Fiction by Claudia Owusu

She stirred awake in the middle of the night, this time not because of rainstorms or a neighbor’s quarrel; but because of her own muggy sweat, and a dampness in the room that made her claw for a body by her bed side—an indent of the husband who had left for abroad about 6 months now, long enough for their son to begin crawling and babbling for a father he barely knew. She missed being held. She missed having someone around the house to do the difficult things like refill the gas tank in the kitchen, pay the electricity bill, or open the top cabinet when she was struggling to reach for things. Just shy of 26, she had become a new mother, alone in a house with a roof that bore down to mirror her gloom.

Tossing, she closed her eyes to invite sleep. When it wouldn’t come, she peeled the ntoma off her body and waddled out of bed. The clock read 3 AM, and she hesitated, wondering if she should pray, if perhaps God had awoken her to intercede over some impossible situation that was brooding near, but instead she reached for the stack of cassette tapes by her bedside, plugged in the recorder, and pressed record: “Kwabena, this is your wife, Salome…”

The weight of her breath surprised her. The way the words leapt out of her mouth, heavy with need. She thought about where to begin. Whether she should start with the first steps their son had taken, or the bill the landlord had dropped off, or perhaps how lately she kept seeing an abandoned beach in her dreams and felt enticed by the thrush of waves and the sand. In the dream, she never saw any faces, only the movement of feet leaving and short spirals of laughter that embodied a kind of joy she knew wasn’t her own.

The recorder whirled.

 

She held her breath and spoke, “Kwabena, you have spoiled me. I can hardly do anything without you here.”

 

If she mailed the tape, it would take about another month to get to him. 30 days until the news itself would become stale. By then, she would’ve already sent another and then another. He had become a compliant penpal, and she had become the person tasked with remembering the minute details of their life together so that the narrative was cohesive; so that it seemed as if they had not missed a beat, but rather that she was living her life, as opposed to waddling around the empty house, aimlessly waiting for him. Which she was.

 

The first time she met Kwabena he had spiraled out of a bar in Tse Addo, a club beer in hand with a throng of jubilating men behind him. Kwabena had bumped into her ruggedly and immediately apologized, calling her all the beautiful words a man can muster in a drunken daze. Her purse had slipped out of her hand on impact, and she’d cleared her throat, pointing downward to signal him. Even with the adoring fans behind him, he had not tried to play up as something he was not. Earnest, he knelt down and gathered her things one by one from the floor, an old lipstick, a hair scarf, a notebook, and a comb she kept for flyaways. He stood up and placed the bag firmly on her shoulder, before parading out with the men. She had been with her first husband Samuel then, and while he watched women dance under disco lights, shaking their shoulders back and forth towards each other on the dance floor, she looked around for Kwabena’s return, her husband’s fingers still interlaced with her own.

She’d run into Kwabena again a year later at the post office when she called for the next customer in line, and his face appeared in a sweet surprise. She was divorced then. He wore a speckled white polo, and spotted a punk haircut with a goatee that added a fullness to his face. She reminded him of the night they met, and he enlisted apologies that she coyly swatted away. He had come to make photocopies and file paperwork for his visa application to the U.S. He testified about how he had stopped drinking after an encounter with the Lord on a New Year’s Eve prayer marathon, and how he was now living every day trying to hear that voice again. She listened intently, basking in his warmth. It was almost as if she wasn’t at work, as if she was somewhere between that night at the bar, between the moment she had walked in and the moment she had settled into a seat. Between the moment he had apologized and the moment he had hurriedly gathered her things off the floor. She wanted to pull him back into the tenor of that night, and he seemed to want to do something else, perhaps pull her into this encounter he had experienced.

That’s how their love began, spiraling into a three-year tug of war of trying to get the other person to shelter on their side.

 

In her room, she cleared her throat and listened to the whirling of the tape.

 

“It’s difficult, Kwabena. Sometimes I wonder if you’ve ever loved me, if you’re ever coming back.”

