“It’s Abena!” Aba cried at the next village meeting, bursting into the room full of old men, her hand clutching her heaving bosom. “She brought evil to Ohene Nyarko, and that evil is spreading to us all!”
The elders gathered accounts from Ohene Nyarko and Abena themselves, and then, for the next eight hours, they debated what to do. It was reasonable that Ohene Nyarko had promised to marry her after the next good harvest. They saw no harm in that, but they could not let the fornication go unpunished lest the children grow up to think such things were acceptable, lest the more superstitious among them continue to blame Abena for the faults of the land. All they knew was, the woman had to be as barren as the land itself for her to not have conceived, and they knew too that if they banished her from the village now, Ohene Nyarko would be too angry to help them get the earth to recover once she had left. Finally, they reached their decision and announced it to all. Abena would be removed from the village when she conceived a child or after seven bad years. If a good harvest came before either outcome, they would let her stay.
—
“Is your husband home?” Abena asked Ohene Nyarko’s wife on the third day of the sixth bad year. She had walked the short distance as the sky dropped around her, but by the time she got there, it had stopped.
Mefia didn’t look at her, nor did she speak. In fact, Ohene Nyarko’s first wife had not spoken to Abena since the night she fought with her husband, begging him to end his affair, to end their family’s shame, and he replied that he wouldn’t go back on his word. Still, Abena tried being nice to the woman any chance she could.
Finally, after the moment of silence grew too awkward for Abena to bear, she went into Ohene Nyarko’s hut. When she saw him, he was packing some things into a small kente cloth sack.
“Where are you going?” she asked, standing in the doorway.
“I’m going to Osu. They say someone there has brought over a new plant. They say it will grow well here.”
“And what will I do while you are in Osu? They’ll probably kick me out the second you’re gone,” Abena said.
Ohene Nyarko set down his things and lifted Abena into his arms so that their faces were level. “Then they will have to deal with me when I get back.”
He put her down again. Outside, his children were picking bark from the Tweapia trees so that they could make chewing sticks to take to Kumasi and sell for food. Abena knew this shamed Ohene Nyarko—not that his children had found something useful to do, but that they had done so because of his inability to feed them.
They made love quickly that day, and Ohene Nyarko set out shortly after. Abena went home to find her parents sitting in front of a fire, roasting groundnuts.
“Ohene Nyarko says there is a new plant in Osu that is growing very well. He has gone to get it and bring it back to us.”
Her mother nodded. Her father shrugged. Abena knew she had shamed them. When the pronouncement of her future exile was made, her parents had gone to the elders to try to reason with them, to make them reconsider. At that time, and still, Unlucky was the oldest man in the village. Deference was still owed, even if he wasn’t allowed to be an elder because he wasn’t originally from the village.
“We have only one child,” Old Man had said, but the elders just turned their heads.
“What have you done?” Abena’s mother asked her at dinner that night, crying into her hands before lifting them up to the heavens. “What have I done to deserve this child?”
But at that point, only two bad years had gone by, and Abena assured them that the plants would grow, and Ohene Nyarko would marry her. Now their only solace was the fact that it seemed Abena had inherited her mother’s supposed barrenness, or Old Man’s family’s curse, or whatever it was that kept her from conceiving a child.
“Nothing will grow here,” Old Man said. “This village is finished. No one can keep living like this. No one can take one more year eating nothing but nuts and tree bark. They think they are exiling just you, but really this land has condemned us all to exile. You watch. It’s only a matter of time.”
—
Ohene Nyarko came back a week later with the new seeds. The plant was called cocoa, and he said it would change everything. He said the Akuapem people in the Eastern Region were already reaping the benefits of the new plant, selling it to the white men overseas at a rate that was reminiscent of the old trade.
“You don’t know how much these little seeds cost me!” Ohene Nyarko said, holding them in his palm so that everyone around him could see and feel and smell them. “But it will be worth it for the village. Trust me. They will have to stop calling us the Gold Coast and start calling us the Cocoa Coast!”
And he was right. Within months Ohene Nyarko’s cocoa trees had sprouted, bearing their gold and green and orange fruit. The villagers had never seen anything like it, and they were so curious, so eager to touch and open the pods before they were ready, that Ohene Nyarko and his sons had taken to sleeping outside so that they could keep watch.
“But will this feed us?” the villagers wondered after they had been shooed away by the children or yelled at by Ohene Nyarko himself.
Abena saw less and less of Ohene Nyarko in those first few months of his cocoa farming, but the absence comforted her. The harder he worked on the farm, the sooner his harvest would be good; and the sooner the harvest was good, the sooner they could marry. On the days she did see him, he would speak of nothing other than the cocoa and what it had cost him. His hands smelled of that new smell, sweet and dark and earthy, and after she had left him, she would continue to smell it on the places he had touched, the full dark circles of her nipples or just behind her ears. The plant was affecting them all.
Finally, Ohene Nyarko said that it was time for the harvest, and all the men and women from the village came to do as he instructed, as he had been instructed by the farmers in the Eastern Region. They cracked open the cocoa fruit to find the sweet white pulp that surrounded the small purple beans, and placed the pulpy beans on a bed of banana leaves, then covered them with more leaves. After that, Ohene Nyarko sent them home.
