Somebody's Heart Is Burning

by Tanya Shaffer

  On the rocky coast outside of town, the ocean foamed and roiled. Pigs played in the surf, and palm trees tossed their tousled heads in the breeze like Rastas at a party. Pygmy goats not more than two feet high roamed the dusty streets, bleating. Walking through town, I was amazed by the range of the goats’ voices and by their human-sounding timbre. The kids, some with shriveled umbilical cords still hanging off their bodies, whimpered in plaintive sopranos. The nanny goats scolded in nasal altos, and the billies chimed in with gravelly bad-tempered baritones. Sometimes I’d see a mother goat toddling anxiously back and forth on her short legs, looking for her kid. The call and response between the searching mother and the lost child sounded like a musical game of Marco Polo.

  A short hop from the beach was a row of dilapidated colonial mansions, replete with columns, balconies, and balustrades. Santana’s extended family shared one of these with several other families. The house was in an advanced state of decay. The floorboards were loose and rotting—you had to be careful where you stepped. Parts of the ceiling were crumbling, and a gust of wind or a heavy stomp could release a small blizzard of plaster flakes.

  The outhouse in Santana’s yard was filled to the point of overflowing, and no one had gotten around to digging a new one. Every morning we trooped a few blocks to the public toilet, where we waited in line to go in. The women’s side consisted of a wooden bench with six holes in a row where women squatted, side by side, like silent crows on a line. The first time we went I lingered outside, planning to enter after everyone else had gone. But either it was rush hour or the place was the hottest ticket in town, because new people arrived as quickly as others left. I finally took a deep breath and plunged in, so to speak. As I arranged myself beside my sistahs, trying to ignore a little girl who gaped at me with unmasked fascination, I waxed philosophical. To squat next to four or five other women, each of you straining in silent (or not so silent) solidarity, is a great equalizer, a uniquely humbling experience. Imagine employer and employee perched side by side every morning before work, I mused. Wouldn’t that go a distance toward breaking down hierarchy? Or world leaders, before they go into a conference room to decide their country’s fates. Every president and prime minister, I decided, should have to try this at least once.

  On my second morning in Apam, after returning from these rather chastening ablutions, Santana and I stood on the sagging upper porch of her family’s home, talking. Stacks of tires, piles of wood, and crumbling cement blocks were strewn about the yard below. The scene was a kaleidoscope of motion: children chasing a ball, goats chasing the children, women stirring pots of steaming mush. Two men played cards while others stood around in a circle, drinking and offering advice. Groups shifted and reshuffled as people came and went, walking or pedaling their wide-wheeled bicycles, balancing things on their heads. At the far end of the yard, the words “Cry Your Own Cry” were painted in bright blue letters on a boarded-up shack. Beyond the yard, corrugated tin roofs stretched a few hundred yards to the cape, where the shaggy-headed palm trees leaned toward the sea.

  As Santana and I talked, smells of smoking fish and roasting corn wafted up, while shouts, cries, laughter, and the staticky pulse of a radio mingled in our ears. A big-bellied, thin-limbed child in underwear sauntered barefoot across the yard, eating from a can. She looked up at us and shouted “obroni” fifteen or twenty times, until I waved to her and called out “Hello!” Satisfied, she continued her stroll.

  “Sistah Korkor,” Santana was tapping my arm. “Did you hear what I said? I said I have not been happy for some six months.”

  “What? Why?”

  “My man, he has left. He has gone to Italy ten months ago. Then, some six months ago, he has sent a cassette to his parents, and he has told them that I should find a husband. He calls Ghana women a natural resource. Himself, he will find a more costly woman. A Europe woman. Because I have not traveled, I am worth nothing. A natural resource only, like water, everywhere, cheap. Because I have stayed in Ghana here.”

  “What a jerk!” I said.

