BRIGHT ABOAGYE

Dreams

Afua and Mensah have been seeing each other for two months, meeting a few times a week. Usually, he comes over with khebab and a couple of beers, and they watch TV. Or they share a bottle of smirnoff and sit outside on the balcony, smoking and talking about God and how surprisingly kind people can be, watching the moths dance around the streetlights. He rests his hand on her thigh. He kisses her in a gentle manner. They walk inside her flat and take off their clothes under the light of her bedroom. He sits on her bed, running his hands over her legs and waist, kissing her until her eyes close and she crinkles herself into him, and they stumble onto the pillows. They make love before turning off the light. Then, just before they sleep, they kiss again. “Goodnight, babe,” he says.

“Goodnight,” she replies.

But when Afua sleeps, she dreams of Brobbey, her ex. He is sitting at the foot of her bed with his blue T-shirt glowing oddly in the moonlight. He looks sorrowful. She touches his cheeks and feels a shock crawl up her arms. He had his mother’s bright eyes and his father’s dark skin. It has

been too long to still be dreaming of him – but there he is, drumming on her lap and droning the tune they always played together. Everything changed after that night he froze on stage at the National Theatre during his band’s biggest performance. After that, he stopped writing music and stopped being the man she knew.

He vanished quickly after the breakup. She figured he must have begged and busked his way back to Takoradi, since all he had were three cedis in coins hidden in the lining of his coat. She knew this because he turned his pockets inside out with the coins dropping on her floor. He didnot hesitate though he reeked of alcohol. He laced his dusty sneakers, shoved his clothes into a ragged rubber bag and did exactly what she told him to do. But part of him never left. In her dreams, she wraps her legs around his waist, locks her fingers behind his neck and allows him inside her.

One night, the dream changes. Brobbey steps out onto the rooftop through the narrow corridor. Alone in Accra, he wants to go home. He thought their love was home, but he was wrong. He walks to the center of the rooftop, strips off his clothes, and the wind carries the clothes away.

His chest, shoulders, and legs are covered in black and red tattoos from his great-grandfather’s stool lineage. He marked himself with the family crest of the Eban symbol for safety and security, trying to hold on to a part of himself that he never truly grasped. He wants to leap, to

soar, but he cannot move away. In the morning, Mensah holds her hand. Her eyes focus on his fair face, his dark eyes, so different from Brobbey’s. Mensah has a tattoo of a dog puffing a pipe on his neck and the numbers 419 above his knuckles. He chews his nails when he is tense. She squeezes his hand, and he smiles. Resting her head on his chest, she makes a raven with her fingers in the morning light, casting its wings against the wall.

On Sundays, Afua strolls with Mensah through the Gardens close to her apartment. They buy frozen cabana in plastic cups, and the drink makes her head spin. One step after the other, she follows the winding path that takes them past the pond and the bamboo grove. Routines like this

form naturally, even when the rules are not clear. Mensah does not talk about his ex-wife, and she does not talk about Brobbey. They circle the gardens and watch children roll tyres and chase one another in the grass. Every so often, there is the smack of a football and the cheer of a small

crowd. A young girl skips across the path, and Afua marvels at the lightness of her step.

Afua turns to Mensah. “Tell me a secret,” she says.

He slurps the last of his cabana and tosses the cup in the bin. “I do not have any secrets,” he replies. “Of course you do,” she says. She has not caught him in a lie yet. Not even about his ex. She knew about her from the start. But Afua wants to know what he is like when she is not around.

She wants to know his fears. People change when they are afraid. People also change when they love. Love and fear go together like life and death. She learned that from Brobbey.

“Maybe you do,” Mensah says. “But there are not really things that I would not tell people.”

She grabs his shirt. “Think of one. Please.”

“Last time you asked me to tell you a secret, remember? I did not have any then either, and you

told me yours.”

She frowns.

“You have so many secrets you cannot keep track of them,” he says, amused. He sits down on a bench and rests his arm where her shoulders will fit.

“What secret did I tell you?” she asks. She sits beside him.

“Did it have to do with Takoradi? Or the dream about ravens?”

He raises an eyebrow.

“Ravens?”

Afua has not dreamt of Brobbey for weeks, and she is afraid he is gone. She thinks about missing part of him he never could forget. Everything that can be known or said about it is in the story he always told her, which was the same story his father told him, passed down from his grandfather and great-grandfather and so on, moving backward in time like that. It is a creation story. In the beginning, the world was dark, and the Creator was a raven. The raven wanted some light, but an old chief kept it for himself. So, the raven turned into a leaf and

floated into the chief’s daughter’s calabash as she drank. She swallowed the leaf and immediately became pregnant. In time she gave birth to a boy who was the raven in human form.

The chief loved his grandson and gave him whatever he asked for. He asked for the moon, stars, and sun, and once he held them, he tossed them into the sky. The world was filled with light, and the raven became himself again and flew into the night.

