words rushed out of me and I was so happy, so relieved, once they were said.
Katherine stretched out her hand, placed it over my own. “I’m so sorry. This must be really hard for you,” she said. “How can I help?”
Gye Nyame, I wanted to say. Only God can help me.
* * *
—
My mother took a week off of work after Nana died. She wanted to throw a big, Ghanaian-style funeral complete with food and music and dancing. She sent money and measurements to the Chin Chin Man so that he could have our mourning clothes made. When they arrived, I took mine out of the package and held it. It was bloodred and waxy to the touch, and I didn’t want to wear it. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been required to wear traditional dress, and I thought it would seem like a lie. I felt about as Ghanaian as apple pie, but how could I tell that to my mother?
What weeping, what gnashing of teeth. My mother was nearly unrecognizable to me. When the policemen left our house the night of Nana’s overdose, she fell to the ground, rocking, clawing at her arms and legs until she drew blood, crying out the Lord’s name, “Awurade, Awurade, Awurade.” She had not stopped crying since. How could I tell her that I found my mourning clothes garish? That I didn’t want the attention this funeral would draw? I didn’t want any attention at all, and in those first few weeks I was safe from it. Nothing teaches you the true nature of your friendships like a sudden death, worse still, a death that’s shrouded in shame. No one knew how to talk to us, and so they didn’t even try. I should never have been left alone with my mother in those days after Nana died, and my mother should never have been left alone with herself. Where was our church? Where were the few Ghanaians, scattered through Alabama, whom my mother had built friendships with? Where was my father? My mother, a woman who hardly ever cried, cried so much that first week she fainted from dehydration. I stood over her body, fanning her with the closest thing I could find—her Bible. When she came to and figured out what had happened, she apologized. She promised me that she wouldn’t cry anymore, a promise she wasn’t yet capable of keeping.
Where was Pastor John in all of this? He and his wife sent flowers to our house that first week. He came by after church the third Sunday, the only three Sundays since joining the First Assemblies that my mother had missed a service. I answered the door, and the first thing he did was put his hand on my shoulder and start praying.
“Lord, I ask that you cover this young lady with your blessings. I ask that you remind her that you are near, that you walk with her as she walks through her grief.”
I wanted to shrug his arm away, but I was so grateful to see him, so grateful for his, for anyone’s, touch that I stood there and I received.
He came into the house. My mother was in the living room, and Pastor John went to her, sat down beside her on our couch. He put his hands on her shoulders, and she crumpled. It looked as intimate to me as nakedness, and so I left the room, giving them space to be with each other and with the Lord. Though I have not always loved Pastor John, I loved him dearly the day that he finally showed up. He has stayed in my life and my mother’s life ever since.
* * *
—
I never told my mother that I hated the funeral cloth. I wore mine, and my mother wore hers, and the two of us welcomed the guests to the clubhouse my mother had rented for Nana’s funeral. Ghanaians came—from Alabama and Tennessee and Ohio and Illinois. And in Ghana, at the funeral that the Chin Chin Man threw, Ghanaians came—from Cape Coast and Mampong and Accra and Takoradi.
My mother paced up and down the room, singing:
Ohunu mu nni me dua bi na masɔ mu
Nsuo ayiri me oo, na otwafoɔ ne hwan?
There is no branch which I could grasp
I am in swamped waters, where is my savior?
I didn’t know the song, and even if I had, I’m not sure I would have joined in. I sat in the