A Short Story
Ticket through the golden gates
By Tehtey
Is there a scholar like my son?
In all the world there is none."
To my ears it was a song. Your presents followed, crystallising the envy of my playmates, none of whom had ever placed first in a class test before. Indeed mother, days like this were Christmas - the days when you cared.
I may not remember when it began to be like this. Innocent as I am, I have only space enough to lodge in my memory, the sanctity of your command on that first day of my schooling.
One had to be six years old to start primary school in Ghana. You were not patient enough for me to fulfill this requirement. Though I was five, you told them I was six for, big and a little on the fat side, I looked it. You scrubbed me clean. The sponge made from the luffa gourd was new and richly lathered with Lifebuoy soap. I remember every bit of that day even our neighbour's remark.
"Isn't that boy handsome? Just like his father."
"He'll be handsomer still when he goes to school to become a doctor." And that, mother, was your sacred command.
My father, up from the breakfast table, came to applaud that command. Tall, muscular, neat with some precious black bushy hair always parted on the left, he also cared. It was he who bought the khaki and paid the tailor. He insisted on his fatherly right - privilege he would put it to pay the school fees for that first fundamental year. Even if at that time and level of my education, the fee was nominal, his gesture evinced how much he cared.
You walked me to school and walked me back again. You thought of me that day more than your many customers that bought fish off your large African wooden tray. You were not afraid then and there in the marked to proclaim the dreams we were sculpturing. You said:
"Ferdi, my son will go to school and to university, to Aburokyiri, and come back a doctor. I will never be ill, nor will our people."
There were so many dreams I wish to remind you of - dreams like the big house to live in, the fine car to drive, and the beautiful loving wife - all proof of how much you cared for my schooling (father too) in those days; cared in every way, mother.
You even had time to put me on your lap and explain the origin of my name. In that town where I was born, lived Ferdinand Rudolph. He was an old mulatto contractor who used to build stilted houses. He chose his mother's African as against his father's Europe when he saw the need on Independence Day. It was he who found grandmother and you at the crossroad when you were in labour, and out for you. rushed you to hospital. Everyone knew Ferdi was the kindest man in all Akuse. You took your time to tell me all this. But, that was when you cared.
These days you don't... Some weeks ago you did something. I came to you with an important news. Important if only because it was all about that great ambition you and I set out to steeplechase some seven years ago.
These days you don't...Some weeks ago you did something. I came to you with an important news. Important if only because it was all about that great ambition you and I set out to steeplechase some seven years ago.
On that day if you would remember, you sat behind your baskets of smoked fish. Your round face and plump body was engaged in serious bargaining with your customers. Tei, my little brother, stood crying beside you. As I entered your market stall, you noticed Tei's tiny hands dovetailed on his head. You plucked them roughly to his side and whipped his cheek sharply with a finger saying, "you know you're not to put your hands on your head and cry. It's an abomination. Do you want me to die? Devil." He cried all the harder and your customers made haste to comfort him.
I came in with my news perhaps too brashly. "Mother, I've won the essay competition." There was no question of whether you did hear me or not. You did. Yet, all your response was to bargain more fitfully with your customers over your smelly fish. I did take the trouble to explain long before then the enormity of the competition. It was opened to all elementary school children in the district. To sit right on top of those thousands of ambitious little scholars was to me more deserving of attention and interest than all the bags of money your customers might have to offer. But well...I tried to reason
That morning you had had one of your upsetting quarrels with father. "Look, K.K." K.K. was father's pet name for you, his beautiful wife. He did not say it on this occasion though with any amount of love. "What is not there, is simply not there. Do you want me to steal some and give to you?"
"Whether you steal or vomit some, I don't care. All that I'm saying is, I can't pay for every goddamn need in this house again. The food we..."
"Rubbish! How much do I take from my salary for myself? Don't I dump everything in your purse?...”
"And what is that everything? The C1,500.00 for one full month and for me, these three boys and you? As if you don't know that what you alone eat everyday in this house is more than a hundred cedis."
Mother, you went on to do a pile of verbal arithmetics. Father let you. Your body quaked, your tongue lashed out and your eyes spat fire. Oh, it was so frightening. It used not to be like this. Not until recently. Father and his dear K.K. even managed to pull through that terrible starvation year. Why then all this?
You see, mother, it was (is) hurting us your three boys - Tetteh, Tei, and I. I am the eldest and can speak for them and for Aggie who at that time of this quarrel was shielded in your womb. Why couldn't you wait for me to grow up? I would be a doctor like we planned and give you all the money you needed. And to think that the money you so furiously demanded was to pay for our needs.
