Man and His Love by Bright Aboagye
After a long search, a Ghanaian chief finds his wife, who did not want to be found.
He found her in Cape Coast.
Cape Coast had not changed since his last visit years ago. The buildings still held the sun like it belonged to them. The breeze still shrieked through the alleys, carrying the salt and the burden of history. Even the dust felt familiar under his sandals as he walked down the alleyway between a kenkey seller and a secondhand bookstall. The chop bar was just where the receipt had said it would be; it was behind a pink-painted building, beneath a blue-and-yellow umbrella that flapped against the wind like it had complaints to file.
He stood outside it for a long time.
It was not the kind of place you expected to find the woman you had failed. The one you had pushed away, bruised with grief and pride. There she was, visible through the open entrance, placing a bowl of fufu in front of a hunched-over man who had already begun licking the pepper soup from his fingers.
She hadn't changed. That was the first thing he noticed. Her back was to him, but he knew. Knew from the way her shoulders moved. From the way her arms moved and from the way she adjusted the bowl like someone who had never once in her life believed her worth ended in service. Every line of her said: I do this work because I chose it, not because I must.
He froze. Then she turned, enough, to greet a man walking in. Their eyes met.
Time paused.
Her face registered the outline of him. There was a shift in her jaw; it was a smile she had not finished offering to the other man who slipped, broke, vanished. Her fingers went still. She did not flee, and that alone told him everything. Her lips tightened, and she approached slowly, like someone descending into a room they had once buried themselves in.
A waitress led him to a booth, but he barely saw her.
She walked to his table with regal control. Every step of hers brought back the memories he thought he had forgotten: the scent of shea butter on her skin, the bite of her tongue, the warmth of her sleeping body next to his and the coconut oil in her afro hair. She sat without asking.
He smiled.
He could do that now, smile again. He could laugh even if he wanted. After all, she was here. Alive. Real. Her eyes pinned him.
"You've found me," she said. "What now?"
He grinned, folding his fingers beneath his chin. "To pick up my wife, of course. It's been a while."
She exhaled through her nose and scanned the room as if looking for a reason to tolerate him.
"Don't you miss me?" he asked, and his voice was light.
"Miss?" She seemed to weigh the word in her mouth. "Yes. I miss being treated like a house pet."
He chuckled, but it didn't reach his eyes. She wasn't finished.
"A mare's only use is to breed," she said gently, staring at her fingernails. Then she looked up, and her gaze locked on his, and smiled cruelly.
He flinched. The words had found their mark. He had earned them.
"I came to take you home," he said.
"I don't want your home," she snapped. "I quite like where I am. Go back to whatever palace you crawled out from."
He didn't respond immediately. He watched her. Her skin glowed, her cheekbones sharp like they had been designed again by grief. Her hair, tied in cornrows, reminded him of when she would sit in front of her mother for hours, eyes closed, mouth slightly open, trusting hands to part her scalp like prayer.
She was still his wife.
He hadn't known how tired he was until he saw her. He hadn't rested in three months, hunting for clues, tracing names and receipts and people who no longer cared to remember the woman who vanished. He had called in favors. Bribed clerks and dismissed meetings. Nearly lost his chieftaincy. None of it mattered.
Now here she was seated glorious and still out of reach.
"You're not coming back?" he asked waiting for her response.
"No."
"Why?"
She opened her mouth, a barbed reply ready. Then she hesitated. His voice had not carried the command it used to. It was not a decree, but a question. That unsettled her.
"I suppose," she said slowly, "your new wife wouldn't appreciate me taking up space."
"There is no new wife."
"Don't lie. I saw her. I saw the first time that Big Mother lead her through our house like a cow to slaughter. She was so proud and so sure. That shiny thing. Her skin is like polished glass. Her belly ripe with the King she was meant to bear. And me?"
Her voice shuddered.
"The old one. The woman who bleeds her children before they can scream. The failure."
His face darkened. He wanted to curse. He wanted to drag his mother's sister to the edge of the sea and leave her for the gods.
"She is married now," he said. "To someone else. I sent her away the day you left. I did not touch her. I never intended to."
She stared, unblinking.
"I have only one wife. You."
He meant it. She wasn't sure she believed him.
"What do you want from me?" she asked.
"I want forgiveness. I want you."
She laughed bitterly. "After all this time?"
"I am sorry. I should have stood beside you. I let them control us. I let the pressure of kingship swallow my marriage. I let my pain become your burden. When you lost the child..."
