A WEEK LATER

Billy Gosa had taken a week off his normal schedule to recuperate from the mental and physical exertions.  He had come to terms with the fact that he had been leading an irresponsible lifestyle which had led him into the arms of Kutorkor.

His mind drifted to the moment his colleagues arrived to attend the marriage ceremony.

It was a moment best seen than described.  It really was a moment,  best forgotten.  He remembered how the workers trooped out only to be met with the disappointing news that the marriage was off.

”I knew it. A legend like Billy Goat can never be tied down. Much less, to a fetish priest,” one said succinctly.

”Why should he take on one Bush Allowance when there are many of them begging to be taken,” another had said, eyeing Safoa.

Cecilia who intended to playfully embrace Billy at the ceremony pondered on how she could use the situation to her advantage.

”This is my chance to hang on to him. My wandering days are over,” she had said to herself on the return journey as she listened to the various takes on the cancelled wedding from her colleagues.

The radiant look on Billy’s face had made it easier for them to deal with the situation. It hadn’t seemed as if he was in any way disappointed by the turn of events.

Billy,  if he was shocked about the arrival of Mary and her mother, was flabbergasted even more so, by the presence of the twins. When Mary and Safoa opened the car’s door and took the twins out, he could have been felled with a feather considering the shock at seeing their cute innocent faces. Even at that poignant moment,  he saw how they took after him. He had stood there, immobilized until he was snapped out of his trance by Father Samuel who touched him lightly on the shoulder and gestured towards them. He tentatively took one, and the other was placed in his other arm. He gazed at them with wonder, hardly able to breathe as he touched them for the first time.

He was tongue-tied, to say the least.

Kutorkor had been viciously enraged by the turn of events.

Billy, to whom she could have made to do anything and obeyed without question had snubbed and left her on their day of marriage.

”Go away all of you. Leave this place this very instant,” she shouted at various fetish priests and priestesses who had arrived to grace the occasion.

What had angered and tested her patience most was the continuous drumming despite the obvious. The groom had left her at the altar, as it were.

”Ewura, stop the nonsense over there. We are not the ones who asked your husband to run away,” a priestess from another village who was fed up with her rants said angrily to her.

This degenerated into a shouting contest and they were soon at each other’s throats until they were separated by the others.

”Your beauty would take you to a man’s room but your character would definitely lead to your rejection,” she screamed at Kutorkor and left to wait for the rest of her entourage at the junction.

Titters and taunts followed as they cheekily went out to join their colleague.

Mary had her mind made up. She was earning enough to comfortably cater for the kids. Even though she still felt something for Billy,  she discarded the very idea of using the babies to get him back. She saw how much he had changed after the visit to the village but she loved her single life and independence.  She often pretended not to have heard the coded words her Mom often said to her concerning the twins’ father.

”I am not going to be in that situation ever again. No man is going to joke with my heart again,” she constantly said that to herself any time she felt her resolve weakening.

She fought it tool and nail.

It was understandable that she would have wished she was in a normal relationship with the twins and their father but no matter how she craved it, she resisted the impulse with all the arsenals at her disposal to capitulate.

She was happy with the way things were and wasn’t going to give in either to her heart or to society.

Billy knew he didn’t deserve her. He had metamorphosed from a reckless womanizer to a humble believer of the benefits of a pious life that frowned upon any form of fornication.

He had become very reserved and timid, especially towards Mary so much so that she sometimes wondered whether he was the same man she used to know.

He had become ambitious and was bent on improving himself, academically and economically.

Even though he had no one in terms of relationships,  he never ever looked at any woman the way he used to.

Cecilia,  who was doing all she could to trap him,  with her visits and suggestive remarks had met only blank walls as far as he was concerned.

She disgusted him with her immortality and loose life. He just kept a bland distance from her and parried all her advances without making her feel bad.

He had learnt the art of saying no to women without making them feel rejected.  And he avoided being alone with her most of the time.

His request to be sent back to the office which was made on a case of extreme stress was well considered and he was sent back to the office.

It had helped a lot in the reversal of his transfer because Mr Krampah,  the now-retired former manager had transferred him in contravention of laid down protocols.  After all, he was a Lab Technician and not an Agronomist.

He was sent back to the lab and Kofi his friend was sent to Mantsekrom to replace him.

”This is my time to rake in some Bush Allowances,” Kofi had said to himself when he left for his new post with his mind on the nubile females he had seen on his last visit there.

”Something good is going to happen to me soon.”

Initially,  Kutorkor had premonitions about the return of Safoa and also about the miraculous healing of Amerley. She had thought they were going to sweep the carpet from under her feet but nothing happened.

Safoa let her be and was prepared to let karma deal with her. As for Amerley,  she had absolutely no idea that she was responsible for her near-death situation but if there was one thing she had learned, it was not to throw herself into the arms of a man or trap men with pregnancy.

”My father loves me if no man loves me. The right man would come sooner or later,” she said as she went home to inspect the cooking of lunch for her father’s Royal visitors.

