A token from Grandpa...5 continued.

The meeting with Gladys sent Emilia's mind back to her mother and father.  She hadn't heard from them in a long time.  She wondered whether her father had fully recovered.  She remembered the day they had taken him to the herbalist.  

She hardly ever missed school.  She was determined to go to Secondary School and then to the University of Ghana Medical School to become a doctor.  However, on that particular day, she had to miss school.  Her father was very ill and there was no money to take him to the hospital so they had brought him to the herbalist.  She was struck by the number of people who had come to see the herbalist.  It was almost like being at the hospital.  She wondered how so many people got ill at the same time.  Her friend, Alice, had once told her that not all the people you see in a crowded place are real people.  Some of them are ghosts.  Emilia shuddered and instinctively looked around her as if she expected to catch someone in the act of vanishing into thin air.  She held on tightly to her mother’s hand.  Her father, Xornam Avorgbedor, could not walk so they had been allowed to carry him to the front of the line and into an inner chamber for immediate attention.

Mama Aku, Emilia’s mother, could not stop crying.  Emilia thought her mother cried like a man.  No sobs, no sniffing, just a stream of tears coming out the corner of her eyes.  She kept wiping them with the corner of her faded cover cloth.  Emilia was scared.  She was always scared to see her mother cry.  She thought her mother was a very strong woman so any situation that could make her cry must be a very grave situation.  She had observed her father’s illness deteriorate within a very short time.  She had been hoping he would get better and was shocked when she woke up one day to see her mother struggling to help him into the bathroom.  The sight had been very heartbreaking for her.

            “Mama, we need to take him to the hospital,” Emilia had told her mother.

            “I know.  But the hospital is too far and there would be too many people.  By the time they finish attending to all the important people and those with money for bribes, who knows what would have happened to your father?  I’ll take him to the herbalist on the road to Keta.”

            “I thought Christians were not supposed to go to herbalists.  I thought herbalists were heathens who got their medicines from dwarfs.”

            “Emi, it was the British people who taught us to think that way.  They thought we wouldn’t buy their medicines if they didn’t discredit our herbalists.  They even called them ‘witch doctors’.  Emi, there is something good in everything.  Your father and I are Christians but we take part in all kinds of traditional ceremonies.  Some Christians think those ceremonies are heathen because of the rites that go with them.  I say I’m giving unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and giving unto Christ what is for Christ.”

Emilia was tempted to argue but she wasn’t in the mood.  She knew that times were bad and her mother had decided to do what was best under the circumstances.  She couldn’t think of a better plan.  One thing she knew about healing was that you had to believe.

            “I’ll come with you,” she told her mother.

            “You don’t have to.  You have to go to school.  They will give you your Common Entrance results today, won’t they?”

            “Yes, they will,” Emilia answered sadly.  “I know I will pass.  But, if we don’t have money to take Papa to the hospital, how do we get the money to get me to Secondary School?”

Mama Aku saw the tears well up in her daughter’s eyes.  She pulled her into her arms and hugged her tight, rocking her gently as the sobs shook her body.  Emilia had sat for the Common Entrance the year before and passed but there was no money to send her to Secondary School.  Since she was in Elementary Form 3, her parents had argued that it would be wiser for her to do it again the following year so she could have both an Elementary School Leaving certificate and qualification into a Secondary School.  After all, beginning Secondary School at the age of 16 used to be the norm until all these new private elementary schools started sending 12 year olds from rich homes to Secondary School.

            “Emi, don’t cry.  We’ll think of something.  Let’s get Papa to the herbalist first.  Are you sure you want to come?”

            “Yes.”

A tall gray-haired man came out of the inner chamber where Xornam Avorgbedor had been taken and yelled, “Aku?”  Xornam may have said something in there because the gray-haired man glanced back into the room, and said with a little laugh, “Mama Aku!”

Emilia and her mother picked their way through the crowd, shouting “Agoo!  Agoo!”  The gray-haired man shouted Mama Aku’s name again even louder and someone responded, “she’s coming!”

Mama Aku was asked into the inner chamber whilst Emilia was asked to wait outside.  A few minutes later, Mama Aku reemerges from the inner chamber with her husband leaning on her right arm.  She also held some herbs and bottled concoctions in a paper bag in her left hand.  The gray-haired man, apparently the herbalist, whispered last minute instructions to Mama Aku and called for the next patient.  Emilia sighed with relief.  Her smile broadened when two teenage boys she knew offered to carry her father home.  Xornam wanted to walk home on his own but the boys insisted so he graciously leaned on their shoulders and allowed them to help him.  He was very thankful, for, even with their help, he realized that every step was still excruciatingly painful.  But Emilia was hopeful.

