JILTED

I had asked Mr. Nyavor to stop opening the car door for me. He was as old as my father and I was uneasy with the way he virtually worshipped me. I did everything to assure him that the gifts I gave him often were not a result of his worship. But he seemed to relish it and would not listen.

“Madam, ebi you dey think say you be small girl but if you hear de tins wey people dey talk about you, you go say I no dey serve you well well,” he once said, grinning from ear to ear.

“What do people say about me?” I asked.

“You no sabi say some people dey respect you pass de president sef?”

“Sure?”

“Why I go lie give you?”

“Whatever you think, I’m just an ordinary girl and don’t want to be worshipped, especially by someone as old as my father. I’m OK. Just drive me and I’ll be all right with everything else.”

“You dey talk of father den age matter? Eno bi you talk for your book inside say business den family matters for no dey mix?”

“Have you read it?” I asked. The closest Mr. Nyavor got to literacy was his mastery of the Ghanaian version of pidgin English. He had dropped out of school at the basic level and joined his late father to fish. The country’s educational system was such that an average student who fell out at the basic level was not better than the one who didn’t learn to recite ABCD at all. He left for Accra to look for a job after they had depleted the stock in the Keta Lagoon.

I had met him five years ago when he was a taxi driver. So professional was he that I took his contact details and traced him when I needed a personal driver. His loyalty, honesty and frankness are peerless. His name formed part of a dozen words he could spell without gathering sweat on his creased forehead. That’s why I didn’t expect to hear him quote anything from my book.

“I no read um but somebody talk for radio wey e call your name say ebi you talk um for your book inside,” he said.

All my attempts to dissuade him from opening my car door for me had failed so, on that day, he still held on to the door even when I was seated.

“Ebi like say dem send that man after you,” he said when I enquired why he would not close the door.

“Errm, Ms. Owusu, I am not sure how you’d react, but I thought I should say hi?” the man stammered. “I have been reading your masterpiece of a book, but never thought our paths would ever cross again. You’re such an inspiration.”

I was about to say “thank you,” until the word “again” jolted me. He froze. I gaped. For a long time, or so it seemed.

I only realized that he too was weeping when I finally reached for a handkerchief and dabbed the tears that coursed freely down my cheeks.

“Let’s meet and talk later,” I finally found my voice. We had a lot to talk about, but neither of us knew where and how to begin it in that sun. As my car pulled out of the parking lot, I turned and found him still transfixed where I’d left him, shaking his head in disbelief.

I knew Nyavor, who’d moved away from the two of us with a face contorted with confusion, expected to hear something, but I didn’t know what to tell him, how to tell that story and where to begin from. The old man doubled as my godfather, my chief advisor. I realised knowledge was powerful, but wisdom was superior when I met him.

I couldn’t bring myself to tell him about the disheveled man with job applications tucked under his sweaty arm. Years ago, I would have gloated over that sight, but time had passed and what would have been a victory celebration of providential vengeance filled me with inexplicable heaviness. As the day progressed, I even began to feel guilty and somewhat responsible for his fate.

Kofi Pra was partly the architect of my success. As I lay in bed that evening, I tried to collect my thoughts together, arrange the series of disjointed events and convince myself that the text message I had sent him in tears years back did not amount to a curse. But that brief encounter had brought back many feelings – pity, love, hate, victory and of course pride – the pride of a mended heart and soul that were crashed and broken into seemingly irredeemable pieces.

Two days I’ll forever remember, even in an event of acute memory loss, are the day I broke my virginity and the day my heart was broken. And the individual at the centre of both events was Kofi Pra, my first boyfriend. It’s been many years, but I still remember the day he placed that cruel call. I least expected his call that morning. He had stopped calling for the past three weeks and our misunderstanding the previous day had worsened the situation. I knew all was not well with our relationship and things were getting to a terrifying peak as far as I was concerned. I was itching to know what it was that he had to say, but it was only ten minutes before we were expected in the exam hall, and the bell would go any moment soon. He knew I had a difficult paper to write. He also knew I was ill-prepared. And he knew he was the cause, though he would not admit that.

“Please, I’m just about to enter the exam hall so if you wouldn’t mind, let me call you immediately after the paper,” I pleaded with him when I heard his cold voice.

