Americanah

  “Okay, babe, okay, I didn’t mean for it to be such a big deal,” he said.

  That evening, Ifemelu wrote a long e-mail to Wambui about the bookstore, the magazines, the things she didn’t tell Curt, things unsaid and unfinished. It was a long e-mail, digging, questioning, unearthing. Wambui replied to say, “This is so raw and true. More people should read this. You should start a blog.”

  Blogs were new, unfamiliar to her. But telling Wambui what happened was not satisfying enough; she longed for other listeners, and she longed to hear the stories of others. How many other people chose silence? How many other people had become black in America? How many had felt as though their world was wrapped in gauze? She broke up with Curt a few weeks after that, and she signed on to WordPress, and her blog was born. She would later change the name, but at first she called it Raceteenth or Curious Observations by a Non-American Black on the Subject of Blackness in America. Her first post was a better-punctuated version of the e-mail she had sent to Wambui. She referred to Curt as “The Hot White Ex.” A few hours later, she checked her blog stats. Nine people had read it. Panicked, she took down the post. The next day, she put it up again, modified and edited, ending with words she still so easily remembered. She recited those words now, at the dinner table of the French and American couple, while the Haitian poet stared, arms folded.

  The simplest solution to the problem of race in America? Romantic love. Not friendship. Not the kind of safe, shallow love where the objective is that both people remain comfortable. But real deep romantic love, the kind that twists you and wrings you out and makes you breathe through the nostrils of your beloved. And because that real deep romantic love is so rare, and because American society is set up to make it even rarer between American Black and American White, the problem of race in America will never be solved.

  “Oh! What a wonderful story!” the French host said, her palm placed dramatically on her chest, looking around the table, as though to seek a response. But everyone else remained silent, their eyes averted and unsure.

  A Michelle Obama Shout-Out Plus Hair as Race Metaphor

  White Girlfriend and I are Michelle Obama groupies. So the other day I say to her—I wonder if Michelle Obama has a weave, her hair looks fuller today, and all that heat every day must damage it. And she says—you mean her hair doesn’t grow like that? So is it me or is that the perfect metaphor for race in America right there? Hair. Ever notice makeover shows on TV, how the black woman has natural hair (coarse, coily, kinky, or curly) in the ugly “before” picture, and in the pretty “after” picture, somebody’s taken a hot piece of metal and singed her hair straight? Some black women, AB and NAB, would rather run naked in the street than come out in public with their natural hair. Because, you see, it’s not professional, sophisticated, whatever, it’s just not damn normal. (Please, commenters, don’t tell me it’s the same as a white woman who doesn’t color her hair.) When you DO have natural Negro hair, people think you “did” something to your hair. Actually, the folk with the Afros and dreads are the ones who haven’t “done” anything to their hair. You should be asking Beyoncé what she’s done. (We all love Bey but how about she show us, just once, what her hair looks like when it grows from her scalp?) I have natural kinky hair. Worn in cornrows, Afros, braids. No, it’s not political. No, I am not an artist or poet or singer. Not an earth mother either. I just don’t want relaxers in my hair—there are enough sources of cancer in my life as it is. (By the way, can we ban Afro wigs at Halloween? Afro is not costume, for God’s sake.) Imagine if Michelle Obama got tired of all the heat and decided to go natural and appeared on TV with lots of woolly hair, or tight spirally curls. (There is no knowing what her texture will be. It is not unusual for a black woman to have three different textures on her head.) She would totally rock but poor Obama would certainly lose the independent vote, even the undecided Democrat vote.

