She stared at his fat face without emotion as she slid up and down his penis. He licked his fat lips in pleasure, not daring to take his heavily lidded eyes off her expanding crotch. His face became more and more twisted in a frenzied passion as he neared his climax. She hated his cum face. It made her want to vomit all over him and rub it in every opening of his body. That would teach him to learn a better cum face.
She couldn’t watch any longer. She looked up at the silk drapes of the four post bed. She had only one reason for agreeing to fuck him. Who had a four-post bed in this day and age? It was so old school it was a turn on.
He began to grab her ample buttock cheeks harder, so she moved faster, grabbing his chest for balance. She kept her pace till he came, shuddering all over her, and pushing his slimy cum inside her womb. She allowed herself to be held tightly as he enjoyed the tail end of his orgasm, his body spasms forcing hers to rock. She faked a moan that was halfway between a scream and a yawn. He fell for it and rocked her harder.
After the vibrations stopped, she carefully lifted herself off him, moved to what had become her side of the bed, and promptly fell asleep.
Tomorrow was another day for this bullshit. But this bed made it so worth it. She snuggled deeper into the soft pillows. Sleep never felt this good.
The next day, she was rudely awakened by vigorous shaking. Mr Koffi never shook her like this if he wanted another fuck. He simply turned her over, asleep or not, and pushed his hard penis into her, ignoring her grunts of pain. She played with her clit when it became too painful.
But this vigorous shaking was uncalled for. She yanked herself from sleep, intending to scream her mind, when he whispered urgently, “Hurry! My wife is here!”
She needed no further specifications. She jumped out of bed, sliding smoothly into her dress, grabbed her pumps and purse and climbed out of the window. At the window, she had to be careful; the eaves were slippery from the light drizzle the night before. She stepped cautiously to the left, all the while, listening in to the sounds going on in the bedroom. Finally, she heard the soft voice of an aristocratic Fante* woman in the bedroom she had just slipped out of. She took her cue to slide down the window into the storage room right below, dropping her heels as quietly as possible on the tiles before she slid in. The storage door was unlocked as usual. She rushed out to the front door and out into the huge compound covered in gravel. She met the security guard who simply winked at her and opened the gate for her to go through.
Finally, she was out on the streets, the well tarred streets of East Legon, not caring how she looked in her sexy purple wraparound lying haphazardly on her naked body, carrying her pumps in one hand and a tiny clutch in the other. She waved a taxi to stop and got in.
“Haatso, Ecomog,” she breathlessly whispered her destination. The taxi driver turned to take a good look at her, smiled and took off.
She stared with no interest at the buildings shrinking away as they sped past. Her thoughts saying nothing to her, formulating no queries, suggesting no answers, offering nothing. As usual. If her thoughts were a house, it’d be an old house, sitting on a lonely, dead field. It’d be covered in cobwebs. It’d be rickety and broken down. It’d hold memories that linger like ghosts of condemned spirits lost in their eternal way. It’d say nothing, but groan with age and wear away, little by little till termites take over. It’d represent only a fraction of what her life had been.
She drifted through the quiet walkways of this rickety, old house, bombarded by memories she had chosen to forget; a painting here, a haphazard photograph there that decorated the dirty walls caught her attention for short spans of time. She saw her father smiling crookedly in this one. He always had a smile like a leech. Not that he ever smiled at her. She had seen him smile only once: when mama had informed him amidst tears that she would never again bother him with his daughter’s needs. Then her mother had bundled her 8-year-old self away from his second wife’s house. She had turned to stare at him, wondering if he’d change his mind, whether their helpless forms would give him a change of heart. It didn’t. Instead, he’d called her half-sister and asked her to sit on his lap. That was the last time she ever saw him.
Now this photograph here was …well…pretty. She had run to the library after school. She needed to get there early so she could leave at a reasonable time. Her mother would give her a good spanking if she came too late to help her cook. She was couched in a corner of the room, undisturbed by the world, reading her life away. She enjoyed the Sweet Valley High series. The drama in their school lives made hers seem unreal, dead even.
This raggedy painting made her cringe. It was so old she struggled to make out the figures etched on the weary canvas: three children in a secret room, herself and two boys. Their eleven year old sexual selves wanted to explore. She had taken her clothes off for the boys to admire her body. Her breasts were still flat though she prayed everyday for them to become as big as Afua’s was. Afua had so much attention from the boys in the class because she was the only one with breasts. But the boys were fixated with the fleshy miracle between her thighs. When they took their clothes off, she was awed with what was between their thighs. She lay down and they attempted to put their snakes inside her like they had seen in the kissy kissy films.
Now this picture here. She’d been proud of this one. She had won a school award for being the best in her literature class. Mama had been so happy. She had taken the shiny certificate and hidden it in her drawer, beneath all her clothes. So nobody could take that from her.
This was another one of school. Their class teacher had failed her in the test. It’s not that she hadn’t answered any of the questions right. It was that she hadn’t bought the teacher’s book; a scrap of photocopied papers the teacher passed off as a textbook. The teacher had written the crap herself and was looking for a quick way to make money off her students. She hadn’t known that then. All she had known was that that textbook was very important to pass her exams. But her mother had had no money.
This picture was the beginning of her real woes. Mama had been killed by a speeding truck. She’d been trying to cross the street to get salt. There’d been too much blood to see her mother’s form. Everything died that day.
She quickly moved on to the next picture. She’d been hungry, so hungry. She chewed on the pink gum of her cheeks, wondering what to do today for food. She sat on her threadbare cloth on the floor in a room she shared with a family of seven. She’d barely had enough for one olonka of rice. She scratched an area on the cold floor with a small stone, etching a deep groove next to her big toe.
