Colors of the Mind

Chapter 1

Mary’s fingers drum the cool tile of her kitchen countertop awaiting her kettle to finish boiling. The kettle, her only son recently bought, will tell her when it is done. But because of habit she can’t help but drum and wait. In the time it takes for the water molecules to vibrate to the point beyond buoyancy, she lets her mind wander. The gallery of her life is vast. In her mind’s eye, her memories are stored in a library. One not too dissimilar to Padmore Library in Ringway where she had spent the majority of her final year as a master's student.

She pulls out the book of her memories of her time at the very Padmore Library. It’s a special section. The one that minutes her research on Ghana’s public-to-private utility grid evolution. More definitively, it's the one that tells the tale of her meeting her late husband, Johnathan Bako. It is also the beginning of her having lost her sight.

Her fingers tat-tat on the now warming surface of the kitchen countertop. Out of habit, she reaches for her mug in the cupboard above her head but almost hears her son, Emmanuel, say ‘Mami, your mug is inside the new kettle. It will heat the water and make the tea for you…’ It’s been a few weeks already, but habits are hard to shake off. And besides, some habits are good, right?

Like wandering deep into your memories? To collect pieces of yourself lost in time. But, forever present in the person you have come to be. She finds it difficult to connect these versions of herself sometimes. More often of late.

“Your son has sent you a message. Shall I read it?” Sersa, her Home Bot, intrudes on her reverie.

“Oh, my son! Emma, are you there?” Mary pivots to ask the empty kitchen.

“No, madam. It is a voice message. Shall I read it?” Sersa repeats in its monotone voice.

“Oh. Oh, okay. Yes, please do,” Mary orients herself back to the counter. There is a warm convection streaming from the soon-to-be boiling kettle.

“Mami, I am coming to yours today with a surprise. By afternoon I should be around. Sersa says you will be home. Do not worry yourself cooking, I have eaten.”

The warm current of air has formed into a pleasant gaseous cushion condensing on Mary’s arm. The kettle has eased its vibrations. Now she hears many mechanical noises clicking into gear. Then the sound of pouring water. Again, she hears her son’s voice ‘when everything is done, the kettle will tell you.’ ‘But how will I know if it's too hot to hold?’ ‘Mami, it takes that into consideration, trust me.’

Mary acquiesces to the advice of her son. In the time it takes for the heat to dissipate from the mug, she considers the tone of her son’s voice.

Emma has been sounding darker of late, she thinks. Like the words he speaks were covered in an ominous cloud and his tone were sleets of rain. His heart, from which this energy emanates, is a heavy morsel, she feels. Mary had asked her son many times what was the bother. But each time she asks he comes back to her with the same response ‘work has been very tough of late.’

‘What is work to him?’ Mary would ask herself. ‘What could be stressing her son at work so much for him to be carrying this weight in his heart into the rest of his life.’ Weighing him down, deeper and deeper into depths far from her, without any signs of struggle. A bridge too far for her to see him.

His work, as far as she understands it, is lucrative. Emma is high up in rank with great prospects for the future. So what at all is it?

A gentle melody from the kettle sings to Mary. She understands this to mean that her mug is cool enough to hold. She pulls it out of its socket and shuffles her way into her living room where she sits down and places the mug on the coffee table by her side.

“Would you like the windows and doors opened Madam?” Sersa asks.

“Please do,” and she listens to the tiny mechanical sounds go about their work of sliding the door and windows open. A small gust of wind pushes its way through the living room space as Mary takes her first sip of tea. She keeps the mug held between her palms on her lap. The warmth of the mug is pleasant against her tummy. A tweet can be heard from a small bird chirping from a branch of a tree in the retirement community garden.

“Would you like me to play music? Last Sunday you requested Tems. Tems is a Nigerian-British singer-songwriter who has won twelve Grammy Awards and released eleven studio albums…”

“I could listen to Jorja Smith,” Mary suggests, lifting her unseeing eyes and imagining the strong toned notes of Jorja brushing the sky, with those darker edges outlining and scratching into the forming impressions of shapes of solids turning into liquids. Then streaks, streaks of primary colors in their darker shades.