She ran her hands over her satin scarf. An umber light poured in from the street. There had been days, years even when she had been lonely. The years in secondary school when she managed her chop box in a dorm crowded with thieving girls; the first year of an apprenticeship at the post office when she was surrounded by men and no women; the second year of marriage when her first husband entertained other women and encouraged her to entertain other men. They’d fought every day. Sometimes from morning till evening, until a disgruntled neighbor sat the two down to mediate peace. Only then did her ex-husband grab his shoes and beeline for the door while she threatened to pack her things and return to her mother’s house. He had left Salome feeling uncovered, a house with the windows and doors left open for anyone to wander into.

Still, after all that, Kwabena had been a respite. A winnowing wind sifting the residue of what had come before. The afternoon they reunited at the post office, Kwabena waited on the customer bench for three hours till she concluded her shift. He held her bag and led her on an outing through Labadi, buying kebabs and pulling her to dance in the streets as he guarded her against traffic. His charm and spontaneity thrilled her, who was pragmatic in all things. He seemed to have never met a stranger. Even in the inky black of the night, people recognized his voice and the candor of his walk and greeted him. Had life dealt him different cards, he might have been a politician, a man of the people. In each interaction, he introduced her as his future wife, and she beamed shyly at his forwardness. She noted as people went out of their way for him, one guy going as far as to give them a ride on the back of a horse buggy to the beach.

As they walked the sandy shore, half-giggles with his arms wrapped around her, Kwabena shared his dreams of traveling to the U.S and the mechanic shop he hoped to start afresh in the Bronx.

 

“Marry me,” He uttered earnestly, “And we can leave Rawlings’ bola country behind.”

 

Salome stifled a laugh as he held tightly to her grip.

 

That night and beyond, Kwabena had helped her attain what she believed happened only to or for other people. He had called her every day from the phone kiosk by his mechanic shop, whispered prayers she needed to hear, and forced her to church. He had a plan that seemed tried and tested, and most of all, it included her. They had married. She had felt a sense of purpose, a sense of her disordered life finding its footing.

“You have to try to come back this year. It only makes sense. If I am your wife, then you should send for me. At least if I am there with you, all will be well.”

She released the button again and thought to start over. To peel back the looms of shimmery black tape and see if it’d make her feel in some ways closer to her own voice. She wondered if he could hear the thrush of the outdoors, the city fast asleep in the vacillating lull of her pleas. Nothing different had happened to cause her to record any of this. She was not in trouble, she was not ill. Yet everything was wrong. Her husband had left for America, draped in a coat half his size. He had cradled her face at Kotoka International Airport, his own beaded with sweat, and promised he’d call. Before he entered the terminal, he had quickly scribbled the address of his niece’s apartment, where he’d be staying in Bronx, New York, “Mail me here.” he said, and hugged her, waving as she held herself and watched him disappear.

That was six months ago. She hadn’t heard from him since. Friends and family abroad shared sightings of him, alive and well in the Bronx.

He must have his reasons, she told herself.

For this tape recording, she thought about singing or playing a song she loved for him. In the last week, she’d sent three tapes off with a quick scribble of her handwriting on the cover “FROM: SALOME to KWABENA”, and a mark of her red lipstick. She dropped the case to her friend Lucinda everyday Thursday at the post office desk. As she handed it over, she wondered where he’d choose to listen to it. She imagined him cradling into the Bronx apartment after knocking snow from his work boots, and kneeling down by the living room tape player to listen with the rest of the house within earshot. For this reason, she kept some of the briefings to general updates, even though what she really wanted to talk about was the intimate things, how she wanted and needed him.

 

“Oh, Salome, don’t do this.” Lucinda retorted as she received the package.

 

“Do what?” Salome straightened her purse on her shoulder.

 

“Say you’ll pay next time. You’re working up a bill, and you know Boss will start asking questions.”

 

“Oh, don’t be fresh on me now. How much is it? 13,000 cedis? Tsk, my husband will take care of it. Just you wait.”

