Americanah

  “It was a strange moment for me, because until then I thought nobody in America cheated,” Ifemelu said.

  Kimberly said, “Oh my goodness.”

  “This happened in Brooklyn?” Laura asked.

  “Yes.”

  Laura shrugged, as though to say that it would, of course, happen in Brooklyn but not in the America in which she lived.

  AT ISSUE WAS an orange. A round, flame-colored orange that Ifemelu had brought with her lunch, peeled and quartered and enclosed in a Ziploc bag. She ate it at the kitchen table, while Taylor sat nearby writing in his homework sheet.

  “Would you like some, Taylor?” she asked, and offered him a piece.

  “Thanks,” he said. He put it into his mouth. His face crumpled. “It’s bad! It’s got stuff in it!”

  “Those are the seeds,” she said, looking at what he had spat into his hand.

  “The seeds?”

  “Yes, the orange seeds.”

  “Oranges don’t have stuff in them.”

  “Yes, they do. Throw that in the trash, Taylor. I’m going to put the learning video in for you.”

  “Oranges don’t have stuff in them,” he repeated.

  All his life, he had eaten oranges without seeds, oranges grown to look perfectly orange and to have faultless skin and no seeds, so at eight years old he did not know that there was such a thing as an orange with seeds. He ran into the den to tell Morgan about it. She looked up from her book, raised a slow, bored hand, and tucked her red hair behind her ear.

  “Of course oranges have seeds. Mom just buys the seedless variety. Ifemelu didn’t get the right kind.” She gave Ifemelu one of her accusatory glares.

  “The orange is the right one for me, Morgan. I grew up eating oranges with seeds,” Ifemelu said, turning on the video.

  “Okay.” Morgan shrugged. With Kimberly she would have said nothing, only glowered.

  The doorbell rang. It had to be the carpet cleaner. Kimberly and Don were hosting a cocktail party fundraiser the next day, for a friend of theirs about whom Don had said, “It’s just an ego trip for him running for Congress, he won’t even come close,” and Ifemelu was surprised that he seemed to recognize the ego of others, while blinded in the fog of his own. She went to the door. A burly, red-faced man stood there, carrying cleaning equipment, something slung over his shoulder, something else that looked like a lawn mower propped at his feet.

  He stiffened when he saw her. First surprise flitted over his features, then it ossified to hostility.

  “You need a carpet cleaned?” he asked, as if he did not care, as if she could change her mind, as if he wanted her to change her mind. She looked at him, a taunt in her eyes, prolonging a moment loaded with assumptions: he thought she was a homeowner, and she was not what he had expected to see in this grand stone house with the white pillars.

  “Yes,” she said finally, suddenly tired. “Mrs. Turner told me you were coming.”

  It was like a conjurer’s trick, the swift disappearance of his hostility. His face sank into a grin. She, too, was the help. The universe was once again arranged as it should be.

  “How are you doing? Know where she wants me to start?” he asked.

  “Upstairs,” she said, letting him in, wondering how all that cheeriness could have existed earlier in his body. She would never forget him, bits of dried skin stuck to his chapped, peeling lips, and she would begin the blog post “Sometimes in America, Race Is Class” with the story of his dramatic change, and end with: It didn’t matter to him how much money I had. As far as he was concerned I did not fit as the owner of that stately house because of the way I looked. In America’s public discourse, “Blacks” as a whole are often lumped with “Poor Whites.” Not Poor Blacks and Poor Whites. But Blacks and Poor Whites. A curious thing indeed.

  Taylor was excited. “Can I help? Can I help?” he asked the carpet cleaner.

  “No thanks, buddy,” the man said. “I got it.”

  “I hope he doesn’t start in my room,” Morgan said.

  “Why?” Ifemelu asked.

  “I just don’t want him to.”

  IFEMELU WANTED to tell Kimberly about the carpet cleaner, but Kimberly might become flustered and apologize for what was not her fault as she often, too often, apologized for Laura.

