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.
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 ‘assault’, 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.
‘Permanently?’
‘Oh no, only until the end of August. Then she’ll come back to me for the re-opening of school.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Six. She is in Primary One this year.’
‘Already? But of course, she was born about the time I had my last born, no?’
‘Yes.’
‘It does.’
The sadness that had descended on them was not proving easy to get rid of. They even went back to what they should have tried to find out from one another when they first met at the hotel: what they were doing here at the Hotel Twentieth Century. Esi told Opokuya about the friend she was supposed to be meeting from abroad, and Opokuya told Esi about the arrangement for Kubi to collect her from the hotel.
‘So you and your husband have taken to dropping into the Twentieth Century for drinks?’ Esi made a great attempt to tease Opokuya.
Opokuya went on to tell Esi about the trip she was planning to her mother’s.
‘Homesick?’ Esi asked, trying hard to keep her teasing tone.
‘Yes.’ Opokuya answered, too enthusiastically, and fell into Esi’s trap.
‘Oh Opoku, shame on you. At your age!’
‘Now you stop it. I miss my mother. You know I haven’t seen her for a long time.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘And I miss the feeling of being special with someone.’
‘You are very special with Kubi.’
‘Esi, you were very special with Oko.’
Esi did not know how to answer that. In the silence that followed, each woman was thinking that clearly the best husband always seems to be the one some other woman is living with! The sadness returned, heavier than before.
One reason why Esi was almost tongue-tied was that she was too aware that Opokuya was her last hope of gaining understanding or at least some sympathy for her point of view. So far, nobody to whom she had tried to state her case had been remotely sympathetic. Like her mother and her grandmother. She had driven home one Sunday morning to discuss the whole business with them. They had found it very hard to listen to her at all. Although they had tried. When Nana’s patience had been stretched beyond endurance, she had asked Esi to tell her truthfully whether the problem was that her husband beat her.
‘No, Nana.’
‘So, does your husband smell? His body? His mouth?’
Esi couldn’t help laughing. ‘No, Nana. In fact, for a man, he is very clean, very orderly.’
‘So then … Listen, does he deny you money, expecting you to use your earnings to keep the house, feed him and clothe him too?’
‘Nana, we are not rich. But money is not a big problem.’
‘What is the problem?’ both her grandmother and her mother really screamed this time: the former with her walking stick raised as though to strike her, and the latter bursting into tears.
Esi had to tell the truth. Her husband wanted too much of her and her time. No, it was not another woman. In fact, she thought she might have welcomed that even more.
‘Are you mad?’ The older women looked at Esi and she looked at them. How could she tell them she did not want Oko? Where was she going to get a man like him again? At the end of the discussion, her grandmother had told her the matter sounded too much for her ears: she didn’t want to hear any more of it. At least not for some time. The declaration was accompanied by a proper palm-rubbing gesture. Finally, as Esi got into her car to drive back to Accra, and almost for a farewell, her mother had called her a fool. She had driven to Accra feeling like one.
As for Oko’s people, there never was a question of Esi talking to them. She was convinced they hated her. She knew that for some time his aunts had been trying to get him a woman, ‘a proper wife’. What had discouraged them was his lack of enthusiasm and the fact that they suspected Esi didn’t care one way or another. The purpose of the project had been two-fold: to get him to make more children, ‘because his lady-wife appeared to be very satisfied with only one child,
a terrible mistake, a dangerous situation.’
They also wanted to hurt Esi: very badly, if they could. And if she didn’t care one way or another, then there was no point to it, was there? As far as Esi was concerned, his sisters were no better. They used to come and insinuate that their brother was failing in his duties to the family because she had turned his head — with ‘something’.
‘She fried it with the breakfast eggs!’
‘She put it into cakes!’
And they would whisper and laugh. As far as the sisters were concerned, Oko never had money to spend on them because he was busy wasting his salary on her. When Esi let it be known that in fact she earned more than he did, their new line of attack was that it served him right, marrying a woman who had more money than him. His wife could never respect him. It was also around this time that the hints began to drop here and there: about the need for him to get himself an unspoilt young woman, properly brought up, whose eyes have not jumped over her eyebrows with too much education and too much money of her own … No she couldn’t go to them.
