Later when I knocked on Evelyn’s door she opened it with a big smile and waved me in. Dressed in shorts so short that the lower part of her bottom hung out, and a tank top so tight that her nipples poked through the thin fabric, she resembled a teenager. I wondered how old she was.
Her flat had the same layout as mine and was similarly furnished. On her center table was a bottle of wine and an assortment of nail polish. The scent of nail polish remover was heavy in the air.
“I just finished changing the color on my toes,” she said to me as she sat on the sofa and raised one foot onto the table so that I could see the shiny purple color expertly applied to her toenails.
“It’s very nice,” I said to her.
“Thanks. What can I get you to drink?” she asked and reached for the bottle of wine. “Wine?”
“No, thank you,” I said before she could pour me a glass.
“Juice? Water?” she said when she put down the bottle, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“Yes, water, please.”
“How can you come to visit me and only drink water?” she said as she made her way to the kitchen. “I have some pastries; would you like to try them?” she asked from across the room. I shook my head, refusing her offer. “Oh, you have to at least try the cakes, they are delicious,” she insisted before opening a white box on the marble-topped island, taking out several cupcakes, and placing them on a saucer.
“Thank you,” I said when she set the plate in front of me along with the water.
“So how are you?” she asked, her eyes gleaming.
“I’m fine,” I answered, making it clear that I had no intention of telling her anything.
“How’s the school?” she asked. She wasn’t lying when she said that Richard had told her about me.
“It’s fine.”
“Great, great. Sarah is a very good designer; she’s made a few outfits for me. But her prices are something else.”
“Yes, she’s very good,” I said. I didn’t know enough about Sarah’s pricing to comment on that and even if I did, I didn’t think it appropriate to join a stranger in criticizing my madam.
“And Accra, how are you liking Accra?” she asked before picking the remote off the table, switching on the TV, and navigating to a sports channel where a football game was in progress.
“Accra is fine, I like it,” I told her.
“Great,” she said, smiling. “You know, once upon a time, I was like you, new to Accra. But I wasn’t lucky enough to have all of this,” she said with a wave of her hand.
“Really?” I said, surprised. I couldn’t imagine her as anything but this well-off person in front of me.
“Yes. My mother sent me to live with an uncle who promised to send me to school, but instead he and his wife decided to make me their maidservant, cooking for their children, cleaning up after them. Everything you see in the Nigerian films, they did to me.”
“Ehn? How did you manage?”
“I ran away. I stayed with friends for a while, slept in people’s kitchens, and once in a kiosk in Kaneshie market. But I met a man who took me in—his wife lived in Kumasi at the time—and put me in school. Of course, I had to pay him in kind, but you know that nothing is free in this city.”
I was listening intently, my eyes wide.
“Anyway, I know what it’s like to be new and alone.”
I bristled. Did she think I was alone?
When I didn’t say anything, she turned her attention to the screen where two Premier League teams were playing. I picked up one of the cupcakes and studied the rainbow of colors in the icing. I wondered what flavor it was under all that sugary paste.
“Are you a football fan?” she turned away from the screen to ask me.
A piece of cake in my mouth, I shook my head.
“What would you like to watch?”
I swallowed the mouthful of sugar and told her I didn’t mind if she watched the football game.
“So how are you holding up with everything that is happening?” she asked me.
“Everything?”
“Yes, with you, Eli, and Muna,” she answered.
“Muna?”
“Yes, Elikem’s . . . the . . . the woman.”
So, the Liberian woman’s name was Muna. I let this sink in, repeated the name in my head a few times, and decided that I hated the sound of it. What kind of name was Muna? It sounded like a lump, an object that was thrown onto the floor and left there, a person that sat in a corner with spit dribbling out the corner of her mouth.
“Richard told you?” I asked.
“Yes, and I’m really sorry that you are in this position,” she said. Her eyes looked sad. I figured she was probably pretending. “So what are you going to do?” she asked me after taking a sip of her wine. I bristled at the question. Did this woman think that she could just poke her nose into my life? It was Richard’s fault; Richard who did not bother to tell me about his girlfriend next door but had no trouble laying out my life before this same girlfriend.
“Nothing,” I said and bit into another cupcake.
“Nothing? Hmmm!”
Against my better judgment, I asked her how she knew the Liberian woman.
“Well, we’ve met at a few functions and I’ve been to the house a couple of times, most recently when the little girl was sick and had to be rushed to Korle Bu.”
“I see,” I said, when what I really wanted to say was, tell me more.
“She’s . . . nice,” Evelyn said carefully.
“Nice?”
“Well, yes, she’s nice,” she said, this time more firmly as though she had no other choice. “The few times I met her she was very friendly and she has invited me to their house again. But I’m just too busy to be visiting people and the woman always has one foot in the airport anyway.”
“I see,” I said again, willing her to continue.
