His Only Wife

by Peace Adzo Medie

  I ignored her theatrics and instead went to the kitchen to wash my hands. I heard a gurgle when I twisted the tap but no water came out. It took me a moment to remember that unlike my flat that had huge overhead tanks to store water, my mother was at the mercy of the Ghana government, which rationed everything, including electricity and water. There was a tall, multicolored plastic bucket filled with water beside the sink, and in it was a plastic bowl with a long handle. I used it to fetch water to wash my hands. My mother could have easily cooked something else, especially because I was pregnant, but she had instead chosen to punish me with sandy fish. I looked around to see if there was something else that I could eat. I found a bowl of groundnut soup in the small fridge and warmed it on the burner; it would be groundnut soup and boiled cassava for dinner tonight.

  When I returned to the table with my dinner, my mother was halfway through hers. She glanced at my food and shook her head as though my choice was too disgusting for words.

  “I saw Aunty,” she finally said, her hand resting on a cube of cassava in her plate.

  “I see.”

  She glared at me; the brevity of my response seemed to increase her anger.

  “She is very unhappy with what you have done. Very unhappy! She says I should tell you to go back to your husband first thing tomorrow morning. Mensah will drive you back.”

  “Ma, I’m not going,” I said calmly. This is exactly what I had been expecting. I was prepared.

  “You will disobey Aunty?”

  “I’m not disobeying anybody, I’m just saying that I won’t go back to living in a flat while another woman occupies my marital home and sleeps in my marital bed, with my husband. I won’t do it, Ma.”

  She pushed her plate away so hard that it slid to the other end of the table, fell off the edge, and clattered off the floor, sending specks of palm oil everywhere. The noise startled both of us.

  “What do you mean? Nonsense. You will go.”

  I stood up. “I am not going today, I am not going tomorrow. If Eli wants me to come back, he should come for me and take me to our house!” I banged the flat of my hand on the table as I spoke; my enamel plate danced.

  “Hehn, what are you saying?”

  “I am saying . . .”

  “I know what you said, foolish girl. Are you mad?”

  “I’m mad for wanting to live with my husband?”

  “You are mad because you’re talking like a madwoman. You expect Elikem Ganyo to come here and beg you to come back home? You have forgotten who you are and where you come from. You have forgotten when you used to sit right here at this table with your old Singer sewing machine, praying that someone will bring you a dress to mend and pay you a few coins. You have forgotten when we used to stand on that verandah waiting for Aunty’s driver to bring us a small sack of rice and a chicken so that we could also celebrate Christmas, so that we could also have something to eat, so that we would not have to go to other people’s houses to ask for food. You have forgotten all of that and you have decided to spit in her face. To shame me in front of this woman who has done so much for us, to shame me in front of everybody. Where in this town will I show my face after this, Afi? Where? How will I go to work after this? How will I go to church, to Women’s Guild meetings? Tell me, Afi, where will I go to hide after this?” She was crying now. This too I had expected.

  “Ma . . .”

  “ ‘Ma,’ what? What are you calling me for? So you know I’m your mother but you won’t listen to what I tell you? You are listening to people who only want to lead you astray, to tell you lies and destroy your life.”

  “Which people?”

  “That Evelyn, who has also forgotten where she comes from.”

  “Evelyn? How do you know about Evelyn? She didn’t tell me to do this, in fact, she told me not to leave.”

  “That is a lie. Aunty says she is the one putting these ideas into your head. Do you not know she is jealous of you? A woman who is past thirty with no husband in sight, why will she not advise you to leave your husband? She wishes she had what you have but you are too foolish to see that.”

  “Nobody told me to do this, Ma. Why aren’t you listening to me?”

  “Nonsense! Why should I listen to you? Are you the mother? Did you breastfeed me?”

  She untied the shorter of two cloths that were around her waist and dabbed her eyes with it. Palm oil still glistened on her right hand but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “Afi, I am your mother, I have no reason to give you bad advice. Why would I eat my own? Why would I destroy the only thing I have in this world?”

