It was strange, how Aunty Uju often spoke about the former heads of state, invoking their names with poisoned blame, but never mentioning The General.
Curt and Dike came back into the kitchen. Dike was bright-eyed, slightly sweaty, and talkative; he had, out there in the basketball space, swallowed Curt’s star.
“Do you want some water, Curt?” he asked.
“Call him Uncle Curt,” Aunty Uju said.
Curt laughed. “Or Cousin Curt. How about Coz Curt?”
“You’re not my cousin,” Dike said, smiling.
“I would be if I married your cousin.”
“Depends on how much you are offering us!” Dike said.
They all laughed. Aunty Uju looked pleased.
“Do you want to get that drink and meet me outside, Dike?” Curt asked. “We’ve got some unfinished business!”
Curt touched Ifemelu’s shoulder gently, asked if she was okay, before going back outside.
“O na-eji gi ka akwa,” Aunty Uju said, her tone charged with admiration.
Ifemelu smiled. Curt did indeed hold her like an egg. With him, she felt breakable, precious. Later, as they left, she slipped her hand into his and squeezed; she felt proud—to be with him, and of him.
ONE MORNING, Aunty Uju woke up and went to the bathroom. Bartholemew had just brushed his teeth. Aunty Uju reached for her toothbrush and saw, inside the sink, a thick blob of toothpaste. Thick enough for a full mouth-cleaning. It sat there, far from the drain, soft and melting. It disgusted her. How exactly did a person clean their teeth and end up leaving so much toothpaste in the sink? Had he not seen it? Had he, when it fell into the sink, pressed more onto his toothbrush? Or did he just go ahead and brush anyway with an almost-dry brush? Which meant his teeth were not clean. But his teeth did not concern Aunty Uju. The blob of toothpaste left in the sink did. On so many other mornings, she had cleaned off toothpaste, rinsed out the sink. But not this morning. This morning, she was done. She shouted his name, again and again. He asked her what was wrong. She told him the toothpaste in the sink was wrong. He looked at her and mumbled that he had been in a hurry, he was already late for work, and she told him that she, too, had work to go to, and she earned more than he did, in case he had forgotten. She was paying for his car, after all. He stormed off and went downstairs. At this point in the story, Aunty Uju paused, and Ifemelu imagined Bartholemew in his contrast-collar shirt and his trousers pulled too high up, the unflattering pleats at the front, his K-leg walk as he stormed off. Aunty Uju’s voice was unusually calm over the phone.
“I’ve found a condo in a town called Willow. A very nice gated place near the university. Dike and I are leaving this weekend,” Aunty Uju said.
“Ahn-ahn! Aunty, so quickly?”
“I’ve tried. It is enough.”
“What did Dike say?”
“He said he never liked living in the woods. He didn’t even say one word about Bartholomew. Willow will be so much better for him.”
Ifemelu liked the name of the town, Willow; it sounded to her like freshly squeezed beginnings.
To My Fellow Non-American Blacks: In America, You Are Black, Baby
Dear Non-American Black, when you make the choice to come to America, you become black. Stop arguing. Stop saying I’m Jamaican or I’m Ghanaian. America doesn’t care. So what if you weren’t “black” in your country? You’re in America now. We all have our moments of initiation into the Society of Former Negroes. Mine was in a class in undergrad when I was asked to give the black perspective, only I had no idea what that was. So I just made something up. And admit it—you say “I’m not black” only because you know black is at the bottom of America’s race ladder. And you want none of that. Don’t deny now. What if being black had all the privileges of being white? Would you still say “Don’t call me black, I’m from Trinidad”? I didn’t think so. So you’re black, baby. And here’s the deal with becoming black: You must show that you are offended when such words as “watermelon” or “tar baby” are used in jokes, even if you don’t know what the hell is being talked about—and since you are a Non-American Black, the chances are that you won’t know. (In undergrad a white classmate asks if I like watermelon, I say yes, and another classmate says, Oh my God that is so racist, and I’m confused. “Wait, how?”) You must nod back when a black person nods at you in a heavily white area. It is called the black nod. It is a way for black people to say “You are not alone, I am here too.” In describing black women you admire, always use the word “STRONG” because that is what black women are supposed to be in America. If you are a woman, please do not speak your mind as you are used to doing in your country. Because in America, strong-minded black women are SCARY. And if you are a man, be hyper-mellow, never get too excited, or somebody will worry that you’re about to pull a gun. When you watch television and hear that a “racist slur” was used, you must immediately become offended. Even though you are thinking “But why won’t they tell me exactly what was said?” Even though you would like to be able to decide for yourself how offended to be, or whether to be offended at all, you must nevertheless be very offended.