“I don’t have the patience for that stupidity of yours anymore. What text message did you send to Selina? Are you my wife?” he snarled.

My end of the phone went dead. It wasn’t deliberate. I just didn’t have anything to say. I wasn’t shocked. He was corroborating my worst fears, compounding my pain.

“Are you now getting out of your mind?” he went on. “If you care to know, I’m going out with her. But is it her fault that I love her? Or have you been told she proposed to me and not the other way around?”

“Kofi, I’m sorry. Can we, please, talk things over after the paper? I’m…” I tried to cut in as harmlessly as possible. The bell had gone for the start of the paper.

“I have nothing to talk over with you,” his voice was rising. “I only called to tell you that today marks the end of everything between us. Don’t ever call me again; not even God can intervene in this decision. Thanks for everything, and better luck in your next relationship,” he said and the line went dead.

The phone dropped from my hand, and I had God to thank because it was a Nokia 3310, one of the most fashionable phones in those days. I was visibly trembling and everything around me was spinning. The ground under my quaking feet began to dance. I could have collapsed, but for Akosua’s quick intervention.

“Nyarkoa, take it easy. Remember you have a paper and that is your life,” she said and helped me onto the garden bench under one of the shady trees that dotted our faculty. “Was that Kofi?” she looked concerned.

I nodded. Then suddenly my head began to throb like a set of agbadza drums paying homage to chiefs at a durbar. My colleagues were rushing into the exam hall and I could see Akosua becoming nervous. But she could not leave me alone.

I picked up the phone and dialed Kofi’s number. I wanted to tell him to give me the chance to explain after the paper. I wanted to apologise, to say sorry for his wrongdoing. That would have given me hope, an assurance that I still had a chance in his life, an opportunity to mend the broken pieces and move on with him. That alone was enough to put me at ease, at least for as long as the paper lasted. But he didn’t answer my call. He only did when I called with Akosua’s phone.

“What is it?” he snarled when he recognized my voice.

“Please, kindly allow me to explain…” The phone went dead and after several vain attempts, I picked up my phone and sent a text message, the text message that defined my life.

It was when I stood up and made for the exam hall that my tears had the opportunity to flow as if I had barrels of it concealed in my eye sockets. Akosua had to leave at a point because the per had long began.

“Does the exam law say that you should not write a paper when you’ve just lost a loved one?” I snarled at Prof. Nii Abbey when he tried to prevent me from entering the hall in late and that state. He felt very sorry and apologised profusely. It was his subject we were writing that afternoon. As the class secretary, I was very close to him. He was a debauched man of matchless notoriety. It was rumoured that the only ladies Prof. Abbey did not sleep with were those who had referrals in his course.  We became friends after our initial squabbles following my refusal to yield to his demands. But the anger Kofi had welled up in me was this time directed at anybody who stood in my way, and he happened to be the innocent victim. I had, indeed, lost a loved one. And I suspect the A+ I scored in his course was a gift from the lecturer. I don’t remember what I wrote that day.

The real import of that day’s happenings dawned on me like a terrifying day when I lay in bed that night. Akosua had tried in vain to console me. The mango juice—the only semblance of food that entered my mouth that day—tasted like urine. I couldn’t accept the reality that I was losing Kofi to anyone else. My heartache intensified when I called only to be told that his phone was switched off. Phone off on Val’s night?

I imagined Selina in my place, moaning and groaning with pleasure in response to Kofi’s tickling and rhythmic thrusting. Until I met Kofi, I didn’t understand why Diana still stuck to her monkey-no-fine McAnthony. And couldn’t wrap my head around why Aba had dumped “Freshboy” Peter. Diana and Aba were my roommates, and when the subject first came up one night, I didn’t quite agree with them.

“Listen to this nonsense from a so-called Man of God o. What’s the essence of entertaining a man who can’t entertain you when it matters most?” Aba was reacting to a TV panelist’s argument as though the man was physically present. It was a few months after she had broken up with her boyfriend.

“Is that why you left Peter?” I asked teasingly, not expecting her to agree with me so easily and frankly. She’d always kept the reason for their separation secret.

