Americanah

  “I’m going to blog about that.”

  “I knew you would say that.”

  She sent Blaine a text back: No, what happened? Is Mr. White okay? Are you done? Want to get a sandwich?

  Blaine called her and asked her to wait for him on the corner of Whitney, and soon she saw him walking towards her, a quick-moving trim figure in a gray sweater.

  “Hey,” he said, and kissed her.

  “You smell nice,” she said, and he kissed her again.

  “You survived Boubacar’s class? Even though there were no proper croissants or pain au chocolat?”

  “Stop it. What happened to Mr. White?”

  As they walked hand in hand to the bagel sandwich store, he told her how Mr. White’s friend, a black man, came by yesterday evening and the two stood outside the library. Mr. White gave his friend his car keys, because the friend wanted to borrow his car, and the friend gave Mr. White some money, which Mr. White had lent him earlier. A white library employee, watching them, assumed that the two black men were dealing drugs and called a supervisor. The supervisor called the police. The police came and led Mr. White away to be questioned.

  “Oh my God,” Ifemelu said. “Is he okay?”

  “Yes. He’s back at his desk.” Blaine paused. “I think he expects this sort of thing to happen.”

  “That’s the actual tragedy,” Ifemelu said, and realized she was using Blaine’s own words; sometimes she heard in her voice the echo of his. The actual tragedy of Emmett Till, he had told her once, was not the murder of a black child for whistling at a white woman but that some black people thought: But why did you whistle?

  “I talked to him for a bit. He just shrugged the whole thing off and said it wasn’t a big deal and instead he wanted to talk about his daughter, who he’s really worried about. She’s talking about dropping out of high school. So I’m going to step in and tutor her. I’m going to meet her Monday.”

  “Blaine, that’s the seventh kid you’ll be tutoring,” she said. “Are you going to tutor the whole of inner-city New Haven?”

  It was windy and he was squinting, cars driving past them on Whitney Avenue, and he turned to glance at her with narrowed eyes.

  “I wish I could,” he said quietly.

  “I just want to see more of you,” she said, and slipped an arm around his waist.

  “The university’s response is total bullshit. A simple mistake that wasn’t racial at all? Really? I’m thinking of organizing a protest tomorrow, get people to come out and say this is not okay. Not in our backyard.”

  He had already decided, she could tell, he was not merely thinking about it. He sat down at a table by the door while she went up to the counter to order, seamlessly ordering for him, because she was so used to him, to what he liked. When she came back with a plastic tray—her turkey sandwich and his veggie wrap lying beside two bags of baked unsalted chips—his head was bent to his phone. By evening, he had made calls and sent e-mails and texts and the news had been passed on, and his phone jingled and rang and beeped, with responses from people saying they were on board. A student called to ask him for suggestions about what to write on placards; another student was contacting the local TV stations.

  The next morning, before he left for class, Blaine said, “I’m teaching back to back so I’ll see you at the library? Text me when you’re on your way.”

  They had not discussed it, he had simply assumed that she would be there, and so she said, “Okay.”

  But she did not go. And she did not forget. Blaine might have been more forgiving if she had simply forgotten, if she had been so submerged in reading or blogging that the protest had slipped from her mind. But she did not forget. She merely preferred to go to Kavanagh’s going-away lunch instead of standing in front of the university library holding a placard. Blaine would not mind too much, she told herself. If she felt any discomfort, she was not conscious of it until she was seated in a classroom with Kavanagh and Boubacar and other professors, sipping a bottle of cranberry juice, listening to a young woman talk about her upcoming tenure review, when Blaine’s texts flooded her phone. Where are you? You okay? Great turnout, looking for you. Shan just surprised me and turned up! You okay? She left early and went back to the apartment and, lying in bed, sent Blaine a text to say she was so sorry, she was just up from a nap that had gone on too long. Okay. On my way home.

  He walked in and wrapped her in his arms, with a force and an excitement that had come through the door with him.

  “I missed you. I really wanted you to be there. I was so happy Shan came,” he said, a little emotional, as though it had been a personal triumph of his. “It was like a mini-America. Black kids and white kids and Asian kids and Hispanic kids. Mr. White’s daughter was there, taking pictures of his photos on the placard, and I felt as if that finally gave him some real dignity back.”

  “That’s lovely,” she said.

  “Shan says hello. She’s getting on the train back now.”

  It would have been easy for Blaine to find out, perhaps a casual mention from someone who had been at the lunch, but she never knew exactly how he did. He came back the next day and looked at her, a glare like silver in his eyes, and said, “You lied.” It was said with a kind of horror that baffled her, as though he had never considered it possible that she could lie. She wanted to say, “Blaine, people lie.” But she said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Why?” He was looking at her as though she had reached in and torn away his innocence, and for a moment she hated him, this man who ate her apple cores and turned even that into something of a moral act.

  “I don’t know why, Blaine. I just didn’t feel up to it. I didn’t think you would mind too much.”

  “You just didn’t feel up to it?”

  “I’m sorry. I should have told you about the lunch.”