 

“Okay, madam. Tell him I have been waiting saaa. You’re lucky we are friends.”, Lucinda responded.

 

“So do what friends do.” Salome swatted Lucinda’s hand and playfully rolled her eyes.
Lucinda chuckled and received the package.

 

Should she tell Kwabena about how Lucinda’s emphasis on waiting had punctured her? How for a moment it had made her feel hopeless, near exposed. Wanting to distract herself, she had walked over to a fruit stall and purchased 10 mangoes she had left untouched in the kitchen. Her house girl Amina had wolfed them down day after day while Salome watched from the corner of her eyes, happy that at least one of them could be satisfied.

As she changed the tape, Salome recalled a month before her first marriage, when her mother had impressed upon her, “Awareɛ kwan wa,” her hands gathered together in Salome’s lap, as if begging her not to venture into uncharted territory. Her mother had pulled her away from the formal introduction of families in the living room to do this, their heads grazing the thin layer of white lace that draped the doorway. “Marriage is long.” She had said again, as if measuring the distance between this life and the next. As if to remind her that this marriage should last longer than her first.

Salome innocently received her mother’s words just as that: words. At first this marriage to Kwabena felt almost like a charge at life, a burst of zest to what had otherwise been lowly and mild. But now, like the first one, it seemed to have fallen into a pit after her husband had traveled. She was doing the best she could to revive it, pressing two interlocked hands to its proverbial chest, heaving and pumping all the air she could muster.

At 3:30 AM, Salome closed the tape and aimlessly strolled to the kitchen. She opened the fridge for a sachet of water and tore the rubber with her teeth. She latched thirstily as the water spilled out, streaming down her chin, past her collarbone, and down the front of her dress. She finished the sachet and squeezed it dry before grabbing another one. This one, she couldn’t finish. Instead, she leaned over the sink and poured the rest into her palm and washed her face. Water ran down her elbows, and a few droplets littered the tiled floor.

 

“Ami!” She called out for her house girl. “Amina!”

 

Ami tumbled out of the corridors from her room. “Yes, ma?”

 

“Get the mop for me.”

 

“You couldn’t sleep, ma?”

 

“No, not tonight.”

 

Ami grabbed the mop head and began wiping. She didn’t know if this meant staying up to keep Salome company like she had done just nights before or leaving her alone. Tonight would be the tenth night for two weeks straight, and frankly, Ami was missing her sleep.

 

“You don’t have to stay.” Salome said, in a voice that sounded like her mother’s.

 

“Oh, it’s no problem, ma. You know I am always here.” Ami said.

 

She grabbed a plastic cup from the cabinet and placed it in front of Salome. She grabbed another sachet and poured.

Salome allowed her hands to be led to the cup. She clasped her hands around it and pulled it close. The gesture reminded her of Kwabena’s large hands around hers. How easily his voice and presence filled a room. How easily, too, he withdrew, his eyes worlds away, chasing and sifting through the cogs of another plan.

Had he always been this way, or had she just not seen? She supposed it was because she was too slow, too contemplative, lugging lightyears behind while he was already on the next page.

 

“Here, I will run you a bucket of water before I say goodnight.”

 

Salome nodded as Amina disappeared down the hall.

 

Her eyes locked on the cup she was holding. This is what loneliness had made her, she thought. Someone who stirred awake in the middle of the night, someone who required supervision.

***

When the sun came up, Salome found herself sitting in the customer’s seat at Lucinda’s mother’s hair salon. Three months had passed, marking nine months since Kwabena had left. Her old braids fell like heavy leaves around her, her son waddling in the threshing floor of synthetic extensions. She scooped low to pick him up, and before she could get a good grip, he twisted out of her hands and fell on his head. He let out a loud cry that caused all the women in the salon to turn.

 

“Oh, who hurt the baby?” Aunty M’Adwoa cooed and drew him to her wide chest. Junior rested his head on Aunty M’Adwoa’s shoulders and suckled his thumb.

