Changes

by Ama Ata Aidoo

  She turned off the ignition, rolled up the car’s windows, got out and went back into the house. By now she could not believe the mess she was in. She tried to sit and think things through, but she was getting nowhere at all. She finally decided to have a drink, a fairly strong one, and slept the rest of the day through.

  By New Year’s Eve, Esi had decided that she needed some tranquillisers for her nerves. Like any member of the late- twentieth-century African and other world female elite and neoélite, she had always known of tranquillisers. At least since she was at the university. After all, you were supposed to become aware from your first year on campus that just about everything in this life ruined nerves:

  telephone calls that never came;

  cosy weekends that never materialised;

  knowing your best friend wanted your boyfriend instead of the one she was going out with;

  knowing your best friend’s date was so much smarter than the inarticulate somebody who was dating you;

  not knowing how to handle male-chauvinist lecturers who didn’t even make the effort to read your essays properly because you were a woman;

  wanting to be a nuclear physicist but everyone telling you it’s much safer to go into teaching because, you know, isn’t that too much for a woman? … and wouldn’t that be too exotic anyway for Africa?

  Esi had never taken any tranquillisers because she also belonged to the group around the world who were convinced that taking any such thing was a sign of weakness. But now, as she trudged through the twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth and thirtieth of December, she also became convinced that she had coped all she could with the muddle that her life had become. She could not cope any more. So before the second set of holidays caught her, she went to see a doctor friend for a prescription.

  The doctor was surprised, since he was no stranger to the belief held in their circles that Esi Sekyi was ‘a real tough bird’. But then he too had been practising medicine long enough not to be surprised any more about human beings: their minds or their bodies. To his questions, she answered simply that she couldn’t cope with work and her private life. He had got an idea of what had sent even this toughest of birds to him — from the free bag of rumours that circulated around Accra — but he still tried not to probe her for the details. After all, he was not exactly into psychoanalysis. Esi, too, offered nothing. So he gave her a routine and good-natured lecture about the need to guard against addiction, and prescribed her some diazepam.

  Having carried the tablets home, Esi realised that she needed courage actually to start taking them. That first night she didn’t take any. She went to bed early with a novel which she soon discarded. She tried to listen to the radio and failed. The songs sounded juvenile, and the news gossipy. She could not gather enough energy to play her own music either. Eventually she lay on her back, sweating and wide-eyed. At about three o’clock she drifted off into an uneasy sleep.

  The next day was of course the thirty-first and the last day and night of the old year. It was also a Thursday which meant that the first day of the new year which was a holiday would be a Friday. She could see the weekend stretching ahead like the Yendi-Tamale road when it was first constructed: straight, flat and endless.

  At about nine in the evening, and absolutely convinced it was a bad omen for the coming year, she took the prescribed milligrammes. After some initial restlessness she fell asleep.

  She slept through the midnight and early morning racket that normally sent off the old year and ushered in the new — the ships’ sirens booming in from Tema harbour; the bells of the different Christian churches ringing to the accompaniment of penny crackers cracking; and the earliest of the various tin-drum mendicants already out on the streets, their raucous discords mixing with the singing of serious choral groups. She never heard a thing. She slept through them all: especially since she had bolted her gate the previous afternoon. This meant that even if she had not slept a drugged sleep she would only have heard the singers as the groups paused briefly outside her gate and moved on.

  It was a persistent car horn which woke her up. She jumped out of bed and snatched up her housecoat to put it on and rush out. But as the horn blew again it occurred to her that whoever was driving the car had already assumed that she was in, and was therefore going to keep on blowing the horn until she appeared. So she decided that she might as well take a minute to look decent. She felt like stretching. She stretched. Then she rushed to the bathroom, cleaned her mouth, washed her face and looked at it in a mirror. It looked okay but peculiarly puffy. She put on the housecoat and glanced at the clock on the wall in the sitting-room. It read some minutes after seven. She was alarmed. Slept for ten straight hours? This needs thinking about, she thought briefly. Then she was wondering who it could be at the gate as the horn blew yet again. She went to the front door and quickened her pace to get to the gate. The car did not look familiar at all. No, she had never seen it before … Then Ali jumped out of it.

  Esi screamed, ‘Ali!’ and was now fully awake — that is, if she had not been before. But then she went straight into another form of stupefaction as she stood staring from one side of the gate, Ali on the other, the key to the gate dangling in her hand.

  The car was brand new. It had a maroon exterior and a plushlooking interior. It also appeared quite small and very expensive. As for Ali, there he was, looking so handsome and smiling like a little boy who knew he had done something so fantastic that congratulations from expected quarters were going to take place in some particularly affectionate form. He was not just expecting it. He knew he would get it.

  ‘Ali,’ Esi said again and now she herself was not sure whether the exclamation was meant as an acknowledgment of the sight of him or the car or both. Ali climbed back into the driver’s seat and asked if he could enter the gate. She woke up from her stupor, opened the gate and stood aside for him and his car to pass. Then she shut the gate again and followed him in. Meanwhile, Ali had already parked by Esi’s car. Beside the brand new and rather posh one Ali had just brought, the old car suddenly looked weatherbeaten, shrunken and forlorn. It was almost like a tired human reaction to vigorous unfair competition.

