Americanah

  “Darling, you’re not paying attention,” Kosi said to him.

  “Sorry, omalicha,” he said.

  “No work thoughts for now.”

  “Okay, sorry. What were you saying?”

  They were in the car, on their way to a nursery-primary school in Ikoyi, visiting during the open day as guests of Jonathan and Isioma, Kosi’s friends from church, whose son went there. Kosi had arranged it all, their second school visit, to help them decide where Buchi would go.

  Obinze had spent time with them only once, when Kosi invited them to dinner. He thought Isioma interesting; the few things she allowed herself to say were thoughtful, but she often remained silent, shrinking herself, pretending not to be as intelligent as she was, to salve Jonathan’s ego, while Jonathan, a bank CEO whose photos were always in the newspapers, dominated the evening with long-winded stories about his dealings with estate agents in Switzerland, the Nigerian governors he had advised, and the various companies he had saved from collapse.

  He introduced Obinze and Kosi to the school headmistress, a small round Englishwoman, saying, “Obinze and Kosi are our very close friends. I think their daughter might be joining us next year.”

  “Many high-level expatriates bring their children here,” the headmistress said, her tone pride-tinged, and Obinze wondered if this was something she said routinely. She had probably said it often enough to know how well it worked, how much it impressed Nigerians.

  Isioma was asking why their son was not yet doing much of mathematics and English.

  “Our approach is more conceptual. We like the children to explore their environment during the first year,” the headmistress said.

  “But it should not be mutually exclusive. They can also start to learn some maths and English,” Isioma said. Then, with an amusement that did not try to shield its underlying seriousness, she added, “My niece goes to a school on the mainland and at age six she could spell ‘onomatopoeia’!”

  The headmistress smiled tightly; she did not, her smile said, think it worthwhile to address the processes of lesser schools. Later, they sat in a large hall and watched the children’s production of a Christmas play, about a Nigerian family who find an orphan on their doorstep on Christmas Day. Halfway through the play, a teacher turned on a fan that blew small bits of white cotton wool around the stage. Snow. It was snowing in the play.

  “Why do they have snow falling? Are they teaching children that a Christmas is not a real Christmas unless snow falls like it does abroad?” Isioma said.

  Jonathan said, “Ahn-ahn, what is wrong with that? It’s just a play!”

  “It’s just a play, but I also see what Isioma is saying,” Kosi said, and then turned to Obinze. “Darling?”

  Obinze said, “The little girl that played the angel was very good.”

  In the car, Kosi said, “Your mind is not here.”

  HE READ all the archives of Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black. The blog posts astonished him, they seemed so American and so alien, the irreverent voice with its slanginess, its mix of high and low language, and he could not imagine her writing them. He cringed reading her references to her boyfriends—The Hot White Ex, Professor Hunk. He read “Just This Evening” a few times, because it was the most personal post she had written about the black American, and he searched for clues and subtleties, about what kind of man he was, what kind of relationship they had.

  So in NYC, Professor Hunk was stopped by the police. They thought he had drugs. American Blacks and American Whites use drugs at the same rate (look this up), but say the word “drugs” and see what image comes to everyone’s mind. Professor Hunk is upset. He says he’s an Ivy League professor and he knows the deal, and he wonders what it would feel like if he were some poor kid from the inner city. I feel bad for my baby. When we first met, he told me how he wanted to get straight As in high school because of a white teacher who told him to “focus on getting a basketball scholarship, black people are physically inclined and white people are intellectually inclined, it’s not good or bad, just different” (and this teacher went to Columbia, just sayin’). So he spent four years proving her wrong. I couldn’t identify with this: wanting to do well to prove a point. But I felt bad then too. So off to make him some tea. And administer some TLC.

  Because he had last known her when she knew little of the things she blogged about, he felt a sense of loss, as though she had become a person he would no longer recognize.