Then the music is on and Mary is, again, back in Padmore Library.

Chapter 2

‘Mr. Bako, lovely to see you again.’

‘Lovely to see you too, Mary Osei-Williams. How does it go with your thesis?’

‘Ah, what can I say? It is going…’

‘What percentage would you say you are left to do?’

‘As ever, looking to put things in numbers… I could ask you the same with your research Mr. Bako — soon-to-be doctor? Last time out, you had said you were 75% done.’

‘Yes,’ John Bako had chuckled and all the mischievous delight within him seemed to shake up into his eyes. A young Mary saw this and knew that this man was up to no good. ‘Yes, it was. But I have miscalculated and must put it at 57% rather.’

‘Wow, that is a serious setback…’

‘Depends on how you define setback…’

Mary laughs to herself. Sitting with her warm mug of tea close to her lips as she prepares for a sip of its wonderful essence. Her late husband and his percentages and statistics. If all the world could be reduced to numbers he would surely have been king of it.

‘And do you take Mary to be your lawfully wedded wife?’ the Minister had asked on their wedding day.

‘Minister, I have always had 99.9% surety that this woman standing in front of me would be my wife…’

Soon-to-be-married Mary squeezed her finely arched eyebrows. Losing herself in the moment, she had asked.

‘Where is the 0.1% then?’ The gathered crowd rippled with unease.

John Bako looked up to the ceiling of the church and then to the guests, then back to Mary.

‘That God would condone it and that he would permit that you would also feel the same way. Do you?’

Mary’s squeezed eyebrows had pressed further until her eyelids shut and tears rolled onto her ever so slightly exposed bosom.

‘I do. With 100% of my heart.’

‘Then allow me to proclaim you husband and wife…’ And before the Minister could finish, the lovers were kissing. Eyes closed until they parted and only saw the world to be each other’s eyes.

Many months after this day, on a quiet evening with the two laying side by side in bed preparing for sleep, John, to defend his paper the following day, a newly-wedded Mary asked him.

‘So you are now about to finally complete your work, 100%?’

‘I believe I am, if God permits it. The 0.1% is always for Him.’

‘So tell me, when we first met and you were coming those days to Padmore Library, you told me your paper went from 75% to 57%, what was the setback? You never told me…’ Mary smiled curiously at her husband. She had placed her reading glasses to the side, as the words on the page were unreadable to what she would later understand to be her waning sight.

‘Depends on how you define setback…’ John had smiled and Mary could almost smell her husband’s minty breath lean in to plant a warm and longing kiss on her lips.

She draws a long sip from her mug and places it down again. Jorja Smith, still crooning in the background suddenly stops and the doorbell rings.

‘Your son, Emmanuel, is here madam. I will inform him that you are in the living room.’

‘Thank you,’ she says to Sersa and wipes a tear off her cheek.

‘We have to fight it! What did you tell me when the doctors informed me about my blindness? You said we need to fight it! Why can’t you do the same?’ A blind Mary demanded from her husband.

‘Mary! I know the numbers. My chances of survival… I am not going to let you suffer. You have it all to do already with adjusting to your blindness. I saw what it did to my own father. My mother gave everything to him. She was broken after that… no!’ a dying John had said.

‘What about for me? For our son, Emmanuel? He’s only ten years old! Huh, what about us?’

‘I will talk to him and tell him my decision… it will be difficult. But it's better this way…’

‘You will leave me in this world? Just like that?’

John did not say anything. Mary had been holding her husband’s arm on their bed. She had felt a solid mass of rock rise in him. The path for which she was connected to him seemed to have been blocked. A shadow was cast on her as a darkness emerged from within him. His arm had stiffened and his body turned away from her.

She let go of him and nodded. Her hands then caressed his face to wipe the tears she could sense creeping down. He allowed her to do this.

‘That 0.1%,’ she thought. ‘This man always gave 0.1% to his God. And now that was what was taking him away from her…’ The rock that had arisen inside of him collapsed into a long shadowy bridge over the months that proceeded. Then, one dry harmattan morning, her husband crossed that bridge. She couldn’t feel him again. Her partner. Her best friend.

