dial episode 39

DIAL
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Sequence 39
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©Aaron Ansah-Agyeman
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The witch took me home.
The sadness was a shroud around me that I couldn’t dispel. She gave me warm water, and I took a bath. We sat on the veranda and conversed. She asked if I were hungry, and I told her no. Then she wanted to know what had happened at the palace, and I narrated everything to her.
A slow smile spread across her face as I spoke and, looking at her, I slowly understood where her daughter had inherited her amazing beauty.
She had a small farm not far from the house, and she took me there. Slowly, as she explained the various life stages of the vegetables and foodstuffs, my sadness slowly dispelled, and I breathed a little bit easier.
Back in the house, we had our dinner on the veranda again. This consisted of soft yam boiled in light soup, and then mashed with red oil, and served with fish, snails and grass-cutter meat. She called it mpoto-mpoto , and again it seduced my palate so much that I could not have enough!
It had put me off at first because its yellowish appearance had reminded me rather unpleasantly of something unprintable, but served with the soup, it had become such an amazing delicacy that I dug in without conscience.
Later, when I looked up, licking my fingers, I saw her looking at me in a kind of funny way, her eyes all tender and soft. I put my head to one side and looked at her with slightly-narrowed eyes.
“And why are you looking at me like that, witch?” I asked softly. “Are you planning on eating my flesh tonight?”
She smiled sadly and shook her head.
“You eat like my husband used to,” she said sadly and looked away, her face suddenly lonely and filled with sorrow. “The only man for me. My man. I miss him.”
“I’m sorry,” I said gently, and she smiled a beautiful sad blast at me.
And that was when I saw the slithering black mass in the yard…another snake, this one bigger!
“Yei!” I whispered, instantly afraid, and got to my feet, ready to bolt inside.
She took my arm and held it tightly, smiling gently.
“You can’t run away from them forever, Yao,” she said kindly. “You’ve been running away all your life, from love and commitment, and it has been transposed in all that you do. It is time to stop running, my son. Come with me.”
I pulled my arm from her hand, my face sickened.
“Don’t you dare, witch!” I said unsteadily.
She took her stick, the one with the V-shaped tip, and then she held my hand.
The gigantic snake was slithering toward the bathroom area. She took my hand and tried to drag me, and I pulled my hand free.
“Hey, witch, don’t do that!” I shouted.
She stood in front of me, held my upper arms and spoke gently.
“You can always get over all the fears, and all the hurts, Yao,” she said gently. “Come with me, don’t be afraid.”
So I followed her, and we chased down the snake.
“The African Black Mamba,” she said softly. “One of the deadliest and violent snakes in the world. It is aggressive, but it has an in-built abhorrence to humans just as we do for them. It is an instinctive mechanism God placed between us. But, a blow to a snake’s back breaks its bone structure, and it ceases to be so mobile. Here, hold it like this, come!”
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And so, for the very first in my life, with an old woman by my side, I faced down a very deadly serpent…and I killed it.
I shouted as I delivered the blow, and I was still shouting when she put a hand to my shoulder gently.
“It’s alright, Yao,” she said. “It’s dead!”
I stopped, panting and sweating, and at that moment I felt an exhilarated joy I had not felt in a long time. For a fact, I had always been so terrified of snakes, the terror creeping close to Ophidiophobia – which was the abnormal fear of snakes!
I dropped the stick and swept her into a huge, warm embrace, and she laughed softly as she hugged me back.
“Well done, son,” she said.
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Much later, I stood on the veranda gazing at the broad expanse of land bordering her house with a pensive look on my face. Maame Ntiriwaa had taken her bucket of water to the bathroom, and she was now taking her huge white towel off the drying line in the middle of the yard.
“So who owns all that land?” I said, sweeping my hand across the terrain. “Does it belong to the king?”
She draped her towel across her shoulders and looked at me.
“No, it doesn’t belong to anybody, actually,” she said carefully. “It is called the Nsamanpowmu, meaning the land of the dead. It is believed these hills are haunted by ghosts and demons. No one comes here, and no one lives here. It is an uncharted and unmapped land, and that is why I was forced here, to live with the demons.”
I nodded thoughtfully.
“I see.”
She went to the bathroom, and I went into the room, still lost in thought. It was getting dark gradually. I undressed down to my boxers and a singlet and crept into the bed, lying on my back with my hands linked beneath my head as plans raced through me, once again my highly-trained mind taking over, mulling over plans of action.
And then she entered the room again.
She had finished bathing, and she had covered herself with the huge towel whilst a smaller grey towel was wound around her hair.
I never knew what actually happened.
Maybe it was the fact that she had nothing on but a towel around her, or the fact that the other towel covered her hair, making her appear younger, in a way. Maybe it was the sheen of the lantern glinting off her skin, or the way she simply came up to the bed, stopped abruptly, and looked at me.
There was always something alluring about a woman with a towel around her, something sensual and delectable, always.
I would never know, though.
I just knew that when she entered and looked at me, and I looked at her, the atmosphere suddenly changed, and instead of seeing her as an old woman – as I had done from the very onset – I suddenly saw her as just an elderly woman.
And her skin was not that wrinkled, and looking like that, in the dim light, she looked rather attractive in a mysterious kind of way.
She was staring at me with an odd look. I tried to speak, to break the ice and warm up the sudden cold awareness between us. Desperately I sought for a way out, but I was up a brick wall. The tension had crept in, that sexual awareness that every couple swum in before the onset of bliss.
Desperately I turned and faced the wall, keeping my back to her.
She didn’t say anything. I heard her moving around the room, getting ready for bed, and I still kept my face away from her. Several minutes later I heard her locking the door, and then the wick of the lantern was turned as she dimmed the glare of the light even further.
A few minutes later the bed depressed as she climbed into it. She had put a sweet-smelling powder on her that assailed my nostrils. I still kept my face to the wall, and breathed shallowly, feigning sleep.
It took several minutes, and just as I was beginning to think she was asleep, she turned on her side too on the small bed, and then her hand fell on my shoulder. I shuddered and turned slowly on my back, and my right hand brushed the length of her naked thigh.
She shuddered mightily, and then with a little moan she came to me, and as her lips descended on mine I felt her breasts crushing my chest, and her thigh slid rather desperately across mine.
I groaned with an inner pain as her lips descended on mine.
Oh, dear…I just didn’t want this!