  UPDATE: ZoraNeale22, who’s transitioning, asked me to post my regimen. Pure shea butter as a leave-in conditioner works for many naturals. Not for me, though. Anything with lots of shea butter leaves my hair grayish and dryish. And dry is my hair’s biggest problem. I wash once a week with a silicone-free hydrating shampoo. I use a hydrating conditioner. I do not towel-dry my hair. I leave it wet, divide it in sections, and apply a creamy leave-in product (present favorite is Qhemet Biologics, other preferred brands are Oyin Handmade, Shea Moisture, Bask Beauty, and Darcy’s Botanicals). Then I put my hair in three or four big cornrows, and knot my satin scarf around my head (satin is good, it preserves moisture. Cotton is bad, it soaks up moisture). I go to sleep. The next morning, I take out the cornrows and voilà, a lovely fluffy ’fro! Key is to add product while hair is wet. And I never, ever comb my hair when it’s dry. I comb only when wet, or damp, or totally drenched in a creamy moisturizer. This plait-while-wet regimen can even work for our Seriously Curly White Girlfriends who are tired of flatirons and keratin treatments. Any AB and NAB naturals out there who want to share their regimen?

  CHAPTER 32

  For weeks, Ifemelu stumbled around, trying to remember the person she was before Curt. Their life together had happened to her, she would not have been able to imagine it if she had tried, and so, surely, she could return to what was before. But before was a slate-toned blur and she no longer knew who she had been then, what she had enjoyed, disliked, wanted. Her job bored her: she did the same bland things, writing press releases, editing press releases, copyediting press releases, her movements rote and numbing. Perhaps it had always been so and she had not noticed, because she was blinded by the brightness of Curt. Her apartment felt like a stranger’s home. On weekends, she went to Willow. Aunty Uju’s condo was in a cluster of stucco buildings, the neighborhood carefully landscaped, boulders placed at corners, and in the evenings, friendly people walked their handsome dogs. Aunty Uju had taken on a new lightheartedness; she wore a tiny anklet in the summer, a hopeful flash of gold on her leg. She had joined African Doctors for Africa, volunteering her time on two-week medical missions, and on her trip to Sudan, she met Kweku, a divorced Ghanaian doctor. “He treats me like a princess. Just like Curt treated you,” she told Ifemelu.

  “I’m trying to forget him, Aunty. Stop talking about him!”

  “Sorry,” Aunty Uju said, not looking sorry at all. She had told Ifemelu to do everything to save the relationship, because she would not find another man who would love her as Curt had. When Ifemelu told Dike that she had broken up with Curt, he said, “He was pretty cool, Coz. Are you going to be okay?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Perhaps he sensed otherwise, and knew of the slight unsteadiness of her spirit; most nights she lay in bed and cried, berating herself for what she had destroyed, then telling herself that she had no reason to be crying, and crying all the same. Dike brought up a tray to her room, on which he had placed a banana and a can of peanuts.

  “Snack time!” he said, with a teasing grin; he still did not understand why anybody would want to eat both together. While Ifemelu ate, he sat on the bed and told her about school. He was playing basketball now, his grades had improved, he liked a girl called Autumn.

  “You’re really settling in here.”

  “Yeah,” he said, and his smile reminded her of what it used to be in Brooklyn, open, unguarded.

  “Remember the character Goku in my Japanese anime?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You kind of look like Goku with your Afro,” Dike said, laughing.

  Kweku knocked and waited for her to say “Come in” before he poked his head in. “Dike, are you ready?” he asked.

  “Yes, Uncle.” Dike got up. “Let’s roll!”

  “We’re going to the community center, would you like to join us?” Kweku asked Ifemelu, tentatively, almost formally; he, too, knew she was suffering from a breakup. He was small and bespectacled, a gentleman and a gentle man; Ifemelu liked him because he liked Dike.

  “No, thank you,” Ifemelu said. He lived in a house not fa
r away, but some of his shirts were in Aunty Uju’s closet, and Ifemelu had seen a face wash for men in Aunty Uju’s bathroom, and cartons of organic yogurt in the fridge, which she knew Aunty Uju did not eat. He looked at Aunty Uju with translucent eyes, those of a man who wanted the world to know how much he loved. It reminded Ifemelu of Curt, and made her feel, again, a wistful sadness.

  Her mother heard something in her voice over the phone. “Are you sick? Did anything happen?”

  “I’m fine. Just work,” she said.

