She gets up and wraps the towel around herself, and says she is going to shower.
Sister Adoma works for a woman who owns several shops selling processed food. She already had four girls working for her and Sister Adoma became the fifth. However, her workload has lightened a little, now that we are of an age to help. She told our father that she would use her salary to send herself to study tailoring when she finishes work.
She is about to leave for work and says, “I left food money for you with Kubewa’s mother. She will buy you something when the time is twelve. Make sure you eat it and take your medicine before your headache comes back. You hear me?” She watches me as if it was the last time she would see me.
We love our sister more than we love anyone in the whole wide world. That is why I also don’t like Stone.
Sister Adoma’s room is next door. I sleep little these days and in one of my countless recent wakeful moments, I was lying beside Sarkodie when I heard the noises and creaks of a spring bed. The hush-hush voice of a man and the giggling of a girl filtered through the darkness.
Later, the giggling started to mix with faint laughter. I tried waking Sarkodie up but he would not wake. I slapped him several times on the face, but he just kept sleeping and muttering mmm mmm mmm. He kept sleeping, no matter how hard I slapped him.
I knew it was Sister Adoma when she said, “Shoosh. Stone, you’ll wake my brothers.” Then she was doing “mm” and “aah” which girls make when a man is squeezing their breasts. Then the laughter started to fade, and I heard our door opening and closing, then urinating sounds coming from the compound.
My mother is away. She is in prison. That is why our sister became our mother. Her case went to Ghana’s Supreme Court, which reviewed the scant details of the original trial by a high court. Her case started when I was just four and ended eight years later. I was a child and I could not attend as often as I wanted because the city is nearly a day’s trip from Agona and our father had to beg to put together the bus fare. He ended up selling his car, his stereo system, air conditioners, even our beds and our refrigerator to pay the legal fees. He has nothing left.
The house is quiet and my eyes remain fixed on the television. They are preaching. The batteries are down and occasionally, I slap the remote.
“Come, and your life will never be the same!” the televangelist shouts into the microphone, in a church packed with hundreds of plastic chairs, “God provides medicine for all people and He gave some of us the power to heal!”
A woman obediently stands in front of the podium, with her arms raised in the air, waiting to be touched by the pastor. The televangelist asks a church worker to pour Holy Water in his hand. Pressing the wet hand on her breasts, the woman screams, “I receive it! I receive it! I receive it!”
Someone is knocking gbam, gbam, gbam, gbam, gbam.
I ask, “Who?”
“It is me!”
“You who?”
“It is me Abena, Kubewa’s mother, open the door.”
“OK wait!”
She’s generous to us. She is always coming around with gifts – smoked fish, fresh tomatoes and salt and sometimes money. She is one of the many who attended our mother’s trial with our father.
She is like Miss Frema. Sometimes I wouldn’t have money for food when I went to school and she would give me some coins. She doesn’t cane me when I don’t buy the books she suggests we must buy.
Tell us: Why are the people like Miss Frema in the community so giving to the brothers?