So Much for Democracy (7 page)

“Don't,” says Thema. “We don't want Mom to know we're in here.” Ebo laughs and turns the volume up even higher, so the sound bounces off the walls.

“Ebo!” Thema shouts. She throws her pillow at him and beats him with her fists as he backs out of the room, laughing. I turn the volume down, but not before Thema's mom appears in the doorway.

“There you are,” she says. “Come help with the table, please.” Thema sticks her tongue out at Ebo as we pass him in the hallway.

Mrs. Ampofo leads us to a courtyard behind the pool where there are several tables set up and lots of women bustling around. She hands us each a stack of plates and says, “Put as many on each table as you can,” then disappears into one of the neighboring houses.

My pile has yellow plates from Thema's house and red ones that must be from another house in the compound. I place one red, one yellow, one red, one yellow around the table until it's full. I end up with two yellow plates next to each other, so I pick one up again. Some boys run in circles around the table, getting in my way. I swat at them to move.

Mom comes outside with a tray of cutlery and a jug of water.

“What are you doing?” she asks me.

“Red, yellow, red, yellow. It doesn't work,” I say.

She hands me the forks and says, “No one will notice tonight.”

She's about to turn away, so I say, “Mom, what's going on? Why did Mr. Ampofo invite us here? Dad said the man is in jail, so isn't it all over?”

She doesn't say anything, but the thin line of her lips is an answer in itself.

“Mom?”

“Stop bothering your mother,” I hear Dad say. I didn't seen him coming.

“Dad, you tell me, then. What's going on?”

Mom wipes at her eyes, and Dad says, “Leave it, Astrid. We can talk later.” He steers Mom away and leaves me standing with a handful of cutlery and no answers. Again.

Ebo and his friends are playing basketball outside the bedrooms. One of them throws the ball at us as we walk back to Thema's room. Thema catches it and runs down the hallway with it in her hands. The boys run after her, shouting, so I back away and look for a quiet place to sit. My head throbs.

The living room is full of adults. Dad and Mom are there, and Mr. Ampofo, and lots of the other people who live in the compound. There isn't enough seating for that many people, so some of the men sit on the floor. Mr. Ampofo is standing near the window, talking, and everyone is listening to him. They all turn and stare at me when I open the door.

Mr. Ampofo stops talking.

“Hi, honey,” says Dad. “We're having a meeting. How about you leave us to it?”

“I was looking for somewhere quiet,” I say. Some of the men shift in their seats, but no one says anything.

“Dinner will be ready soon,” says Dad. “I'll come and find you at the table, okay?” He asks it as a question, but it isn't one, really, so I back out of the room and close the door. My eyes sting. Before today, Dad had never talked to me like that. Like I'm a little kid. But today it seems to be all he's doing.

Ebo's lying on Thema's bed when I get back to her room. There's no sign of anyone else.

“Hi,” he says, and for once I don't blush.

“Hi,” I say.

“Are you okay?” He sits up and makes room for me on the bed.

I guess my face shows how frustrated I am. I shake my head. “I don't know.”

“Let me guess. No one's telling you anything, right?”

“Right,” I say. I sit down next to him.

“Welcome to the club,” he says.

“They say it's all over, but then they won't tell us anything, and now they're in a meeting, being all secretive.”

He nods. It makes me feel better that he's being treated the same way I am.

“Do you think…” My words falter. It's strange talking to Ebo this way, but it's a relief to be my real self with him.

“That we're in danger?” He finishes my sentence.

I nod.

“I don't know,” he says. He lies back down and stares at the ceiling.

I watch him breathe in and out, and then I say, “If it gets too dangerous, we can all leave, though, right?”

“Leave?” he says.

“You could go to London. We'd go back home.”

Without turning his face, he laughs. “My dad would never leave,” he says.

“How come?”

“We're Ghanaian. We'd never leave.” He closes his eyes and hums, and I sit at the end of the bed, feeling like a total spaz. I wish that Thema would come in or the earth would swallow me.

