Chapter 4- Akua (pt.1)

Akua thumbed the pages of her book with her right hand as she copied Ms. Dorothy’s notes from the blackboard with her left. She had found a way to position herself so that she appeared to be looking at the notebook when she was actually glancing out the window.

As the pages of her book passed under her thumb, they made a strong, soft noise--the noise a toad would make if it could whisper. Then…thump! as the pages came to an abrupt stop at the place where she had tucked the picture from her father’s box. Not the loud thump of a hand on a djembe drum, but the silent thump one feels when she almost drifts to sleep while sitting up, but is jerked back to the awake world by the weight of her falling head.

croaaaaaak, thump. croaaaaaak, thump. croaaaaaak, thump.

A whispering frog and a silent thump that only Akua could perceive the importance of as she anxiously awaited the arrival of the Search & Find tro-tro and the man who would be sitting in the back seat with a smile that curled at the corners.

*   *  *

It hadn’t taken Akua very long to figure out what it was about the man that had drawn her to him and why she could think of nothing else for the rest of the day and every day since. As a matter of fact, the revelation had come to her the very same night that she first spotted him sitting there in the back of the tro-tro.

She had been at the table working on one of her inventions when it struck her.

“And what are we working on now, Akua Edison?” her mother had joked as she entered the door and noticed her daughter hammering small holes into a piece of shiny aluminum.

“It’s for the tap. It’ll make the water run more slowly,” Akua replied without looking up from her invention.

“And why in the world would we want the water to run more slowly?”

“Because there is a water shortage on the continent, many parts of the world actually. The book I read today, one that the Americans left when they came to paint our school, said that we don’t need to shorten the length of our showers if we use a more efficient tap. So, I’m making a more efficient tap.”

“Akua, my dear, in our house, we bathe with a bucket,” her mom replied with a smirk.

Akua, too, smiled, and as she did she caught a glimpse of that curled-in-the-corners-smile reflected in the hole-riddled aluminum. Her mother’s words from the morning came flooding back to her, “he’s in your smile,” she had said. And like a jolt of electricity surging through her body, Akua knew who the man in “Search & Find” tro-tro was.

*  *  *

Comments

  1. RajikinsMarch 8, 2018 at 5:25 AM

    'Curled in the corners smile'...your snippets are so good it makes me want to come back for more every time.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Molly HoganMarch 8, 2018 at 2:49 PM

    I like how you structured this piece and moved your character from scene to scene. I have such a strong sense of her desperate hope.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Alice NineMarch 8, 2018 at 2:59 PM

    Wonderfully crafted. You have me asking questions that make me want to keep reading. Personal connection-- I've experienced that "bathe with a bucket" while staying in a thatch/bamboo hut in a refugee camp on Thailand's border.

    ReplyDelete
  4. BrianMarch 8, 2018 at 5:38 PM

    The plot thickens. Industrious Akua in this scene also made me think of Molly in this commercial: https://youtu.be/sucKTktHYA8

    ReplyDelete

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