Homegoing

  “So she is still giving you trouble, eh? Even though you are taking her to Osei Bonsu’s funeral?” David asked.

  “Nothing is ever enough for this wife of mine,” Quey said.

  “That is what happens when you marry for power instead of marrying for love. The Bible says—”

  “I don’t need to know what the Bible says. I studied the Bible too, remember? In fact, I recall going to religion class more often than you did,” Quey said with a short laugh. “I have no use for that religion. I chose this land, these people, these customs over those of the British.”

  “You chose it, or it was chosen for you?” David said quietly. Quey stole a glance at James, and then looked away. It was as his mother always yelled at Quey when she was truly angry: “You are so soft, you break apart. Weak man.”

  “And you, James? You are almost old enough for the marriage festivities to start. Should we begin looking for a bride for you, or have you got a woman in mind?” David winked at him and then, as though the wink were the pulling of a switch that led to his throat, began to laugh so hard he choked on his own spittle.

  “Nana Yaa and I have chosen a nice wife for him to marry when the time comes,” Quey said,.

  David nodded carefully and tipped the calabash of wine back, his Adam’s apple bobbing against the stream of liquid that ran down it. Watching him, James cringed. Before his great-uncle Fiifi had died, when James was still just a small boy, Fiifi had conspired with Quey to choose the woman whom James would marry. She was called Amma Atta, the daughter of Chief Abeeku Badu’s successor to the stool. Their joining would be the last thing on the list of rectifications that Fiifi had promised himself he would fulfill for Quey. It would be the realization of a promise that Cobbe Otcher had made to Effia Otcher Collins years ago: that her blood would be joined with the blood of Fante royals. James would marry her on the eve of his eighteenth birthday. She would be his first, his most important, wife.

  Because Amma had also grown up in the village, James had known her all his life, and when they were young, he used to play with her outside Chief Abeeku’s compound. But the older they got, the more Amma started to annoy him. Little things, like the way she always laughed just a second too long after he told a joke, just long enough for him to know she didn’t find him funny at all, or the way she put so much coconut oil in her hair that if the strands brushed against his shoulder while they were together, his shoulder would continue to smell of oil when they were apart. He was only fifteen when he knew that he could never truly love a woman like that, but it didn’t matter what he thought.

  The men continued sipping the wine in silence for a while. In the trees, the birds were calling each other to sleep. A spider crawled over James’s bare foot, and he thought of the Anansi stories his mother used to tell him, and still told his younger brothers and sisters. “Have you heard the story of Anansi and the sleeping bird?” she would ask them, mischief dancing behind her eyes, and they would all shout “No!” and giggle into their hands, thrilled by the lie they were telling, for they had all heard it many times before, learning then that a story was nothing more than a lie you got away with.

  David tipped the calabash back again, his head tipping back with it so that he could completely empty the contents. He belched, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Is it true?” he asked. “The rumors about the British abolishing slavery soon?”

  Quey shrugged his shoulders. “The year James was born, they told everyone in the Castle that the slave trade was abolished and that we could not sell our slaves to America anymore, but did that stop the tribes from selling? Did that make the British leave? Don’t you see this war the Asantes and the British are fighting now and will continue to fight for far longer than you or I or even James can live to see? There’s more at stake here than just slavery, my brother. It’s a question of who will own the land, the people, the power. You cannot stick a knife in a goat and then say, Now I will remove my knife slowly, so let things be easy and clean, let there be no mess. There will always be blood.”

  James had heard this speech or something like it many times before. The British were no longer selling slaves to America, but slavery had not ended, and his father did not seem to think that it would end. They would just trade one type of shackles for another, trade physical ones that wrapped around wrists and ankles for the invisible ones that wrapped around the mind. James hadn’t understood this when he was younger, when the legal slave exportation had ended and the illegal one had begun, but he understood now. The British had no intention of leaving Africa, even once the slave trade ended. They owned the Castle, and, though they had yet to speak it aloud, they intended to own the land as well.

  —

  They set out again the next morning. James thought his mother looked as though the night’s rest had lifted her spirits. She even hummed while they traveled. They passed small towns and villages that were built of little more than mud and sticks. They relied upon the kindness of people whom Quey had once worked with, or cousins of cousins whom Nana Yaa had never met, people who offered their floors and a bit of palm wine. The further into the country they moved, the more James noticed how his father’s skin attracted attention among the bush people. “Are you a white man?” one little girl had asked, reaching out with her index finger and swiping Quey’s light brown skin as though she could capture a little bit of the color on it.

  “What do you think?” Quey had asked, his Twi rusty but passable.

  The little girl giggled, then shook her head slowly before running away to report back to the other children who were gathered around the fire staring, too intimidated to ask him themselves.

  They reached Kumasi at dusk and were greeted by Nana Yaa’s eldest brother, Kofi, and his guards.

  “Akwaaba,” he said. “You are welcome here.”

  They were taken to the new king’s large palace, where the servants had prepared a room at the corner of the structure. Kofi sat with them while they ate the welcome food and updated them on what had passed in the town since they had left their own village.

