Changes

by Ama Ata Aidoo

  Esi nearly turned back when it occurred to her that Opokuya might not be in after all. She always worked on New Year’s Eve and other times like that, she remembered. And one thing Esi was quite clear of was that she did not feel like meeting Kubi when Opokuya was away. He had always given her an uncomfortable feeling which she had not tried too hard to analyse. Could it be love/hate? But then why? She had noticed that since she had become All’s second wife he had been even chillier with her. And that whole trouble the previous year had not helped matters at all. On the other hand Esi felt that if Kubi was just keeping a candle burning for Oko, then it was a bit silly. After all he, Kubi, should know that Oko was a full-grown man who should be capable of taking care of his own problems.

  But she continued driving towards the Dakwas’. In a short while she was turning into their drive, and one of the kids had seen her. So by the time she had parked, the whole clan was out there exclaiming. And Opokuya was there after all. Esi got out of the car and the two of them went through their usual exuberant greetings, their questions and answers sliding over one another like eels in a water tank. Then Opokuya was virtually hustling Esi towards the kitchen. Esi caught sight of Kubi as they entered the courtyard, and they waved genially at one another. Of course the friends had lots to talk about, but first the recriminations. Why hadn’t this one looked that one up and all that … ? Explanations. Excuses. Confessions. As usual, they quickly forgave one another and exchanged New Year greetings. Esi wanted to know how come Opokuya was off duty. What new miracles had occurred? But Opokuya hardly heard her. She was just waiting to hear about the car.

  ‘Esi, and this car … Oh it is beautiful ... It looks completely new. It is, isn’t it? Is it yours? When did you get it? ...’

  ‘One at a time, my sister.’ Esi admonished.

  ‘But tell me something quickly,’ Opokuya pleaded, as if her very life depended on what Esi told her about the new car.

  ‘It is a New Year’s present from Ali.’

  ‘W-h-a-a-a-t?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Opokuya opened her mouth. No sound came out. She shut it again. For some time she kept doing that: opening and shutting her mouth. Then it was Esi’s turn to be surprised. In all the years of their friendship, she had never ever seen any piece of information or indeed anything at all kick and crush her friend in that way … And did she think of ‘kick’? And ‘crush’? In any case, why should her getting a new car from Ali have that effect on Opokuya, who now stood, a little pathetic, as she opened and shut her mouth like fish out of a drag-net, desperately hopping around for water on a hot beach? It looked a bit funny too.

  But how could Esi laugh? Plainly, Opokuya didn’t know how to handle the information or all the unexpected and conflicting emotions it had aroused in her. On one hand, she was really happy for Esi. But she was also feeling envious: very envious. And that was quite new to her nature. She was wondering how any one person could be so lucky. And in any case, where was her luck? What was it she had got out of life and out of marriage? Answer: a very faithful husband. Four fine children. Endless drudgery at work. And the state, who was her employer, paying salaries so low you were convinced the aim was to get people like her to resign and go to work for doctors in private practice. Now look at her, and look at Esi …

  Eventually, Opokuya asked Esi what she planned to do with her old car. Esi told her the truth: that she had not thought about it. ‘Sell it to me,’ said Opokuya. It was a plea that seemed to have come from so deep in her being, it had almost sounded like a prayer.

  Esi was completely taken aback. Sell that useless thing to Opokuya of all people?

  ‘Opoku, it is scrap!’

  ‘Well, sell it to me as scrap.’

  Esi looked at her friend as if Opokuya was someone she was meeting for the first time ever.

  ‘Opoku, if you really want that car, you can have it for free,’ she surrendered. But Opokuya was not having any of that. Before Esi left Sweet Breezes Hill, they had agreed on a price that was reasonable enough for Opokuya to have the car for next to nothing and still maintain her dignity.