As a result of Esi’s growing uncertainty about the justification of her decision, she was hesitating to tell Opokuya her story. And since any hesitation with communication was itself a new development in their relationship, it too was creating its own nervous tensions in her. If Opokuya was her last hope of getting an understanding at all, then she had better not let go of her. For here, where no one ever made the mistake of thinking that any marriage was strictly the affair of the two people involved, one could never attempt to fight any war in a marriage alone. And if she lost Opokuya too, she would have to fight alone.
Before Opokuya moved into Accra recently, she and Esi had only once before lived in the same town since they were in secondary school. It was when Esi and Oko were first married and Esi returned with Oko to Kumasi, where he had been teaching. Kubi was then an assistant surveyor, and Opokuya was still a midwife at the Central Hospital. At the time, neither of them had any marital problems to share. Of course Opokuya as usual had sounded as if she had plenty. But then, as some of her colleagues always said unkindly, Opokuya searched for problems to talk about, so that she too would sound just like any other wife. As for Esi, she was then expecting her baby, and was too recently married to be aware of problems even if there had been any.
After her baby was born, Esi had wanted to return to work. But that had not been easy. She had had to face the difficulty of having to choose between two not so attractive options. She could stay on at Kumasi, but that meant that she would not be working at all, or not meaningfully. It was not every government department that had regional branches. The Department of Urban Statistics was one of those that didn’t. Or she could return to Accra for her regular job: as long as she first convinced Oko that they could still see one another as often as possible at weekends, either she going or he coming. But at the merest hint of that, Oko had made it clear that the subject wasn’t even up for discussion. He made it clear that as far as he was concerned they had done enough of that kind of travelling when they were just friends’. In fact he had thought one reason why they had got married was to give themselves the chance to be together properly, no?
In the end the only option left her, which she had had to take, was to ask to be seconded to the regional census co-ordinating office. She had ended up keeping the Birth and Death register.
‘Surely, one doesn’t need a Master’s degree in statistics to do that?’ she would fume and rage daily. Oko ignored her complaints. The truth was that he didn’t feel that sympathetic. And neither did the men in the office. In fact, they let her know that she was unwelcome, and a burden they did not know what to do with.
Having to deal with a man who is over-qualified for a job is bad enough.
To have to cope with an over-qualified woman in any situation is a complete misfortune.
Now six years later, both she and Opokuya were here in Accra, working. And she had a marital problem. A big problem. She should just gather herself together, and tell Opokuya what she felt. If Opokuya too could not understand her, then that was that. She would accept that she was just a fool, like her mother and her grandmother had said.
After all, people change. Look at her. Esi had changed. If she now found Oko’s attentions so suffocating that she wanted very badly to split, then people change. There was a time when she had been made to fear that in fact she would never marry.
‘You have waited too long,’ Esi’s mother had complained. ‘Given your structure, you shouldn’t have.’ (The poor woman shared the popularly held belief that a young woman who is too tall, too thin, and has flat belly and a flat behind has a slim chance of bearing children. The longer she waits after puberty, the slimmer those chances get!)
Esi’s main problem was that she was easily bored. And no woman ever caught a man or held him by showing lack of interest. Esi had known that she would have to work up some enthusiasm in her relationship with men. ‘But how?’ she had kept asking herself. Now looking back she didn’t dare admit, even to herself, that perhaps what she had felt for Oko in the first years of their married life was gratitude more than anything else. Gratitude that in spite of herself he had persisted in courting her and marrying her.
‘Not many women are this lucky …’ Esi could hear her grandmother’s voice. ‘And who told you that feeling grateful to a man is not enough reason to marry him? My lady, the world would die of surprise if every woman openly confessed the true reasons why she married a certain man. These days, young people don’t seem to know why they marry or should marry.’
‘What are some of the reasons, Nana?’
‘Ah, so you want to know? Esi we know that we all marry to have children
‘But Nana, that is such an old and worn-out idea! Children can be born to people who are not married.’
‘Sure, sure, but to help them grow up well, children need homes with walls, a roof, fire, pots.’
‘Oh Nana. But one person can provide all these things these days for a growing child!’
‘Maybe ... yes... Yes, my lady. We also marry to increase the number of people with whom we can share the joys and the pains of this life.’
‘Nana, how about love?’
‘Love? … Love? … Love is not safe, my lady Silk, love is dangerous. It is deceitfully sweet like the wine from a fresh palm tree at dawn. Love is fine for singing about and love songs are good to listen to, sometimes even to dance to. But when we need to count on human strength, and when we have to count pennies for food for our stomachs and clothes for our backs, love is nothing. Ah my lady, the last man any woman should think of marrying is the man she loves.’