“Good afternoon, mami,” Emmanuel says and Mary wipes another tear from her face before her son sees her.

Chapter 3

Mary feels her son sit by her bedside. He lands on the chair with a huff and puffs out a breath and then a sigh. He is shadowy and blurred on the edges, she feels.

“My son, how are you doing?” Mary places her mug on the table and then reaches midway to her son. She knows very well where his hand is. But she wants him to meet her halfway.

It takes a moment but Emmanuel grabs her hand and presses it ever so slightly.

“I am okay, mami. You are looking very well and I see you are using the mug I got you?”

“Yes, Emma! Oh, at first I wasn’t sure but then it worked just as you said. Thank you so much for it.”

“It is not a problem at all…”

“You said you were going to come next week, what happened?” Mary adjusts her body so she is facing her son.

When he speaks she knows his face isn’t facing hers.

“Work, mami… Work,” he snaps.

“No need to have that tone with me…”

“Sorry,” he is now facing her. “But the work, it can get very busy all of a sudden. And the order falls on me to make sure all is correct.”

Mary feels a flash of red burst from her son’s shadowy aura.

“I understand my son… forgive me for wishing that you were with me more,” Mary pleads, clapping the back of her hand into her palm.

“Oh, mami. No need for that,” Emmanuel begs, and Mary senses that bright flash of color all but drain out of him. He is left in grey.

“So, what is this surprise you have for me?” Mary says with a smile.

“Last time, a few months back or so, you remember I came and we were listening to how they have these chips to fix people’s eyesight?”

“Oh, Emma…” Mary’s hands grasp the ends of her armchair.

“So, I’ve got it. And it's a simple procedure. Doesn’t take more than a few minutes to insert. Then there is the adjusting period, something like an hour. I have spoken to the doctor and a couple of her referrals and it is good. It works…” Emma drew closer to his mother, holding her hand.

“I don’t know, Emma. It sounds wonderful… But also scary. I have come to know this world in my own way. And it's something I can understand. So, I don’t know…” Mary shook her head. She is reminded of the long stone bridge on which her husband crossed to the other side so many years back. She remembers the 0.1% he always gave to God.

“Papa’s Pastor, you have his contact?”

“Why are you asking? But yes, I do. I got it a couple of years back when he came to the house for Papa’s ten years…”

“Let us get his opinion and blessing then… maybe he can even accompany us to the doctor on the day? If we decide to do it.”

“Why wouldn’t you want to do it, mami? You will be able to see. You can be more independent. It will make your life easier. So what is there to think about?”

“My son,” Mary gives herself a moment, leaning back into the embrace of her armchair.

She sighs. Her fingers pluck at a loose thread coming off the seams of the upholstery of her armchair. It is something she could fix if she had her sight. But that is a thought that hasn’t crossed her mind for many years. A thought of ‘if she had her sight.’ She has come to appreciate this space in her mind that she adorns with colors intimately tied to feelings. Of hers. Of the people around her. She has come to understand that she might actually ‘see’ more into those people around her and understand better because she isn’t distracted by the surface level of visuals. What would happen if she could see? Would that all change? Would she lose this deeper perception?

Her thought flits to her late husband. In the time since his passing, the fog shrouding the bridge has thickened to an almost solid mass. She had spent many hours of her life delving into her memories, trying to hold on to those moments with him. The way he had held her hands when she was descending into blindness and he would help her walk up and down their neighborhood.

The time he lost his favorite socks and turned the house upside down looking for it.

‘Mary! Mary! Where is that bloody sock of mine!’

‘I don’t know John,’ She had said. ‘I can not see…’

And he stopped his rampaging and she just heard him start laughing, and laughing, and he walked up to her and pressed himself onto her and kissed her wholly on the lips and said ‘I love you.’

Then she asked ’99.9%?’

’99.9%,’ he replied.

But all that time spent in the library of her memories in her mind, she couldn’t reach her husband and that pain soon enveloped her. Consumed her. She stopped looking for him. She had to. For her son. For those in the world of the living. Her husband was gone.

