The trotro I took broke down after Dawa. It took more than two hours for the driver and his mate to fix it. It broke down again after Tsopoli. This time there was nothing they could do about it. The mate joined another trotro to

Tsopoli and came back with an empty trotro. We got stuck in traffic at the Tema roundabout and again at the Tetteh Quarshie interchange. By the time we got to Tudu it was past 7 p.m. I checked into the first guest house I saw. It was a seedy motel—the rooms had purple lights, there was no running water and the bed bug infested mattress and pillow reeked of stale sweat and saliva. Mrs Hammond would have had a fit. I lay on the floor and waited for sleep to come. I missed my home,

I missed my own bed, I missed the sound of the ocean which lulled me to sleep each night. But most of all I missed Pope, Nene and Mantse.

***

The next morning I was off to Kasoa at the crack of dawn but again I got caught in traffic, at the Mallam junction. When I finally got to Kasoa, I spent three hours looking for the right street. Google maps was not much help probably because most of the streets had not been made. My search led me to a brown and cream painted house with a hedge of croton bushes around the walls. The wind chased fallen Indian almond leaves across the lawn. Across the street was a wooden provision store. I greeted the woman in the store, and turned my attention back to the house.

This was it. This was my mother’s house. My mother. My real mother. Would she be here?

Would she even recognise me? Would she just know? Would my belly button twitch? Would it tingle? Would there be some sort of signal to me to let me know she was the one who had been on the other end of the umbilical cord? Would she feel the connection?

I lingered in front of the gate and looked through the spaces in the gate. There was a tricycle and a black rag doll lying on the lawn. My throat constricted. She had a daughter. Why hadn’t she wanted me? I knew fifteen was too young to be a mother but why hadn’t she searched for me when she was older. Didn’t she care what had happened to me? This was turning out to be more difficult than I imagined. I had to decide quickly whether I was going to ring the bell or not. Already the woman in the kiosk across the street was looking at me suspiciously. She came out with her baby strapped to her back and pretended to straighten some black polythene bags that had been pegged to the door of the kiosk.

I pressed the doorbell. I heard it ring inside.

The woman in the kiosk had stopped pretending to straighten the bags and was openly staring at me.

The woman who came to the gate looked flustered and was heavily pregnant with another of my stepsiblings. Once she opened it, I heard two children screaming from inside the house. She looked far younger than Mama—than Asi. If she had me at fifteen then she was now thirty-one years old now. She was in an asasawa dress.

She was big-boned and had wide hips like me but she was lighter skinned. My dark colour had to have come from my biological father. I opened my mouth but no words came out.

From somewhere inside the house there was another scream, then the front door opened and a young girl stepped out. She looked to be about five. She was in a tie-and-dye dress with her hair cornrowed into a ponytail. Assorted coloured beads were attached to the ends of each plait. She was holding the side of her upper arm with one hand, “Mummy, Junior has beat me again.”

As soon as she said the words, her lips trembled and a wail emerged from somewhere deep inside her. Tears flowed freely down her face and mucus ran out of her nose. She sniffed the mucus back. My biological mother turned and screamed in the direction of the house where a toddler stood by the open door. He was only in diapers and a singlet. He held a banku paddle in his hand. “Junior stop beating Maame and go and put the banku-ta down. Make sure you pick your toys up from the floor before I get there.” The little girl ran back to the house. Junior followed her in. I couldn’t believe she let a toddler beat her. I’d expected Junior to be older.