ATO

“Akosua, I really don’t think it will work anymore….”
Silence.
– “What does that mean?”
He started to say something, and then paused.
I was holding my little girl in my hands before he called. We were doing some ABC’s.
“Mummy what is wrong? Mummy! Oh you put water on my book!”
She shouted in all the English she could muster, referring to my tears.
He told me, “the time we spend apart will make our love grow stronger..….”
“Let me go and bring some money. Kwaku can go to the big school in Dansoman, and you can wear some of Naana’s American boutique dresses eh?”
Of course I had no care for Naana’s boutique dresses – they sure were beautiful though…. But I didn’t care.
This was my husband’s dream, and I wanted him to live it!
I believed him….
I worked with him….
I supported him!
I understood when he couldn’t bring home any money because he needed to save….
I provided for us.
The yams and plantains were doing well at that time.
My small hairdressing salon wasn’t too bad off too.
Kwaku was just five…..
The night he left, he promised me…. “I’ll come for the three of you.”
I was five months along then…..
I trusted him!
The first year was the toughest!
The yam market was almost non-existent, and the prices of plantains had sky-rocketed so high, that people made do without them.
We thrived on the little we got from the hair salon.
It was hard!
But then he started to send some money. I put the kids in a very good school, and put myself in an evening class, to be able to enter the university…
Two years after, he talked to me about having to marry a lady for “papers”. I objected vehemently.
But of course he went right ahead….
That’s when the money stopped coming.
Kwaku had to help me right after school. We had opened a small provision store… We weren’t doing too badly. I had to stop my class, so my little girl could enrol in that big school too.
I remembered all the sacrifices I made just so he could live his dream. I remembered all the work I put into it….
“It’s not that I no longer love you. I just don’t know when I can make enough money to bring all the three of you… Life is very hard here you know…. and there’s also the lady that helped me with the papers… It will be very difficult to go through with a divorce” He carried on and on in that fake accent he had gone to get.
I had so much to say, yet no words seemed to want to escape the barrier of my mouth….
Kwaku seemed to have realised what was going on. He came and got his sister, and carried on helping her…
“A, B, C, D…..”
“Ato, you’re leaving me and your two children, because ‘it just won’t work out’?”