  Her father, too, asked why she sounded different and if all was well. She told him that all was well, that she was spending much of her time after work blogging; she was about to explain this new pastime of hers, but he said, “I’m fairly familiar with the concept. We have been undergoing a rigorous computer literacy training in the office.”

  “They have confirmed your father’s application. He can take his leave when my school vacates,” her mother said. “So we should apply for our visa quickly.”

  Ifemelu had long dreamed of, and talked about, when they would be able to visit her. She could afford it now, and her mother wanted it now, but she wished it could be another time. She wanted to see them, but the thought of their visit exhausted her. She was not sure she would be able to be their daughter, the person they remembered.

  “Mummy, things are very busy at work now.”

  “Ahn-ahn. Are we coming to disturb your work?”

  And so she sent them invitation letters, bank statements, a copy of her green card. The American embassy was better now; the staff was still rude, her father said, but you no longer had to fight and shove outside to get in line. They were given six-month visas. They came for three weeks. They seemed like strangers. They looked the same, but the dignity she remembered was gone, and left instead something small, a provincial eagerness. Her father marveled at the industrial carpeting in the hallway of her apartment building; her mother hoarded faux-leather handbags at Kmart, paper napkins from the mall food court, even plastic shopping bags. They both posed for photos in front of JC Penney, asking Ifemelu to make sure she got the entire sign of the store. She watched them with a sneer, and for this she felt guilty; she had guarded their memories so preciously and yet, finally seeing them, she watched them with a sneer.

  “I do not understand Americans. They say ‘job’ and you think they have said ‘jab,’ ” her father declared, spelling both words. “One finds the British manner of speaking much preferable.”

  Before they left, her mother asked her quietly, “Do you have a friend?” She said “friend” in English; the tame word parents used because they could not desecrate their tongues with “boyfriend,” even though it was exactly what they meant: somebody romantic, a marriage prospect.

  “No,” Ifemelu said. “I have been very busy with work.”

  “Work is good, Ifem. But you should also keep your eyes open. Remember that a woman is like a flower. Our time passes quickly.”

  Before, she might have laughed dismissively, and told her mother that she did not at all feel like a flower, but now she was too tired, it felt too much of an effort. On the day they left for Nigeria, she collapsed onto her bed, crying uncontrollably, and thinking: What is wrong with me? She was relieved that her parents had gone, and she felt guilty for feeling relief. After work, she wandered around the center of Baltimore, aimlessly, interested in nothing. Was this what the novelists meant by ennui? On a slow Wednesday afternoon, she handed in her resignation. She had not planned to resign, but it suddenly seemed to be what she had to do, and so she typed the letter on her computer and took it to her manager’s office.

  “You were making such progress. Is there anything we can do to make you change your mind?” her manager asked, very surprised.

  “It’s personal, family reasons,” Ifemelu said vaguely. “I really appreciate all the opportunities you’ve given me.”

  So What’s the Deal?

  They tell us race is an invention, that there is more genetic variation between two black people than there is between a black person and a white person. Then they tell us black people have a worse kind of breast cancer and get more fibroids. And white folk get cystic fibrosis and osteoporosis. So what’s the deal, doctors in the house? Is race an invention or not?

  CHAPTER 33

  The blog had unveiled itself and shed its milk teeth; by turns, it surprised her, pleased her, left her behind. Its readers increased, by the thousands from all over the world, so quickly that she resisted checking the stats, reluctant to know how many new people had clicked to read her that day, because it frightened her. And it exhilarated her. When she saw her posts reposted on another site, she flushed with accomplishment, and yet she had not imagined any of this, had never nursed any firm ambition. E-mails came from readers who wanted to support the blog. Support. That word made the blog even more apart from her, a separate thing that could thrive or not, sometimes without her and sometimes with her. So she put up a link to her PayPal account. Credits appeared, many small and one so large that when she saw it, she let out an unfamiliar sound, a blend of a gasp and a scream. It began to appear every month, anonymously, as regular as a paycheck, and each time it did, she felt abashed, as though she had picked up something valuable on the street and kept it for herself. She wondered if it was from Curt, just as she wondered if he followed the blog, and what he thought of being referred to as The Hot White Ex. It was a halfhearted wondering; she missed what could have been, but she no longer missed him.