“Isn’t it annoying? He’s the type who is never tired of pestering you and yearning for sex, but when you give him the chance, you won’t know when he starts and when he finishes,” she said, still angry with the TV panelist.

“Were you able to tell him in the face the reason you left him?” I was inquisitive, for I’d heard that men didn’t want to hear it.

“I didn’t leave him. I made him realise my pain, and he rather called it quits. I’d told him one night when he was climbing on to me that I was tired and wanted to sleep, so when he finished, he should wake me up to put on my clothes. He knew I was not used to sleeping naked after such things.” I shook with laughter.

“Apart from him panting like a dog that has been running all day, you could sleep without knowing someone was making love to you. That was exactly what I told him and when I opened my eyes to see his reaction, he was dressing up. You know men have this stupidity in them, what they call ego! He left the room without a word and that was the last time we spoke to each other.”

“That was wicked of you, Aba,” I said.

“So, you now understand why I can’t leave McAnthony,” Diana, who had been reading as if she was detached from our conversation sprung up at this point. “Men, they say, enter into relationships with their eyes, but we ladies have our criteria. It doesn’t take a long time for a charming man to look ordinary. What some men lack in looks is made up for in other qualities we can’t see or trumpet.”

At the time of this conversation, I had just accepted Kofi’s proposal, but I still had my hymen intact. Their talk was like those inapplicable theories we learnt to pass our end-of-semester exams and forget afterward. I later realised Kofi was extraordinary in love making.

He never forgot to plant a firm and gentle kiss on my lips before sliding out of me. It was the kiss that usually woke me up from my deep sleep of pleasure. It was usually at that point that I realized how tightly I held on to him, each time wishing he went deeper and deeper until he touched my very heart, the delicate heart which belonged only to him.

“Are you satisfied?” he would sometimes ask, smiling.

“Pleasure is insatiable, you know. At least, not the kind you give.” I would remind him in a whisper.

“Well, then is your turn.”

“My turn to do what?”

“To mount, of course.  What men can do, women can do better. Or are you now ready to concede the obvious?”

“I will never exchange the birthright of women for pleasure. I only acknowledge your superiority in this because some things are natural gifts. Who knows, sex might well be your gift of the Holy Spirit.”

At this point, he would give my naked body a gentle slap.

“You’ve hit me, Kofi,” I would wince, feigning pain and anger. Then he would have to placate me. It was fun and each time was as unique as a first encounter. He was gentle and kind and polite, the kind of guy who’d rush through rain to buy you ice cream.

As I lay in bed that night, I imagined Selina in my place, taking what belonged to me. But that was not the main source of my heartache. I had vowed in my life never to meet my husband deflowered. Growing up, that’s what every girl was told. It was society’s standard code of morality for women. I had, in turn, told myself that I would either marry still a virgin or marry a man who would tear my hymen. My mother once told me that was the only way a woman could bring honour to her parents and her family. It was the highest standard of measuring the character of a woman and I, like many young women, didn’t want to fall short. I now consider that as cow dung, but not at the time Kofi was walking out of my life. Those stereotypes, coupled with the power of first love and everything I had come to cherish about him, made it almost impossible to move on even after the text message of finality I’d sent to him.

After weeks of tears and regret, I realised there was nothing I could do to win Kofi back. I decided to stick to the text message I sent him that afternoon: “You can dump me like a rag, but you’ll one day chase me for my autograph!”

I didn’t mean an autograph. I meant revenge. The most befitting revenge for a man who dumps you like a piece of plastic is to let him regret ever leaving you. Kofi was a fool and I would make him regret it.

I started to compare myself with Selina. There was nothing extraordinary about her appearance, but she had a different status, one that appealed to any gold digger. Her father was the finance minister at the time and her mother was the head of the Business School of our university. She went about campus in the latest Mercedes Benz, the car in which I first spotted Kofi and her. I don’t know how their paths crossed and who wooed whom, but they were together.

I had gone to Kofi’s hall after all attempts to reach him on the phone failed. I was still on the balcony of the second floor when I saw Selina’s Benz screech to a halt, and after what seemed a long time, Kofi stepped out, his face animated with that sheepish look of vain pride. His hallmates cheered and he acknowledged it. Most of those who cheered knew about my relationship with him so to avoid utter embarrassment, I quickly descended the stairs and moved towards the hall’s annex before he and his noisy lot entered his room.

