Dial - Season 2 - Episode 98

4 years ago

Dial - Season 2 - Episode 98

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I had never experienced any emotional pain more horrible than I experienced that Saturday afternoon. My heart almost literally leapt into my mouth. The horror crashed into my head, and the pain thudded away relentlessly inside my whole body.

I sagged and would have fallen if I hadn’t reached out to support myself on the arm of one of the deep settees.
“Adobea is getting married?” I whispered, dazed and horrified.
“What?” Maame Ntiriwaa screamed, her face absolutely shattered. “No, that cannot be true! And she didn’t bother to inform me?”

“Oh, no,” my mother, the beautiful Afua Beatrice, said. “She must be hurt. She must be doing it because she’s so hurt!”
“Why didn’t you come earlier?” I groaned, my horrified eyes digging into the Holy Man with anger. “You knew I was looking for her! You knew I came for her! I couldn’t get any message to her because you insisted I couldn’t leave your mountain house! And you now come and give me this?”

“I didn’t know you were looking for her, son,” he said, unfazed, and continued to eat. “As soon as you became a Christian, I no longer had any control over your affairs. You didn’t bother to come and ask me, son. I came here, and gave you that, so you can’t blame me!”

“Oh, Lord!” I breathed hollowly as the weight of my helplessness hit me. “I’ve lost her! The ceremony was supposed to begin at one o’clock! It’s now past two o’clock! Oh, Lord!”

The Holy Man shrugged, and then he pointed at Jerry giving Tom a hiding on the television, and began to laugh uproariously.

I swung away from him because I wanted to hit out at him; I was that angry, and that bitter, and that hurt.
“No, I can’t live without her!” I shouted in agony. “She loves me…yes, Mom, you’re right! She’s doing this out of pain! I’m going to stop her!”

With pain swimming freely in my chest, I grabbed the car keys of the Hummer and turned toward the door.
“Hey, son!” the Holy Man said, and when I turned he spoke without taking his eyes off the television. “There’s a big black chair in the garden of the church, under the long tent. You must sit on that one!”

I gaped at him with incomprehension and bitterness.
“Sit on a big black chair?” I asked dully. “Why?”

“Oh, so you get a better view of the wedding reception,” he said, still without taking his eyes off the television, and then he burst into gales of laughter when Jerry kicked Tom off the deck of a ship into the sea.
I restrained myself.

I could have killed that man that day.
With a sharp grunt I turned from him and rushed for the door.

The sirens on my car wailed, and the lights flashed as I fixed the location of the church on the GPRS and hit the fastest route, driving almost violently through the streets of Accra.

My heart was in agony, and as I raced along it struck me then…Yao Biko, the guy who had had no use for women, who had just spent the better part of his life listing down women, who couldn’t wait to get rid of one girl so that he would go after the next, was now breaking all major traffic rules and risking arrest just to get to one girl!

Time, really, changes, and nothing under the sun is permanent!

Just one girl, one girl…and I couldn’t fit into this world if she were not with me! I could probably find more beautiful girls, sophisticated girls who knew the latest trends and spoke the best English. I could probably get girls form any part of the globe, if I wanted to…

But, no, she was the one.
The only one.

Abena Adobea…yes, I loved her, and I craved her, and needed and wanted her!
Only she could give me this pain, this feeling of sheer helplessness!

That village girl! That uneducated, proud and spirited girl.