“We can’t live off of this,” the villagers whispered as they walked back to their houses. Some of the families had already started packing up their huts, discouraged by what they had seen inside the cocoa pods. But the rest of them came back after five days to spread the fermented beans in the sun so that they would dry. The villagers had each donated their kente sacks, and once dry, the cocoa beans were packed into these sacks.
“Now what?” they asked each other, glancing around as Ohene Nyarko put the sacks into his hut.
“Now we rest,” he announced to the group waiting outside. “Tomorrow I will go to the trading market and sell what I can.”
He slept in Abena’s hut that night, as brazenly and openly as if they had been married for forty years or more, and this gave Abena hope that soon they would be. But the man beside her on the floor was not the confident man who had promised an entire village redemption. In her arms, the man she had known since before they wore cloth to cover their loins trembled.
“What if this doesn’t work? What if I can’t sell them?” he asked, his head buried in her bosom.
“Shh! Stop that talk,” she said. “They will sell. They have to sell.”
But he kept crying and shaking so that she could not hear him when he said, “I’m afraid of that too,” and she would not have understood even if she had.
He was gone by the time she woke up the next morning. The villagers had found and killed a scrawny young goat in preparation for his return, cooking the tough meat for days as best they could in the hope that it would turn tender. The younger children, thinking they were fast and clever, would try to snatch small pieces of partially cooked meat from the animal when their mothers weren’t looking, but the women, born with a sixth sense for children’s mischief, would swat their hands, then clutch them at the wrists, holding them over the fire until the children cried out and swore to behave.
&n
bsp; Ohene Nyarko did not come back that night or the next. He came back in the afternoon of the third day. Behind him, being led by rope, were four fat and obstinate goats, bleating as though they could smell the iron of the slaughter knife. The sacks he had carried out, full of cocoa beans, had come back to them filled with yams and kola nuts, some fresh palm oil, and plenty of palm wine.
The villagers threw a celebration the likes of which they had not thrown in years, with dancing and shouting and bare, jiggling breasts. The old men and women danced the Adowa, lightly swaying their hips and bringing their hands up and over, as though ready to receive from the Earth and then give back to her.
Their stomachs had grown smaller, it seemed, and so the food they ate filled them quickly, and they filled the crevices that were left between the food with sweet palm wine.
Unlucky and Akosua were so happy the bad years had finally ended that they held each other close, watching the others dance, watching the children drum against their full bellies in time with the music.
In the middle of all the celebration, Abena looked over at Ohene Nyarko as he surveyed the people of the village they all loved so fiercely, his face full of pride and something she couldn’t quite place.
“You’ve done well,” she said, approaching him. He had kept his distance all night, and she thought it was because he didn’t want to draw attention to the two of them in the middle of the celebration, didn’t want the villagers to start wondering what this meant for Abena’s exile. But the meaning was all Abena was able to think about. She had not told anyone yet, but she was four days late. And though she had been four days late before in her life, and imagined that she would be four days late again before she died, she wondered if this time was the time.
What she wanted was for Ohene Nyarko to shout his love for her from the rooftops. To say, now that the whole village has been fed and feted, I will marry you. And not tomorrow, but today. This very day. This celebration will be for us.
Instead, he said, “Hello, Abena. Did you get enough to eat?”
“Yes, thank you.”
He nodded and drank from a calabash of palm wine.
“You have done well, Ohene Nyarko,” Abena said, reaching out to touch his shoulder, but her hand grazed nothing but air. He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Why did you move?” she asked, stepping away from him.
“What?”
“Don’t say ‘what’ like I am crazy. I tried to touch you and you moved.”
“Quiet, Abena. Don’t make a scene.”
She didn’t make a scene. Instead, she turned and began walking, walking past the people dancing, past her parents crying, walking until she found the floor of her hut and lay down upon it, one hand clutching her heart and the other clutching her stomach.
—
This was how the elders found her the next day when they came to announce that she could remain in the village. The bad years had ended before her seventh year of adultery and she had not yet conceived a child. And, they said, Ohene Nyarko’s harvest had been so profitable that now he could finally fulfill his promise.
“He will not marry me,” Abena said from her spot on the floor, rolling this way and that, one hand on her stomach, the other on her heart, holding the two places that hurt.
The elders scratched their heads and looked at each other. Had she finally gone mad from all the years of waiting?
“What is the meaning of this?” one of the elders asked.
“He will not marry me,” she repeated, and then she rolled away, giving them nothing more than her back.
The elders rushed over to Ohene Nyarko’s hut. He was already preparing for the next season, preparing and separating the seeds so that he could pass out a share to all of the other village farmers.
“So she has told you,” he said. He didn’t look up at the elders, just continued to work on the seeds. One pile for the Sarpongs, one for the Gyasis, one for the Asares, another for the Kankams.
“What is this about, Ohene Nyarko?”
He had made all of the piles, and in the afternoon, the head of each family would come to collect them, spread them onto their own small plots of land, and wait for the strange new trees to grow and flourish so that soon the village would be restored to what it once was, or surpass it.
