And he thanked her and they walked. Oddso walked ahead of him because she knew the way.
She knew exactly where to turn as she knew which corridor smelled of antiseptic more than the others and which floor tile was cracked and might catch your foot if you were not careful.
She had walked this route every day for 22 days. She could walk it blind.
As they approached ward 3, she slowed. She always slowed at the door because she was always slightly afraid of what she might find on the other side.
Some days she had come and found her mother awake and sitting up and that was good.
Some days she had found her so still and greyl looking that Adzo’s heart had stuttered.
She never knew which day it would be until she opened the door. She pushed the door open.
Ward three had eight beds. Five were occupied. The smell was the same antiseptic and something beneath it.
Something human and private. Bed 11 was at the far end. There was a curtain pulled halfway around it.
Adso could see her mother’s feet at the end of the bed, still wrapped in the socks Adso had brought on Wednesday.
She walked toward the bed. Behind her, she heard the man’s footsteps slow. She pulled back the curtain.
[clears throat] Her mother was awake. Her eyes were open and looking at the ceiling.
When she heard the curtain move, she turned her head. She saw Adzo first, and her face softened immediately.
Then she saw the man standing behind Adzo, and her face changed in a way that Adso had never seen before.
Her mother’s face did not just change, it collapsed. Not in pain, in something older than pain.
The kind of change that happens when your body recognizes something before your mind does.
Her mother said very quietly. You barely above a whisper. Cojo. She said it. The way you say the name of something you had stopped expecting.
Not angry, not joyful, just recognizing like a word in a language you thought you had forgotten rising suddenly from somewhere you did not know it was stored.
Ado looked between them. She looked at the man. She looked at her mother. She said, “Mama, who is he?”
Her mother closed her eyes. She opened them again slowly. She looked at Adzo with an expression that carried so many things at once that Ado could not read any of them clearly.
Her mother said, “Come here.” Adso came to the side of the bed. Her mother took her hand.
She was quiet for a long time. Then she said, “He is someone I knew before you were born.”
Adsu said, “He said the same thing.” Her mother turned to look at the man again.
He was standing at the foot of the bed with his hands at his sides, absolutely still.
He said, “Safa.” Her mother said, “How did you find me?” He said, “I did not find you.
Your daughter found me at the road junction near the Khi estate gate. Her mother looked at Adzo.
You were at the gate again? Adzo said, “Yes.” Her mother said, “I told you not to go near the main road.”
Adzo said, “You also said the hospital bill needs paying.” Her mother was quiet. Then slowly something like a tired smile crossed her face.
The smile of a woman who has been outmaneuvered by her own child and found it despite everything a little bit funny.
Cojo took the chair beside the bed without being invited and sat down. He said, “How long have you been here?”
Her mother said, “22 days.” He said, “And before that, what where were you living?”
She told him, “The compound house in Aboose Okai.” Before that, Medina. Before that, a brief time in Kumasi after her mother died and she had gone to bury her.
Kojo listened. He did not interrupt. He did not look at his phone even once.
When she was done, he said, “And Adzo’s father.” And Sepha said simply and clearly, “You are looking at her.”
The ward was very quiet for a moment. A nurse walked past the open curtain and did not notice them.
Outside the window, the sound of the city continued. Motorbikes, a vendor calling, the distant honk of traffic.
None of it touched that small space around bed 11. Kojo sat with the information settling into him the way sediment settles in still water slowly layer by layer until the water that was once cloudy becomes clear and you can see all the way to the bottom.
And he said why didn’t you tell me? Safa turned her head away toward the wall.
She said, “I tried. Your cousin said you were too busy. Your London number rang and rang.
I wrote two letters. I don’t know if they arrived.” Cojo said, “I never got letters.”
She said, “I know. At some point, I stopped expecting answers.” He said, “I should have come back.”
She turned to look at him again. She said with no particular anger, just honesty, “Yes, you should have.”
Adzo was standing at the foot of the bed watching all of this. She was processing it the way 11-year-old children process enormous things, in pieces, one at a time, not looking at the whole picture yet.
She had understood that this man knew her mother. She had understood that the knowing had been close.
Anna, she had almost understood the rest, but was keeping that last piece at arms length for now because once you understand something fully, you cannot ununderstand it.
She stood there and watched and kept her face very still. Kojo stood up. He said, “I am going to settle the bill, all of it, today.”
Cifa said, “Cojo,” he said. “Please let me.” There was a firmness to it that was also a kind of pleading.
She looked at him for a long time. Then she nodded once. He turned to Adzo.
He said, “Will you come with me to the billing office?” Adzo looked at her mother.
Her mother gave a very small nod. Adzo went with him. The billing office was on the ground floor.
It smelled of paper and printer ink. A man in a short-sleeve shirt was sitting behind the counter tapping at a keyboard.
Kojo gave him CIFA’s name and the man typed and looked at his screen and said the amount outstanding was 430 CI.
Kojo reached into his jacket and produced a card and paid it. Just like that.
430 CI which had taken Adzo 22 days of standing at road junctions holding a photograph paid in 40 seconds.
The receipt printed. The man stamped something. Adso watched the paper come out of the printer and thought about all the mornings she had stood in the sun and all the cars that had not stopped.
She did not feel angry about it. She felt something that was harder to name, like the difference between climbing a hill slowly and reaching the top and realizing a car could have taken you there and being glad you’re at the top, but also feeling the weight of every step.
She took the receipt and held it with both hands. Cojo watched her hold it.
He said quietly, “I’m sorry it took this long.” She looked up at him. She said, “Are you apologizing to me or to mama?”
He said, “Both.” She folded the receipt carefully and put it in her plastic bag next to the photograph.
When they returned to the ward, a different nurse was at bed 11 checking Cifa’s chart.
The nurse looked up and said the doctor would come in the afternoon and that if the remaining blood work looked good, Sepha could possibly be cleared for discharge by end of the following week.
Sepha thanked her. When the nurse left, the three of them were alone again. Sepha looked at Cojo.
He looked back at her. Adzo sat in the chair and unpacked her plastic bag and took out a small container of porridge she had made that morning and placed it on the bedside table.
Yeah, she did everything carefully and quietly as if trying to take up as little space as possible.
Kojo said, “I want to be involved in everything if you will allow it.” Safa said, “You cannot come back into a life and pick up from where you stopped.”
He said, “I know.” She said, “There are 11 years you are not here. You do not get to skip over those.”
He said, “I am not asking to skip over them. I am asking to start from now.”
Sepha was quiet. She looked at Adso who was opening the container of porridge and pretending to be very focused on the lid.
Sepha said, “Adso has a right to decide what she wants. I will not make that decision for her.”
Adso looked up. She put the porridge on the table. She said, “What would start from now even look like?”
It was a serious question asked seriously. To the way only children can ask serious questions with no softening, no social cushion, just the raw form of the thing that needs answering.
Cojo sat back down in the chair. He thought for a real moment before speaking.
He said, “I do not know exactly, but I would like to learn your name properly.
I would like to know what you like and what you hate. I would like to make sure your mother is cared for.
I would like to be honest with you about who I am and what I failed to do, so you can decide from real information, not from something I polished up to seem better than it was.”
Adzo looked at him for a long time. Then she said, “Do you like ground nut soup?”
He blinked. He said, “Yes.” She said, “Mama makes the best one. When she is better, she will make it and you can try it.”
She said it like a test, like she was placing a small condition on the future to see if he would accept the terms.
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