Changes

by Ama Ata Aidoo

  ‘How many mouths does Musa think we have, eh?’ Mma would ask no one in particular. She would then proceed to give several away to her women friends, until one of them, a much more realistic somebody than Mma could ever be, asked whether Mma didn’t think that if she sold some of the nuts, she could find something else, like salt, to buy with the money? That was a hint Mma took.

  So to go and buy kola from someone else, especially when Ali and his father had just arrived from the south the night before, sounded very strange indeed. But then, grown-ups are always strange and unpredictable. Both boys said, Oui, Mma,’ and left the house.

  The boys were right. Mma didn’t need the kola. She just wanted them out of the house for a short while. That was why, in her haste, she had named the first commodity that had come into her head.

  ‘Ah-ah, there are things you don’t discuss with young people listening in. Especially if it’s about their future. Since they never forget, if they overhear you making decisions about them which later turn out to have been unfortunate, they would never forgive you …’

  Mma adjusted her veil and approached the men. To their cries of ‘Where is the food?’ and ‘Where is the tuo?’ she asked them to be patient and wait. She knelt. Another surprise that afternoon. Mma never knelt.

  ‘It’s about Ali.’

  ‘Uh … huh,’ grunted the men.

  ‘Musa, no one is a better father than you. The boy doesn’t miss his mother. Allah be praised.’

  ‘Ei,’ exclaimed both men, ‘what mother are you talking about now? Are you not the boy’s mother?’

  ‘Please forgive my words,’ said Mma, nervously. She realised immediately that she had almost gone too far in her attempt to oil them up for what she was about to say. ‘But the boy is growing. Now he knows enough Arabic to improve on his verses himself with the reading of the Holy Book.’

  ‘Woman, woman, be short,’ her husband, Baba Danjuma, cut in. ‘What is it you want to tell your brother?’ Baba Danjuma was trying to hide his fury that whatever it was, she had not discussed it with him first.

  ‘Musa,’ said Mma, Ί want you to leave Ali with us properly. No more travelling for him. So we can put him into a French school. Please? These days, that is very important. Koranic schools are all right. But

  Musa and Baba Danjuma were already laughing a great deal and calling on Allah to come bless this good woman, their wife and their sister. But that was what they had been discussing all morning! Strange ... Allah is great. They had thought they would tell her what they had agreed about Ali after she had fed them. Since, may Allah protect us all, if she did not hurry with the food, she might have two corpses to deal with … Ah no, there was no problem. Of course, Ali would go to the French school.

  Mma Danjuma was very surprised, and relieved. She had nothing more to say. There was just no need. She rose up.

  ‘Ah... yah,’ she said, ‘I shall bring the food now.’ She went back to the kitchen.

  A little while later, when she took the steaming bowls in herself, Baba Danjuma thought there was something odd about it.

  ‘Where are the boys?’ he asked.

  ‘I sent them to Abdoulayi,’ she replied. Why explain further?

  Oh … oh, both men murmured. They too were quite anxious to eat, they didn’t feel like probing. Since they had already done their ablutions, they immediately attacked their food.

  As Mma turned to return to the kitchen there was a smile on her face. Ah men, how easy that was! Had they really discussed sending Ali to the French school? Or had they just agreed quickly so that she, a woman, wouldn’t have the credit of being the ore to have brought out a good idea? Or was it just because they were anxious to eat? Mma knew she would never know the answer to that one. But what did it matter as long as they did not stand in her way and ruin her plans to get the boy properly educated? They are men. They must have their little self-deceptions.

  In time, Ali went to the junior French school, and later, the lycée. Much later he continued to Ghana and went to a teacher training college, where he met Fusena his wife. Later still he gave up teaching and got himself to England, where he acquired both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Sociology and Economics.

  When Ali was in an English-speaking environment, people found his language ‘quaint’ with its French accent and philosophical turn to everyday phrases. When he was in a Francophone environment, people thought his language enchantingly ‘simple, comme les Anglais!’

  5

  Sunset over the Gulf of Guinea is something very special — any evening.

  ‘Sister, the sea has melted,’ said the seven-year-old Kweku to his aunt, as he gazed at the ocean under one such glory.

  Driving towards the Hotel Twentieth Century, Esi was completely overwhelmed by the vision of so much gold, golden red and red filtering through the branches of the coconut palms. Although she herself had been born not that far from the sea, even she wondered, as she later looked for parking outside the hotel, how people who had such scenes at their backyards felt on a daily basis. Then, ashamed of herself for automatically applying a research approach, she told the sociologist in her to shut up.

  The beach was only a couple of kilometres to the right of the hotel, and the fishermen who were busy packing up their boats down there might have been amused if they had heard her thoughts. For at that time, what they were wondering was whether the government would fulfil its promise to help them get motorised boats and better nets, and when the Minister of Power would stop increasing the price of kerosene; and that night out at sea, would it be warm? For definitely, a chillier wind than they were used to was blowing through their lives.

  Having located a good place, Esi parked expertly, jumped out of the car, locked it, and strode towards the reception desk of the hotel, her shoes beating out the determination in her mind.

  ‘Yes, Madam? Good evening, can I help you?’ All that from one of the two men manning the place, said very hurriedly, almost as if he was afraid to pause in case Esi interrupted him before he had finished his standard greeting. She did not interrupt him. But once she was sure he had finished his recitation she asked him if a foreign friend who should be in for a conference had arrived.

  Oh, yes,’ the receptionist cut in, quite affably though. ‘You were here about the same time yesterday to ask for her?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Esi agreed, a little surprised that he could recall so instantly and so accurately.

  ‘Just a minute,’ said the man and with that he turned aside, picked up a clipboard that held some sheets and quickly read what was on the sheets. Then he looked up.

  ‘There are three new arrivals for that workshop. What is the name of your friend?’

  ‘Wambui Wanjiku,’ her voice registering an anticipated disappointment, ‘she is coming from Kenya.’ The man looked at his sheet again, although he already knew the name was not on it. Then he looked up. ‘No, she has not arrived yet.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Esi turned around. She paused for a while and moved a step or two, towards the entrance. But she changed her mind about going back out. It was clear that she was uncertain as to what to do next. She could go and sit down to have a beer. But she knew this was not really done. A woman alone in a hotel lobby drinking alcohol? It would definitely be misunderstood. Then she told herself that she was tired of all the continual misunderstandings. She was tired after a long day in the office, she was disappointed that her friend was obviously not going to show up for her workshop, and she was going to have her beer: misunderstanding or not. By this time, she was already sitting by a table.

  ‘Esi!’ a voiced called out above the steady hum of voices. It was deep and feminine.

  ‘Opokuya!’ Esi screamed back, even before looking for the direction from which the voice had come. They were hugging.

  They had missed each other, those two friends. They always did even when they were away from one another for only a few days. And
this time they had not been in touch for weeks. Besides, until recently they had lived in different parts of the country for several years. But then they were aware that as two women, each of whom had a demanding career, a husband, a child for one and four children for the other, there was a limit to how much time they could spend together. In any case, what was between them was so firm, so deeply rooted, it didn’t demand any forced or even conscious tending. Each of them had realised over the years that perhaps they had managed to stay so close because they made so few demands of one another. Especially in terms of time to idle and gossip. However, whenever it had become necessary to be in daily communication they had done that too, without either of them fussing.

  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 ‘ass
ault’, 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.