  She checked her blog e-mail too often, like a child eagerly tearing open a present she is not sure she wants, and read from people asking for a drink, telling her she was a racist, giving her ideas to blog about. A fellow blogger who made hair butters first suggested advertising and, for a token fee, Ifemelu put up the image of a bounteous-haired woman on the top right side of the blog page; clicking on it led to the hair butter website. Another reader offered more money for a blinking graphic that showed, first, a long-necked model in a tight dress, then the same model in a floppy hat. Clicking on the image led to an online boutique. Soon there were e-mails about advertising Pantene shampoos and Covergirl makeup. Then an e-mail from the director of multicultural life at a prep school in Connecticut, so formal she imagined it typed on hand-cut paper with a silver crest, asking if she would speak to the students on diversity. Another e-mail came from a corporation in Pennsylvania, less formally written, telling her a local professor had identified her as a provocative race blogger and asking if she would lead their annual diversity workshop. An editor from Baltimore Living e-mailed to say that they wanted to include her in a Ten People to Watch feature; she was photographed next to her laptop, her face doused in shadow, under the caption “The Blogger.” Her readers tripled. More invitations came. To receive phone calls, she wore her most serious pair of trousers, her most muted shade of lipstick, and she spoke sitting upright at her desk, legs crossed, her voice measured and sure. Yet a part of her always stiffened with apprehension, expecting the person on the other end to realize that she was play-acting this professional, this negotiator of terms, to see that she was, in fact, an unemployed person who wore a rumpled nightshirt all day, to call her “Fraud!” and hang up. But more invitations came. Hotel and travel were covered and the fees varied. Once she said, on an impulse, that she wanted twice what she had been offered the previous week, and was shocked when the man calling from Delaware said, “Yeah, we could do that.”

  Most of the people who attended her first diversity talk, at a small company in Ohio, wore sneakers. They were all white. Her presentation was titled “How to Talk About Race with Colleagues of Other Races,” but who, she wondered, would they be talking to, since they were all white? Perhaps the janitor was black.

  “I’m no expert so don’t quote me,” she started, and they laughed, warm encouraging laughter, and she told herself that this would go well, she need not have worried about talking to a roomful of strangers in the middle of Ohio. (She had read, with mild worry, that op
enly sundown towns still existed here.) “The first step to honest communication about race is to realize that you cannot equate all racisms,” she said, and then launched into her carefully prepared speech. When, at the end, she said, “Thank you,” pleased with the fluidness of her delivery, the faces around her were frozen. The leaden clapping deflated her. Afterwards, she was left only with the director of human resources, drinking oversweet iced tea in the conference room, and talking about soccer, which he knew Nigeria played well, as though keen to discuss anything but the talk she had just given. That evening she received an e-mail: YOUR TALK WAS BALONEY. YOU ARE A RACIST. YOU SHOULD BE GRATEFUL WE LET YOU INTO THIS COUNTRY.

  That e-mail, written in all capital letters, was a revelation. The point of diversity workshops, or multicultural talks, was not to inspire any real change but to leave people feeling good about themselves. They did not want the content of her ideas; they merely wanted the gesture of her presence. They had not read her blog but they had heard that she was a “leading blogger” about race. And so, in the following weeks, as she gave more talks at companies and schools, she began to say what they wanted to hear, none of which she would ever write on her blog, because she knew that the people who read her blog were not the same people who attended her diversity workshops. During her talks, she said: “America has made great progress for which we should be very proud.” In her blog she wrote: Racism should never have happened and so you don’t get a cookie for reducing it. Still more invitations came. She hired a student intern, a Haitian American, her hair worn in elegant twists, who was nimble on the Internet, looking up whatever information Ifemelu needed, and deleting inappropriate comments almost as soon as they were posted.