She looked at the expectant faces in the crowded room. “What happened with the bodies was a very big disgrace,” she began. “My elders disgraced not only me and all of Otuam; they disgraced themselves. Baba and Isaiah showed up at the morgue rip-roaring drunk. Baba’s hat kept falling off, and Isaiah was wearing one sandal.”
“That’s a lie!” Isaiah piped up. “I had on two sandals!” Baba Kobena didn’t say anything about his hat but glowered at Isaiah.
Isaiah continued, “We are very sorry for the mistake, but we didn’t plan it. Really, it was the morgue’s fault for rolling out the wrong body. No one should make any false allegations against me because it is not true that I did this thing on purpose.”
Peggy was relentless. “Isaiah, Mr. Aduako removed the cloth from the body, even though you told him not to bother. Didn’t you notice the cyst missing from the late king’s back? He complained about it to anyone who would listen that last year, so you must have known. And what about the scar on his chest? You saw that every day when he was walking around in a cloth.”
“That’s true!” said a nephew of the late king. “Anybody could see the scar on my uncle’s chest! If the body you took had a smooth chest, why did you take it? ”
Isaiah the Treasurer shook his head. “I followed Baba Kobena’s instructions,” he said. “Everyone knows that Nana always listens to him, so when he said it was the right body, I wasn’t so sure, but I just went along with him.”
“That’s not true,” Baba Kobena thundered darkly from his perch on the corner of the dais. “You were the one who insisted it was the late king even though I wasn’t sure. This whole thing is your fault.”
Uncle Eshun rose unsteadily from his seat and said, “Please, Nana, forgive everyone for this mistake and move on.” Shimmering tears fell from his Bambi eyes.
“First of all, it was not just a mistake,” Peggy replied quickly. “It was a disgrace. A mistake is when you overcook your fish, not when you put the wrong body in the royal tomb.”
Mama Amma Ansabah stood up and cried, “I don’t think it was a mistake at all. The fact remains that when they brought the body back from the morgue that first night, they locked the door and wouldn’t let me in! Clearly that is evidence of guilt. Why else would they have locked the door if they hadn’t been hiding something?”
Peggy thought about that. It certainly was suspicious. It was also odd that people who had seen him up until his stroke didn’t realize it wasn’t his body sitting on the throne. “Did anyone know that it wasn’t the right body?” she asked.
Numerous hands went up as several people cried, “I did! I did! ”
A man stood up crying Ah-go! As the room silenced, he said, “My mother and I helped wash and prepare the body on Friday. My mother was one of the late king’s sisters. She took one look at the body and almost fainted and said, ‘It’s not him. They have the wrong one.’ We went outside and quietly discussed what we should do. Neither of us is an elder, Nana, so we felt we didn’t have the status to make a fuss. That’s why we decided to wash and dress the body of the man we didn’t know.” He sat back down.
Peggy pulled a handkerchief from her cloth and wiped the rivulets of perspiration from her face. Her gaze fell on Tsiami, who had been sitting motionless in the tsiami chair in front of her and rather looked like an embalmed corpse himself.
“Tsiami!” she snapped, and he started up with a jerk.
“Nana!” he replied.
“Did you know that the body wasn’t the right one?”
Tsiami stood, carefully adjusting the folds of his cloth, and puckered his lips thoughtfully. “Remember I, too, called you when Baba and Isaiah wouldn’t let me pour libations after they had brought back the king. You told me not to worry about it so I had to pour them outside the locked door. But now I know they didn’t want me in there because I would have seen it wasn’t the right body and I would have told you. When I did see him on the throne, along with everyone else, I knew we had the wrong one. Even an idiot could have seen that.”
Peggy was afraid her heart might stop and forget to start up again. “Tsiami, why didn’t you say anything?” she demanded.
Tsiami shrugged and said, “I had no say in the matter because Nana only listens to Baba so I kept my mouth shut. The past year it has always been Baba this and Baba that, and Nana can only trust Baba, and Nana calls Baba when she wants to talk about Otuam instead of calling Tsiami. I knew if I said anything, Nana would just get mad at me because she is always getting mad at me and yelling at me and sometimes threatens to do things to my balls. Squeeze them until my eyes pop out, wither them, and things like that. So I kept quiet.
“And I figured, if the king is happy, and her five hundred guests are happy, what did I care if they buried the wrong body? It wasn’t my business. If I had said anything, it would have ruined the funeral with all the dignitaries there.”
Peggy passed a hand over her face. Yes, she had made some threatening remarks about balls in the past in an effort to find out what motivated her elders to behave. But that wasn’t a reason to hide the fact that she was burying the wrong king. How could Tsiami have possibly attended the funeral for three days performing the rituals while knowing the wrong dead man was sitting on the throne?
Slowly, Baba Kobena rose from his chair in the corner of the dais like a towering thundercloud. “I have been disgraced!” he cried at the top of his lungs. “Humiliated! You think I did this intentionally, but I did not! How can you accuse me of that?”
Mama Amma waved her towel at him as if he were a fly. “You are either very wicked or very stupid, Baba,” she said. “Either way, it’s not good. Sit down.” Baba shook his head and sat back down.