  “Eight years I was with him. Now I am twenty-seven years old. You see? He has wasted my years. I should have traveled before him. I should have been in Europe long time now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have given him the money to go. Then, some months later, I should have followed him. My father, he had seven fishing boats. Now he has died and my stepbrothers have lost five of them with drinking. But before, I managed the affairs. I saved. I gathered 600,000 cedis, and my brother was bringing this money to Accra to arrange the visa and the plane tickets, when he was in an accident with the tro-tro and died. When we went to claim the body, the money was not there. Now my brother has left me with five children to provide. So I have lost my chance. I have lost my chance and my man, too.”

  I looked at her in surprise, searching for something to say. I’d never imagined such a story, never sensed her underlying despair. “You’ll meet someone better,” I said, taking her hand. “Someone who values you.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t want them now, these men. I see what they are. Two have betrayed me. Now the other, from before, he begs me to come back. But he has betrayed me last time, with a woman. All his friends say, ‘Santana, come back to him,’ because I used to cook for them, long time. They all love me; they remember. But I say no, he has betrayed me once, he will do it again.”

  I nodded sympathetically.

  “What about your man?” she asked suddenly. “Your sweet Michael.”

  “What about him?”

  “Why have you left him?”

  “I . . . I wanted to travel . . .”

  “You will go back to him?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  She lifted an eyebrow.

  “I don’t know, Santana, I’m not sure.” I felt suddenly defensive.

  “Does he beat you?”

  “No,” I laughed. “No, he doesn’t beat me.”

  “He goes with other women, then?”

  “No. No. I mean, now, maybe, because I said we should leave things open, but when we were together, no.” The thought that he might be seeing other women now brought a painful tightness to my throat.

  “So why, then? What is wrong? You think African men are more costly because you must go far to find them?”

  “No! I just . . . I don’t know. I love him but . . . it’s complicated.”

  “It is not complicated. He is natural resource. He needs to grow rare.”

  “Stop it, Santana, I—” I stopped midsentence. How did she always manage to drive me nuts? My mind formed the words I might use to explain the situation to a friend back home: I love him, but I’m not sure I’m in love with him. I’m not sure he’s the one. The words seemed unbearably childish, mere semantic diddling. I could never say them to Santana, not with that knowing smile on her face. Not in the wake of what she’d just told me.

  “Anyway,” I continued. “We were talking about you. Where can we find you a better man?”

  She shook her head. “No more man for me. My heart, it has closed.” She smiled. “Now I only torture men. I may be Ghana woman, everywhere resource, but I am more strong than they. I have no need of them, and this makes them crazy. All this they want,” she turned around slowly, swaying her hips, “but they can never have.”

  “The woman is the p-property of her husband,” said Santana’s cousin Ema, short for Emanuel. He was laughing, but he was angry. I was angrier. I’d heard enough of this kind of talk during my time here to build up a reservoir of frustration. We were sitting on the weathered wooden floor around a low table, over the remains of kenke and pepper sauce. Santana sat beside me, silent for a change. We had all washed our fingers in a bowl of water and wiped our mouths with our wet hands. My tongue burned from the chili.

  “A woman is a human being,” I said, fighting to keep my voice even. “An equal human being. Not property.”

  Ema laughed again. “A woman is not equal to a m-man. See t
his m-muscle?”

  “Physically, women and men are different,” I said. “Different strengths and different capabilities. Intellectually, they are equals.”

  “But if the m-man is stronger, then the m-man must d-dominate,” Ema insisted. “That is how it is in nature.”

  The topic under discussion was whether or not men had the right to beat their wives. Looking at small, slender Ema, with his gentle hands and slight stutter, it was hard to imagine him dominating anyone.

  “Then does a strong man have a right to dominate a weaker man?” I asked. “Should a strong man make a weaker man his slave?”

  “We are t-talking about the way things are, not the way they should be.”

  “No, we’re talking about our opinions. You didn’t say, ‘Many men in Ghana treat their wives as property.’ You said, ‘The woman is the property of her husband,’ implying that you felt that was just fine.”