The three months after the trip to the herbalist were very tough for Emilia.  Her father’s health did improve somewhat and he went back to work but the position of a village carpenter doesn’t yield enough money to send a child to a Secondary School in Accra.  As she had predicted, she passed the Common Entrance examination and gained 287 out of 400.  It was the third highest mark in the whole Region that year.  She had hoped to get a scholarship from Labone Secondary School, her first choice school, but she didn’t.  One of her friends had 265 and got a huge party from her parents.  287 was a big deal!  The pass mark for girls that year was 225 and it was 230 for boys.  A local correspondent for GBC1 even came to interview her.  Unfortunately, although many sympathized with her for not having the means to go to Secondary School, nobody offered to help.  Well, there was an offer.  A local transport owner offered to pay Emilia’s way through Secondary School if she would marry him.  His youngest son had taught Emilia in Primary School.  Emilia wanted to accept it but her mother was disgusted.  They argued over it for many days.

Finally, as they lay one night with Emilia’s sobs echoing through the darkness, Mama Aku inclined her head towards where her daughter lay.  Since it was just a single room that could only take one bed, Xornam Avorgbedor had made his daughter a small foldable bed that looked like a settee when folded up.  While her parents’ bed was set against the east wall of the room, Emilia’s bed was set against the west wall.  Her father had laid a rod over their bed from which they hung a curtain that protected Emilia from any adult stuff they may do.  She did remember a time when they used to make her laugh when one of them would poke his or her head out from behind the curtain and whisper,  ”Emi, mon amie!” and then pull back quickly behind the curtain.  It was the same way Mama Aku had poked her head from behind the curtain when she heard Emilia’s sobbing.

            “Emi,” Mama Aku said gently.  “Emi, can you hear me?”

            “Yes, Mama,” Emilia answered, her speech distorted by her sobbing.

            “Emi, listen.  We’re sorry we don’t have the means to help you become the person you want to be.  But I’m not sorry for refusing to allow you to marry that old man.  There is a saying that an experienced person is better than a soothsayer.  I know you’re cut out for great things.  I know you’ll be a great person in future.  I have faith in you.  I don’t want you to become an old lady before you become a young woman.  Anybody who offers a brilliant girl like you something with strings attached does not have a good heart.  And who wants to allow her daughter to marry a man who has so publicly demonstrated that he doesn’t have a good heart?  Most people go into a marriage without knowing the real person they’re getting married to.  You are fortunate.  God Himself has caused this man to show his true self.  What other proof do you need?”  Mama Aku paused for a few minutes.  She could feel that Emilia was listening so she continued.

            “Look at yourself, for example.  You’re a young woman who is very clever.  Supposing you marry this old man today and he helps you to achieve your dreams.  Right now, all you know is this village with simple people and a simple life.  When you go to Accra, it’s very different.  Believe me, I have lived in Accra before.  My mother and I used to sell ‘red-red’ at the University….”

            “You’ve told me that before,” Emilia cut in quietly but clearly.  Mama Aku noticed that she had stopped crying.

            “Okay, now listen.  Once you’ve met all those sophisticated people and danced on great carpets and held the hands of handsome younger men, your simple old man would no longer appeal to you.  You would look at all the possibilities and curse the day you got yourself trapped into marriage with a man whose son could be your father.  That is when you would be forced to break that man’s heart.  Believe me, I know what that kind of heartbreak is like and I wouldn’t like you to do it to an old man.”  Emilia murmured something.

            “What did you say?” Mama Aku asked.

            “I said I wasn’t going to break his heart.”

            “Emi, you’re still a child.  Listen to your mother.”

            “Yes, Papa, “Emilia whispered, glad to hear her father’s voice getting stronger again.

            “Emi, I’m going to send you to Accra, anyway,” Mama Aku continued.  “I’m sorry it’s not going to be under the same circumstances you wished for.  I have a friend there who is a very well-known hairdresser.  She was also very clever when we were in primary school.  But her passion was to become a hairdresser and she’s become a good one.  She has agreed to train you for free.  You’ll live in her house and help with household chores while you learn the trade.  Once you master it, you can start your own business and earn some money to go to school.  Education is not a race.”

That is how Emilia came to live with Mrs. Esilfie and her two sons, Panyin and Kakra.

 TO BE CONTINUED.