  “I know, Ma. I know you want what’s best for me.”

  “Then why will you not do what I am telling you?”

  “Because I love him. Living in that flat without him is killing me, Ma. Knowing that he’s with another woman while I lie alone in bed, it is killing me. Sometimes I feel like . . . like I can’t breathe, like I’m going to choke on my sadness and die alone in that bed. I cannot keep living like this.” Now I was the one crying. I sat on the nearby sofa and propped my head up with both hands as the tears ran down my face. My mother sat beside me and wiped my face with the edge of her cloth.

  “I know it’s not easy. I know. But it won’t be like this forever.”

  “How do you know, Ma? It has been almost one year and nothing has changed. If I don’t do something now I will be stuck in that flat forever. I have to fight for what I want, for what’s mine.”

  “Afi, even if he is with another woman, it is not the end of this world. Which man, especially one like your husband, does not have another woman? Even your uncle Pious, as old and useless as he is, has a girlfriend, on top of his many wives.”

  “This is different. It is supposed to be the girlfriend who stays in the flat and gets to see the man once a week, not the other way around, not the wife. Ma, I’m not going back to that life. I’m not. Tell Aunty I’m not going.”

  “Afi, which mouth will I use to deliver this message to Aunty?”

  Eli called soon after. His mother had told him I was in Ho.

  “Come back and let’s talk about this . . . this thing.”

  “Mmm mmm, I’m tired of talking.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I’m not coming back to that flat. Our son will not live in that flat. If I come back it is to live with you, in our house. And you will have to come for me.”

  He hung up the phone. There was no turning back now.

  That evening my mother placed a low stool in the bathroom and I sat on it to bathe. It was too strenuous to repeatedly bend over to scoop water out of the bucket with a small plastic pail and empty it on my body. She offered me her bed, which had a new mattress, and I accepted even though she refused to share it with me. Instead she went to my room. I was too tired to argue with her so I let her go, but still I struggled to fall asleep. I was constantly aware of the whir of the faltering fan, and my cotton nightgown was soon drenched with sweat. Every time I managed to start dozing off, I was jolted awake by footsteps and voices as people walked past the window. This is what I had missed when I first moved to Accra, but now I longed for the cool and quiet of my flat. How was I going to survive here?

  Mensah came back the next morning. It was about seven and we were standing on my mother’s verandah. I had hurriedly tied a cloth over my nightgown when my mother called out to me, but had forgotten to put on my slippers; I was used to walking barefoot on the plush carpet at King’s Court. The concrete was cold beneath my feet. A light fog still hung in the air and one of the neighbor’s teenage daughters was hurriedly sweeping under the almond tree while dressed in her school uniform; she should have swept before her morning bath. She would be late for school if she took any longer. Her palm frond broom kicked up a cloud of dust that thickened the fog.

  “Aunty said I should take you back to Accra,” Mensah said. I noticed that he didn’t start with ‘please.’ Obviously, enough had been said about me yesterday to e
mbolden him.

  “Tell Aunty I can’t go.”

  “You can’t go?” he said, shock causing his mouth to hang open after he asked the question. I don’t think he had ever heard anyone say no to Aunty.

  I shook my head.

  “When can you go then?”

  “I’m waiting for my husband to come for me.”

  “So I should tell Aunty you can’t go? That you’re waiting for your husband?”

  “Yes.”

  He left but not before giving me a look so sharp that had it been a knife it would have pierced me.

  My mother was seated at the dining table when I reentered the house, her face still crumpled. Her cloth was tied across her chest and her chewing stick was slack in her mouth, as though it would fall as soon as she began speaking. Fortunately for me she didn’t say a word, but then she didn’t have to, her face said everything. On any other day, she would have been dressed and walking out of the door by then, but today she did everything slowly. She fluffed the thin cushions of the chairs in the sitting room, swept and dusted, and then decided to mop, even though she normally only mopped on the weekends. It was only after this that she filled a bucket with water from a barrel in the kitchen and carried it into the bathroom for her morning bath. I was seated in the sitting room when she finally came out of her bedroom, dressed for work.

