Wife of the Gods (17 page)

“I accept your explanation of witchcraft, but I don’t think
Elizabeth is guilty of anything.”

“Ah,” Isaac said with a knowing smile. “That’s because she has
charmed you. That too is something witches do very well.”

∨
Wife of the Gods
∧

A
bout a dozen people
were standing around outside the entrance of Augustus Ayitey’s
house. Gifty was not going to be dealing with the long wait that
99
^%
of these clients would have to endure. She was a VIP
customer who got preferential treatment, especially since she gave
Mr. Ayitey and his assistants a nice dash every year at
Christmastime.

Gifty confidently walked up to the front screen door and
knocked. A few moments later the head of the assistant poked out,
and as soon as she saw who it was, she invited Gifty and Hosiah
in.

Mr. Ayitey practiced in his rear courtyard, where there was a
collection of makeshift enclosures and overhead canvas coverings.
People were standing or sitting around being treated or waiting to
be. There was a strong smell of herbs and animal flesh. Gifty and
Hosiah were shepherded into one of enclosures and asked to sit on
the wooden stools.

Gifty hugged Hosiah. “See? Isn’t this interesting?”

He looked around, eyes wide. There was a mat on the ground and a
pot boiling on a stove in the corner. “What’s that, Granny?”

“That’s where they make some of the medicines.”

“Oh.” He wrinkled his nose. “It stinks.”

“That’s because the medicine is very strong.”

It was another thirty minutes before Mr. Ayitey came in. He was
a big, bald man with a wide, vertical scar on his left cheek. Gifty
felt Hosiah flinch and press back into her.

Ayitey smiled broadly. He had a large gap between his upper
front teeth.

“Madame Gifty! How are you on this fine day?” He spoke Ga, and
his voice came out of him like a slingshot.

“Very well, Mr. Ayitey, thank you.” She laughed pleasantly.

Ayitey sat on the stool opposite them.

“Every time I see you, you look better and better,” he said to
her. “Are you getting younger?”

“Oh, stop,” Gifty said, enjoying his playfulness.

“So this is the boy you told me about,” Ayitey said.

“Yes, this is Hosiah, my grandson.”

Ayitey held out his hand to Hosiah.

“Greet Mr. Ayitey,” Gifty urged, giving him a gentle push.

Hosiah shook hands the way he had always been taught, but he was
staying very close to Granny.

“And you say he has some heart trouble?” Ayitey asked her.

“Well, the doctors at Korle-Bu say he has a hole in the
heart.”

“Eh-heh. I see. Come here, little boy.” He held his hand
out.

Hosiah looked up at Gifty.

“It’s all right,” she said.

He moved tentatively toward Ayitey.

“He’s not going to hurt you, Hosiah,” Gifty said.

Ayitey pulled Hosiah’s shirt up over his head and gave it to
Gifty. He put his ear to Hosiah’s chest. She watched intently. The
herbalist,
her
herbalist, turned Hosiah this way and that,
listening to his chest and stomach, touching him all over, from
head to limbs.

“When he runs,” Ayitey asked Gifty, “he can’t breathe well?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Eh-heh. I see.” He flicked his fingertips along the bottom of
his chin as if his skin was itching. “What trouble is in the
family?”

“His father’s mother disappeared many years ago – no one knows
what happened to her. And the boy’s uncle is paralyzed.”

“Do you know of any curse on the family?”

“I am sure there’s no curse on my side, but as for his side, I
don’t know.”

Hosiah came gladly back to Gifty as she waited patiently for
Ayitey to give his diagnosis.

“No, it’s not any hole in his heart,” he said abruptly.

“Is that so, Mr. Ayitey?” Gifty was thrilled. “I
knew
it!”

“Evil spirits are disturbing the boy,” Ayitey went on. “They
have entered his chest because that is a favorite place for them to
stay. So when he is trying to run, they are taking his air.”

“Ao, mercy!
” Gifty exclaimed under her breath.

“Also, the evil spirits like to go in and out of his heart;
that’s why it is making some noises there and not beating
well.”

Gifty was nodding slowly. “Can you sack evil spirits from his
body?”

