A token from Grandpa...Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Nana Ajoa was sitting expectantly by the phone.  She was becoming impatient with the thumping of her heart against her ribs.  She wanted, more than anything, to relax.  She had still not been able to forgive herself for the manner in which Baaba was abducted.  She kept wondering how any educated person could allow such a thing to happen.  She kept replaying the incident in her mind, making corrections.  She wanted desperately to make amends for her blunder.  Initially, she had wept incessantly.   She later decided, however, that crying was like admitting she had lost.  She only had one desire-to ensure her daughter’s kidnappers are arrested and punished.  She also thought she needed her husband.

She had received a call from the kidnappers an hour earlier.  They had told her what she already knew; that they had Baaba.  Baaba had tried to talk too but she was only able to say ‘Ma’ before the line went dead.  Since then, Nana Ajoa had not been able to step away from the phone.  The voice of her daughter had sparked hope within her.  With that, she felt like she could hold her breath for eternity.

The phone rang again and she jerked it violently off the hook.

            “Hello,” she said, her voice almost shaking with excitement.

            “Hello, Nana.  It’s Ato.  Listen….”

            “Ato, when are you coming back home?  I miss you.  Please, stop punishing me for my father’s mistakes.  You have to stop listening to him.  You’re both causing me a lot of pain with your petty squabbles.  Do you even know where your daughter is at this time?”

            “Relax, Nana.  You need to relax.  Listen, Kwesi has just been admitted at the hospital.  It was a freak accident.  I’ll give you the details later.  The police are investigating.  I was thinking of coming home tonight but in view of….”
            “In view of nothing, Ato.  You need to come home now!”

            “I’m sorry but I can’t.  Didn’t you hear what I said?”

            “Ato, you need to come home now.  Baaba has been kidnapped!”

            “What?  What did you say?”

            “I said Baaba has been kidnapped,” Nana Ajoa said, almost choking on the words as the tears  trickled down her face.  “I’m sorry, Ato.  It’s all my fault.  I should have done a better job of protecting her.”

            “Everything’s going to be alright.  Don’t blame yourself.  I know you’re a good mother.  Just hang on.  I’m on my way.”

            “Thank you very much, my dear.  See you soon.”

            “Nana?”

            “Yes?”

            “I love you.”

            “I…love…you…too,” Nana Ajoa said between sobs and hung up.

She felt sorry for her husband.  She felt sorry for her daughter but she didn’t want to feel sorry for herself.  These are challenging times, she thought.  It had been really hectic for her since her daughter was kidnapped.  Her firm had nine cases pending that she was directly responsible for.  She had managed to have five of them adjourned to dates by which she hoped the storm in her world would have passed.  She wondered whether Baaba’s abduction had anything to do with a case she may have handled in the past.  Since most of the cases she had handled were civil suits, it was difficult for her to find the connection.

Ato’s exit from the house had been particularly difficult for her but Baaba’s abduction was like twisting the knife in the wound.  It didn’t help that her father kept trying to make her see how everything was the consequence of  Ato’s irresponsibility.  She felt a great sense of relief now that she had talked to Ato.  She looked forward to seeing him walk through the door again.  She hoped he was coming home to stay.  Not ‘home’ as in the house but home as in her arms.  She was planning to give the house back to her father.  She had come to the conclusion that she needed to choose between Ato and her father’s gift and she knew exactly who she didn’t want to lose. 

As she moved away from the phone, she thought about her own mother.  She remembered faintly how a group of people from the Volta Region had once come to her father’s house and demanded to be allowed to take her away.  One of them, a beautiful woman in a faded blouse over an almost tattered wrapper, claimed she was her mother and had wept throughout the meeting.  In the end, the matter had been taken to court and Nana Ajoa had been allowed to attend the proceedings.  It was then that she had begun to admire lawyers and the way they strode confidently through the courtroom.

As she grew up, things had begun to fall in place in her mind.  She had come to understand the situation through the hazy pictures her five year old brain had taken in.  Her father had impregnated the daughter of a red-red(gari, beans and fried plantains) seller while he was studying at the University of Ghana Medical School.  His parents had taken care of the seventeen year old girl till she gave birth.  As soon as the baby had been born, they sent the young mother away with the promise that as soon as their son began to practice as a doctor, they would let him marry her.

Three years later, however, the young doctor had married the daughter of a wealthy businessman from Nkawkaw.  Two years later, Aku heard about the ‘high society’ wedding and reported it to her family.  The elders of the family came down to Accra with her to demand custody of Nana Ajoa.  Dr. Dadzie advised them to take the matter to court.  They did.  The court ruled that it was in Nana Ajoa’s best interest to be raised in a home where she could have the opportunity of a good education.  Thus, a five year old girl was legally snatched from her real mother.  Although Aku had been awarded the right to visit her daughter any time she wanted, she never stepped in the home of the Dadzies again.  Now that her own daughter had been snatched from her, Nana Ajoa could understand why the woman in her memory had been crying.  Twenty-two years was a very long time but the pain came fresh into her heart.

            “Mother, o mother!  Where are you?”

Her naïve, five year old mind had seen a shabbily dressed woman.  Her adult mind yearned for a hug from that woman.  She wanted to hold her in her arms and say, “Mother, here I am after all these years.  They threw you out of my life but now I want to get back into yours.”

She had vowed to stop crying but she couldn’t.  Thinking about the woman she should really call ‘mother’ opened the floodgates again.  She entered the bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed.  She buried her face in her hands and cried all the tears she had held back for so long.  She was still crying when the phone began to ring again.