Between Sisters

• ONE •

Not’ing wonders God.

This is what my daa says when something unexpected happens to take the wind out of his belly. Apparently things like that happen often in life, because I have heard him say those words over and over again.

Friday June 3 began strangely because we woke up to water running freely in our standing pipe after a year of silence, when the mains in our neighborhood of Alajo were shut down. A burst pipeline, somebody said, and the faucet became indifferent whichever way we twisted the tap.

Then we forgot what the tap was for until I heard Effie screaming in my ear.

Gloria, wake up!

Hmmmm? I was losing my dream. We were out playing in the field…

Effie shook me, and I had to open my eyes.

I opened the right one first. The left one felt as though someone had poured starch over it to glue it shut. Sleep struggled to keep its hold on me.

Sit up, she commanded.

I did so, ever so slowly dragging my legs over the side of the bed. I had gone to sleep after midnight because I had attended the Thursday prayer meeting with Daa and we had much to pray about: Maa’s health, a job for Daa, a vocation for me, and Effie’s attitude.

But the day had come too soon. Not because the sun rose to ruffle the neck feathers of our neighbor’s cockerel, but because all of sudden, just like that, the water gushed out of the standing pipe and splashed on the circle of concrete where we placed our buckets.

Apparently James Adama, the cobbler who lived in the third apartment in the house, woke up first.

Water, he shouted in spite of the hour. It was four-thirty in the morning.

Eno and Asibi, two sisters who lived in the second apartment, woke up, too. Daa woke up and shouted for us. And now Effie was doing her best to get me out of bed.

Soon we were scrambling for every container we could find to fill with precious water.

Fetch the gallon beneath the table. Empty the rubber filled with oranges. Don’t forget to fill the cooler, Maa said, pointing to our red clay water pot.

We even filled the empty beer bottles. We could not trust that the water would continue to flow through the tap in our compound, even for the rest of the day. It was easier to trust the twenty-minute walk to the Caprice Hotel, where we usually fetched our water in aluminum buckets that we carried on our heads, balanced on soft rolls of cloth.

Today Effie and I would be spared the evening walk and the crick in our necks, but our job was no easier now as we lined up behind our housemates and fetched container after container of water.

Breakfast was a thick slice of sugar bread with a dab of Blue Band margarine, which I munched on my way to school, joining my friends along the road. Buses and taxis were revving their engines, overfilling with workers and screeching threadbare tires against the tar. Porridge and koose sellers mingled with beggars. Every now and then a squawking car horn alerted us to the danger of walking too close to the road.

Effie had left for her catering school minutes before me. Maa would go to her shared stall at the Mallam Atta Market. I could only guess at what Daa would do all day until we returned to our three rooms in our shared compound house, the place we called home.

The sun shone brightly on my neighborhood school. Our cream and brown uniforms had been ordered by the government for every school child in the country. Too bad they did not order our shoes as well. There was every kind of footwear, from slippers to boots in every color. A few people wore their socks pulled high or rolled over at their ankles. Even if some people wore shoes with holes in their soles, nobody was barefooted. Mr. Jonas the headmaster insisted on that.

God bless our homeland, Ghana! And make our nation great and strong, four hundred voices sang boldly to the wind and the trees in our school compound.

We were lined up in eighteen long columns in front of the great veranda at the Alajo Number Five Experimental Elementary and Junior Secondary School for the morning assembly. Each class was represented by two columns of about twenty students each. My class, being the most senior, was at the extreme left, and we stood one behind another sweating in the sun. I tried to remember when my class had lined up at the extreme right when I was just beginning school.

Next there were the announcements. Mr. Jonas was speaking in his nasally accented English, which was hard to understand. In school everyone said he was too colo — old-fashioned. Every other male teacher wore regular black trousers and a shirt, but Mr. Jonas wore his white shirt tucked into starched khaki shorts, and long white socks up to his knees.

We were fidgety while he spoke until he said, The results of this year’s JSS exams are in and will be posted on the notice board in the office.

Something in my chest dropped in my belly — pom! I lost the rest of the headmaster’s comments and I didn’t even hear the words of the pledge we recited just before each class marched to their classroom.

The dreaded day had come, and all I could hope for was a miracle. I had never done well in school, not even when I repeated class six, just before I came to JSS. My problem was reading. My problem was just about everything, really.

I felt dizzy. I felt I would lose the sugar bread in my belly if I so much as spoke. I found my chair and sat down behind my desk. Miss Tanoh calmed the class down and called us in groups of twelve to go to the office to view the results. My name, Gloria Bampo, meant that I would be in the very first group.

Nii Tetteh Addo, Kofi Andah, Gloria Bampo… she called, checking our names off a list.

We made a single file and walked up the corridor toward the office. In our school we filed for everything!

We crowded around the notice board searching for our names. I held back, almost too afraid to look.

There was my name, third on the list. I was the first to fail. Out of fifteen subjects I had failed thirteen, passing only needlework and art.

