Midnight (19 page)

“Calling?”

“Yeahhh, you know like they say.… ‘Many are called but few are chosen.'”

“Yes, of course.”

“Fascinating, absolutely fascinating.”

He was at a peak. It was time to move on. He signaled to the waitress. She made a beeline to their table.

“Well, Paul, Phyliss, I gotta git on. A whole buncha stuff to do; you know how it is.”

They shook hands again. Paul Mensah handed him his card. “I know you're coming back to Ghana; get in touch.”

Paul and Phyliss Mensah, Export-Import, African Art, “I will, I will. Y'all take it easy.”

He made a grand stroll-exit. The food had absorbed the beer. Now what?

He strolled from Danquah roundabout on the right side of the road.
Here we are in the middle of town and they don't even have sidewalks
. The stores were owned by the Lebanese and the vegetable stands in between were rented and stocked by the Lebanese. They used Ghanaians as front men. He found out by asking, “You own this vegetable stand?”

“No, this belongs to the white man next door. I work here. You are welcome.”

He walked to the end of the business district, which ended at Romonas and crossed the street to walk back to Danquah roundabout on the other side of the street.

Ghana is boring. It's like Watts. No movies, no hip places to go, just a bunch of joints where you can go and drink beer and gin. People selling stuff everywhere—bread, shoes, dish towels, can openers, belts, cassettes, plastic, everything. Life struck him as being too serious.

People walked past him, talking and laughing, but he didn't feel that they were really enjoying themselves. Life was too serious to be enjoyed.

It was almost five o'clock, he could tell from the lightweight traffic jam that was beginning to happen in front of him.

Kwatsons. He wandered into the closest thing he had come to that resembled a supermarket in Osu. Three aisles of odds and ends with a butcher shop at the rear and dishes, glasses, stationery, and some more odds and ends upstairs.

They wouldn 't know what to do if they saw a Vons, or a Boys or a K-Mart
.

He went upstairs to buy envelopes and strolled back out into the humid, dusty street.

Number One, the all-purpose joint on the corner, facing Danquah Circle. “Lemme have a Club beer.”

The beer was cold but he didn't have an urge to drink it. He had had enough beer for the day. He slumped in his seat under the beach umbrella, studying the scene.
Wonder if shit would be different for me if I was a Ghanaian? They don't seem to be bored. Everybody seems to have something to do. People are going from one place to another. I see a baby on every woman's back, so I guess that must take up the slack, if you don't have movies or a TV to watch
.

Wonder what Elena is doing tonight? Ain't this a damned shame? I got a thang going on with a woman and I don't even have her phone number. I don't even know if she has a phone. I don't even know where she lives. Time to go back to the Chamber of Horrors
.

Fred was in super form. The morning growl session had been fueled by who knows how many beers, and now he was prowling around the house with a beer glass in his hand, degrading his spouse. “You don't mean a fuckin' thing to me! You understand me?! You ain't shit!”

Helene took note of Bop's entrance with a mean look. “Some woman came here this afternoon looking for you.”

“Did she wear glasses?”

“Yes.”

Elena.
Damn. While I'm lushing it up and down the streets I could've been laying up between them pretty black thighs. Shit!

Fred barely took notice of his arrival except to pause for a swallow of beer and not in his direction.
Good. Don't include me on your hit list; I don't need it
.

He retreated to his room, stripped to his shorts, and sprawled across the bed. The dreams came easy after the beer (how many did I have today?), the good food, the heat and humidity. It was easy to lock Fred out; he had learned how to do it in jail. There was a button you had to push in your head if you didn't want to hear or be included in everybody's escape plan, the he-said-they-said bullshit, the occasional sadistic guard, the mutterings and snoring of hundreds of people locked up together.

He was on a road with a red stripe painted in the middle of it. The road was walled in on both sides by lush green jungles. He walked toward the horizon on the road, taking note of the fruit that grew on the trees. There were moments when he felt himself floating above the road, but he was following the red stripe, whether on the road or in the air.

