So Much for Democracy

by Kari Jones

  SO MUCH FOR

  DEMOCRACY

  KARI JONES

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Text copyright © 2014 Kari Jones

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Jones, Kari, 1966-, author

  So much for democracy / Kari Jones.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-0481-4 (pbk.).--ISBN 978-1-45980-760-0 (bound)

  ISBN 978-1-4598-0482-1 (pdf).--ISBN 978-1-4598-0483-8 (epub)

  I. Title.

  PS8619.O5328S6 2014 jC813’.6 C2013-906650-0

  C2013-906651-9

  First published in the United States, 2014

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013954146

  Summary: The political upheaval in Ghana in 1979 puts Astrid and the rest of her Canadian family at risk.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover design by Chantal Gabriell

  Cover artwork by Janice Kun

  Author photo courtesy of Camosun College

  In Canada:

  Orca Book Publishers

  PO Box 5626, Station B

  Victoria, BC Canada

  V8R 6S4

  In the United States:

  Orca Book Publishers

  PO Box 468

  Custer, WA USA

  98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  17 16 15 14 • 4 3 2 1

  To Dawn and Terry and Bruce,

  for the Ghana years.

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Historical note

  Acknowledgments

  ONE

  “Astrid, are you listening to me?” asks Mom.

  I nod, but I’m not, because she tells me exactly the same things every morning. Don’t talk to anyone you don’t know, don’t eat anything unless it’s made in our kitchen, don’t drink anything unless it’s from a sealed bottle, don’t touch anything and, most of all, don’t go anywhere without asking. Those are the rules.

  “I know, Mom,” I say as I pull my school uniform on over my head and check myself in the mirror. “I’m twelve. I can remember the rules.”

  She stands behind me and smooths the neck of my uniform until I twist away and say, “Mom, you’d better get Piper up or we’ll be late for school.”

  She tucks a strand of hair behind my ear and says, “Go have some breakfast. We’ll be right down.”

  I pull the hair out from behind my ear and adjust the neck of my uniform, then slip my feet into my sandals. I take one last look at myself in the mirror, inhale deeply and then exhale.

  It’s not easy living with my mom these days. She’s getting so overprotective.

  I’m not hungry, so I go outside to wait for Mom to drive us to school. My little brother, Gordo, and Thomas, the gardener, are already there, peering at something dangling from one of the hibiscus bushes. It’s some kind of spider, possibly deadly.

  “What is it?” I ask Thomas, since there’s no point talking to Gordo when he’s watching any kind of creature. Gordo’s only ten, but he knows more about nature than most adults, and when he’s focused on something he finds interesting, it’s like he forgets anyone else is even there.

  “It’s a weaver,” says Thomas.

  “Is it poisonous?” I ask.

  Thomas leans on his shovel and says, “Now Asteroid, do you think I’d let Gordo get that close to a poisonous spider?” Thomas smiles when he calls me Asteroid, which is a play on my name. I like that we share a private joke.

  Thomas knows everything there is to know about our garden and the plants and animals in it. Most of them he points out to Gordo, but I did catch him once placing some cobra eggs in a bucket to take away before Gordo found them.

  I shouldn’t have worried about the spider being poisonous.

  The wind rattles the hibiscus bushes, and sand blows into my eyes. Thomas calls this wind the Harmattan and says it comes all the way across West Africa from the Sahara. When he first told us that, I didn’t know whether to believe him, since Accra’s on the ocean and nowhere near the desert, but I looked it up in the encyclopedia, and he was right. Ever since we got here, three months ago in the middle of January, sand’s been making our food crunchy and getting into our eyes. The rains are supposed to start soon, though, which will be a relief.

  Thomas points to the spider and says, “Make sure to keep Piper away. It’s not poisonous, but it still hurts if it bites.”

  “I will,” I say.

  Piper is two and has hair like a chick’s down. In Accra, having white skin and blond hair is like wearing a sign that says stare at me. Even my own sandy-blond hair makes people gape. Strangers cluck at Piper when we walk down the street. Kids skip across lanes of traffic and try to stroke her cheek. I give them an ice-queen stare because Mom says we shouldn’t let people we don’t know touch her. But Piper smiles right at them, and they smile back.

  When Mom comes out to take us to school, Gordo looks up and starts to tell her what he’s found, but I interrupt him. “Thomas says the mangoes will be ripe soon.” I nudge Gordo as I speak, and he sighs but steps away from the bush. Thomas nods and smiles at Mom.

  We’re all getting good at hiding things from her.

  Mom thinks there’s danger lurking everywhere. At home in Canada, she’s not like this. At home, she even let Gordo have an insect collection in his room. She’s changed. There’s something going on with her, and I don’t know what it is. She makes us brush our teeth with boiled water and won’t let us go outside in bare feet. In the evenings we have to wear long sleeves because of the mosquitoes, even though it’s still ninety degrees outside. She thinks the soldiers standing at the roadblocks are pointing their guns at us. She’s convinced that insects will burrow into our toes and our guts and our bloodstreams, and we’ll all get sleeping sickness or malaria or dengue fever, or the soldiers will shoot us.

