Changes

by Ama Ata Aidoo

  That made a lot of sense, and that was her Ali. He always did the most charmingly appropriate things. She didn’t know it then, but the restaurant to which he had taken her after first seeing a film was one of the best in the city. Ali had told her that it was a Chinese place, and what they offered appeared closer to the food at home than any other foreign foods he had tasted in London.

  While they were eating, Fusena asked Ali why he had sent for them just then if he had also finished his studies there.

  ‘To begin with, even if I was going to go back home immediately I would still have liked to have you and Adam here. For a bit of a holiday for you, and maybe some shopping before we all went back together. But I am not going back just yet.’

  ‘Why?’

  So Ali told Fusena that after the coup, he and others on the special scholarship had received letters from The Castle telling them that the new government had decided it would not be needing their services. That they should consider the programme they were on cancelled.

  ‘Ei, the coup, Ali!’

  ‘Ah-hah?’

  Fusena could hardly speak. According to her, the world at home had turned completely crazy. All over the country the programmes that had been initiated by the old regime were being wound up or sold off to private individuals. And very cheaply: as though they were perishable goods at the end of a market day. Her eyes were full of unshed tears. Ali told Fusena to forget all that, and remember they had gone out to celebrate. But by then, it was clear that more than half their appetites had gone.

  Soon after finishing his degree examinations, and even before Fusena arrived, Ali had got a full-time job. And now he began to study part-time for a Master’s in Economics and Business Administration. Fusena on the other hand sat at home in their one- bedroom apartment or did her housework and looked through catalogues.

  When she went out, it was to shop or to window-shop. Then she became pregnant with the second baby. So from then it was being pregnant, nursing the new baby, looking after Adam and Ali, and staring at London’s bleak and wet views.

  That was hard: the rain. Fusena kept asking herself how a daughter of the dry savannas of Africa could have ended up in such a rain-soaked hole.

  And yet you would have thought that with her memory of perpetual drought, anyone would never get tired of waters or rain.

  Not Fusena. She did get tired and very quickly too. In those days, London was still very English and marked by an absence of the technological conveniences that were already being taken for granted in North America and much of Europe. Were there at least neighbourhood laundromats? Fusena could not have answered the question. There was none in her neighbourhood. So for her, London was shopping trolleys loaded with baby food and breakfast cereals; nappies steaming around a gas fire. And other permanently wet laundry which you left out in the rain, because there was no point bringing it in with hopes of taking it out again when the sun came out. The sun never shone. As for Fusena’s mind, it gradually refused to take in anything heavier than the tabloids with their sex-for-sale and other scandals. Except that she was often too busy to read much of even that.

  The rain was not the only problem Fusena had with her life as All’s wife in London. One rainy day, it occurred to her that life should offer more than marriage. That is, if the life she was leading was in fact marriage. To begin with, she was beginning to admit to herself that by marrying Ali, she had exchanged a friend for a husband. She felt the loss implied in this admission keenly, and her grief was great. The first time that this hit her, she actually sat down and wept bitterly. She also knew immediately that there was nothing she could do about her situation. Leaving Ali was not only impossible but would also not be an answer to anything. Because having married her friend and got a husband, there was no chance of her getting back her friend if she left or divorced Ali the husband. She would only have an estranged husband. Nor did it help matters much that in the middle of all her frustrations, she kept telling herself that given the position of women in society, she would rather be married than not, and rather to Ali than anyone else.

  Fusena had stared hard at London and admitted that she had another problem. It was this business of Ali getting more and more educated while she stayed the same. Sometimes she truly felt desperate. For whereas she could console herself that she would leave the wetness of London behind her once they were back home, she knew the other problems would stay with her.

  And they did. At the end of their first week back home in Ghana, Fusena knew she was pregnant with their third child. So their first couple of years back home, she was busy being pregnant, nursing another infant, helping Ali to find somewhere for them to live and making a home. By the end of those two years, she could not even remember how it felt to be in a schoolroom. Clearly, to go back to teaching after those years and what they contained was going to be hard enough even if Ali had not kept telling her that it was not really necessary.

  ‘It is a waste of time,’ he said. ‘The hours are long and the pay is terrible.’ He would earn enough to look after all of them. Which he did. But Fusena’s dissatisfaction did not go away. After all, like nearly all West African women, she had been brought up in a society that had no patience with a woman who did not work. Her husband’s wealth or ability to support her was a matter of only mild importance — just something that could make life easier.

  ‘But, Fusena, teaching is out of the question,’ Ali would insist during the regular discussions they had on the issue. ‘There should be a more lucrative job you could do and still have time to look after the children.’ He bought her a massive kiosk at a strategic site in Accra. They said of it that what Fusena’s kiosk did not sell was not available anywhere in the country. And when she heard they were saying that she made more money from the kiosk than the largest supermarket in town, she only smiled to herself.

  And now here was Ali telling her that he was thinking of making a woman with a university degree his second wife. So Allah, what was she supposed to say? What was she expected to do?