  “How is this lunch suddenly so important? You hardly even know this Boubacar’s colleague!” he said, incredulous. “You know, it’s not just about writing a blog, you have to live like you believe it. That blog is a game that you don’t really take seriously, it’s like choosing an interesting elective evening class to complete your credits.” She recognized, in his tone, a subtle accusation, not merely about her laziness, her lack of zeal and conviction, but also about her Africanness; she was not sufficiently furious because she was African, not African American.

  “It’s unfair of you to say that,” she said. But he had turned away from her, icy, silent.

  “Why won’t you talk to me?” she asked. “I don’t understand why this matters so much.”

  “How can you not understand? It’s the principle of it,” he said, and at that moment, he became a stranger to her.

  “I’m really sorry,” she said.

  He had walked into the bathroom and shut the door.

  She felt withered in his wordless rage. How could principle, an abstract thing floating in the air, wedge itself so solidly between them, and turn Blaine into somebody else? She wished it were an uncivil emotion, a passion like jealousy or betrayal.

  She called Araminta. “I feel like the confused wife calling her sister-in-law to explain her husband to her,” she said.

  “In high school, I remember there was some fundraiser, and they put out a table with cookies and whatever, and you were supposed to put some money in the jar and take a cookie, and you know, I’m feeling rebellious so I just take a cookie and don’t put any money in, and Blaine was furious with me. I remember thinking, Hey, it’s just a cookie. But I think for him it was the principle of it. He can be ridiculously high-minded some times. Give him a day or two, he’ll get over this.”

  But a day passed, then two, and Blaine remained caged in his frozen silence. On the third day of his not saying a single word to her, she packed a small bag and left. She could not go back to Baltimore—her condo was rented out and her furniture in storage—and so she went to Willow.

  What Academics Mean by White Privilege, or Yes It Sucks to Be Poor and White but Try Being Poo
r and Non-White

  So this guy said to Professor Hunk, “White privilege is nonsense. How can I be privileged? I grew up fucking poor in West Virginia. I’m an Appalachian hick. My family is on welfare.” Right. But privilege is always relative to something else. Now imagine someone like him, as poor and as fucked up, and then make that person black. If both are caught for drug possession, say, the white guy is more likely to be sent to treatment and the black guy is more likely to be sent to jail. Everything else the same except for race. Check the stats. The Appalachian hick guy is fucked up, which is not cool, but if he were black, he’d be fucked up plus. He also said to Professor Hunk: Why must we always talk about race anyway? Can’t we just be human beings? And Professor Hunk replied—that is exactly what white privilege is, that you can say that. Race doesn’t really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don’t have that choice. The black guy on the street in New York doesn’t want to think about race, until he tries to hail a cab, and he doesn’t want to think about race when he’s driving his Mercedes under the speed limit, until a cop pulls him over. So Appalachian hick guy doesn’t have class privilege but he sure as hell has race privilege. What do you think? Weigh in, readers, and share your experiences, especially if you are non-black.

  PS—Professor Hunk just suggested I post this, a test for White Privilege, copyright a pretty cool woman called Peggy McIntosh. If you answer mostly no, then congratulations, you have white privilege. What’s the point of this you ask? Seriously? I have no idea. I guess it’s just good to know. So you can gloat from time to time, lift you up when you’re depressed, that sort of thing. So here goes:

  When you want to join a prestigious social club, do you wonder if your race will make it difficult for you to join?

  When you go shopping alone at a nice store, do you worry that you will be followed or harassed?

  When you turn on mainstream TV or open a mainstream newspaper, do you expect to find mostly people of another race?

  Do you worry that your children will not have books and school materials that are about people of their own race?

  When you apply for a bank loan, do you worry that, because of your race, you might be seen as financially unreliable?

  If you swear, or dress shabbily, do you think that people might say this is because of the bad morals or the poverty or the illiteracy of your race?

  If you do well in a situation, do you expect to be called a credit to your race? Or to be described as “different” from the majority of your race?

  If you criticize the government, do you worry that you might be seen as a cultural outsider? Or that you might be asked to “go back to X,” X being somewhere not in America?

  If you receive poor service in a nice store and ask to see “the person in charge,” do you expect that this person will be a person of another race?

  If a traffic cop pulls you over, do you wonder if it is because of your race?

  If you take a job with an Affirmative Action employer, do you worry that your co-workers will think you are unqualified and were hired only because of your race?

  If you want to move to a nice neighborhood, do you worry that you might not be welcome because of your race?

  If you need legal or medical help, do you worry that your race might work against you?

  When you use the “nude” color of underwear and Band-Aids, do you already know that it will not match your skin?

  CHAPTER 39

  Aunty Uju had taken up yoga. She was on her hands and knees, back arched high, on a bright blue mat on the basement floor, while Ifemelu lay on the couch, eating a chocolate bar and watching her.

  “How many of those things have you eaten? And since when do you eat regular chocolate? I thought you and Blaine eat only organic, fair trade.”

  “I bought them at the train station.”

  “Them? How many?”

  “Ten.”

  “Ahn-ahn! Ten!”

