Rosemary
Let’s say a prayer for Rosemary,
our daughter, our little sister,
a prayer of faith that her journey will go well.
Let’s say a prayer for Rosemary.
Let’s speak words of peace, hope and love.
Our prayer for you, young one,
is to reach your rightful destination,
never be lonely, never hurt again.
We say a prayer for Rosemary,
our daughter, our sister.
Smile, jubilate and somehow, we will know
you arrived safely.
It seemed as if Osei Kwame was always smiling, or was it just me? He was always pleasant, almost going out of his way to be nice to me.
“Hello Ama, my wife. How are you today?”
I would always shyly smile and with my head a little bowed say, “I am fine, thank you.” He teased me by calling me his wife. Osei Kwame was a grown man with a wife and two children, Rosemary and Gabriel. We lived in the DC Metro area.
I liked Osei Kwame and his family. His name was actually Kwame Osei, but he preferred to be called Osei Kwame, putting the last name ahead of the first, as in a class register. One of his grade-school teachers had called students by their last names first. Osei Kwame liked the sound of that and kept it all his life. But I called him uncle, just that, not Uncle Kwame, but uncle.
Osei Kwame’s perfect family was a pleasant sight to behold. As a child, I liked this smiling man who played the accordion. We went to the same church and every Sunday, Osei Kwame would have his accordion slung around his neck and stretched across his chest. He would also bring it to our homes when we had holidays or birthday celebrations. He was often called upon to play this instrument at funerals and other important events such as baby naming celebrations in our Ghanaian community. I remember how passionately he moved his fingers on the keys as he played the accordion. It was written all over his face how much he loved playing his beloved instrument.
At church, he sat in a corner reserved for the instrumentalists. For a couple of years, he was the only instrumentalist in our small church until we later gained a guitarist and a pianist. I remember the song he taught the congregation of about eighty-five people.
“Jesus is my everything,
Jesus is my everything,
Jesus is my everything,
He’s all I need.”
It was such a simple song, but so catchy and upbeat that we enjoyed singing it, especially when it was accompanied by Osei Kwame’s accordion music. I was a child but I remember it very well, even thirty years later. The more we sang it, the more I enjoyed the song, particularly when we sang it to take the offering as we danced towards the front of the sanctuary waving our white handkerchiefs and deposited our monies into the collection bowls. Well, at least it was the adults who danced, and waved their handkerchiefs. We children just observed them, sometimes giggling conspiratorially. Away from them, we sometimes played church, and mockingly imitated them.
Osei Kwame was tall, about a good six feet and two inches. He was big, but not fat. His two children, Rosemary and Gabriel were cute kids, both a little on the quiet side. When they first joined our church, Rosemary was eight and Gabriel five. Rosemary was slender and of average height. She was withdrawn but I noticed her hair was always braided well. Gabriel’s hair was also always nicely cut and neat. I don’t know if Osei Kwame cut it himself or took him to the barber, but if he cut it himself, it sure looked better than most of the other little kids who regularly got haircuts at home.
I never knew that Auntie Virginia was not Rosemary’s mom and that she was Osei Kwame’s second wife. I learned this by overhearing the adults discussing it and other old news and secrets some of them knew after the tragedy. Later, I heard that Osei Kwame’s first wife lived in Ghana. She had been with Osei Kwame in DC, but they separated upon her mother’s death. Although she knew it was a risk to return home and attend the funeral, since it was likely that she wouldn’t be able to return to the U.S., she still didn’t see how she could stay and not go back home to help bury her mother and rightly send her off to the other world.
Many others who didn’t have proper papers too often didn’t go to help bury their deceased parents, knowing that they would not be able to return. They did their best and sent money for the funeral to help, explaining why they couldn’t return home, but Rosemary’s mother wouldn’t stay behind.
Osei Kwame and his wife argued about it.
“How do you expect me to stay here when my mother is lying in a cold fridge somewhere, heh? You are a man. You don’t understand.”
“Eh, I am a man. Is it now that you are finding out I am a man? If I am a man, then you too are a mother. How can you risk your chances of not returning when you have a daughter who needs you? What about Rosemary, eh? Doesn’t she need her mother? Mame Yaa, look at what you are saying. You can’t go. You have to stay!”
“Kwame, I will go. Are you the one to tell me what to do about my mother? Can’t you see my mother is dead and it’s killing me? Your mother is still alive, so you don’t even feel anything. Am I a tree, heh? Am I a tree? I have feelings. I know it’s a risk, but I have to go. I am trusting God to take me safely and work things out for me, for all of us. Is immigration bigger than God?”
“Heh? Mame Yaa, are you sick? Are you sick in your head? Do you hear yourself? You are comparing immigration and God? This is paperwork, not spiritual warfare! I am telling you, if you dare go and not return, it will be your fault!”
“O ho, Kwame! Stop that! Stop telling me what to do. Aden? Have a little faith.”
“Yo-oo ok! Have faith. You are telling me to have faith. Yo-oo! You are the only Christian here. Yo-oo. I have heard!”
Rosemary’s mother went and was unable to return. Out of anger, exasperation and feeling disrespected, Osei Kwame didn’t feel any motivation or obligation to help his wife in any scheme she proposed about returning. Aside from her taking care of Rosemary, he didn’t need her. He completed the cultural divorce procedures through family members representing him back home and that was that. Within a year, he married Auntie Virginia and Rosemary gained a new mother. In another year, she had a brother, Gabriel. By all accounts, they were a perfectly happy family.
