Bitter Leaf, short story published in The Caribbean Writer

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Bitter Leaf

This short story is fiction and is not based on any particular person or group of people. It was shortlisted by Glimmer Train and was awarded Marguerite Kobb Mckay prize by the Caribbean Writer in 2009. It was first published in The Caribbean Writer in 2008.

 Our trip to Walatayo, West Africa, was at first exciting. In the capital city, Kalala, we stayed in the best hotel, dined in splendid restaurants, danced to high-life music and visited my husband, Somokai´s, former schoolmates. They tried to persuade him to stay after being away for years. They told me to go up-country, see the real Walatayo.  The following week, we packed a Range Rover loaned to us by his friend, a government official.  His chauffeur would drive us to the village.  

      I looked forward to the hinterland, wore the traditional lappa* and bubba*, wrapped my head and covered my face to protect myself from the dust. Cars racing ahead of us kicked up dirt and gravel that blanketed the landscape with a brown haze.  Beyond the road, green mountain ranges peeped through thick clouds. Dense trees hid villages.  

  

   Marketers braved the heat and choking dust to sell fresh fruit, vegetables and greens.  Hunters hawked smoked bush meat and fresh meat. Monkeys with slit throats hung on poles, heads sagging sideways.

   The check point to the next county was manned by armed, uniformed soldiers parading in sun-glasses.  Walatayo had recently experienced a failed coup, so vehicles were stopped and searched, and passengers harassed despite having correct documents. My knees shook as our car approached the soldiers but, driving an official vehicle, we were only questioned and waved on.

       After turning off the highway and driving for another seven hours, we arrived at the village.  Somokai’s parents, led by drummers and dancers, welcomed us. His father, a towering, dark man, wore a fez. His rotund mother was dressed in a traditional fanti gown.  A young girl, her hair corn-rowed, trailed them.  Over her slender body, she wore an orange and purple tie-dyed outfit that contrasted with her morose face. She looked at me briefly, then fixed her eyes on her leather sandals. Somokai’s parents and clansmen shrieked and locked him in embrace. 

When he had wrestled himself free, he introduced me. The girl, eyes cast down, stood between his parents, as they reluctantly shook my hands.

 The festival in his honor began. Dancers whirled to drum beats.  A group of agile, elderly women, shaking beaded gourds, broke out in song and dance. Then two ceremonial country-devils, covered in layers of straw, arrived accompanied by a group of young men playing traditional instruments and performing acrobatic stunts. This was the Africa I had come to see and feel. Soon Somokai was dancing and singing. And I joined in.  Everyone cheered us on.  I felt I belonged.

     That afternoon I sipped my first palm wine.  It looked like milky, coconut water but tasted like old champagne   After rounds of palm wine, I giggled happily with my new kin. Then, Somokai’s mother beckoned and escorted us to large rattan chairs.  The girl brought a straw tray food. Barely raising her eyes, she served us.  I stared at the green stew, inspecting the shrimp and fish steeped in palm oil.

     “It’s bitter-leaf soup,” Somokai said, as he ate. “Eat it so my people wouldn’t be offended.”

 The soup, seasoned with chili peppers, was bitter, and despite my hunger, I only ate a few spoonfuls. My eyes watered. I coughed and demanded water.

       “Please bring water.” Somokai summoned the young girl. “Come on Alice, eat more. The pepper  makes you sober.”

       The child looked up briefly as she set a pitcher down, and securing her falling lappa, she vanished.

      “She’s a pretty little girl. Is she your father’s ward?”

      “A distant cousin,” Somokai said. “Eat up. The soup is fantastic.”

       “No more, that’s it.”  I shoved the plate away.

        Somokai drew a long face and finished my soup.

       Afterward, Somokai´s father stood up, spoke tersely, then presented the girl, now clothed in a black and gold gown, to Somokai.  His jaw dropped. Two adults pushed the girl closer to him. They danced and clapped hands. Then, the overjoyed spoke lengthily as he looked at Somokai and his parents.

      “Somokai, It is a ritual?”

      “Er, Er, yes.”

      “About?

      “I can’t say right now.” Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead.

      “they’re over the moon.”

      “Shuss.” Somokai stamped his feet.

     “My stomach’s hurting. I need the toilet”

      “Mama.” Somokai nodded to his mother.

      She escorted me to a roofless hut on the outskirt of the compound and moved the make-shift door. I squatted on the dirt floor.

