King Peggy Read online

  “Well, Peggy?” he asked.

  She took a deep breath, ran her hand over her short curly hair, and said, “Boss, do you know that your secretary is going to be a king? ”

  The ambassador cocked his head to one side and looked at her strangely. “Are you feeling okay?” he asked.

  “I’m tired,” she admitted, thinking that one good night’s sleep hadn’t entirely made up for three sleepless ones. “But I’m fine.”

  “Then what are you talking about? ”

  “Boss, I have been chosen king of Otuam because my uncle passed away. They did all the rituals, and the ancestors want me because they made the schnapps steam up, and I have accepted it.”

  The ambassador frowned. “King, Peggy? Are you sure they don’t want you to be the queen mother?” he asked. “Perhaps you got it wrong.”

  Peggy had a feeling that she would be getting this question a lot. “It’s true that there aren’t many lady kings in Africa,” she agreed. “But now you are looking at one, the same one who types your letters and makes your appointments, and I have to leave you in the near future to go to Ghana for my enstoolment.”

  “How many days will you be gone?” He frowned again as if struggling to absorb this turn of events.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll stay until President Kufuor leaves D.C.,” Peggy offered. “Then I’ll be gone for about ten days. They say that’s the minimum that I will need for all the rituals.”

  The ambassador nodded. “Very well,” he said. “Congratulations.” He stood up, and Peggy stood up, and she went back to her desk.

  A few minutes later the ambassador buzzed Peggy and called her into his office. This time he remained sitting at his desk.

  “Is it true, what you told me just now?” he asked. “Or was it a joke? Or are you perhaps not feeling well?” He rubbed his forehead as if it were he who wasn’t feeling well.

  “Boss, why are you so shocked?” she asked.

  “Because in Ghana we don’t have female kings. It doesn’t make sense.” He shook his head back and forth and put his palms up toward the ceiling in the ancient gesture of shocked agitation. If she wasn’t mistaken, she seemed to be witnessing the crisp, cool, polished ambassador coming undone.

  “We have two female kings in Ghana,” she countered. “I read about them on the Ghana news website. Now I’m the third.”

  The ambassador sighed. He shifted in his chair and frowned thoughtfully. Beneath his trim mustache, his mouth formed into a little O that swung first to the left side, and then to the right. Looking into space, he finally said softly, as if speaking to himself, “You will be a good one. You are very strong, very focused, and you don’t take nonsense from anybody. You stand up for what is right. You run this office beautifully, so I can see you running your kingdom efficiently as well.” He nodded curtly, and Peggy got up and went back to her desk. The buzzer rang again.

  “How did you get to be the king?” he asked over the intercom. “What is this about schnapps steaming up?”

  She told him about the genealogical list and ancestral libations. “They have chosen a good one,” he said again. “I guess I’m the only ambassador in the whole world whose secretary is a king!”

  Word spread quickly throughout the embassy, and most people congratulated her heartily, calling her Nana and bowing playfully in front of her. Elizabeth, in particular, was happy. “Only God creates kings!” she said, smiling broadly. “God has a purpose for you!”

  Some others looked a bit sour and told her she was crazy to accept such a responsibility. But when Peggy looked into their eyes she knew that these were the jealous ones. A lot of them were career diplomats with a much higher rank and salary than she possessed, full of themselves because, for a time at least, they had been sent to the best diplomatic posting in the world, Washington, D.C. And yet she was the king, not them. When the government recalled them from Washington and sent them to, say, Somalia, she would still be king, and they would be in Somalia.

  William called to congratulate her—they usually talked about once a month—and told her about the Otuam elders’ visit to give him the news. When Kwame Lumpopo arrived at William’s house in Accra with a gaggle of traditionally robed elders bowing and bearing bottles of beer and whiskey, William had been startled. Then, when he heard of Peggy’s accession to the throne, he had thought about it a moment before saying, “My wife will make a most excellent king. But I hope you people know what you are in for. Because if anybody in Otuam is doing anything wrong, Peggy will bust their ass.” William told her that Kwame Lumpopo and her elders had laughed at this remark, but he had been dead serious and hadn’t even cracked a smile.