A river welled up in my tight chest. Last again! How could I return to the classroom? How would I hold back my tears? How would I survive the day?

The answer was simple. I would spend the day locked in a toilet cubicle.

I rushed off while the others celebrated with explosions of high fives.

The girls’ toilet was not the best place to be. Too busy, too smelly and too dirty. The good thing was my tears dried quickly. I blew my nose hard and I walked back to the classroom. God must have made me invisible because nobody took any notice of me in my corner, as people pondered what all those numbers meant for their future opportunities.

I did not remain invisible the whole day. Soon the news spread that some of us had failed. Some of us had failed badly! Naa Koshie didn’t care. Her mother, who lived in England, was going to return for her. She even had a passport.

After all, I passed English, she laughed. That’s all I’m going to need in England!

I wished I had something defiant to say. I had nothing. My best friends, Janet and Afi, stayed with me during recreation. But it was sad company. They had nothing to say. They had passed and I could tell they were bursting to celebrate.

That was the first time I spoke those words, Not’ing wonders God. Right then I understood my daa. I understood defeat.

What would Effie say? What would Maa and Daa say?

Then the bell rang to close school for the day. I left my friends behind.

Along the way home, I decided to say nothing about my results until I had a plan. I pushed back my shoulders and increased my pace. For one month I had been an Ananse Guide, when it had been offered free to every girl in our school. I joined for just long enough to be taught to march straight.

As I walked, I even tried to sing a praise song, but my throat closed up over the words. All that escaped was a loud hiccup. I took the long path home.

•

It is easy to think with a tray of oranges balanced on one’s head, especially when it is done day after day for five years. Carrying oranges was far easier than carrying water, even if one had to walk for several hours, peddling fruit. Normally I would have waited for Janet and Afi, who peddled bananas and groundnuts, the poor man’s dinner. Oranges were the cheap control for thirst until water began to show up in plastic bags at every street corner. We had to walk longer then to sell everything.

I wandered from one street to the next, forgetting to shout my wares. I wanted to think. I wanted time to deal with my shame and sorrow so that I could trust myself not to cry salt-tears when I faced my parents. Most of all I needed a solution to Gloria Bampo’s hope-starved future.

A woman walked by holding a large black handbag and smelling of Zenata perfume. She greeted me as she passed.

I thought of Auntie Ruby, who always smelled of Zenata. For two months she had been visiting Maa with plans of taking me as a nanny for one of her relatives. Maa always said I was still in school.

I had several friends who lived with aunts and other relatives as house maids. Their lives always seemed hard, not only because of the amount of work they did but because of the stories they told of the wickedness done to them in those homes — rough speaking, beatings and name-calling.

I had said to Maa that I would rather sell medicinal herbs with her at the smelly market than become a maid. I would even travel with her across the country to Togo or Ivory Coast to trade.

But she’d laughed softly and said, You don’t know what you’re saying. You are only a child.

I found a path that wound around the backyards of some of the larger houses, those ones that were surrounded by high walls, once white but now stained a dirty brown. The tall grass scratched at my legs.

Did Maa have to push through bushes like these when she went selling across country? Probably worse, I imagined. This was the city.

Akutu wula, akutu wula!

The sharp call pierced through my thoughts. A man was calling for the orange seller. He was calling for me.

Yes, I replied.

Are you deaf or daydreaming? He was standing at the door of the boys’ quarters of a bungalow. I couldn’t tell if he was angry or joking, so I said nothing. I went toward him as he was making no attempt to come to me. I had sold nothing up until then. What would Maa say about that?

I lifted the tray off my head.

Put it on this table, he commanded, pointing to a table on his veranda.

I did so. I watched him. He didn’t smile. His eyes were red, his manner sour and there it was, the unmistakable smell of akpeteshie booze. He spoke in a mixture of Ga and English.

"Ene, how much?" he demanded. I began to explain the prices according to size.

This one here is 200 cedis for one and that one is 300 cedis. I have already peeled some, I said, pointing to the smaller oranges.

Give me two, he commanded.

I picked them up and as I stretched my hand toward him, he grasped my wrist and pulled me down. His grip was strong, even painful.

I screamed before I knew what was happening. Quick as a cat I twisted out of his grasp and was on my feet and running.

"Hey, akutu wula, he shouted after me. Mini sane, buulu? Come back, fool!"

I didn’t look back. I left my tray behind with all the oranges and the knife, too. If it was a theft, he had succeeded. If it was a rape, I had escaped.

It was only then that I realized how late it was, for the last of the orange streaks had left the evening sky, and gray was giving way to indigo.

Where was I? I kept running and running.

Then there was Daavi, our kelewele seller sitting atop her stool, fanning the early fire on our familiar street corner.

Here I was, home again.

Not’ing wonders God!

• TWO •

Maa said I had been foolish to go by myself to sell oranges. She wanted to know why, so I told them about my failed JSS exam.

Oh, Gloria, she sighed.

Not’ing wonders God, Daa muttered.

The next morning, Maa