  It was late afternoon when Esi finally drove down the hill to return to her place on the other side of town. Clearly, she had not lost any of the dread which had haunted her earlier at the thought of entering her bungalow. Although she had not consciously set out to go and talk to Opokuya, now she was thinking that she should have tried to. How could she have wasted all that opportunity? She felt like whipping herself. Yet she could recall quite clearly how at the time it had seemed as if it was Opokuya who was in need of friendly attention. Besides, how could she have communicated her doubts about the man who had given such a tremendous gift to a friend who had so nakedly envied the gift? Esi was convinced that at some point she had even heard Opokuya murmur that if this was the stuff of which being second wives was made, then her whole life, not just her ideas, needed reviewing! Of course, in her own great way, Opokuya had made it all sound like a joke. Except that over the years it had become quite apparent that it was not only Opokuya who had got to know Esi; Esi too had come to know Opokuya. And one thing she had come to know about her friend was that all that cheerfulness sometimes carried great anxieties; personal and not so personal. Now Esi was quite certain that some of the personal anxieties had almost surfaced that afternoon. There had been a desperation in Opokuya’s voice when they were discussing Esi’s old car, which was overwhelming and which Esi would not have believed Opokuya capable of, if she had not heard it herself. But she had heard it: at exactly the point where Opokuya had feared that Esi would not sell her the car precisely because it was old, full of troubles and the sort of thing you did not sell to your worst enemy or a good friend — because an enemy would take it that you knowingly cheated, and a good friend would feel deliberately betrayed. No, you sold cars like that either to total strangers you were never likely to meet again, ever, in your life, or to Kokompe engineers for cannibalisation. To think Opokuya was the one who would drive the car made Esi feel very, very uncomfortable …

  Well, the least she could do would be to hand the car over to her favourite ‘engineers’ even before she had taken a pesewa from Opoku. They would work thoroughly on it; reorganising it completely with spare parts manufactured by themselves. It might take about six months, but that would cut the total cost by about two thirds. And she knew that when they said they had finished, it would have the possibility of at least another year’s trouble-free driving to it. These were proposals the mechanics had made to her a long time ago. But she had not been able to take advantage of it because she could not see how she could have done without the car for that long …

  Esi continued sitting in the new car outside her own gate while the night built itself up around her. She was having arguments with Ali, with Opokuya and her own self — about Ali, about the two cars and above all about All’s new secretary.

  So what of it if Ali occasionally dropped his secretary home?

  But it was not ‘occasional’. It sounded like every day.

  So what of that?

  But I don’t want him to!

  Why not?

  It hurts.

  Does it?

  Terribly!

  Well, just remember that if a man can have two wives … Then he can have three wives … four wives…

  And on and on and on … Plus, remember …

  Esi did not want to remember anything. She got out of the car, opened the gate, entered the compound and parked it for the night. Soon she was getting ready for bed, composing her thoughts for another working week and for a brand new year.

  22

  Things did not improve. In the first few weeks of the new year, it could be seen that Ali was trying. He made his visits to Esi’s more regular, and stayed as long as he could, whenever he was around. It was almost like before they got married. But he really could not keep it up. Too soon, things returned to the pattern of the very recent past.

  Ali phoned regularly to announce his immi
nent departures. He phoned from the different cities and towns inside and outside the country to which he travelled. He phoned to report his arrivals. In between his travels, he phoned regularly when the telephone lines permitted. He and Esi always had good telephone conversations.