He stopped. Her eyes had gone glassy. She looked away.
He reached across the table, tenderly. "That night. At the hospital. I should have never left you alone."
She didn't move, didn't speak.
"I love you," he muttered.
There it was. He had placed his heart on the table, waiting for it to be crushed.
"You hurt me," she said finally. "You let them mock me, make me small in my own house. You watched me bleed and you left me to mop it up alone. Why would I take you back?"
"Because I am still yours."
She stared long at him, her silence was full of wounds but she needed to think through. Then, surprising them both, she smiled faintly.
"You're mad," she said.
"Mad for you."
She snorted. Then sighed.
"What are you eating?" she asked.
He grinned.
"Whatever you recommend, my queen."
He stayed. She hadn't expected that. Thought he would return to his estate, to the silk cushions and long meetings, to the loyal elders who nodded even when he was wrong. She thought the street food would wear him down; the mosquitoes would break his resolve. But morning came and there he was, at the same booth, sipping millet porridge from a calabash like he had been raised by fishermen.
He nodded when she walked past. He did not smile and also did not speak. He did not need to.
The second morning, he asked if he could help. She did not answer. Later, she found him sweeping the front of the chop bar in silence, his cloth tied clumsily around his waist, his feet bare and his hands moving to the ground. The other girls whispered behind their hands and watched him. Some giggled. Others gasped when they heard who he was.
He did not look at any of them.
Only her.
By the fourth day, he was washing bowls at the back. His fingers, once smooth from palace life, had begun to peel. He flinched when the water stung, but he did not stop. The owner of the chop bar, a stout woman named Auntie Esi, called her aside.
"Your husband is mad," she coughed out.
"He is not my husband," she replied.
Auntie Esi laughed. "He sleeps on a mat outside, eats with the apprentices, and washes plates with a smile. If he is not your husband, then I do not know what love is."
She walked away without answering.
That night, after closing, she found him sitting under the mango tree, watching the sky like it would call her name back to him. She walked past, meaning to enter the small room she rented behind the bar. He stood before she reached the door.
"I can sleep outside the door," he said.
"You already are."
He hesitated, then added, "Closer this time. In case you need anything."
She stared at him. Then she nodded.
He rolled out his mat and placed his cloth over himself. She watched from behind the curtain, her heart too loud, her eyes refusing to blink.
She dreamt of the first child that night. The one who had not stayed. The one time never gave an opportunity for them to name.
In the dream, she held the baby in her arms and walked across a dry field. She looked for him everywhere, but he was not in the dream. When she turned around, the baby had vanished. All that was left was blood on her cloth and nothing; the silence was so wide she could hear her own heart pulsate.
She woke up sweating. Outside, he snored softly.
The next day, she cooked rice for him with her own hands. She did not speak when she placed the bowl in front of him. He did not speak either. He bent his head and ate slowly, reverently, like the food was holy.
She began to see a change in herself. It was not forgiveness. Not yet. But something broke in her soul.
They walked together to fetch water the next morning. She carried her pan on her head. He struggled with his, sloshing half the water out before they reached the bar. She laughed. He smiled at the sound, like a man who had not heard music in years.
Later that day, one of the girls told a story about a man who chased his wife across three regions after she left him at their wedding feast. He laughed with the others, then turned to her and said quietly, "I would have chased you across the sea."
She looked away.
The memories came uninvited, like wind under a door. Nights when they lay wrapped in silence, their fingers touching under the sheets. The time he built her a wooden cradle before their first child. The way he used to call her "my star" when no one was listening. And then the day the bleeding would not stop, the incessant pain and the way the nurses avoided her eyes, how he had sat outside and never entered the ward, waiting to hear good news.
That was what had broken her. It was not the elders. His mother's stares were nothing to her. His mother's sister was someone she could easily avoid. And the other woman who walked in like a snake gliding across polished tiles was a story she could endure. It was him. He was the one who had promised her a kingdom and vanished when her body betrayed her.
She thought she hated him. She wanted to hate him still. But hate was on the other side of the road.
And it was getting harder to reach it.
That evening, as he washed the mortar and pestle, she came to stand beside him.
"You never cried," she spat out.
He looked up.
"After we lost her. You never cried."
His hands paused.
"I cried every night," he said. "But never near you. I thought I had to be strong for both of us."
"You should have cried."
"I know. It would've meant nothing if both of us were crying."
They stood and looked at each other. Somewhere, a radio played a love song from an old highlife album. The words drifted, sweet and slow, into the evening.
