What the River Said

TThe call came in the middle of a lecture on statistics, three months ago, and Mara Boateng had let it ring out, because it was a lecture, and because it was Mum, and Mum always called at the wrong time.

Then a message: Call me. Now. Please.

Mara had gone out into the corridor of the Social Sciences block at Legon, into the hot afternoon and the smell of dust and frangipani, and called, and heard her mother's voice, very small, say: "Nana is gone."

Nana Kwaku Boateng. Eighty-four. Grandfather, last ferryman of the Asuo Abenaa, teller of terrible jokes, champion of draughts. He had died in his sleep in the family house in Krobonsu, on a Tuesday, the river's day of rest. Auntie Efua said that was fitting. Nana had always said the river and he were old friends.

That was three months ago. There had been the one-week observance, the nnawɔtwe, which Mara had missed for exams. There had been family meetings by phone, arguments about dates, about money, about which church. And now, at last, there was the funeral: a full weekend, Friday to Sunday, the way funerals were done at home.

Mara had not been home to Krobonsu in six years.

There had always been a reason. School, then exams, then a holiday job at an uncle's shop in Kaneshie, then Legon. Mum went home every Christmas and came back with yam and plantain and gossip, and said Nana asked about you, and Mara said next year. It was easy, in Accra, to say next year. Accra was loud and fast and full of next years. Krobonsu was four hours away, and a different world, where people still greeted every person they passed on the road, and the river had a day of rest, and nobody said next year about anything that mattered.

Now there were no more next years with Nana. There was only the funeral.