  “I am going.”

  “Won’t you eat? I made oats.”

  “I am not hungry. I will see you in the evening,” she said, barely looking at me. But she didn’t leave immediately. Instead she stood in the doorway, readjusting her cloth, her headscarf, her blouse, anything to delay facing Aunty. It made me even sadder to see her suffer this way. For a brief moment, I considered asking Mensah to come back, but I steeled myself. This was necessary.

  Barely an hour passed before Mensah returned; Aunty wanted me to come to the depot. Even though I had been expecting this, I felt my entire body become slack. I was tempted to ask Mensah how Aunty had received my message but I didn’t; he was already beginning to see himself as my equal. Besides, I knew that everything I said or did would be relayed to her. So instead, I got dressed and rode with him to the depot, my head held high and my lips set in a tight line. Aunty’s depot was opposite the main entrance to the big market and was one long block of rooms, most of which served as storerooms for flour, rice, oil, and other food products that she bought wholesale and distributed. Some of the traders in the big market bought their goods from her and resold them in smaller quantities; one sack of rice from the depot was later resold as thirty cups of rice in the market. The area was already buzzing with activity. On the street, taxis and buses honked incessantly as they ferried traders and shoppers, and pedestrians darted through the moving traffic in a bid to get to their destinations. At the depot, a queue of women waited in front of the cashier’s office to make their purchases. Boys and young men, most of them shirtless and sitting on carts and in wheelbarrows, waited close by to carry the goods to the market. I recognized several of the women but didn’t stop to greet them and didn’t turn around when I heard one of them call my name. Instead, I dashed into Aunty’s office, which was the last room in the row and one in which no one dared enter unless they were summoned by Aunty herself. When I entered, she was seated behind her desk and my mother sat in one of two straight-back chairs in front of the desk. The office was plain: gray filing cabinets lined one wall and a fan turned overhead. Piles of cellophane-wrapped receipt books occupied one corner, and beside them was a wooden stand on which sat a small TV with rabbit ears antennae. A gray landline phone and a filing tray were the only items on Aunty’s desk.

  “Good morning, Aunty,” I greeted her, my shaky hands hidden behind my back.

  “Good morning, Afi. How are you?”

  “Please, I’m fine.”

  “Good. Sit down,” she said, pointing to the empty chair next to my mother. Beside me, my mother sat on the edge of her chair, her hands tightly clasped in her lap.

  “I hear that you have left your husband’s house and have refused to return,” she said without any inflection in her voice, as though she was asking me about the weather.

  I nodded, my words stuck in my throat.

  “Why?”

  I cleared my throat, and told her what I had told my mother yesterday but with fewer details and in a less defiant tone.

  “And this is why you are refusing to go back home?”

  “Yes, Aunty.”

  She sighed with her whole body and appeared to sink into her swivel chair. My heart began to beat faster.

  When she spoke again, it was in the same calm tone. “It is not right for you to come here and behave like this. To behave as if my son is some type of beast that has bitten you. Elikem has not done anything to you; how many men will do for you all that my son has done for you? How many? I have spoken to him and he’s willing to take you back, because of the child, so go home.”

  “Please, to Accra?”

  “Of course.”

  “Please, will I be moving to his house when I go back?”

  For the first time I saw a flash in her eye. I was pushing her too far. “I said go home.”

  “Please Aunty, I cannot go back to that flat,” I said, my voice quavering and my heart thumping. I heard my mother draw a sharp breath but I refused to look her way.

  “Are you telling me that you won’t go?”

  “Aunty, please . . .” my mother began, but the woman immediately raised a fleshy hand and my mother fell quiet.

  “I asked you a question.”

  “Please, it’s not that I don’t want to go, it’s just that . . . it is what I explained to you.” I was almost whispering.

  She swiveled her chair to face my mother. “Olivia, do you hear what your daughter is telling me?”

