She had given me a new electric sewing machine on the day of my graduation from Sister Lizzie’s sewing shop. She had also attended the celebration and had been there when my mother, aunts, and cousins spilled powder on me—from head to toe so that I looked like a careless baker—and formed a singing and white-handkerchief-waving procession that followed me from Sister Lizzie’s shop to our house where my mother served some finger food and drinks. Aunty had promised me an overlock machine and a button-making machine once I set up the kiosk. The gesture had brought me to tears. How many people would do such a thing for someone they weren’t even related to? This last thought had propelled me to my feet. I joined my mother indoors. What kind of person was I for even second-guessing Aunty, for thinking that anything she planned could go badly for me, for putting myself before her, before my mother? How could I throw away the opportunity to give my mother a better life after all that she had suffered?
The traditional wedding happened three months after my mother told me about Aunty’s proposal. And now, maybe, my name was Afi Ganyo.
Three
When we arrived in Accra, Richard came to welcome my mother and me and show us where we would be living. I hadn’t known what to expect when Aunty’s driver told us we were close. No one had told me where I would be staying or how Eli and the woman would fit into my living arrangements. Mawusi and I had speculated most of the previous evening when I went over to Tɔgã Pious’s to say goodbye. She was grinding pepper in a cast-iron kole that was held in place by her feet as we perched on low stools in her mother’s corner of the kitchen, away from the ears of her father’s wives and their children who were busy lighting coal-pot fires to begin the evening meal.
Mawusi was a believer in true love; she watched telenovelas way more than I did. She had started a Mills & Boon and Harlequin Romance book exchange club when we were in senior secondary school and believed that God created Yao—whom she had started dating in our first year of senior secondary school—to be her husband. My story—the marriage of a poor girl to a rich man whom she barely knew—was better than any telenovela or romance novel.
“I’m sure you’ll be in whichever house he’s in,” she said with confidence.
“They are not going to throw you into a bush,” my mother had said when I wondered aloud about where I would call home in Accra. I rolled my eyes at her response when her back was turned. My concerns temporarily receded the next day in Accra when the car drove through high metal gates, manned by two uniformed security guards, and stopped in a parking space in front of an eight-story apartment building. Seated in the back seat with my mother, I gasped at the sight of the white structure with its sliding windows and doors on each floor, which reflected the sunlight and caused the building to sparkle. I could see identical lawn furniture and potted plants neatly arranged on the covered balconies of the lower level flats. Beside us in the parking lot were an assortment of gleaming cars. A generator, which I would later discover was the size of a small house, hummed behind the building. Two men watered a lawn so green that I doubted its naturalness. The leaves of young palm trees, planted in the grass and perfectly spaced so that they looked like soldiers with elaborate headdresses on guard duty, rustled in the gentle breeze.
“Welcome, Madam,” someone said, breaking my trance and causing me to shut my mouth, which had been hanging open. It was a young man in a brown-and-yellow uniform.
“Thank you,” I mumbled, still enthralled by what I was seeing. I remembered that my mother was with me and turned to check on her. She had stuck her head out of the car window and craned her neck to look up at the structure in front of us. I left her to gawk and climbed out of the car. The driver had already opened the trunk and was removing our bags, which our greeter stood at the ready to collect. I picked my handbag off the seat and hung it on my shoulder and moved to help them with the bigger bags.
“No, Madam,” the man exclaimed, and grabbed the nearest suitcase to keep me from taking it.
“He will carry them,” the driver said.
The man nodded vigorously and reached for a second bag. I backed away.
“Fo Driver!” my mother called, she had climbed out of the car and was now standing beside us. “Is this where we are going to stay?” she asked the man who everyone, except the Ganyos, called Brother Driver. His name was Charles and his family’s house was less than a ten-minute walk away from ours in Ho. Charles nodded, his lips quivering in an effort to avoid breaking into a broad smile and his eyes purposely not connecting with ours. He obviously noticed and was amused by our reactions; he had probably come here many times before. Besides, he spent most of his day in Aunty’s house in Ho, which was quite majestic though it did not reach as high up in the sky as this one.
“He will show you the way,” Charles said to me, pointing to the man who had begun rolling away one of my suitcases while balancing a second on his head. A second man had appeared and was rolling away a third suitcase.
“Are you not coming?” I asked Charles, suddenly alarmed. Was he planning on simply leaving us here and driving away?
“I have to go back, Aunty is waiting, but Fo Richard is coming,” he told me. He had set the last of our belongings on the pavement that ran the perimeter of the building.
“Okay, thank you,” I said as he shut the trunk.
“May God go with you,” my mother said to him.
“Stay well,” he replied.
Charles began to drive away just as Richard’s white Range Rover entered the compound and pulled into the parking space that Charles had vacated.
“Mia woezor,” Richard called as he came toward us, his arms opened wide. He wore dark blue jeans and white leather loafers, which I imagined would feel like a baby’s skin to the touch, and an unnecessarily tight polo shirt that revealed everything, including his obscenely protruding bellybutton. He hugged my mother and then me.
“How was the trip?” he asked as he picked up my mother’s traveling bag.
“Oh no, please leave it, Fo Richard,” my mother protested, too rattled to answer his question.
“Let me carry it,” he said, brushing aside her protest and walking in the direction in which the men had taken the other luggage. We began to follow him. Behind his back my mother turned to me and formed a silent “Hehn?” with her mouth. Like me, she was in awe of it all, including Richard Ganyo carrying our bag. I broke into a grin and grabbed her arm. I was excited.
We entered the foyer and the girl behind the curved security desk rose and greeted Richard. He responded in a way that told me he came here often, and then he poked one of the buttons on the wall beside the silver lift doors. My heart skipped a beat; I had never been on a lift before. I hoped that I wouldn’t embarrass myself in front of Richard and this girl who had a wide smile on her face though I suspected she was laughing on the inside at our awkwardness. I got the feeling that my arrival had been extensively discussed by the staff. When the lift doors opened, I held my mother’s hand and pulled her inside to stand behind Richard. We both held on to a hip-level iron bar on the wall, expecting the movement of the machine to rock us. The opposite wall had a mirror so that we could see our reflections. I still had on the weave from the wedding but had tied it back in a ponytail. I had wanted to wear jeans and a flowery off-shoulder top for the trip but had decided against it. I was not sure about where we would be going and who would be meeting us. So instead I had worn a simple pleated dress that I had sewn with batik my mother had bought me last Christmas, and flat sandals with crystal-like baubles on the straps; they had been in one of the suitcases the Ganyos gave me. My mother had on one of her good kabas and her wig from the wedding. Just as the lift pinged, I met Richard’s eyes in the mirror and we both smiled; me because I had successfully ridden in my first lift, and him, I assume, because he was happy to be showing me my new home.