Huge birds with pelican beaks swooped back and forth in front of him as he slowly made his way through one hilly stretch of the road. “Keep going, keep going, keep going,” they seemed to be saying. “Keep going, keep going.” It was a weird bird song.

The road curved and, as he rounded the corner, a gigantic, charcoal-colored woman stood in the center of the road, naked, smiling at him. Charcoal textured, with snow white teeth, short nappy hair, gorgeous breasts and hips, incredibly female. She beckoned to him in the Ghanaian way with the palm down and said, “Ba—Ba, come.”

He walked toward her, feeling small, strange, inadequate. She's too big for me. She must be six feet tall. As he approached her she turned and started walking away from him. He hurried to keep up. Her pace was unhurried but he couldn't reach her side. He managed to match her pace ten strides behind.

Her back was strongly muscled; the indentation between the top of her body and the bottom perfectly molded.
Wowwww.… What is she? 50-22-50 or something?

He wanted to run up behind her and run his hands along the curve of her buttocks.
I ain't never seen a ass this perfect
. He felt mesmerized by the rhythm of her walk, every lilting step was an invitation to dance, to touch.

Bop could feel himself becoming aroused.
She's too big for me. I'd be like a baby in her arms
. He felt that feeling, but he couldn't push the erotic element to the side.

She turned to smile at him, encouraging him.… “Keep going, keep going, keep going,” the birds whispered now.

Suddenly she stopped, turned to him, opened her arms, and spoke for the first time. The voice sounded familiar but he couldn't place it. “Come, give me your love.”

He approached her hesitantly, and as he did so, she began to shrink. He was within five yards of her and she was his size.

“Come, give me your love; I need it desperately.”

He floated into her arms and they kissed. It was a long, feverish kiss. He felt his mouth being glued to her lips and wanted to pull away, but he couldn't.

And then he opened his eyes in panic and saw that he was kissing Justine, and her face was a network of scratches, scars, termite carvings, decayed, ugly. He screamed and woke up simultaneously.

“Whatcha doin' in there, motherfucker! Jackin' off!?”

Fred was still at it; Helene was still taking it. Bop pulled his bathtowel from the chair beside the bed and scrubbed the sweat from his face and upper body.

What the fuck was that about? How long have I been asleep?
He peered through the dim moonlight streaming into the window, at the quartz clock on the bedside table. 7.30
P.M.
Well, they say you dream when you just go to sleep or when you're just getting ready to wake up.

The tiny rivulets of sweat from his forehead and armpits continued for a few minutes. He trembled but he couldn't get away from it.
Justine. He had managed to blot her out of his dream-consciousness for days. Justine. Maybe I'm getting malaria again
. He palmed his forehead. Just perspiration, no fever.
Justine
.

He flung the towel across the room and sprawled out with his hands interwoven behind his head.
Why in the fuck should I feel guilty about her? She had her mind about her when she decided to do what she wanted to do. Why should I feel guilty?

He dabbed at the perspiration rolling off his temples and discovered he was crying.
Oh wowwww.… An Original Brick crying. Wonder what they would say about this?

The tears simply rolled out of the corners of his eyes for a few minutes, uncontrollably. He felt stupid, crying, because he couldn't really focus on a reason for his tears.

I really fucked that girl up. I'm gon' have to do something for her when I get back
.

He remained awake for an hour after Fred finally swore his way to sleep on the living room sofa. “Fuck you, you stinky bitch!”

Releasing Helene to have a nightcap of gin and brandy, and a tortured sleep.

9

Helene woke him up with a sour expression on her face. “That woman is here again. Couldn't she wait until people got up before she started visiting? It's only 7.30
A.M.
and we didn't get in bed 'til late.”

Kiss my motherfuckin' ass, Helene; I don't have to be a genius-psychologist to see where you're coming from. After somebody had ragged my ass the way you got ragged last night, you're looking around for a chance to brush some of that shit off your head
.

