Mistress of the Game
Mistress Of The Game
Asabea Ashun
Copyright Asabea Ashun 2010
Chapter 1
April 22, Takoradi, Ghana
A lone schoolgirl with a battered backpack featuring Dora the Explorer was walking along the beaten path behind the Methodist Public School on the East Side of Takoradi. It was a hot day as most days are in the seaside Ghanaian city. Hardly anyone was walking along the path that was usually busy with farmers carrying produce on their heads, their wives walking behind them with babies on their backs and a couple of goats for company. She wore the standard school uniform of brown and cream dress that all public school students had to wear. Her hair was cut short with no fancy hairpins or clips. As she walked along, she kicked a stone here, a twig there. A few times, she’d stop to pick up an interesting item – a coin, a nail or a candy wrapper while she recited a poem she’d just learned at school.
‘Because ye have broken your own chain
With the strain
Of brave men climbing a Nation's height…”
She stopped, trying to remember the next line of Elizabeth Barret Browning’s poem. She scratched her head a couple of times, stomping her right foot as if to jog her memory. Suddenly, it came to her.
“Um….yes, yes, yes!” she said excitedly as she remembered the rest of the verse and recited it all in one go.
‘Because ye have broken your own chain
With the strain
Of brave men climbing a Nation's height”
Yet thence bear down with brand and thong
On souls of others, -- for this wrong
This is the curse. Write.
She laughed at herself for forgetting this poem she’d been memorizing for the past month. She had absolutely no idea what it was about and it didn’t seem to matter. She recited it one more time and decided it was time to sing a song she could skip to. She sang about a vulture that was so hungry he decided he’d make friends with the local dog. She sang at the top of her voice, mimicking the vultures voice and then the dog’s voice; anyone listening would probably think there were two children singing. Ama Kese was ten years old.The path wound its way past the small Checheku stream. She walked gingerly at its edge and continued further into the forest. All of a sudden, she stopped as if to listen to the birds but the look on her face indicated that the sound she’d heard was not a beautiful one. She stopped singing and tensed up. As if on impulse, she ran behind a large palm tree and waited. It was as she’d feared; there were others on the forest path with her. She stretched her neck as far as it would go without making herself visible and then the intruders came into view - a man and a woman, clinging to each other in sexual intimacy. The woman was black and the man was pale, not like a white man but still white with short spiked black hair and very thin eyes. He touched the woman’s breasts and she then let out a little chuckle.
“You like?” said the man.
“Yes”, the woman responded coyly.
“Me peh wo”, said the man in stilted Twi, the local language.
“Saaa?” the woman asked. Do you really like me?
The man lunged towards her, drowning her entire face with slobbering kisses. She tried to push him off gently but he seemed oblivious to her resistance. He started unbuttoning his khaki pants as the woman began to protest. He pulled his head from out of her ample cleavage, looked at her and seemed surprised to see the fear in her face.
“Why you afraid? You ashaweh no?”
“Please sir, me not prostitute. I have job. I sell fish. Please, my people do bad if I make dirty by you. Please no…”
“Me can make you rich…you like me, you get money. Money more than one day sell fish!”
“No…please…no….please….please….no”, she whimpered. Ama, hiding behind the palm tree felt a trickle of urine running down her legs as she crouched close to the ground. She was too afraid to breathe and yet she thought she recognized the voice of the young woman. It was Araba, the sixteen-year-old fish seller who lived in Mama Kate’s house. She was tall and thin with silky smooth skin burned dark by the daily sun. The man must be one of the oil workers who had arrived in droves once the Freedom Oil Fields opened up much needed employment. As Ama contemplated her situation, she knew she didn’t want to stay and watch whatever was going to happen. She slowly slid her bottom up the tree and then quietly stretched one leg to the right. She adjusted her backpack, lifted her other leg and then ran away from the scene as fast as her legs could carry her. And then she heard the gun shot.