  “I’m sorry, sister, but we could not wait so long to bury him,” Kofi said, and Nana Yaa nodded. She had known that the body would be buried before they got there so that the new king could take office. She had only wanted to make it to the funeral.

  “And Osei Yaw?” she asked. Everyone was worried about the new king. Because they were at war, they had had to choose him quickly, just after the burial of James’s grandfather, and no one knew whether or not this would be bad luck for the people and the war that they were fighting.

  “He is doing a fine job as Asantehene,” Kofi said. “Don’t worry, little sister. He will make sure our father is honored as he should be honored.”

  As his uncle spoke, James noticed that Kofi paid no attention to his father. His eyes never once reached Quey’s eyes, not even when wandering. He was like the blind cat that moved through the dark forest solely on instinct, avoiding the logs and rocks that threatened it or had hurt it once before.

  The funeral proceedings began the next day. Nana Yaa left the palace long before James and the other men were awake so that she could join with the women of the family in mournful wailing, wailing that announced to everyone in the town that the celebration day had indeed arrived. By noon, these women were dressed in their red cloths, nyanya leaves and raffia braided about their clay-stained foreheads as they walked up and down the streets, wailing for all the townspeople to hear.

  In the meantime, James, his father, and all of the other men put on their black and red mourning cloths. There was a line of drummers that began at one corner of the Royal Palace and ended at the other. They would drum until dawn. The men began chanting, then dancing the Kete, the Adowa, the Dansuomu. They would dance until dawn.

  The dead king’s family sat in a row so that they could be greeted by all the mourners as they came in. A single-file line of people began at James’s grandfather’s first wife and went all the way into the m
iddle of the town square. Everyone in line shook the hand of each family member, and offered their condolences. James stood next to his father. He tried to remember to keep his shoulders squared and to look each mourner directly in the eyes so that they knew he was a man whose blood was as important as they expected it to be. They shook his hand and murmured their sorries, and James accepted, even though he had never lived in Asanteland and had known his grandfather only as a person knows his shadow, as a figure that is there, visible but untouchable, unknowable.

  By the time the last of the mourners were coming through, the sun was at its highest point in the sky. James reached up briefly to wipe sweat out of his eyes, and once he had, he opened them to the loveliest girl he had ever seen.

  “May the old king find peace in the land of the spirits,” the girl said, but she did not reach for his hand.

  “What’s this?” James asked. “You do not shake?”

  “Respectfully, I will not shake the hand of a slaver,” she said. She looked him in the eye as she spoke, and James studied her face. Her hair was worn in a puff at the top of her head and her words had whistled through a gap between her front teeth. Though her mourning cloth was wrapped tightly, it had slid a little low so that James could just make out the tops of her breasts. He should have slapped her for her insolence, reported her, but the line continued on behind her and the funeral had to continue too. James let her move on, tried to watch her as she continued down the line, but before long he lost her in the crowd.

  He lost her, but he could not forget her, even as the line moved on and the rest of the people came by to shake his hand. James was by turns annoyed and ashamed by what she had said. Did she shake his father’s hand? His uncle’s? Who was she to decide what a slaver was? James had spent his whole life listening to his parents argue about who was better, Asante or Fante, but the matter could never come down to slaves. The Asante had power from capturing slaves. The Fante had protection from trading them. If the girl could not shake his hand, then surely she could never touch her own.

  —

  They finally laid Osei Bonsu, the old king, to rest. The gong was rung to let the townspeople know that it was done, that they could all return to their normal lives. It would not be over for the family members for another forty days. For another forty days, they would wear the mourning clothes, sort through and divide the gifts, and worry over the king’s successor.

  James’s parents would be leaving within the next couple of days, and James knew that he didn’t have much time to find the girl who had refused to shake his hand.

  He went to his cousin Kwame. Kwame was approaching twenty years old and had already married twice. He was a fat, dark man who spoke loudly and drank often, but he was kind and loyal. James and his family had visited once when James was only seven. He and Kwame had been playing in their grandfather’s Golden Stool room, a room men had been killed for entering uninvited, a room that had been expressly forbidden to them. While playing, James had knocked over one of their grandfather’s canes. In one of those coincidences that could only be attributed to evil spirits, the cane had landed in the palm oil lamp, catching fire, and the two boys had worked quickly to put it out. Smelling the fire, the whole family had come to see what was going on.

  “Who is responsible for this?” their grandfather shouted. He had been the Asante king so long that his voice seemed no longer human, more like the roar of a lion.

  James had looked down immediately, expecting Kwame to tell on him. He was the outsider, only in town once every few years. Kwame was the one who had to live there, with their lion of a grandfather and his quick, powerful rage. But Kwame had said nothing. Even as their mothers laid them across their laps and beat them in unison, Kwame still had said nothing.

  “Kwame, I need to find a girl,” James said.

  “Eh, cousin, you have come to the right place,” Kwame said, laughing loudly. “I know every girl who walks this town. Describe her to me.”

