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Back No Sweetness Here: and Other Stories Save as PDF
Chapters (15)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Everything Counts
  5. For Whom Things Did Not Change
  6. In the Cutting of a Drink
  7. The Message
  8. Certain Winds from the South
  9. No Sweetness Here
  10. A Gift from Somewhere
  11. Two Sisters
  12. The Late Bud
  13. Something to Talk About on the Way to the Funeral
  14. Other Versions
  15. Afterword

It was this time that something made me realise that they were all bad women of the city. Duayaw had told me I would feel warm if I danced, yet after I had danced, I was colder than before. You would think someone had poured water on me. I was unhappy thinking about these women. ‘Have they no homes?’ I asked myself. ‘Do not their mothers like them? God, we are all toiling for our threepence to buy something to eat . . . but oh! God! this is no work.’

When I thought of my own sister, who was lost, I became a little happy because I felt that although I had not found her, she was nevertheless married to a big man and all was well with her.

When they started to play the band again, I went to the women’s table to ask the one with whom I had danced to dance again. But someone had gone with her already. I got one of the two who were still sitting there. She went with me. When we were dancing she asked me whether it was true that I was a Fante. I replied ‘Yes.’ We did not speak again. When the band stopped playing, she told me to take her to where they sold things to buy her beer and cigarettes. I was wondering whether I had the money. When we were where the lights were shining brightly, something told me to look at her face. Something pulled at my heart.

‘Young woman, is this the work you do?’ I asked her.

‘Young man, what work do you mean?’ she too asked me. I laughed.

‘Do you not know what work?’ I asked again.

‘And who are you to ask me such questions? I say, who are you? Let me tell you that any kind of work is work. You villager, you villager, who are you?’ she screamed.

I was afraid. People around were looking at us. I laid my hands on her shoulders to calm her down and she hit them away.

‘Mansa, Mansa,’ I said. ‘Do you not know me?’ She looked at me for a long time and started laughing. She laughed, laughed as if the laughter did not come from her stomach. Yes, as if she was hungry.

‘I think you are my brother,’ she said. ‘Hm.’

Oh, my mother and my aunt, oh, little sister, are you all weeping? As for you women!

What is there to weep about? I was sent to find a lost child. I found her a woman.

Cut me a drink . . .

Any kind of work is work. . . . This is what Mansa told me with a mouth that looked like clotted blood. Any kind of work is work . . . so do not weep. She will come home this Christmas.

My brother, cut me another drink. Any form of work is work . . . is work . . . is work!

The Message

The Message