|
Micheline raised bashful eyes at the husband she had left eleven years ago, but never divorced. “Sleep well, Old Man,” she said as he lowered himself onto the thin mattress.
Behind the closed double doors of Micheline’s bedroom, Kokui and Nami began to shed the long day. Micheline, too, peeled off her scarf and boubou and settled into the bed.
“No one else makes Mawuli Nuga sleep on a floor mat,” Micheline said as her daughters quickly arranged themselves around her.
Kokui ached at the pride masking hope in her mother’s voice. The truth was no one knew who or what made Mawuli Nuga do anything he did—and no one made Mawuli Nuga do anything he didn’t want to do.
“Ma, why do you always make him sleep out there the first night?”
“Only to boot us onto the floor the rest of the week, and let him in,” Nami added.
“The first night is to punish him,” Micheline said, “but a whole week would punish me.”
Kokui inched deeper into her mother’s armpit. “Ma, why don’t you leave Daddy and remarry?”
“Re marry?” She sliced the word into two, seemingly considering the question for the first time in her life. “Marry who again?” She shook her head. “No.”
“Why?” Kokui emptied her chest of breath, overcome with sadness for her mother. “Because you love Daddy?”
“Should I let him give another woman what I’ve earned?”
“What have you earned, Ma?”
“As long as I am around, what he has is yours. The others have divorced him. Their kids have left the country.”
“They’re still his children, Ma. And he is married to Auntie Hemaa, too.”
“Hemaa has no children.”
“Have you spoken with Daddy about this?” Who knew how Mawuli would decide to divide his estate in his will, Kokui thought, or if there wasn’t some other wife somewhere with children who could also stake a claim? “He can leave his things to whoever he wants to.”
“Don’t worry about what my husband and I speak about.” Micheline began stroking her daughters’ heads. “How are things at your father’s house? With your stepm—Hemaa?”
Kokui winced at the studied nonchalance in her mother’s query. She asked this question every year. “She’s still there.”
“She’s there, Ma,” Nami repeated, “but Daddy has gone to—”
Their mother’s stroking stopped. “Has gone to do what, Nami?”
Kokui inhaled. Nami wouldn’t tell their mother about their new baby brother. Not after she had insisted the news was their father’s to tell. Not on their first night of the only week they spent together as a family every year. “Ma—”
“Daddy has gone to bring another baby to the house.”
Kokui gasped at the sudden crack in Nami’s voice. Gone was the judgmental seal of set lips her little sister often wore when they discussed their mother, and absent was the sycophantic defense she often made for their father. Nami’s mask of sarcasm had broken, her face agape with dry sobs.
“A baby boy,” Nami rasped. “He cried all through the night. That’s why Daddy was yawning—”
“Did he keep the baby in his room with him?” Micheline asked.
“On the way here, we learned that the woman, the baby’s mother, is the wife of one border agent. The agents tried to pull us out of the car, opened Sister Kokui’s door, called a soldier in.” Every few words, the crack in her voice deepened. “They almost arrested us at Aflao.”
Kokui swiped the tear sliding across the bridge of her nose. “No, Ma, he didn’t let the baby sleep with him like you say he used to do with us.”
Micheline wheezed now, silent tears shaking her body and the bed. “I chose wrongly,” she said. “I chose wrongly. I chose wrongly.”
Nami croaked. “If you say he is wrong, Ma, then we are wrong.”
Kokui reached across her mother’s belly to clasp her sister’s hand.
“Be wiser than I was.”
“How, Ma?” Kokui asked. It wasn’t Micheline’s fault Mawuli had deceived her. How could she have chosen differently when she hadn’t known who or how he really was?
“I don’t know,” Micheline admitted.
They lay in their respective lakes of sadness, their throats taut not only from the weeping but the whispering. God forbid, Kokui thought bitterly, Mawuli hear and accept that the knife he had plunged in the hearts of his wives had cut his children, too. It was so confusing to her, this impulse they all shared to protect Mawuli from the pain he had caused them.
“She cursed us, Ma.” Kokui brought it up because she had not been able to keep the woman’s words down since she heard them. Lying next to her mother and sister, she could see the serpentine arm of her baby brother’s mother stabbing at the darkness.
“Who cursed you?”
“The boy’s mother.”
“Ho!” Nami scoffed. “You think she’s the only one that’s cursed Daddy? Even Ma cursed Daddy.”
“But she didn’t curse Daddy,” Kokui said. “She cursed us.”
“What did she say?” their mother asked.
Kokui conjured the woman’s desperate, acrid rage. “Because of the shame you’ve caused me, not one of your daughters will marry happily.”
“Is that a curse?” Nami asked, wiping her mask back in place. “Who do we know who is happily married?”
Micheline let out a sad breath. “You can hope for something better...”
( Continued... )
Copyright 2024 All rights reserved. Book excerpt reprinted by permission of the author, Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond. This excerpt is used for promotional purposes only.
More Books by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond
www.NanaBrewHammond.com
| 