Either one, but soon.

TEN

I wait and wait, but over the next few days, no one says anything more about the attempted coup—that's what they call it when someone tries to take over the government. When I ask Dad about it, he looks at me sideways and waves his hand. “Don't worry about it. It's over.”

That makes me so mad. He never used to talk to me like that.

“But it could happen again, right? And if it did, what would we do?” I ask.

Dad stands in front of the mirror in his bedroom and combs his hair and straightens his shirt. “It won't happen again, because the man who led the coup is in jail now, so what do you mean,
what would we do
?”

“I mean if it happens again, would we go back home?”

That makes him turn away from the mirror. “Do you want to go home? I thought you liked it here,” he says.

There's no point. He isn't listening to me. He hasn't been for a while. Hasn't he seen anything that's going on in this family?

“Mom doesn't.”

He sighs and turns back to the mirror. For a minute we both stare into the glass, our eyes catching each other's in the reflection. Then he says, “Don't worry about your mother, Astrid. We all have different ways of coping with things.”

“Yeah, hers is to treat us like prisoners,” I say.

“Not fair, Astrid. Not fair at all,” he says. He puts down his comb and walks out of the room without looking back at me even once. I sit on the edge of their bed and wait until I'm sure I'm not going to cry.

To avoid seeing Dad downstairs, I go outside to wait for Mom to drive us to school.

Thomas is working near the house. “Astrid, help me with this, will you?” he asks. He points to a clump of leaves growing up from the ground.

“There aren't snakes or spiders hiding in there, are there?” I ask.

His whole face laughs, like that's the funniest question anyone ever asked him, and he says, “No, I need to tie them back, that's all.”

I wrap the ball of string he hands me around one side of the clump, then reach around so he can take it from me and gather the other side in. As he ties off the string, I say, “Thomas, did you hear about the guy who tried to take over the government last week?”

“I did, Astrid.”

“And…” I'm not sure what I want to ask him. There's something strange going on. Dad says the man's in jail, so there's nothing to worry about, but if that's true, then why is everyone being so secretive and serious about it?

Thomas looks up from his knotting and says, “And?”

I shrug. “I'm not sure.”

“I'm not sure either,” he says.

“But it won't happen again—that's what my dad says.”

Thomas nods, then says, “Maybe not.”

I want to ask him what he means by
maybe
, but Mom and Gordo come outside, and Mom says, “Hurry, Astrid, we're going to be late,” and anyway, Thomas is already reaching around a smaller clump of leaves like he's forgotten we were talking.

We are right behind Sister Mary's scooter at the roadblock, and when she leans toward the soldier something heavy pulls her coat pocket down, and she almost loses her balance. The soldier skips back in alarm, and Sister Mary hurries on. In the parking lot, I try to see what's in her pocket, but it's only when we get to the classroom that I find out Sister Mary has come to school with a snake in her coat pocket. A big snake. With a brother like Gordo, I get my fill of snakes and spiders and stuff. I thought I'd be free of them at school at least.

When Sister Mary pulls the snake out of her pocket and holds it up, I can feel Bassam jump with excitement behind me.

“Figures,” I say to Thema, who rolls her eyes.

“Gather round,” says Sister Mary, and all of us scrape our chairs back and join her at the back of the classroom where there's a glass terrarium on a table. Sister Mary holds out the snake to each of us, and several people—mostly boys, including Bassam—reach out to pet it, but when the snake head comes toward me, I pull back.

“It's not dangerous,” Sister Mary says.

“Still,” I say.

“It's dry. Not like you'd expect.”

I put my hand out, but as my fingers get close to its head, the snake flicks its tongue, and my fingers flit back to my side. Bassam snickers, but Sister Mary's so focused on her snake, she doesn't notice. I glare at Bassam.

“I don't think Astrid likes snakes,” says Bassam.

As usual, my face reddens, but this time Sister Mary says, “Not everyone does,” and as soon as she turns away, I stick my tongue out at Bassam.