 

Salome felt a wave of embarrassment. Aunty M’Adwoa, who had known Salome since primary school, read the look, and chuckled, “Fix your face, ɔdɔ. Children fall. Life moves on.”

 

Salome avoided locking eyes with Aunty M’Adwoa in the mirror.

 

“When Lucinda was younger, I dropped her on the dining table…BA-YANG!” Aunty M’Adwoa said and laughed to herself, “Maybe that’s what’s wrong with her.”

 

Salome laughed then. And kept laughing. It chortled out of her like a ribbon of okro. Long, with a trail easy to follow.

 

Soon the other women were laughing, too, till Lucinda stumbled in, her feet caked with dust, and her work bag on her shoulders, “What’s funny?”

 

The silence erupted with laughter again, until Aunty M’Adwoa trailed off and the rest followed.

 

Lucinda rolled her eyes and exited the back door towards their compound home.

 

“Salome, dear, go to the washing bowl over there for me.” Aunty M’Adwoa called.

 

Salome walked over and a shy girl with a nametag “Serena” met her there. The girl pushed Salome down into the chair and shoved her shoulders to signal Salome should shift downward. The washing bowl now rested against her ears and as Serena lifted the pail of water to her scalp, the cold stream sent a shiver through her. Salome jolted up and the stream poured down her back, into her brassiere and down her spine.

 

“Serena, be careful.”, Aunty M’Adwoa cautioned.

 

“Sorry, madam.” Serena grabbed a towel and draped it around Salome’s shoulders. “Sorry, madam.” She said again when the towel slipped.

 

“Don’t worry, it’s fine. You go ahead.”

 

Serena scrubbed her scalp forcefully. Salome’s shoulders jolted up and down as she closed her eyes.
She heard the sound of waves in her ear and exhaled as her shoulders drooped in comfort. She’d gotten the braids when Kwabena left. Typically, she visited Aunty M’Adwoa’s shop monthly to retouch her new growth. But she’d left these braids in longer than usual, perhaps as a time stamp of his departure, a daily log of when she’d finally hear back from him. The only reason she had taken them out now was because they had started to smell. Something between old sweat and dried onions. She told herself it had been cost effective. No, that’s what she would report to Kwabena in the next tape. Perhaps it would ginger him to send a response back. He would find a calling card and send her a message and pass on a tape to someone in the Bronx who was on their way to Ghana. The person might be at the house right now, talking to Amina, and leaving a message for her. She would listen to the tape over supper in her room, while Amina played with Junior.

 

“Madam”, Serena’s hand jostled her shoulders. “Madam, please I am finished.”

 

Serena stood over her and peered down, avoiding direct eye contact. The girl had wrapped a towel around Salome’s shoulders and around her head. A trail of water fled the wrap and streamed down her face. She drew her blouse up to wipe it, “Thank you.”

 

Serena pointed to the seat in front of the mirror. She wheeled a cart over and began to arrange a hedge of rollers on Salome’s head.

 

“Salo, here, take a mango.” Aunty M’adwoa balanced a bowl in one hand and Junior in the other.

 

Salome took a slice and peeled back the yellow flesh with her teeth. Aunty M’Adwoa handed her another one and another, until Salome finally caved and balanced the whole bowl on her lap.

 

She ate like this while Serena arranged the rollers and the women in the shop talked.

 

When Lucinda returned, Salome’s head was out of the dryer, and Junior was fast asleep. Women had filtered in and out one by one until they were the only three left. Accra buzzed with a steady impatience outside, hordes of people landlocked behind trotros, packed deep in a standstill. Aunty M’Adwoa ushered them out of the shop quickly and locked the door. She drew down the shop gate and closed the padlock.

Salome motioned to pull Junior out of Aunty M’Adwoa’s arms, but the woman nudged her away.

 

“I should get going.” She said, “You’ve been kind enough, Aunty, and Amina might be worried by Now.”

 

“Amina will be fine. She knows where you are. Let’s walk.” Aunty M’Adwoa beckoned them forward.

