The Deep Blue Between by Ayesha Harruna Attah

Author:Ayesha Harruna Attah
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Published: 2020-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

At Hajia’s house, we weren’t laughing, however. Private Osman grew stranger and stranger. Whenever I returned, whether in the morning or in the evening, he would be sitting on the stoop, lamenting the bad nature of war. At night, he yelled till his throat was hoarse, and his children, then eight and ten, came to my room to get away from their father’s terrified rants. It softened Hajia, rounded her edges, and she began to look to me to help with her boys. I was happy walking them around the zongo and picking them up from Koranic school after work. It made Hajia so warm to me that when I asked if I could spend the weekend at Amerley’s, she didn’t even send me off with her usual admonishment. I needed just one night of sleep in which I didn’t hear throaty screaming.

On that afternoon, after work, I took my raffia basket packed with my sleeping cloth, a change of clothes for the next day and a dress that Amerley had given me and went across the courtyard to Amerley’s room. She wasn’t back from her classes, so I set my basket down, opened up the windows to air out the room’s stuffiness, and looked at the books on her shelf. I picked up one, Jane Eyre, that lay on Amerley’s bed and started reading it.

I woke up to Amerley’s big smile hovering above me. She was her father’s daughter.

“I am so giddy you’re staying over.” She’d thrown her schoolbooks on to the floor and flung herself on the bed. “Today, we go to High Street to get that corset. Tomorrow, we’ll go to my cousin’s wedding, and then on Sunday, church.”

For my part, I felt like I’d gained a sister, and my happiness was so large it blocked out any words, so I just ended up grinning like a fool.

“That book is dull,” Amerley said. “See, it lulled you to sleep.”

“I was enjoying it! I have just been sleeping badly where I stay.” It hit me that I didn’t have a home. I couldn’t use the word home—hadn’t had one in a long time. I was floating.

As if she’d read my mind, she said, “Why do you never tell me about yourself?”

“You never ask.”

“I shouldn’t have to. I blurt out every unimportant detail to you.”

When I was at Wofa Sarpong’s, my voice left me, and I didn’t think it had come back yet. And now, Amerley took up all the space, didn’t let me feel like my story was important, so I didn’t try to make my voice heard. It made me think of Husseina and how she rarely spoke. If anyone asked questions, I would answer for her, as if she had no voice. For the first time, I understood what she must have felt like.

“Where is your family from?” Amerley asked.

I sat up, fluffed up her pillow in my lap. I told her about growing up in Botu, a place which was beginning to feel more and

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