!
Three times the ritual call and response were given. Then Tsiami said, “Our king, Nana, has recently returned from America—”
“Tsiami, you shouldn’t talk about me until you have poured libations to the ancestors,” Peggy interrupted.
Tsiami paused. “Oh,” he said, “I don’t have the schnapps and I don’t have the stool room keys.”
Here we go again, Peggy said under her breath in English. “Let me get this straight. You are my tsiami, and you have had a year to prepare for this meeting, and you have forgotten to get schnapps and the keys. As I recall, something of a similar nature happened with the keys last year.”
“I will go get the schnapps,” he said, “but I don’t know where the keys are.”
A few minutes later, as Peggy waited on her stool, Tsiami returned with the bottle of schnapps. He poured libations on the floor crying, “Aaaa-bah! Aaa-bah! Ka-kra!” Mama Ansabah stood beside him and joined in, encouraging God and the ancestors to listen. After every splash of schnapps, a swarm of flies settled on the wet concrete, lapping up the liquor and rubbing their front legs together in drunken delight.
During the prayers, Peggy became aware of the queen mother sitting silently at her left side, stroking her white cloth. Peggy felt sorry for her. She was forced to sit with elderly people and listen to their conversation, which couldn’t possibly be interesting for a schoolgirl, and never say a word herself, because a person who didn’t know anything shouldn’t say anything. A lot of them did, of course, her elders being a case in point, but the queen mother seemed smart enough to know she wasn’t yet smart enough and remained silent.
Her beauty and poise certainly made her decorative, Peggy was forced to admit. And perhaps one day, when she was older, the queen mother would become a woman of insight and action, an energetic advocate for Otuam’s women and children. The ancestors must have chosen her for a reason.
Just then another elderly woman with a towel shuffled up to the dais to have the honor of fanning the king, and the first one took her seat. Peggy launched into a carefully prepared speech. “I know that some of my elders met secretly at midnight with the children of the late king and discussed how to dishonor me and dishonor the late king at the same time. They talked about burying him privately so that when I went to the morgue to get him for the royal funeral, he wouldn’t be there. He would have been dumped into an unmarked grave somewhere, which would have been a disgrace to all Otuam.” The people murmured to one another. “Those who attended this meeting should be ashamed of themselves.”
Uncle Moses might be forgiven for not looking ashamed, as he sat plucking at the flowers on his dress, but Isaiah the Treasurer held his head high and surveyed the audience as if he had had nothing to do with the meeting.
Peggy continued, “Last year when the bank opened on Main Street, I opened a bank account in my name alone. Immediately some of my elders started the rumor that I was using the funds for my own personal amusement and not for Otuam,
and that was why I refused to put their names on it.
“Now that you can see this palace, I think you have an idea of where the money has gone. I have bought a beautiful brass bed for the late king, which you will see in a few minutes, and two hundred chairs for the funeral guests, some of which you are sitting on. In the near future I will buy a sound system, a tent, and another two hundred chairs. These items are not just for kings, or even the extended royal family. They are for anyone in Otuam who wants to bury a relative with dignity and can’t afford the high cost. All you will have to buy for a funeral is food and drinks for your guests. I will take care of the rest. Funerals are a big expense to all families, I know, and this is one way I can help my people move toward economic prosperity.” This statement was met with cheers as many jumped to their feet and clapped wildly.
Peggy went on. “If any citizen of Otuam wants to know how much money is in the royal bank account and where it has gone, he should ask me and I will allow him to meet with the bank manager and see the records for himself because I have nothing to hide.”
A woman stood up and declared, “It was wise that Nana didn’t put any of her elders’ names on the bank account. If she had done so, we would have had no bed for the funeral and we would all be sitting on the floor because we would have no chairs! The elders would have stolen the money and spent it on themselves. That is why Nana passes all the good things through Nana Kwesi. She should fire all the other elders except Mama Amma Ansabah, who is the only decent one in the bunch.” Sitting next to Peggy on the stool, Mama Amma Ansabah beamed, and Peggy allowed herself a brief smile.
A small, dark man in a black-and-white print shirt popped up near the back of the room. “Everyone here should bless Nana and give her their full support,” he said. “Otuam now knows how she will help us. What she says is the truth and is not a lie. We have the proof in this palace and the two new boreholes she has brought us. Anyone here who does not support her, who makes trouble for her, will be punished.”
King Peggy Page 31