Auntie Virginia was tall but fat. As a child of pubescent age, I always wondered how tall people could also be fat. I could see how short people could be fat because they didn’t have the length to stretch out the weight from the food they ate, but tall people? I didn’t understand, so I only concluded that tall people who were fat ate much more than they should and that was why the food filled up their tall frame. I also observed that many tall people who were fat looked shorter than they actually were. I learned that after some people lost weight. But Auntie Virginia’s fatness did not make her look shorter. She was a big full woman about two hundred pounds. She wore her hair natural and often cornrowed it. She was also cross-eyed. The first time I met her, because I was a little startled and intrigued about her imperfect eye, I stared at her, mostly looking at the eye, and when she caught me staring, out of shame, I quickly averted my eyes.
Auntie Virginia was almost always sitting down. She was not as outgoing and jovial as her husband. As a child, I couldn’t understand why Osei Kwame married her and how Rosemary was so pretty while she wasn’t. She wasn’t ugly, but besides her nicely rounded face, she wasn’t exactly a beautiful woman. But many things didn’t make sense to me when I was a child.
Although Rosemary was a pretty girl, one of her hands was badly burnt from the back of her fingers towards the tip of her wrist. I remember when I first saw she had burned her hand. We were in my family’s kitchen and my mother had asked me to give all the kids popsicles. When it was her turn, I saw her hand. A little horrified, I asked, “Rosemary, what happened to your hand? How did you burn it?” But she looked at me and didn’t respond. She just took her red popsicle from me and went away.
I thought she was a little weird anyway. Besides, I didn’t have a lot of tolerance for the younger kids. I thought they were noisy and annoying, especially when I was made to give up my TV shows in favor of theirs. And my mother didn’t help things as she always put me in charge of them as if I were the baby-sitter even when their parents were there.
After giving the kids their popsicles, I told my mother about Rosemary’s hand when she came to the kitchen to get a glass of water for one of the visiting adults. Returning to the living room with the water, I heard my mother, as usual, expressing profuse concern, asking Rosemary’s father about her hand.
“Osei Kwame, Ama just told me that Rosemary burned her hand. What happened?” My mother asked in her naturally high-pitched voice, adding more urgency.
“Hem, sister, you know these kids. She went playing on the stove and burned herself. I don’t know how many times we have told them to stay away from the stove and matches. But Rosemary is hard-headed. Virginia had boiling water on the stove, preparing to make banku, and the next thing we knew, Rosemary had burned herself reaching for the water. For what, I don’t know.”
“Eii these kids will kill us with worry oo!” My mother said.
“When did this happen?” My father joined the conversation.
“Just two weeks ago,” replied Osei Kwame.
“Hmmph. That girl doesn’t listen,” added Auntie Virginia.
“Ama, call me Rosemary,” my father instructed me, with a voice that reached the kitchen without him having to get up. I went to the door leading to the basement and going down a few steps, shouted “Rosemary, Rosemary, come here!” She didn’t hear me with all the noise they were making, and I became even more annoyed that I was forced to go down to retrieve her.
“My father wants to talk with you.” I said interrupting her fun. I led her to the living room where my father and the rest sat.
“Rosemary, come here. Let me see your hand,” my father said as he reached out his hand to hold Rosemary’s scarred limb when she offered it. I looked on as my father observed her hand. “I hear you had an accident on the stove, hm? Please stay away from the stove and listen to your mother and father, okay? We don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Yes, Uncle.” Rosemary said with her head bowed, embarrassed as two other adults also asked to see her hand. My father took her hand again and told her he would pray for her so her hand would heal fast.
“Remember to be good so my prayers would be answered. Okay?”
“Yes, uncle.”
Since then, I always felt bad for her and a little sad each time I saw her scarred hand. I guess I felt more this way because I was always afraid of getting injured, especially getting burned by fire. As a child, by the age of eight, I had already broken a leg and worn a cast. I had even stayed at the hospital for some time and my leg was in the cast for months. Although it itched and was sometimes unbearable and made me unable to walk for a long while, it had healed, and my current doctor said there was no trace of my broken limb. But being burned was another thing all together.
At that time in my short life, I had seen a couple of burn victims. Their injuries were either on a part of their face or on a limb and it always left me nauseated and even more afraid of fire. I remember a man I once saw whose face had been disfigured by burn marks. I was simultaneously afraid and repulsed by him. Still, I felt sorry for him that he would have to go through life like that and I wondered if someone could look beyond his facial deformity and marry him. Or was he bound to live a lonely life because of his disfigurement? Because Rosemary was a little girl, I wasn’t so repulsed by her hand, but rather sympathetic and worried how she would go through life with these burns and if people would not want to befriend her because of the deformed skin on her hand.
I knew the Oseis for three years before Osei Kwame’s flight. Well, actually, I knew them for six years, but during the last three years, they had ceased attending our church. But in the years that we went to the same church, our families were connected, and we celebrated holidays and some birthdays together. During summer, we sometimes had barbecues in our backyard and at times, we would visit their two-bedroom apartment in DC. Because Rosemary and I were separated by 3yrs, she was not my playmate. Her mates were my younger brother and sister. But like family, we all interacted.
The last time her family came to our annual picnic, as we did always, we invited some of the families in the church to a barbecue and games. Sometimes, afterwards, we would drive about ten minutes away to a middle school in Takoma Park, Maryland and watch fireworks. At the barbecue as usual, the adults chatted and laughed about their own stories, life’s happenings, and Ghanaian politics while we children played dodgeball, softball, and board games.
When the Oseis arrived, one of Rosemary’s hands was in a cast. The cast covered the entire arm. Rosemary had apparently sustained a bad fall from her bike. My mom asked me to fix her a plate. I did and set it in front of her on the picnic table. Fortunately for Rosemary, it was her left hand that was broken so she didn’t have a lot of difficulties feeding herself; otherwise, I am sure my mother would have instructed me to feed her as well, which would have annoyed me. It seemed to me that my African parents, especially my mother, was always asking too much of us, especially me since I was the oldest.
