Changes (24 page)

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 wheezed 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.

So who could it be? There was of course Ali... but it couldn't be him. It could be Opokuya who might have been coming back for any one of a number of things to do with the car... The visitor was already knocking on the door as she switched on the light in the sitting room. Perhaps she should switch on the light on the veranda for whoever it was; but she felt that she may just as well open the door and let the person come in anyway. As the visitor stepped into the room, she shut the door and stepped back.

Neither of them could collect himself or herself together quickly enough even to say hello. They just stared. Kubi was overcome by
the sight of an Esi he had not seen before; eyes of crimson and face stained with tears. And Esi was feeling extremely vulnerable since she suspected that that was how her face looked.

‘I thought Opokuya was here,' he said rather uncertainly.

‘Yes, she was here but she's gone now.'

‘How?'

‘In my car,' she said, and tears welled up in her eyes.

‘What is it?' Kubi sounded alarmed. Esi lifted her face to say something to him ... No words came. Kubi took hold of her hand, maybe to lead her into the room and get her to sit down. He found himself holding her close. Then, as though he had taken a quick decision just in that minute, he turned to face her and hold her closer and hard. She did not feel like offering any resistance. He began to kiss her face, her neck and all over. Then they were moving towards the couch and Esi could feel Kubi's manhood rising.

Esi's mind snapped open. There must be a cure for most pains including a feeling of desolation, she was thinking. Why not? she added, all in her head. Then it occurred to her that maybe this was what had always been between her and Kubi. Which neither of them had wanted to face but which had inspired his treatment of her to swing between that of a kindly understanding uncle and an irritable, disapproving older brother? It also occurred to her that maybe this might be an answer to the great question of how to get one's physical needs met, and still manage to avoid all attachment and pain.

So then, why was she remembering that business about drowning people experiencing a replay of their entire life in a flash of a second? So here was her life. Either it is not true that only the drowning go through that experience, or we can drown quite a few times in this life in different ways... And water is not the only force to fear …

Thoughts chased one another so quickly in her mind, it was like a fast-moving film … She remembered that there is something called friendship. And hadn't her friendship with Opokuya been, so far, the most constant thing in her life? And that whereas mothers, fathers, grandmothers and other relations are like extra limbs we grow, a friend symbolises a choice? And to maintain a friendship is a choice? Therefore not to maintain a friendship — indeed, to kill a friend — is a choice? Opokuya's ample face came into view, beaming... humorous, but with Nana's voice, ‘My lady Silk, remember that a man always gains in stature any way he chooses to associate with a woman — including adultery... But, in her association with a man, a
woman is always in danger of being diminished …'In any case, wasn't the need to maintain that friendship greater on her part? Maybe Opokuya could shed her. She, Esi, could not afford to shed Opokuya.

When she finally realised that Kubi was unzipping his trousers, Esi broke free from the embrace. And at that sign of unwillingness on her part, Kubi too paused. He might have offered an explanation, but there really was no need for words. He reorganised himself and made sure he had got his keys. At the door Kubi turned to face Esi. It was as if he was going to say something. Again there was no need. Esi easily guessed what he had been about to say. She was never going to breathe a word of what had nearly happened — to Opokuya or any living soul. There are things you don't do to a friend. Opokuya was not just a friend. She was a sister, almost her other self. And definitely there are some tales you don't tell even to yourself.

Esi never went back to Oko. As far as she was concerned, that was never even an option. She never had a baby with Ali either. That relationship stopped being a marriage. They became just good friends who found it convenient once in a while to fall into bed and make love.

She never bothered to look for an annulment of the marriage. That would have meant going back home to her people with her version of what had happened. They would have called Ali. Ali would have shown due respect and gone to meet them at the village. They would have put before him the matter as they would have received it, and expected Ali to comment. She knew that Ali would have told her people that as far as he was concerned he loved her and that they were still man and wife... Her people would not have accepted any explanation from her as to why she would want to ‘destroy' that marriage too.

               
‘What? Throw away a man who gave you things any other woman would have given part of her life for? Including a brand new beautiful car? And isn't it being rumoured that in fact, he has almost finished paying for an estate house for you?'

‘And he is fine!'

‘Ah, for a scholar, so respectful... an unusual human being …'

It would probably have ended in her grandmother asking her to go back to the village for a longer stay. So that they could take her to the priestess and ask her to have Esi's soul called up for an interview.
For instance, about what it was that she really desired from this life. Since as far as they were concerned she always seemed to get and throw away what other souls desired. Besides, her behaviour was becoming too unnatural altogether.