“Now, we have to build a nest for the snake, so first we need newspaper to shred and some water. Astrid, Thema, you girls go to the headmistress's office and ask for the keys to the storage cabinet.”

“Thank you, Sister Mary,” I say, and I mean it. A bit of fresh air is what I need.

Out on the breezeway, Thema and I take our time. A wind wafts across the playing fields, and the fresh air feels good.

“Trust Sister Mary to do something like bring a snake to school,” says Thema.

“Yeah,” I say, but the truth is, even if I don't much like snakes, there's something cool about a woman who drives around with one in her coat pocket.

I giggle and say, “You should have seen the look on the soldier's face at the roadblock. He looked like he thought the snake was about to bite him!”

Thema and I are still laughing when the door opens and the headmistress walks out of her office.

“Girls,” she says.

“Good morning, Miss,” we chant, trying to hide our laughter.

“Did Sister Mary send you?”

“We're to ask for the key to the storage cabinet,” Thema says.

“Is this for the snake?”

“Yes, Miss,” I say.

“All right, come in.” She walks back into her office and beckons for me and Thema to follow. I've never been in her office before, and I can tell by how closely Thema crowds behind me that she's as nervous as I am.

The phone rings, which startles all of us, since the phones seldom work, and we stare at it for a minute before the headmistress says, “Excuse me for a moment, please” and picks up the receiver. She waves at two seats, and Thema and I sit down.

It seems rude to listen to her on the phone, so Thema and I both lean in to the radio that sits on a small table between the two chairs. As we listen, the music is interrupted by a man's voice. He speaks in Twi, so I have to ask Thema, “What's he saying?”

“Jerry Rawlings' trial will be broadcast on this station,” Thema says. “He's the man who led the coup.”

Miss covers the phone receiver with her hand and listens too. When the man's done and the music comes back on, she shakes her head before she says goodbye to the caller and hangs up.

“What do you think it means?” asks Thema.

“It means this is not over yet,” says Miss. She stands up and walks to the window. Her answer is not a surprise to me. Something in the way my dad and Thema's dad have been talking makes me think they don't believe it's over either, even if they keep saying it is.

“Miss?”

“Yes, Astrid.”

I'm not sure what I want to ask, so I say, “Could it happen again? I mean, could someone else try to take over the government?”

Miss sits down again. She stares out the window and I think she's not going to answer, but then she says, “It could happen.”

“How come, Miss?”

“Because life has been hard for Ghanaians for a long time now. Many people are looking for something new. They want to be able to buy food in the stores and have good job opportunities for their kids and be able to live in nice houses.”

“My dad says Rawlings's timing is bad because of the elections coming up,” I say.

“You can't expect everyone to agree, Astrid.”

“What do you think, Miss?” asks Thema.

“I agree with Astrid's father about the timing. I don't know why anyone would want to interrupt things now.”

She reaches into a drawer in her desk, then stands up and hands the key to me.

I'm quiet as I take it from her, but when she says, “What is it, Astrid?” I say, “I hope it doesn't happen. I mean, I hope no one else tries to have a coup.” My voice is small, because I realize as I speak that this is what has been sitting in the back of my brain. This is why no one is telling us anything. They're scared it will happen again.

Again, Miss stares out the window like she hasn't heard me. Then she says, “It's a mistake to broadcast this trial. I won't be too surprised if there is some unrest after that.”

“What do you mean,
unrest
?”

She shakes her head. “I'm not sure what I mean. These are uncertain times for Ghana. Let's hope I'm mistaken and the elections go ahead as planned.” She opens the office door and motions for me and Thema to leave.

“Thank you, Miss,” I say as Thema and I walk past her.

“You're welcome, girls,” she says.

Out in the breezeway, Thema says, “She's nicer than I thought.”

I nod. She is nicer than I expected, and she's the only person who's taken me seriously. But she hasn't put my mind at ease at all. Not at all.

ELEVEN