She answered the door and was deeply disappointed to see her father’s face. Her mind raced for a plausible excuse to get the old man out of the way before her husband’s arrival. Dr. Dadzie walked past her daughter and entered the living-room. He went to sit in his favorite armchair, which faced the television directly.
“Any news yet?”
“Nothing,” she replied and walked briskly into her bedroom. She returned a few minutes later with a make-up kit, dabbing powder on her face. She sat on the edge of the center table and continued to apply make-up.
“Are you going out?”
“Yes,” she replied. “I’m handing a case over to a friend and I need to brief him on where we’ve gotten to so far.”
“I guess I need to leave, then. Are you sure you haven’t heard any news about Baaba at all yet?”
“No.” She wanted to say more but she wanted to be quiet to be sure if the sound she had heard outside was the sound of a vehicle. She felt a tightening in the pit of her stomach. The last thing she wanted at that moment was another confrontation between the two most important men in her life. She walked quickly to the window, parted the curtains and looked out. A wave of relief washed over her when she saw the roof of a speeding van over the fence wall.
“Are you expecting someone?” Her father asked as she picked up the make-up kit and walked towards the bedroom.
“Not really.”
She literally jumped when she heard the ‘bang’ of a car door closing.
“Calm your nerves, Nana Ajoa. What has come over you?”
She went back to the window quickly enough to see Ato close the gate behind him and walk towards the house. She headed for the door but the phone began to ring before she could let him in.
“Get the phone. I’ll get the door.”
Instinctively, Nana Ajoa obeyed her father. Seeing his father-in-law shook Ato quite a bit. Dr. Dadzie must have noticed it for he asked, “Disappointed to see me, huh?”
Ato merely muttered his greetings, entered the living-room and deliberately sat in the armchair he suspected his father-in-law may have just left to open the door for him. Although Dr. Dadzie had given the house to his daughter as a gift, it was Ato’s money that had furnished it. So all the furniture in the house, including the armchair Dr. Dadzie was so fond of, had been bought with Ato’s money. True, he owned it jointly with Nana Ajoa but the circumstances under which they were acquired gave him bragging rights over his father-in-law. Dr. Dadzie moved towards his son-in-law, intent upon prompting him to move from his position but thought better of it when he saw the look in Ato’s eyes. He chose another seat and sat down to think of something irritable to say to Ato.
Dr. Dadzie lit a cigar and blew the smoke arrogantly in the younger man’s general direction. Ato cleared his throat disgustedly.
“Sorry, do you mind if I smoke?”
“Sir, I do mind. I believe that second-hand smoke is an unfair way to go to one’s grave.”
Dr. Dadzie was caught completely off-guard. However, he managed to show a smile that said he accepted the challenge. He knew Ato did not smoke so, more out of formality than out of civility, he had always sought Ato’s permission whenever he wanted to smoke in his presence. The permission had hitherto never been refused. He gently stifled the glow off the tip of the cigar and put it away. He didn’t want Ato to say he was not a gentleman. It just might get to that, he thought.
“I’m very concerned about my granddaughter. What are you two doing to get her back?” Dr. Dadzie asked.
“I have already lodged a complaint with the Police although Nana Ajoa tells me…”
“We ought to be grateful we didn’t lose her to some ritual murderers,” Dr. Dadzie said, interrupting Ato. “Let’s be careful how we handle these people. Let’s not do things that may get them unduly agitated.”
Ato shifted uneasily in the armchair but kept quiet. Nana Ajoa hung up the phone with a worried expression on her face. Ato was immediately by her side.
“Come on, Nana, come into the arms of your responsible father,” Dr. Dadzie said, springing up onto his feet.
“Daddy, please!” Nana Ajoa yelled, holding up a restraining hand to her father.
An uncomfortable silence rose and held the air taut. Nana Ajoa walked slowly over to her father and hugged him.
“I’m sorry, daddy. I’m sorry. But I need to let you know that you don’t make me feel comfortable in your presence anymore, especially when my husband is around.”
Her father pushed her gently away and walked towards the door. He opened the door, turned and told Ato:
“I hear your brother has been injured by a prostitute he picked off the street. Too irresponsible to marry, huh? It’s in the blood, isn’t it?”
Nana Ajoa opened her mouth to say something but let out a deep sigh instead when her father walked through the door and closed it gently behind him.
Ato tried to hold her but she moved away from him.
“I’ve heard that you’ve applied for a job at the University. At least you could have informed me.”
“You know I need the job. I thought you might kick against the idea again,” Ato responded smugly.
“So it’s alright for me to do something you don’t like as long as I don’t inform you before I do it, huh?”
“Look, Nana, I can still withdraw the application or refuse to go for the interview or something if that is what you want.”
“No. I think you should rather pray you get the job. We need money. We need fifty thousand dollars to get Baaba back. Hard cash.”
