King Peggy Page 7

  Sometimes there was a veritable stream of vendors, one right after the other, marching between stopped cars, deftly dodging the motorbikes that drove between the lanes. As bad as traffic was, the vendors made it worse. Often, when a ten-minute light finally turned green, drivers were waiting for change from a vendor who kept it in a basket on her head. When, due to violently honking horns, the driver started rolling forward, with the vendor running alongside the window, by then the light might have turned red, and everyone would be forced to idle with windows open, since very few people had air-conditioning, and breathe in the retch-inducing exhaust fumes belching out of a thousand cars. Bored to tears, they might decide to buy something, and then the delay would happen all over again.

  Peggy knew that the street hustlers were the kids who never went to high school. Only grades one through nine were free in Ghana and most families couldn’t afford the fees required to send their kids to four years of secondary school, or S.S., as they called it. Those kids who turned to farming or fishing in their village could usually support themselves adequately, but those attracted to the glitter of the big city usually ended up peddling stuff on the street twelve or fifteen hours a day for a few pennies profit.

  Otuam, she knew, had no high school. How many Otuam kids—her kids, now—left for Accra or Cape Coast to hawk stuff at traffic lights? As king, what could she do to protect them from such a hard life? She would have to bring a high school to town, she realized, though that was another thing she had no idea how to do.

  Zigzagging in and out of the crowds of hawkers were handicapped young men on skateboards, their tiny shriveled legs tied up around their waists as they propelled themselves with their hands encased in flip-flops. Many of these young men, Peggy knew, were highly intelligent. In the United States, they would have university degrees in computer engineering, say, and whisk themselves to work in a handicapped-modified car, slide into a motorized wheelchair, and roll unimpeded into their offices using handicapped-accessible ramps and elevators. As far as Peggy knew, in Ghana only a few modern hotels and major hospitals had elevators, and she had never seen a handicapped ramp.

  Here, as in all of Africa, there was no place for the handicapped, because there was already no place for so many of the able-bodied. It was almost impossible to get a good job in the private sector unless the owner was a relative. And even a relative wouldn’t hire a handicapped person, an object of pity and ridicule. Peggy sighed, watching the bright-eyed young men rolling themselves quickly up to cars with their hands outstretched. The best place in the entire world to be handicapped, she knew, was in the USA.

  Once outside the city, they had about thirty good miles on the Accra—Cape Coast Highway, and as the car sailed along west Kwame Lumpopo chattered charmingly about all the ceremonies and family gatherings over the next nine days, the work he had done to help organize them, and how he would help Peggy rule Otuam. They sped down the highway past pale green fields dotted with termite hills up to seven feet high, cones of golden-red earth sticking up like minivolcanoes. Every so often, rising like an elegant umbrella above the celery-colored meadows and dark green bushes stood the onyina, or silk cotton tree, with silver-white bark and black-green leaves.

  Many houses along the road dazzled with colors that jolted the eyes, having received free paint jobs from the cell phone companies: an explosive yellow with a blue MTN logo, a screaming red with a white Vodafone logo, and a clamorous blue with a white Tigo logo, occasionally all three of them in a row.

  At six p.m. the sun set rapidly and local farmers closed up the little stands from which they sold home-grown coconuts, tomatoes, papayas, yams, and pineapples. Twice they passed groups of thirty or forty people sitting outside on plastic chairs, watching a soccer match on a television perched high on a cabinet.

  Suddenly Kwame Lumpopo veered off the coastal highway onto a rutted side road between the wooden stands of two street vendors. At first there was just the occasional pothole, which really wasn’t any worse than the roads in Washington, and Kwame Lumpopo swerved neatly around them in a series of undulating semicircles that reminded Peggy of figure skating.