  Ali jumped out of the car again and met Esi for a greeting hug. Funnily enough, all the plans she had made over the last several days of how she was going to receive him when — if ever — they met again seemed to have simply vanished. Oh, she was going to be noticeably cold. She was also going to ask him what he wanted at her place, and order him to turn back immediately and leave her premises. The plans were many, but one way or another she was going to get him to see that she was not only fed up but for her, the relationship was finished. But now here she was feeling so relaxed from having slept so well. So that although she knew there was nothing positively wild in how she was feeling about him, there was nothing negatively wild in it either. Definitely, she had no urge to run and scratch his face. Maybe if she had done, or shown her anger in any of the other ways she had planned, Ali would have felt better. As it was, Ali noticed her quiet reserve, and his heart sank.

  ‘Happy New Year, my dear,’ he said as he kissed her on the mouth. She did not reject the kiss. When her mouth was free, she said.

  ‘Happy New Year to you too, and what a lovely car!’

  ‘You like it?’

  ‘Of course. Who wouldn’t?’

  ‘I am glad,’ he sighed with obvious relief. ‘Because it’s yours.’

  ‘W-h-a-a-t?’

  ‘Of course. Whose did you think it was?’

  ‘But … but …’

  ‘But nothing. This is your car, and here are the keys/

  Esi was aghast. ‘How can you give it to me?’ she protested.

  ‘Why not? It’s your New Year present.’

  ‘But it is too much!’

  ‘Is it? Well, I don’t think so.’

  Then Esi was touching the car, opening its doors, examining the upholstery, the dashboard, its space-age headlamps. She obviously couldn’t beli
eve her eyes or him.

  They were both quiet for a little while, and then she faced him fully: ‘But what will your wife say?’ she asked.

  ‘Please Esi, don’t make me angry,’ he said it very quietly, and Esi knew he was already angry.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what?’

  She had stopped examining the car completely, her eyes on his face.

  ‘I know I’ve got some explaining to do. But please, let’s not fight. It’s New Year’s Day.’

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’ Esi countered, as if her surprise that it should be New Year’s Day was genuine. She could not understand herself and her lack of excitement. A brand new car? Considering the state her old car was in? Considering that new cars had completely disappeared from the streets of the city? And vanished from the roads of the country? Couldn’t she whip up just a little enthusiasm at such an incredible present?

  Esi tried, but she could not experience any joy. Surprise, yes. Amazement even. Then she secretly admitted that she had known even before Ali actually said the words — that he had brought the car for her, and she had understood the gesture as a bribe. A very special bribe. But a bribe all the same — like all the other things he had been giving her. They were all meant to be substitutes for his presence.

  When she looked up, Ali was watching her. She knew he was reading her mind and she felt a little ashamed.

  ‘Ali, I am so sorry,’ she offered as she moved to kiss him. ‘Thank you so much ... It is beautiful … And God knows I need a car, a good car .. . This has taken my speech away ... I don’t know what to say ... I never dreamed I could ever get anything like this …’

  ‘I understand,’ was all he could say. Then, disentangling himself, he went to open the boot of the car and brought out his briefcase. He opened the case and brought out the papers on the car: licence, insurance, road-worthiness and ownership registration. It was all done.

  ‘You mean that all I’ve got to do is get in and drive it?’ Esi was freshly surprised.

  ‘Exactly,’ Ali said. Esi laughed for the first time that New Year morning.

  ‘Hold up your hand,’ Ali commanded and Esi instantly remembered the last time he had commanded her to hold up her hand. Slightly puzzled, Esi held her hand up and Ali dropped the keys into her open palm. ‘You want to try it out?’ he asked her, but Esi thought they should go inside first.

  ‘No, we’ve been standing here since time began and

  ‘Actually yes.’ Ali agreed, without waiting for her to finish.

  ‘So come in. Let’s go sit down and I’ll fix us something to eat and drink first.’ Esi finished.

  They went indoors, and made some toast and a pot of coffee. They ate in silence. The tension had almost gone out of the atmosphere except perhaps for an unspoken understanding that, outside the car, virtually any other conversation topic was potentially explosive.

  ‘How did you know maroon was my favourite colour?’

  ‘Maybe I didn’t. I like seeing you in maroon. It’s a colour I like too. So I chanced it.’

  ‘Oh Ali, thank you. Thank you so much.’

  ‘If you thank me again, I will probably spank you,’ he warned, and they both laughed. It was almost like old times.

  But then two mature people cannot talk about a car forever. After they had eaten, Ali told Esi that he had to leave. Esi had suspected this, and deep down she did not even care. But she also felt that at least because of the car, she had to pretend she didn’t want him to leave. It was show time.

  ‘Must you?’

