“You just made my skin pock.”
It’s true—the woman’s skin looked like chicken skin and the white hairs on her arm stood up. She rubbed her arms, as if to wipe off the pocks.
“We have a lot in common, my dear Hassana,” she said, dabbing her cheeks and smearing her hands on the creases of her woollen dress. “For four years, Fritz and I were kept hostage. Do you know what that means?”
I shook my head.
“We were prisoners. We were captured and kept by the Asante. Some days, we had our hands and feet tied up. For me, it was a sign from God to better understand what the slave trade was doing to humanity. I understand what you could have gone through, but do you know what brings us even closer?” She blinked and her eyes had filled with more water. “I had twins, and one of them died. Aunty Rose lost her twin, too.”
I hugged Mrs Ramseyer tight, and didn’t want to let go. What would I do if I found out that Husseina had died? I didn’t know where she was, but, in the deepest part of my knowing, felt that she still lived. I would know if she had died. Wouldn’t I?
“Talk to Aunty Rose,” Mrs Ramseyer said.
It made sense to me now—Aunty Rose’s pinched face, her sadness. Aunty Rose taught us English classes and even when there were funny stories, like that talking rabbit in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, she barely cracked a smile. I had never seen her burst into any kind of emotion: not laughter, not passionate cries. Unlike her father, Revd Ramseyer—when he was angry, the whole Christian village could hear him railing, and it was usually about the treachery of some heathen chief. And Mrs Ramseyer, the mother of twins—she was anything but sad. But I understood Aunty Rose now.
“Thank you for telling me about your life,” I said.
“Let me know any time you want to talk about your sadness,” said Mrs Ramseyer. “Do you want me to tell Aunty Rose about this?”
I shook my head no. I had to do it myself. Was it something she talked about with other people? How would I even bring up the subject with Aunty Rose? I plotted. When I wasn’t playing with Afua, I spent my time watching Aunty Rose, waiting for the best moment to approach her, but also began to grow fearful of what would become of me if I didn’t find Husseina. Sometimes, Aunty Rose would twitch and look over her shoulder, as if an invisible hand had pressed itself there. Most of the time, she held long conversations with the African catechists in the mission, like Brother Stefano, and would break out into belly-holding laughter. I never saw her do that with her parents or the other white missionaries. Other times, she would talk to herself, and I was sure it was to her twin she spoke. In those moments, to make her feel less lonely, I would linger by her.
She led a group of us to the garden next to the big mission house, and I slipped my hand into hers. At first, her hand went floppy, then she looked at me and gripped my hand. We dropped tomato seeds into the holes we’d dug and covered them up with black crumbs of soil. We sprinkled the soil with a light rain of water, then went back to the mission house for lunch. I sat by the other pupils, as we were told to, but I really wanted to take my bowl of boiled green plantain and nkotomire stew to sit by Aunty Rose, who was at table with the other teachers.
During nap hour, I couldn’t sleep. I thought and thought about Aunty Rose and her twin and then I thought about their God. Mrs Ramseyer had told us that good things happened to people who followed their God, so how could their God have punished these people who were supposed to be doing his work? They’d left the comfort of their family and the things they were used to, had come all the way to a new land where people looked nothing like them, and yet he had had them imprisoned and had taken away one of Mrs Ramseyer’s babies. I didn’t understand why bad things should happen to them. The way I understood it at least, with our Otienu, our God, it could simply be the destiny of the person. Everyone was born with a specific journey. That was it! I would talk to Aunty Rose about her God, and then, if I was feeling bolder, I would ask her about her twin.
I got out of bed and left the dormitory, even though we weren’t supposed to go out during nap hour. I ran across the lawn we had freshly mowed that morning, which had left fat blisters on my thumbs, and went up the stairs to knock on Aunty Rose’s door.
She answered it and let me into her room, without asking questions. She had no photographs or paintings on her wall, making hers one of the plainest rooms in the mission.
“Why did your God take your twin?” I blurted, out of breath. My mouth acted faster than my brain.
She closed the door behind her and drew up a chair for me to sit on.
She lowered herself on to her bed.
“Mama must have told you then,” she said, staring into the air in front of her. “I was a baby when it happened, so I have no memory of it. How much do you know?”
I repeated everything Mrs Ramseyer had told me.
“The people who took my parents prisoner, they made a doll out of clay, painted it white and told them it would help me feel less alone. My parents didn’t dare say no to the Asante, but as soon as we left, they destroyed it. Said it was a fetish. I wonder how I would have felt if I had been allowed to keep it.” She stopped, sighed. “I honestly don’t know why he didn’t survive. He was a boy. God has his reasons for everything. Maybe it was to teach my parents humility; maybe it was to save their lives. Maybe when our captors saw that we, too, experienced loss and heartbreak, it endeared us to them.”
I saw that I was making her sadder, so I said, “Sorry.” I was thinking I really didn’t like their God at all.
“I have a twin,” I volunteered. “But I don’t know where she is.”
Aunty Rose stared at me, then quietly said, “You have to find her.”
It was not what I’d expected to hear from her, so I said, “She’s in a place surrounded by plenty of blue water.”
“Tell me more,” Aunty Rose said.
“I dream of her a lot. But once in a while, I dream her dreams. That’s how I know where she is. I can’t control when I get her dreams.”
“Hassana, please, whatever you do, find your sister. You have to.”
If I knew how to, I would have done that a long time ago, I almost shot back. She asked me to repeat the dreams and everything I remembered. She was beginning to annoy me.
“You’re too happy here,” she concluded.
“I’m not that happy. I’m quite lonely…”
“You’re not unhappy. There’s a pattern to everything you’ve told me. It sounds as if you dream her dreams when you are unhappy. I don’t know about your sister and if she has the same experience, but you need to feel deep sadness to have that openness to her.”
I hadn’t realized this, but it was ringing true. Even as little girls, some of the times we’d had dreams in common were when our grandmother didn’t want to sing with us because we’d stayed too long at the waterhole, the time our father went missing and when I got into such a sorry state at Wofa Sarpong’s. Aunty Rose was probably right.
“How do I get sad?”
“You can’t stay here any more. You have to leave. My parents won’t let you be sad—they don’t believe that children should be unhappy. Yes, sometimes, Revd Ramseyer is like a dragon, but have you noticed how after he shouts he always brings a fruit or something nice to cheer you up? It’s too happy here.”