“We will try it, my son. But, with the pastor’s blessing…”

Chapter 4

“Doctor, my mother and I will be coming in tomorrow morning,” Emmanuel speaks to his audio system. Through the speakers in his apartment, he hears the doctor’s reply.

“Yes, Emmanuel, that is all good. You have your appointment and we are set to do the insertion tomorrow.”

“My mother has asked that our pastor accompany us. Pastor Enoch. Will that be an issue?” Emmanuel continues, opening his fridge to see if there is still any bambara-nut milk. He presses a sensor on the fridge to alert it to place an order for groceries. He touches again on another sensor and this instructs the fridge to blend all diced ingredients in the fridge into a shake.

“Not at all. If it’s the same Pastor Enoch I know, then we have met before. He understands how we work and he can provide the assurances your mother needs. It is fine Emmanuel. We shall see each other tomorrow. Have a good night.”

The call ends and Emmanuel sits on the high chair at his kitchenette, waiting for the smoothie to finish mixing. His chin rests on the palm of his right hand. Soon his fingers rub on his forehead and he shakes his head from right to left.

‘His mother. His dear dear mother. What is he going to do with her?’ he weighs. The Holy Oaks Folks Community home he moved her to so many months ago hasn’t had the results he expected. He thought she being with other elderly people would allow her a chance to make new friends. But it simply hasn’t. She has stayed cooped up in her world without making any such effort to meet new people. With her old friends, well, his mother, after his father’s death, did little to continue those relations. She has lost virtually all communication with those who were in her life before her marriage. Did his mother expect he, Emmanuel, to fulfill all her social needs, like his father had done?

And that is exactly what it must be. Or? Earlier in the day she had passed the comment on him not being there enough. She always makes him feel like what he does is not enough.

But, maybe, that is the case?

‘No!’ his therapist has counseled him that he can’t be expected to do everything for his mother and that the boundaries he has placed need to be kept for his mental health. But that hasn’t eased the weight that follows him into the home his mother stays in.

“Emmanuel. Your shake is ready. It contains a high percentage of fiber with some natural sugars. This falls in line with the recommendation made by your doctor to help reduce your high blood pressure. Enjoy!”

***

“Mommy, long time no see! Or, I should say long time no hear!” Pastor Enoch bursts out in laughter and so does Emmanuel’s mother. The pastor is holding his mother’s hands in his and he is standing just a tad bit too close to her for Emmanuel’s liking.

They are in the lobby area of Euracare Clinic in Labone. The clinic is everything you’d expect from a future-facing facility. Not just in Ghana. World wide. ‘No more politicians having to fly out for healthcare!’ Emmanuel hears from a conversation he had with a friend some time ago.

Emmanuel turns his ear to the conversation ongoing between the Pastor and his mother.

“Pastor Enoch, it is so good to hear your voice indeed,” Emmanuel’s mother smiles, bringing her hands together and in so doing, the Pastor as well.

“You are no more in Dzorwulu?” the Pastor asks, and Emmanuel’s ears perk up.

“No, oh. We moved to East Legon Hills a few months back…”

“You and Emma?”

“Oh, no — no! Forgive me. Just myself. Into a community home. It is very peaceful. And you know, the space is more compact and easy for me to move around. And there is care there in case of any emergencies…”

“Emma, come here,” the Pastor commands. Emmanuel pushes himself off the lobby chair and then shuffles over. The Pastor places his hand firmly on his back. “Why don’t you and your mom live together?”

Emmanuel glances at his mother then his eyes dart down to the floor. He breathes in and looks to respond to the Pastor. But he doesn’t know what to say. For him, that would mean a step backward, wouldn’t it? To go and live with his mother. She was living her life and it was up to him now to forge one of his own, for his future family. But then that argument fell short. His work life consumes so much of his time that family is beginning to seem more like something he would do in another life. And that was okay to him and a lot of people in his immediate circle as well. The things he found solace in, outside of work, his gym, his sculpting, his socializing, these are the things he values and there is no space for much else to come in. And he prefers it as such. And so this question of why he doesn’t move in with his mother is less about a never-to-be-made family and more about the life he has now and not wanting to disturb it. He needs what he has. He has worked and is still working hard on developing this space for himself with the support of his therapist. Boundaries to allow for stability and growth. To root himself in the world and create a solid footing where, during his adolescence, there was severe angst and slips into depression. Something his therapist has explained might be coming from having to come to terms with his father’s decision to let his illness kill him. To leave he, Emmanuel, and his mother to it. But also, the layered trauma of seeing his mother struggle and his annoyance at her for not being able to be there for him. So, what would it mean if he were to stay with his mother? He would have to be in service to her 24/7. Those boundaries. The solid footing. Where would he end and she begin? Who would he be?