When a crime is reported, pray that it was not committed by a black person, and if it turns out to have been committed by a black person, stay well away from the crime area for weeks, or you might be stopped for fitting the profile. If a black cashier gives poor service to the non-black person in front of you, compliment that person’s shoes or something, to make up for the bad service, because you’re just as guilty for the cashier’s crimes. If you are in an Ivy League college and a Young Republican tells you that you got in only because of Affirmative Action, do not whip out your perfect grades from high school. Instead, gently point out that the biggest beneficiaries of Affirmative Action are white women. If you go to eat in a restaurant, please tip generously. Otherwise the next black person who comes in will get awful service, because waiters groan when they get a black table. You see, black people have a gene that makes them not tip, so please overpower that gene. If you’re telling a non-black person about something racist that happened to you, make sure you are not bitter. Don’t complain. Be forgiving. If possible, make it funny. Most of all, do not be angry. Black people are not supposed to be angry about racism. Otherwise you get no sympathy. This applies only for white liberals, by the way. Don’t even bother telling a white conservative about anything racist that happened to you. Because the conservative will tell you that YOU are the real racist and your mouth will hang open in confusion.
CHAPTER 22
One Saturday at the mall in White Marsh, Ifemelu saw Kayode DaSilva. It was raining. She was standing inside, by the entrance, waiting for Curt to bring the car around, and Kayode almost bumped into her.
“Ifemsco!” he said.
“Oh my God. Kayode!”
They hugged, looked at each other, said all the things people said who had not seen each other in many years, both lapsing into their Nigerian voices and their Nigerian selves, louder, more heightened, adding “o” to their sentences. He had left right after secondary school to attend university in Indiana and had graduated years ago.
“I was working in Pittsburgh but I just moved to Silver Spring to start a new job. I love Maryland. I run into Nigerians at the grocery store and in the mall, everywhere. It’s like being back home. But I guess you know that already.”
“Yes,” she said, even though she did not. Her Maryland was a small, circumscribed world of Curt’s American friends.
“I was planning to come and find you, by the way.” He was looking at her, as though absorbing her details, memorizing her, for when he would tell the story of their meeting.
“Really?”
“So my guy The Zed and I were talking the other day and you came up and he said he’d heard you were living in Baltimore and since I was close by could I just find you and see that you were okay and tell him what you look like now.”
A numbness spread swiftly through her. She mumbled, “Oh, you’re
still in touch?”
“Yes. We got back in touch when he moved to England last year.”
England! Obinze was in England. She had created the distance, ignoring him, changing her e-mail address and phone number, and yet she felt deeply betrayed by this news. Changes had been made in his life that she did not know about. He was in England. Only a few months ago, she and Curt had gone to England for the Glastonbury Festival, and later spent two days in London. Obinze might have been there. She might have run into him as she walked down Oxford Street.
“So what happened now? Honestly, I couldn’t believe it when he said you guys were not in touch. Ahn-ahn! All of us were just waiting for the wedding invitation card o!” Kayode said.
Ifemelu shrugged. There were things scattered inside of her that she needed to gather together.
“So how have you been? How is life?” Kayode asked.
“Fine,” she said coldly. “I’m waiting for my boyfriend to pick me up. Actually, I think that’s him.”