"I still see her," she finally said.
"I do too."
Their hands touched over the soapy pestle, and he didn't move. She did not pull away. The days moved like they were watching. Each morning, he swept before the sun came up. By the time she tied her headscarf and stepped outside, he was already seated under the mango tree, face turned toward the sky. He no longer asked if she had slept well. She no longer asked if he would leave.
But the people had started to notice.
First it was Auntie Esi, speaking to a pepper seller behind the plantain stand. Then it was the apprentices, who now kept quiet when she walked by, staring with smiles and judgment in their eyes. She heard them one evening while she cleaned the counter.
"He says he's a chief. What kind of chief washes bowls?"
"The kind who loves his wife," another added, laughing.
She paused mid-wipe. They thought it was romantic. They had not lived in her skin.
They did not know what it meant to lose a child and then be treated like the cause. Like her womb had eaten the baby out of spite. Like her grief was a weapon she held against the elders.
She had buried more than one child. She had buried her name and her joy.
He had let it happen.
She told him so one night when the moon was high and the moment had gathered between them like dust.
"You left me alone in that room. The elders came and asked me questions. Did I lift anything heavy? Did I eat unclean food? Did I provoke the gods? And you, where were you?"
He sat with his legs crossed, his arms resting on his knees and his face moving down to look at her.
"I was in the palace," he looked at her to draw the truth into her body.
"They told me not to return to your room until you had healed."
"I needed you more than anyone."
"I failed," he cried out. "I believed them when they said I must be strong. That I must preserve the line."
She turned away.
"You could have fought for me."
"I am fighting now."
She did not respond. The pain returned, coiling around her stomach like a clenched fist.
The memory of the agony: in the weeks that followed, his presence became a ritual the town could not ignore. People began to visit. Some came to eat and stayed to stare. Others asked questions. A few recognized him and bowed slightly before him. She noticed how stiff he became when that happened and how his smile disappeared, and his shoulders became tensed. She had forced it out of her life.
One afternoon, a black Jeep with tinted windows parked across the road. She watched through the open doorway as the door opened, and his uncle stepped out. Nana Kwaku. He was an egoistic man who believed in culture and cared about the family name.
He walked toward the chop bar with the slow arrogance of royalty. The customers sensed the change. There was a complete shutdown of every mouth as he walked. The bowls were the only noises that could be heard.
He stopped beside her table.
"You dishonor your stool," he said, not bothering with greetings.
She dried her hands on her apron and looked him in the eye.
"I do not owe the stool anything."
His face filled with contempt. "You are a woman. You owe the stool your diligence."
Before she could speak, her husband rose from his seat.
"She owes nothing," he said firmly. "Not to you. Not to me. Not even to the ancestors."
His uncle turned. "You speak like a boy. So, the rumors are true. You think sleeping in chop bars and washing plates redeems you? A chief must lead and control his wife."
"I am leading," he said. "I am leading myself back to the only woman I have ever loved."
"Then you are no longer fit to be called chief."
He did not answer. His silence thundered through the room. The older man left without another word.
The people began to murmur. She stood by the wall, her breath was shallow, and she saw nothing.
"Are you ready to risk everything?" she said once the door had closed behind the car.
"I already lost everything when I lost you."
She wanted to hate him for the things he said. But there was something different in his voice now. There was less pride and more urgency.
That night, she opened her door before going to bed and looked at him moving on his mat.
"Come inside," she called out to him.
He rose and followed. She pointed to the corner.
"Sit. No talking."
He obeyed. They slept in the same room for the first time in months. He did not touch her. He did not move. But she heard his breathing, and it secured her.
In the darkness, she remembered how he once sang to her belly. The first time they thought they would become parents. He sang an old lullaby his mother had taught him, off-key but it was beautiful. They had lain under mosquito netting in a rented single room a few months before he became chief. But it was the only time in her life she felt completely safe.
The baby never came. She rolled to her side and watched him in the dark.
He looked older now. The lines on his forehead were more visible now. His beard had more grey than she remembered. He was no longer the man who believed power could fix everything. He had been stripped. And yet, he was still hers.
She watched him sleep; later she noticed he was struggling to sleep.
"Do you still sing?"
He smiled for a brief moment, "Only for you."
She nodded. He then sang the same lullaby. She held on to her stomach.