“Yes,” Ayitey said. “First thing is we wash the boy with water
in which we have put
abatasu
leaves from the Shai Hills.
That will take the disturbing spirits away.”

“Yes, I see.”

“Then he will drink the ashes of the
nereyu
plant with
hot water. That will repair the damage done to his heart.”

“Thank you, Mr. Ayitey, thank you.”

He went out to get the treatments ready. A few minutes later, a
young woman assistant brought a large metal pan of water wide
enough for Hosiah to stand in. Ayitey came right behind her with a
bunch of the dark green abatasu leaves in his hand. He dropped them
in the water and stirred them around.

“All right,” Ayitey said. “Now take off the rest of the boy’s
clothes.”

“Granny, what are they going to do?”

“They’re just going to give you a bath with that special water,”
Gifty said, starting to pull down his pants.

He clutched at them and tried to stop her. “But I had a bath
this morning, Granny,” he protested. “I don’t want another
bath.”

She took his face between her hands. “Sweetie, we have to do
this because Mr. Ayitey knows it will make you better.”

“No,” Hosiah said. “I don’t want to. Can we go home now,
Granny?”

“We have to hurry up a little bit, Madame Gifty,” Ayitey said,
impatience creeping into his voice. He ordered the assistant to
help.

Gifty yanked Hosiah’s shorts down, and the assistant pulled them
off completely. Hosiah began to cry.

“Shh, shh, come on now,” Gifty said. “It’s just a little bath,
Hosiah.”

He pulled away from her.
“No!
”

She swept him up in her arms, but he executed a trick that all
children know, stretching his arms above his head and kicking his
legs straight out so he became like a stiff board that slid out of
her hands like butter. The instant his feet touched the ground, he
backed away to make his escape, but Ayitey and the assistant were
ready for him. He grabbed Hosiah by the arms, and she took his
feet. He was screaming and kicking as they got him to the pan. For
a moment, the assistant lost hold of his feet.

“Hold him!
” Ayitey yelled at her.

She got him back.

“Put him inside,” Ayitey grunted.
“Inside
.”

They pushed him into the water in the pan, and Hosiah bucked and
kicked. Ayitey pressed his head down and leaned on his
shoulders.

“Wash his body, wash his body, quick
,” he shouted at the
assistant.

She struggled to rub him down with the water, but the wetter
Hosiah’s skin became, the slicker it was. From where Gifty stood,
the fight was a blur of small, flailing limbs.

Hosiah came up coughing and choking. He took a deep, desperate
breath that sounded like a
whoop
, and then he looked at
Gifty standing by and his eyes asked her,
Why don’t you help
me?

“Okay, okay,” Ayitey said desperately “We’ve washed him enough.
Now we give him the nereyu.”

They picked Hosiah up bodily. He was slippery and difficult to
grasp as his legs kicked like little pistons. They brought him down
to the mat.

Ayitey looked appealingly at Gifty. “Madam, we need your help,
please
. Hold his legs.”

Gifty’s stomach lurched. She knelt down and held on to her
grandson’s ankles. She heard herself saying, “Mr. Ayitey, I want to
stop. It’s enough, please.”

Ayitey either ignored her or did not hear her. He told the
assistant to proceed. She reached for a small calabash beside the
mat, swirled it around a few times, and poured a dark grainy liquid
into a spoon. She held Hosiah’s head tight in preparation to
force-feed the medicine down his gullet. She suddenly snatched her
hand away, and her eyes went wide as she saw blood in her palm.

Gifty would always remember that moment. The world turned dark
and cold as she realized what had happened. Sometime during the
struggle, Hosiah had struck his head against the metal pan. Now she
saw the gash in the soft skin of his scalp, and from it rivers of
blood flowed down his face like bright red paint.

∨
Wife of the Gods
∧

W
hen Dawson and Fiti
got to Bedome, chairs were being set up in an open area, apparently
in preparation for some kind of ceremony.

“It may be there’s a
durbar
today,” Fiti said. “Or maybe
a new trokosi is to be given to Togbe Adzima.”

Bedome was a village indeed. The ground was uneven and reddish
in color. The houses were really huts made out of mud brick and
covered with thatched roofs. It intrigued Dawson that Bedome should
be so far behind booming Ketanu, just on the other side of the
forest.