  It was discomfiting to observe how Kimberly lurched, keen to do the right thing and not knowing what the right thing was. If she told Kimberly about the carpet cleaner, there was no telling how she would respond—laugh, apologize, snatch up the phone to call the company and complain.

  And so, instead, she told Kimberly about Taylor and the orange.

  “He really thought seeds meant it was bad? How funny.”

  “Morgan of course promptly set him right,” Ifemelu said.

  “Oh, she would.”

  “When I was a little girl my mother used to tell me that an orange would grow on my head if I swallowed a seed. I had many anxious mornings of going to look in the mirror. At least Taylor won’t have that childhood trauma.”

  Kimberly laughed.

  “Hello!” It was Laura, coming in through the back door with Athena, a tiny wisp of a child with hair so thin that her pale scalp gaped through. A waif. Perhaps Laura’s blended vegetables and strict diet rules had left the child malnourished.

  Laura put a vase on the table. “This will look terrific tomorrow.”

  “It’s lovely,” Kimberly said, bending to kiss Athena’s head. “That’s the caterer’s menu. Don thinks the hors d’oeuvre selection is too simple. I’m not sure.”

  “He wants you to add more?” Laura said, scanning the menu.

  “He just thought it was a little simple, he was very sweet about it.”

  In the den, Athena began to cry. Laura went to her and, soon enough, a string of negotiations followed: “Do you want this one, sweetheart? The yellow or the blue or the red? Which do you want?”

  Just give her one, Ifemelu thought. To overwhelm a child of four with choices, to lay on her the burden of making a decision, was to deprive her of the bliss of childhood. Adulthood, after all, already loomed, where she would have to make grimmer and grimmer decisions.

  “She’s been grumpy today,” Laura said, coming back into the kitchen, Athena’s crying quelled. “I took her to her follow-up from the ear infection and she’s been an absolute bear all day. Oh and I met the most charming Nigerian man today. We get there and it turns out a new doctor has just joined the practice and he’s Nigerian and he came by and said hello to us. He reminded me of you, Ifemelu. I read on the Internet that Nigerians are the most educated immigrant group in this country. Of course, it says nothing about the millions who live on less than a dollar a day back in your country, but when I met the doctor I thought of that article and of you and other privileged Africans who are here in this country.” Laura paused and Ifemelu, as she often did, felt that Laura had more to say but was holding back. It felt strange, to be called privileged. Privileged was people like Kayode DaSilva, whose passport sagged with the weight of visa stamps, who went to London for summer and to Ikoyi Club to swim, who could casually get up and say “We’re going to Frenchies for ice cream.”

  “I’ve never been called privileged in my life!” Ifemelu said. “It feels good.”

  “I think I’ll switch and have him be Athena’s doctor. He was wonderful, so well-groomed and well-spoken. I haven’t been very satisfied with Dr. Bingham since Dr. Hoffman left, anyway.” Laura picked up the menu again. “In graduate school I knew a woman from Africa who was just like this doctor, I think she was from Uganda. She was wonderful, and she didn’t get along with the African-American woman in our class at all. She didn’t have all those issues.”

  “Maybe when the African American’s father was not allowed to vote because he was black, the Ugandan’s father was running for parliament or studying at Oxford,” Ifemelu said.

  Laura stared at her, made a mocking confused face. “Wait, did I miss something?”

  “I just th
ink it’s a simplistic comparison to make. You need to understand a bit more history,” Ifemelu said.

  Laura’s lips sagged. She staggered, collected herself.

  “Well, I’ll get my daughter and then go find some history books from the library, if I can figure out what they look like!” Laura said, and marched out.

  Ifemelu could almost hear Kimberly’s heart beating wildly.

  “I’m sorry,” Ifemelu said.

  Kimberly shook her head and murmured, “I know Laura can be challenging,” her eyes on the salad she was mixing.

  Ifemelu hurried upstairs to Laura.