The days after that were quieter. He no longer asked if she would come home. She no longer told him to leave. They lived like two branches growing in the same soil but unsure if they could twist toward each other again. There were affectionate moments that gave her reassurance. Like when she was cooking kontomire stew the week before, she felt his arms wrap around her waist from behind. She strained. His hands moved slowly, carefully, and she could feel his breath on her neck.
"I miss holding you."
She leaned back slightly, just enough for him to feel her the coolness of her skin.
"I miss being held."
They stayed like that until the stew threatened to burn.
Later, she would pretend it had been nothing. It was a moment of weakness. He would not argue. He had learned patience. And in everything that happened: touch, the unspoken situations, he felt it was a rebirth and an achievement. It was not trust but it meant he was almost there. And it felt real; it was living too, like them.
The letter came two weeks later.
It was folded in a blue envelope and carried by a palace servant who shook when giving the letter out. He had recognized the man at once, a boy who once fetched water from the courtyard well. Now grown, now frightened, he bowed too gracefully and placed the envelope on the table without speaking.
She watched her husband as he stared at it. None of them spoke. He looked at the addressor and she watched him with such curiosity.
"From your mother?" she asked.
He nodded once.
She poured water into a glass and placed it beside him. He opened the envelope without hurry, pulled the letter out, and read it silently. When he was done, he folded it again and set it aside.
"Well?" she asked, wiping her hands on her apron.
"She says if I do not return within three days, the elders will choose another heir."
"And what will you do?"
He looked up at her. She did not want to push him to make the decision. He needed to decide on his own.
"I told you. I came for my wife. I will not return unless you come with me."
"You would let the throne go?"
"I would let everything go."
She sat across from him and studied his face.
"You once told me the people were more important than love. That duty came before the heart."
"I was young. I thought I could have both. I thought duty would protect love. But it killed it. Now I know better."
She leaned back and closed her eyes.
"You cannot abandon your people."
"I already did. The moment I stopped listening. The moment I allowed them to hurt you."
His words settled between them. She stood and walked to the window. Outside, the street buzzed with life. Children chased tyres down the road. A man pushed a cart full of plantain. Life continued, whether they healed or not.
"I do not want to go back to that house."
"Then we will build a new one."
"What of your mother?"
"I will speak to her."
"She will never accept me again."
"She does not have to. I do and that's what matters."
She turned to him; her arms folded across her chest.
"And if I never give you another child?"
"Then I will be your husband and nothing more. I married you, not your womb."
"You speak easily now," she said, her voice trembling. "But you were not this man when I needed you."
"I know."
She came closer, her hands dropping to her sides.
"I loved you," she said with meaning. "With everything. I carved myself to fit you. I let them blame me because I thought I could bear it. I thought you would come back for me."
He knew she was telling the truth. He could feel her love for him.
"I am here now."
She looked up, and he saw it. The years of grief and the continuous bricks of hurt. It had been cemented with the hope that refused to die even after everything. She stepped forward, slowly, until they stood toe to toe.
"You cannot erase what happened," she said.
"I do not want to erase it."
"Then what do you want?"
He reached for her left hand and held it in his hands.
"I want to live with you... in whatever way you will have me. If it is marked by darkness or light, I will be there with you. I will support you."
Tears filled her eyes. She did not look away.
"I want to trust you again."
"Then let us begin."
They stood for a while. Her fingers played in his hands. A long moment passed before she nodded.
"I will come," she said. "But we do not go back to that house."
He smiled, the first real smile in months.
"Then we start again."
The next day, they packed her few belongings. The other waitresses came to say goodbye. Auntie Esi hugged her tightly and showered blessings into her ear. When they stepped outside, a crowd had gathered. Word had spread. He held her hand. She did not shrink.
They walked to the waiting car, where the palace driver stood beside the door. She paused before entering, turned once to look at the chop bar, the street, the mango tree, the life she had made out of pain and salt.
Then she stepped inside. They did not return to the palace. Instead, they drove into the countryside, to the view of the river where the land knew what to say to the heart and the sky listened to the command of the body. There, they built a small house. It was a comfortable house. It was enough to build a family. He'd leave in the mornings to attend to royal duties and come back early to see her.
At night, they sat on the porch and watched the stars rise. Sometimes they spoke. Sometimes they stayed there and enjoyed the view. She did not forgive him all at once. Healing was not a thing that happened by declaration.
But whenever he sang the lullaby again, she felt in her soul that had made her whole. She knew he truly loved her. And when he cried beside her one evening as they watched the rain soak the earth, she held his hand. He was still her husband. And she, after all the grief and the years and the broken pieces, was still his love.