“Pastor Enoch, my son needs to live his life as well. We made this decision together,” Emmanuel’s mother intervenes much to Emmanuel’s relief.

His mother has embellished how it went to arrive at this ‘decision together.’ He is thankful to her for painting him in a positive light. He can remember still, as much as it pains him to see that version of himself play back in his mind, how he yelled at his mother about her need to move out of the family house. She had been impossibly stubborn about leaving. But Emmanuel, with increasing frequency, had to rush to the house to help his mother in some shape or form with various levels of emergencies. This all came to the detriment of his work and other life activities, of course. But aside from that, there had been a huge offer made by the Ghana Private-Public Housing Investment unit to buy the house and transform it into some sort of mixed complex development. The money, as Emmanuel saw it, would go a long way in providing much-needed financial security for himself as it was becoming harder and harder to save and plan for the future. The financial security was for his mother as well and he made that argument with a raised voice and arms in a tumult. She gave in. Eventually. She sat him down in the bed in her room held his hands and told him she was sorry and that she would move to go to the Holy Oaks Community home. She had then smiled and caressed Emmanuel’s face. His eyes cast downward.

“I understand my dear. Your son must make his own nest,” the Pastor pats Emmanuel on the back.

A door to the far end of the lobby opens, and a beaming blond-haired white woman with black-rimmed glasses approaches.

“Good to see you all here today. Pastor Enoch, always a pleasure,” the doctor greets. “Are we ready to fix our eyesight today, Madam Bako?”

The Pastor and Emmanuel open up their circle to include the doctor.

“Mmm…” Emmanuel’s mother shifts.

“Mommy,” the Pastor enters. “I have been here, how many times doctor? I can’t count. You know Mrs. Priscilla, the one with the juice? Yes, remember she had developed some severe condition that affected her eyesight. Well, anyway, she did it recently. And it worked perfectly. God is indeed wonderful. She is the most recent one, but I have had the chance to pray over many who have come for this procedure. All have come out a success…” the Pastor unsheathes his pocket bible. “Let us pray…”

Emmanuel eyes it as he sets himself into his customary posture of solemnity and faux piousness.

Chapter 5

Mary’s fingers drum on the cool tile of her kitchen countertop. Her tea is patiently simmering with the essences and delights of spices hitherto unknown. She is indulging in the story written on the back of the tea box. She has taken to reading more now that she has her sight back. It is one of the few outcomes she appreciates from the operation.

She lifts the box closer to her face and her eyes make an adjustment. The words are sharper and ultra-focused like she is zooming into a document on a computer. It's disconcerting but unlike other visual experiences. This one is easier to manage. She reads:

‘Salvation never seeks to speak of itself as such. We find it in ourselves and we know what it is even though it is a feeling that can’t be put into words. For the world has come to be a place of many words and labels as we seek to know everything that is to be known. Our thirst for knowledge has hamstrung us. Look to the sky and ask yourself a question of its magnificence that can’t be reduced to fact. Why have we done this to ourselves? Why have we removed the great glory of mystery and imagination from our minds? Thus, the burning curiosity put out in our hearts…’

‘My mother taught me her ways of tea making. A process at once scientific yet mystical. The process of creation was set but the results never. Yet one could never say that the tea, though inconsistent in taste (never disappointing in quality), didn’t relieve of the drinker a certain pain, suffering. That the tea soothed a certain essence of ourselves and left us changed from before we first sipped it. A new person? A new perspective?’

‘This series of creations you have acquired are for me a cure for this cursed World. A Salvation. Love will set us free. We are a community, we are a nation.’