There was, in Kayode’s demeanor, a withdrawal of spirit, a pulling back of his army of warmth, because he sensed very well that she had made the choice to shut him out. She was already walking away. Over her shoulder, she said to him, “Take care.” She was supposed to exchange phone numbers, talk for longer, behave in all the expected ways. But emotions were rioting inside her. And she found Kayode guilty for knowing about Obinze, for bringing Obinze back.
“I just ran into an old friend from Nigeria. I haven’t seen him since high school,” she told Curt.
“Oh, really? That’s nice. He live here?”
“In D.C.”
Curt was watching her, expecting more. He would want to ask Kayode to have drinks with them, want to be friends with her friend, want to be as gracious as he always was. And this, his expectant expression, irritated her. She wanted silence. Even the radio was bothering her. What would Kayode tell Obinze? That she was dating a handsome white man in a BMW coupe, her hair an Afro, a red flower tucked behind her ear. What would Obinze make of this? What was he doing in England? A clear memory came to her, of a sunny day—the sun was always shining in her memories of him and she distrusted this—when his friend Okwudiba brought a videocassette to his house, and Obinze said, “A British film? Waste of time.” To him, only American films were worth watching. And now he was in England.
Curt was looking at her. “Seeing him upset you?”
“No.”
“Was he like a boyfriend or something?”
“No,” she said, looking out of the window.
Later that day she would send an e-mail to Obinze’s Hotmail address: Ceiling, I don’t even know how to start. I ran into Kayode today at the mall. Saying sorry for my silence sounds stupid even to me but I am so sorry and I feel so stupid. I will tell you everything that happened. I have missed you and I miss you. And he would not reply.
“I booked the Swedish massage for you,” Curt said.
“Thank you,” she said. Then, in a lower voice, she added, to make up for her peevishness, “You are such a sweetheart.”
“I don’t want to be a sweetheart. I want to be the fucking love of your life,” Curt said with a force that startled her.
Part 3
CHAPTER 23
In London, night came too soon, it hung in the morning air like a threat, and then in the afternoon a blue-gray dusk descended, and the Victorian buildings all wore a mournful air. In those first weeks, the cold startled Obinze with its weightless menace, drying his nostrils, deepening his anxieties, making him urinate too often. He would walk fast on the pavement, turned tightly into himself, hands deep in the coat his cousin had lent him, a gray wool coat whose sleeves nearly swallowed his fingers. Sometimes he would stop outside a tube station, often by a flower or a newspaper vendor, and watch the people brushing past him. They walked so quickly, these people, as though they had an urgent destination, a purpose to their lives, while he did not. His eyes would follow them, with a lost longing, and he would think: You can work, you are legal, you are visible, and you don’t even know how fortunate you are.
It was at a tube station that he met the Angolans who would arrange his marriage, exactly two years and three days after he arrived in England; he kept count.
“We’ll talk in the car,” one of them had said earlier over the phone. Their old model black Mercedes was fussily maintained, the floor mats wavy from vacuuming, the leather seats shiny with polish. The two men looked alike, with thick eyebrows that almost touched, although they had told him they were just friends, and they were dressed alike, too, in leather jackets and long gold chains. Their tabletop haircuts that sat on their heads like tall hats surprised him, but perhaps it was part of their hip image, to have retro haircuts. They spoke to him with the authority of people who had done this before, and also with a slight condescension; his fate was, after all, in their hands.
“We decided on Newcastle because we know people there and London is too hot right now, too many marriages happening in London, yeah, so we don’t want trouble,” one of them said. “Everything is going to work out. Just make sure you keep a low profile, yeah? Don’t attract any attention to yourself until the marriage is done. Don’t fight in the pub, yeah?”
“I’ve never been a very good fighter,” Obinze said drily, but the Angolans did not smile.
“You have the money?” the other one asked.
Obinze handed over two hundred pounds, all in twenty-pound notes that he had taken out of the cash machine over two days. It was a deposit, to prove he was serious. Later, after he met the girl, he would pay two thousand pounds.