  But then they got to rougher patches where there were so many potholes that they had no choice but to drive over them. The car pitched and rolled from front to back and side to side, bouncing up and down like a small vessel tossed by a hurricane. Kwame Lumpopo had stopped talking now; he gripped the steering wheel tightly and concentrated on avoiding the deepest potholes, which could flatten your tire or tear off your muffler. The car didn’t seem to have any shock absorbers, and with no seat belts in the car their heads kept hitting the roof. Peggy felt that every bone in her body and all her teeth were rattling.

  African roads are no joke, she thought. Oh boy. I had forgotten. As king I will also have to fix this pitiful road at some point. No one is going to want to invest in my town if they crack their heads going over these potholes. When was the last time they paved this road? Forty years ago?

  They drove a long way through the bush and through some small villages of mud and concrete block houses lining tiny twisting roads. After about thirty minutes on the unpaved roads, they finally reached Otuam. Built on a slight hill, sloping gently downward to the beach, it was topped by its most recognizable feature, the salmon-colored Methodist church with its tall steeple. As they drove down Main Street, Peggy saw people—her people—sitting at tables selling food and phone cards on either side of the road with kerosene lamps burning. Technically, they weren’t lamps so much as thick wicks jammed into large tin cans of kerosene and set ablaze. There were no streetlights, but Kwame Lumpopo’s headlights lit up short-legged goats scurrying out of their way.

  The people milling about Main Street were slower to get out of their way than the goats as they walked from one table to the other, laughing, chatting, examining merchandise. Peggy studied them, but they ignored her. Little did they know the lady in the passing car was their new king.

  Kwame Lumpopo turned onto a road that was more like a sandy patch of ground than a road and swerved around tree trunks until they passed behind the royal palace, totally dark now what with the king in the village for good. Peggy wouldn’t be staying there. When she had asked Kwame Lumpopo about the condition of the palace, he confirmed her fears that it was completely uninhabitable. He had arranged for her to stay in the home of a distant cousin of theirs just a few hundred feet away.

  They swung around the back of the palace and bounced under some trees, past a few low houses. Then they stopped in front of a one-story concrete block house with a long front porch, painted blue with yellow trim, lit outside by a single lightbulb next to the front door. For the next nine days this would be the king’s residence.

  Kwame Lumpopo honked the horn and within seconds a gaggle of women ran out the door, arms outstretched, clucking and cackling in gleeful welcome.

  “Welcome, Nana!” they cried, waving their arms above their heads. As Peggy emerged from the car, she recognized Auntie Esi, who at eighty-five held the status of the eldest female in Peggy’s family. She was a petite, spry woman with a narrow face and lively sparkling eyes. Auntie Esi was everybody’s mother and grandmother. They embraced affectionately.

  Standing next to Auntie Esi was Cousin Comfort. At seventy-six, she was beautifully dressed in an elegant printed blue robe, edged with lace and embroidered with gold, and a matching head wrap. She wore a thick black wig, flawless makeup, and real gold jewelry. Cousin Comfort lived in Tema, a suburb of Accra, and had been driven to Otuam earlier that day by her son.

  “Nana, we are so proud!” Cousin Comfort cried, hugging Peggy. “Your mother would be so happy to know her daughter is a king.” Peggy felt a little stab of pain but managed a smile.

  Cousin Aggie had come in from Accra to cook and clean for the royal entourage and would be staying in the little bedroom next to the kitchen. Her brother lived in Otuam, so there would be plenty of time for her to visit with him. Aggie was probably fifty, though she looked ageles
s. She had long limbs, broad hips, and a thousand braids, which she wore in an oblong bun covered by a kerchief, making her head look something like a hornet. Aggie, too, gave Peggy a hug.

  And there were three other elderly aunties who made up Peggy’s entourage, Auntie Esi explained, introducing them. Together they would teach her about Otuam and instruct her in royal etiquette. They would help her dress and undress, provide her with company, and fan her with towels when it got too hot, an honor accorded to kings. Peggy remembered elderly women fanning Uncle Joseph in shifts at royal events.

