Afua Awo Twumwa

The night sky overhead watched her. She crossed her feet and pulled the blanket over them. Here in the cold, nothing mattered more than the sky filled with stars and the city lights that shone with them miles away from her. Staying up with them into the wee night had a magic with it. Inside, she could feel a billion eyes staring back at her from every light. And from them, she could almost hear a choir of silky voices singing to her, telling her they care. So, nothing mattered. Not even the sense of loss of weight on her chest. She didn’t bother to look at them. To look at her bare chest. To feel pity for herself and fall over into a ball of angry desperate emotions. She’s over that. She breathed in heavily and raised her head to the skies. They weren’t happy tonight. They weren’t anything close to blue. Maybe they were mourning a fallen star or just in a bad mood. Perhaps they have moods too.

She frowned. What if the bad mood is when they keep back rain and allow the mean Ghanaian sun to scorch the already dried black backs laboring for one meal. Or is that when it allows the rain through its gates over and above how much water the broken gutters decorating most streets in Accra can escort to safety. But she knew it was just sky. Sky full of clouds and stars and who knows what scientists will find next month or what they’d never find out till God calls it a wrap. Who knows.

Who knows. That was her magic when she wasn’t fine and fit to lift her head up to the sky. Her magic before she met the sky. The phrase saved her life. Not entirely. But it did save her mind from flittering to dark worlds some of her new friends didn’t make it back from. She said who knows to herself a hundred times over in a single day. Who knows slid off her lips while she filled forms, accepted diagnoses, failed chemo, gave up on lumpectomy and called her dead mother over her grave to tell her the worst bad news. Her daughter filled with life and breasts, breasts she was teased for for half a decade, won’t be back by her silent grave with them. Walking back into the hospital meant she would walk out without them. Double Modified Radical Mastectomy will make sure of it.

She walked back in nonetheless. She remembers nothing of the cutting away. She remembers everything after. Anesthesia worked in the surgery room and left her to face the pain alone in the outside. The day she stubbornly insisted and drove herself away from the second home she unwilling checked herself into, she had forgotten who she was now. She had till a young lady adjacent her in traffic reminded her. Her two pupils were attached to her chest. She followed the eyes to see why they’ve got guest and there was her bare chest. The tears fell and she sped home. There, the walls don’t talk. They only stare back. They don’t wander why you won’t fill up bare chest with materials foreign to your breast area. Even your own skin. Foreign materials that make them look more feminine. And they don’t ask you questions of what now. They don’t ask what you’ll do with the many years left after the twenty-five you’ve seen. They don’t ask what your plans are about trapping a man who’d love you past filled chests he could have drifted to sleep lying on. They are silent observers. Whatever eyes they have don’t talk. They don’t ask whether you’re truly alright. Even after you’ve answered till your throat dries with a Yes. They don’t wander why you’re happy with a bare chest. Why you are a happy bare chest.

But she’s learnt you don’t live happily with walls only. She had to feed. She went back to talking eyes and starred in conversations she’d rather not be even a listener of. Life moved on. She moved too. She carried her limbs past days and months and years of loneliness that’s blacker than dark. She carried her chest through smiles and laughter and visits. And she lived five years on. She’s also learnt the magic of skies and words can fail. She’s learnt permanent magic comes from loving a man who’s otherworldly for most and forgetting men who can’t love hard flat female chests. She smiled as the balcony embraced the new day. The day after #pinkoctober dies and women like her wait for another year to receive love from strangers. She smiled and folded her blankets readying to sleep chest down. Because when life gives you a bare chest, you forget about breasts you wished away many many times but miss terribly now and you school your heart on happiness. You fight not just to own your chest the way you prefer. You become happy with your bare chest. You become the happy bare chest.

© M’afua Awo Twumwaah 2017.