He ignored Helene's ill-tempered remarks and pulled Elena into his room.

“Hi baby; I'm glad to see you.”

“I thought you would be. Put some clothes on; we're going for a ride.”

Thursday. One more day 'til kick-off.…

“Shit, I didn't know you had a new car.”

“There are many things you don't know about me. Bop,” she said, sounding mysterious.

“Hey, you got that right, lady.”

Funny little car with wood paneling on the doors, looked like somebody had made it by hand. Minor 1000, whatever that was. English.

He was stunned to see the road they were on, how much it resembled the road in his nightmare.
If I see a red stripe I'm jumping out of here
.

“We're going to Larteh, to my mother's ancestral town. Some people might call it a village, but I think it's a town. And we will visit the shrine of Akonodi to ask Okomfohene Nana Oparebea for her blessings.”

He studied her profile.
Damn, this is a fine sister, but she's crazy as a Betsy-bug
.

“We gonna do what?”

“Don't worry. It'll all be painless. And then I thought we could have lunch at Tamara's and spend the night and return in the morning.”

“You got it all mapped out, huh?”

“Yes.”

She was fun to travel with. She told weird little stories. “There were three men on a bridge; all of them fell into the river and one of them came out of the water without getting his hair wet. Which one was that?”

“Damned if I know.”

“The bald one.”

“Oh, I see, said the blind man.”

They took wayward turns off the main road to stare at mud-walled hamlets. “Our people need better housing, better feed, more medical facilities, a manufacturing capability.”

“Sounds like you need a whole bunch of things.”

They paused to buy sugar cane, had it cut into edible lengths, and sped off, spitting the residue of the juicy stalks onto the road.

She was a regular. He liked the way she ignored the sap from the cane running down her chin.

“We must get some watermelon; I love watermelon in the countryside.”

They found a watermelon stand three miles up the road, purchased slices, and spat seeds as the journey continued.

Ten
A.M.
The sun and the hum of the motor had lulled them into a quiet place. They passed people on the roadside carrying logs on their heads.

“Elena, did you see that? That woman carrying a tree trunk on her head.”

“Oh! That's the way they carry things here.”

“I know that, baby, but a tree trunk?!”

The Ghanaian countryside didn't seem receptive to the idea of picnicking. Or lovemaking. The roadsides were dense and hostile-looking to him. It wasn't the first time he had been in the countryside, and once again he asked himself:
Could I live out here, in this?

“Beautiful, isn't it?”

“Yes, beautiful.”

He looked at her thighs through the thin fabric of her dress, the way the muscles rippled as she worked the clutch and the gas pedal. He felt tempted to simply ask her point blank.… Elena, do you have AIDS? Have you had sex with anybody else over the last ten years who may have had AIDS?

She placed her right hand on his left thigh and canceled out all questions.

“I think I'm going to miss you, Bop.”

“You better.”

Larteh came at the end of a curve in the road. Suddenly, after a gentle winding around a few hills, they were on the main street.

“Larteh is simple. If you're going uphill, you're going into town; if you're going downhill, you're going out of town.”

She drove uphill through the clots of people, exchanging greetings and comments with people.

“Looks like you know everybody in town.”

“Just about; this is where I spent my earliest years.”

They came to the end of the street and she parked in a vacant lot, an imposing house with a stone porch on one side and a church on the other side.

“Well, here we are.”

“Well, where are we?”

“This is the home of the chief, my mother's senior brother. He isn't here now; he has a business in London, but my uncle Bobby should be here.”

“Your mother's brother is a chief?”

“Yes.”

The girl is full of surprises.
A chief.… Wowww. Then she must be a princess or something
.

“Let's sit here for a few minutes.”

They occupied seats on the porch, and within minutes a young man came with a pitcher of ice water and two glasses. “You are welcome,” he murmured and padded away.

You are welcome. They didn't say, “Welcome,” or, “Glad you came,” or anything like that. They always said, “You are welcome.”