A few children were playing with one another, running about and
rolling around while goats munched placidly on whatever it was they
ate and chickens pecked at invisible nourishment on the ground.

As they passed through the village, Dawson and Fiti greeted
anyone who eyed them with curiosity. All the women seemed to be
doing something – sweeping or carrying water in large bowls on
their heads – but there was a good supply of men sitting languidly
around doing nothing in the “life is boring” kind of way, not the
“life is good.”

But one of them redeemed himself and got up to approach Dawson
and Fiti. He was thirtyish, with a broad, open face and huge eyes,
dressed in a button-down teal shirt and dark trousers.

“Ndo
,” he said in greeting, but he switched to English.
“Good morning, Inspector Fiti.”

“Good morning, John.”

They shook hands, and Dawson wondered how they knew each
other.

“Welcome, sir,” John said. “You have come to see Togbe?”

“Yes. This is Detective Inspector Dawson from Accra.”

“Oh, yes. Good morning, sir. You are welcome.”

“Thank you.”

“Please, come with me.”

They followed John. He gestured ahead. “There is the house.”

Though small, Togbe Adzima’s house was the only one in the
village made out of cement blocks. It was dirty brown with a single
badly framed window.

“Please, wait here for one moment,” John said. As he turned to
go into the house, a rap tune sounded from his pocket and he fished
out a mobile and flipped it open to his ear. Dawson blinked.
A
mobile phone in the middle of a village with no electricity or
running water. Amazing
.

“Who is John?” he asked Inspector Fiti.

“He does different things in Ketanu – odd jobs, carpentry,
selling mobile phones, and so on, and he also acts as an assistant
to Togbe.”

“I see.” Enterprising man, obviously.

John came back out. “Please, he says you should wait a
little.”

“Thank you.”

John disappeared for a while and then returned with two women,
one carrying a stool on her head and the other a large animal skin,
probably that of a gazelle. They put the stool down and the animal
skin in front of it. Evidently Togbe Adzima was to take his
“throne” there. Two more women brought a wooden chair each for
Dawson and Fiti to sit directly opposite the priest.

A small, curious crowd had quickly gathered. The adults stared,
and the children fidgeted and giggled. Unlike in a jaded big city
like Accra, the smallest distraction was of intense interest in a
village. Dawson had forgotten that. This public assembly wasn’t
exactly what he had envisioned.

“We won’t be able to question Togbe Adzima closely with this
kind of audience,” he commented to Fiti.

“Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”

Adzima finally emerged, and Dawson realized he had been
expecting a bigger, heartier man. In fact, the priest was quite
average in stature. He was dressed in traditional cloth wrapped
around the chest and thrown over one shoulder, and he wore an odd
straw hat shaped like an upside-down tumbler.

He took his seat on the stool and arranged himself and his
cloth. Only then did he look up. He wasn’t in good shape. His eyes
were bloodshot, and several teeth were missing or decaying behind
slack, pendulous lips stained red with kola nut.

John formally introduced Dawson and Fiti, taking much longer
than an introduction needed to. Then he came over to Dawson, which
was the cue to present the drinks. Dawson gave up the Beefeater
first, and then the schnapps, and John chanted something in Ewe and
raised each bottle skyward, presumably so God or the gods could
take a good look, after which he stood the bottles on a small table
to Adzima’s side. He opened the schnapps, poured a little out in a
shot glass, and presented it to Adzima, who took a sip and handed
it back. Now it was Fiti’s turn, and then Dawson’s, both taking a
swig from the same glass. Dawson tried not to pull a face as the
schnapps seared his mouth and sent a shot of fire down his throat.
The stuff was ghastly. If only he had some Malta to wash it
down.

Still in Ewe, John asked them the standard question on Adzima’s
behalf: “What is your mission here?”

“We are investigating the death of Gladys Mensah,” Fiti said.
“Detective Inspector Dawson here has come from Accra.”

John recited this to Adzima, who rendered the reply back through
John. “What is it that you want to know?”

“Togbe Adzima,” Fiti began. “We understand Gladys Mensah used to
visit Bedome on occasion.”

Again through John and back.

“Yes. Correct.”

“And we understand she was here on the evening before she was
found dead,” Dawson said.