 

The night fell around them, easeful, like a shawl. Their shadows grew long on the concrete, dancing against the twinkling lights of taxis and street pubs.

 

After they had trekked a distance, Aunty M’Adwoa paused and turned to Salome, “Is something the matter?”

 

The question surprised Salome. She glanced at Lucinda and tried to read her expression for clues.

 

“I see the marital trouble written all over your face.”, Aunty M’Adwoa continued. “And you’ve gotten so thin.”

 

Salome began to regret leaving her house. She had grown so accustomed to slithering around her home to the post office, and back, that she had forgotten that people could see her, really see her.

Aunty M’Adwoa looked at Salome and waited for her to fess up.

“Kwabena and I have been fighting,” Salome blurted out. She supposed giving away a little, a half￾piece truth, was better than giving all.

 

“Oh, honey, I’m no stranger to that.” Aunty M’Adwoa balanced Junior on her left shoulder and gave Salome a warm smile.

 

“—But it has been resolved,” Salome continued. “In fact, he sent some toys and a beautiful note for me and Junior. His friend from the U.S delivered it yesterday.”

 

“Oh? You didn’t tell me.” Lucinda cut in.

 

“Good.” Aunty M’Adwoa assured and handed Junior over to Salome.

 

“Nobody knows this, but the gift included a plane ticket…. for me and Junior.” Salome threw in. Once she had started, it became difficult for her to stop. “We can’t wait to see him.”

 

She wanted to slap the part of herself that allowed her big mouth to precede her discernment.

 

Lucinda shrieked with excitement and Junior stirred in his sleep.

 

“That’s wonderful! Ei, no more tapes ooo. Only reunion!” Lucinda and M’Adwoa jumped up and down, almost lifting her off the ground with them.

 

“We praise God!”, they squealed. Aunty M’Adwoa lifted her hands heavenward and swayed in praise.

 

Salome could barely breathe. All she could hear was their deafening joy and the rattle of dread in her own stomach.

What had she done? And who had she done it for?

***

At 2 AM, Salome woke up and started a new tape.

“Kwabena, you said you would love me through better or worse.”

 

Her shoulders began heaving as tears spilled from her eyes. She caught a glimpse of her back in the bedroom vanity. Two months had passed since she had sold everyone the lie of her reunion with Kwabena. And eleven months had passed since Kwabena boarded the plane and turned ghost in the Bronx. Consequently, Salome and Amina had started packing her things in a suitcase to nowhere. The following day after Lucinda and Aunty M’Adwoa walked her home, Aunty M’Adwoa had called Salome’s mother in a hurry to congratulate her. Her mother had rushed over to cook a whopping dinner the next day, and bathe her grandson, who she wouldn’t be seeing for a while. She lamented at how he would start talking without her, start school without her, and soon graduate to college to become the medical doctor of her dreams without her. She wiped tears from her eyes. She wouldn’t admit it, though Salome knew that Adelaide delighted in her one and only daughter, and even more so now that Salome had found herself in a marriage that seemed to yield much fruit. In fact, the golden ticket of fruits: a ticket to America. As Adelaide stalked around the house, making a big fuss of preparing things for her daughter, she had asked to see the plane ticket, to view it with her own eyes, but Salome had warded her off under the guise that she didn’t want it to go missing.

Salome blamed Kwabena. Had he done what men ought to do, had he arrived in the Bronx and called, sent a letter, a tape, a pigeon, an owl, a battered snail, a coverted witches’ broom, she wouldn’t have had to lie or become the load bearing wall in their marriage. She had run so far only to return to her origin, like a dog tied to a heavy chain.

She pressed pause on the tape. And then hit the record button.

 

“Kwabena, are you alive? You must be. You should see what a story I have woven for us.”

 

She began to weep. The despair in her chest insisted on being known.

She buried her head in her arms and wailed.

 

The door cracked open, and her mother poked her head into the room.