She remembers how Brobbey strummed his unplugged guitar with his feet on her kitchen table.

It sounded like chains being dragged across the floor. Once, when she asked him to stop, he said, “My people’s language is vanishing like sea turtles. Only a handful of elders still speak it.”

“You can learn,” she said.

“To speak to who? Ancestors?”

“I can learn too.”

“My great grandfather was a warrior who led a whole clan. When the colonisers came, our

people were pushed back to three villages. My grandfather became a fisherman, and my father grew up selling smoked fish.”

“Your father is a judge now”, she reminded him. She grabbed his fingers before they could reach

the bottle on the table. “And your mother is a headmistress.”

“I do not expect you to understand anything about my family,” he said. He pulled his hand away and poured another shot. He had always drunk like that, though he stopped hiding it after quitting music.

“My great-grandfather came to me in a dream and told me he never named me,” he said, wiping his mouth. Brobbey was obsessed with disappearing, and at the time Afua did not know why. She thought he was just another drunk like her uncle, and she did not want to end up like her aunt, three children, juggling debt and holding up a broken man. The last time she visited her aunt; the living room was piled with clothes waiting to be sorted. Her aunt was sobbing as she folded bed sheets alone.

But Afua had the wrong diagnosis. Alcohol was just a symptom. She knew because when Brobbey left, she began to live like him. She stopped going out. She stopped answering her phone. She stayed in and let everything decay. She had told him to leave, but she had no idea

how to go on without him. Months passed. One day, she found the right word for their condition and wrote it on a postcard. Metathesiophobia: the fear of change. She mailed it to the last address she had for him, a small post office in Sekondi, but she never heard back.

She reminds herself every day that she is healing. She found a job as a Copywriter at Dentsu Ghana and made new friends. Mensah helps too. One of their dates takes them to a bowling alley near Osu. She chooses a sparkling purple ball and imagines it sliding perfectly down the lane, but she cannot move. She stares at the smooth floor, at the glowing pins.

Mensah comes up behind her, hand on her elbow, and guides her arm back. The ball rolls from her fingers and creeps forward. Under the violet lights of the alley, he tells her she has beautiful poise, and she realises fear can be beautiful. She tries to send that thought to Brobbey. Fear does not have to stop you, she says. But she sees him wrapped in jackets, soaking in the rain. He cannot hear her.

Afua and Mensah have their small traditions, even if they keep some things unspoken. On Wednesdays, they make boiled yams with kontomire and mushrooms and watch Efiewura reruns.

On Fridays or Saturdays, they attend live music shows at the +233 Jazz Bar. On Sundays, they get frozen cabana near the park and walk under the tall neem trees. And every other Tuesday, they go to an art gallery. Sometimes they stay inside and order food. The ceiling is low and round like a clay oven. She likes to stare at the faded signboard, the old posters and the framed pictures of famous people. Yaa Asantewaa. Kofi Awoonor. Maya Angelou. Even Ayi Kwei Armah is up there.

One Tuesday, she wears a blue dress with red flowers. She has not worn it since her last anniversary with Brobbey. Underneath, she wears purple track shorts. Mensah wears swimming trunks and a black T-shirt from a concert he attended at the Accra Sports Stadium. They order grilled chicken and yam fries and select old Samini songs from the jukebox. They play chess while waiting. Mensah makes the first move with his king’s pawn. She has her secrets, but he has his strategies. He chews his nails when she takes too long. She finally jumps her knight.

“Do you even have a plan?” he asks. When she starts to cry, he gives up the game, and they dance instead to the songs. She looks down at his shoes.

“Are you looking at my steps?” he asks.

She nods.

He holds her tighter, and in his arm, she can feel the rhythm of the music.

“What are you afraid of?” she asks him.

“Nothing.”

She frowns. “No secrets. No fears. You expect me to believe that?”

“There is not much I am not willing to face. I am sorry.”

“You are lying.”

“I can tell you what I used to fear, in order.”

He counts them off on his tattooed fingers. “The Abonsam. Dogs. Heights. Kintampo Road. My mother dying. Marriage. Divorce. But now I feel like avoiding what you cannot change is a waste of life.”

“Easy for you.”

“It is a choice,” Mensah says. He dips her with such care. Her head moves close to the tiled floor, and she imagines Brobbey watching them from a distance, a figure playing tricks on her heart. Sometimes she thinks every date with Mensah is a rehearsal for finding Brobbey again. But it is

wishful thinking. Brobbey has vanished from her, bit by bit. Mensah lifts her up. “Do not look so sad, babe,” he says. “We are just spending time together.” He steps to the right, then to the left. She smiles and locks eyes with him. They dance until the delivery guy arrives.

Bright Aboagye counts Aja Monet and Akwaeke Emezi amongst his influences. He dreams of becoming a surrealist blues poet, writer, and restaurant entrepreneur. Bright hopes that his work inspires and gives hope to all who engage with it.