  8

  When Ogyaanowa went to stay with her grandmother at the beginning of the long vacation, the understanding had been that she would return home to Esi and Oko for the re-opening of school. However, as the marriage began to fall apart, Oko’s mother had become just a little nasty about everything. It had seemed to Esi that the older woman was getting ready to use the child as some sort of a weapon to fight her with, and she had secretly sworn not to let that happen. So one day, and much to her mother-in-law’s surprise, she had suggested to her that Ogyaanowa could stay on. ‘The bungalow gets too lonely for her. Here, there would be other children for her to play with. Nearly all her cousins …’

  ‘Please, don’t call them her cousins,’ her mother-in-law had reprimanded.

  ‘But … but Maa,’ Esi had virtually stammered, ‘aren’t they her cousins?’

  ‘You know that in our custom, there is nothing like that. Oko’s sisters’ children are Ogyaanowa’s sisters and brothers. Are we Europeans that we would want to show divisions among kin?’

  Esi had felt completely ashamed. She suspected the older woman was seizing on the issue to put her in her place.

  So Ogyaanowa had continued to stay at her grandmother’s and get completely spoilt. And it was true, there were lots of other people nearer her own age for her to play with. Esi didn’t want to admit that the arrangement suited all parties concerned. But it did. Just like any mother, she found it difficult to accept that her child could be happy in any environment other than the one she had created. However, the truth of the matter was that if Ogyaanowa had been still at the bungalow, she would have felt at least a little funny bringing in Ali so soon after virtually throwing Oko out.

  Guilt is born in the same hour with pleasure,

  like anything in this universe and its enemy.

  Just as earthquakes and floods become landmarks in the history of nations, the morning when Oko jumped on Esi became a landmark in their relationship: referred to
thereafter by both of them as ‘That Morning’. Well, ‘That Morning’ had been the first day of the secondary school holidays which was why he was able to linger in bed.

  It was now about a year since Esi and Opokuya had met at the lobby of the Hotel Twentieth Century, and nearly fourteen months since That Morning. Oko blamed himself for overstaying in bed. He could not stop thinking that perhaps if he had got himself up at his usual early hour he would later have found a better way to show his determination to give their relationship another chance. It was always possible that some alternative existed which would have been more acceptable to Esi, rather than the one he had chosen which had had such unfortunate repercussions.

  Anyway, from That Morning, he had spent a good deal of the long vacation checking up on his new school. After each trip, he had returned with glowing reports. The school was big. The grounds were well kept. Neat. The headmaster’s office was impressive. Ah, a real office of his own to work in ... a lovely bungalow with at least four spacious bedrooms ... It wouldn’t be a bad idea for Esi and Ogyaanowa to get out of the city at the weekend. In fact, as things were working out, with his place and her place, they really had a house in the country and a house in town, no? For two people in public service a rather luxurious prospect, no? Esi had refused to be in any way impressed.

  Gradually his enthusiasm began to die down. Esi had thought he didn’t know her, but he did. Events of That Morning might have outraged her, but it could not be the whole story. She was just using it. This was the point from which he had begun to feel genuinely baffled. To think that your woman is being cold to you because of another man is almost ennobling. Maybe he is throwing money at her. Maybe he is more good-looking than you. Women seem never able to resist shows … But to have to fight with your woman’s career for her attention is not only new in the history of the world, but completely humiliating. In any case, how does one go about it? By the time Oko finally left Esi’s place to take up his new post he was tired and bitter, and it all showed.

  His people had of course learned of what had been going on between him and his wife. One day, one of his mothers and two of his sisters had marched on Esi, demanding what right she thought she had to start him on a new job with such bad luck? They had gone on to call her a semi-barren witch and told her that they thought their son and brother was well rid of her, thank God. Esi had not said a word during the entire performance.

  In the end, even the practicalities of leaving a man who shared her accommodation had not proved too difficult for Esi to overcome. Especially since Oko had been only recently promoted — out of the classroom — to go and head a big secondary school in the mid-central region. She had made it clear to him that when he finally left Accra to go and assume duty in late August, she would not go with him then, and she would not join him later. Quite simple. Or that’s what she had thought. Even then Oko had not really believed that Esi was serious, until she snubbed all his attempts to get her to see how his promotion would add some new advantages, and even glamour to their lives.

  Esi had carried out her determination to leave Oko and even asked for a divorce. This development had so startled him that for a day or two he had almost become disorientated, and had taken to drinking a little more than usual. In fact, he was later aware that what had really saved him was the newest challenge in his life — going to head the school. It demanded so much of him he could not possibly have indulged in too much sorrowing after his collapsed marriage. But not even the new job could stop him from thinking about his broken marriage every now and then. He did, especially in the very late hours of the night, when he could finally leave his office and crawl home to bed. Sleeping alone did not feel right. After all, he hadn’t done that for any consistent period for nearly ten years. But that was nothing compared to the real strangeness of not having the usual reminders of Esi around: the subtle aroma that was the sum total of her clothes, her perfumes, her powders, her body and even her briefcase and scribbling board. It was the absence of that and the sense of loss he suffered in consequence that so often assailed him mercilessly, and cruelly ruined his mornings. However, other aspects of his new job had in-built help for him. Since the school was some distance away from Accra, he was able to deceive himself into thinking that Esi had not left him. That they were only separated until she could start coming out for weekends. And he missed his daughter terribly too. Deep down in the corners of his being, he could not persuade himself to accept that it was all over.