That day, feeling under the weather with this broken arm, Rosemary didn’t play much but watched the other children play all the games. But a highlight for her was when everyone decided to sign her cast.
“Let’s sign Rosemary’s cast,” Kofi Appiah said to Daniel Okyere. Turning to her he asked, “Rosemary, do you want us to sign your cast?”
“Okay;” she responded, shyly smiling.
Years later, I wish I were the one who had suggested signing the cast. It didn’t occur to me. Kofi Appiah was a better person than I.
Kofi signed it saying what he wrote aloud, “feel better, Rosemary, Kofi.” Daniel followed, also uttering what he wrote, “get well soon, Rosemary, Daniel.” After these two, other kids joined in. Even those playing cards and ball stopped and came to sign her cast and I signed it as well, “hope you heal soon - Ama.” I drew a smiley face. Other additions of “get well soon and feel better Rosemary” with X’s and O’s and more drawn smiley faces were added. Even the adults got involved in this act while her parents looked on. Rosemary was happy to see this display of affection and attention.
Not long after, the Oseis stopped attending church with us. My parents kept in touch with them and, once or twice, we got together, but after a while, we didn’t see each other anymore.
About two years after they stopped attending our church, I overheard my mother on the phone talking to Auntie Virginia.
It was a Saturday, and I was doing my chores of cleaning out and polishing our wooden cabinets with lemon Pledge and reorganizing the can goods and other food supplies. I can still smell the scent of the lemon Pledge when I remember this day. My mom answered the hanging yellow telephone in the kitchen when it rang. By her questions and responses through a heightened voice, I sensed something bad had happened. It seemed it had happened to one of the children.
“Where is he? Where is she? What? Call the ambulance now! But you have to call the ambulance, Virginia. I am going to hang up now so you can call 911. Do it, Virginia!” My mom hung up the phone.
By this time, I had stopped my work and was staring at her.
“What’s wrong, mommy? Is someone hurt?” My mom wouldn’t answer. She picked up the receiver then hung up without calling. She repeated the gesture and then stood there thoughtfully for a few seconds. My father had gone to visit a sick church member, so she just had to wait until he came home. This was in the 1980’s before beepers and cell phones. She went upstairs and I went back to my work, but then I was too distracted and worried so I couldn’t continue.
I followed her, but by the time I stood quietly at the pathway to her room, the door was shut, and she was praying as I have heard her many times before when something was wrong. The words of her prayer were loud yet, at times, too fast to understand. I wanted to make sense of them but couldn’t. All that was clearly distinguishable to me was her repetition of the words, “Lord, let it be well. Lord, let it be well.” Then in a few minutes, when I sensed that she was done, I tiptoed away and returned downstairs. This time, she returned to the living room to use the phone there. From the kitchen, I moved to the adjacent dining room, peeking at her sitting on the blue corduroy sofa, talking.
“Osei Kwame, what’s going on? Did Virginia call the ambulance? Oh? Oh? Is she okay? Where is she? Okay. Thank God. Thank God. Ata is not here, but I will tell him to call you when he comes home. Okay. Bye.” She hung up and returned upstairs singing a solemn worship song. The next day after church and Sunday dinner, instead of taking us to evening service, our parents left us at home and went to visit the Oseis. That was the last time I heard my parents mention the Oseis, until well over a year later.
I was seventeen, a junior in high school when the Ghanaian community and all the DC Metro area were abuzz about a news incident. As a high school student, I had a part time job at a national fast-food chain. I worked about three times a week, so when I was working, I would rush home from the school bus stop, quickly grab something to eat from the fridge, change into my work uniform and walk the fifteen minutes to my job. I worked from five in the evening until nine or nine-thirty and my mother or father would pick me up.
I wasn’t at home when the local news first reported the story. If I hadn’t been at work, I would have heard the most talked about and perplexing breaking news of the week.
The local news programs and the papers followed a top story of a Jane Doe whose body was found frozen on a fence at a dump site. The news continued to run the story and showed an image of her face hoping someone watching would identify her. Someone did. It was one of the girl’s teachers, who, watching the news was shocked and terribly saddened to learn that a student she hadn’t seen for about a week was dead and in the news. Her name was Rosemary Osei. Afterwards, that name accompanied the picture flashed on the screen when the story was reported. By the time the police raided the Osei home, Osei Kwame, Auntie Virginia and Gabriel had taken off and allegedly escaped to Ghana. Although the medical examiners concluded that Rosemary Osei died of hyperthermia, the case was ruled a homicide.
There were live and in-depth print interviews. Left lingering were many unanswered questions. For starters, what happened? Why was she there? Who had she come there with? Why hadn’t her parents made a missing person’s report? Authorities and investigators hoped that if the Oseis had fled to their home country, the Ghanaian authorities would take them into custody and extradite them. It never happened. Either the Oseis never returned to Ghana or the Ghanaian authorities never got involved with the case. They had successfully escaped, leaving their daughter’s body to be handled by the DC and United States government.
The mystery surrounding the last days and hours of Rosemary’s life could not be entirely pieced together by the authorities. Osei Kwame and those who knew the details were gone. But some of us overheard conversations between our parents and other church members, and came to learn about the darkness which pervaded the Osei home. Our accordion-playing brother, friend and uncle had a heart that could not be tamed by all the teachings, preaching and Christian fellowship he received. Perhaps it was because of his troubled heart that he sought the fellowship of the church. Or maybe he sought it for selfish gains, to make a name for himself as a respectable member of the Ghanaian community.
To add to his internal struggle, Osei Kwame’s second wife could not love and accept Rosemary as her own. To keep his wife happy and his marriage intact, Osei Kwame enforced violent discipline on his daughter. Any displeasure affected Virginia by Rosemary was met with swift punishment. Shouting, slapping, and beating the girl were not enough.