A man in a turquoise robe stood up. “The town must unite,” he said. “We must learn the lesson of the broom. When the fibers are tightly tied together, the broom sweeps well. But if you pull one out, you loosen the tie at the top and other fibers fall out, and the broom does not sweep well.” Did this man expect Peggy to forgive them completely? She had been contemplating substantial jail time and a fine.
As if in answer to this question, Queen Mother Ameyaw stood up from her stool on Peggy’s left side and, pulling her red and gold brocade shawl gracefully about her with a clattering of golden bracelets, addressed the assembly.
“Last night I had a dream,” she said, “in which I came into this throne room and it was full of stools, ancient stools, and full of dead kings and dead elders I had never met. Nana was sitting there on her stool, and an old man leaning on a walking stick came in and sprinkled perfumed powder on her head, which as you probably know was what people did to honor victorious generals in the past. Then this old man with the stick praised her for doing so many things well, and all the dead kings and elders praised her with great praise.
“Then I saw the late king who had been in the fridge, and he too praised Nana for trying to give him a great funeral and for giving water to her people, and fixing his palace, and bringing a high school to the town. So the message of the dream is that Nana has done well, and the late king is happy with her efforts, and happy to be buried here even if it was a few days later than we planned. The message of the dream is that we should forgive those who did the wrong thing and move on.” The queen mother sat down as the townspeople clapped.
Peggy knew that the ancestors had a hard time reaching her in dreams. It was as if, when she went to sleep, she hung up a sign that read: Peggy sleeping. Ancestors, please do not disturb. She had had only one dream that came true, though she had had it repeatedly, in her thirties, about walking behind the king’s palace in Kumasi. It seemed that the ancestors, realizing an attempt to give Peggy the dream would probably be futile, had given it instead to Queen Mother Ameyaw, who evidently received dream messages more easily.
Peggy found it fascinating that the dream contained no mention of punishment or revenge, which indicated she shouldn’t imprison and fine Baba and Isaiah. She suspected that the ancestors would punish the mi
screants in their own way and in their own time.
More importantly, the message was a clear sign that the ancestors, even the late king, were pleased with Peggy’s efforts, despite the disgrace. What else could it mean but honor and praise for Peggy? It was their way of telling her to calm down, relax, and look ahead. They knew of all her efforts, of all her expense, and were proud of her, were blessing her. It was a message straight from heaven, saying, You have done well, Daughter. Suddenly humbled, she bowed her head.
Then she raised it and said, “The queen mother’s dream means something important, or she would not have had it. We must consider well her dream.”
26
Though Uncle Joseph’s body was finally at rest in the royal tomb, Peggy’s trouble didn’t end there. A reporter from one of Accra’s main radio stations called the president of the council of chiefs in Essuehyia and said he had received an anonymous tip that the wrong king had just been buried in Otuam, and he wanted a confirmation before he broadcast the story. The president had not heard anything about it and told the reporter he would investigate the matter and get back to him.
When he called Peggy, he was doubly horrified by her explanation. First, that she had indeed buried the wrong king, and second, that she hadn’t conducted the proper royal rituals when she buried the right king, but had simply let the morgue workers pull one body out of the coffin and lay the other one in.
“This is a very serious matter,” the president said. “We will have to hold a tribunal to investigate your actions. Come to our hall in Essuehyia tomorrow morning at ten.”
Peggy’s heart sank. Though she had, every step of the way, done the very best she could, she was now facing an angry tribunal of kings. She found comfort in Queen Mother Ameyaw’s dream; the dead kings, at least, were pleased with her, and as important as the council of chiefs was, even they recognized that ancestral kings had priority.
The following morning, Peggy, Nana Kwesi, Papa Warrior, and Tsiami were ushered into a small office on the side of a courtyard, where they greeted several members of the council and sat down in chairs that had been set out in a circle.
“We are very upset to hear that you buried the wrong body,” the president said. “This council, which works hard to keep alive the dignity of kingship, has been disgraced by the scandal. And Nana, though you were unaware of the mistake in burying the wrong king, at least you should have contacted us the moment you knew about the mix-up.”
“I was devastated,” she explained. “Horrified. All I could think about was to switch the bodies as soon as possible. I never considered that I was expected to contact the council of chiefs.”
“You know we performed special rituals at the coffin when we buried the wrong one,” the president said sternly. “Why didn’t you think we should have done the same rituals for the right one? ”
Peggy sighed. “I thought that all the rituals we did, the entire funeral, were spiritually for my uncle,” she replied, “even if it wasn’t him lying there. I didn’t think we had to do them again.”
At first, the council wanted ten million cedis, some seven hundred dollars, to be her fine. Peggy countered with one hundred dollars. They argued about the fine for an hour or so, without coming to any resolution. Then the president said, “I want to know how you think this mix-up occurred.”
Peggy explained that she hadn’t seen the king since 1997 and, forbidden by tradition to pick up the body herself, had sent two elders to do so.
“But how did your elders not recognize that this wasn’t their king?” interjected a white-haired council member, perplexed. “Hadn’t they worked with him every day for, what, twenty-five years?”
