Homegoing

“Marjorie” beings in the early 1980s in Cape Coast, where a 10-year-old boy is offering to show Marjorie the Castle for five cedis. She just made the eight-hour ride from Accra and knows the boy is trying to make money off of tourists, so she shouts at him in Twi that she is African, but he asks her, “But you come from America?” (264). She walks away, lugging her heavy backpack. She is in Ghana to visit her grandmother, Akua, as she does every summer. Akua had moved from Edweso to Cape Coast to be near the water.

Akua, whom Marjorie calls “My Old Lady” (265), welcomes her and sees Marjorie wince as she removes her backpack. Marjorie thinks about how she has hidden pain from her father and grandmother, whose own scars are visible. They travel back to Akua’s beach bungalow, which was built by Marjorie’s parents some years back while she stayed at home in Alabama with a friend. She asks to go to the water in English. Akua knocks her on the back of her head, saying “Speak Twi,” and Marjorie apologizes, remembering how her parents demand the opposite in Huntsville, Alabama, where they live. Her father was livid when a teacher sent Marjorie home with a note asking if she needed special classes because she never spoke in class.