  Any kind of spider would be just another danger to her.

  Honestly, I think Mom’s in way over her head, and she figures the sooner Dad’s done his work helping with the elections, the sooner she’ll be able to get us all out of here.

  There’s no freedom for me and Gordo here at all. At home, we walked to school and biked around the neighborhood with our friends. If it was warm, we went to Dairy Queen. In winter, we hung out in each other’s rec rooms and listened to Bee Gees records. On weekends we rode the bus across town to see the latest movies, like Star Wars. I bet when The Empire Strikes Back comes out, the whole gang will go.

  Here, Mom insists we’re picked up and dropped off everywhere we go. Honestly, sometimes I feel like I’m a five-year-old on an endless play date. There’s no way I’m giving Mom any more reasons to be paranoi
d by telling her about the spider.

  I glare at Gordo as we settle into the car. “Don’t say anything,” I mouth. He nods and leans back into the seat.

  TWO

  I’d be in grade seven at home, but here they call it Form One. Gordo’s in Class Five. He thinks it’s funny that his class has a higher number than mine. Before we came here, I was worried we’d have to go to a school where everything was in a language we didn’t know, but Dad explained that because there are so many languages in Ghana, the schools mostly use English. Lucky for me.

  When we get to school, I run to my classroom, slide in beside my friend Thema and sit down. Bassam sits behind me and pulls on my ponytail. I keep forgetting to put my hair in a bun so he can’t yank it. I want to turn around and slap him, but I don’t dare. Sister Mary gives the scariest evil eye I’ve ever seen, and I’ve felt the sting of her anger before. I’m determined not to let it happen again.

  Sister Mary hasn’t liked me since the first day I came to class and she asked me to show everyone where I come from. She rolled down one of the wall maps until it reached almost to the floor. It was a map of the United States, with a sliver of Canada showing across the top. Sister Mary asked me to put a yellow sticker on my hometown, but the map was blank where Victoria should be, like it didn’t exist.

  “Place your sticker on Vancouver or Seattle, then,” she said.

  “I’m not from Vancouver or Seattle,” I said.

  “How about Toronto?” She pointed to Toronto, half a continent away.

  “I’m not from Toronto either.”

  “At least it’s in the same country,” she said.

  All the other maps were covered in stickers. Most were clustered in Ghana, but there were some in Nigeria and Togo, one in Upper Volta and one in Japan. Everyone else got to put a sticker on their home.

  “Maybe we can get a map with Canada on it,” I said.

  Sister Mary’s nostrils flared. “Are you refusing to put your sticker on the map, Astrid?” she asked.

  I felt my palms prick. This wasn’t fair. In a small voice I said, “Yes, Sister Mary.” It was such a little thing, a sticker on a map. But it was my right to claim my home.

  Sister Mary snapped the map shut. Oh, good, Astrid, I thought. You’ve been in school for half a day and already the teacher hates you. I sat back down and stared at the floor. I tried not to catch Sister Mary’s eye for the rest of the day. Or any day since.

  Today, I’m determined to stay on Sister Mary’s good side, even if it means ignoring Bassam as he pulls my hair, so I lean forward out of his reach and sit still.

  “Good morning, Sister Mary,” the class chants when she walks into the room.

  She smiles and says, “Hello, everyone. I hope you had a good weekend.”

  “Yes, Sister Mary.”

  We rise and sing the school song and the Ghanaian national anthem.

  We have gym today, so we all go to the bathrooms and change into our shorts and T-shirts and sneakers and head outside to the fields. Our feet scuff the packed red earth up into our eyes as we walk. There’s a smell of burning grass in the air. I hate gym, and it’s way too hot to feel like doing anything, so Thema and I lag behind until Sister Mary says, “Girls, catch up.”

  She hands out long loops of elastic to the girls and soccer balls to the boys. The boys run to set up the goalposts, and the girls sort through the elastics. I’d never heard of playing elastics before I came here, but all the girls play it, and since it’s pretty much like skipping rope, it didn’t take me long to learn the game.

  “Sister Mary, may I please watch the soccer? It’s too hot to jump elastics,” I say.

  The girls stare, their eyes moving from me to Sister Mary.

  “No, you may not,” she says, and I know for sure by the tone of her voice that if I say one more thing about it, I’ll find myself cleaning chalkboard dust off the erasers all morning, and I certainly won’t be on Sister Mary’s good side. I turn away from her and choose an elastic.

  Thema and I wrap the elastic around our ankles while Harpreet jumps. She gets as high as our thighs before she trips and it’s Thema’s turn. Harpreet and I put the elastic back down at our ankles, and Thema jumps in. Thema’s the best jumper, and she gets as high as our hips before she trips and it’s my turn. I start off okay, but I’m not paying enough attention, so I only get as high as their knees before I miss the pattern and am out.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Harpreet asks as I trade places with her and she goes again, this time with a longer pattern.

  I shrug. “I’m hot.”

  “Me too,” says Thema.

  “Let’s sit down,” says Harpreet. She gathers up the elastic and wraps it around her wrist.

  “We’re not allowed,” says Thema.