‘Drink it and feel the hands that minced the earth into spice. Drink it and feel the warmth transform the spice into a colossus. The colossus is you. Drink it and be set forth…’

Mary puts the box down and leans in. She closes her eyes and tries to imagine the stone bridge she frequents. The one with the mist and fog descended upon it like a curse from God. But she can’t grasp it anymore. All she sees now when she closes her eyes are the afterimages produced by her new eyesight. But she persists. She tries to remember when her hand was wrapped around her late husband’s arm as he told her he wouldn’t seek treatment. She has no issue jumping back to that memory but somehow she is in that room again with no faces or features. Worrying still, there is no river flowing through John. There is no stone wall erected. She closes her eyes tighter. She sees the letters, words, and sentences written at the back of the tea box ‘why have we removed the great glory of mystery and imagination from our minds…’

She slams her fist on the countertop and screams “God! Where are you my John!?” She crumples into herself, knees buckling in and hands just about keeping her to the countertop. There is a river flowing through her. Her eyes redden and break with tears. A raw madness. It flashes, then it's gone. She slips onto the floor and into a heap.

“Mary! Are you okay? Do you want me to call an emergency service? Or, do you want me to call your emergency contact — Emmanuel, your son?” Sersa asks, responding to her collapse.

But Mary doesn’t respond. The heap, of which she has become, hiccups with a gentle sobbing.

…

Emmanuel stands with Pastor Enoch hovering over his mother who is lain on her bed asleep. Her eyebrows are set in a furrow and a mild sweat is forming on her temples. The Pastor says a few words under his voice then turns to Emmanuel.

“God is good… I haven’t experienced such a reaction to the operation.”

“I paid for Sersa to perform a home analysis on her condition and the results were that there is nothing physically wrong with her. So, I just carried her to the bed, and that is when I thought to call you… just to see…”

“It's okay, my son,” the Pastor folds his hands into themselves, hangs his head and sighs. “I do not believe that this has much to do with her eyes. If I am being perfectly honest. Come with me…” the Pastor leads the way out of Mary’s room into the hallway. Framed pictures of Emmanuel’s family line up the wall until you get to the kitchen. Just to the left of the Pastor’s head is one of a young Emmanuel, his mother and father in a canoe with paddles across their laps, smiling at the camera. Somewhere on the Akosombo lake.

“Your mother needs you. Why don’t you consider staying with her? At least for a little while. So that she can get a sure footing?”

“It is quite a stressful time at work, Pastor… and to move here, the timings will put me off…”

“Put you off? This is your mother. You are the man! You must be there for her or else you will live to regret it for the rest of your life. I am telling you something, my son.”

They walk down the hallway and settle onto the cushioned couches of Mary’s living room. Emmanuel thinks the pastor is about to dive further into speech but they gather in the quiet of his mother’s living space, weighed as if by her life, ever present in the framed pictures all around them. Emmanuel remembers that the pictures have a sensor that reads a face and then plays an audio describing the scene and the people in the picture taken. It was something he had bought for her as a housewarming gift.

His mother had asked him to take her to the picture of the family in the canoes on the Akosombo Lake.

“Your father wanted us to paddle the whole lake!” she had laughed after the picture had described the scene.

Emmanuel laughs and then spies the pastor whose eyes are shut and his breathing steady. He makes to get up but the pastor begins to speak.

“You younger generation have lost so much understanding of our culture and what is important. Our values and the principles… I couldn’t get it — what was it at all that is drawing our youth away from the Abrahamic religions, eh? I have spoken to imams and other pastors and we are all facing similar problems. It is very serious. But I am beginning to understand… I can not force you to do anything you don’t want to do,” the Pastor rose and straightened his dress. “When I lost my mother, it was the end of my world. There was so much that has eaten into me and made life so much harder to face, because, inside, I knew that I had let her down… Life is precious on this Earth. I am a Pastor but I am also a human. I have my doubts about it all, about where we go after, but here I am, my son.”

