Ghana Must Go Read Free Page A

unsavable daughter. A Western. He wished he had a weapon. Little six-shooter, silver. Two. Something with more shine than a Hopkins M.D. And a clearer opponent. Or an opponent less formidable than the basics of medical science. The odds.
    Presently, Olu. “What is it?”
    End scene.
    “Nothing.” Kweku chuckled. “Just tired, that’s all.” He patted his son’s head. Or his son’s browbone more accurately, his son’s head having moved from where he remembered its being. He looked at Olu closely now, surprised by the height (and by other things he’d seen but never noticed before: the wide latissimus dorsi, the angular jawline, the Yoruba nose, Fola’s nose, broad and straight, the taut skin the same shade as his own and so smooth, baby’s bum, even now in adolescence). He wasn’t pretty like Kehinde—who looked like a girl: an impossible, impossibly beautiful girl—but had become in the course of one weekend, it seemed, a really very handsome young man. He squeezed Olu’s shoulder, reassuring him. “I’m fine.”
    Olu frowned, tensing. “The baby, I meant. What is it? The gender?”
    “Oh. Right.” Kweku smiled. “It was a girl,” then, “It’s a girl,” but too late. Olu heard the past tense and glared at him, wary.
    “What’s wrong with the baby?” he asked, his voice tight.
    “The curse of her gender. Impatience.” Kweku winked. “She couldn’t wait.”
    “Can they save it?”
    “Not likely.”
    “Can you?”
    Kweku laughed aloud, a sudden sound in the quiet. He patted Olu’s head, this time finding his hair. His elder son’s appraisal of his abilities as a doctor never ceased to amaze or delight him. Or appease him. His
other
son couldn’t have cared less what he did, irrespective of the fact that they lived off his doing it. He didn’t take this personally. At least he didn’t think he did. At least he didn’t show it when his cameraman was around. He was an Intelligent Parent, too rational to pick favorites. A Man’s Man, above petty insecurities. And a Well-Respected Doctor, one of the best in his field,
goddammit!
, whether Kehinde cared or didn’t. Besides. The boy was un-impressable. Perpetually indifferent. His teachers all said the same year after year. Preternatural ability, exemplary behavior, but doesn’t seem to care about school. What to do?
    Kehinde doesn’t care about anything,
Kweku told them.
Except Taiwo
. (Always except Taiwo.)
    “No,” he answered Olu, his laugh lingering as a smile. Olu’s eyes lingering on the side of his face. Then falling away. They walked farther down the hallway in silence. Suddenly, Olu looked up.
    “Yes, you can.”
    •   •   •
    All these years later when Kweku thinks of that moment, he can picture the look on his fourteen-year-old’s face, when Olu seemed to become—in the course of one instant—an infant again, raw with trusting. The boy was transfigured, his whole face wide open, his eyes so undoubting that Kweku looked down. His elder son’s appraisal of his abilities as a doctor broke his heart (for a second time. He hadn’t felt the first). He shook his head weakly and looked at his hands. His fingers still frozen from running through the snow. He was teetering on an edge, though he didn’t know which, some strange gathering force building within and against him. “She doesn’t have the heart for it—” he started, then stopped. They’d reached the glass door to the nursery.
    •   •   •
    Kweku peered in.
    There it was.
    On the left.
    Three and a half pounds, barely breathing, barely life.
    With all kinds of patches and tubes sticking out of it, it looked like E.T. going home.
    Olu pressed his hands to the Plexiglas window. “Which one is it?” he asked, cupping his hands around his eyes. Kweku laughed softly. Olu didn’t say
she
. Only
it
,
one
,
the baby.
Little surgeon in the making. He pointed to the incubator, the handwritten tag. “That one,” he said. “Baby