By Pamela Naaki Tetteh

Here's the truth about Nneka:

Her name isn't really Nneka. She does not know this. Not even the radio-clutching, chain-smoking grandfather who raised her knows her name. The only person who knows is a woman Nneka finds in a photograph one afternoon when she is fifteen and curious. The photograph is hidden between two encyclopedias on her grandfather's bookshelf. It feels featherlight in her hands and looks faded, soft with age. It is of a woman with Nneka’s face, braids tumbling down her bare shoulders. Nneka looks at it and feels: the blurred edges of her memory sharpening, coming into focus. She knows who this is in the photograph, and is shocked that she has not thought to ask of her, all these years. She goes to find her grandfather and he tells her the story of a baby, abandoned on his doorstep, by a daughter he hadn't seen in years. He finds a letter, received months after the abandoning. The letter itself is unimportant to Nneka; it is the return address that draws her, a house in Accra, Ghana.

The next morning, the grandfather finds his safe open, and a fair few thousand Naira and Nneka, gone.

***
In Ghana, one can learn a lot by simply being, blending seamlessly into the background. No one takes much notice of a skinny girl hawking a tray of oranges. No one minds that she passes the same street everyday, asking questions about the large house with the high, pale blue walls. No one asks any questions of her, past how much?

She lives in a shanty with two other girls she met at the bus station the day she arrived in Ghana. She keeps her money in a purse tied around her waist and has learned to wake at the slightest sound. The girls, Adwoa and Naa, ask no questions of her and she offers nothing. She has one goal: to find the woman with her face. She finds the address on the letter easily. It is a prominent house, owned by the prominent Adjemans: retired colonel and his beautiful Nigerian wife.

So she goes, oranges on tray, tray on head, everyday, to the street, walking up and down its length, calling out buy your sweet orange here, making customers out of the women whose shops dot the street and the men who always seem to be lounging around under the shade of trees, talking about ‘the good old days’. Blending in. Waiting.

***
And then one afternoon, the house's gates open and a car crawls out. Nneka, who is about calling it a day, stops and turns. The car passes by, slow enough for her to see the woman with her face, in the backseat, older now, colder than the woman in the photo. The woman too, looks out of the car window and sees Nneka. Shock purples the woman's face as she whispers, a single sound that is ferried from her lips to Nneka's ears alone: Nkem.

Pamela Naaki Tetteh is a student of the arts and a lover of essays, sleep and other queer things. Her dream job would be to become an author, but she'll gladly settle for being a writer.

- All rights to this story remain with the author. Please do not repost or reproduce this material without permission.