Peggy nodded. “They thought that his appearance must have changed from being in the morgue. There was a wrist tag for identification, but one of my elders can’t read, and the other one had trouble reading it because it was faded from all the formaldehyde.”
Suddenly Tsiami, who had been staring into space, said loudly, “Oh, that wasn’t it at all.”
All eyes in the crowded room focused on him.
“What do you mean?” the president asked. Peggy wondered what Tsiami would reveal, as he had proven capable of keeping the most shocking secret until the last moment when it all tumbled out and left you scratching your head why he hadn’t told you sooner. Now what was he going to say to all these kings?
“The children of the late king wanted to come to his funeral without paying any of the morgue fees or even for the coffin,” Tsiami began, studying his hand and picking at a callus. His lower lip jutted out in seeming concentration at this task. “They never cared much for their father anyway, and they never wanted him to have a dignified royal burial. But since Nana was going to give him one, they wanted the honor of being there and setting up a table to collect the nsawa donations. When they learned this wouldn’t be allowed, they hatched a plan to dishonor both their father and Nana at the same time.”
He stopped again, picking off a little piece of hard skin and flicking it onto the floor.
“And then?” the president prodded, as everyone leaned forward.
“And then they knew that they had a relative who worked with all the dead bodies at the morgue. They knew this woman could pick out the wrong body, the body of an old man nobody cared about and would never pick up, and roll it out on a slab to the elders. But they had to be sure of the elders. That’s why they approached Isaiah the Treasurer and Baba Kobena. Isaiah has always been corrupt, and though Baba hasn’t, that was probably why he really needed the money. The children of the late king knew that Nana trusted Baba, so they offered him a price he couldn’t turn down. Anyway, everyone has a price, as they say, and the children of the late king found what Baba Kobena’s price was.”
Each face of those listening bore the expression of utter astonishment—a trinity of circles consisting of two wide-open eyes and one wide-open mouth.
Unprodded this time, Tsiami continued as he started examining his other palm for calluses. “The mortuary man had no idea of any of this, and as the wrong body was rolled out by his assistant, the relative who had been bribed by the children, he advised Baba and Isaiah to look very closely at the body to make sure it was the right one, especially because the name on the wristband was so faded. They identified the wrong one on purpose, but they had to get drunk first because they knew they were doing something that the ancestors might punish them for.
“And because they had been bribed, that was why Baba Kobena and Isaiah the Treasurer wouldn’t allow me or any other elders to see the body that night. Some of the king’s relatives washed and prepared the body, but most of them thought he was greatly changed by being in the morgue so long, and the few who realized it wasn’t him were too afraid to say anything.
“None of the others on the council—Mama Amma, Eshun, Uncle Moses, or myself—saw the late king until the funeral had started and he was sitting on the throne, and all the dignitaries had arrived, and it was really too late to switch the bodies or make a fuss. Eshun can’t see that well anymore, and Uncle Moses has become brain addled, and Mama Amma didn’t know the late king. But I knew it was the wrong body the second I saw it, though I figured, what difference did it make to me if they buried the wrong one? Nana would be happy with holding such a magnificent funeral; whoever the dead guy was would be happy to finally be buried; and the late king, well, he probably wouldn’t be too happy still floating in the tank of formaldehyde, but what did I care? I never much liked him. Uncle Rockson was a good king, and Nana is good, but the late king really wasn’t so good.”
There was another long pause, but Tsiami had really finished this time.
On purpose. Peggy was horrified, all her worst suspicions confirmed. It had been done on purpose. Even Baba Kobena, her beloved, honest elder, had been involved. A word kept pulsating through her mind. Wicked. Wicked. Wicked.
“Tsiami,” Peggy pleaded, “how do you know this? Is it just gossip, or is there any proof? ”
He shru
gged and brought his hand closer to his eyes for further scrutiny of the calluses. “Everybody knows,” he said, squinting. “You know how people talk in Otuam. The children of the late king are very proud at having disgraced Nana, and they have been boasting about it to everyone. They think it’s very funny. They think they’ve won.”
Those in the room lowered their heads in shame at the story, except for Peggy. Her head was high, and her eyes flashing. But they haven’t won, Peggy thought. Because there is a God who doesn’t approve of dishonoring corpses, especially that of the person who gave you life. They haven’t won because there is a God who hates deceit and bribery and causing pain to innocent people, a God who will punish the wicked. Honor thy father and thy mother, God said, and he wasn’t joking.
“They didn’t get to finish their plan, though,” Tsiami added. “Giving you the wrong body was just part one.” Several heads snapped up.
“What plan?” Peggy asked in fresh horror. There was another part to the evil plan?
“The morgue fees for the late king had been paid, you see, and he was still in the tank. Therefore, his children planned to go and get him on a day when Mr. Aduako wasn’t there and their conspirator in the morgue could roll out the body and they could cart it off to an undignified burial in a secret place. They hoped that by the time you realized you had buried the wrong body in the royal tomb, you would never be able to bury the right body because it would have disappeared. And everything you did for the funeral would have been a complete waste. But Mr. Aduako found out too soon for them to do this. So at least you were able to bury the right body the second time around.”
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