And Kutorkor despite her relief that she hadn’t been found out, felt a sense of guilt but not altogether remorseful.

”Small boys are young. He thinks he can use and discard me just like that,” she said as she fumed at the way he left her on the day of their marriage. She felt shortchanged. She swore to herself that she was going to go to all lengths to get him to perform his lawful duties as a man for both her and the baby growing in her womb.

Mary’s mother, Maame Konadu had been admitted to the hospital for what the doctor said was stress related. That put immense pressure upon Mary as she had to perambulate between taking care of her needs at the hospital and taking care of the twins in addition. That great task sapped her energy.

That evening,  Billy felt the urge to visit the twins even though he felt his presence was not really welcomed but the urge was strong enough for him to risk it.

He was surprised when he saw even when he was far away that her front door was wide open. He knew something was amiss. He quickly went in and found Mary sprawled on the floor, with the twins bawling their eyes out. He paused, torn between Mary and the kids, but he swiftly picked her up and laid her on the bed. She stirred a little and he wetted a towel and cleaned her up gently. Her elbow was bruised apparently,  from the fall of which she had obviously tried to prevent. By the time he was done, she had fully regained full consciousness. Then he went to the tots and they quieted down as soon as they felt his presence. A powerful source of love and belonging coursed through him as he stared back at Mary with her looking back into her eyes. She realised then that she could never separate the boys from the bond they shared with their father.

She was even more impressed when she woke up in the morning to find that he had spent the night there and had cleaned the whole place inside out. The kids’ nappies had been changed and he was trying to feed the kids.

Still weak, she gingerly got up to prepare breakfast for the babies when she saw what he was trying to feed them.

”He thinks he can give adults food to kids,” she said to herself with amusement. She fed the babies and ate the rice and stew he had earlier prepared which she surprisingly found delicious.

It was only much later when she cringed when she remembered that she hadn’t taken her mother’s supper to her at the hospital the evening before.

She implored Mena Aba, her kind landlady to care for the babies as she went to visit her at the hospital with some of the food Billy prepared.

She was shocked. Utterly floored when she found her mom, looking hale and hearty and smilingly conversing with a smiling Billy Gosa as if they had known each other for years.

”Mary you didn’t tell me that Atta papa is such a caring man,” her mother said, laughing, when she noticed Mary looking at them from the doorway.

”I brought food,” Mary managed to say as if she couldn’t trust her voice.

”Don’t worry about that. Asew has already given me rice and chicken,” the elderly woman said even as she sucked the marrow out of a piece of chicken she had in her hand.

She gaped at them in surprise. She wondered where he had gotten chicken to buy so early in the morning as she didn’t have it in the fridge.  She had no idea that when she succumbed to sleep the night before,  Billy had gone to his home to pick the chicken including some ingredients and spices with which he had churned out that delicious meal.

 Even the rice was from his place.

”I wonder why he’s being so nice and changed all of a sudden,” Mary mused with wonder tinged with suspicion ”or is it that he has really changed?”

She found his behaviour the exact opposite of the reckless and irresponsible Billy she knew only too well.

From that day onwards,  he became a constant visitor to her home. She found herself weakening towards him but still was apprehensive of his motives.

His concern seemed to focus on only sitting by the babies and talking to them as if they could hear him which sometimes pissed her off. It was as if he was the one who got pregnant.

”Maybe he should just get pregnant for just three months and see,” she mused and smiled at how ridiculous it sounded.

She was suffering over nothing. Among everything else,  she wished he paid attention to her too.

Actually,  Billy Gosa had realised that he loved her but felt he had no right to say that to her after all the wicked treatments he put her through in her most vulnerable moments. He also felt that showing how much he cared could drive her away and he could lose his visiting privileges.

”What slow coaches they are,” Maame Konadu,  a daily visitor to her daughter said to herself about the love tango between them.

”Maybe I should lock them up in a room and throw the key away,” she mused with humour but it felt as if that could be the only solution.

She smiled at how dirty her mind had become ever since the day she was discharged from the hospital. They were not even in a relationship and she was thinking about them getting married.

Kutorkor was impatient to have her belly protrude clearly as a sign of pregnancy to enable her to embark on her next plan of action.

”Maybe it’s because I am fat,” she said to herself as she wore the maternity gown she had recently bought. She admired herself in the dressing mirror and turned left to right, looking for a change in her physique.  She saw only her tender breasts as the only sign. ”Ohh, how I am going to shame my enemies,” she said and smiled triumphantly ”What is mine can never be taken away from me”

She fine-tuned her plans on how she was going to get him back into her arms. That singular thought so highly aroused her that she thought about going to see that idiot who had replaced him for a possible romp in the hay.

The determined look on her face as she turned away from the mirror boded no good for the well-being of Billy Gosa.

The next day, on impulse,  Kutorkor boarded a bus to visit Billy.

It was time for her to go and claim her man.

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