Changes (9 page)

‘Oh, don't say that. Besides, the situation is quite complicated.'

‘How? … There is a wife?'

‘Opoku …'

‘Ah, but you. Did you really think you were lonely? My sister, you don't know. What I was going to say though is that, if you really were lonely, and you wanted to do something about it badly

Esi sighed rather audibly, ‘There is.'

Opokuya heard the sigh, and became immediately concerned, ‘You like him, heh?'

‘Very very much.'

‘I don't blame you. He looks good enough to eat.'

Opokuya suggested it really was time they went home. Esi agreed. Just as she had expected, Opokuya was feeling a little drowsy after the alcohol, and more than a little uneasy about her husband and the fact that she'd been away from her home for so long, and unexpectedly. Besides, both she and Esi were tired from the intensity of the discussion. They beckoned the waiter who had been serving them throughout the evening, and when he came, they asked for their bill. After they had settled that, they picked up their handbags, went out of the hotel lobby and into Esi's car.

In the end, they never managed to leave the hotel together. Opokuya saw Kubi long before he saw her. She followed their vehicle with her eyes, as he pulled in looking for parking space. When she asked Esi to stop, Esi wouldn't switch off the engine.

‘Why are you in such a hurry? Stay and say hello to Kubi.'

‘No,' said Esi, almost in a panic.

‘You think he'll quiz you about Oko?' She had read Esi's mind.

‘Yes,' it was another confession. ‘And I couldn't go through with it, not now.'

Opokuya thought they should both meet Kubi so that Esi could say a quick hello. It would make it easier for her to explain how she had managed to spend an entire evening at the hotel, although the fact that she had had to was not even her fault. Almost immediately, they saw him driving towards them. Opokuya moved quickly and went to stand in the vehicle's path. Kubi screeched to a stop.

‘Opokuya, you scared me!' Kubi protested to a laughing Opokuya.

‘You must stop playing dangerous and childish games.'

‘Hello Kubi,' said Esi to a very surprised Kubi. He returned the greeting. But before he knew what was happening, Esi had said something like, ‘See you, Opokuya,' and just gone off.

Kubi remembered that there were other cars behind him, so he
moved the car forward.

‘I'm very sorry,' Kubi offered in response to a question Opokuya had not asked aloud. ‘And in any case, I had told you this morning that we were going to have a meeting. These days, you should know how these budgetary meetings are.'

‘A reference to my new position at the hospital, no doubt?' ‘Well, why not?'

Opokuya decided that getting angry wouldn't do any good. But she still could not help asking whether his budgetary meeting had really gone on until nearly nine o'clock in the evening.

‘No, not really. But it was still quite late when we finally finished — maybe around seven — and I had thought by then you would have found your way home …' There was no doubt that now his voice was asking a question.

‘Actually, Esi and I bumped into one another, so we sat and had a chat. I kept hoping that sooner or later, you would come

Kubi thought he had better not say what he was going to say. That surely Esi too had a husband and a child, and shouldn't she have tried to go home earlier to take care of her household? They were both silent all the way home; which was extremely frustrating for both of them. Kubi had been looking forward all evening to asking Opokuya about her time with his sister — as an excuse to voice more boldly his objection to her proposed trip to her mother's.

Opokuya too had looked forward to telling him about her time with his sister. How Connie had assured her that ‘all would be fine for the kids to come ... of course. And anyway, what is this business of coming all the way here just to ask whether the children could stay with me while you are away? Isn't my house their home …? You shouldn't worry about a thing. You can go away whenever it is convenient for you.'

She had also wanted to tell Kubi the latest news about Esi and Oko. Somewhat uncertainly this time. She knew Kubi wouldn't like that. Although their friendship was older than their marriage, she and Esi had also been lucky to have married men who got on rather well, and genuinely liked one another's wife. In fact, because Esi was still in the university when Opokuya and Kubi got married, Kubi had always treated Esi more or less like a younger sister, with openly demonstrated affection. So that if Opokuya hadn't been such a confident woman she would have found it difficult not to be jealous of the relationship between her husband and her friend. Not to mention
the fact that Esi and Kubi spoke the same language. Opokuya's first language was supposed to be only a dialect of the same language. But the version in their part of the country had lost or rather gained from its contact with the majority language of that region. So it had become a little foreign. When Esi and Kubi spoke she understood a whole lot. But it was never enough to enable her to catch the nuances behind their words — especially when they spoke fast. However, she had long ago told herself that she already had enough problems to cope with. What would happen to her if she started suspecting her husband and her best and only real friend? Such things happened of course. But Esi and Kubi?

Having sorted that out with herself, life had in fact been quite easy. She was able to enjoy both her friend and her husband, content to leave each day to take care of its unpredictable self, as far as ‘all that' was concerned.

Opokuya's decision to trust her husband had paid off in other ways. She never let herself worry about Kubi's chronic lateness; whether it had to do with normal office affairs, or indeed, any kind of affair or affairs. For instance, he could be taking a woman or women with him on his bush trips. She was aware that most men in his position did. Again, she had taken some time to think seriously through it. The only conclusion she had arrived at about that too was that, short of insisting on going with him on every trip, a very silly and unlikely thing for her to do, she would never know the truth. So again she had asked herself, why worry about it?