It turned out that the burn on Rosemary’s hand was not from her playing with hot water on a stove but from a deliberate attempt to discipline the girl. Osei Kwame had deliberately prepared the scalding water and held down a seven-year-old girl, forcing her hand in the burning water, turning a deaf ear to her shouts and cries of agony for the punishment’s duration. She had to behave. She had to respect and honor her stepmother. She had to fear and honor him. Beatings included kicking the child even when she was curled in the fetal position on the floor, crying and pleading for her father to stop. He did when his anger was spent.
A year before her death, when they had called our home, Osei Kwame had beaten his daughter so badly that the girl lay bleeding and swollen. A kick to her head with his dress shoes had resulted in a collapse and the swelling of the head and face. He shouted at her to get up, but she wouldn’t, so he left her on the floor of the hallway where he had grabbed and beaten her. He went out of the house to get some fresh air. Minutes later, when Auntie Virginia saw that the girl was still not moving, she became afraid and panicked. She called our home for help; my mom told Auntie Virginia to call 911. I don’t know whether she did or not, but later, a disoriented Rosemary woke up and the Oseis were spared something worse.
But the last time around, after Osei Kwame brutally beat and stomped on her, Rosemary didn’t wake up. Although they repeatedly tried to wake her up, she never responded. Terrified of what they had done and what could happen to them, Osei Kwame carried his daughter on that terribly cold January night and putting her in his car, drove to a dump site, discarded the body of his fourteen-year-old daughter and fearfully took off in the dark.
Sometime after, the girl slowly came to consciousness and felt the bitter cold of that winter’s night. She wasn’t sure where she was, but sensed it was in or near a place with a lot of refuse. There was an overwhelming and debilitating stench everywhere. A weak and disoriented Rosemary somehow crawled her way through the refuse and felt what she made out to be a fence, separating her from the rest of the world. She began to climb over the fence but felt the sharp points at the top of the fence pierce her palm. She managed to reach the other side with frozen and numb fingers and the freezing wind blowing in her face, the upper portion of the gym jacket she was wearing tangled itself to the tip of a wire. She resisted, in her weak and diminished state, trying to separate herself from the wire, but it was to no avail. The dying girl, whose heart was already failing, was not successful. She died hanging over the fence.
Rosemary was dead. She had survived hell for fourteen long years, but could not hold on longer.
Throughout my life, I occasionally recalled Rosemary’s story, especially when I saw news reports of an abused child. When I was a child, I thought my parents were strict and demanding, that they wanted too much of us, always instructing us to do this and that. Now that I am a parent, I understand their strictness, their wanting us to be responsible, but I still can’t understand their silence. After all these years, I don’t know why those who knew would keep quiet and allow Osei Kwame to continue to rule his home with anger and assault, and even keep quiet after the final criminal act. A small conservative immigrant community in the 80’s, many of them undocumented, they opted to protect him and themselves from the U.S. police and immigration. As a mother, I hurt when a child is injured and can’t imagine that I would have kept silent. I still don’t understand how Auntie Virginia allowed this to happen to a child in her care.
Recently, I travelled to Ghana with my mother. We went to her hometown, Winneba, to visit relatives and some childhood acquaintances. That weekend, her high school was the venue for a performative arts festival. Her best friend, Auntie Deborah, from that high school, was the current head mistress and had invited us to the festival. It was a hot but breezy Saturday, and the program was held outside on the vast high school’s grounds. The show was just how Auntie Deborah described: a wonderful concert with singing and drama by children to adults in native languages and English. There was cultural dancing and even a comedy of errors which was in our Fante language. We laughed and clapped as we were entertained by the different performances.
Towards the end of the program, there was a musical group performance, a fusion of Ghanaian Gospel and High Life. The accordion player caught my eye with how he handled his instrument. We were in the first row, and I studied the way he perspired from his temples down and yet was lost in the playing of his instrument. I felt myself tapping my mother’s thigh as she sat on my right side. I wanted to know if she could confirm what I was seeing.
She had also noticed the likeness to Osei Kwame. He had aged over the decades, but we knew it was him. My mother and I looked at each other with our mouths almost open as if we were seeing a ghost, this uncle, friend, Christian brother who had vanished decades before. As we locked eyes on Osei Kwame, his gaze finally located ours. He didn’t recognize me as I was now an adult woman in my forties, but it was clear he recognized my mother. He dropped his eyes and his playing faltered. When the group finished, they disappeared into the school building.
After the program, my mother told Auntie Deborah that we had seen a friend we wanted to greet. Auntie Deborah led us into the building, but Osei Kwame could not be found. We asked the members of the group where their accordion player was. No one knew. Osei Kwame had taken off again.
When my mother told Auntie Deborah the story, and how Rosemary died and Osei Kwame fled to Ghana, I learned two new devastating details. Osei Kwame called my father for help when the police were after him. My father wasn’t able to help him in the way he wanted, but he didn’t report him to the police either. I was deeply disappointed by this. My father could have helped bring justice to Rosemary but didn’t. He didn’t stand in Osei Kwame’s way from fleeing. No one did. I also learned that Rosemary’s mother had died three years after.
Maybe Rosemary’s mother couldn’t bear the final separation and had to join her daughter in death. One could only hope that they would be reunited. As for Osei Kwame, Virginia and Gabriel, my family never heard from them again, at least until we set eyes on him in Ghana.
All these years, when I think about Rosemary, I pray that our children won’t be harmed, and that others would not be silent about such cruelty. I also regret I wasn’t kinder to her.
Go in peace, Rosemary. Go in peace. We pray you will fare well in your next world.