  “I’m sorry. I was rude just now and I apologize.” But she was sorry only because of Kimberly, the way she had begun to mix the salad as though to reduce it to a pulp.

  “It’s fine,” Laura sniffed, smoothing her daughter’s hair, and Ifemelu knew that for a long time afterwards, she would not unwrap from herself the pashmina of the wounded.

  APART FROM a stiff “Hi,” Laura did not speak to her at the party the next day. The house filled with the gentle murmur of voices, guests raising wineglasses to their lips. They were similar, all of them, their clothes nice and safe, their sense of humor nice and safe, and, like other upper-middle-class Americans, they used the word “wonderful” too often. “You’ll come and help out with the party, won’t you, please?” Kimberly had asked Ifemelu, as she always did of their gatherings. Ifemelu was not sure how she helped out, since the events were catered and the children went to bed early, but she sensed, beneath the lightness of Kimberly’s invitation, something close to a need. In some small way that she did not entirely understand, her presence seemed to steady Kimberly. If Kimberly wanted her there, then she would be there.

  “This is Ifemelu, our babysitter and my friend,” Kimberly introduced her to guests.

  “You’re so beautiful,” a man told her, smiling, his teeth jarringly white. “African women are gorgeous, especially Ethiopians.”

  A couple spoke about their safari in Tanzania. “We had a wonderful tour guide and we’re now paying for his first daughter’s education.” Two women spoke about their donations to a wonderful charity in Malawi that built wells, a wonderful orphanage in Botswana, a wonderful microfinance cooperative in Kenya. Ifemelu gazed at them. There was a certain luxury to charity that she could not identify with and did not have. To take “charity” for granted, to revel in this charity towards people whom one did not know—perhaps it came from having had yesterday and having today and expecting to have tomorrow. She envied them this.

  A petite woman in a severe pink jacket said, “I’m chair of the board of a charity in Ghana. We work with rural women. We’re always interested in African staff, we don’t want to be the NGO that won’t use local labor. So if you’re ever looking for a job after graduation and want to go back and work in Africa, give me a call.”

  “Thank you.” Ifemelu wanted, suddenly and desperately, to be from the country of people who gave and not those who received, to be one of those who had and could therefore bask in the grace of having given, to be among those who could afford copious pity and empathy. She went out to the deck in search of fresh air. Over the hedge, she could see the Jamaican nanny of the neighbors’ children, walking down the driveway, the one who always evaded Ifemelu’s eyes, and did not like to say hello. Then she noticed a movement on the other end of the deck. It was Don. There was something furtive about him and she felt rather than saw that he had just ended a cell phone conversation.

  “Great party,” he told her. “It’s just an excuse for Kim and me to have friends over. Roger is totally out of his league and I’ve told him that, no chance in hell …”

  Don kept talking, his voice too larded in bonhomie, her dislike clawing at her throat. She and Don did not talk like this. It was too much information, too much talk. She wanted to tell him that she had heard nothing of his phone conversation, if there had been anything at all to hear, that she knew nothing and that she did not want to know.

  “They must be wondering where you are,” she said.

  “Yes, we must go back,” he said, as though they had come out together. Back inside, Ifemelu saw Kimberly standing in the middle of the den, slightly apart from her circle of friends; she had been looking around for Don and when she saw him, her eyes rested on him, and her face became soft, and shorn of worry.

  IFEMELU LEFT the party early; she wanted to speak to Dike before his bedtime. Aunty Uju picked up the phone.

  “Has Dike slept?” Ifemelu asked.

  “He’s brushing his teeth,” she said, and then in a lower voice, she added, “He was asking me about his name again.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “The same thing. You know he never asked me this kind of thing before we moved here.”

  “Maybe it’s having Bartholomew in the picture, and the new environment. He’s used to having you to himself.”

  “This time he didn’t ask why he has my name, he asked if he has my name because his father did not love him.”

  “Aunty, maybe it’s time to tell him you were not a second wife,” Ifemelu said.