  During the call, Peggy and William caught up on the news of their respective families. There was no bitterness between them, just goodwill tinged gray with sadness now, and unspoken regret for what might have been. Toward the end of their conversation, William surprised her by saying, “I will visit you in Otuam. I will try to make it for your enstoolment, but if I can’t, I will visit you another day.”

  Peggy’s heart leaped. William would visit her. Only now she wouldn’t be a barren, discarded wife. She would be an enstooled king, mother of seven thousand people. Maybe, when they saw each other again after six years, things would be different. Maybe William, now a father and a successful businessman, would be stronger, more independent in making his personal choices. It was a small, secret hope that she hardly dared to admit, but it was there, nonetheless.

  After all the turmoil of making the decision, Peggy was happy that she had accepted. She had no idea what awaited her over there in her new kingdom, but she trusted that God, Jesus, and the ancestors would take care of her. And so she cheerfully kept up with President Kufuor’s ever-changing schedule for his visit to Washington.

  The evening that President Kufuor was guest of honor at a state dinner at the White House, Peggy saw clips of it on the news as she packed her bag. Ghana’s president looked splendid in a tux, but his wife wore a striking gown of Ghana’s traditional fabric, kente cloth, narrow strips of hand-woven cotton or silk with designs that dated back to the seventeenth century. In the past, kente had been worn exclusively by kings and dignitaries, but nowadays anybody could buy it. The price deterred many, however: about nine hundred dollars for a single eight-by-twelve-foot cloth.

  Kente could be made in any color, though most people preferred bright colors with orange or gold predominant, woven in geometric shapes and bold designs. Each color represented a virtue of some sort: Black for the intense spiritual energy of the ancestors. Red for death and mourning. Yellow for fertility. Maroon for Mother Earth. Purple for tenderness. And blue for the sky, the home of the Great Creator Spirit. Each pattern also had a meaning, such as The extended family is a force, One person does not rule a nation, To err is human, It’s not my fault, and If you have something to say about me, let me first give you a stool to sit upon.

  An African wearing kente, or even regular cloth decorated with adinkra symbols, walked out into the world proclaiming what he or she stood for: strength, family, or forgiveness, powerful concepts that helped you get through your day. Peggy opened her closet and looked at the row of black and brown pantsuits she usually wore to the office. How sad, she thought, that we Americans dress like this. We walk outside every morning with no power, no symbolism, no added bit of spiritual heft to help us meet our challenges.

  Most of the clothes Peggy would be wearing were already in Otuam. Kwame Lumpopo had said that every day during her visit she would have to wear the royal kente cloths of the late king who was in the fridge, thrown over her left shoulder the way men wore them. This was because until she was enstooled, the old king, who had merely gone to his village for a cure, was still technically alive and in power. Peggy would be standing in for him, wearing his cloths and carrying his regalia. Only after her enstoolment could she buy her own cloths.

  Peggy considered what to do about jewelry. Ghanaian kings wore lots of colorful beads, bracelets, rings,
and anklets. But as men they didn’t wear earrings, which queen mothers weren’t allowed to wear either. Peggy decided that since she was now a king she would give up earrings entirely, but she would go heavy on the traditional beaded necklaces and bracelets.

  She opened her jewelry box and took out her beads, examining them carefully. Ghanaian beads were made of recycled glass, smashed to a fine powder and shaped in a heated mold. Half-inch-long tubes were the most popular shape, often interspersed with spherical beads. They were all hand painted. The background color, blue, for instance, would be overlaid by white, yellow, or red designs: a combination of circles, dots, stripes, zigzags, and squiggles.