* * * * *
The Haunting
He used to come to her dressed in a blueish-green two-piece pajama set with animal prints. He always came to her bedside, as a handsome four-year-old boy with a dark complexion and black woolly hair. She always woke up trembling. He seemed so real. So alive. But when she shook herself from sleep and opened her eyes, no one was there. She always struggled to fall asleep again. No one had to tell her he was her child.
There were long stretches of time when Julia wouldn’t see him and she thought she would never see him again, that the nightmares had ceased. But then it would happen again. Again, in the same pajamas, he appeared by her side of the bed calling for his mommy. He looked so innocent. So handsome. But she didn’t want him to return She couldn’t bear the load his memory brought.
She kept these experiences to herself, never telling her husband or her best friends since college. One day, as she sat outside her pastor’s office waiting her turn to go over a program she was heading, she heard the pastor advising another member on a familiar issue. The door was closed but their voices were audible enough for her inquisitive ears. Julia couldn’t see the woman clearly even if she peeked through the frosty upper half of the door. Although she wanted to, she knew it wouldn’t be right. She wouldn’t want someone to do it to her. When she heard the woman’s problem, she listened intently.
“Pastor, I need to talk with you confidently. I don’t want my husband to know.”
“What is it, sister?”
“Pastor, I keep having a dream where I see children coming to me. At first, I thought I was dreaming about my future children, but realized I didn’t want them.
“What do you mean you didn’t want them? Do you want to have children?”
“Yes, I do. My husband and I are trying. But when I dream about these children, I get a feeling that I don’t want them. Does that mean I really don’t want children?”
Pastor Tawia was a sixty-five-year-old man who had been in ministry for forty years in Ghana and later in America. He had not only studied religion and philosophy, but he had also studied spiritism, and had experienced it himself. He immediately knew what his parishioner was talking about. He knew it was not a matter of just bad dreams, but of spiritual matters.
“Sister, I have to ask you some personal questions and I need you to be honest.”
“Yes, Pastor.”
“Have you been pregnant before?”
“Hmmm, Pastor. As for this question, hmmm.”
“Sister don’t be shy or embarrassed. I am not here to judge you.”
“Yes, Pastor. I have been pregnant before.”
“How many times and what happened with the pregnancies?”
“ Pastor, I was young, a secondary school student back home. I aborted them.”
“You are not the first to have this experience.” The children you see coming to you are images of the ones that went by the wayside. But they are not the real children. Your children have returned to God. These are familiar spirits who take the shape of the children to haunt their mothers.”
“Heh? Pastor, how? How can spirits come as aborted children?”
“Sister, these are spiritual matters. There are many things in the spirit realm people don’t know or understand. The only way you can stop them from returning is to ban them. You have to vocalize a prayer and forcefully instruct them never to return; otherwise, they will always continue to haunt you. I will pray with you before you leave. The next time they come, ban them from returning.”
When the child came to Julia again, she remembered the pastor’s words. She prayed and banished him. She instructed the child never to return and to stop haunting her. She repeated the words firmly. Her husband, who was deeply asleep began to move on the bed as if disturbed but didn’t wake up. She lowered her voice, repeating the prayer. She hoped that the child had heard. She hoped that the pastor knew what he was talking about.
*
It had been sixteen years since he last came to her and yet she remembered him as if it were just yesterday. She wondered what he would have been, what they could have been as a family. She wondered if he would ever come again. She missed him and wanted to see him again, even if it were just in a dream. Her would-be first born child.
He would have been twenty-four years old had he lived, had she allowed him to continue forming in her body. But she couldn’t. She had her entire life ahead of her. It was 1996 and she was in the midst of her undergraduate study.
If she had chosen differently, would she have been able to graduate with honors and continue to graduate school? Would she have married his father, her then boyfriend? She tossed the questions back and forth in her mind. She always resolved she couldn’t have risked her future simply because she was careless and allowed that carelessness to determine her fate. She would bring shame to her religious family and be the talk of the church and community.
She remembered how her cousin’s case had influenced her decision. Two years before her own dilemma, her closest cousin, Afia, had dropped out of college. The family was devastated and angry with her. Afia’s father was the head usher and her mother the women’s fellowship president. They threw her a big graduation party for finishing with honors, and choosing to study computer science. When she was away in college, they publicly emoted pride about how she was doing in her prestigious college in Pennsylvania, on partial scholarship. This abruptly ended when she returned home after her second semester, obviously pregnant.
When her parents saw her protruding stomach, both their mouths dropped for what seemed an eternity until her mother found the words.
“Afia, what is this?” Walking to her and pointing at Afia’s stomach and then poking it repeatedly with her index finger, “what is that stomach? What does this mean? Are you pregnant? Heh? You got pregnant? Afia, who put this thing there? What foolish boy, heh Afia? So, you went to school to get pregnant instead of studying? Eiiii!” Her mother shouted and dropped both her hands-on top of her head as if to wail, as if to give up living because a loved one had suddenly died. Afia stood there in the living room, her suitcase still by her side.
“So, with this stomach, you are what, four months, five months pregnant, hmmm?” Afia stood there quietly while her father was also standing still in disbelief. Her mother raised her voice even further, as if it weren’t loud enough already. Tilting her face to look at Afia whose head was bowed, her mother shouted, “don’t you hear me talking to you? Answer me!” “I am five months, Maa,” Afia finally spoke. Turning to her husband, she announced as if he hadn’t heard, “Eii! Kwasi, do you hear that? She says she is five months! Your daughter is five months pregnant!” And returning to Afia, she continued, “So you mean when you came home for Christmas you were pregnant and hid it, heh? Eii Afia! Who gave birth to you? I! I gave birth to you. Am I a liar? Am I a deceiver that my daughter should become a liar and deceiver? To spend an entire month with us in this house during the holidays and not tell us? To return to school and be carrying a baby and not tell us? Eii boy!” She turns to her husband and says, “Kwasi, say something. Hmm. I don’t even know what to say anymore!” She stood with her arms folded looking at her daughter with a mixture of anger, incredulity, and disappointment.
