No Sweetness Here

Kwesi is Maami Ama’s 10-year-old son. He speaks only once in the story, and he is deliberately written more as a symbol than a character. His most notable characteristics are his great beauty and his happy, charismatic personality. His mother adores him, the village treasures him, Chicha favors him, and both sides of his family claim him as theirs. He is called, at various times, “perfect” “beautiful”, “good”, “such a son” and other terms of praise. Chicha is captivated by his beauty: “[H]e had just turned ten years old [… and was] quite tall for his age. His skin was smooth as shea butter and dark as charcoal. His black hair was as soft as his mother’s” (57). He gets very little time on the page and almost no time to speak. He appears in the story three times: Once, Chicha watches him play soccer and notes that he likes playing goalie. When he comes in for dinner, he and his clothes are dirty from playing and he says “Mama, here I am […] I’m hungry” (62). The final time he appears in the story, he is dying. He is Maami’s only child, which is another reason he is so treasured: “Even though he is only one, consider those who have none at all!” (59). His role is to be the object both torn apart by the families and ultimately torn from them. In this, he resembles the soccer ball. After his father wins custody of him, he immediately dies by snakebite, a death both random and heavily foreshadowed. Thus, both families, as well as all the villagers, are denied the boy they fought over.

Maami Ama is Kwesi’s mother and Kodjo Fi’s estranged first wife. Kwesi’s wonderful personality “[throws] a light on the mother’s lively though already waning beauty” (56). She is raising Kwesi alone after the cruel treatment from her husband and in-laws caused her to leave him. She feels her bad marriage made her soul “fit for burial” and now “only wants to live on [her] own looking after [her] child” (61). Her devotion to Kwesi is total. Whenever Chicha makes jokes about taking him away, she panics: “What will I do, what would I do, should something happen to my child?” (56). And when Chicha jokes about whipping Kwesi, she offers to take the lashes herself. Her years of living apart from Kodjo Fi, raising Kwesi on her own, and wishing to finalize the divorce and live free show that she will push back against traditional village norms even as motherhood remains at the center of her life: “Maami Ama loved her son; and this is a silly statement, as silly as saying Maami Ama is a woman” (57). The idea of losing the struggle does not seem to frighten or disturb her when she speaks of it to Chicha, and she says she will cooperate if told to let him go. When the time comes, she accedes immediately, but so quietly that she is obviously trying not to show the pain it causes her. This quiet acquiescence illustrates her powerlessness in a culture that accords all legal and political power to men. Maami Ama is trying to go along with her prescribed role and wants only a small bit of happiness for herself and her son; but she is denied that, not just from the custody battle but from Kwesi’s fateful death by snakebite. The last time she appears in the story, she is kneeling on the ground, cradling his empty school uniform. She has spoken often in fear and panic about what would happen if she lost Kwesi, and in this moment her deepest fear has been realized.

Kodjo Fi is a minor character, a presence felt around the edges of the story. He appears only once, at the divorce settlement, and he barely speaks. The village women collectively are a louder and more directly impactful presence, including the women in his family. Collectively, they seem to exert more power than he does. He is significant and worth remembering because the central conflict involves his divorce with Maami Ama. He is also the male character representative of the traditional patriarchal power and family structure. Chicha notes that Kodjo Fi is a “selfish and bullying man, whom no decent woman ought to have married” (60). He has three wives, and Maami Ama is the first. Maami Ama states that Kodjo Fi treated her badly, giving her little or no money for the household and only the “smallest, thorniest plot” to farm for food, a serious deprivation in a subsistence farming community (61). Her “bad marriage” to Kodjo has made her “soul […] ready for burial” (62). Chicha says that Kwesi and Maami only had each other as Kwesi grew up. He was not involved in raising Kwesi, and the story does not explore how he feels about the boy or what kind of father he will be if Kwesi goes to him. Maami Ama is willing to yield him custody, though, once she is instructed to do so.