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| Image generated with OpenAI |
Cape Coast had not changed since his last visit years ago. The buildings still held the sun like it belonged to them. The breeze still shrieked through the alleys, carrying the salt and the burden of history. Even the dust felt familiar under his sandals as he walked down the alleyway between a kenkey seller and a secondhand bookstall. The chop bar was just where the receipt had said it would be; it was behind a pink-painted building, beneath a blue-and-yellow umbrella that flapped against the wind like it had complaints to file.
He stood outside it for a long time.
It was not the kind of place you expected to find the woman you had failed. The one you had pushed away, bruised with grief and pride. There she was, visible through the open entrance, placing a bowl of fufu in front of a hunched-over man who had already begun licking the pepper soup from his fingers.
She hadn't changed. That was the first thing he noticed. Her back was to him, but he knew. Knew from the way her shoulders moved. From the way her arms moved and from the way she adjusted the bowl like someone who had never once in her life believed her worth ended in service. Every line of her said: I do this work because I chose it, not because I must.
He froze. Then she turned, enough, to greet a man walking in. Their eyes met.
Time paused.
Her face registered the outline of him. There was a shift in her jaw; it was a smile she had not finished offering to the other man who slipped, broke, vanished. Her fingers went still. She did not flee, and that alone told him everything. Her lips tightened, and she approached slowly, like someone descending into a room they had once buried themselves in.
A waitress led him to a booth, but he barely saw her.
She walked to his table with regal control. Every step of hers brought back the memories he thought he had forgotten: the scent of shea butter on her skin, the bite of her tongue, the warmth of her sleeping body next to his and the coconut oil in her afro hair. She sat without asking.
He smiled.
He could do that now, smile again. He could laugh even if he wanted. After all, she was here. Alive. Real. Her eyes pinned him.
"You've found me," she said. "What now?"
He grinned, folding his fingers beneath his chin. "To pick up my wife, of course. It's been a while."
She exhaled through her nose and scanned the room as if looking for a reason to tolerate him.
"Don't you miss me?" he asked, and his voice was light.
"Miss?" She seemed to weigh the word in her mouth. "Yes. I miss being treated like a house pet."
He chuckled, but it didn't reach his eyes. She wasn't finished.
"A mare's only use is to breed," she said gently, staring at her fingernails. Then she looked up, and her gaze locked on his, and smiled cruelly.
He flinched. The words had found their mark. He had earned them.
"I came to take you home," he said.
"I don't want your home," she snapped. "I quite like where I am. Go back to whatever palace you crawled out from."
He didn't respond immediately. He watched her. Her skin glowed, her cheekbones sharp like they had been designed again by grief. Her hair, tied in cornrows, reminded him of when she would sit in front of her mother for hours, eyes closed, mouth slightly open, trusting hands to part her scalp like prayer.
She was still his wife.
He hadn't known how tired he was until he saw her. He hadn't rested in three months, hunting for clues, tracing names and receipts and people who no longer cared to remember the woman who vanished. He had called in favors. Bribed clerks and dismissed meetings. Nearly lost his chieftaincy. None of it mattered.
Now here she was seated glorious and still out of reach.
"You're not coming back?" he asked waiting for her response.
"No."
"Why?"
She opened her mouth, a barbed reply ready. Then she hesitated. His voice had not carried the command it used to. It was not a decree, but a question. That unsettled her.
"I suppose," she said slowly, "your new wife wouldn't appreciate me taking up space."
"There is no new wife."
"Don't lie. I saw her. I saw the first time that Big Mother lead her through our house like a cow to slaughter. She was so proud and so sure. That shiny thing. Her skin is like polished glass. Her belly ripe with the King she was meant to bear. And me?"
Her voice shuddered.
"The old one. The woman who bleeds her children before they can scream. The failure."
His face darkened. He wanted to curse. He wanted to drag his mother's sister to the edge of the sea and leave her for the gods.
"She is married now," he said. "To someone else. I sent her away the day you left. I did not touch her. I never intended to."
She stared, unblinking.
"I have only one wife. You."
He meant it. She wasn't sure she believed him.
"What do you want from me?" she asked.
"I want forgiveness. I want you."
She laughed bitterly. "After all this time?"
"I am sorry. I should have stood beside you. I let them control us. I let the pressure of kingship swallow my marriage. I let my pain become your burden. When you lost the child..."
He stopped. Her eyes had gone glassy. She looked away.