 

“Salo? Is that you crying?” She stalked over and wrapped her body around her daughter’s. She did it so effortlessly without thinking. As if to slide under the weight and take it from Salome.

 

“And…the trip…ticket…Kwabena…” Salome heaved in between words.

 

“Aww, I know it’s difficult leaving what you have built behind.” Adelaide soothed her daughter’s back as her body yielded to the sobs.

 

“Ma…” Salome wiped her nose and looked at her mother.

 

Even through the dark, Salome could see the desire in her mother’s eyes for her daughter to outpace her, to go beyond the mark of where she had gone.

It hurt Salome to know that she would not only be killing her mother’s dream, but her own dream in one fell swoop.

A knock rattled at the door.

“Ma, should I bring you some water?”

When she didn’t hear a response, Amina poked her head in and waddled sheepishly to the bedside like she had done many nights before.

 

She pressed a sachet into Salome’s mouth and watched as she slurped.

 

When Salome finished, Amina took the sachet and drizzled the last few droplets on Salome’s face and wiped. She then grabbed the bottom of her boubou and held it to Salome’s nose, “Blow.”

She blew. Loud and hard.

Adelaide watched their dance. The whole ordeal was too maternal for her. On one hand, it touched her that her daughter was so well-taken care of. But on the other hand, it displeased her. Amina was half Salome’s age. Couldn’t Salome hold it together just a little bit longer? Keep face?

 

Adelaide shifted on the bed and cleared her throat. As if sensing the distaste, Amina pulled away and propped Salome against the bed.

The spirals and stacks of tapes by her bedside tumbled down. They were all marked with a variation of FROM SALOME TO KWABENA TAPE IX; SALOME TO KWABENA TAPE XX; YOUR HEART VIII; THINGS I WANT TO SAY XXX. They were arranged in order, some in packages ready to drop off to the post-office, some in progress.

Had it been a normal occasion, Amina would’ve escorted Salome there tomorrow morning for another drop off under Lucinda’s employee credit. They would’ve walked over to the mango stand afterwards, and maybe today, Amina might’ve done all the talking for her, with Salome in her ghostly state and all.

“Mmhm. Amina, I think I hear Junior crying.” Adelaide muttered.

It took a while for her voice to register in Amina’s ear. The room was so dark, and sometimes Salome and Adelaide’s voices mirrored each other. Except where Adelaide’s was sterner, Salome’s wilted like a flower at the end of her sentences.

“Of course, Ma.” Amina tumbled out of the room the same way she had come in. The door clicked closed behind her.

“What’s all this, Salome? You’re scaring me.” Adelaide jostled her daughter slightly and tried to control the volume of her voice.

She drew her daughter’s head into her lap and began to part lines for cornrows. Salome’s perm from the salon visit had grown out, and the silky strands led to a thick nest of hair locked at the root.

They used to sit like this in primary school, their bodies webbed together as Adelaide whipped her daughter’s hair into neat cornrows. Salome, even keeled, would run through her course grades with her mother. And her mother would beam at her obedient child, calm and astute, numbering in the middle of her class. Salome had done everything she was supposed to do, Adelaide thought. Salome was a good daughter.

 

Adelaide fought with the hair and gave up.

“Salome, talk to me.” She lowered to the floor next to her daughter. They were shoulder to shoulder now like classmates, girls in the same room, not separated by age, or upbringing, or the piercing aches of relationships they alone bore the marks of.

Salome couldn’t see her mother’s face. She imagined it wide-eyed and curious, with patience only a mother could muster. This made it even more daunting for Salome. Like she had come to the mouth of a body of water and somehow found herself in the thrashing waves.

“Whatever it is, I’ll believe you.” Adelaide gave her daughter’s hand a tight squeeze.

 

Salome sighed, “Ma, did you love?…I mean have you ever been in love?”

 

Adelaide felt her daughter’s breath on her face. A sliver of light pierced the space between them. Adelaide caught glimpses of daughter’s jawline and the curve of her forehead, perhaps the glint off her nose if she squinted hard enough.