  He also sent gifts. And what gifts! He brought her gold bangles from the Gulf States and succulent dates from Algeria (or was it Tunisia?). He brought her huge slabs of chocolates from Switzerland, and gleaming copper things from Zambia and Zimbabwe. He brought her shimmering silk from the People’s Republic of China, the Koreas and Thailand. Indeed, he virtually made a collector of the world’s textiles out of Esi as her wardrobe literally overflowed with different types and colours. From West Africa itself she got gorgeous adires from Nigeria, as well as other fabrics from Mali, Sierra Leone and the Gambia. These were all various shades of blue extracted from the wild indigo plant and either put on comfortably coarse traditional weave, or on imported fabrics of programmed softness and perfected sheen. From the Soviet Union, Ali brought Esi some very special amber-inlaid wrought iron jewellery as well as the cutest matroshkas for Ogyaanowa. Then, since he seemed to have made it a policy to bother with only Japanese electronics, he brought her from other technologically advanced environments, their ethnic goods and local crafts. Or if they were manufactured goods, then they would be peculiar to the place and unrivalled anywhere else in the world: household linen and native American jewellery from the United States, beer mugs from Bavaria. Through the gifts, Esi saw the entire world from her little bungalow. What she did not seem to see much of was the skin of the man behind the phone calls and the gifts. The explosion occurred somewhere towards the end of their third year of marriage. Esi decided she was just fed up. For weeks she had not seen Ali. So one day when the gate had been open and she had heard a car drive up, she peeped at it through the curtains. It was early afternoon of a weekday and she had just come in from work herself. She was only dressed in a single piece of wrapper. When she realised it was Ali, she didn’t bother to go and change. She just met him at the front door with, ‘Ali, I can’t go on like this.’

  With one hand clutching some parcels and his briefcase, he tried to grab her for an embrace with the other hand, even before he had entered the sitting room completely. But Esi would not let him. And since he was carrying too many things and one hand was completely occupied, she could easily wriggle free.

  ‘I said I can’t go on like this,’ she repeated. Ali seemed to have heard her this time. He dumped everything in a nearby chair and moved towards her. But Esi quickly moved back and kept walking backwards and away from him like a child who had done wrong and earned a whipping. Or rather, as if Ali carried some dangerous contamination and had to be kept as far off as possible. Ali noticed it all and stopped in his tracks, hurt.

  ‘Esi, you say you can’t go on like what?’

  ‘Like ... this,’ she said shrugging her bare shoulders. Almost as if her condition of being scantily dressed and barefooted early on a tropical evening was a symbol of the condition of their marriage, and therefore his fault. ‘This is no marriage.’

  ‘What would you consider to be a marriage?’ He asked, his voice full of genuine puzzlement.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replied. And she was being genuine too. ‘But if this is it, then I’m not having any of it,’ she added with such chilling finality that for a little while, Ali really did not know what to say. Then he turned, went back to the chair and picked up only his briefcase and turned to leave.

  ‘If that’s how you see it, then I’m going

  ‘Home!’ Esi finished the sentence for him with something of a flourish, like a victory declaration. ‘Well, just go “home” to your wife and children and leave me alone,’ she told him, more quietly.

  Ali was clearly confused. For a moment or two he shuffled on the same spot; then he opened the front door and went out. He must have gone straight into his car and turned on the ignition. Soon Esi heard the car move away. She collapsed into a chair, her eyes shining while a headache began to work its way up from the back of her neck.

  About three months later, Esi phoned Opokuya at the hospital. Opokuya noticed immediately that her friend’s voice sounded extremely tired. This was a new Esi she was teaching herself to get used to. The first time Esi told Opokuya about the break up, she could hardly speak for the suppressed tears and sniffling. Opokuya had already learned that Esi and Ali were through, that the marriage was ‘comoi, kaput, finished, kabisa.’ Opokuya had not been at all surprised. But she had pretended that she was. If you don’t tell such truths easily to yourself, then how can you tell them to your best friend? So calling up her composure and good sense, she told Esi that she was terribly shocked by the news.

  ‘Are you sure of what you are telling me?’ she breathed into the phone. ‘What has happened? … When did it happen?’

  Meanwhile, Esi was laughing hysterically.

  ‘Opokuya my sister, just tell me that you told me so!’ she screamed.

