Kwei Quartey - Wife of the Gods

“When I got there, I was trying to think of a way to poison her, but time was going, the sun was about to sleep, Gladys wanted to leave, and she kept asking me which was the medicine to cure AIDS. I showed her a plant I didn’t even know, and she began to laugh at me, saying that she didn’t think that was it. And the more she talked, the angrier I became that she was telling me all these things she was planning to do for you. She even said she was going to make the Ministry of Health get you a nice guesthouse, and that’s when I knew for sure that she wanted to live with you in that house. I wanted to tell her that you belonged to me, not to anyone else, that she couldn’t have you.”

Osewa turned to Dawson. “Isaac is everything to me in this world. He gave me everything. His very touch the first day I met him was like nothing I had known. He gave me the love I never had from Kweku or anyone else, and most of all he blessed me with a beautiful son. Do you know how much I wanted a son, Darko? Do you know how I felt when I saw women with two, three, four beautiful children while I had none?”

“I know it was painful for you, Auntie,” Dawson said. “What did you do to Gladys?”

“I attacked her. I wanted to hurt her. We fell on the ground and she started to scream. I squeezed her neck to make her quiet, and she was looking up at me while I was doing it. She was struggling and I wanted her to stop, so I kept squeezing. Her neck was very soft. And when she stopped breathing, I felt sorry for her, and I didn’t know what to do, so I just tried to make her more comfortable by moving her underneath a palm tree. And I rearranged her skirt and blouse so they were nice and neat again.”

Osewa turned her palms up and looked at them as if she was seeing them for the first time. “I couldn’t let her take away my treasure, that’s what you have to understand. Not Gladys, nor any other woman.”

“Even your own sister,” Dawson said.

Osewa drew in her breath so sharply it made a sound of asphyxiation. Her right hand, fingers spread, went to her chest. She stood frozen. Dawson moved in close.

“Where did you bury my mother?”

He grasped her arm, but she threw it off and sprang away like a bush rabbit.

“Don’t touch me!” she snapped. Her eyes blazed like red-hot embers. “You’re just like her. Even your laugh is like hers. She was always better than me, that woman. Ever since we were children. And then she would rub it in my face. She had everything. She lived in Accra, she was more beautiful, she had you and Cairo while I was barren , and then she wanted Isaac for herself as well.”

Her chest was heaving and her hands were trembling.

“Isaac looked at Mama that day we came to see you,” Dawson said, “and she looked back at him. I saw it, and so did you, and you knew what it meant.”

“Yes. That she wanted him. She was going to get him.”

“When you said you had been outside setting the traps for the rabbits,” Dawson said, “you really went to see Isaac, because you were afraid that something was going on between him and Mama, and you desperately wanted Isaac to reassure you that it wasn’t so.”

“Yes.” She looked admiringly at Dawson for a moment. “How do you know everything? Then, when your mother came to see us just after Alifoe was born, a farmer mentioned to me that he had seen Beatrice go into Isaac’s compound and that she had spent a long time there. And then I knew Beatrice was in love with Isaac, because if that wasn’t the case, she would have told me she had gone to see him, maybe for some healing, but she didn’t. She did not say one word about it.

“She came back to Ketanu again, and this time I challenged her. I asked her, ‘Beatrice, I know you have been secretly going to see Isaac Kutu. Why are you doing that?’ She told me she feared that she might have offended the gods in some way and that’s why they had taken Cairo’s legs away, that perhaps she needed to be purified, and so that was why she had visited Isaac’s compound. And I asked her, Why not just find a healer in Accra to purify her? Do you know what she answered? She said that no one made her feel the way Isaac did. She said she just felt so happy when she was with him.

“And then your mother confessed something to me and begged me never to tell anyone. And I said, All right, I won’t tell anyone. She told me she often dreamed that she was standing with seven or eight women who were Isaac’s wives, and one by one they died around her. They just fell down on the ground one after the other and left only Beatrice standing. Once they were all dead, she became Isaac’s new wife.” Auntie Osewa shuddered. “That’s when I realized.”

“Realized what, Auntie Osewa?”

“Boniface Kutu had been right that one of my sisters was a witch, only he chose the wrong sister. It wasn’t Akua who needed to be tried. It was Beatrice. She was the witch. It was Beatrice who had stolen my womb from me.”

“Oh, no, Osewa,” Isaac said, dismayed. “That’s not the way it was.”

“She had stolen my womb. Isaac got it back, and now Beatrice wanted to steal him . How dare she? What gave her the right to take so much away from me?”

Dawson’s bottom lip was quivering. “Auntie, how did you kill Mama?”

“You already know,” she said, suddenly weary. “You held the weapon in your own hands.”

Dawson felt sick.

“Yes, Darko. It was the rope we make from elephant grass, the same kind I made for you when you were a boy.” Tears streamed down her face. “I planned it. I knew I couldn’t do it with my bare hands. Your mother was too strong.”

“And when it came time for Mama to return to Accra,” Dawson said softly, “you walked with her toward the tro-tro stop, but you never got there, did you? You led her to the grove-just like you were to do with Gladys twenty-three years later-and you killed her there. You told everyone the lie that you had seen Mama board the tro-tro, but this last time, when I was having dinner with you and you were telling us about it, you made another mistake. It’s always in the lying that a mistake is made.”

“What mistake?”

“Mama would never have sat near the front seat, even if it was the last tro-tro on earth.”

“Oh,” Osewa said dispiritedly. “I didn’t even know that.”

Dawson took her gently and held her close.

“Detective Sergeant Chikata is going to arrest you now, Auntie, and then he will be taking you away. Okay?”

“I love you, little Darko. I will always love you.”

I T WASN’T A FETISHpriest who had built the juju pyramid at the plantain grove. It had been Osewa’s creation. Maybe it would indeed serve to keep evil spirits away, but its main purpose was to hide what was underneath.

With Constable Gyamfi’s help, Dawson removed the rocks one by one from the pile. He felt a certain closeness to the constable. With Inspector Fiti and Constable Bubo suspended pending the investigation into alleged police brutality, Dawson had offered to stay in Ketanu and help at the station until a replacement inspector could be sent in.

All the rocks were down now, and the soil was exposed. Gyamfi had brought a shovel, and Dawson thrust it into the ground. Even though the soil was soft from the recent rain, it was hard work digging. Dawson had insisted on doing it without any help. When he got three feet down, he stopped and wiped the sweat streaming from his brow.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to take over for a while?” Gyamfi asked.

“I’m sure.”

As he continued, the shovel struck something hard, and he stopped and knelt down. Gyamfi moved closer to see. It was about the size of a thumb. It looked light in color but stained by the dark earth. Dawson used his bare hands to clear more soil away. It became clear that they were looking at a human bone.