‘Nyamekye, are you not following your mother to the farm?’ As if I am the boy’s only parent. But he is stuck with this habit, especially where I and my little ones are concerned.

‘Gyaawa, your child is crying. . . . Gyaawa, your child is going to fall off the terrace if you do not pay more attention to him. . . . Gyaawa, your child this, and your child that!’

Anyway, that morning I was hurt and when I opened up my mouth, all the words which came to my lips were, ‘I thought this boy was going to be a scholar and not a farm-goer. What was the use in sending him to school if I knew he was going to follow me to the farm?’

This had made him more angry. ‘I did not know that if you go to school, your skin must not touch a leaf!’

I did not say anything. What had I to say? We went to the farm leaving Nyamekye with the children. I returned home earlier than his father did. Nyamekye was not in the house. I asked his brother and sisters if they knew where he had gone. But they had not seen him since they finished eating earlier in the afternoon. When he had not come home by five o’clock, I started getting worried. Then his father too returned from the farm. He learned immediately that he was missing. He clouded up. After he had had his bath, he went to sit in his chair, dark as a rainy sky. Then he got up to go by the chicken coop. I did not know that he was going to fetch a cane. Just as he was sitting in the chair again, Nyamekye appeared.

‘Hei, Kweku Nyamekye, come here.’

Nyamekye was holding the little bucket and I knew where he had been to. He moved slowly up to his father.

‘Papa, I went to the river to visit my trap, because today is Friday.’

‘Have I asked you for anything? And your traps! Is that what you go to school to learn?’

And then he pulled out the cane and fell on the child. The bucket dropped and a few little prawns fell out. Something tells me it was the sight of those prawns which finished his father. He poured those blows on him as though he were made of wood. I had made up my mind never to interfere in any manner he chose to punish the children, for after all, they are his too. But this time I thought he was going too far. I rushed out to rescue Nyamekye and then it came, wham! The sharpest blow I have ever received in my life caught me on the inside of my arm. Blood gushed out. When he saw what had happened, he was ashamed. He went away into his room. That evening he did not eat the fufu I served him.