  How we’d segued onto this topic from Christianity, I wasn’t sure. Ema had spent the entire afternoon trying to save me, a phenomenon I’d grown accustomed to during my time in Ghana. The country was brimming with fanatical Christians of every imaginable stripe. The missionaries had done their work thoroughly, and every vehicle had a religious slogan painted on the side; every business had a name like “God Is Love Beauty Saloon” ( sic) or “Blood of Jesus Carpentry Shop.” I enjoyed flaunting my agnosticism, driving the faithful to increasingly heroic measures in their efforts to convert me. Throughout the day, I’d maintained a faintly ironic tone while Ema begged, pleaded, cajoled, and railed. Now, with the wife-beating discussion, the tables had turned. He was relaxed, content to disagree, while I was desperate to convert him to my point of view.

  “History is against you,” I told him angrily. “Women are rising all over the world.”

  “Ghana m-must not be part of the world, then,” he retorted.

  Santana rolled her eyes. “Let the man think what he wants,” she said, pronouncing the word “man” with visible disdain.

  In public, Santana treated me like a pet parrot. She’d taught me a few phrases of Fanti, most of them scatological, and as we made our daily rounds through town, she made me repeat them over and over, eliciting roars of laughter from everyone we met.

  “Santana, please,” I begged her. “Stop. Just stop for a while.”

  “Yes,” she would say, but within five minutes she’d demand that I do it again. “Why not make some laughter?” she asked.

  “Because I’m tired of being a sideshow.”

  “You are not side. You are the main show in Apam!”

  My body was another point of contention. Santana was obsessed with my skinniness. During meals, I sat on the floor around a low table with the adult members of the family, each with our ball of fufu or kenke , sharing a pot of stew. Santana watched me eat as though it were the most intriguing performance she’d ever seen. If I ate slowly, she berated me to speed up. If I ate quickly, she forced another ball of kenke or fufu on me.

  I’m not a large person, and in the heat, my appetite had diminished. Furthermore, in spite of years of feminist self-education, I have as much body image baggage as the next American female. Being forced to eat past the point of fullness brought up all my adolescent angst. My attempts to explain this to Santana played like a ludicrous cross-cultural Abbott and Costello:

  ME: Santana, please don’t pressure me to eat more. When I eat too much, I feel bad about myself. Do you understand? (Santana nods.) Good. Thank you. (I finish my ball of kenke, sit back, and relax. Santana shouts something to one of the young girls, who brings another ball of kenke and sets it on my plate.)

  ME: Santana! Didn’t you hear what I just told you? If I eat too much, I start to hate myself. I feel disgusting.

  SANTANA: You hate my food!

  ME: It has nothing to do with your food!

  SANTANA: It shames me to have a skinny guest. We must make you fat and beautiful.

  ME: (voice rising in panic) I don’t want to be fat and beautiful.

  SANTANA: They will say I am starving you. That I am a bad hostess. Eat!

  ME: I can’t eat another bite. I refuse to eat this kenke.

  SANTANA: (shouting) Thank you for refusing what I give you!

  Meanwhile, the children hovered silently, eyeing the kenke.

  But the biggest issue was money. Santana liked to keep me guessing. Here I was, staying in her family’s home, eating their food, going everywhere with her. When I offered direct compensation, she always said no. To make up for this, I went out and bought things—large bags of rice, tins of milk, packages of sugar—and brought them to her home as gifts. Periodically, however, she spontaneously commanded me to pay for something: a tro-tro ride, a shopping trip, a visit to the hairdresser.

  This irritated me beyond logic. I wanted consistency. The seeming arbitrariness of it made me feel off-balance, out of control. My feelings ricocheted wildly. One moment I was sure Santana was the most generous person I’d ever known. The next I had the distinct feeling she was taking advantage of me.

  One day we dropped in on the local dressmaker. It turned out Santana had already chosen fabric and engaged the woman to make matching outfits for us. The patterns were drawn up; we had only to be measured.

  The gesture moved me deeply. The fact that the material she’d selected was a neon green print with swirling yellow vines on it did nothing to dampen my enthusiasm. But when we went to pick up the finished dresses, Santana ordered me to “pay the woman.”

