“What are you talking about? We’re traveling on Monday.”
“There’s a flight to Paris every day and the airline won’t charge you a fee for changing the dates because of your frequent flier status; you told me that yourself. Not that it would matter if they charged you. So let’s leave on Tuesday. But on Monday, let’s go to Ho and get married.”
“Afi . . .why . . .this is not the time.”
“This is the time. Now. If you love me, let’s get married in church.”
“Afi, you know . . .”
“Stop. Just stop. I don’t want to hear about you sorting things out. I don’t want to hear any of that. Just be honest with me. Will you marry me or not? Just for once, Eli, tell me the truth.”
He sighed and leaned back in the wrought-iron garden chair. His weight pushed the legs deeper into the soil. He looked down at the phone, which he’d placed on his lap, and then looked back up at me. “I can’t do that, Afi, I can’t marry you. I’m sorry.” His voice shook.
“Because you want to marry her? You want to marry her when your mother dies. You want to marry her and you want her to be equal to me and you know that we both can’t have a church wedding. So if we both can’t have a church wedding then neither of us will have it.”
He didn’t say a word.
“Was there ever, ever a moment in this marriage when you thought of me as the only one, when you wanted only me?”
He didn’t answer me.
“Why do you love her so much? Why am I not enough for you?” I said, my voice breaking.
“Afi, you know I love you.”
“But you love her more than me. Don’t you?”
“What kind of question is that, Afi?”
“It’s a very simple question. Yes or no. Do you love her more than me?”
“I love you both.”
“Do you love her more?”
“I love you both.”
“You love us both so you will marry us both, because you’re special and deserve to have everything you want. Everything! But I don’t deserve to have what I want, what I’ve suffered for.”
“You will still be my wife, my first wife. It won’t be any different from the arrangement we have now.”
“We both know you plan to go back to how things were. To sleeping in two homes and driving around Accra with a traveling bag in the trunk of your car. It’s only a matter of time; this show that you’re putting on for your mother is not going to last forever. I’m not ready to go back to that. I won’t go back to lying in bed alone and crying for you. Crying for you while you take my son to live in another woman’s house.”
“Afi . . .”
“Don’t say my name. And don’t you dare call our marriage an arrangement. We don’t have an arrangement, I’m your wife! Your family married me for you. All of our relatives were there. Father Wisdom was there. I’m your wife!”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t have a second wife. Please be reasonable, Afi.”
“Reasonable? You are wicked. You are a liar.”
“I never lied to you. I never told you I was going to leave her. Never.”
He slept in the guestroom that night, and the next day I told him I wanted a divorce. We were standing on opposite sides of the kitchen, our backs against the countertop. Sensing the mood, Mrs. Adams and her helper had made themselves scarce. It was a Sunday and my mother had taken Selorm to church with her. I was considerably calmer than the day before. Probably because I was exhausted after having stayed up all night, thinking about what I would do and what my decision would mean for me and Selorm. No matter how hard I tried, my spirit continued to rebel at the idea of me as one of Eli’s wives. Just the thought of him sharing a home with her left me feeling hot, as though the air conditioner had been turned off, and caused a dull ache to take over one side of my head. By the time the first sunlight filtered through my curtains, I was certain that I would rather live without him than share him with her. “I want a divorce,” I said quietly.
“Divorce? You can’t be serious, Afi. Because of this?” His incredulity surprised and angered me. So he really expected me to sit quietly and accept whatever he threw at me?
“Yes, because of this. Because you’ve been cheating on me and lying to me. Because I don’t want another woman in our marriage.”
“Stop being unreasonable,” he said, a cup of coffee in hand. He had been holding it without touching it to his lips since he came into the kitchen.
“I really hate it when you say that!” I said, glaring at him.
“Say what?”
“When you dismiss my pain and suffering as unreasonable. When you refuse even for a minute to empathize with me. How would you feel if I cheated on you? If I told you I wanted to be with another man while married to you?”
He put his coffee mug down and scoffed. “That’s different, Afi. You know it’s not the same thing.”
“It’s the same thing, but you would never agree to it. So why should I agree to this, to you being with her?”
He took a step forward and I scooted sideways. I didn’t want him to touch me. A pained look settled on his face. “Okay, fine,” he said very slowly, locking eyes with me. “Let’s not waste our time on hypotheticals. I’m sorry about everything, I’m sorry I hurt you. I know that this is very difficult for you; it is difficult for me too. I love you and I love the life we have together. I don’t want to lose this, to lose you.”
“You love me, but not enough to leave her and be with me?”
“Darling, I can do anything for you, but not that. She’s my family too, I can’t leave her. Just like I would never leave you.”
“Then stay with her, I will go,” my voice caught in my throat as I realized that we were nearing the end, that he would not change his mind.
“Please don’t say this, Afi.”
“I wish you had told me all of this before I fell in love with you.”
“I never meant to hurt you.”
“But you have and I can’t be with you anymore.”
“Afi, don’t do this. Think about Selorm, think about our baby, don’t do this to him.”
“I’m not the one doing anything to him, it’s you. You are the one breaking apart our family because of another woman. You should at least take responsibility for that.”