      Finally, Somokai took me to a large white-washed country house and returned to the ceremony. The six-room house, with a hallway running down the middle, smelled of fresh cement. Our room was furnished with two single beds draped with mosquito nets.  A large straw mat covered the freshly concreted floor. A screen nailed over the window kept large insects out. I undressed, hung my clothes over a chair and threw myself onto one of the beds.  But I remained sleepless.

    

      I heard Somokai arrive hours later. He dropped onto his bed like a sack of rice and soon snored heavily. Listening to mosquitoes attacking the net, I gazed out the window at the sky, lost myself in time.

       I didn’t hear Somokai wake.  I felt his arms around me and moved over to allow him to squeeze himself onto my bed. But it was uncomfortable, so he dragged our beds together. Climbing back in, he stroked my braids, drew me closer.  We lay for a while, staring at the moonlight through the window.

     “Somokai,” I cried, breaking the silence. “Just tell me.”

     “Alice, this is no small thing. It could end our marriage.”

     My throat tightened.  “Tell me,” I said, despite fearing what I would hear.

     Somokai sat up. “You know, our elders have a saying: Let no man think he can escape his fate.”

     “What does that mean?”

     Somokai said, “Let me start from the beginning. When I was ten years old, a Methodist missionary persuaded my father to let me attend a mission school ten miles away. Until that time, my parents, who were poor subsistence farmers, could not afford schooling. I learned quickly. My father was proud of me and promised me the most beautiful girl in the village if I finished. At the time, I laughed it off. At twenty I graduated at the top of my class and the missionaries offered me a scholarship to attend university in the U.S.  It was something I had not dared to dream. I was expected to return to Walatayo and become a government official, but I stayed on to do my M.A. and met you.  And now my father has kept his promise.”

     “What do you mean?

    “Alice, they’ve given me a wife.” His voice trembled as he spoke.

     I felt my throat go dry. “Do you have to take her?” I croaked.

     “They won’t forgive me if I refuse her.”

     Somokai stood up, paced the floor.  “My father made arrangements with her parents and took responsibility for her with my future in mind. He sent her to bush school to learn the traditions of her people and, because of my education, saw to it that she had some Western schooling.  He has invested a lot in her.  In a way, she has become his daughter and he won’t return her to her parents.”  

     “You didn’t know?” I asked.

     “Not really.”

     “Not really!” I fired back. “Well, I won’t  share you with another woman.” A dam inside me broke.

      He walked over and pulled me to his chest, kissed my cheeks, my tears, lips, hair.  I felt dead inside.

      “I want to go home,” I said.

      “We can’t leave until I figure something out.”

      I pulled myself away, looking at his somber face. “Don’t touch me. Just go.”  He opened the door and left.  I cried for hours, wiping my face with my nightgown, the bedsheet, anything to stop the flood. Eventually, I fell asleep.

                                                     

            

        I was left alone.  I remained in the room, unable to eat, for two days. On the third day, feeling hemmed in by the walls, I took the first of many walks in the forest. The tall rubber trees blotted out the sunlight, made the forest dark and mysterious. Dried leaves spiralled downward, landing on soft beds of decay.

     Days later, as I walked, a mass of driver ants crossed my path and a few, straying away from the thick black column, latched onto my sneakers. They held on tenaciously as I shook and stamped in desperation. While mashing one foot on the other to crush them, I was grabbed from behind. I kicked and screamed not wanting my bones to be picked clean by the driver ants after being murdered.

     “Alice, Alice, it’s me, Somokai”.  He pulled me away from the marching ants.

     Tears of relief filled my eyes as Somokai’s muscular arms almost crushed me. We latched on to each other and cried. We walked in silence until a patch of light led us to a clearing. A clansman had begun burning trees in preparation for planting. And there we sat down on a huge felled log.

    “Alice, listen,” Somokai said.  “I spoke to a traditionalist about our predicament.” He squeezed my hand nervously. “He advised that we adopt and suggested that I go to the capital and arrange to get her a birth certificate. She doesn’t have one.”

     “Is that possible?” I asked, wanting to trust him.

     “Anything is possible in Walatayo,” he said, searching my eyes. “Do you agree?”

     “No, I don’t. But I don’t want you to become an outcast.” Feeling trapped, tears welled in my eyes.