“We first met at some business award ceremony, I can’t remember which one—there are so many of them these days and they are mostly worthless because people pay to win. Anyway, we sat at the same table, Richard and I, and she and Eli. I was actually seated beside her and we chatted a little. One strap on my dress gave out during the ceremony,” she said, smiling and cupping her breasts which were too large for her palms, “and she lent me her scarf to cover up and insisted that I keep it at the end of the evening. And it wasn’t a cheap scarf, I’m talking silk, probably bought from a boutique in Italy or somewhere like that. We met again at a mutual friend’s birthday party a few weeks later. She brought Liberian food, lots of greens; it was all very tasty. I even brought some home. And last time when I went to the house with Richard to visit while Ivy was sick, she seemed happy to see me.”
I snorted before I could stop myself. I wondered if she was one of the spies that Aunty had mentioned. Maybe the woman had asked her here to keep an eye on me, and Richard didn’t even know it.
“You’re behaving like Richard. But I’m only telling you what I’ve experienced,” she said in response to my stony face.
“Then your experience has been different from everyone else’s,” I said.
“Mmmm,” was all she said before she turned back to the football game on TV. But I kept staring at her. Something about the confidence with which she spoke caused me to suspect that she had even more information that I did not have. Now I was stuck between not wanting to make my life a topic of discussion and wanting to hear what she really knew, even if I didn’t believe all of it. But Evelyn didn’t go back to discussing the woman. After a few more minutes of football, she switched to a music channel and we both watched silently as half naked women wriggled their well-oiled bodies against fully-clothed men.
“I know that guy,” she said when a musician appeared on the screen, dressed in a fur-lined hoodie and baggy jeans dancing on a street in Accra, grabbing his crotch to the beat of the music.
“Really?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me; this woman really knew how to hoo
k me. A few minutes later I was shaking my head in disbelief as she described how the rapper had hounded her for her number at a nightclub and then hurled insults at her when she refused to give it to him. For the rest of the afternoon she regaled me with stories of her life in Accra. She worked for an advertising agency and got the chance to meet a lot of famous people because of her job. In fact, that was how she met Richard: her company handled the advertising for King’s Court. I began to find her candor refreshing; her life seemed to be an open book. She told me about the men she was with before Richard and the things about him that she loved and hated. Did I know that Richard liked to spend Saturdays in bed, cuddling? Did I know that Richard had a room in his house that was dedicated to his shoes? She told me about the plots of land she owned in Accra, including one on which she had started a cement block factory. She told me these things with complete nonchalance. I ended up eating dinner with her and taking the rest of the cupcakes back to my flat.
That night I thought about our conversation but couldn’t decide how I felt about her. She had seemed so straightforward and open about her own life that I had left her flat feeling like I had known her for a long time. My mother would surely dislike her if they ever met. A person who talks so freely about her own life will talk just as freely about yours, I imagined her saying. Regardless, there was something about Evelyn that intrigued me, so that before I fell asleep, I admitted to myself that I was looking forward to seeing her again and hearing more about her life, and about what she knew about mine.
Eli came to my school the next day. He hadn’t said anything about coming to see me when we last spoke. I was on my way to the food stall where I planned to eat red red with one of the other girls when I saw across the street a tall figure leaning against a white Land Cruiser and waving. I had to draw closer to realize it was him. I still didn’t know him well enough to remember his form and movements. But when I did recognize him, I began to walk faster and forgot the person at my side, who eventually went on without me.
“Good afternoon,” I said, surprise causing my voice to come out louder than I had intended.
“Good afternoon, Afi. How are you?” he said, smiling down at me.
“I’m fine, thank you,” I said, smoothing the tail of my secretary top, wishing I had known that he was coming.
“I came to take you to lunch. I’m sorry, I should have called first but I just finished a meeting in the TLZ building and thought this would be a good time.”
I nodded, happy that he had come but unsatisfied with his explanation. I climbed into his car, which was all tinted windows and leather seats. When seated, we both looked at each other. He stared openly before starting the car while I stole glances when I thought his eyes were on the road. He was so handsome! The white shirt contrasted perfectly with his beautiful brown skin, and his voice was deeper, warmer in person than over the phone. When he smiled at me, my stomach fluttered and I looked away, unable to hold his gaze. I started talking to ease the tension. I told him that I had successfully cut and sewn my first pair of trousers that morning, and he told me that he had been meeting with investors, of which he was one, who were building a mall near the airport. I was impressed but not surprised—I knew the kind of man that he was. When finished, the mall would be better than any we had in the country; there would be underground parking, a helipad on the roof, a five-star hotel. Every major business in Ghana would have space there so that shoppers could get everything done in one place, and those who could afford to would sleep over and continue shopping the next day.
“You could open a boutique there to sell your clothes,” he looked away from the road to say to me. I grinned and glanced away. A few minutes later I was still grinning as we stopped at a traffic light and our car was immediately descended upon by hawkers. Wait till my mother heard this! Wait until she heard that I might have a store in a new luxury mall. Even more, wait till she heard I was about to have lunch with Eli; maybe I could go to the bathroom and call her when we arrived at the restaurant.