He reached across the table, tenderly. "That night. At the hospital. I should have never left you alone."
She didn't move, didn't speak.
"I love you," he muttered.
There it was. He had placed his heart on the table, waiting for it to be crushed.
"You hurt me," she said finally. "You let them mock me, make me small in my own house. You watched me bleed and you left me to mop it up alone. Why would I take you back?"
"Because I am still yours."
She stared long at him, her silence was full of wounds but she needed to think through. Then, surprising them both, she smiled faintly.
"You're mad," she said.
"Mad for you."
She snorted. Then sighed.
"What are you eating?" she asked.
He grinned.
"Whatever you recommend, my queen."
He stayed. She hadn't expected that. Thought he would return to his estate, to the silk cushions and long meetings, to the loyal elders who nodded even when he was wrong. She thought the street food would wear him down; the mosquitoes would break his resolve. But morning came and there he was, at the same booth, sipping millet porridge from a calabash like he had been raised by fishermen.
He nodded when she walked past. He did not smile and also did not speak. He did not need to.
The second morning, he asked if he could help. She did not answer. Later, she found him sweeping the front of the chop bar in silence, his cloth tied clumsily around his waist, his feet bare and his hands moving to the ground. The other girls whispered behind their hands and watched him. Some giggled. Others gasped when they heard who he was.
He did not look at any of them.
Only her.
By the fourth day, he was washing bowls at the back. His fingers, once smooth from palace life, had begun to peel. He flinched when the water stung, but he did not stop. The owner of the chop bar, a stout woman named Auntie Esi, called her aside.
"Your husband is mad," she coughed out.
"He is not my husband," she replied.
Auntie Esi laughed. "He sleeps on a mat outside, eats with the apprentices, and washes plates with a smile. If he is not your husband, then I do not know what love is."
She walked away without answering.
That night, after closing, she found him sitting under the mango tree, watching the sky like it would call her name back to him. She walked past, meaning to enter the small room she rented behind the bar. He stood before she reached the door.
"I can sleep outside the door," he said.
"You already are."
He hesitated, then added, "Closer this time. In case you need anything."
She stared at him. Then she nodded.
He rolled out his mat and placed his cloth over himself. She watched from behind the curtain, her heart too loud, her eyes refusing to blink.
She dreamt of the first child that night. The one who had not stayed. The one time never gave an opportunity for them to name.
In the dream, she held the baby in her arms and walked across a dry field. She looked for him everywhere, but he was not in the dream. When she turned around, the baby had vanished. All that was left was blood on her cloth and nothing; the silence was so wide she could hear her own heart pulsate.
She woke up sweating. Outside, he snored softly.
The next day, she cooked rice for him with her own hands. She did not speak when she placed the bowl in front of him. He did not speak either. He bent his head and ate slowly, reverently, like the food was holy.
She began to see a change in herself. It was not forgiveness. Not yet. But something broke in her soul.
They walked together to fetch water the next morning. She carried her pan on her head. He struggled with his, sloshing half the water out before they reached the bar. She laughed. He smiled at the sound, like a man who had not heard music in years.
Later that day, one of the girls told a story about a man who chased his wife across three regions after she left him at their wedding feast. He laughed with the others, then turned to her and said quietly, "I would have chased you across the sea."
She looked away.
The memories came uninvited, like wind under a door. Nights when they lay wrapped in silence, their fingers touching under the sheets. The time he built her a wooden cradle before their first child. The way he used to call her "my star" when no one was listening. And then the day the bleeding would not stop, the incessant pain and the way the nurses avoided her eyes, how he had sat outside and never entered the ward, waiting to hear good news.
That was what had broken her. It was not the elders. His mother's stares were nothing to her. His mother's sister was someone she could easily avoid. And the other woman who walked in like a snake gliding across polished tiles was a story she could endure. It was him. He was the one who had promised her a kingdom and vanished when her body betrayed her.
She thought she hated him. She wanted to hate him still. But hate was on the other side of the road.
And it was getting harder to reach it.
That evening, as he washed the mortar and pestle, she came to stand beside him.
"You never cried," she spat out.
He looked up.
"After we lost her. You never cried."
His hands paused.
"I cried every night," he said. "But never near you. I thought I had to be strong for both of us."
"You should have cried."
"I know. It would've meant nothing if both of us were crying."
They stood and looked at each other. Somewhere, a radio played a love song from an old highlife album. The words drifted, sweet and slow, into the evening.