        

      That day I learned something new about Somokai’s tribal and country’s customs. Girls can be promised to a man even before they are born. And when a girl grows up and rejects the man, her parents must refund the dowry given to them. This was the reverse. His father refused to return the girl he had invested so much in. 

       Several days after, Somokai went to the city to procure the necessary documents to travel to U.S. Virgin Island. 

       “How many people did you bribe?” I quizzed, putting on a brave face.

       “Don’t ask,” Somokai grunted. “That’s one custom you needn’t learn.”

       “What name did you give her?

       “Mary…Kumeh.” 

       “What’s her real name?

       “Yassah.”

       “How old is she?”

       “Twelve, Pa said.”

        “When…When is the wedding ceremony?” I coughed up the words like phlegm.

        “Next Saturday.”

        “So in Walatayo she’s your wife.  In the U.S. Virgin Islands, she’ll be your daughter.”

        “Yes, and for God’s sake, don’t tell anybody.”

      I attended the wedding fuelled by homemade gin and palm wine. Before the ceremony, Somokai paid a dowry of five cows, cloth and cash. Surrounded by their clansmen, he and Mary-Yassah exchanged kola nuts, a symbol of hospitality and unity between both families. The ceremony was followed by three days of feasting in honor of the newlyweds. I didn’t ask what he did inside the hut after they were escorted to it. But he swears he didn’t touch her.

     I’m the head wife now. Second wives are at your beck and call they told. The girl knows she is Somokai’s wife. Stop worrying I keep telling myself. She isn’t going to tell anybody she’s married to her father.

 Our flight two weeks later across the Atlantic to the Virgin Islands seemed long and slow. We were silent and dour. My thoughts swirled like a hurricane. I hardly looked at the ashen-faced girl between us. She had been given a sedative as she had suffered from car sickness on our drive to Kalala. Now she was flying for the first time after being carried onto the plane. She sat rigidly, one hand gripping the seat’s arm; the other holding a paper bag to collect her vomit which Somokai emptied.

       I wake to pounding drums, voices screaming my name… Alice Ku…meh. People dressed in straw skirts, faces dotted with white chalk, dance around me, as I lie on a freshly plaited palm mat in a compound of huts. Then I am lifted by two women, one old, one young, and carried into the forest. My legs twitch as I struggle to escape. My mouth is dry from screaming. An alarm clock rings loudly. I hurl myself onto the ground and wake up on the carpet in my dark bedroom on the island of St. Thomas.

       My husband Somokai is at work. The curtains block out the blazing sun. I hug my skin and bones, crawl back into bed and sink deeper into the blackness brought on by our journey to Walatayo.  I haven’t told anyone about my trip, not even my best friend, Rita. The events have become a rope around my neck and I slowly suffocate. Lying on my bed, I am a silent, animal lassoed by inertia.

     Days later, the voice, I am not yet accustomed to, speaks to me.  Hands tap my shoulder. Her hands.  I open my eyes into hers staring at me. She is dressed in wrinkled fanti cloth. Her hair is unkempt.

     “Missy, you awright?” the timid voice asks.

     “No, I’m…  I have a…  I am jet-lagged.  It’s been… days…”

     “Missy, I want to go home, to ol’ ma and ol’ pa.”      

     “You miss them, don’t you?” I mumble.

     “Yes.”

      Her voice is hoarse from crying. Her thin frame convulses under a new deluge of tears.

      “Don’t cry,” I hear myself say, realizing that I am not the only one betrayed by her customs.  Pulling her onto the bed next to me, I hug her frail body, massage her temples, whisper into her ears.  “Never mind, school will soon begin and you will make friends. It will get better. O.K.?”

      “O.K.,” she rasps.

      And clinging to each other, we sit awhile.  Her tears slowly drain away. Rising, I reach for a tissue and wipe her nose. I scan my darkened bedroom.  A plate of moldy food and dirty glasses rest on the side table. My dress is crumpled, my hair uncombed.  We resemble each other—gaunt, bedraggled.

       “Yassah-Mary, let’s clean up, get dressed.”

        “O.K., Missy.”

        Yassah-Mary rises.  We begin to put things in order.

        I open the curtains, the sun streams in.

       “Let’s go shopping, just you and me.”

        A puzzled smile blooms on her face.