  Ifemelu shrugged. She had already eaten them all, but she would not tell Aunty Uju that. It had given her pleasure, buying chocolate bars from the newsstand, cheap bars filled with sugar and chemicals and other genetically modified ghastly things.

  “Oh, so because you are quarreling with Blaine, you are now eating the chocolate he doesn’t like?” Aunty Uju laughed.

  Dike came downstairs and looked at his mother, her arms now up in the air, warrior position. “Mom, you look ridiculous.”

  “Didn’t your friend say that your mother was hot, the other day? This is why.”

  Dike shook his head. “Coz, I need to show you something on YouTube, this hilarious video.”

  Ifemelu got up.

  “Has Dike told you about the computer incident at school?” Aunty Uju asked.

  “No, what?” Ifemelu asked.

  “The principal called me on Monday to say that Dike hacked into the school’s computer network on Saturday. This is a boy who was with me all day on Saturday. We went to Hartford to visit Ozavisa. We were there the whole day and the boy did not go near a computer. When I asked why they thought it was him, they said they got information. Imagine, you just wake up and blame my son. The boy is not even good with computers. I thought we had left them behind in that bush town. Kweku wants us to lodge a formal complaint, but I don’t think it’s worth the time. They have now said they no longer suspect him.”

  “I don’t even know how to hack,” Dike said drily.

  “Why would they do this sort of rubbish?” Ifemelu asked.

  “You have to blame the black kid first,” he said, and laughed.

  Later, he told her how his friends would say, “Hey, Dike, got some weed?” and how funny it was. He told her about the pastor at church, a white woman, who had said hello to all the other kids but when she came to him, she said, “What’s up, bro?” “I feel like I have vegetables instead of ears, like large broccoli sticking out of my head,” he said, laughing. “So of course it had to be me that hacked into the school network.”

  “Those people in your school are fools,” Ifemelu said.

  “So funny how you say that word, Coz, fools.” He paused and then repeated her words, “Those people in your school are fools,” in a good mimicry of a Nigerian accent. She told him the story of the Nigerian pastor who, while giving a sermon in a church in America, said something about a beach but because of his accent, his parishioners thought he had said “bitch” and they wrote to his bishop to complain. Dike laughed and laughed. It became one of their stock jokes. “Hey, Coz, I just want to spend a summer day at the bitch,” he would say.

  FOR NINE DAYS, Blaine did not take her calls. Finally he answered the phone, his voice muffled.

  “Can I come this weekend so we can cook coconut rice? I’ll do the cooking,” she said. Before he said “Okay,” she sensed an intake of breath and she wondered if he was surprised that she dared to suggest coconut rice.

  SHE WATCHED Blaine cutting the onions, watched his long fingers and recalled them on her body, tracing lines on her collarbone, and on the darkened skin below her navel. He looked up and asked if the slices were a good size and she said, “The onion is fine,” and thought how he had always known the right size for onions, slicing them so precisely, how he had always steamed the rice although she was going to do it now. He broke the coconut against the sink and let the water out before he began to nudge the white meat off the shell with a knife. Her hands shook as she poured rice into the boiling water and, as she watched the narrow basmati grains begin to swell, she wondered if they were failing at this, their reconciliatory meal. She checked the chicken on the stove. The spices wafted up when she opened the pot—ginger and curry and bay leaves—and she told him, unnecessarily, that it looked good.

  “I didn’t overspice it like you do,” he said. She felt a momentary anger and wanted to say that it was unfair of him to hold out forgiveness like this, but instead she asked if he thought she should add some water. He kept grating the coconuts and said nothing. She watched the coconut c
rumble into white dust; it saddened her to think that it would never be a whole coconut again, and she reached out and held Blaine from the back, wrapped her arms around his chest, felt the warmth through his sweatshirt, but he eased away and said he had to finish before the rice got too soft. She walked across the living room to look out of the window, at the clock tower, high and regal, imposing itself on the other buildings of the Yale campus below, and saw the first snow flurries swirling through the late evening air, as though flung from above, and she remembered her first winter with him, when everything had seemed burnished and unendingly new.

  Understanding America for the Non-American Black: A Few Explanations of What Things Really Mean

  1. Of all their tribalisms, Americans are most uncomfortable with race. If you are having a conversation with an American, and you want to discuss something racial that you find interesting, and the American says, “Oh, it’s simplistic to say it’s race, racism is so complex,” it means they just want you to shut up already. Because of course racism is complex. Many abolitionists wanted to free the slaves but didn’t want black people living nearby. Lots of folk today don’t mind a black nanny or black limo driver. But they sure as hell mind a black boss. What is simplistic is saying “It’s so complex.” But shut up anyway, especially if you need a job/favor from the American in question.

  2. Diversity means different things to different folks. If a white person is saying a neighborhood is diverse, they mean nine percent black people. (The minute it gets to ten percent black people, the white folks move out.) If a black person says diverse neighborhood, they are thinking forty percent black.

  3. Sometimes they say “culture” when they mean race. They say a film is “mainstream” when they mean “white folks like it or made it.” When they say “urban” it means black and poor and possibly dangerous and potentially exciting. “Racially charged” means we are uncomfortable saying “racist.”

  CHAPTER 40