“Good Lord! Where are we going to get that kind of money?”
“Daddy, of course. Who else?”
Ato eyed her as if she had just sold his soul to the devil.
“Okay,” she said when she saw the look on his face. “Let’s go see if Akuamoah can help us. But you must realize that I won’t hesitate to go to my dad if I have to. He’s as worried about her as I am and he’ll be glad of an opportunity to help.”
Nana Ajoa sat quietly in the passenger seat as her husband drove the Volvo towards the cluster of auto spare parts shops at Abossey Okai. She felt alarmed that no matter how hard she tried, she could not bring herself to love her father like she used to. She was particularly concerned that she had lied to him when he had asked about the kidnappers. Something within her had prevented her from telling him the truth. Although there was a good reason for her not to share the information with him, that reason had come to her after the fact.
There was a lot in her life to be thankful to her father for. However, she was beginning to wonder whether any of the things she had received were given out of love or out of a desire for control of her life. She felt particularly disgusted that all her life she had been steered away from the truth about her biological mother. And the reason for that, she suspected, was because Dr. Dadzie did not want to be reminded that he had had a child with a woman way below his own social standing. She could sense that in the way he treated Ato.
She felt a strong desire to go seek her biological mother. Since her own daughter was abducted, she could hardly think of the word ‘mother’ without conjuring up the image of a young woman’s tear-filled face as she pleaded to be allowed to take her baby away. And that image always brought tears to her eyes.
That it had taken her so long to miss her biological mother was due to the love that blossomed between her and her late step-mother. Mrs. Emily Dadzie had no children of her own and had treated Nana Ajoa with such love and respect that it felt almost sacrilegious for Nana to break a rule in order to find another mother. Although the other Emily in her life, her aunty Emily in Chicago, had kept pushing her to find her real mother, Nana Ajoa had been determined not to seem ungrateful to her stepmother. How ironic, she thought, that the incident that would lead me to yearn so much for my biological mother took place when I was trying to call the only woman who kept pushing me to find her.
“Why are you crying, Nana?”
Ato’s voice shot like an arrow through her thoughts. She instinctively groped behind her seat for the box of Kleenex she kept there. It was empty. Ato quickly pulled out a handkerchief from his breast pocket and handed it to her. He felt guilty.
“Nana, please cheer up. Baaba will be alright.”
Nana Ajoa nodded but remained quiet. Ato brought the Volvo to a stop in front of Akuamoah’s shop. One of the salesgirls recognized the car and walked over to Nana Ajoa’s side.
“Please, they’re on their way to Tamale. They left just a few minutes ago.”
“Are they going by State Transport?” Nana Ajoa asked, alarmed.
“No. They’re going in the Pajero.”
“Which way did they go? I want to see if I can catch up with them?” Ato said.
“Well, they’re going through Kumasi so they’ll probably use Nsawam road.”
Ato shifted the car into gear and lurched dangerously into the traffic. A mummy truck screeched to a halt just inches behind him. The driver hurled profanities on Ato whose concentration was on the road. He maneuvered the Volvo between a tipper truck and a taxi, causing his wife’s heart to miss a beat.
“Please, do be careful,” Nana Ajoa said.
“Don’t worry. We’ll be fine,” he replied.
He sped his way round the Obetsebi Lamptey Circle and headed towards the Kwame Nkrumah Circle to join the Nsawam road. He suddenly pulled over to the side of the road and parked the car.
“What are you up to?” Nana Ajoa asked angrily.
“The question is; why are we doing this?”
“For your daughter, remember? Kidnappers, ransom and a lot of money we don’t have. Come on, Ato. Are you okay?”
“I don’t think we need to chase them all the way from here to Tamale. Let’s go relax and call them in the morning.”
“We don’t have the time.”
“They didn’t give a deadline, did they?”
“Of course they did and I told you.”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“I did, too!” Nana Ajoa said.
“Okay, alright, how long do we have and where do we take the money?”
“I can’t sit here and discuss that, Ato. Let’s do something!”
“What do we do?”
“We were following them, weren’t we?”
“That is pointless. There are so many ways by which they can get to Tamale. We can drive all the way to Tamale and all we will see are many Pajeros that look like theirs. It would be a waste of time.”
“Then,” Nana Ajoa said calmly. “Let’s go see my dad.”
He would have flared up but he checked himself, sinking his teeth into his lower lip. He held on tightly to the steering-wheel, cursing himself for having neither relatives nor friends who could help him at a time like this. All the people he knew who could part with that kind of money were Nana Ajoa’s people. Even the Akuamoahs were the late Mrs. Dadzie’s relatives.
An idea occurred to him. He started the engine, shifted the gear to first and, keeping his foot on the clutch, accelerated gently. As soon as there was a lull in the flow of traffic, he made a quick U-turn.
