A Token From Grandpa...Chapter 13

She was trying very hard to believe that what seemed to be happening between Kwesi and Gladys right before her eyes was none of her business.  She was surprised, however, that Gladys would allow something like that to grow given her status and what she knew about Kwesi and her.  It was true she had admitted she was only a prostitute Kwesi picked off the streets but she felt that should still be able to deter Gladys from getting romantically involved with him.  It felt awkward for her to be sitting there watching them eat together, hold hands and even kiss as if she wasn’t there.  Something inside her was hurting but she wanted to be happy for them.  She wasn’t sure whether it was romance or platonic friendship but it seemed to her that Gladys was putting her job on the line for whatever it was.

            “Emilia, are you okay?”  Gladys suddenly asked. 

Emilia opened her mouth to speak but feared her voice might betray her so she nodded instead. 

            “You make very quiet today….” Kwesi began but Gladys interrupted him with a playful slap on the shoulder.

            “No more pidgin English.  Emilia understands Fanti.  She speaks Akan very well.”

Emilia was surprised at how familiar Gladys and Kwesi had gotten with each other in such a short time.  She had met Kwesi before Gladys did and, although the meeting had been brief and ill-fated, she somehow felt Kwesi was being disloyal to her.  It wasn’t supposed to hurt her but it did and she didn’t know which made her angrier-that she felt betrayed or the fact that it hurt when it shouldn’t.  She hadn’t developed any feelings other than pity for him so she did not understand why his seeming romance with another woman bothered her so much. 

She stood up from the chair Gladys had placed beside Kwesi’s bed for her. 

            “I must be going,” she said to Kwesi, trying hard to avoid eye contact with Gladys.  “I’m so glad you’re doing okay.  I was so scared.”

            “You think say I go die?”

            “I said speak Fanti,” Gladys said in Fanti as she moved from where she was sitting beside Kwesi on the bed.  Emilia wondered what would have happened if any of the nurses or doctors had walked in to see one of their colleagues sitting on a patient’s bed.

            “See you later, Emilia” Gladys said as she picked up the plates and cups she and Kwesi had just used.  “You know he will be discharged tomorrow, right?”

            “O, I’m so glad to hear that,” Emilia said still avoiding eye contact with Gladys.  “I’ll come visit you at home on Saturday.”

            “I no dey go for dat house anymore.  I move.”  Kwesi said.

            “Where have you moved to?”

            “He’s moving in with me,” Gladys said matter-of-factly as she strode out of the ward.

Pain shot through Emilia’s heart like a knife.  She remembered the first night she had met Gladys at the hospital.  Something in Gladys’ manner that night had seemed condescending.  She didn’t look like the kind of nurse who would date a tro-tro driver at all.  Or, Emilia wondered, is it a newly discovered familial link?

            “I wish you all the best, Kwesi.  I’m so happy for you.”

            “Thank you,” Kwesi said with a smile.

Emilia left the ward with a lump in her throat.  She felt somehow that Gladys was doing something wrong to her but she didn’t understand why she felt that way.  She saw a visitors’ bathroom and hurried into it to release the tears welling up behind her eyelids.

            “I should have said something to her.  I should have!”  She whispered softly to herself.  But what was there to say?  After all, she was just a prostitute who shouldn’t be emotionally attached to her clients.

That night, as she lay beside Alice trying to sleep, she became overwhelmed by self-pity.  She thought about all that she had been through and wondered whether there was really a God who cared.

The sound of Alice’s snoring irritated her.  She sneaked out of the room to sit on the wall of the uncompleted section of the building.  The compound was very quiet.  All of Alice’s co-tenants seemed to be sleeping.  One of them was lying on a mat in front of his door, snoring.  It must be too hot inside, Emilia thought.

She looked again into the house in which she had seen the little girl she suspected was blindfolded.  It was very dark so she couldn’t see much.  Suddenly, an overwhelming desire to sneak into that house overtook her better judgment.  She jumped off the short wall and walked slowly to the wall dividing the two houses.  She turned briefly to look at the man on the mat.  He was still snoring.  She kept her eyes on him as she put her hands on the wall and lifted body up.  She put one leg over the wall, sat on it briefly before jumping into the darkness on the other side.

She landed on a soda can and winced at the sound it made.  She expected something to happen so she hid among the plantain trees for a bit.  She began to sweat from fright.  The basic instinct for self-preservation kept telling her to jump back over the wall.  She took a step back, put one hand above the wall but then she looked back again at the building that she thought held an innocent girl captive.  She started moving through the darkness towards that building, one precarious step after another.  She expected to hear someone yell or a dog bark

Okota had just locked the door on Baaba when he heard the crunch of a soda can.  He quickly ducked under a window and looked out.  It was too dark outside to see much.  He was beginning to relax when he heard footsteps.  He began to panic.  Whatever he did not understand unsettled him.  He moved stealthily across the corridor and into the room where Nii Darku sat on a couch smoking a joint.

            “There’s someone outside.  I hear footsteps!”

            “It’s Mahmoud,” Nii Darku said with a wave of his left hand.

            “It’s not Mahmoud.  Mahmoud would have blown the horn for us to open the gate.  There’s someone out there.  It’s either a ghost or a robber.”

            “Relax, relax!”  Nii Darku got out of the couch, took a last drag on his joint and put whatever was left of it on a coffee table.  “Okay, where is this ghost?”

They walked slowly out of the room, Okota leading the way.

Emilia found herself directly under a window when a flashlight lighted the path she had just traversed.  She was so frightened she could hardly breathe.  She held her breath as the bearer of the light passed right in front of her, swinging the light from side to side.  She realized that her entry had not escaped detection.  Another man appeared, holding something like a hand gun.  She got down on her hands and knees and crawled to the other side of the building, away from the men.  She sat below a window to catch her breath and nearly screamed when she heard the ‘clink’ of louvre blades being opened.

Then she heard a small voice singing.  Emilia pressed her nose to the mosquito netting.  She saw the shape of a girls face despite the darkness.  The girl must have seen her too for she whispered excitedly, ”Mother!”

            “Who are you?”  Emilia asked as gently as she could.

Baaba stepped away from the window, covered her face and let out an ear-shattering scream.  Emilia took to her heels and vaulted over the wall in one swift motion, not caring how she landed on the other side.  The man who had been lying on the mat was now awake.  He was urinating behind the wall.  She knocked him over, landed on top of him and they both rolled in the muddy pool of his urine.  When they got up, the man ran into his room like a rat that had just escaped the snap of a trap by a hair’s breadth.