"I still see her," she finally said.
"I do too."
Their hands touched over the soapy pestle, and he didn't move. She did not pull away. The days moved like they were watching. Each morning, he swept before the sun came up. By the time she tied her headscarf and stepped outside, he was already seated under the mango tree, face turned toward the sky. He no longer asked if she had slept well. She no longer asked if he would leave.
But the people had started to notice.
First it was Auntie Esi, speaking to a pepper seller behind the plantain stand. Then it was the apprentices, who now kept quiet when she walked by, staring with smiles and judgment in their eyes. She heard them one evening while she cleaned the counter.
"He says he's a chief. What kind of chief washes bowls?"
"The kind who loves his wife," another added, laughing.
She paused mid-wipe. They thought it was romantic. They had not lived in her skin.
They did not know what it meant to lose a child and then be treated like the cause. Like her womb had eaten the baby out of spite. Like her grief was a weapon she held against the elders.
She had buried more than one child. She had buried her name and her joy.
He had let it happen.
She told him so one night when the moon was high and the moment had gathered between them like dust.
"You left me alone in that room. The elders came and asked me questions. Did I lift anything heavy? Did I eat unclean food? Did I provoke the gods? And you, where were you?"
He sat with his legs crossed, his arms resting on his knees and his face moving down to look at her.
"I was in the palace," he looked at her to draw the truth into her body.
"They told me not to return to your room until you had healed."
"I needed you more than anyone."
"I failed," he cried out. "I believed them when they said I must be strong. That I must preserve the line."
She turned away.
"You could have fought for me."
"I am fighting now."
She did not respond. The pain returned, coiling around her stomach like a clenched fist.
The memory of the agony: in the weeks that followed, his presence became a ritual the town could not ignore. People began to visit. Some came to eat and stayed to stare. Others asked questions. A few recognized him and bowed slightly before him. She noticed how stiff he became when that happened and how his smile disappeared, and his shoulders became tensed. She had forced it out of her life.
One afternoon, a black Jeep with tinted windows parked across the road. She watched through the open doorway as the door opened, and his uncle stepped out. Nana Kwaku. He was an egoistic man who believed in culture and cared about the family name.
He walked toward the chop bar with the slow arrogance of royalty. The customers sensed the change. There was a complete shutdown of every mouth as he walked. The bowls were the only noises that could be heard.
He stopped beside her table.
"You dishonor your stool," he said, not bothering with greetings.
She dried her hands on her apron and looked him in the eye.
"I do not owe the stool anything."
His face filled with contempt. "You are a woman. You owe the stool your diligence."
Before she could speak, her husband rose from his seat.
"She owes nothing," he said firmly. "Not to you. Not to me. Not even to the ancestors."
His uncle turned. "You speak like a boy. So, the rumors are true. You think sleeping in chop bars and washing plates redeems you? A chief must lead and control his wife."
"I am leading," he said. "I am leading myself back to the only woman I have ever loved."
"Then you are no longer fit to be called chief."
He did not answer. His silence thundered through the room. The older man left without another word.
The people began to murmur. She stood by the wall, her breath was shallow, and she saw nothing.
"Are you ready to risk everything?" she said once the door had closed behind the car.
"I already lost everything when I lost you."
She wanted to hate him for the things he said. But there was something different in his voice now. There was less pride and more urgency.
That night, she opened her door before going to bed and looked at him moving on his mat.
"Come inside," she called out to him.
He rose and followed. She pointed to the corner.
"Sit. No talking."
He obeyed. They slept in the same room for the first time in months. He did not touch her. He did not move. But she heard his breathing, and it secured her.
In the darkness, she remembered how he once sang to her belly. The first time they thought they would become parents. He sang an old lullaby his mother had taught him, off-key but it was beautiful. They had lain under mosquito netting in a rented single room a few months before he became chief. But it was the only time in her life she felt completely safe.
The baby never came. She rolled to her side and watched him in the dark.
He looked older now. The lines on his forehead were more visible now. His beard had more grey than she remembered. He was no longer the man who believed power could fix everything. He had been stripped. And yet, he was still hers.
She watched him sleep; later she noticed he was struggling to sleep.
"Do you still sing?"
He smiled for a brief moment, "Only for you."
She nodded. He then sang the same lullaby. She held on to her stomach.
