She never knew what love was from the beginning, maybe that is why she is who she is. Her father died before she was born and her mother died from children. Her mother’s sister offered to raised her because it was the right to do but the gesture was not out of love.

She was put to work by the extended family the moment she was old enough to wash dishes, which was 6 years too long in her aunt’s opinion. Her cries became a source great annoyance and nuisance to her aunt, so she learned from the very beginning that crying gets her sent to a locked room.

When she was 12, she told her aunt she wanted to go to school and learn, so that she might become somebody. Her aunt laughed at her and told her to get the dishes ready for supper. Despite her knowing that her aunt was a woman with a short temper, she kept asking,

“Auntie when will I go to school?”

Each time was met with a slap, a kick, a projectile being thrown at her and once a bowl of hot water. Luckily, it burned just her left hand which left scars for years to come.

Upon realizing her auntie’s plans to keep her in servitude, she decided to take life into her own hands. She begged her 9-year-old cousin to teach her everything he learned from school. By 16, she could read and speak English fluently, completely self-taught with her cousin’s help of course.

It was a particularly humid sunny day when she saw him. She sat upon nets by the sea shore where she was supposed to be skinning fish to be sold in the market but the fish lay forgotten beneath her feet as she devoured a book. Her cousin’s science text book got her attention so much that she didn’t notice him approach her; tall, muscular, head full of locs that reached the nap of his back. She sensed an immense power from him. Fear seized her bones but curiosity kept her from darting away.

“What are you doing?” He asked. His voice was deep like a well but smooth like the lake her auntie’s catfish came from.

“I- I am reading” She finally managed to get out. She looked at his chest, water droplets clung to his skin as though for dear life and added dimension to his already majestic chest.

“At work?” he asked puzzled. She looked back at his face. It looked young, but full of hair. He looked like a beast, the ones that made your heart quiver.

“Yes” she said in a soft voice.

“Well, if you want to read at work, you might as well read something worthwhile” he pulled a book from thin air and handed it to her. Dazed, she took it, the weight of the book made her hands bulk and she allowed it to fall to her laps. She kept her eyes on his face and feared the worst as her heart beat a thousand times more. He nodded his greeting and walked away. She made sure not to look back as she was sure looking upon a man’s nakedness was an insult.

After the initial surprise left her, she looked at the book. The title was a strange language she did not understand and she shifted it this way and that until she gave up trying to understand it and opened it. She gasped and threw it away, disgusted by the images she saw. It was a book of witchcraft!

She had gone to enough church services to know that to be a witch is to be condemned in hell. She decided that after all her suffering in this accursed world she would not go to hell. When she died, she would go to heaven so she lived a holy life. She did everything her aunt asked her to, took punishment gracefully, never spoke back and she did not know a man. Her only sin was the crime of knowledge and for that she asked for forgiveness of sins and fasted regularly. She buried the book in the sand, praying silently that the touch of the book would not drive her to sin and hurried with her task.

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Since then, the horrors began. She began to see that same script everywhere. Young people and foreigners had them on T-shirts, it was lettered in television, once she swore she saw it on a signboard but it quickly disappeared into English. She was going crazy, she knew it. She just did not know how to articulate her thoughts. The worst part were her dreams. Nightmares rendered her nights sleepless and restless. She couldn’t help seeing the images, entrails falling out of the mouths of men, bodies being mutilated and humans hanging from trees. She prayed to god to deliver her from the hands of evil but it seemed God was dead.

Her turning point came when her cousin came home from boarding school and she rummaged his book bag for interesting reads.

Her body shoke with fear as she saw a book completely filled with that same lettering.

“Kwasi what is this?” She asked shaking. Her cousin sat up from the bed, anxious to her sudden emotional reaction. She thrust the book to his face.

“Oh, this?” he laughed, thinking her fear to be confusion “It’s the bible in Greek”

“But why would they write the bible in Greek? Isn’t English enough?”

“Oh hoh! Greek is one of the original languages the bible was written in”

“Why do you have it?”

“I want to study theology in the university. It seems very interesting”

Her mind immediately went back to the book the strange beautiful man had given her. Why would he give her a profane book written in the language God used to write the bible? Had she been visited by the devil himself? Was she supposed to be a sort of an unholy Messiah to preach about evil deeds?

Her chest seized up and she contemplated the implications and decided that no, she would not let that happen. She is a child of God and is meant for great thing. She fled from her cousin’s confused room and went back to her chores, hoping to be absolved by hard work.

Years later, she did not remember what she did, but she recalled her aunt’s husband beating her mercilessly. Her cousin stood at the side screaming for his father to stop but not daring to come closer. Her aunt finally came back from church and rushed to the scene. The first question her aunt asked was what her offense was. The husband told her to shut up and mind her business.

“Agya* if you kill her I will not cook for you o”

That seemed to get him to calm down, he spat in her hair and walked away. Her aunt ordered her cousin to get inside.

This is not the first time she had been beaten this way. She would cry and lament, calling for God the entire time. Then she would go to the outside bathroom to clean her wounds and cry until someone came to fetch her.

This time, something shifted. She started calling to god but she heard a voice saying,

Are you a stupid girl? When have you called that he came?

That made her stop and an emotion she had never had toward her aunt’s family welled up in her chest.

Anger.

She was angry and for the first time was going to do something about it. She got up and staggered to the beach. Every step was full of pain but her will was stronger than her physical ailments. It was exactly where she left it, the book of horrors.

She felt a strong urge to remove her clothes and entered the water, the still hugged across her chest. When the water touched her, her body relaxed, immediately letting go of the pain. She laughed in ecstasy and went deeper. Soon the water was at her chest but she was not afraid. She looked up and the moon and giggled more, it was big and round and bright, it felt as if the whole world had come to see her die.

Then she heard the voice again,

You are indeed a stupid girl! Get out and learn! Get out and become powerful.

She looked across the water and saw a fish jumping out and inside the water again in an arc. Quickly she backtracked towards the shore, the book still across her chest. That was definitely not a fish. Her body was still singing when she ran all the way home.

She hid the book in her room, that was also the storeroom for all the things her aunt sold in the provision container. As she was getting ready to leave do her evening chores, her cousin moved aside the cloth that was the sole barrier between the room and outside and entered.

“Can’t you go anywhere?” her cousin asked sadly “They will kill you”

“I don’t think so. God will protect me” She said, for once hope in her voice.

“Here” he offered her a book. She gazed at it and before her eyes could look up so he could see the tears in her eyes, he was gone.

It was a Greek dictionary.

*Father, normally used by Ghanaians to indicate the man of the house.