Changes (6 page)

In the lobby other voices bubbled as though in a boiling cauldron, mixing with the clinking of glasses, the steps of men and women coming in and going out, some popular music that intruded subtly from one of the hotel's bars: high life, Afro, rock, Afro beat … funk, whatever. In the distance, and from a neo-colonial African city that had barely managed to drag itself through one more weekday, the tired traffic hummed and crawled itself home for the barest of evening meals and a humid tropical night.

Esi and Opokuya talked excitedly, each asking questions of the other and not having time to pause to answer the other's. At the beginning of that chance meeting they were both too pleasantly surprised for the difference in their voice timbres to be noticeable. However, as they settled down, it became clear that Esi's voice was quick and thin — ‘silvery' to those who liked her, ‘shrill' to those who didn't. Opokuya's voice was slow, low, and a little husky.

               
Hi, how are you? I am well, and you? How are you? Can't complain. How are the children? They are fine. And those in boarding, have you seen them lately, and how are they? And our little daughter, how is she? Oh, she is fine. You have been hiding! No, it's you who've been hiding …

And they went on and on until, tired with the sheer exuberance of their meeting, Esi remembered she had sat down to have a drink just before Opokuya came. When she asked Opokuya whether she could join her at her table, Opokuya said, ‘Sure,' and they moved to Esi's table. And the questions and exclamations resumed. Esi wanted to know about Kubi. Was he all right? Opokuya assured her that he was, but then he didn't like Accra or any city much, and so had been complaining endlessly since they got transferred. A note of wistfulness had crept into Opokuya's voice which had not escaped Esi.

‘And you?'

Oh, I am all right,' Opokuya answered quickly.

Almost compelled to console her friend, Esi said she didn't blame Kubi for not caring for ‘these urban areas'.

Rather startled by the declaration, Opokuya looked quickly at her friend, ‘You know I love cities,' she said pointedly. At that, Esi just laughed.

‘This is Opokuya all over again. How can anyone like any of these
cities and not feel ashamed to confess it to even a good friend?'

They spent some time ordering things to drink and updating one another on their lives. Esi had a beer and Opokuya had tea. Esi had wanted to stand Opokuya ‘a proper drink'. But Opokuya would not hear of it. She insisted that alcohol relaxed her so much that if she took so much as a sip of anything alcoholic, the first thing she would want to do even that early in the evening would be to look for her bed.

‘So what?'

Opokuya was shocked.

‘But Esi, that would not do at all,' she protested. How could she, Opokuya Dakwa, sleep anytime she felt like it? With a fully grown man, a young growing woman and three growing boisterous boys to feed?

‘But you have got some house help, no?' Esi said at one point, in an obvious attempt to convince her friend that she had been listening. But she knew she was not concentrating much.

‘Yes,' Opokuya tried to answer, taking the bait, ‘in spite of that though, the children and their father refuse to organise even their already-cooked supper when I'm around... You'd think that with me being away on duty at such odd hours they would have taught themselves some self-reliance. But no. When I'm home, they try to squeeze me dry to make up for all the times they have to do without me.'

Esi laughed again, watching her plump, smooth-skinned, shining-haired friend, and thinking that if that's how people who are squeezed dry normally look, then long live the ‘dry-squeeze'.

After a while, both women sighed, declared it was hard all around. But then when Esi suggested that she thought that at least Opokuya should find life a little worthwhile, Opokuya glared at her and demanded why Esi thought so.

‘At least, you have got a full life. You have been able to keep your marriage, look at your four wonderful kids.'

‘Yes, and my job,' Opokuya added cynically. ‘Well, see how ragged I have become in the process of having “a full life”.'

‘You vain creature! In fact, you look very well and prosperous.' Esi was laughing again, and scolding her friend at the same time.

Presently Opokuya startled Esi with a declaration that she thought Esi was sad. Esi pretended to be puzzled.

‘Sad?'

Opokuya conceded that maybe ‘sad' was not exactly how Esi's mood could be described but she, Opokuya, was convinced that something was wrong. She knew her friend. There had been a persistent light-heartedness about Esi throughout the years they were growing up: a certain what people described as ‘I don't careism' which was also part of her particular charm. Therefore, any diminishing of that spirit got immediately noticed by anyone who knew her well enough. In the meantime, she herself was thinking that it was just like Opokuya to have caught her out so quickly. The fact was that she could not remember feeling so low in a very long time. The last few months had been too ‘negatively eventful', as one of her colleagues would say and then go right on to add that:

               
One thing Ghanaians are good at is simply turning

               
English down on its head!'

A waiter brought them their orders, and while Esi swallowed large gulps of her beer, Opokuya took rapid sips of her tea, almost as if she was afraid that leaving it standing for a second would cool it beyond rescue.

‘You and your hot tea,' Esi teased her kindly.

‘Well, you know what my life is. How would I cope without tea, eh?'

‘You, Opokuya, cope?' Esi thought she hadn't ever heard anything so ridiculous before. ‘You know you would cope in any situation, tea or no tea.'

‘I'll ignore that. Maybe in the eyes of a loyal friend I look “prosperous”,' she added a little bitterly. Esi opened her mouth to say something. Opokuya stopped her and just went on to remind her that, ‘The days when being fat was a sign of prosperity and contentment are long over. You and I know that these days the only fat people in the world are poor uneducated women in the so-called Third World and unhappy sex-starved women in the more affluent societies who are supposed to eat for consolation.'

By the time Opokuya had finished her speech, Esi was laughing so much her eyes were swimming in unshed tears.