  Opokuya could only do the best a phone would permit. She begged Esi not to distress herself. Because everything would work out in the end. At this, Esi laughed harder. Eventually, Opokuya promised to go over and see her at the next available opportunity. Esi seemed to be immediately comforted by that. She calmed down and even managed to remember to tell Opokuya that the next time she was at the bungalow, she could drive the car away, because in the course of the year she had got it repaired and repainted, and now it was looking really good. Opokuya was so excited at the news that waiting through the next few days was pure torture.

  Opokuya wanted to come that evening or the next, but something always cropped up at home or at work. So that whenever she was really free, it was always too late and too dark. But today she was determined to see Esi and to take away the car, even if she got there at midnight. She had been on a morning shift, but whoever should have come to relieve her in the afternoon had been so late that she had virtually done the afternoon too. Of course, she had told herself that she was not going to mind. That apart from depriving her of a good break, it suited her fine. When the night shift came, she would go straight to Esi’s.

  But things turned out even better for her. The afternoon person came eventually, very late for work, but quite early for Opokuya’s plans. So she arrived at Esi’s at virtually the same time as Esi had herself just got home from work.

  They went indoors together and had a little chat. Esi made tea for Opokuya and fixed a drink for herself. Or a series of quick drinks. When Opokuya commented on it, Esi flared up asking her what was wrong with one having a drink or two after work. Opokuya was finding it all distressing. But there was nothing she could do to help her friend. She secretly wished Esi would weep or do whatever else would get some of the tension out. But she also knew that her friend was not the weeping kind.

  Eventually, Esi gave the car keys to Opokuya, who was so thrilled that she nearly flew out of the door. But then something occurred to her and she looked sharply at Esi.

  ‘But Esi. .. eh ... don’t you need your old car yourself? I mean isn’t Ali … taking the new one back?’

  Esi understood. ‘No, it’s all right. Ali says the car is mine ... So you just go and enjoy your car!’

  Opokuya released a huge sigh of relief.

  The evening ended up being one of the vary rare times the friends had been together, and yet after a while they did not seem to have much to talk about. This was due to the fact that Esi was still feeling low over her problems with Ali, and Opokuya was too excited at the immediate prospect of having her own car. Which meant that Esi wanted to be alone, and Opokuya was in a hurry to be gone. Finally, Opokuya managed to leave Esi, and get into the car. She drove away. It was dusk, but too early to switch on the car’s headlamps. In any case, for all the clarity of her vision and the confidence of her steering, Opokuya could have been driving on the motorway at high noon.

  Esi stood in the space left by her old car and listened to its engine as it wheeze
d away. She forgot that it was quite late, and she should go and lock the gate. Instead, she turned and went indoors. She shut the front door behind her and made straight for her bedroom and her bed. She sat down. Then to her own surprise, she started to weep. Nothing violent: just two tears rolling quietly down her cheeks.

  23

  All Esi was aware of was desolation. As for her mind, it was completely blank. She did not know what to do and was not sure whether she had to do anything. What made everything bad was that she had been aware that her grandmother and Opokuya had tried very hard to warn her. She had just been a real fool. What was she to do? Where did she go from here? Too tired to do anything else, she continued to sit on the edge of her bed while the tears too continued streaming down her face. After a while, she thought she should get up, go and wash her face and begin to pull herself together. But even that seemed like such a massive operation; as though someone had tasked her to rebuild the world. She continued to sit.

  She probably dozed for about half an hour with the sheer exhaustion of everything. Because when she looked out the window, she couldn’t see anything at all. Night had fallen without her being aware of it. She realised that she was sitting in the dark, and her bedroom was not the only place without lights. There were no lights anywhere in or around the house. She also remembered that she had not shut the gate or locked any of the doors. She told herself that, much as she hated the thought, she should just get up and get ready for the night.

  Then she saw the lights of a car. She had not heard it come in, and wondered who it could be. She got up and started putting lights on; a little action she was to regret, because if she had just stayed where she was, the caller could have concluded that she was not in and gone away. But once she had put the first lights on, she had to continue, and there there was no chance of her pretending that she was not in.