He begged me to reconsider but I refused. It was either the woman or me; he couldn’t have both of us. He grabbed my hand when I tried to walk out of the kitchen and I jerked it away from him. I saw tears in his eyes as I turned to walk away but I steeled myself. My mother also began to cry when I told her but I think she already knew that there was nothing she could do. Mawusi, on the other hand, tried much harder to get me to change my mind. She was determined to salvage the fairytale.
“Afi, he’s a good man. Apart from this thing, he’s a good man. You have to remember that. And what he’s proposing is not ideal and it’s not common like before, but people still do it. I even know women with university degrees, doctors and lawyers, big, big, women, who are co-wives. It’s manageable as long as the man is not like my father who’ll make all of the women stay in the same house and refuse to take care of his children.” She was sitting with me in my bedroom. My mother had called her to come over as soon as I announced my decision.
“Mawusi, you don’t know what it feels like, how it hurts. He wants to marry her. I cannot live with that, I cannot live with that woman in our marriage.”
“He said he loves you both.”
“Ah! Even parents do not love their children equally; how much more a man and his wives? If he really loved me, he would have left her a long time ago. But I’m obviously not enough for him. After all this time, after all I’ve done, after Selorm, and I’m still not enough for him. How would you feel if Yao did this to you?”
“This is different.”
“Because he’s rich?”
“No, because you can still have what you’ve always dreamed of. A good life with a man who loves you, and is kind, and
takes care of you.”
“I want more than that. I want him to be mine only. Is that too much to ask? I’m sorry that I’m not like other wives who are able to happily share their husbands with co-wives and mistresses and girlfriends. That’s just not me. I’m not built like that. Look at what happened when I was pregnant. I can’t live the rest of my life with that kind of heartache.”
“It will get better with time.”
“How do you know? The last time it got worse. I used to lie in bed pregnant and convinced that the sadness would strangle me. The longer I stay in this marriage, the longer it will hurt. It will either drive me insane or leave me permanently depressed, and that’s not the life I want for myself or my son.”
She sighed heavily. “Afi, you know that people will talk.”
“Let them talk. Am I the first woman to ask for a divorce in this country? Women do it all the time and their lives don’t come to an end. They continue to breathe and work and some of them even manage to find love again. Why should I be any different? I’m still young, my business is doing well, I will work and take care of myself and my son. Even if Eli decides not to give me one cedi after today, we will still be fine.”
“Hmmm. Where are you going to find a man like Elikem Ganyo to marry you again? Especially now that you have a child?”
“I don’t want to marry a man like him again.”
Mawusi had barely left before Richard and Yaya came. It couldn’t have been a coincidence; their brother must have called them. I was sitting on the back porch, getting some air and watching Selorm try to kick a ball in the grass. My mother was taking a nap after complaining about a headache and Eli was upstairs. His brother and sister came outside to talk to me.
“Eli told us what happened,” Richard said quietly, his hands folded in his lap. I don’t think I had ever seen him so serious. They were seated across from me. For the first time since I had known her, Yaya was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, her hair in a bun, slides on her feet, and no makeup on her face. She looked like she had rushed out of her house.
“Hmmm,” was all I said before looking past them to see what Selorm was doing.
“Remember, I told you that this woman did something to my brother, this is not the Eli we know. The woman is evil, pure evil, she . . .”
“Please, just stop there,” I said, cutting him off. “She hasn’t done anything to your brother. Eli just wants to have his cake and eat it. He thinks he should be free to accumulate as many cars and houses and women as he wants. He never intended to leave that woman and you all knew it, but you led me to believe that it was just a matter of time.” Richard appeared shocked at my words, his eyebrows climbing his forehead. He obviously still thought that I was the same girl he sat on my mother’s verandah with, spinning tales about the Liberian woman.
“Be careful what you say, Afi. Don’t insult us,” Yaya said, a forefinger and her voice raised in warning to me.
How dare her, after all they had put me through. I had had enough of her, and her mother, and her brothers. “Don’t tell me to be careful! Didn’t you people tell me that he was going to leave her? And now two years later you are back, telling me it’s spiritual, that she has scrambled his brains so that he can no longer think straight. Why can’t you just admit that your brother was with a woman that none of you liked and so you tried to use me to get him to leave her. Just admit that she’s not crazy, or manly, or suicidal, or an alcoholic, or a chain-smoker, or a bad mother. There’s nothing wrong with her! She’s a woman who you don’t like because she does as she pleases and doesn’t dance to your tune. You shouldn’t have dragged me into this. You should have fixed it without involving me. Or better still, you should have just let your brother be with whomever he chose.” I was enraged and saying everything I had thought about last night as I paced my bedroom, fearing that the pain ripping through my chest would never stop.
“Haha,” Yaya said drily, rolling her eyes and clapping slowly. “Dragged you? You, Afi, who was stitching rags together and calling yourself a seamstress in Ho. Dragged you? You should be grateful that we rescued you from that miserable existence and gave you the life you have now.” Her eyes flashed as she spoke and for the first time, I noticed that she closely resembled her mother.