She had met Mr Boadu for the first time in this one. He’d been her first, but she’d been so grateful. That day, for the first time in her life, she splurged. Papaye* had been her first stop. Fried rice and grilled chicken had never tasted any better to any of their customers. From that day, things became better. She swore never to go back.
She laughed at this one. Mr. Ayittey’s wife had caught her in her marital bed, administering blowjobs which her thick fat lips could not do to her poor husband’s penis. The woman had dragged her by her straight weave on the floor and naked out into the street for all their neighbours to see. She had simply covered her crotch with her hands and smiled at the woman, ignoring the curious eyes raping her body in the middle of the street. For some reason, she had been intrigued by the movement of the enraged woman’s breasts. They were so big they jiggled excessively as she shouted. She loved the way they moved. They looked so warm and welcoming, as though they would comfort her when she cried there. Mama had big breasts like those.
She had sauntered so absentmindedly she hadn’t realized that there were no more pictures. Instead, she faced a rickety mirror. It had a large crack that slid horizontally right across the middle. She saw herself: a thin, dark woman, with the breasts of a child. She’d some solid education now. She had her own place. She ate good food in the rare occasion she needed food. She looked different. Almost aristocratic. Her face demure and cool, viewing the world through bored eyes. She even spoke different, her words strolling out of her mouth in a clipped blur. She spoke only English now; a rich English that made people mistake her for a wealthy man’s daughter. She rarely spoke Twi anymore. It was the language of poverty. Her classmates in Senior High School would not recognize her now. She was glossy figurine of class and had that rich smell about her.
But the scars were there. She still felt the pain of her wounds. She alone could see them.
“Madam. Y3 duru oo.”*
The taxi driver broke into her thoughts. She paid him and climbed out.
As soon as she unlocked her door, she dumped her bag on the floor next to her door. Her room was almost painfully neat, everything in its designated place. Her shoes, her pride and glory, an assortment of stilettos, loafers, slippers were arranged neatly on a huge wooden rack. Her gold pot of clothes either hang or were folded neatly in her vintage Chippendale wardrobe, a gift from another rich married man for great sex. The neoclassical design looked and felt awesome, very patrician. She joked sometimes it could give her orgasms. She had an unquenchable taste for African art, and her room was made her sanctuary for the stuff; abstract art decorated her walls in paintings, African scenes carved in figurines decorated tabletops and her shelves. Her particular fetish was paintings or carvings of naked black women, framed lonely and beautiful in abstract surroundings.
She loved the spiritual, though she dappled in none. The scent of burnt incense that constantly hang in the air put her in that indefinable religious space that made the old rickety house look solid sometimes. If only for a little while.
She stared at her bed, a huge round fluffy thing in the middle of her beautiful room. The silky red sheets she was addicted to adorned the soft mattress, decorated by seven pillows which lay in an arranged mess all over her bed. Mr. Cuddles was the only white that broke the red streak, stretching his fluffy white self over three of her pillows. Pouffes in the family of red, purple and blue decorated the lonely spaces of the room.
She had created her own love scene. Here, no one could destroy for her the one fairytale she had allowed to remain in her heart. Not even Life.
She sighed heavily, so heavily a few tears escaped her heavy eyes. She slid out of her dress, leaving it to lie forgotten on the carpet, near a glass centre table, that complemented a pink couch shaped in the form of a kiss. Quite a lot of money, but yet another present. Her vagina surprised her sometimes.
She had left her thong at Mr Koffi’s. She hoped for him his wife would not find it. If she did, would she pick it up and smell it? She wondered. Maybe admire the wonderful embroidery. Hey, maybe, Mrs. Koffi would want to fuck her too when she thought how good the pussy must have been to own such a sexy thong, she laughed to herself.
More tears.
She went to her system at one corner of the room and turned on her Love music. The sound of the piano wafted along with her body to the bathroom.
Marsha Ambrosius moaned in the background, her voice dancing a tango with the cinnamon scented shower gel. She crawled into the bath, sighing as the warmth of the bubble bath caressed her skin. It was a love story of water and skin, of droplets and body, of tears and bubbles. She sank in deep, holding her breath and going under. Eyes shut tightly, she willed her lungs to give in. Death was whispering seductive secrets in her ear. Jesus’ trial of temptations was nowhere near as tempting.
The scented water licked away the salt streaming down her cheeks, kissing them tenderly, savouring her lips with love. The water was soft on her dark body, caressing every curve. Reverently. The warmth of the bath made love to her hills and valleys, healed her scars, touched her in ways she had never allowed any man. She slid back up, enjoying the water as it pushed streaks in her hair. She sighed.
She was beautiful.
She reminded herself.
She could be loved.
She reminded herself.
She could love.
Even if it meant a finger, a clitoris, and an expensive bathtub.
Fante* – An ethnic group in Ghana, originally from Cape Coast.
Papaye* – A popular fast food restaurant in Ghana
Olonka* – a tin cup
Y3 duru oo* – Ghanaian dialect, Twi meaning ‘We have arrived.’
– End –
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Author Mini-Biography
To Nana Akosua K. Hanson, storytelling is a never-ending song, an infinite tune, the endless duet that blurs the line between the spiritual and physical. It is that which makes her aware of the greater beings we are, the connection to God as and how it chooses to manifest itself through us.
An Alice in her own wonderland, she speaks in poetry, short stories, prose-poems and runs a blog, The Black Arts that generally serves as an outlet for her creative work, including photography (an artistic endeavour she began to pursue only a months ago!). A lot of her work is contemplative; influenced largely introspection, self discovery, philosophical ponderings of the Self, the Self in nature, and human experiences.
She currently works as a producer for radio shows at an esteemed local radio station in Ghana, Citi FM.
Her ultimate ambition? To become the best of herself as she can be, contributing to the somewhat abstract course of humanity.
Love is a two letter word : ME,