  “I was practically a second wife.” Aunty Uju sounded defiant, even petulant, clenching her fist tightly around her own story. She had told Dike that his father was in the military government, that she was his second wife, and that they had given him her surname to protect him, because some people in the government, not his father, had done some bad things.

  “Okay, here’s Dike,” Aunty Uju said, in a normal tone.

  “Hey, Coz! You should have seen my soccer game today!” Dike said.

  “How come you score all the great goals when I’m not there? Are these goals in your dreams?” Ifemelu asked.

  He laughed. He still laughed easily, his sense of humor whole, but since the move to Massachusetts, he was no longer transparent. Something had filmed itself around him, making him difficult to read, his head perennially bent towards his Game Boy, looking up once in a while to view his mother, and the world, with a weariness too heavy for a child. His grades were falling. Aunty Uju threatened him more often. The last time Ifemelu visited, Aunty Uju told him, “I will send you back to Nigeria if you do that again!” speaking Igbo as she did to him only when she was angry, and Ifemelu worried that it would become for him the language of strife.

  Aunty Uju, too, had changed. At first, she had sounded curious, expectant about her new life. “This place is so white,” she said. “Do you know I went to the drugstore to quickly buy lipstick, because the mall is thirty minutes away, and all the shades were too pale! But they can’t carry what they can’t sell! At least this place is quiet and restful, and I feel safe drinking the tap water, something I will never even try in Brooklyn.”

  Slowly, over the months, her tone soured.

  “Dike’s teacher said he is aggressive,” she told Ifemelu one day, after she had been called to come in and see the principal. “Aggressive, of all things. She wants him to go to what they call special ed, where they will put him in a class alone and bring somebody who is trained to deal with mental children to teach him. I told the woman that it is not my son, it is her father who is aggressive. Look at him, just because he looks different, when he does what other little boys do, it becomes aggression. Then the principal told me, ‘Dike is just like one of us, we don’t see him as different at all.’ What kind of pretending is that? I told him to look at my son. There are only two of them in the whole school. The other child is a half-caste, and so fair that if you look from afar you will not even know that he is black. My son sticks out, so how can you tell me that you don’t see any difference? I refused completely that they should put him in a special class. He is brighter than all of them combined. They want to start now to mark him. Kemi warned me about this. She said they tried to do it to her son in Indiana.”

  Later, Aunty Uju’s complaints turned to her residency program, how slow and small it was, medical records still handwritten and kept in dusty files, and then when she
finished her residency, she complained about the patients who thought they were doing her a favor by seeing her. She hardly mentioned Bartholomew; it was as though she lived only with Dike in the Massachusetts house by the lake.

  CHAPTER 17

  Ifemelu decided to stop faking an American accent on a sunlit day in July, the same day she met Blaine. It was convincing, the accent. She had perfected, from careful watching of friends and newscasters, the blurring of the t, the creamy roll of the r, the sentences starting with “so,” and the sliding response of “oh really,” but the accent creaked with consciousness, it was an act of will. It took an effort, the twisting of lip, the curling of tongue. If she were in a panic, or terrified, or jerked awake during a fire, she would not remember how to produce those American sounds. And so she resolved to stop, on that summer day, the weekend of Dike’s birthday. Her decision was prompted by a telemarketer’s call. She was in her apartment on Spring Garden Street, the first that was truly hers in America, hers alone, a studio with a leaky faucet and a noisy heater. In the weeks since she moved in, she had felt light-footed, cloaked in well-being, because she opened the fridge knowing that everything in it was hers and she cleaned the bathtub knowing she would not find tufts of disconcertingly foreign roommate-hair in the drain. “Officially two blocks away from the real hood” was how the apartment super, Jamal, had put it, when he told her to expect to hear gunshots from time to time, but although she had opened her window every evening, straining and listening, all she heard were the sounds of late summer, music from passing cars, the high-spirited laughter of playing children, the shouting of their mothers.