Her father was unable to say anything though the look on his face said it all. It was as if he had been gutted, as if the rug he was standing on had been maliciously pulled from under him compelling him to land on his bottom with great force. It took him several days before he found his voice; when he did, he told her to leave the house and that she was a bad example to her siblings. She went to her best friend Vera’s home for a few days. It was Vera’s father, Deacon Ferguson, who pled with her parents for their forgiveness, imploring them to accept her even as the rich man forgave and accepted his prodigal son in the bible. They allowed her back home but let her know that she and she alone was responsible for the child and that if she could lie down with a man, then she could very well take care of the repercussions.
Instead of pursuing a college degree, instead of staying on campus and attending classes, Afia had to work tirelessly at a minimum wage job to finance the care of a child.
Julia had been home that summer when Afia was pregnant. She saw and heard how her cousin was badly treated and shamed at church. They cut their eyes and twisted their faces in her direction. “Hmmph! And she brings this stomach here unashamed, giving our children bad ideas!” The women complained naturally and intentionally so that Afia was certain they were not pleased. After two weeks, she stopped going to church until months after she delivered the baby.
When Julia first sat down with her, Afia dryly narrated her mother’s entire dramatic response and how her father refused to talk to her for days, passing her by when he saw her in any part of the house.
“What are you going to do, Afia?”
“Mama, what can I do?” Afia always called Julia Mama, her home name since she was named after her father’s mother.
“I will work and go to college part time near here. It’s all my fault. I knew better. I should have protected myself even if Marcus hadn’t. Mama, be careful oo. Don’t let this happen to you.”
*
Julia reflected on Afia’s experience and how it had changed the course of her life. She couldn’t bear what Afia endured by the eyes and mouths of their family and church. Also, she couldn’t push aside her future and work at a minimum wage job for years scraping to take care of a child as her cousin was doing. Afia would have been a graduating senior in the year that Julia got pregnant. Julia started college after Afia and yet she was ahead of her. She couldn’t repeat Afia’s error, so she never considered keeping the baby even as she noticed how it was changing her body in those early weeks, how her appetite had increased, her breasts becoming fuller and tender to the touch and how she was easily tired and hit the bed and slept so deeply that she almost missed her eight o’clock morning classes. Only her abrasive alarm sound saved her. See how this pregnancy is already interfering with my life? she thought. She knew she wouldn’t keep it.
A student leader in a number of organizations and a double major in criminal justice and English, Julia was well known and liked. Students, teachers, and administrators alike listened to her because she was smart yet respectful of her professors and the staff, always addressing them as professor, ma’am or sir. She regarded the feelings of her college mates. Her friendly yet confident personality were part of the reason she had served as freshman, sophomore, and the current junior class president. She was a Dean’s List student and already a member of Who is Who Among American Colleges and Universities. She was the pride of her two departments. Professors and students expected great things from her. By her sophomore year, the student body had elected her most likely to succeed.
As a student, Julia comported her five-foot-four-inch one hundred-and-fifteen pounds frame confidently. Her look was business casual and casual elegant, always wearing a two-inch pump as she made her way across campus, carrying a briefcase, never a backpack. She thought backpacks were unattractive and wished her little sister in middle school would stop carrying them on her back as she warned they would ruin her posture. She had style and embraced it, but she couldn’t embrace this new development in her life. It threatened to change her life’s course where she couldn’t clearly see her academic plans and her future as she had before.
She began to suspect something was wrong when she got all her usual pre-menstrual symptoms, the bloating, the tender breasts, the two to three pounds weight gain, even the cramps in her middle and lower back, but then it continued three days past her expected date, five days, seven days, and ten days. She became worried but tried to calm herself. She had been careless before and all had been well. Surely, she couldn’t be pregnant. All would be well.
I am not pregnant, she thought and forced herself to believe it hadn’t happened to her, but two weeks after she was late, she decided to buy a pregnancy test. A friend gave her a ride to the Family General, where most of the college students go in that sleepy highly conservative town to purchase just about everything they needed with the exception of clothes and food, things from ceramic plates and mugs, bathroom cleansers, cheap bathroom carpets, to incense, aspirin and pregnancy tests. She tried to be discreet about it, picking up several items that she didn’t need at the moment, like toothpaste, dental floss, cotton balls, toilet tissue, and the pregnancy kits. She looked at the very limited options they offered. There was a test with only one kit and then another with two. She stood there for a minute trying to determine which one she should get. On the one hand, all she needed was one test; on the other, she was safer buying two just in case something went wrong with the first or if she needed confirmation. The one with two pregnancy tests was more expensive than the one kit, but cheaper compared to buying two of the single kits. She decided to buy the one with two kits since she wanted to be certain. Still in the back of her mind, she was hoping and expecting her period to come any minute. It didn’t.
It didn’t matter how much she was embarrassed to have the pregnancy kits rung up. It didn’t matter how much she wasted her time and money on all those other distracting items she had put in the shopping basket. When she went to the cashier, the older woman picked everything one by one to ring their price on the cash register and she couldn’t help but feel ashamed and guilty that at barely twenty years old, a student, unmarried, she was purchasing a pregnancy test. The older woman looked at her and just rang the test as if to say, “it is not my business.”
