He said what needed to be said, nothing more.
“The banku is too sticky today,” she said while they ate one night. In the beginning, she had insisted on taking her meals separately from him, saying that it wouldn’t be proper for them to eat together, which was true enough. But the thought of her alone in her room with nowhere for all of her questions to go seemed to him to be the worse option. So now, this and every night, she ate across from him at his small wooden table.
“It’s good,” he said. He smiled. He wished he were a beautiful man, with skin as smooth as clay. But he was not the kind of man who could win a woman just with his presence. He would have to do something.
“No, I’ve made much better in the past. It’s okay. You don’t have to eat it if you don’t like it. I’ll make something else for you. Would you like soup?”
She was starting to pick up his plate, so he held it down.
“This is good,” he said again, more forcefully. He wondered what he should do to win her. For the past five years she had been drawing him more and more out of himself. Asking him questions about his schooling, about Edward, about the past.
“Would you like to go to Edweso with me?” Yaw asked. “To visit my mother?” As soon as he said it, he regretted it. For years, Esther had been nudging him to go, but he either deflected or ignored her. Now, his love had made him desperate. He didn’t even know if the Crazy Woman of Edweso was still alive.
Esther looked uncertain. “You want me to go?”
“In case I need someone to cook for me as I travel,” he said hurriedly, trying to cover his tracks.
She considered this for a moment, and then she nodded. For the first time since he had met her, she had no further questions.
*
There were 206 kilometers between Takoradi and Edweso. Yaw knew because he could feel each kilometer as though it were a stone lodged in his throat. Two hundred and six stones collected in his mouth, so that he could not speak. Even when Esther asked him a question, like how much longer were they to travel, how would he explain her presence to the townspeople, what would he say to his mother when he saw her, the stones blocked his words from passing. Eventually, Esther too grew silent.
He remembered so little of Edweso, so he could not say if things had changed. When they reached the town, they were greeted first by a sweltering heat, the sun’s rays stretched out like a cat after a nap. There were only a few people standing about the square that day, but the ones who were there stared freely, shocked at the sight either of the car or of the strangers.
“What are they looking at?” Esther whispered miserably. She was worried about herself, that people would think it improper for them to be traveling together, unmarried. She had not said this to him yet, but he could see it in the way she lowered her eyes and walked behind him.
Before long, a little boy, no older than four, holding the long train of his mother’s wrapper, pointed at Yaw with his tiny index finger. “Look, Mama, his face! His face!”
The boy’s father, who stood on the other side of him, snatched his hand away. “Stop that nonsense!” he said, but then he looked more closely along the line the boy’s finger had drawn.
He approached Yaw and Esther where they stood, uncertain, holding one bag each. “Yaw?” he asked.
Yaw dropped his bag to the ground and walked closer to the man. “Yes?” he said. “I’m afraid I don’t remember you.” He held his hand above his brows to shield his eyes from the sun, but was soon extending it again to shake the man’s hand.
“They call me Kofi Poku,” the man said, shaking back. “I was about ten when you left. This is my wife, Gifty, and my son Henry.”
Yaw shook hands all around and then turned toward Esther. “This is my…This is Esther,” he said. And Esther too shook hands all around.
“You must be here to see Crazy Woman,” Kofi Poku said before realizing his mistake. He covered his mouth. “I’m so sorry. I mean Ma Akua.”
Yaw could tell from the way his eyes searched and his mouth slowed that Kofi Poku had not had to call his mother by her name in years. Perhaps ever. As far as Yaw knew, the Crazy Woman of Edweso could have earned her title well before his birth. “Please, don’t worry,” Yaw said. “We are here to see my mother, yes.”
Just then, Kofi Poku’s wife leaned in to his ear to whisper something, and the man’s eyebrows lifted, face brightening. When he spoke, it was as though the idea had been his all along.
“You and your wife must be very tired from your journey. Please, my wife and I would like you to stay with us. We will make you dinner.”
Yaw started to shake his head, but Kofi Poku waved his hand, as though trying to counteract Yaw’s shake with his own. “I insist. Besides, your mother keeps odd hours. It would not be good for you to go to her today. Wait until tomorrow evening. We will send someone to tell her you are coming.”
How could they refuse? Yaw and Esther had planned on going straight to Akua’s house to stay, but instead they walked the short mile’s distance from the town square to the Poku house. When they got there, Kofi Poku’s other children, three daughters and one son, were beginning dinner. One of the girls, the tallest and most slender, sat before a great big mortar. The boy held the pestle, which was nearly twice his height. He held it straight up and then would send it crashing down just as the girl’s hand finished turning the fufu in the mortar, barely escaping the impact.
“Hello, my children,” Kofi Poku called, and all of the children stopped what they were doing and stood, so that they could greet their parents, but when they saw Yaw their voices hushed and their eyes widened.
The one who looked like the youngest girl, with two puffs of hair on either side of her head, pulled on her brother’s pants leg. “Crazy Woman’s son,” she whispered. Yet still, all could hear, and Yaw knew for certain now that his story had become legend in his hometown.
Everyone stood there, embarrassed for a minute, and then Esther with her large and muscular arms snatched the pestle from the older boy and quickly struck the fufu in the mortar before anyone had time to think or react. The ball of fufu flattened, and the fufu stick fell with a thud against the clay earth.
“Enough!” Esther shouted once they had all turned to stare at her. “Has this man not suffered enough that he should come home to this?” she asked.
“Please excuse my child,” Mrs. Poku said, using her voice to speak instead of her husband’s for the first time since they’d met her. “It’s just that they have heard the stories. They will not make the mistake again.” She turned, allowed her gaze to rest on each of the five children, even the toddler at her feet, and quickly, without any need for further explanation, they understood.
Kofi Poku cleared his throat, and motioned for the two of them to follow him to their seats. As they did, Yaw whispered, “Thank you,” and Esther shrugged. “Let them think that I am the crazy one,” Esther said.
They sat down to their meal. The kids served them, frightened but kind. Kofi Poku and his wife told them what to expect from Yaw’s mother.
“She lives with only a house girl in that place your father built for her on the edge of town. She rarely goes out anymore, though sometimes you can see her outside, tending to her garden. She has a lovely garden. My wife often goes there to admire the flowers that grow there.”
“Does she speak when you see her?” Yaw asked Mrs. Poku.
The woman shook her head. “No, but she has always been kind to me. She even gives me some flowers to take home. I put them in the girls’ hair before we go to church, and I think it will bring them good marriages.”
“Don’t worry,” Kofi Poku said. “I’m sure she will know you. Her heart will know you.” His wife and Esther both nodded, and Yaw looked away.