Attem beamed, ruffling the boy’s hair. ‘The greatest gift anyone has ever given me.’
She bent down and whispered into her son’s ear. ‘Little Hawk, why don’t you go and say hello to your Baba?’
Ituen knew the scent of home.
Yaa
Yaa stretched her arm out of the car window. She was on a road trip to Ankobra Beach in the middle of spring semester, second year. She was stressed with mid-terms, stressed about familial pressures; stressed about who she was supposed to be and who she was.
He had detected the dip in her mood – he always did. He always detected her shifts, the motion of her thoughts, without trying. He’d shown up at the door of her dorm room at 6 a.m. and told her to get dressed. It was almost a seven-hour drive to the beach. Yaa had insisted on splitting the drive, but he refused. And so she relaxed and slept peacefully on the way, as he played her favourite songs and intermittently reached over to gently sweep his knuckles across her cheek. She would smile in her sleep. To this day, Yaa couldn’t recall a time where she’d sunk into such contentment.
When they arrived at the beach, they spoke about life, their futures, their wants, all while curled up with each other, hands tracing maps on each other’s bare, sun-drunk skin, all roads leading to happiness. It was just them on their section of the beach that day – off-peak, during the week – and they were so tipsy with the heady cocktail of youth and love that they wanted to believe that God had created it just for them. They were the world’s axis. They drank milk straight from the coconut, ate fried fresh tilapia and then indulged in the richness of each other, feeling nourished, galvanised.
She didn’t hear the roar of the waves, only how sweet her name sounded on his tongue.
‘Yaayaa,’ he whispered.
They were each other’s natural wonders.
‘But how do you know?’
Yaa paused in perfecting the deep-wine hue of her lips and swivelled her neatly lined eyes away from her reflection to the phone lying on the marble of her bathroom counter. She knew her best friend couldn’t see the incredulous look she was levelling at her through speakerphone, but she also knew Abina would feel it by instinct. After a few seconds, Yaa sensed her best friend roll her eyes as her voice rose from the phone.
‘Abeg. Don’t look at me like that. I hate it when you look at me like that.’
Yaa smirked. ‘Then don’t ask silly questions. How do I know Kofi is gonna propose tonight? Maybe because it’s my birthday and we’re going to the best restaurant in the city and he paid for me to get a manicure, oh, and I stumbled upon a ring hidden in his blazer pocket?’
Yaa turned back to the mirror to finish up her lipstick and scrutinise her look. Her high cheekbones were subtly glowing in a manner that mimicked the glow of love. Her dark eyes were accentuated to look wider, brighter, which would assist in the expression of pleasant surprise that she intended on pulling later. Her deep skin gleamed smooth and poreless – ready for any close-up photos that might ensue. Yaa ran a hand through her straight, thin, waist-length twists to ensure that they weren’t tangled at the bottom and inhaled deeply. She looked exactly how she knew this evening was going to be. Perfect.
‘Oh yeah. The ring that you accidentally found because you just so happened to be going through every single blazer he owned.’
Yaa laughed as she carefully combed through her eyelashes with an inky-black bristled wand. ‘It was an accident. I was looking for change to tip a delivery guy with, that’s all. He should have been more discreet.’
Yaa’s best friend scoffed. ‘Sticking to your story, huh? Like searching his blazer pockets isn’t part of your morning routine. Anyway, that isn’t what I was asking. What I actually meant was how do you know you wanna marry him?’
The question stilled Yaa as she lifted up a bottle of perfume to spritz on her wrist. The question was so foreign it made her mind buck and recoil. It raked against life as she knew it. The knowledge that Yaa was going to marry Kofi was always an always.
Yaa and Kofi’s families were the most influential in the Ashanti region and were considered something close to royalty in the province’s capital, Kumasi. Kofi’s family was a political dynasty of chiefs and councilmen and governors littered through generations, while Yaa’s family was one that had grown from a plucky market-trader, who went from one stall in old Kejetia market to the biggest department-store chain in the region. Yaa’s family had started unions and safeguards for traders, rattling the local government. Kofi’s family was old money, old power, they represented a time in the past where there was a clear distinction between market woman and ohemaa, whereas Yaa’s family blurred the lines and established a new world where tradeswomen could become queens, with her great-great grandmother – after whom she was named – leading the way.