When she went home, she dumped all the contents of the plastic bag on the carpeted floor of her off campus apartment and retrieved the pregnancy test kit. She read it and then read it again more carefully to be sure she did not make an error and waste it. It’s not as if she hadn’t seen the television commercials on the kit; she had, repeatedly, but she certainly did not think it would concern her as other feminine merchandise did every month. Now the pregnancy tests were in her room, brought there by her because she had been foolish. She hadn’t listened to the advice of her youth mentors; she hadn’t honored her upbringing as a Christian girl, and she hadn’t learned from Afia’s experience.
She took one of the kits and went to the bathroom. There, she sat down and placed the stick strategically between her thighs to catch the flowing urine. At first, when she attempted to urinate, she couldn’t. Then she sat there waiting, shaking her right foot impatiently, and after a minute or more of trying to will herself, the urine began to flow, droplets falling on her fingers. When she had finished, she placed the stick on the top of the commode tank, washed her hands and left for five minutes as the instructions required. She went to her bedroom and turned on the television for distraction, though she really couldn’t pay attention. She was still not in the right mind to put away the things she had purchased in their appropriate places, especially since most of them belonged in the bathroom. She would know if she were pregnant by a plus on the reader or one line if she were not. Positive plus line, negative one line.
She waited. She prayed and hoped it was negative though as hopeful as she had been, she knew she was likely in denial, that she was indeed pregnant. She looked at the watch on her left wrist and noticed that five minutes had expired, but she held herself for another thirty seconds and as difficult as it was, another thirty seconds again, just to be sure. She went to the bathroom and looked at the kit, picking it up and looking at it even closer as if she hadn’t seen it well before. Plus sign. Positive.
It was real now. She called her boyfriend, Roger, and confirmed to him that it was positive. A senior, a year ahead of her, he had been less stressed about it, because he didn’t doubt that his driven girlfriend wouldn’t keep it. They both agreed she would take care of it, and he would provide the bulk of the money, considering he earned more than she did. She was a tutor on campus while he worked as a paid intern at a local television station. She told her two closest friends, Tamara, and Anna, and they helped her find a clinic for the abortion.
On the phone with the clinic, the nurse asked,
“How far are you?”
“I am not sure.”
“When was your last period?”
“Six weeks ago. I am two weeks late.”
“You might be four weeks pregnant, but it might be further.” Her heart leapt in fear at this information. She thought how strange it was to be walking around pregnant and not know. She was stressed during those two weeks she waited for the procedure. The child, unaware of its fate, was still growing, still impacting her body, independent from her decision. She was experiencing morning sickness as well as waking up in the mornings with a bitter spicey taste lodged in her throat, as if she suffered from the worst heartburn ever. She forced herself to focus on her schoolwork and hoped the time would go quickly. Rodger managed to scrape up most of the four hundred dollars the procedure would cost and gave it to her.
When the time came, she followed the instructions the clinic had given her in preparation for the procedure. She and Anna traveled a little over an hour to the small clinic in a bordering state. It was a one-level building with white sidings and many green shutters. There was a small parking lot, which would hold about twenty cars, the dividing white lines fading on the black tar. Julia and Anna used the concrete sidewalk although it was apparent by the challenged lawn that not everyone made use of the sidewalk.
After signing in, she sat next to Anna and waited until she was called. Her palms were sweating and her body shaking though it wasn’t visible to others not carefully studying her. She had read up on the procedure. She knew she would feel pain, but how much, she wasn’t sure. She prayed all would go well and that it wouldn’t be so bad.
A nurse in teal scrubs came from the heavy wooden brown door to the main area summoning patients. When her name was called, her heart skipped a beat.
“Julia?”
She quickly raised her hand, stood up and went to the nurse. Anna followed.
“Can my friend come with me?” The nurse’s eyes fell on Anna and then Julia.
“I am afraid she can’t. There will be a nurse and doctor with you.” Julia looked at Anna, who hugged her and told her she would be alright. She walked in with the nurse, who obviously knew to be sympathetic and kind to patients.
She was led into a small room where the procedure was explained to her. The nurse informed her that in some cases, after the procedure, the fetus might still be moving. She was horrified for a moment to hear that, and she involuntarily imagined the gruesome suggestion. She mentally held herself together, believing there was no returning from her decision. She hoped that this would not be the case with her, that she would not see anything at all. She then had to sign papers saying that she had been counseled, that she understood what was going to happen and that it was her choice to undergo the procedure. If not, she could decline and leave.
She held the document in her hand. She felt guilty that she was doing this. She believed she had already sinned by engaging in a pre-marital sexual relationship with Roger, which she had learned even before she was a teen in Sunday school and always understood as wrong, and here she was about to have an abortion. In that moment, she remembered King David, how he had seduced Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, and, when she became pregnant, killed Uriah, and quickly married Bathsheba to hide his offense. She thought she was doing what he did, to cover up a sin. She knew God would be angry with her as He was with the king, but she still believed she had no choice. She couldn’t have this major game-changing interruption in life. She signed the papers.
The nurse led her to another room where the procedure would take place. It was much like a typical doctor’s examining room, the kind she always entered when visiting a doctor’s office. There was nothing really special or different in the room. Before the nurse left, she was directed to disrobe fully and put on the clinic gown provided and then to wait until the doctor came in. She did. She heard crying from the next room. A teenage girl was crying loud enough that she and others in the clinic could hear her. At first, she couldn’t tell if the girl was going through the procedure at the moment or if she was about to.
“You are going to have to calm down. You are upsetting people.” She heard a nurse calmly but firmly counsel the girl to stop crying.
“Ok. I’m sorry,” the girl managed to say between tears, but she couldn’t stop crying.
“You know, if this continues, we wouldn’t be able to perform the procedure.”
“Nooo, I want to stay,” the girl cried even more as if to plead with the nurse not to give up on her.
“But I don’t think you are ready. I think you need to think about it a little more,” the nurse advised.