“The person I loved I didn’t get.” Adelaide muttered back.

 

“So where is he now?” Salome’s words disappeared at the end, just barely above a whisper.

 

“Last I heard somewhere in Holland with a wife and kids. He was a footballer I knew in JSS. Why this question?”

 

Salome stalled. “Did he know you loved him?”

 

“It makes little difference, dear.”, Adelaide shrugged. “What he knew didn’t keep him.”

 

Her mother’s candor surprised her. Adelaide spoke simply. Like black was black and white was white. No in-betweens. Unlike Salome, who wanted everything to matter. No matter how many months or years had passed in between. No matter who or what had hurt her.

Salome’s heart pulsed at the thought of letting go of something she had never even fully received.

Had Kwabena found another woman? Fallen ill? Had he gone abroad and just suddenly forgotten her?

She stared at the pile of tape letters scattered on the floor.

She imagined the image of him growing fainter and fainter, disappearing over the cliff of her memories. She imagined being in her mother’s shoes, years later, and repeating the same line to her son or even to a daughter, sprawled on the weathered bedroom carpet.

Salome wiped her face and stood up. She felt like she had entered her own life in the middle of the story, half-listening and unsure what to do with the rest of the telling.

***

On the day of travel, a chicken’s crow stirred Salome awake at 4 a.m. She showered. She slicked her hair back into a clean bun and clipped a ponytail. Amina swept the house and wheeled the suitcases out to the front of the corridor while Salome fed Junior in the living room. When Junior was all tied and ready, Salome packed a side bag of the tape letters and hailed a taxi alone to the post office. She paid Lucinda in full and handed over as many tapes as she could afford for mail. What she couldn’t afford to mail, she told Lucinda to keep, even though it was her own voice meticulously recorded and stamped.

“Salo, are you sure?” Lucinda asked.

“Yes, keep them. Listen to them, if you must. Some marriage lessons for you there.” Salome teased.

“Ahhh, you think I want to be sickened by you and Kwabena’s cheesy love story?” Lucinda threw back.

“Jealousy is ugly on you.” Salome laughed and threw her hands around her friend.

They held unto each other tightly, waiting for the other to let go. All things considered, through primary and boarding school, Lucinda had been a buoy for Salome, keeping her anchored where she might have slipped.

“If you cry, eh, I will beat you.” Lucinda said as tears streamed down her face.

 

Salome laughed and wiped her own tears.

 

“I love you. Thank you.”

 

Salome waved till the image of Lucinda dwindled in the rear windshield. She leaned against the cab door with Junior in her lap and watched Accra fade into a blur. The glint of the morning sun resting on the stirring city. The car darted through travel from Taifa towards Accra central to [AD4.1] Legon. She wanted the journey to stretch on forever without end. By 8am, she entered the airport with the help of a security man and pushed her suitcases with Junior balanced on top. It was early enough that the place wasn’t crowded. She imagined the throngs of people, departing Ghana at all hours, reclining at the pub near the Kotoka International Airport, counting their hours and their days. As she joined the queue, a flight agent in the next kiosk locked eyes with Salome and beckoned her forward. Salome shifted uncomfortably and pointed to herself to be sure.

“Me?”

 

“Madam, yes, please, you can come.”

 

Salome ambled forward and balanced Junior on her hip. She busied herself by sorting aimlessly through her bag.

 

“Where to?” the agent asked.

“Bronx. Bronx, New York.”

 

Who was Kwabena? What did he owe her? This was how she’d begin to forget.

Bio
Claudia Owusu is a Ghana girl through and through. As a writer and filmmaker, her work divulges the nuance of Black girlhood through a personal and collective lens.

Her writing is featured or is forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, The Offing Mag, Chestnut Review, Ninth Letter, Bellingham Review, and elsewhere. Her films have screened internationally at Aesthetica, the New York African Film Festival, Urbanworld, and Blackstar Fest.

She is the author of the chapbook, In These Bones I am Shifting from Akashic Books. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from The Ohio State University.