  So James did, and when he finished, his cousin told him who she was and where he could find her. James went out into the town he barely knew, looking for the girl he’d met but once. He knew his cousin would keep his secret for him.

  When James found her, she was carrying water in a bucket on the top of her head, heading back toward her family’s hut.

  She did not seem surprised to see him, and he was confident that whatever he’d felt during their brief time together, she had felt too.

  “Can I help you with that?” James asked, pointing to the bucket.

  She shook her head, horrified. “No, please. You shouldn’t be doing this kind of work.”

  “Call me James.”

  “James,” she repeated, rolling the strange name around in her mouth, tasting it as though it were bitter melon hitting the back of her tongue. “James.”

  “And you are?”

  “Akosua Mensah,” she said. The two kept walking. The few townspeople who recognized James stopped to bow or stare, but mostly people went about their daily lives, fetching water and carrying wood back for their fires.

  It was a ten-mile walk from the stream to Akosua’s hut in the bush on the outskirts of town, and James was determined to learn everything there was to know about her.

  “Why would you not shake my hand at the king’s funeral?” James asked.

  “I told you. I will not shake the hand of a Fante slaver.”

  “And am I a slaver?” James asked, trying to keep his anger from entering his voice. “If I am Fante, am I not also Asante? Was my grandfather not your king?”

  She smiled at him. “I am one of thirteen children. Now there are only ten of us who remain. When I was a small girl, there was war between my village and another. They took three of my brothers.”

  They walked in silence for a few minutes longer. James was sorry for her loss, but he knew too that all loss was just a part of life. Even his mother, important as she was, had once been captured, stolen from her family and planted in another’s. “If your village had won that war, would you not have taken three of someone else’s brothers?” James asked, unable to resist the question.

  Akosua looked away. The bucket on her head was so steady, James wondered what it would take to knock it down. Maybe wind? Maybe an insect? “I know what you are thinking,” she finally said. “Everyone is a part of this. Asante, Fante, Ga. British, Dutch, and American. And you are not wrong to think like this. It is how we are all taught to think. But I do not want to think this way. When my brothers and the other people were taken, my village mourned them as we redoubled our military efforts. And what does that say? We avenge lost lives by taking more? It doesn’t make sense to me.”

  They stopped walking so that she could adjust her wrapper. For the second time that day, James tried as hard as he could not to look at her breasts. She continued. “I love my people, James,” she said, and his name on her tongue was indescribably sweet. “I am proud to be Asante, as I am sure you are proud to be Fante, but after I lost my brothers, I decided that as for me, Akosua, I will be my own nation.”

  As James listened to her speak, he felt something well up inside him as it had never done before. If he could, he would listen to her speak forever. If he could, he would join that nation she spoke of.

  They walked farther. The sun was getting even lower in the sky, and James knew it would be impossible for him to make it home before nightfall. Still, they slowed down so that it seemed their feet were not even moving at all really, just coasting slowly, as though their bodies were being lifted and flown awkwardly by the mosquitoes they could feel buzzing around them.

  “Are you promised to anyone?” James asked.

  Akosua glanced shyly at him. “My father does not believe in promising a girl before her body has shown that she is ready, and I have not yet received my blood.”

  James thought about his own wife-to-be back home in his village, selected for him because of her status. He would never be happy with her, and his marriage would be as loveless and
biting as that of his parents. But he knew his parents would never approve of Akosua, not even as a third or fourth wife. She had nothing, and she came from nowhere.

  Nothing from nowhere. It was something his grandmother Effia used to say on nights when she seemed most sad. James couldn’t remember a day when he hadn’t seen Effia in all black, nor a night when he hadn’t heard her faint crying.

  When he was still just a small boy, he’d spent a weekend with her at her house near the Castle. In the middle of the night, he had woken up and heard her crying in her room. He’d gone to her, and wrapped her into a hug as tight as his little arms could muster.

  “Why are you crying, Mama?” he’d asked, touching his fingers to her face, trying to catch some of the tears to blow and make a wish on as his mother sometimes did when he cried.

  “Have you heard the story of Baaba, my own?” she asked, pulling him up onto her lap and rocking him back and forth.

  That was the first night James heard it, but it wasn’t the last.

  Now James grabbed Akosua’s hand, stopped her from moving. The bucket on her head began to sway, and she lifted her hands to steady it. “I want to marry you,” James said.

  They were only steps away from the girl’s hut. He could see it through the bushes. Young children were wrestling with each other in the mud, coming up with their faces caked in brown. A man stood chopping the tall grass with his machete. Each time the blade hit the ground it shook the earth. James thought he could feel it move under his feet.

  “How can you marry me, James?” the girl said. She looked worried now, her eyes stealing over to where her family waited. If she was too late with the water, her mother would beat her, then yell at her until dawn. No one would believe that she had been with the Asante king’s grandson, and if they did believe it, they would only smell trouble.

  “When your blood comes, you must tell no one. You must hide it. I am leaving tomorrow, but I will come back for you, and we will leave this town together. Start a new life in a small village where no one knows us.”