  “We are if we’re faint,” says Harpreet, and she puffs up her cheeks so they look bloated and blinks her eyes quickly until they start to water.

  “Sister Mary,” she calls, “I need to sit down, please.”

  Sister Mary strides over to take a look. Harpreet blinks her eyes some more and sags a little.

  “It’s so hot, I feel a bit faint,” says Harpreet.

  Thema and I both pinch our bottom lips with our teeth to keep from laughing, and the effort makes us both sweat and look terrible.

  “You girls should know better than to play elastics in the sun. Why aren’t you in the shade? Go and sit under the tree until gym’s over,” says Sister Mary, and she marches back to the soccer field.

  “See? Easy,” says Harpreet.

  As soon as Sister Mary’s far enough away, Thema and I let ourselves laugh. The three of us walk to the tree and sit among its exposed roots. We move slowly in case Sister Mary looks back at us. The tamarind pods rustle above us, and the red dirt swirls in eddies around our feet. The shade is soft on our skin.

  There are two soldiers at a roadblock on the other side of the wall. One of them is watching the boys playing, and the other seems to have fallen asleep.

  I’m still getting used to seeing soldiers on the streets. Ghana’s military runs the country, and they have roadblocks all around. We moved here so Dad can help with the elections that are supposed to give Ghana a proper government. The soldiers don’t seem to do much but hang out at these roadblocks. I asked Thomas what the roadblocks are for, and he grimaced and said they were just another part of the corruption that’s all around.

  Normally, I don’t mind the soldiers too much, since I don’t have to go near them, but I don’t like these ones here at school. Having them on the other side of the school wall every day makes me feel like a prisoner. It’s like they’re watching us all the time. Mom already does enough of that.

  “Heads up,” calls Bassam as the soccer ball soars over our heads and hits one of the limbs of the tree. A tamarind pod drops to the ground. The soccer ball bounces off the branch and lands on the road, waking the soldier, who snaps to attention.

  Everyone freezes.

  The woken soldier kicks the ball into the street, but the other one runs after it and catches it with his foot. He juggles it off his boots. We all crowd along the wall to watch.

  “Hey, give us our ball back,” says Bassam.

  It’s like the soldier hasn’t heard him. He bounces the ball from foot to foot and up onto his chest and back to his feet. On and on he goes, ignoring the boys.

  “He’s good,” Thema says.

  “You ask him for it back. He’ll give it to you,” Bassam whispers, but Thema doesn’t say anything.

  “What’s going on?” Sister Mary says as she joins us at the wall. She elbows her way through the boys.

  “Is that one of our balls?” she asks in a low voice.

  We nod. I wait for her to call out to the soldier, who still hasn’t taken any notice of us, but instead she says, “Everyone back to the classroom.”

  “Awww…It’s still gym,” says Bassam, but Sister Mary cuts him off.

  “Come along,” she says, and there’s a s
harpness in her voice that startles me.

  “What’s that all about?” I whisper to Thema as we walk back to the classroom, but she shrugs her shoulders and says, “I don’t know.”

  “It’s weird that Sister Mary is scared of a soldier,” I say.

  “Yeah,” says Thema.

  When we get back to the classroom, Bassam’s in such a bad mood that he yanks my ponytail so hard it hurts my forehead.

  “Ouch,” I call out.

  He laughs and reaches out to pull it again, but I say, “Get away!” and lean forward so he can’t reach.

  Sister Mary spins around. “Astrid,” she snaps. We’re not allowed to speak out of turn in her class. Bassam winks at me. I glare at him, and unfortunately, that’s the moment Sister Mary catches my eye.

  I sigh, because I know I’ve done it again.

  “Astrid, sit up straight and pay attention,” Sister Mary says.

  “He started it,” I say.

  Sister Mary says, “Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”

  I don’t know what that means, but I know it sounds unfair, and I also know that Bassam started it. It’s not my fault Sister Mary is in a bad mood. Bassam chuckles behind me and I want to slap him, I really do, but instead I sit up straight, look forward and try, once again, to stay out of Sister Mary’s line of sight for the rest of the day.

  THREE

  Gordo whines. “Please? Why can’t I go with you?”

  “Because only your mother and I were invited. I don’t think the family across the street has kids. Listen to Astrid. She’s in charge while we’re gone,” says Dad. It’s Saturday afternoon, and Dad and Mom are going to the neighbors’ house for drinks. Piper has fallen asleep, and Abena, our housekeeper, has agreed to keep her ear open for her while Mom and Dad go out. I don’t know why Gordo is whining to go with them, but it’s driving me nuts.

  “We won’t be too long. You know the rules,” Dad says. Of course we know the rules. Mom drills them into us every morning.

  When Mom and Dad have left, I go upstairs, put my Olivia Newton-John tape on and lie down. It’s so refreshing, lying under the air conditioner, and luckily, the power has stayed on for a few days, so the room is cool. I lie there and think about home, about biking to the water park and getting drenched in a shower of cool, clean water. There’s nothing like that here, and even if there were, Mom would never let us go. She’d be afraid we’d get cholera from the water.