‘Push up please . . . push up. Won’t you push up? Why do you all sit looking at me with such eyes as if I was a block of wood?’

‘It is not that there is nowhere to push up to. Five fat women should go on that seat, but look at you!

‘And our own grandmother here is none too plump herself. . . . Nana, if they won’t push, come to the front seat with me.’

‘. . . Hei, scholar, go to the back. . . .

‘. . . And do not scowl on me. I know your sort too well. Something tells me you do not have any job at all. As for that suit you are wearing and looking so grand in, you hired or borrowed it. . . .’

‘Oh you drivers!’

Oh you drivers . . .

The scholar who read this tengram thing, said it was made about three days ago. My lady’s husband sent it. . . . Three days. . . . God – that is too long ago. Have they buried her . . . where? Or did they cut her up. . . . I should not think about it . . . or something will happen to me. Eleven or twelve . . . Efua Panyin, Okuma, Kwame Gyasi and who else? But they should not have left me here. Sometimes . . . ah, I hate this nausea. But it is this smell of petrol. Now I have remembered I never could travel in a lorry. I always was so sick. But now I hope at least that will not happen. These young people will think it is because I am old and they will laugh. At least if I knew the child of my child was alive, it would have been good. And the little things she sent me. . . . Sometimes some people like Mensima and Nkansa make me feel as if I had been a barren woman instead of only one with whom infant-mortality pledged friendship . . .

I will give her that set of earrings, bracelet and chain which Odwumfo Ata made for me. It is the most beautiful and the most expensive thing I have. . . . It does not hurt me to think that I am going to die very soon and have them and their children gloating over my things. After all what did they swallow my children for? It does not hurt me at all. If I had been someone else, I would have given them all away before I died. But it does not matter. They can share their own curse. Now, that is the end of me and my roots. . . . Eternal death has worked like a warrior rat, with diabolical sense of duty, to gnaw my bottom. Everything is finished now. The vacant lot is swept and the scraps of old sugar-cane pulp, dry sticks and bunches of hair burnt. . . how it reeks, the smoke!

‘O, Nana do not weep . . .’

‘Is the old woman weeping?’

‘If the only child of your only child died, won’t you weep?’

‘Why do you ask me? Did I know her grandchild is dead?’