Dial - Season 2 - Episode 96

Episode 4 years ago

Dial - Season 2 - Episode 96

Her children were holding her, trying to wrestle the metal from her hand. She was screaming, and I knew that if I didn’t get out, she might probably kill me with that thing because I was too dazed to defend myself. I crawled painfully to the entrance of the store. People were gathering, and some had their cameras out.

As I got to my feet a man raced toward me with huge cement brick in his hand, ready to crush my head.
“Thief, thief!” he was screaming.
Obviously, seeing Connie attacking me, he thought I was a thief. My blood ran cold. In this part of the world thieves usually received instant lynching before the police arrived, and this situation could escalate rather quickly.

I spun away and smashed a fist into the man’s jaw, and he dropped like a sack of potatoes.

Other young guys rushed toward me, and I was beginning to get desperate, but Connie’s daughter appeared and shouted at them to let me be because I wasn’t a thief.
I shambled dazedly to my car, and then got my cheque book out of the briefcase. I had written a cheque meant for Connie, but seeing the state of her shop, and how sick her husband was, and how she had aged so much in such a short time, I knew she was in need of more.

And so I wrote another cheque, the amount four times what I had wanted to give her, and then I went back to the shop. People were still milling around as I stood in the entrance with matted blood in my hairline, and traces of tears in my eyes. Connie saw me, and she began to rant with tears raining down her face, her finger pointed at me.
“Yao Biko, the gods will punish you! You will rot before you die, Yao Biko! I will never ever forgive you, devil boy like you! Set a foot here and I’ll cut off your head, Yao Biko! Molten lave will rain down on your head, and thunder will strike you dead!”
I sighed deeply as her daughter approached me with a desperate look in her eyes.
“Sir, could you leave and come back later?” she asked miserably. “My mother is so upset! What did you do to her to make her hate you like this?”

Without a word I handed her the cheque. She glanced down at it, and her eyes opened wide with shock, and then she hugged me and thanked me. I asked her to say sorry to her parents for me, and then I returned home.
There were a few of such cases, but mostly I was forgiven, and I found a sense of freedom and a lightness on my heart.

But of Abena Adobea, I heard no good news, and my desperation and pain soon reached unbearable heights. We went to church, me and my two mothers, and we fasted for a breakthrough.

And then, one Saturday afternoon, the sweet tones of the doorbell chimed, and I activated the video. Standing patiently outside was Mr. Kwesi Kumankuma Kyenkyenhene Ketiampongkese Kupualorkpokpo, the Holy Man of Wowo!

I began to laugh and promptly buzzed him in, and as the two women came in, drawn by my wild laughter, I raced past them to the entrance and embraced the man hard.
“Hey, stop that bullcrap!” he said through his chuckles. “Hello, son. I missed you.”
“Missed you too, old man,” I said as we went upstairs. “Been thinking of coming over lately, but I still haven’t found Abena Adobea and I wanted to sort that out first. But I can’t believe this. You rang the doorbell?”
He chuckled again.
“My powers of scaring people are useless against true Christians, son,” he said when we entered the living-room, and he promptly pulled a green apple out of the air and proceeded to bite into it.

Maame Ntiriwaa embraced him, and I introduced my mother to him.
“Can I serve you some lunch?” my mother asked after the Holy Man was seated.
“Oh, yes,” he said as he looked at the television. “Bring me some of that sweet plantain and kontomire stew. Yao, see if you can find some Tom and Jerry cartoons for me to watch.”

“How did you know we cooked that?” my mother asked, aghast, and then Maame Ntiriwaa burst out laughing, and I joined in.
And later, whilst he was eating and watching cartoons, I asked if he came to visit me.
“Visit you, yes, and also to visit a bad young doctor and put a curse on him,” he said and smiled.

I laughed uproariously at that, so hard that I couldn’t stop laughing for a while.