  Then Oko’s mother came and deposited a breathing parcel on his doorstep, in the form of a very beautiful and very young girl. Oko was absolutely certain that he had not met her before. During their first encounter the only feeling he could recognise was extreme surprise — that it was still possible in this day and age to get a young woman in this world who would agree to be carried off as a wife to a man she had never met. He was also aware that he was too flattered to ask his mother to take her back. The young woman looked so soft and so easy, he found himself struggling not to think of her as too stupid to take Esi’s place, even remotely. He soon found himself comparing the two women to beverages, and concluding that if Esi had been liquor this young woman was definitely going to be fruit juice. Being with Esi was being forever drunk. But he was also becoming convinced that she was not good for him. On the other hand, this specimen had brought with her a feeling of natural wholesomeness ... So which ancestor first warned that turning down an offer of kingship does not necessarily mean that anyone is going to think of you when the matter of who to elect as the king’s spokesman comes up? Oko let the girl stay.

  When a letter arrived from a lawyer’s office asking for a divorce for Esi, he was so mad he rushed to Accra. At first he threatened to refuse to divorce her. Then he changed his mind and talked reason. Sure, she could have a divorce if she could invent some grounds for it. He was not going to contest it. He was not even going to hire a lawyer to appear on his behalf in court. When Esi asked him about the girl, he just laughed and didn’t even bother to ask how she knew. What he had asked her was not to be ridiculous. ‘You know perfectly well that if ever you really want to, you can come back to me,’ he said without the slightest trace of irony and cynicism, and left.

  9

  If Ali could not get Esi out of his system, it was not for lack of trying. Growing up from boyhood into a man, he had trained himself never to feel sexually attracted to other men’s women. It was part of what he had absorbed from his environment. Spoken or unspoken, it was understood. No decent man did that sort of thing. And if a man was not decent enough not to do it, then he did not blame anybody if he got what came with such behaviour — including death sometimes. He always remembered his father telling or rather asking him in a discussion when he was only an adolescent: ‘But you see, my son, you know what my life is. How do you think I could have survived all these years moving from place to place, often sleeping in such odd conditions, if I had also chased after other people’s wives?’ Ali could not have given an answer even if one had been expected from him. Anyway, for him, the whole issue had crystallised into a conviction that really there was no need. Why go after other men’s women when the world had enough unattached females for each man to have his own and some left over? And whether it was just an attitude or a philosophy, it had worked until he met Esi.

  After that first encounter in his office, Ali sat down and faced the fact that Mrs Esi Sekyi excited him a great deal. But what could he do about it? So there followed days when he would sit behind his desk at Linga Hide Aways after office hours, pretending he was working. In actual fact he was thinking about Esi. He had started sending her presents. Then he had run into her by chance at the Hotel Twentieth Century. After that, he gave up. He had to seek her out, and he did.

  After the great and endless agony he had gone through deciding whether or not he should contact her, what Ali had not at all been prepared for was to find Esi separated from her husband. As if that was not enough good news, one day he had learned, quite ac
cidentally, that in fact she was divorced. From what she had told him as being the basis of her estrangement, he had thought she was crazy. Or rather, ‘nicely mad’. Which was how he had put it to himself at the time. He had silently thanked Allah and set about wooing her.

  The relationship between them soon became what could have been described as steady. If it had been in the village and within a strictly traditional setting, this was the point where some of her fathers would have marched on Ali to ask him what his intentions were. In the city, it only meant that Ali could take her out: to dinners and such. They always patronised restaurants that were hidden deep in the belly of the city, or far from the city centre along and the arteries that led motorists to other towns and even out of the country. These places had some things in common. They were dimly lit; they provided music for those who desired to dance anytime during the week, and couples could get keys …

  However, Esi and Ali reserved their love-making for the comfort of Esi’s bed. This nearly always followed an outing, as well as any time he came just to be with her. He would shut up Linga Hide Aways at the end of the working day and drive straight to her. They would immediately fall into each other’s arms and hold her welcoming kiss from the front door through the length of the sitting-room, through her bedroom and on to her bed. Then for the next hour or so it was just grunts and groans until, quite exhaused, they fell quiet.

  Since both of them would have had an exhausting day at their work places, they sometimes dozed off. Invariably, it was Ali who slept properly and longest. Esi would get up to go to the bathroom to wash herself and walk around for a while before looking for a cloth to wrap herself in. On days that she was absolutely certain she was not feeling up to a repeat of the love-making, she practically tiptoed around, careful not to wake Ali. For she knew what would happen if he woke up and saw her naked body.