  Again the agonizing litany: Was Santana my friend, or was she just trying to get things from me? Had she ordered the dresses as a means for us to bond, or because she wanted a new dress?

  The day after the incident with the dressmaker, we shopped for the ingredients for a garden egg stew, dressed in our twin outfits. A garden egg is a popular Ghanaian vegetable that resembles a small, ovoid zucchini.

  “I want to learn how to make the stew, so I can cook it for my friends back home,” I told Santana with excitement. “And I want to photograph every step of the process, to document it.”

  In the cheerful chaos of the market, Santana knew everyone. She knew which woman to buy the garden eggs from, which the peppers, which the kenke, the palm oil, the small cube of bouillon to add flavor to the stew. We picked our way among spread-out blankets piled high with brightly colored vegetables. Women grabbed at our skirts and called out to us in passing, “Santana, buy this! Obroni, nice, nice.”

  The shopping trip took hours. With each vendor Santana bartered endlessly, shouting, haggling, cajoling, shaking fistfuls of tiny red peppers, tomatoes, or rice in the seller’s face. Santana and the saleswomen played out a complicated drama, in which they sometimes seemed like bitter enemies, sometimes best friends. Even after an agreement had been reached, Santana would cop a coy look and ask the seller to add a few extra of whatever it was, as a bonus. The woman usually complied, a rueful expression on her face. They parted, finally, shouting half-humorous threats.

  “Next time you pay me right away or I call the police!”

  “Next time you give me fresh vegetables or I steal your husband!”

  “She owes me much,” Santana said of the woman she bought the peppers from. “I have given her fish many times.”

  When we purchased tomatoes, Santana said again, “Pay the woman.”

  “Why the tomatoes?” I asked suddenly. “Why not the rice, or the bouillon cubes, or the chili peppers? Why the tomatoes and only the tomatoes?”

  “Why not?” she laughed.

  “Because it doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Why don’t you let me pay for all of it? Or let me give you some money. Or let me decide myself what I want to buy.”

  “Because today,” she shouted, “I want you to buy tomatoes!”

  Carrying the ingredients up the rickety stairs, she asked me, “Do you shop like this at your end?”

  I flashed on an image of Santana at Safeway, trundling around a cart piled high with packaged goods, Sarah Lee a
nd Kellogg’s and Kraft. The image made me sad.

  “No,” I told her. “Shopping is very different at my end.”

  Later, I sat down at the coal port to fan the flames beneath our bubbling stew. A fixture in many Ghanaian kitchens, a coal port was a small iron structure, about sixteen inches tall. Coal went in the bottom, and the top was a funnel with an airhole in it on which to place a pot.

  “Will you take a picture of me doing this?” I asked Santana, handing her the camera.

  “So you can lie to your friends at home?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “I will take this photo,” she said. “But when they ask me, I will tell the truth. I will tell them that you are lazy and will not work. Also that you come to my house and fight with my cousins. That you insult me. That you refuse to eat.” She smoothed her bright green dress. “But it is also true that you choose very nice dresses for your Sistah Santana and yourself.”

  A flash lit the stew.

  “Will you send me this photo?” Santana asked, after a pause.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “You will forget.”

  “No I won’t,” I snapped, “I’ll send it. I said I’d send it and I’ll send it.”

  “Say what you want,” she said, “You are my sistah, but I know what is true.” She took the palm leaf from my hand and began fanning.

  “Look,” she said softly, “so many delicious tomatoes.”

  Game Night again. My turn to share a national pastime. In the cement-floored dining room, we pushed the tables against the walls and placed the chairs in a wobbly circle. There were no electric lights, only the orange glow of kerosene lanterns and the pale moonlight flooding in through the windows and doors. I called for a volunteer to operate the radio. Virgin Billy raised his hand.

  We counted the number of players and the number of chairs. There had to be one less chair than there were players, I explained. Each round, one person would be eliminated. Each person’s sole object was to stay in the game.