In the end, what we feared happened. e drama took place only a few weeks so, I remember it very clearly...It s an evening. We were pounding fufu pestle in my hands, you behind the mortar). Father was reading a borrowed newspaper. Then this night-soil-man came, smelling not of the night-soil he was wont to carry every night, but of akpeteshie of which he was quite drunk. "Good evening auntie." He did not come just to greet us and, of course, mother could not be his auntie. He came to demand money for emptying our shit can which was why he was employed by the Municipal Council in the first place. We all co-operated except my father. Perhaps it was because he worked in the Ministry of Information that he was so well-informed of his rights.
"Kwame," mother called father by his first name. "Give the man eighty cedis. I'll refund it after the fufu."
"For what?" It was not a question needing any answer. They had argued on that before. Father turned on the man and sought to drive him away. Mother intervened, rushed from behind the fufu to hand the man the money. Father continued to grumble even after the man was gone, and mother had quietly taken her seat behind the mortar.
"Yesterday it was the PDC demanding fifty cedis from every tenant just to clear rubbish some lousy labourers are supposed to have cleared. Today, it is to pay for my own shit." He would have calmed down eventually.
But presently, our neighbour came round with bread made more appetising by the fact that it was fresh from the oven. Tetteh and Tei asked to buy some. In my heart, I seconded the request. Mother however did not call the bread seller because Tetteh and Tei itched for some. This she pointed out later.
'Kwame, please buy one forty-cedi loaf..."
"Buy bread when fufu is ready, K.K.?" Father exploded again. "You're spoiling the children...claim my C1,500 is not enough... forty-cedi worth of bread when supper is ready..."" Blah! blah! blah! he went on.
You see mother, I sided with you that day. Not really because I knew you would good-naturedly allow us to consume the loaf before the next breakfast which you said it was meant for, but then I thought father was becoming too irritating. Nevertheless, you also were too harsh on him. You told him he had been a pauper for too long which was why he couldn't afford a bread treat for his children. That Mr. Foli who was once his classmate now rode in a car, whilst he, my dear father, even though a senior civil servant could not afford a decent chalewote (bathroom slippers) to walk in. Frankly mother, I did not like the idea of my father being compared to that ugly drunkard. Neither did my father.
You see mother, I sided with you that day. Not really because I knew you would good-naturedly allow us to consume the loaf before the next breakfast which you said it was meant for, but then I thought father was becoming too irritating.
When father left the house that night yet to return, you suffered as much as we did. I heard you weep bitterly that night when you thought we were all asleep. And that was not the only time.
Perhaps I should hasten to add that father wants to come back. You have forbidden us never to see him in his office or in the house he shares with that old face-bleaching hag. But he comes to see us at school regularly with cakes and biscuits and money. He asks of you always. Telling you all this is a big risk I am taking remembering how you spanked us when we told you of his first visit. Really mother, why should you pretend to hate him so much?
If father were here, chances are, you would not have caused the crisis which led to my writing this piece.
You were that hot afternoon in your stall slapping flies off you Koobi (salted fish) with the broad simple leaves which were your wrappers when I entered. I knew that the news in my throat was as delicate as baby Aggie's head which lay serenely in your laps. I knew I should take my time. So I drank water first like a stranger from a journey, greeted you before coming to the point. The letter.
"Mother, I've gained admission to Ghana Secondary School."
Oh goodness, it was not your disappointing reaction that alarmed me your lukewarm ayekoo (well done), your taking that letter and without opening it, putting it on the wooden tray beside the filthy koobi - it was the fact that you have apparently washed away our vision and the dignity of it. Money? Yes, I am twelve years old so I should know the weight of money in such things. Even if I became a day student which is what I will be in any case, you will still sink in on the average two thousand cedis every term just to see me through the first year. My father after giving you everything' (which you stubbornly reject these days) may have nothing more to contribute. But mother, do we have to let go the pearl of our dreams just for these anxieties?
I saw the flies dance robot on that letter, ticket through our golden gates of the future paradise and, my eyes got filmed. You saw it. If you had said something or done something even if discomforting, it would have cleared a world of dreadful thoughts. You did and said nothing except to ask unimportantly whether I would have kenkey or fried ripe plantain for lunch. It all confirmed my worst fears.
Oh the days when you cared, mother. When a day like this was Christmas... when you would hail me to the world. to my ears a song...your presents...the days when you cared.