  “Aunty, I have talked, I have said everything, but her ears are hard. I do not know what else to do.” The tremor in her voice told me that tears were not far behind. She then turned to me. “Afi, my daughter, my only child, I am begging you, I beg you in the name of God, go back to your husband.”

  I shook my head. My eyes were now fixed on a spot behind Aunty’s head.

  “So you will disrespect your mother?” Aunty said.

  I remained quiet.

  “Okay then, go,” she said.

  In a flash, my mother pushed back her chair and fell to her knees. “Aunty, she is a child, she does not know what she is doing. I will talk to her.”

  The woman abruptly stood up and my mother followed her lead.

  “She’s your daughter.”

  “You’re doing the right thing,” Mawusi said, when I told her what had happened in Aunty’s office. She was away in Côte d’Ivoire for her semester abroad. All of this turmoil would be more bearable if she were with me. I was even tempted to call Evelyn but didn’t, not after I had ignored her advice to stay in Accra.

  I pretended to be asleep when my mother returned that evening. In fact, I had been pretending to be asleep most of the day. By the time I returned from the depot, word had spread that I was in town. A stream of friends and relatives came looking for me at my mother’s house. I’d refused to answer the door until Godsway, Mawusi’s brother, walked to the other side of the house and saw me through my mother’s bedroom window. I was forced to open the door to let him in. Tɔgã Pious had sent him to bring me. I told him I would come over as soon as I had lunch but I didn’t. Instead I drew the curtains and curled up in my mother’s bed. My uncle was the last person I wanted to see and I didn’t want to have to answer questions about my presence in Ho. Besides, I didn’t think my mother could handle knowing that I was out and talking with people, not after everything that had happened that day.

  Around eight the next morning a wave of nausea forced me awake and sent me running to the toilet, but not before I became entangled in my mother’s doorway curtain and had to steady myself on the doorframe. I noticed my mother in the sitting room, reading her Bible, when I came out of the toilet. Al
l she had on was a cloth knotted above her breasts. Her scarf had slid to the crown of her head and didn’t look like it would stay on much longer.

  “You’re not going to work?”

  “Mmm mmm,” she replied, without looking up from the book on her lap.

  “Why?” I sat across from her. I was beginning to feel lightheaded.

  She went on reading her Bible without answering me, her forefinger following the small print on the page. It was after she had finished her reading and closed the Bible that she spoke to me.

  “Aunty said I should stay home until I convince you to go back.” She didn’t seem angry when she said this, just weary.

  “Has she sacked you?”

  “No, she said I should come back after you go to Accra.”

  “So no work?”

  “No work and no guild meetings.” My mother lightly ran her hand on the cover of the Bible as she spoke.

  “She has banned you from church!” I exclaimed.

  “Lower your voice,” she said. She walked over to the window and struggled with the rusty lever before succeeding in shutting the louvre blades.

  “You can’t go to church?” I was on my feet beside my mother.

  “She didn’t say I can’t go to church, she said guild meetings.”

  “But how can she do this? It’s bad enough that she has suspended you from work, but church?”

  My mother sighed heavily and sat down again.

  “I will call Eli; he has to talk to his mother.”

  “Call Eli? The same Eli that you have left? You are not thinking properly, ehn?”

  “But she cannot do this to you.”

  “If you do not want her to do this to me, you should go home.”

  There was very little conversation between us over the next few days. She went to the market and cooked for us but always shooed me away when I tried to help. When our neighbors asked why she hadn’t been to work in several days, she told them it was because I was visiting, and she said the same when some of the women’s guild members came to check on her after their bi-weekly prayer meeting. Aunty had made it clear that under no condition was I to speak ill of her son. My mother was desperate to conceal my marital problems, but she quickly realized that keeping me cooped up at home wasn’t helping. Word soon began to spread that I was hiding indoors because I was ill. A few days after my return, Tɔgã Pious, who had tired of waiting for me to come to his house, came to mine.