“The rest has to be up front, yeah? We’ll use some of it to do the running around and the rest goes to the girl. Man, you know we’re not making anything from this. We usually ask for much more but we’re doing this for Iloba,” the first one said.
Obinze did not believe them, even then. He met the girl, Cleotilde, a few days later, at a shopping center, in a McDonald’s whose windows looked out onto the dank entrance of a tube station across the street. He sat at a table with the Angolans, watching people hurry past, and wondering which of them was her, while the Angolans both whispered into their phones; perhaps they were arranging other marriages.
“Hello there!” she said.
She surprised him. He had expected somebody with pockmarks smothered under heavy makeup, somebody tough and knowing. But here she was, dewy and fresh, bespectacled, olive-skinned, almost childlike, smiling shyly at him and sucking a milkshake through a straw. She looked like a university freshman who was innocent or dumb, or both.
“I just want to know that you’re sure about doing this,” he told her, and then, worried that he might frighten her away, he added, “I’m very grateful, and it won’t take too much from you—in a year I’ll have my papers and we’ll do the divorce. But I just wanted to meet you first and make sure you are okay to do this.”
“Yes,” she said.
He watched her, expecting more. She played with her straw, shyly, not meeting his eyes, and it took him a while to realize that she was reacting more to him than to the situation. She was attracted to him.
“I want to help my mom out. Things are tight at home,” she said, a trace of a non-British accent underlining her words.
“She’s with us, yeah,” one of the Angolans said, impatiently, as though Obinze had dared to question what they had already told him.
“Show him your details, Cleo,” the other Angolan said.
His calling her Cleo rang false: Obinze sensed this from the way he said it, and from the way she heard it, the slight surprise on her face. It was a forced intimacy; the Angolan had never called her Cleo before. Perhaps he had never even called her anything before. Obinze wondered how the Angolans knew her. Did they have a list of young women with European Union passports who needed money? Cleotilde pushed at her hair, a mass of tight coils, and adjusted her glasses, as though first preparing herself before she presented her passport and license. Obinze examine
d them. He would have thought her younger than twenty-three.
“Can I have your number?” Obinze asked.
“Just call us for anything,” the Angolans said, almost at the same time. But Obinze wrote his number on a napkin and pushed it across to her. The Angolans gave him a sly look. Later, on the phone, she told him that she had been living in London for six years and was saving money to go to fashion school, even though the Angolans had told him she lived in Portugal.
“Would you like to meet?” he asked. “It will be much easier if we try to get to know each other a little.”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation.
They ate fish and chips in a pub, a thin crust of grime on the sides of the wood table, while she talked about her love of fashion and asked him about Nigerian traditional dress. She seemed a little more mature; he noticed the shimmer on her cheeks, the more defined curl of her hair, and knew she had made an effort with her appearance.
“What will you do after you get your papers?” she asked him. “Will you bring your girlfriend from Nigeria?”
He was touched by her obviousness. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“I’ve never been to Africa. I’d love to go.” She said “Africa” wistfully, like an admiring foreigner, loading the word with exotic excitement. Her black Angolan father had left her white Portuguese mother when she was only three years old, she told him, and she had not seen him since, nor had she ever been to Angola. She said this with a shrug and a cynical raise of her eyebrows, as though it had not bothered her, an effort so out of character, so jarring, that it showed him just how deeply it did bother her. There were difficulties in her life that he wanted to know more about, parts of her thick shapely body that he longed to touch, but he was wary of complicating things. He would wait until after the marriage, until the business side of their relationship was finished. She seemed to understand this without their talking about it. And so as they met and talked in the following weeks, sometimes practicing how they would answer questions during their immigration interview and other times just talking about football, there was, between them, the growing urgency of restrained desire. It was there in their standing close to each other, not touching, as they waited at the tube station, in their teasing each other about his support of Arsenal and her support of Manchester United, in their lingering gazes. After he had paid the Angolans two thousand pounds in cash, she told him that they had given her only five hundred pounds.