“To get the cocoa plants, I had to promise a man in Osu that I would marry his daughter. I will have to use all of the leftover goods from my cocoa trade to pay her bride price. I cannot marry Abena this season. She will have to wait.”
From her hut, where Abena had finally risen off of the hard ground and dusted off her knees and back, she knew she would not wait.
—
“I’m leaving, Old Man,” Abena said. “I can’t stay here and be made a fool of. I have suffered enough.”
Her father blocked the exit of the hut with his body. He was so old, so frail, that Abena knew she had only to touch him and he would fall, the path would clear, and she could make her way on.
“You can’t leave yet,” he said. “Not yet.”
He slowly backed out of the doorway, watching to see if she would stay. When she didn’t move, he picked up his shovel, went out to a spot on the edge of their land, and started digging.
“What are you doing?” Abena asked. Unlucky was sweating. He moved so slowly, Abena took pity on him. She took the shovel and began to dig for him. “What are you looking for?” she asked.
Her father got down on his knees and started raking away the dirt with both of his hands, holding it awhile, then letting it sift through his fingers. When he stopped, all that was left in his palms was a black stone necklace.
Abena sank down beside him and looked at the necklace. It shimmered gold and was cool to the touch.
Her father huffed loudly, trying to catch his breath. “This belonged to my grandmother, your great-grandmother Effia. It was given to her by her own mother.”
“Effia,” Abena repeated. It was the first time she had heard the name of one of her ancestors, and she savored the taste of the name on her tongue. She wanted to say it again and again. Effia. Effia.
“My father was a slaver, a very wealthy man. When I decided to leave Fanteland, it was because I did not want to take part in the work my family had done. I wanted to work for myself. I see how these townspeople call me Unlucky, but every season I feel lucky to have this land, to do this honorable work, not the shameful work of my family. When the villagers here gave me this small bit of land, I was so happy that I buried this stone here to give thanks.
“I won’t stop you if you want to go, but please take this with you. May it serve you as well as it has served me.”
Abena put on the necklace and hugged her father. Her mother was in the doorframe, watching them out in the dirt. Abena got up and hugged her mother too.
The next morning Abena set out for Kumasi, and when she arrived at the missionary church there, she touched the stone at her neck and said thank you to her ancestors.
Part Two
H
IT TOOK THREE POLICEMEN to knock H down, four to put him in chains.
“I ain’t done nothing!” he shouted once they got him to the jail cell, but he was speaking only to the air they had left behind. He’d never seen people walk away so quickly, and he knew he had scared them.
H rattled the bars, certain that he could bend or break them if only he tried.
“Stop that ’fore they kill you,” his cellmate said.
H recognized the man from around town. Maybe he’d even sharecropped with him once on one of the county farms.
“Can’t nobody kill me,” H said. He was still pressing on the bars, and he could hear the metal start to give between his fingers. Then he could feel his cellmate’s hands on his shoulder. H turned around so quick, the other man didn’t have time to move or think before H had him lifted by the throat. H was over six feet tall, and he had the man so high up, his head brushed the top of the ceiling. If H lifted him any higher, he would have broken through. “Don’t you t
ouch me again,” H said.
“You think dem white folks won’t kill you?” the man said, his words coming out small and slow.
“What I done?” H said. He lowered the man to the ground, and he fell to his knees, gasping up long sips of breath.
“Say you was studyin’ a white woman.”
“Who say?”
“The police. Heard ’em talkin’ ’bout what to say ’fore they went out to get you.”
H sat down next to the man. “Who they say I was talkin’ to?”
“Cora Hobbs.”
“I wasn’t studyin’ no Hobbs girl,” H said, his rage lit anew. If there were rumors about him and a white woman, he would have hoped it would be someone prettier than his old sharecropping boss’s daughter.
“Boy, look atcha,” his cellmate said, his gaze so spiteful now that H grew suddenly, inexplicably afraid of the smaller, older man. “Don’t matter if you was or wasn’t. All they gotta do is say you was. That’s all they gotta do. You think cuz you all big and muscled up, you safe? Naw, dem white folks can’t stand the sight of you. Walkin’ round free as can be. Don’t nobody want to see a black man look like you walkin’ proud as a peacock. Like you ain’t got a lick of fear in you.” He rested his head against the cell wall and closed his eyes for a second. “How old you was when the war ended?”
H tried to count back, but he’d never been very good at numbers, and the Civil War was so long ago that the numbers climbed higher than H could reach. “Not sure. ’Bout thirteen, I reckon,” he said.
“Mm-hmm. See, that’s what I thought. You was young. Slavery ain’t nothin’ but a dot in your eye, huh? If nobody tell you, I’ma tell you. War may be over but it ain’t ended.”
The man closed his eyes again. He let his head roll against the wall, this way, then that. He looked tired, and H wondered how long he’d been sitting in that cell.
“My name’s H,” he finally said, a peace offering.
“H ain’t no kind of name,” his cellmate said, never opening his eyes.
“It’s the only one I got,” H said.