  Underneath her beads she found the delicate gold bracelet her mother had given her, and a quick stab of pain seared through her. She hadn’t worn it since her mother’s death, had intentionally buried it beneath her beads, because it hurt her so to look at it. In Ghana, mothers gave their daughters a collection of gold jewelry upon their first menstruation, a gift welcoming them to womanhood. Women wore the gold on their wedding day and on important occasions throughout their lives before passing it on to their own daughters. The gift included four bangle bracelets (two for each wrist), a few long necklaces, and four long belts with antique beads. If a woman had more than one daughter, she worked and saved for years, if necessary, to make sure each one received a substantial gift of jewelry.

  When Peggy menstruated, her mother told her she would give the gold to her later when she left the house to get married or continue her education. The day before Peggy left for catering school in London, she told her mother the time had come for her to receive her birthright, the beautiful gold that had been passed down in her mother’s family and cherished for generations. But Mother sagged and started to weep.

  “What’s wrong, Mother?” Peggy asked.

  Mother went miserably to her bedroom and came back with the dainty gold bracelet. “This is all I have for you,” she said. “When your father left me, I had to sell the rest of your gold to support the family. I sold it for our future, Peggy, for your tuition in London. You can put gold on the table, but you cannot eat it.”

  In Ghana there were no laws to force men to support wives and children. Many of them, like her father, like her Uncle Joseph, simply walked away and never paid a dime. They left their old families in the lurch while they ran off and started new ones. Some men had several wives, each with numerous children, and the men only provided for the families they were currently living with.

  To support her children, Peggy’s mother had opened a store in the market, selling brightly colored bolts of cotton cloth and lace trim. She had worked hard, with Peggy often helping in her free time, and the family had never gone hungry. It had never occurred to Peggy to wonder where she got the money to open the shop, but now she knew.

  Now Mother sat on the couch and rocked back and forth, crying for her failure as a mother to do the most traditional thing a woman was supposed to do for a beloved daughter. Peggy held the little bracelet and began to weep, too. Not for the loss of the gold; she didn’t care about that. But now she finally understood the sacrifices her mother had made for her, the pain she must have endured while making them, and the dread she must have had of this very moment.

  And it was all her father’s fault. She wondered if he had any idea that he had caused such wretched sadness. If he had known, he probably wouldn’t have cared. Where was he now? Eating and drinking with his awful new wife? Enjoying the children he had had with her when he had still been married to her mother? Peggy wanted to spit on him. She went to the couch and threw her arms around her mother and cried with her, their tears and sobs blending together until they were too exhausted to cry much more.

  “I failed,” Mother said through her hands, “I failed you as a mother. I can’t give you the gold. My great-grandmother’s beautiful gold.”

  “It’s all right, Mother,” she said, “I don’t care about the gold. You are giving me an education. Your little shop put food on the table. That is so much more important than some stupid jewelry. I don’t need the jewelry. But I will treasure this little bracelet all my life.”

  She pulled her mother’s hands away from her face and cupped her wet cheeks. “This bracelet means more to me than all the gold in the world,” she said. And she meant it.

  Now Peggy examined it closely. There were two thin bands of gold held together in the center by beautifully carved family symbols so old that their meaning had been forgotten. Her tears fell on it, shining for a moment like liquid diamonds before disappearing. She would wear this bracelet in Ghana, to have her mother with her there when she became king.

  Failure, she thought, can follow you anywhere, like a lion tracking its prey in the bush. It can find you as a wife, or as a mother. It seemed to impact women more often than men, who usually didn’t pay it much mind. There were many men who, when faced with failure, would go to a bar to get drunk and watch a football match, perhaps go home with a strange woman, and forget about it. Such men bounced around doing exactly what they wanted, not thinking of how their behavior hurt others, until they knew they were dying and then they started to think about it. Her father had been one of those men. In 1987 he had called her from a hospital in Kumasi. He was dying, he explained, and begged her to come see him before he left the earth. He had something he needed to say to her.