“Yaya,” Richard said and touched his sister’s shoulder but she shrugged his hand off and rose to her feet. I stood up too. My words had pushed her buttons and caused her to show me her true colors.
“You want the truth? This is the truth: We picked you from the gutter and gave you a life that you would not have had in a thousand years. There are countless women in this country with pretty faces and fat asses—you are not special. We could have chosen any one of them for my brother. How far do you think that face and body would have taken you? Where would your high school degree have taken you in this country where even university graduates can’t make it? You were nothing and you are still nothing. Think about that before saying that you are divorcing him and allowing that woman to come back into this house.”
“Get out,” I said, nose to nose with her. Her words stung.
“Me get out? Is this your house? Did you buy this house? You are only here because we have allowed you to be here.”
“Okay then, watch me leave.” I scooped up Selorm and took him inside, leaving them on the porch.
“Ah, Yaya. Why?” I heard Richard say in exasperation as I walked away.
Neither my mother nor I bothered to tell Aunty what was happening in Accra. That was her son’s job. Instead I called Tɔgã Pious and told him to return the schnapps to the Ganyos.
“What are you saying, Afi?” He had only recently begun to talk to me again after the issue with the money I gave him at Christmas.
“I’m saying I don’t want to be in this marriage anymore so please return their drinks so it can be over.”
“What happened? Come home and let us talk about it. There has to be a way to solve this.”
“There’s no way; please return the drinks.”
“Afi, you can’t just leave your husband like that. And what are we supposed to tell the family when we go? You have to at least come home first.”
I went to Ho with my mother and Selorm on Monday morning and bought two bottles of schnapps on the way, the same brand that Richard had given to my uncle at the wedding. In Ho, my uncles and Aunty Sylvia, who had come from Togo that dawn, tried to change my mind. Tɔgã Pious begged me more than Eli had; you would have thought he was begging for his life. We were in his sitting room, the same room in which I had waited on the day of my marriage to Eli. The louvre blades were shut because they didn’t want a word of this to get out.
“What will people say about us?” Uncle Bright asked.
“Uncle, I don’t care what people say.”
“Of course it’s easy for you not to care. You live in Accra. We are the ones who live in Ho and have to face our neighbors every day. Will we even be able to go to the depot to buy things after this? You know my wife buys flour from there and Aunty allows her to buy on credit. She only pays after she has sold the bread. So stop thinking only about yourself and think of us,” Uncle Excellent said.
“If you refuse to go to Aunty’s house, I will return the drinks myself,” I told them.
“Heeeeeeeeey,” Aunty Sylvia shouted in shock and folded her hands on top of her head as if she had just received news of a death in the family.
“Olivia, what is wrong with your daughter, what kind of new madness is this? Have you heard of a woman returning her drinks before? Do you not have people?” Tɔgã Pious said. He was now on his feet and pacing the small room. My mother ignored him and fanned Selorm with a newspaper. He had been fretting in the heat.
“I’m saying that if you refuse to take it back, I will.”
“You’ll not rest until you shame all of us, until we all become outcasts in this town. I thank God my brother Illustrious is not here to see what you’re doing.”
“I wouldn’t have married Eli i
f my father was alive. He would never have agreed to this marriage.”
They said Aunty smashed one bottle of schnapps against a wall when they went to her house to return the drinks. This was after she told them she wouldn’t accept that I was leaving her son. She cursed me and my mother and threatened to deal with me severely. Aunty Sylvia said spittle had begun to bubble in the corners of the old woman’s mouth as she spoke, like some kind of rabid animal. Halfway through her rant, she had had to pause and gulp air like a dying fish. I just shook my head when Aunty Sylvia told me this. I was no longer afraid of Aunty.
Evelyn was silent for a while when I recounted all of this to her. She was visiting me in the workshop. I had converted one of the rooms back into a bedroom, which I shared with Selorm. My mother slept in the second room.
“I don’t really know what to say,” she finally said.
“You want to say that I should have learned to enjoy the money and ignore his faults.”
She chuckled. “Yes, that’s true. But also that you should be happy—most importantly, that you should be happy. That you should have your peace of mind. That marriage shouldn’t be a never-ending competition where you spend your life fighting to be seen and chosen. That all the money in the world is not worth the pain and tears and sleepless nights. So you did good and you will be fine. You are smart and you are not afraid of hard work; you will be fine.”
“Eli said he will give me money for Selorm every month. And he said I can keep the car and driver and have one of the houses.”
“But of course, that’s the least he can do.”
“But I’ve had enough of living in other people’s houses, I want my own. I . . .”
“Let me stop you right there. You had better accept that car and house and even ask him to add a flat and another car to it. Think of it as payment for what he put you through. It is not other people’s house; it is your house! Just make sure that he puts your name on the title. In fact, make sure your name is on every piece of paper, for the house, the car, everything. I know a lawyer that can fast-track it; I will take you there myself. As long as your name is on the title, Small Aunty will not be able to open her big mouth to tell you nonsense. You have to be tough, Afi. Make sure your name is on every document, make sure Selorm’s name is on every document, so that tomorrow if something happens to Eli, you will get what you are entitled to.”
His Only Wife Page 23