‘But, Esi, why did you say that at least I've kept my marriage? What's wrong with yours?'

The question was unexpected but should not have been. Esi paused for the minutest moment, then she said rather quietly, Opokuya, I have left Oko.'

It was like the booming of a cannon into the evening.

‘Esi, what do you mean?'

‘Just that. I have left him.'

Absolutely unsure of how to handle the moment, Opokuya seized on the banal: ‘How can you leave him? After all, he has been living with you in your bungalow.'

‘Opokuya, don't be funny. You know that leaving a man does not always mean that it's the woman who has to get out of the house.'

‘I don't know anything. So how did you leave Oko?'

Esi was surprised by how much had happened in the month or so since that Monday when, following their latest argument, Oko had jumped on her. She decided to feel assaulted and from then on, her mind had seized on the ‘assault', and held it. Part of its fascination for her was its legal usefulness. She was clever enough to know, if only subconsciously at that stage, that it could come in handy should she ever decide to apply for a proper divorce. Meanwhile, from the evening of that same day, Oko had done all he could to get her to see that, in fact, he had jumped on her' because he loved her and that it had been part of his decision to give the relationship a second chance. Esi had not only refused to be convinced, but had in fact got angrier and angrier the harder he had tried to explain. In any case, she had not thought it necessary in the days that followed to change the decision to leave him. Of course, she was aware that although the incident was not the only cause of her disaffection, it had helped her to make up her mind.

‘Esi, I'm so sorry,' Opokuya cut into Esi's thoughts.

‘Why? Opoku, that marriage was not working

‘Esi, I'm so sorry ... so sorry.'

They were quiet for a while, then they started to ask about one another's children. Esi wanted to know where Opokuya's children were in school and what they were doing. And Opokuya wanted to know about Ogyaanowa. According to both mothers, all the children were fine, and Ogyaanowa was at Oko's mother's.

‘Permanently?'

‘Oh no, only until the end of August. Then she'll come back to me for the re-opening of school.'

‘How old is she?'

‘Six. She is in Primary One this year.'

‘Already? But of course, she was born about the time I had my last born, no?'

‘Yes.'

‘Time does fly.'

‘It does.'

The sadness that had descended on them was not proving easy to get rid of. They even went back to what they should have tried to find out from one another when they first met at the hotel: what they were doing here at the Hotel Twentieth Century. Esi told Opokuya about the friend she was supposed to be meeting from abroad, and Opokuya told Esi about the arrangement for Kubi to collect her from the hotel.

‘So you and your husband have taken to dropping into the Twentieth Century for drinks?' Esi made a great attempt to tease Opokuya.

Opokuya went on to tell Esi about the trip she was planning to her mother's.

‘Homesick?' Esi asked, trying hard to keep her teasing tone.

‘Yes.' Opokuya answered, too enthusiastically, and fell into Esi's trap.

‘Oh Opoku, shame on you. At your age!'

‘Now you stop it. I miss my mother. You know I haven't seen her for a long time.'

‘I didn't know.'

‘And I miss the feeling of being special with someone.'

‘You are very special with Kubi.'

‘Esi, you were very special with Oko.'

Esi did not know how to answer that. In the silence that followed, each woman was thinking that clearly the best husband always seems to be the one some other woman is living with! The sadness returned, heavier than before.

One reason why Esi was almost tongue-tied was that she was too aware that Opokuya was her last hope of gaining understanding or at least some sympathy for her point of view. So far, nobody to whom she had tried to state her case had been remotely sympathetic. Like her mother and her grandmother. She had driven home one Sunday morning to discuss the whole business with them. They had found it very hard to listen to her at all. Although they had tried. When Nana's patience had been stretched beyond endurance, she had asked Esi to tell her truthfully whether the problem was that her husband beat her.

‘No, Nana.'

‘So, does your husband smell? His body? His mouth?'

Esi couldn't help laughing. ‘No, Nana. In fact, for a man, he is very
clean, very orderly.'

‘So then … Listen, does he deny you money, expecting you to use your earnings to keep the house, feed him and clothe him too?'

‘Nana, we are not rich. But money is not a big problem.'

‘What is the problem?' both her grandmother and her mother really screamed this time: the former with her walking stick raised as though to strike her, and the latter bursting into tears.

Esi had to tell the truth. Her husband wanted too much of her and her time. No, it was not another woman. In fact, she thought she might have welcomed that even more.

‘Are you mad?' The older women looked at Esi and she looked at them. How could she tell them she did not want Oko? Where was she going to get a man like him again? At the end of the discussion, her grandmother had told her the matter sounded too much for her ears: she didn't want to hear any more of it. At least not for some time. The declaration was accompanied by a proper palm-rubbing gesture. Finally, as Esi got into her car to drive back to Accra, and almost for a farewell, her mother had called her a fool. She had driven to Accra feeling like one.

As for Oko's people, there never was a question of Esi talking to them. She was convinced they hated her. She knew that for some time his aunts had been trying to get him a woman, ‘a proper wife'. What had discouraged them was his lack of enthusiasm and the fact that they suspected Esi didn't care one way or another. The purpose of the project had been two-fold: to get him to make more children, ‘because his lady-wife appeared to be very satisfied with only one child,

               
a terrible mistake, a dangerous situation.'

They also wanted to hurt Esi: very badly, if they could. And if she didn't care one way or another, then there was no point to it, was there? As far as Esi was concerned, his sisters were no better. They used to come and insinuate that their brother was failing in his duties to the family because she had turned his head — with ‘something'.