The Pastor takes a few steps to the door. Emmanuel is still sitting. His hands wrapped into themselves. His eyes drawn to the place around his feet. The Pastor has gone and he is in the living room by himself. The sun’s last rays are dulled by the drawn curtains. Dust mots float about the house like falling golden feathers.

When you can’t make a decision, time doesn’t move. Or it moves at a different pace. A slower one.

Pastor Enoch had reprimanded his generation’s centering of self. Emmanuel is surprised by this. He didn’t ever think the Pastor could have known about the very thing that has dominated a lot of his non-work hours. But it makes sense. It is a ‘religion’ in one way or another. This centering of self-love.

What would any other young person say now to aid him make this decision? He doesn’t feel anything in his heart. He leans forward and his fingers find their way to his forehead of which it begins to rub. He remembers his father sitting with him on his childhood bed. It was just before bedtime. He remembered how the mattress sunk to his father’s weight and Emmanuel’s body tilted toward him. How his father’s hand rose up to stroke his trembling cheek. There had never been a reason for his father to come and sit by his side like he was doing that night. Never an occasion before that resembled this one. It was all so strange to young Emmanuel, the corridor light on and the door to his room ajar. The silhouette of the profile of his father’s face, defined. He was afraid.

His father smiled at Emmanuel finally and told him words somehow Emmanuel didn’t understand but knew. And now, as an adult, he couldn’t remember those days that preceded after his father told him he was dying. And maybe even as a kid it slipped through his fingers unnoticed. But all too soon there was a tombstone with his name on it and a set of flowers to keep it company. With the cemetery keepers looming in the back arguing over who was to collect the change from his mother. And a young Emmanuel would get angry at them for being so insensitive. And all too soon he had convinced his mother to move to this old folks community. And…

A series of mechanical sounds lift him back to his mother’s living room as Sersa goes about her business of preparing the house for night.

Then night descends.

Emmanuel kicks off his shoes. He slips onto the couch and lays his head on a pillow. He closes his eyes.

Then sleep.

Chapter 6

The backdrop is a fading yellow, like pages of a worn diary. In the forefront sits Mary flicking through a Volta River Authority Annual report. She sits with her back to a window with louver blades tilting downward. The desk is scratched with names and epitaphs. Her eyes are drawn to something on the table. She puts the report down and her fingers trace the letters drawn into the wood.

‘From your beloved John…’

She looks up, the yellow backdrop has wrinkled into grey. Around her is stone and concrete and road stripes that lead to a bridge. The greyness hangs like a fog on her being and she can’t see far across the bridge. She walks. With each step she hears a guiding voice grow stronger and feels it supporting her. She is walking as fast as she can but the bridge is equal to her pace. She can’t reach it but she keeps walking anyway.

She stops.

The sky opens up above her and she sees the face of a baby. The baby is now a man and he is standing by her side. There is another voice, singing. Jorja Smith. She doesn’t know but she knows.

The man is holding her hand and leaning in to her.

‘Mama, I am here if you need anything, okay.’

She nods her head and the clouds and the greyness gather again to close off the opening in the sky. She turns back and she is again sitting with the window behind her. The annual report on the desk. The sun is pouring into the room. She looks at her hands and sees them for the very first time. She turns them this way then that, admiring their delicacy. Her palms are facing up and in her right hand are a pair of rolled up socks.

‘I have found them, John!’

She laughs and the other voice from before laughs too. Tears are in her eyes and down her cheek, slipping into her laughing mouth. ‘Salvation never seeks to speak of itself as such.’

She throws the socks up into the air and the ceiling of the library tears open and she sees a baby sleeping in a cradle. Its in her new home in the old folks community center. A bird is tweeting from the garden. Emmanuel is watering the pots on her porch leading to the backyard.

‘I am here,’ he says then waves.

She lifts herself up, then using the rails, steadily shuffles down the hall and through the living room. She turns to one of the pictures of her family lining the wall. As she faces it, Sersa begins to describe the scene.

She will have to tell her son to remove that feature.

She walks over the threshold leading to the community garden and sees the bird that was tweeting. Red breasted with a black coat, yellow beak and black spot on its head. It's fluttering near a pink-flowered bush.

She sees it. She hears it. She feels it.