Julia was sad for the girl, but simultaneously irritated. She was making it worse for her. The girl managed to calm down her cries to whimpers that could still be heard through the shallow walls. They didn’t operate on her that day.
A few minutes later, a pudgy white male doctor in his mid-fifties and another white nurse, a tall one with long dirty blond hair came in. The nurse looked like Lindsay Wagner from “The Bionic Woman,” one of Julia’s favorite shows. She was struck by the nurse’s presence and kept looking at her, not minding the doctor. Both the nurse and doctor greeted her. The doctor asked her if she had done the preparations ordered before the day’s appointment. She said yes. Time was not wasted. He gave her instructions to sit up on the cushioned examining table and to place her feet in the stirrups as she was familiar with when she did her annual pelvic exams. He then instructed her to scoot her bottom down. She always found this awkward and a bit tricky, but she did it and the nurse helped her adjust. She was so tense. They told her to relax; she tried but was not very successful. The doctor asked her not to move. There was a steel basin beneath her.
Before he began, he told her what he would be doing, using instruments to separate the fetus, and then using a suction machine to retrieve the fetus, and the placenta, telling her that it would only take a few minutes.
She asked if the baby would feel anything. He told her no and she felt better. She wanted it to be over quickly. And upon adjusting herself once more as the doctor and nurse required, the doctor entered her with his fingers and pulling them out of her, paused and told her she was three months pregnant. He asked her if she wanted to continue given that she was farther along. She froze. She hadn’t expected that. She wondered how she could be three months pregnant and only miss one period. She realized she must have been pregnant and still had her period the month before. She hesitated. The doctor and the nurse looked on, expecting a response. She said yes, she still wanted to go through with the procedure.
The procedure began. She held on, trying to survive the moment. She heard snapping and breaking, which surprised her. She hadn’t expected to hear anything. She felt sorry for the little being inside her and what was happening to it. After he was done with the instruments, the suction began. She felt the pain, major cramps that she had never felt before. She started crying but tried to mute herself. She didn’t want to be like the girl and upset other patients who might hear her. She wished Roger were there. She wished her mother were by her side. She looked at the nurse and then she looked at the ceiling. Tears continued to stream down her face and into her ears. The bionic woman look-alike was comforting her, assuring her she would be alright. A sharp pain made her jerk not once but twice although she was supposed to stay still. She couldn’t help it.
The doctor told her sternly not to move otherwise she could acquire an internal injury. She was sorry and immediately thought she didn’t want to do anything to complicate her future pregnancies when she was ready for a family. She fought to stay still in spite of the pain. She cried. The nurse asked her to squeeze her hand hard when she felt pain. She kept thinking to herself, “why am I here? How did I get here? Why?” She asked herself repeatedly, squeezing the nurse’s hand. When it was over, she was relieved and inexplicably exhausted.
Julia was given a sanitary napkin and pain medication; she was led to a different room where she could rest for some time until she felt ready to get up and go. She was informed as to how to take care of herself, to only use pads and not tampons, no tub baths to avoid infection, not to engage in any sexual activity in the next six weeks and to use a contraceptive when she finally does. She was to see a doctor after six weeks for a pelvic exam check-up to ensure all was well. She was given pamphlets which repeated the information, and more. When she returned to the waiting room, Anna stood up and hugged her. “Are you okay?” she asked.
She said “yes,” and they stepped outside to return to the university.
Outside, Julia and Anna were surprised to be confronted by angry protestors. They stood across the street from the clinic, holding anti-abortion signs. They had apparently arrived after the two had gone in earlier. They yelled, “abortion is murder,” “baby killer” “save the babies” and other chants that were written on their placards.
Julia was immediately angry, yet she felt embarrassed for her exposure.
“Just ignore them,” Anna told her. They made their way to Anna’s car in the parking lot and drove off.
A year later, she and Roger were through. She graduated with honors as planned and went on to law school.
When she looks back, she remembers how Afia struggled to finish school and raise her daughter, Krystin, at the same time. Now twenty-six years old, her goddaughter was graduating from medical school, the pride of her mother and her grandparents. She was proud of Afia’s accomplishments and of Krystin’s.
It has been many years since the child stopped coming to her. While he no longer haunts her dreams, the memory of him and that experience do not leave her. She has thought of him occasionally over the years, but lately, she has thinks about him more. She misses him. By this time, he would have completed college and might be wrapping up graduate school. She wonders what he would look like as a young man. Would he favor his father or her? Perhaps he would have been an accountant, a journalist or a teacher, a lawyer like herself.
Sometimes, she wishes she had her son in her life. But had she kept the child, she would have been tied to Roger forever. She is grateful that she is married to her husband of seventeen years, a more loving and caring man. And for that alone, she has no regrets about the procedure. Her only regret is putting herself in the position to make that painful decision which has haunted her for many years.
Today, when she looks at her fourteen-year-old son and twelve-year-old daughter and hugs them close to her, she daydreams of the big brother they will never know. Before they were born, he was already there calling her mommy.
About the Author
Miriam Comfort Gyimah, Ph.D.
Miriam C. Gyimah was born in Ghana, West Africa, but completed her primary and secondary schooling in Maryland. She attended the University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES;) subsequently received her master’s degree in English from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (SIUC) and followed it with a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Binghamton University (SUNY) in upstate New York. After earning her doctorate, she taught at her undergraduate alma mater as an assistant professor of English and African Studies for five years and then worked as a contractor for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as a senior policy analyst. Dr. Gyimah returned to teaching in 2017 and entered the George Mason University MFA program in 2019. She is currently a full-time lecturer at Howard University and an adjunct at Mason in both institutions’ English department. Dr. Gyimah currently resides in Woodbridge, VA.