The days after that were quieter. He no longer asked if she would come home. She no longer told him to leave. They lived like two branches growing in the same soil but unsure if they could twist toward each other again. There were affectionate moments that gave her reassurance. Like when she was cooking kontomire stew the week before, she felt his arms wrap around her waist from behind. She strained. His hands moved slowly, carefully, and she could feel his breath on her neck.
"I miss holding you."
She leaned back slightly, just enough for him to feel her the coolness of her skin.
"I miss being held."
They stayed like that until the stew threatened to burn.
Later, she would pretend it had been nothing. It was a moment of weakness. He would not argue. He had learned patience. And in everything that happened: touch, the unspoken situations, he felt it was a rebirth and an achievement. It was not trust but it meant he was almost there. And it felt real; it was living too, like them.
The letter came two weeks later.
It was folded in a blue envelope and carried by a palace servant who shook when giving the letter out. He had recognized the man at once, a boy who once fetched water from the courtyard well. Now grown, now frightened, he bowed too gracefully and placed the envelope on the table without speaking.
She watched her husband as he stared at it. None of them spoke. He looked at the addressor and she watched him with such curiosity.
"From your mother?" she asked.
He nodded once.
She poured water into a glass and placed it beside him. He opened the envelope without hurry, pulled the letter out, and read it silently. When he was done, he folded it again and set it aside.
"Well?" she asked, wiping her hands on her apron.
"She says if I do not return within three days, the elders will choose another heir."
"And what will you do?"
He looked up at her. She did not want to push him to make the decision. He needed to decide on his own.
"I told you. I came for my wife. I will not return unless you come with me."
"You would let the throne go?"
"I would let everything go."
She sat across from him and studied his face.
"You once told me the people were more important than love. That duty came before the heart."
"I was young. I thought I could have both. I thought duty would protect love. But it killed it. Now I know better."
She leaned back and closed her eyes.
"You cannot abandon your people."
"I already did. The moment I stopped listening. The moment I allowed them to hurt you."
His words settled between them. She stood and walked to the window. Outside, the street buzzed with life. Children chased tyres down the road. A man pushed a cart full of plantain. Life continued, whether they healed or not.
"I do not want to go back to that house."
"Then we will build a new one."
"What of your mother?"
"I will speak to her."
"She will never accept me again."
"She does not have to. I do and that's what matters."
She turned to him; her arms folded across her chest.
"And if I never give you another child?"
"Then I will be your husband and nothing more. I married you, not your womb."
"You speak easily now," she said, her voice trembling. "But you were not this man when I needed you."
"I know."
She came closer, her hands dropping to her sides.
"I loved you," she said with meaning. "With everything. I carved myself to fit you. I let them blame me because I thought I could bear it. I thought you would come back for me."
He knew she was telling the truth. He could feel her love for him.
"I am here now."
She looked up, and he saw it. The years of grief and the continuous bricks of hurt. It had been cemented with the hope that refused to die even after everything. She stepped forward, slowly, until they stood toe to toe.
"You cannot erase what happened," she said.
"I do not want to erase it."
"Then what do you want?"
He reached for her left hand and held it in his hands.
"I want to live with you... in whatever way you will have me. If it is marked by darkness or light, I will be there with you. I will support you."
Tears filled her eyes. She did not look away.
"I want to trust you again."
"Then let us begin."
They stood for a while. Her fingers played in his hands. A long moment passed before she nodded.
"I will come," she said. "But we do not go back to that house."
He smiled, the first real smile in months.
"Then we start again."
The next day, they packed her few belongings. The other waitresses came to say goodbye. Auntie Esi hugged her tightly and showered blessings into her ear. When they stepped outside, a crowd had gathered. Word had spread. He held her hand. She did not shrink.
They walked to the waiting car, where the palace driver stood beside the door. She paused before entering, turned once to look at the chop bar, the street, the mango tree, the life she had made out of pain and salt.
Then she stepped inside. They did not return to the palace. Instead, they drove into the countryside, to the view of the river where the land knew what to say to the heart and the sky listened to the command of the body. There, they built a small house. It was a comfortable house. It was enough to build a family. He'd leave in the mornings to attend to royal duties and come back early to see her.
At night, they sat on the porch and watched the stars rise. Sometimes they spoke. Sometimes they stayed there and enjoyed the view. She did not forgive him all at once. Healing was not a thing that happened by declaration.
But whenever he sang the lullaby again, she felt in her soul that had made her whole. She knew he truly loved her. And when he cried beside her one evening as they watched the rain soak the earth, she held his hand. He was still her husband. And she, after all the grief and the years and the broken pieces, was still his love.
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