Children of the Street - [31]

“I think you need to come to my house then,” Dawson said with a laugh.

Obi chuckled. “Please, you just tell me, I will come.”

“Thank you. I’ll remember that.”

“But how the doctor treats me,” Obi continued, becoming serious again, “it’s like I’m his family. He is the one who bought me this truck three years ago, and even before that, he helped me get furniture and a new gas stove for my house.”

“He has a good heart, obviously.”

“Oh, yes. Every day I thank the Almighty for guiding me to the doctor.”

“The pictures of the woman and three kids in his office-that’s his family?”

“Yes, please. But four years ago, the wife died. He has been sad ever since that day. He loved her very much.”

“What happened-to the wife, I mean?”

“Accident. A terrible one like you’ve never seen. She was driving to Cape Coast.”

“And the children?”

“They are all in different places abroad, but the oldest one says she will come back to Ghana soon. I know the doctor wants her to stay in his house.”

“He’s lonesome.”

“Oh, yes-very lonesome. When his children come to see him, and the oldest one brings the grandchildren too, he is so happy.” Obi laughed, as though his boss’s joy was being channeled through him.

The expected rain began in earnest. Dawson asked Obi to drive his motorbike to a repair shop in Asylum Down. Once his bike had been dropped off, Dawson insisted on taking a taxi despite Obi’s repeated offers to give him a ride home.

“You’ve done more than enough, my friend. Thank you.”

He gave Obi a generous tip for his trouble.

19

Comfort Mahama was sixteen. She was copper-colored, a coveted hue, with a tiny waist that flared to those big, bouncy, round buttocks that drove men crazy. Starting late Monday afternoon, she loitered around the Timber Market waiting for customers.

Most of the time, she was a head porter at Agbogbloshie Market up the street, carrying neck-breaking loads of merchandise for people. It just didn’t pay enough. In her mind, Comfort was doing what she needed to do to survive. There was no right or wrong about being an ashawo, no good or bad.

She glanced at the gathering storm clouds. Rain ruined business. Her gaze shifted, roaming languidly across the crowded market scene-people haggling over plywood or paint, a woman selecting herbal preparations from the fetish section, porters lumbering through with planks of wood on carts. One of them, a ragged boy of about seventeen, came up to her after delivering his consignment and offered her fifty pesewas.

She shook her head. He must be joking.

He called her a nasty name and moved on. Comfort flicked her head with contempt and stuck her tongue out at his back.

A few meters away, down a row of timber, a fight had broken out between two porter boys over who was to get the job transporting a pile of plywood. No one seemed to want to stop the brawl. Quite the contrary, a small crowd was collecting to watch. One of the boys was much bigger than the other, who was getting thrashed. After a few minutes of being thoroughly beaten, he begged for mercy, picked himself up, and limped off swollen and battered.

Comfort looked away. These fights were entertainment only because there was nothing better to watch. She shifted her weight slightly, aware of a burning sensation in her loins. She was using some medicine from the fetish market, but it didn’t seem to be working. She still had a yellowish discharge.

Someone hissed at her and beckoned. She sauntered over. He was about nineteen, she guessed, not bad looking.

“I like you,” he said, smiling and showing a gap in his teeth that suited him.

“Four cedis.”

“Oh, it’s too much!”

“How much you want to pay?”

“One fifty.”

They haggled until they agreed on two fifty and then took a walk. The commercial area of the market thinned out. Standing outside a tent rigged up to a wall was a gaunt man. Flash, as people called him, might have been in his twenties, but he looked like forty. He was wearing orange trousers and a bright blue shirt open almost to his navel. Comfort wondered where he got his ridiculous clothes. No one dressed like that.

This turf belonged to a guy called Tedamm. Everyone knew Tedamm. Flash collected user fees from the ashawos and paid Tedamm the larger portion.

Comfort handed him seventy-five pesewas. He looked at it as if it wasn’t money.

“You short fifteen pesewas,” he said.

“Ho!” she exclaimed. “But you charged seventy-five last time.”

“Price go up.”

Sullenly, she topped off the fee.

“Wait small,” Flash told her.

She ignored him while he stared at her without blinking the whole time they stood there. She hated the man. They waited for the muffled groans from inside the tent to die down. The girl came out first, her face dispassionate, then the man, zipping himself up.

Flash nodded permission to Comfort, and his eyes followed her as she went in with her customer.

Afterward, Comfort reflected she would have to do better than this. Two fifty minus the tent user fee didn’t leave her with much. The first drops of rain began, which promised even more misery. She started out to Nkrumah Circle to pick up some more customers. It was a long walk, but she could charge more there than at the Timber Market.