  This was the traditional time when African men, maybe men all over the world for all she knew, asked their women for forgiveness. And the women always showed up ready to give it. Maybe we are partly at fault, she thought, because we make it so easy for them. Men know that no matter how badly they treat us, they can always make a deathbed confession and leave this earth unburdened by guilt. Maybe we should say, Hell no! After what you did to us, I will never forgive you. In fact, I will pour libations right now begging the ancestors to drag you down to hell. Maybe that was what she should say to her father right now.

  “Well, Peggy, are you coming?” he asked, his voice trembling. Now, she thought, was the time to let him have it with both barrels.

  “Yes, Father,” she said. “I will take the next available flight.”

  She hadn’t seen him in years, and now he looked shriveled. Old age and illness had reduced this once hale and hearty man to a dried-up shell, a corn husk that could speak. She approached his bed.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and his voice was ragged and raspy. “I have been lying here thinking how badly I treated your mother and you kids. I hope you can forgive me so that when I go to meet the ancestors in a few days, or hours, I can tell them you have forgiven my bad behavior.”

  At first Peggy was exasperated. Why did men so foolishly wait until the last minute? They were like bulls in a china shop, running riot, doing damage, and never thinking twice about it until someone presented them with the bill. Only then did they say, Gee, did I do that? Sorry. And they only did it then because, being selfish creatures, they didn’t want the ancestors to drag them down to hell.

  She wanted to make him a sharp retort, the kind that stabbed the soul like an ice pick. But then she looked at the shrunken old man in the hospital bed, with the tubes going into his skinny veined arms. She looked at the human soul behind eyes glazed with approaching death. She had hated him for so many years, but she couldn’t hate him now. Also, even if it had only been done in a moment of selfish pleasure, this man had given her life, and she must always be grateful to him for that, and honor him, no matter how bad his behavior.

  “I forgive you,” she said, and for a moment the dull eyes shone with light. “Go to the ancestors knowing you are forgiven. We all forgive you. Mother, too.” She knew her mother would have wanted her to say that.

  She left him then, and he died the next day. He had, evidently, been waiting to die until he was forgiven, and that was probably the smartest thing her father had ever done. It would be terrible to leave your body bowed down with the crushing weight of unforgiven sins. The ancestors waiting to take you to the other s
ide would yell at you, possibly beat you, before they dragged you down.

  Peggy wondered if Uncle Joseph’s children had obeyed his summons at the end. Had his sons in Houston flown to Accra? Had the daughters living in Accra gone to his side when he was in the hospital, dying? Had they told him that he was forgiven to speed his soul to God? She hoped so.

  Part II

  GHANA

  September 2008

  5

  Kwame Lumpopo was standing in the visitors’ waiting section and flashed her a white grin as she emerged from the terminal. There he was, just as she remembered him—tall, well built, and good-looking. A charmer.

  Though Accra was only sixty miles away from Otuam, you never knew how long the trip would take. This afternoon it took them two hours just to get out of Accra. The road was jammed all the way to the city limits and for a mile or two beyond. They crept alongside beat-up cars with black smoke roaring out of the tailpipes and lopsided public minibuses called tro-tros, stuffed with passengers and crowned with a tottering heap of luggage roped to the roof. There were large dust-covered trucks carrying merchandise between Accra and the hinterland, and the occasional shiny SUV so popular with top government officials and successful businessmen, always in black or steel gray. Peggy smiled to see the air-conditioned SUVs and stifling tro-tros all equally stuck in the same unmoving line.

  Local residents made good use of the tie-up to sell idled travelers a startling variety of goods: blankets, bath and dish towels, boxes of Kleenex, rolls of toilet paper, children’s toys and rubber balls, meat pies, phone cards, dog leashes, superglue, pens, apples, fried plantains, and sunglasses on a large square board. They hawked machetes, which were used to open coconuts or cut grass (most people didn’t have lawn mowers), and water, large and small bottles, as well as little plastic baggies of water for those who couldn’t afford the luxury of a whole bottle; people bit the corner off and squeezed the water into their mouths. And they sold tiger nuts, which looked like small, dimpled peanuts and for centuries had been eaten by aging men as a sexual stimulant, a kind of African Viagra.