  Cousin Charles, with his thick glasses, big muscles, and booming baritone voice, was also there to welcome her. At forty-five, Cousin Charles lived in Cape Coast and worked for an optician. He was married, with three grown sons who worked in the building trade. Cousin Charles was known for his sturdy reliability: always there when you needed him, always ready to help.

  “Nana, we are so happy for you!” he said, giving Peggy a big bear hug.

  As Kwame Lumpopo moved his bags into Cousin Charles’s room in the front of the house, Auntie Esi took Peggy on a quick tour. All the rooms except one had old linoleum floors and a few sticks of furniture. The dining room had a table, six chairs, and an ancient fridge that shuddered and rumbled. There was a big fan above the table, with three lightbulbs, two of which were burned out. The kitchen had a kerosene stove and two large rusty tanks in the corners where the kids dumped the buckets of water in the morning, for which Aggie carefully counted out the coins. The five bedrooms each had a bed, and that was it, except Peggy’s corner room, which also had a couple of plastic chairs. She would have to live out of her suitcase, since the closet had no shelves and no clothes rod. Luckily, there was a fan on the ceiling, which she would keep on twenty-four hours a day, as long as the electricity held out.

  Though the rest of the house was spartan, the parlor was lush, plush, and Victorian in décor, with overstuffed chairs and sofas on a beautiful new linoleum floor. It had lacy drapes, and several fans and chandeliers crowded the intricately carved ceiling. One wall had bookcases filled with china and dainty knickknacks. Oddly, the walls were covered with plastic vines and flowers. The owner of the house, Comfort Mensah, also known as the Other Cousin Comfort, was the widow of Peggy’s cousin and used the Otuam house as a weekend getaway. She had bought these luxury items at one of the new Western-style furniture stores in Accra, where she resided most of the time.

  Peggy sat down with her relatives on the comfortable furniture while Aggie served beer and water. They asked her about her journey and her life in the United States and told her how excited they were that the ancestors had seen fit to choose a woman king. “We couldn’t believe it when we heard it!” Auntie Esi said. “This is a new day for Otuam.”

  Looking around at her relatives chattering happily, Peggy realized that she had suddenly been enveloped in the warm embrace of African family, something she hadn’t felt since her mother’s funeral. Here there were so many layers of people around her, aunties, cousins, nieces, nephews, and neighbors, an interconnectedness of human spirits that she had never developed in the United States.

  At that moment she wondered how she could have stood to live without it for so long, the shining eyes, the kind words, the laughter and stories and humanness that bound them all together. In the United States, she did her job and came home to her condo. Sometimes she feared that if she died in her condo or had a stroke, no one would find her for weeks. That would be impossible in Ghana. There would always be relatives calling to see how you were, banging on your door, bringing you plates of fish and rice, inviting you to church and family events. Even if you told them to go away and leave you alone, they wouldn’t. They would bounce back with gentle chastisement of your bad behavior and more invitations and perhaps a few bottles of beer.

  Then Auntie Esi turned to Peggy and said, “We will be sleeping with you. Just as a pride of lions sleeps surrounding its leader, as a king you must have attendants in your room at all times.”

  Peggy frowned. Suddenly the warm embrace of family did not seem so desirable. Enjoying the company of others in the waking hours was one thing, but Peggy did not relish a slumber party at her age. That was one great advantage after her husband left. No one snoring, coughing, getting up to pee, trying to talk to her, or tossing around in the bed like a Sea World dolphin so she bounced up and down.

  “But I am an American,” she replied. “I need to sleep alone, not with a bunch of people.”

  The aunties roared with laughter and shook their heads.

  “You are a king now, and you need our spirits to protect you!” cried Auntie Esi. She explained that as Peggy’s closest female relative, Cousin Comfort—her mother’s sister’s daughter—would share the bed with her. The other four relatives would sleep on mats on the floor.

  There was no arguing with them. As king, it seemed, Peggy would have to give up certain things.