Eli took me to Red Oasis. The staff seemed to know him and without asking, directed us to a table at the poolside. I asked him if he was a regular.
“Yeah, I come here for a lot of my lunch meetings; it’s not too far from my office,” he told me.
“Oh. Please, where is your office?” We had never discussed the location of his office in our phone conversations.
“It’s on the bank road, after the first traffic light. It’s bigger than the offices in Monrovia, Nairobi, New York, and London combined.”
“Are you traveling again soon?”
“Yes, but short trips, nothing like the last time,” he said, his finger lazily rubbing the sweating glass of sparkling water. “Do you want to come?” he asked.
“Me?” I replied, my glass of Coke halfway between my mouth and the table. I had never thought of traveling abroad, with or without him.
He chuckled at my reaction. “I think that’s a good idea, maybe on my next trip to Europe. Do you have a passport?”
I shook my head. I had never had a reason to get a passport.
“Okay, I will arrange for someone to get one for you. I will have Joanna buy the forms and bring them to you.”
“Joanna, your assistant?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, thank you,” I said to this offer of a European trip and help from Joanna.
Our food came after that and we began to eat. I had ordered rice and beef sauce and he had akple and okro soup with goat meat. My food tasted fine, but his soup looked thin without the ademε and other leaves that would thicken it and make it tastier. It was such a shame that he had to come out to a restaurant to eat akple, all because that Liberian woman didn’t know how to cook our food.
“Is it tasty?” I asked him, suddenly pained, like a mother who had caught someone maltreating her child, because the mad woman gave him no option but to eat this inferior restaurant food. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was cooked with boxed corn and cassava flour instead of proper corn and cassava dough.
“It’s fine,” he said as he dipped a ball of the white paste into the soup.
“You should let me prepare akple and okro soup for you,” I said, daring to look directly at him.
He was silent and unmoving for a couple of moments and then he reached across the table for my hand, the one still holding the fork. The contact startled me and I dropped the fork onto the red tablecloth.
“I know things haven’t been the way they should. I know and I’m really sorry. I’m having some difficulties but I’m fixing everything. Soon . . . things will change. I want to be with you, to see you, to come home to you. It’s just that . . . well you know I’ve been with someone else and we have Ivy and we live together and she is . . . and Ivy is sickly, very sickly, Ivy is very sickly and I have to think about her before I do anything. But I want you to know that things are going to change for the better. I know that calling you isn’t enough; I know that you are my wife and this isn’t how it should be. I want you to be happy and have everything you want. I will make sure that you are happy and have everything you want. I promise you.” His gaze and voice were soft when he said this, as though he and I were alone instead of sitting poolside at a hotel during the busy lunch hour. His hand remained on mine, lightly brushing, as he stared at me. I realized that he was waiting for an answer.
“Okay,” was all I could whisper. My heart was beating faster than it ever had, and I knew that if I tried to say anything more, only nonsense would spill out of my mouth. I couldn’t believe what he had said and how he had said it. I wanted to put my arms around him and tell him that it was okay, that I could wait for a few more months, that I knew about the difficulties he was having with the woman, that I respected how much he loved his daughter and cared for her well-being, that most men would have thrown the woman out a long time ago without a second thought, that I would wait for him, as long as he wanted me to. But instead, I interlaced my fingers with his and gazed at him and I di
d this without any shyness or fear. I looked at him like a woman looks at her man, like a wife looks at her husband, because for the first time, I felt like his woman, like his wife.
We finished our meal in silence and he drove me back to work. Parking a few houses away from Sarah’s, he reached into the glove compartment and pulled out two wads of crisp bills that still carried the bank’s seal.
“Your driver brought me money last week,” I said when he put the money on my lap.
“It doesn’t matter, use it to go shopping, go out to eat, whatever you want,” he said.
I reluctantly stuffed the money into my bag and thanked him.
“When will I see you again?” I asked him, my eyes meeting his.
He hesitated before answering, “This weekend.”
I nodded, satisfied. The weekend was only four days away.
I said “thank you” again and reached for the door handle; I had overstayed my lunch break and Sarah would not be happy. But before I could open the door, he reached out and pressed a hand on my knee. I turned to him, my eyes questioning. But without saying a word, he pulled me closer and brushed his lips against mine. My body reacted with a hunger that I did not know I had been feeling. I pressed against him, at least as much as I could with the gear box between us, and my tongue slipped out of my mouth to meet his. I didn’t care that people could see us through the windscreen or that Sarah would be angry that I was late. All I cared about at that moment was the feel and taste of him. When we finally parted, we were both breathing heavily and I had to take a couple of minutes to compose myself while he held my hand.
“I’ll see you on Saturday,” he said softly.
I don’t even know how I made it through the rest of that day, but after supper I called my mother and told her that Eli had taken me out for lunch. I told her about our conversation in the car and at the lunch table. I, of course, left out what had happened between us at the end. It was too intimate a moment. Maybe I would tell Mawusi, but for now it was my beautiful secret.
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