  ‘Yes, I wish I could stay

  He couldn’t stay. She knew that.

  “Could you give me a lift please, madame?” he pleaded playfully.

  “Yes, of course!” she agreed, almost too quickly.

  She got into the car. She put the key into the ignition and backed out, turned and drove towards the gate. They remembered that he would have to get out to shut the gate. But all that was done in no time. As they faced the open road, Esi looked at him and asked in the even thinner voice of her uncertainties:

  ‘Am I dropping you home?’

  ‘No,’ Ali said evenly. ‘I’m checking in on one of those visitors at the Twentieth Century.’

  ‘On New Year’s Day?’ she asked, and then she could have bitten her tongue.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Ali.

  She could only knead her mouth in despair, as she silently drove them to the Hotel Twentieth Century and parked.

  There was neither pain nor joy when she held out her cheek to be kissed. He kissed her and jumped out of the car. She sat for a while watching his disappearing back, as he bounded up the few steps of the hotel, and vanished into its interior.

  Esi was flabbergasted. Or rather, ‘flabberwhelmed’! Then she laughed softly to herself as she remembered the freakish word. Trust Ghanaians again. They had decided to create out of ‘overwhelmed’ and ‘flabbergasted’, a new word to describe an emotional state which they had decided the English were not capable of experiencing, and therefore had had no expression in their language for …

  Yes, flabberwhelmed. That was what she was feeling as she sat in her excellent new car on New Year’s Day at the hotel’s car park. Obviously, Ali was determined to keep her off his and Fusena’s home. As her heart began to pound rather uncontrollably, she asked herself a question. To wit: in what way was her situation different from what it would have been if she had simply stayed as All’s mistress, in spite of going to see her people in the village, giving her the ring and all?

  The question was out. A shudder ran through her as she began to examine its full implications. And the conclusion came rather swiftly. This was a complete dead end.

  The ancients claim that they know something about the freshly dead. That especially those who perish violently are often compelled by certain forces to visit familiar people and places. When they do, they observe what goes on, but without interest. They cannot be moved because all emotions have to do with living tissues: sensitive skin, muscle and bones; rushing blood and beating hearts. And since spirits are humans who have been mercifully spared of such baggage, they cannot rejoice, they cannot hurt…

  So like a spirit newly released from the body, Esi sat and remembered all the other times in the past that Ali had announced he had to leave her — after a short or a long stay — and how intensely she had hurt each time then.

  ‘I must be running home …’

  ‘I have to go home …’

  ‘I’ll phone from the office before I go home …’

  Til pass by on my way home …’

  And they had both known that he had always meant where he and his wife, Fusena, and their children lived.

  21

  Once she was back outside her gate Esi realised that in fact she was not at all keen to enter the house. She turned back towards town. The city was quiet now. The merrymakers of the early hours of the New Year must have dragged their exhausted bodies one by one home to bed. It felt quite strange driving through an Accra that was quiet at mid-morning, and with hardly any traffic. She and her car were cruising as central an area of the city as Makola. Yet even from that far, she could hear the Gulf of Guinea rumbling: like a deep voiced complaint, computerised and programmed to go on forever.

  Soon she began to get that special feeling of power that a solid car always gives its driver. She could feel her body and her mind losing the little tension they had managed to accumulate from the last couple of hours with Ali, in spite of the drug and the night’s rest. Now she smiled to herself as she thought of what a driving experience this was compared with the struggle her old car had been. She slowed down and began to think. Should she go and show the car to her daughter? She cancelled the idea immediately. Although she was not superstitious, she still couldn’t bear the thought of Oko’s family looking at her lovely car with their customary malevolence. Should she leave the city centre and take one of the major arteries out? Where would she go? For a moment, she thought of driving home to t
he village. But knowing how it always was at home, she thought that would be a stupid risk. No one dashed in there and dashed out again. If you arrived there and left six hours later, that would be considered no visit at all. As they saw you off to your car, everyone would be complaining and no one would mind if you heard them. Meanwhile, it was already close to noon. Even if she made up her mind not to go back home to pick up anything but to drive straight on, the trip in would take an hour and a half, at least. If it was still daylight when she left the village, that would be another hour and a half. So that with the unlikely chance of everything working out perfectly one was still looking at about nine hours from then. And it would already be dark anyway when she set out from the village. And she knew the state the roads were in ... On the other hand, if she was not going to make it a day trip, then she had to go home and pack a few things.

  In the meantime, here she was making her way towards Sweet Breezes Hill. Maybe she wanted to go to Opokuya’s anyway, to see her and wish her and her family a happy New Year? But, of course, also to show her the car? They hadn’t met in a long time, and definitely not once during the holidays. And in any case, it had been like that for some time. Of course, people always made a fuss about leaving newly married people to themselves whenever the circumstances allowed it. Very modern, very educated. Quite untraditional. But apart from that, Esi had suspected for some time that Opokuya was reluctant to come visit her at the bungalow because she really had not managed to deal with ‘this second wife business’ …