  She asked the aunties to show her where she could bathe. They opened a narrow wooden door off the hall, and she saw a small tiled shower room with a shower head, faucets, and drain. Then she saw the bucket on the floor. It was as she had thought—no running water in Otuam. Peggy nodded. All Africans knew how to get very clean with a bucket of water. Even if they were born and raised in a big city, they always had relatives who lived in a town or village in the bush. And you didn’t need to heat the water because room temperature water in Ghana was already quite warm.

  Right next to the shower room was the toilet room, which had a toilet and sink that didn’t work. Instead of flushing the toilet you had to throw a bucket of water into the bowl to push everything down the pipe. Peggy laughed. Truly, a toilet fit for a king.

  After she bathed, she chatted with her aunties for a while and as soon as she got in bed fell into a delicious sleep.

  Peggy was awakened at four a.m. by roosters right under her window shrieking cocka-doodle-doo in a variety of discordant tones. The birds must have awakened the goats, which immediately started a raucous baaing. She rolled over and put the pillow over her head.

  At four thirty she was again shocked awake by the pounding of drums somewhere nearby, which reverberated through her pillow. Drums had always been an important part of Ghanaian culture. There were the royal drums, the fontomfrom, which were played only for the king by royal drummers. Chest high, these drums were made of wood carved with ancient symbols. Six-inch-high elephant tusks projected around the front of the drum, and a piece of cowhide was stretched tightly over the top. Each drumstick was made of a piece of wood naturally angled like the number seven, the dark bark stripped off revealing the naked whiteness of the wood beneath.

  The regular drums, the djembe and kpanlogo, were smaller, knee-high, and anybody could play them with bare hands. The drums sang out an ancient rhythm, the heartbeat of the earth, which the loud chatter of modern civilization had long ago drowned out in most parts of the world. They started slowly at first, then gradually increased until the beat became the very tongue of the ancestors calling in a voice far more powerful than any human voice.

  Peggy pulled the pillow off her head and listened to the drums. From the uneven staccato beat she knew that these were the talking drums, an ancient form of tribal communication, like Morse code. Ghanaian languages had a tonal component in which each syllable had a different pitch. Using a set of drums of different pitches, therefore, the drummer could communicate as if he were speaking. Such messages easily traveled five miles in days when the world was silent, before cars and planes and general noise pollution. Then the village five miles away would drum the message so other villages would hear it and repeat it. Within minutes, an important message could be drummed dozens of miles away, much sooner than even the swiftest runner could deliver it.

  Peggy wondered if this particular beat was to inform the people of Otuam that their king had arrived. Her hunch was confirmed shortly afterward when she heard several bangs of the porch gate, followed by the repeated slams of the screen door. A m
oment later Aggie knocked on her door and poked her turban inside. “Nana,” she said, “the elders are here to greet you.”

  The aunties, she knew, had also been awakened by the drums. She had heard them yawning loudly and stretching. Now Auntie Esi leaped up from her sleeping mat and said, “We will dress you, Nana.”

  The aunties wrapped Peggy in an over-the-shoulder cloth, red for mourning the late king, and threw on several layers of bead necklaces and bracelets. She stood as the aunties walked around her, examining her and, after a few more tucks at her cloth, told her she passed inspection.

  As they dressed themselves in colorful two-piece print dresses and head wraps, Peggy sat on the bed holding a little hand mirror and made up her face. She had given great thought to her makeup. Kings wore eyeliner to keep evil spirits at bay, and Peggy would wear plenty of that as she always had. Not only did she like the look, but as king she would probably attract more jealous spirits than ever before, so she would really lay it on thick. Her one concession to being a lady king would be lipstick. Bright red lipstick. Peggy could never give that up. She applied a thick coat.

  Auntie Esi stood next to the door, ready to open it so Peggy could lead the way. Just before she stepped outside her bedroom, it occurred to Peggy that this was her first moment of kingship, meeting her royal council, and she inhaled sharply, feeling a wave of dizziness wash over her. This was real. It was no longer merely an amazing story, an exultant twist of fate that made her feel special. The reality, the responsibility was here.