Taiye Selasi - Ghana Must Go

The holes in the road make for truly rough going, which inevitably begins to feel like the fault of the driver. When he finally stops abruptly by a small walled-in compound, one tire in a groove, tilting off the main road, they glare at him, nauseous, unaware that he’s parked and not simply run the car into a ditch by mistake. Benson turns to speak, stopping short at their faces. He manages a halting “Yes. Right. Okay. So.”

The air has gone heavy with the stopping of the vehicle, the moment they’ve been waiting for appearing to have come. Fola touches Olu on the knee, which stops the bouncing. Ling observes the gesture, notes that Olu doesn’t flinch. Kehinde mouths to Sadie you okay? She nods her head. He looks across at Taiwo, who is staring out the back. Benson tries again, removing Ray-Bans and sunhat, and forcing a slightly less chipper “We’re here.”

iii

“Here” is a compound at the edge of the village, a square of nine huts in a large patch of dust with a tree in the middle befitting the context, the same type of tree found in every such patch: massive, ancient, gray, twisted, thick trunk a small fortress, raised roots bursting up through the hardened red earth, knotted branches fanned out in imperial fashion, horizontal, dropping leaves on their way to the roofs. A behemoth. Beneath it are five wooden benches arranged in a circle, to a social effect. Around it, six huts form a three-sided square with their doors standing open to dark, bed-less rooms; behind these two more, and behind that the biggest, or tallest, a mud hut with massive thatch roof.

The driver has stopped in the groove by an entrance marked off by a wall made of crumbling red brick. They get out in silence, first Benson, then Olu, then the rest of them, shading their eyes with their hands. A heavyset woman is waiting to meet them in a traditional outfit of simple black cloth. She’s fashioned a swath of this cloth as a head wrap with bow tie in front, short gray hair tucked inside. Her skin is so smooth that she could be much younger, but she stands like a woman of seventy hard years: with her elbow on the wall and her head on her fist and her hip pushing out, other hand on that hip, as if seeking to rest the full weight of her past on this crumbling brick wall for these one or two breaths.

Fola steps forward, arms extended, ever gracious. “Shormeh,” she says.

“I am Naa.” The woman sighs.

“Naa, excuse me. Of course.” Fola laughs. “It’s been ages. God.”

Naa doesn’t laugh. “You are welcome in Ghana.” She straightens up slowly, taking her head off her fist and her elbow off the wall and her eyes off of Fola, a shift in position that draws her attention to Sadie at the edge of the circle.

iv

Sadie feels the gaze on her face, with the humidity, a pressure or a magnet: it tugs at her eyes, though her chin, out of habit, resists the ascension and sinks to her chest while her eyes travel up. She rarely looks people in the eye when she meets them, preferring their mouths or her hands as an audience — anything to throw off the would-be observer, to avoid being looked at too closely, too long. She’s doing it now, standing slightly behind Taiwo in the broken-doll position she perfected in high school, with shoulders hunched forward and flip-flops turned inward, an arrangement of limbs that conveys such unease that the onlooker invariably feels uneasy himself and after one or two seconds looks away. Undaunted, indifferent, or accustomed to uneasiness, Naa gazes on, drawing Sadie’s eyes upward — and holding them put: Sadie can’t look back down, for her shock at the striking resemblance.

She could be her mother, this heavyset Naa, with the same angled eyes (“half-Chinesey,” per Philae), same stature, short, sturdy, same negligible eyebrows, round face, rounded nose, like a button for coins. The joke of genetics. That of all of his children it should have been she who inherited this appearance, the one who would spend the least time with their father and come to so loathe his particular features. They worked out just fine on his face: he was handsome in the way that a man can be, without being pretty, with the skin like this Naa’s or like Olu’s, so flawless. A tidy face. Elegant.

Not so her own.

Philae likes to call her “a natural beauty,” while Fola uses phrases like “you’ll come into your own” (in a tone reminiscent of “we’ll find your hidden talent”), but Sadie knows better. She isn’t pretty. End of story. Her eyes are too small and her nose is too round and she hasn’t got cheekbones like Taiwo or Philae, nor long slender limbs nor a clean chiseled jaw nor a dipping-in waist nor a jutting-out clavicle. She’s five foot four, solid, not fat per se, stocky, pale milky-tea skin, number-four-colored hair, neither tall nor petite, with no edges, no angles; she looks like a doll, one she wouldn’t have wanted. It isn’t worth trying to explain this to Philae, nor to Fola for that matter. They wouldn’t understand it. They’re pretty , a state of being they both take for granted, through no fault of theirs (through the joke of genetics). Their empathy is bound within the limits of their reality, Sadie knows. They can’t imagine it, not being pretty. A bit like, say, a woman might imagine being a man — can merely close her eyes and picture it, whatever “being a man” may mean to her — but can’t in fact picture not being a woman, would have nothing to draw on, however she tried. So the pretty woman’s imagination is limited, absent reference for the experience of not being seen. Most of the time she herself can’t be bothered to sort through the reasons the world doesn’t see her. It all seems a bit too cliché, melodramatic, for a girl with her sarcasm and level of education. She accepts that the media are to blame for her bulimia, her quiet, abiding desire to be reborn a blond waif; vigorously castigates Photoshop as a public health threat; has examined and condemned her childhood taste for white Barbies; and so on. Isn’t stupid. Can see the thing clearly. But the fact remains: she is invisible. Unpretty.

The sense of being looked at is new and alarming. “H-h-hello,” Sadie stutters, flushing, offering a hand.

Naa takes the hand, frowning deeply, squeezing tightly. “Ekua,” she says.

“Um, I’m Sadie.” Sadie smiles. “My name is Sadie. Nice to meet you.”

But Naa is insistent. “Ekua,” she repeats. “Sister Ekua. It’s you.”

Sadie laughs nervously, not following. “I’m Sadie. That’s my middle name. Ekua.”

Naa nods. “Welcome back.”

Sadie thinks to clarify that she’s never been to Ghana, but Naa moves on to Olu, and on down the line. A second heavy woman in the simple black muslin with head tie appears with a large plastic tray piled with bottles of Coke, Fanta, Malta, Bitter Lemon.

Fola tries again. “Hello, Shormeh.”

Correct.

The soft drinks are distributed with hardened eyes, pleasantries, introductions made briefly, condolences exchanged. “We have prepared a small welcome,” says Shormeh. “Please be seated.” She gestures to the benches in a circle in the shade.

• • •

The sun has stopped playing demure and come forward, the air pressing down on their arms like a hand. They sit on the benches with their sodas, sweating lightly. A small crowd has gathered to observe the affair. They are children mostly, appearing from inside the modest houses dressed in faded American clothing, wearing cautious, watchful smiles. Girls , Sadie notices after trying to place the feeling that there’s something here she’s missing. All the children are girls.

“Where are the boys?” she asks Fola beside her.

Fola chuckles wryly. “They’re at school.”