Opokuya still fretted at Kubi's daily late return from work all the same. But for two completely different reasons. She was anxious for his safety. What would she do if something happened to him? She had lived among his people all her life, from the time she had travelled west to come to boarding school when she was about fourteen years old. Of course, she had gone home every school holiday. But what was a total of four months in a whole year? She had returned to this part of the country in order to go through nursing school, and later to specialise in midwifery. She had met and got married to Kubi. Clearly, she was as good as a stranger in her own part of the country. If anything happened to Kubi, where was she going to go? Nowhere other than where she was, that was clear. She would definitely have to stay in this city, with her children, a native of nowhere. Kubi's people were kind and considerate, but they had not managed to convince her that she was one of them. They couldn't. After all, most people
wish their sons and daughters would marry the the girl or boy from next door, or at least from the neighbourhood. And she definitely hadn't been from Kubi's neighbourhood! She knew better than to complain. Some other women in similar situations were much worse off than her ... and in any case, she would rather not think of anything happening to Kubi. Not just yet, dear Lord.

Of course, the other reason why she fretted daily at Kubi coming home late was the car. That she could never get used to. To have a car parked all those hours when it could have been moving?

As they parked outside the gate of their bungalow, she realised the day was truly over.

I envy Esi's freedom of movement, she thought rather non- consequentially. She also realised suddenly that in fact she had been thinking that for a very long time.

       
7

Ali and Fusena had been classmates at the postsecondary teacher training college at Atebubu. He had been twenty-three years old then and she twenty-one. From the very first day they set eyes on one another as ‘ninos' in their first week on campus, they had taken to each other. At that time, it was not ‘like' as in ‘lovers', but ‘like' as in ‘like'. Just good friends they were most of the time, and sometimes a little more like brother and sister. For their three years on campus, they often spent a lot of their free time sharing discoveries, comparing notes and even swotting together.

The college was one of those that had been almost deliberately placed in confluent towns of Ghana to attract aspiring teachers from the dominant ethnic groups in equal proportions. However, on the campus at Atebubu, as on the others, the students still maintained a tendency to relate along ethnic lines. Ali was of course a loner in that respect. He was not a southerner, and he did not feel like a northerner, or an upper either, what with his French accent and all.

But Ali liked the company of interesting women, and right from the beginning he found Fusena very interesting. For instance, most evenings after supper, they would stay together until curfew. The college was co-educational, but the campus was strictly segregated. And ‘curfew' was how the students described the hours of the night when according to the rules, men and women students were not to be seen together.

Around this time it never occurred to either Ali or Fusena to admit that there could be much else between them apart from friendship. What indications existed in their separate hearts as to what else could be possible was for each of them a closely guarded secret that was not revealed to their conscious selves. What Ali could not admit even to himself was that he felt jealous anytime he saw Fusena talking to any male other than himself. Whether the male was a teacher or a student made no difference.

Fusena on her part could also not bear to see Ali relate to any woman other than herself. In fact, once when she had gone to his room and met a girl-student there she had become depressed for days. After they graduated, they both went to teach at primary
schools in Tamale. So Ali and Fusena continued to see one another regularly. But they were still just good friends. Meanwhile, throughout what was now six years of their friendship, each of them had got involved in a number of love affairs that seemed not to have been given much opportunity to grow.

Fusena had come close to getting married once. The suitor had been an important man in the government with lots of years between him and Fusena, lots of other wives, lots of new money and heavy political power. He was an
alhaji.
As soon as he realised that she was not going to be easy to woo he had set about the business of winning her, as though she too was a parliamentary seat. Apart from carting loads of presents to her house for her mother and father as well as half of her extended family, he had sent around his thugs to warn any man he thought could be interested in Fusena as a lover. And of course that had included Ali. But the latter had been only amused by all the happenings at that time. Surely enough though, one evening he heard a knock on his door, and when he opened it he found a giant on his doorstep and concluded that his messenger had come. He treated the man with great charm and courtesy, so that before the man had even begun the verbal part of his mission, Ali had convinced him that there was no way he, Ali, could be interested in any man-woman relationship with Fusena. Why, Fusena was the sister he had always wanted but never had. Allah, and ordinary mortals too, were his witnesses. He had been worrying himself about the fact that Fusena was not married. In fact, he considered he had failed in his duties that he never managed to get Fusena married to any of the very intelligent male colleagues at the teacher-training college. At this the big man's giant had grunted menacingly. But you see, Ali continued without pausing, maybe Allah knew what he was doing. Clearly, he was preserving Fusena for the
alhaji.
The giant's face exploded in a blinding brightness. As for himself, Ali stressed, he was going to do all that was in his power actually to promote the
alhaji's
cause.

Ali had thought he had been quite earnest at the time. It was only later that he could admit — and always with some panic — that perhaps he had suspected all along that Fusena had had no intention of marrying the man. When she announced that decision, her mother, Mma Abu, nearly lost her mind, for two main reasons. First there were all the riches that had seemed so easily within their grasp, and which they had now lost.

Then there was the bigger question of Fusena and marriage. Mma Abu had thought her friends and relatives were just being jealous when Fusena passed her examinations to go to college. They had tried to stop her from going and had tried to get her to marry. Now everyone was just laughing at her behind her back. A twenty-six-year-old woman not married? Was she ever going to? When?

When Mma Abu accepted that she could not deal with the matter of Fusena and marriage any longer, she went to consult the family
mallam.
The
mallam
read from the Holy Book, threw his cowries, drew his lines, and told her not to worry. Her time would come.

‘And sir, when that time comes, would she not be too old to have children?'