When I later asked him about Selina, his immediate reaction was to get angry and claim that there were only friends. He stopped calling and would pick up my call after many days of failed attempts. On any holiday or occasion when we were on campus, it was Kofi who suggested where we spent the day, but Valentine’s Day was less than 12 hours away but I hadn’t heard anything from him. After trying in vain to get him on phone, I made it to his room and found him reading. We both had our last papers to write the following day, and there wouldn’t be a more suitable way to end the semester than chill out on Val’s Day after the sleepless nights of learning.

Kofi said he wouldn’t go out the following day. When he went out to take his bath, I sneaked into the messages on his phone. He was planning to go out with Selina on Val’s Day. The more I read some of the messages they had exchanged the more I wished I hadn’t read them. All I could do was send a text message to Selina after I had returned to my room, pleading with her to leave Kofi for me. And the price of what I did was the call just before my last paper.

When I was too young to understand the reasoning of the heart, I thought it was foolish to cry over a man. I thought it was stupidity to its highest degree when I heard people hurting themselves because of love. I later realised I was thinking the way the Bible puts it—like a child. My mind was clear I had to leave, but it was subservient to my heart. I went without food for many days and it was a miracle I didn’t jump into the street naked. Broken-heartedness has no cure. It only takes the intervention of time to heal and to mend the broken pieces and forget the loss. In my case, it wasn’t different. I spent more time thinking about my revenge. To excel. To ride in a better car than Selina’s. Efua Nyarkoa Owusu, would not allow that direct grandson of the devil to gloat over her failure. I’d been despised because I didn’t come from a family whose name rang a bell, but I was determined to create my own status. I lost my head in my studies. I became more intimate with my goals and gave my career my all. And it paid off.

***

As I had promised, Kofi and I met after our encounter at the car park. Not much of him had changed. He had practically nothing to boast about apart from the first degree he took a year before I graduated. He still boarded trotro vehicles and was desperately searching for a job. Selina had left him long ago and he had failed so many times to keep a steady relationship. When it was my turn to say how life had treated me, I left a lot of details and some of my proudest achievements. There were those I couldn’t leave out, which he perhaps might have heard about.

I told him how I had secured a scholarship to pursue my MBA and proceeded to do my PhD at Harvard. I told him how my business pitch had been adjudged the best in a prestigious global entrepreneurs challenge and how top multinational giants fought to be associated with it, how the Time magazine ranked me third in its Under 30 Global Achievers, and my book sold two million copies in the first year of publication and how every organisation of repute invited me to speak at seminars and staff durbars. It was such an activity that took me to the bank Kofi had come to seek a job.

He apologised and was pleased to learn that I had forgiven him long ago. He felt confident and did what every foolish man in his shoes would do—initiate a fresh start, a comeback. I was still single and unattached. And he knew it.

I shook my head. And he understood it. There was no way I would so cheaply betray womanhood. Besides, we Africans believe in reincarnation. If Kofi Pra came back to his next world with a six-inch mini cobra between his thighs, he would learn to respect the dignity of women.

When I later met Agbemo, I sent Kofi an invitation to our wedding, but he didn’t show up. After bouts of more stimulating pleasure from the man of my life, I picked up my phone which I had put on silent mode to avoid intrusion into our sanctuary of joy. It was only then I saw Kofi’s text message: “My absence was not out of ill will. I just couldn’t bear to be present. It may sound stupid, but what I felt for you after our last meeting was stronger than it was when we dated. I’d prayed for a miracle, but your rejection hurt as if you’d jilted me. I blame myself for what happened and may happen in the near future. I’m sorry.”

I put the phone aside and went to bed because I didn’t know what to immediately say to him. It’d been a long day and the night did not promise to be any shorter. I was making love for the first time since my last sex with Kofi. He had nearly ruined my future and my love life. I didn’t have to allow him to ruin my night.

He, however, ruined the honeymoon. That was when Akosua sent me a link the following morning to the news item about his suicide.