A Need to Forget

It was 1am when we arrived. At such an unholy hour, we were there at the cemetery. Boakye, my kid brother, tip-toed close behind me - his breathing sounded heavy and irregular.

“Keep a hold on yourself, you girl! You got us into this mess, remember?”  

He mumbled a reply that was barely audible and sighed.

As we inched slowly towards our targeted tombstone, my mind quickly traveled back to that blasted morning when I unwisely stood up to my brother’s long-time bully, only to be caught up in a dare-war. I comforted myself with the awareness that finally, many years down life’s rugged lane, I would sit my grandchildren down and say, “In my lifetime, I looted a paramount chief’s grave”. I would be happy to watch their eyeballs dilate to splitting point. But before any of that, I needed to tackle the current situation first. I felt a well of unusual pride. For the first time, in all my 18 years on earth, I was doing something thoroughly illegal.

As if on cue, I heard what sounded like the howl of a wounded dog, but I knew it came from Boakye. He was nowhere to be found. I had no idea when I had lost him or he had lost me, or whatever was out there had got him, but adrenaline had set in and all I could think of was finding my 15-year old brother before it was too late. It seemed my feet knew where they were going because I got to him and there he was, laying in a coffin with blood splashed across his chest. His eyes were vacant and it took me a moment to snap out of the shock I was in and notice his chest moving…he was alive!

Three years, and he still had not spoken a word. I know I should have told the truth but then after I had realized that night, that the blood on him had not been his there was no point in talking about it to anyone. We only needed to get home quietly. At that time, I had thought he was in shock but I was also very sure it was a prank we had fallen directly into and the worst that was going to happen was that our lives will fall back to how they had always been. I live a lonely quiet life – no friends, no sports life, no boys, and absolutely no fun. And my brother gets his too-smart and bookish self extremely bullied. I was wrong.

There had been no change, he said nothing, and he hardly ate. Visits to the doctors and pastors had taken over the already too little social life I had and my sleep, every night, was plagued with a series of nightmares and guilt-laden dreams of that night in the royal cemetery. I always saw them in each nightmare and in each dream. Three hooded shadows, holding swords similar to ones I remembered seeing at the Manhyia Palace museum when my class did a trip there. They always took off their hooded dark cloaks to reveal their true selves. They were dressed as warriors form tooth to toe, with their huge talisman-strewn smocks and blackened faces. I would scream out to them, demanding the truth as to what exactly they had done to my brother and all they would say in sickening monotonic voices was, “We knew your motives. No one disturbs our royal ancestors.” I always woke up feeling like a log had been dumped on my heart so that it struggled to beat. Whatever Boakye had seen, he was the only one who knew and they were holding his tongue; whoever they were.

The stranger on whose laps I was seated looked like he was ready to cry. He let out breath he had been holding since I began my story and I almost couldn’t bear the brandy, garlic and some other foul thing-laced breath he directed at my face. How old is he, 105? I thought as I focused, for the first time that night, on my client. He had lost a good number of teeth. Then as if I hadn’t just told him the story of my life, he began to whisper something in French and tried without luck to locate my lips. He was obviously drunk beyond redemption.

Then, I felt like crying. Not for myself but for him and all the other men who had come to me just as he had. He had issues he needed to forget. They all did.  I had issues I needed to forget too; Issues that, in my case, kept piling up – guilt upon guilt. So I constantly needed a distraction. The injections did it for a while (kept my head miles away from my neck), the alcohol solved it briefly (turned my limbs liquid), and the sex was simply therapeutic for both parties – less for me, more for them.

 I needed to forget completely, that in my lifetime, I had almost looted a paramount chief’s grave. I needed to forget that in my lifetime, I had killed my brother’s smart brains, drained my family of all savings, and wiped them all off the surface of the earth; my brother first, in his sleep, and later my parents, out of grief.

I needed to forget that I was a complete failure, a need that gnawed away at my sanity, an ever present need... 
to forget.