His name was Cojo Mensah Brew. He was 43 years old. Yet he was the CEO of a logistics company called Sunost Freight which had offices in Acra, TMA and Takarati.
He had not thought about Sepha Antui in many years. Not in the way of choosing not to think about her, more in the way that people bury things, not because they want to forget, but because remembering is too heavy to carry while working and building and moving forward.
He had told himself she was fine. He had told himself she had moved on.
He had built that belief carefully, brick by brick, and it had held for years.
But now a child was standing in front of him at a road junction holding a photograph and everything he had built was coming apart.
He said, “Come sit in the car. I will not drive anywhere. Just come and sit so we can talk properly.”
Adzo looked at the car. She looked at him cuz she had been told many times not to enter strangers cars, but she had also been taught to read people.
Her mother had taught her that. Watch their hands. And her mother had said if their hands are calm mostly they mean well.
This man’s hands were not completely calm but they were not threatening either. They were shaking slightly like someone standing in cold wind.
She followed him to the car. He opened the back door for her and she sat inside and the smell hit her immediately.
Clean leather and some kind of woodscented air freshener and underneath it all the faint smell of cologne she did not know the name of.
He sat in the driver’s seat and turned to face her. He said, “That photograph, the woman in it, I knew her.”
Ozo looked at him. “You know my mother?” He said, “I knew her a long time ago.”
Ozo said, “Come from where?” The man said, “From university. We were we were friends.”
He said the word friends the way you say a word that is only partly true.
Adzo was 11, but she was not simple. She watched him say it. She said, “Friends like good friends.”
He looked out the windshield. He said, “Yes, we were very close.” Adso waited. There was more to it.
She could tell. The story of how Cojo Mensah Brew had lost Sepha Antui was not the kind of story people told at parties.
It was the kind of story that lived in the chest, quiet and heavy, and came out only when something forced it.
He had met Cifa in their second year at the University of Ghana. She was studying education.
He was studying business. They had met in the library. She had been using the chair he thought was empty.
And he had tried to move it. And she had looked up with such calm that he had apologized without meaning to.
They had talked for 3 hours that day. He had never talked to anyone for 3 hours without noticing the time passing.
They were together for 2 years. He had loved her in the way that young men love when they do not yet know that love requires decisions.
In their final year, Kojo had been offered a fellowship in London, a business scholarship, fully funded one-year possible pathway to a firm.
His family had been very clear. You go, “Opportunities like this do not come back.
He had told himself he would send for CIFA, that they would manage the distance, that he would return.”
He had told her all of this standing outside her hall of residence on a Thursday evening in October, and she had listened and said nothing.
And he had thought her silence meant she understood. But when he arrived in London, the calls became less frequent, the letter shorter.
London had its own gravity. It pulled at you and you had to pull back very hard to stay connected to what you left behind.
He pulled back for 6 months. Then he stopped pulling back. He told himself she had moved on.
He found out two years later through a mutual friend that she had tried to reach him for months, that she had left messages with his cousin, that she had eventually stopped.
He had carried that information for many years without examining it too closely. If you do not examine a wound, sometimes you can convince yourself it is healed.
He had not known she was pregnant when he left. He had not known at all.
He sat in the car at the road junction with an 11-year-old girl in the back seat and he was doing arithmetic.
The only arithmetic that mattered. And it was landing on him the way a heavy thing lands when dropped from a height.
Not all at once, in stages. First the weight, then the sound, then the full meaning of both.
He turned to face Adzo again. He said very carefully, “Your mother? What is she sick with?”
Adso said, “The doctor said it is her liver. They said she needs medication and she needed an operation, but they could not do the operation until part of the bill was paid.
It they did the operation 2 weeks ago. My aunt sold her sewing machine to help.
But the remaining bill is 430 CD and I have 67. She said this all in one breath like she had rehearsed it many times which she had.
He listened to every word he said and she is at Corlebu. Adzo said yes.
He said is she awake? Is she talking? Adzo said, “Some days she talks, some days she sleeps all day.”
Yesterday she recognized me. She said it like that was an achievement. Yesterday she recognized me.
He closed his eyes for 3 seconds. When he opened them, he reached into his jacket and took out his phone and called someone.
He said, “Fifi, cancel the 9:00. Cancel the 10:30 also. Tell Quu I will call him this afternoon.”
The person on the other end started to say something and he said I know and tell him I said this afternoon.
He ended the call and turned back to Adso. He said I am going to take you to the hospital.
Adso stiffened. She said I don’t know you. He nodded. He said that is correct.
So we will do this. You call someone you trust. Tell them where you are going and with who.
What is the number plate of this car? Then we will go. Adzo looked at him.
This was not what strangers usually said. Strangers did not usually help you protect yourself from them.
She took out her own phone, a cracked screen, the kind that cuts your thumb if you swipe in the wrong place, and called their neighbor, Auntie Doula.
She told her the car color, the number plate she had read from outside, the name the man had given her.
Auntie Doula said, “Adzo, do not go anywhere with a man you do not know.”
Adzo said, “He says he knows Mama.” There was a pause. Auntie Doula said, “What is his name?”
Adzo turned and said, “What is your full name?” The man said, “Cojo Mensabu.” She told Auntie Dua.
Another long pause. Auntie Doula said quietly, “Ado, go.” Adzo turned back to the man.
She says, “Go,” she said. He started the car. They drove toward Corlebu Teaching Hospital in silence for the first few minutes.
Then Adzo said from the back seat, “How do you know Auntie Doula?” The man said he did not know her.
Adzo said, “Then why did she say to go with you when I told her your name?”
The man was quiet for a moment. He said, “Maybe your mother told her about me.”
Adzo considered this. Then she said, “My mother does not talk about my father.” He kept his eyes on the road.
He did not respond to that directly. He said, “Tell me about her shadow, how she has been, what she likes, what she says.”
And Adzo, who had not been asked this by anyone, began to talk. She talked about how her mother woke up early, even on weekends, because she said sleeping late was a kind of waste.
She talked about how her mother made groundnut soup the way no one else made it.
Thin but so full of flavor that she wanted to drink it after the food was done.
She talked about how her mother sang while ironing always the same two songs and how she always apologized to Adso after she was harsh with her.
Always that same night before sleep. I was too sharp today. Forgive me. She talked about how her mother had been a teacher before the school reduced their staff and she had to start sewing to earn and how even then she brought home books and quizzed Adso on them every evening.
Adzo talked for 20 minutes straight. The man drove and listened and did not once look at his phone.
[snorts] When they arrived at the hospital, the parking attendant recognized the car and waved them into the reserve section near the entrance.
Adzo noticed this. “Do you come here often?” She asked. He said, “I am on the hospital board.”
She did not fully understand what that meant, but it clearly meant something because when they entered the main building, a woman at the reception desk looked up and said, “Good morning, Mr.
Mensabru.” And he nodded and said, “Which ward is Sepha Antu in?” And the woman checked quickly and said, “Female Medical Ward 3, bed 11.”
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