      It has been three weeks since I’ve let the sun in I now look Yassah-Mary in the eyes without fear. We’ve been out several times. She’s still bewildered, overwhelmed but excited by her new world. She was plucked from a village without electricity to settle in a city where everything runs by it.  She’s a child navigating new waters, a child in need of a mother. I try to guide her.  She calls me Ma now. Not Missy.

      We are stacking dishes in the dishwasher.  The telephone rings.  Nerves still raw, I’m startled. I drop a dish that shatters on the floor. Yassah-Mary stoops down to collect the fragments.

     “Thank you.” I smile at her.  She smiles back.

     “I need to get a grip…,” I mutter, dashing off downstairs.  I step on a dustpan, scatter its contents on the carpet.  My thoughts still flitter about and I leave one chore unfinished to start another.  My finger I  cut chopping onions earlier throbs as I reach for the phone.    

     “Alice Kumeh.”

     It’s Rita. She’s heard I’m back and is angry I haven’t called. She asks for Somokai. I tell her he’s become a snail buried in work.

      “Rita, come over for a coffee, I’ll explain. Yeah, five will be fine.”

        I am excited about Rita’s visit.  I look forward to baring my soul.

       Rita is prompt.  I watch her from the kitchen window. A large knee-length pink blouse drapes her plump body. Blue jeans squeeze her thick thighs. She enters the gate and knocks on our door.   Yassah-Mary, eager to see a visitor, rushes to let Rita in.

    “Hello darling. Where’s Mrs. Kumeh?” asks Rita, sizing up Yassah-Mary.

    “In the kitchen.” Mary-Yassah’s voice is soft, quivering.  Her accent almost renders her words indecipherable.  Her dress hangs on her frame. She points to the kitchen then leaves.

    “Hello, Rita,” I call from the kitchen.  “You know the way.”

    “Who’s the girl?” Rita rests her handbag on the kitchen table and sits down.

    “It’s a long story.” I peck Rita on the cheek. “You got time?”

    “For you, of course! That must be some story because, girl, you look like a broomstick.”

    The kettle whistles loudly. 

    “Want some coffee?  Coconut tart?”

     “Can’t resist.”

     I ask about her love life as I make the coffee and warm the tart. She’s mum about that.

     “So, what happened?” Rita asks munching the pastry.

    I pour my heart out to Rita, watch her face fold into emotions, answer her questions. It is already dark outside. She’s holding both my hands, mouth open in disbelief.

     “Rita, promise me you won’t tell anyone,” I say after a long pause.

      You’re sure Somokai didn’t fool you? If I were you, I would be thinking…My mouth’s shut like a clam. It’s your gamble. And the girl?”

      “She is a daughter, not a rival.  She’s young.  In a couple of years, Somokai will be an old man to her. He will forever be her father. In this country, at least.  And she’ll be so American, she’ll shudder at the thought of cohabiting with an old man.”

     “Unless he’s a millionaire,” laughs Rita huskily. “You’re right.  When we were twenty, thirty was old.” 

    “I feel like someone who’s confessed to a priest.”

    “Then say one hundred Hail Marys.”

    “Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord be with thee.”

     Rita laughs. “Well, got to go home. I have a guest coming over.”

    “Thanks for listening,” Rita.

     “Guess What?”

     “What?”

      “I no longer feel the taste of bitter-leaf on my tongue.”

     I squeeze her tightly as I exhale, feeling the ghost that has haunted me slowly loosen its grip.

Notes:*Lappa-West African wrap-around skirt

            Buba-blouse     

© 1992 Althea Romeo-Mark                   

Born in Antigua, West Indies, Althea Romeo-Mark is an educator and writer who grew up in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. She has lived and taught in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, USA, Liberia (1976-1990), London, England (1990-1991), and in Switzerland since 1991.

She was awarded the Arts and Science Poetry Prize for poems published in POEZY 21:Antologia Festivaluluiinternational Noptile De Poezie De Curtea De Arges, Curtea De Arges, Romania, 2017.

Marguerite Cobb McKay Prize by the Editorial Board of The Caribbean Writer in June, 2009 for publication (short story “Bitterleaf,”) in Volume 22, 2008. Other prizes and awards include the short story prize for “Easter Sunday,” Stauffacher English Short Story Competition/Switzerland 1995

Poetry Award for poem “Ole No-Teeth Mama,” Cuyahogo Community Writers Conference. 1974,

Scholarship Award. Breadloaf Writers’ Conference. Middlebury College, Vermont, USA. 1971.