“Where are we going?” Nana Ajoa asked, surprised.
He did not respond. He kept his eyes on the road. He kept biting his lower lip to prevent himself from saying anything stupid. He brought the car to a halt in front of a red light.
“Are we going to see my dad?”
Ato turned and gave her a creepy glare that nearly made her jump out of her seat.
“Don’t ever look at me like that again,” she said as she shifted in her seat.
The light changed to green but he had to wait for a white cane wielding gentleman to finish crossing the street. He put maximum pressure on the accelerator, hoping to reach the next set of lights before they changed to red. He was unlucky. The lights changed from green to amber, then to red. Nana Ajoa gave a deep sigh of relief when he began to slow down.
Ato drove into the Darkuman station at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle area where Kwesi operated his van. He parked the Volvo, murmured an excuse to his wife and went into the office of the drivers’ union.
Mr. Mate Korley was the president of the drivers’ union. He was bald and had a mustache like one you would see at a beard and mustache contest in Alaska. He was proud of his massive belly and wore an African print shirt that made it prominent. The walls of the office were covered in schedules of drivers plying various routes of Accra from the station. The desk was bare save for a couple of newspapers of the day. He kept all his files in the drawers and only brought out the ones he needed whenever he needed them. As soon as he was done with each one, he put it right back where it belonged.
He stood up and gave Ato a warm handshake, hoping that the unannounced visit was not to announce Kwesi’s death. He had heard about Kwesi’s mishap and gone to visit him at the hospital. In fact, he had encouraged all the workers at the station to visit him at the hospital whenever they could.
He pointed to the chair in front of his desk and asked Ato to sit down.
“Thank you but I will not take too much of your time. My wife is waiting in the car.” Ato said as he took the seat.
“How is she?” Asked Mr. Mate Korley, trying to avoid asking about Kwesi since he expected the meeting to be about him.
“Everybody is fine, health-wise. So is Kwesi. He is recovering remarkably.”
“I thank God for that,” said Mr. Mate Korley, shifting in his chair with relief. He waited patiently for Ato to explain the purpose of the visit.
“Mr. Mate Korley, we have a very serious problem on our hands. I don’t want to bore you with unnecessary details. Long and short of it is that my daughter has been kidnapped. I don’t know your policy concerning help for families but I was hoping that since she’s Kwesi’s niece, the union could loan us some money to pay the ransom. My wife’s relatives would have given us the money but they’ve gone to Tamale for the weekend. I’ll pay you back as soon as they get back.”
“How much money are you talking about?”
“Fifty thousand dollars.”
“Wow!” The drivers’ union president put his hand on his mouth in astonishment.
“I’ll bring it back as soon as my wife’s relatives get back from Tamale.”
“Mr. Quansah, we have benefits for our union members but kidnapping is not in our books. Even if we could cut corners, and trust me I would gladly do that for your brother, it would involve immediate family members like mother, father, child and spouse. I’m sorry about your situation, but trust me, if I had that kind of money or knew how to get that kind of money, I would gladly help you off the books. I’m really sorry, trust me.”
Ato had known that he was clutching at a straw with this move but what could he do? He dreaded the humiliation of having to go to his father-in-law, of all people, for help. He stood up, shook the hand of the union president and thanked him for at least giving him audience.
“Why can’t some university graduates figure things out for themselves?” Mr. Korley asked his secretary as soon as he had closed the door behind Ato.
Ato was walking back to where he had parked the Volvo when he thought he saw Emelia standing in a long line of commuters waiting for tro-tro to Darkuman. He wasn’t sure whether it was her or not but he decided to check. He wanted her to know that neither he nor Kwesi bore her any grudge. He wanted her to understand that she was welcome to go visit him if she wanted to. He didn’t want her to keep running away from him.
Emelia had also seen him get out of the Volvo and enter the drivers’ union office. The Volvo was blue-black and Nana Ajoa was wearing a black beret to cover her hair because she hadn’t had time to have it done since the night Ato left. With the lack of sufficient sleep, her fear of the police and the weight of Kwesi’s injury on her conscience, Emelia’s mind was stressed to the point of paranoia. What began as a ‘what if” Ato was an undercover policeman driving a police car with his female partner became reality in her mind when she saw him walking towards her. She quickly got out of the queue and began to run.
"I just want to talk to you," Ato shouted after her but she kept running.
He threw his hands up in despair and walked back to the car.
“Funny woman!” He said as he took his place behind the wheel. Nana Ajoa surprised him with a hard slap on his right cheek.
“While Baaba is languishing in the clutches of some pedophiles who are probably planning to kill her, you’re busy running after cheap girls at Kwame Nkrumah Circle right under my nose? You should be ashamed of yourself!”
TO BE CONTINUED.