  Part 6

  CHAPTER 43

  For the first few days, Ifemelu slept on the floor in Dike’s room. It did not happen. It did not happen. She told herself this often, and yet endless, elliptical thoughts of what could have happened churned in her head. His bed, this room, would have been empty forever. Somewhere inside her, a gash would have ruptured that would never seal itself back. She imagined him taking the pills. Tylenol, mere Tylenol; he had read on the Internet that an overdose could kill you. What was he thinking? Did he think of her? After he came home from the hospital, his stomach pumped, his liver monitored, she searched his face, his gestures, his words, for a sign, for proof that it had really almost happened. He looked no different from before; there were no shadows under his eyes, no funereal air about him. She made him the kind of jollof rice he liked, flecked with bits of red and green peppers, and as he ate, fork moving from the plate to his mouth, saying, “This is pretty good,” as he always had in the past, she felt her tears and her questions gathering. Why? Why had he done it? What was on his mind? She did not ask him because the therapist had said that it was best not to ask him anything yet. The days passed. She clung to him, wary of letting go and wary, also, of suffocating him. She was sleepless at first, refusing the small blue pill Aunty Uju offered her, and she would lie awake at night, thinking and turning, her mind held hostage by thoughts of what could have been, until she fell, finally, into a drained sleep. On some days, she woke up scarred with blame for Aunty Uju.

  “Do you remember when Dike was telling you something and he said ‘we black folk’ and you told him ‘you are not black’?” she asked Aunty Uju, her voice low because Dike was still asleep upstairs. They were in the kitchen of the condo, in the soft flare of morning light, and Aunty Uju, dressed for work, was standing by the sink and eating yogurt, scooping from a plastic cup.

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “You should not have done that.”

  “You know what I meant. I didn’t want him to start behaving like these people and thinking that everything that happens to him is because he’s black.”

  “You told him what he wasn’t but you didn’t tell him what he was.”

  “What are you saying?” Aunty Uju pressed the lever with her foot, the trash can slid out, and she threw in the empty yogurt cup. She had switched to part-time work so that she could spend some time with Dike, and drive him to his therapist appointments herself.

  “You never reassured him.”

  “Ifemelu, his suicide attempt was from depression,” Aunty Uju said gently, quietly. “It is a clinical disease. Many teenagers suffer from it.”

  “Do people just wake up and become depressed?”

  “Yes, they do.”

  “Not in Dike’s case.”

  “Three of my patients have attempted suicide, all of them white teenagers. One succeeded,” Aunty Uju said, her tone pacifying and sad, as it had been since Dike came home from the hospital.

  “His depression is because of his experience, Aunty!” Ifemelu said, her voice rising, and then she was sobbing, apologizing to Aunty Uju, her own guilt spreading and sullying her. Dike would not have swallowed those pills if she had been more diligent, more awake. She had crouched too easily behind laughter, she had failed to till the emotional soil of Dike’s jokes. It was true that he laughed, and that his laughter convinced with its sound and its light, but it might have been a shield, and underneath, there might have been a growing pea plant of trauma. br />
  Now, in the shrill, silent aftermath of his suicide attempt, she wondered how much they had masked with all that laughter. She should have worried more. She watched him carefully. She guarded him. She did not want his friends to visit, although the therapist said it was fine if he wanted them to. Even Page, who had burst out crying a few days ago when she was alone with Ifemelu, saying, “I just can’t believe he didn’t reach out to me.” She was a child, well-meaning and simple, and yet Ifemelu felt a wave of resentment towards her, for thinking that Dike should have reached out to her. Kweku came back from his medical mission in Nigeria, and he spent time with Dike, watching television with him, bringing calm and normalcy back.

  The weeks passed. Ifemelu stopped panicking when Dike stayed a little too long in the bathroom. His birthday was days away and she asked what he would like, her tears again gathering, because she imagined his birthday passing not as the day he turned seventeen but as the day he would have turned seventeen.

  “How about we go to Miami?” he said, half joking, but she took him to Miami and they spent two days in a hotel, ordering burgers at the thatch-covered bar by the pool, talking about everything but the suicide attempt.

  “This is the life,” he said, lying with his face to the sun. “That blog of yours was a great thing, had you swimming in the dough and all. Now you’ve closed it, we won’t be able to do more of this stuff!”

  “I wasn’t swimming, kind of just splattering,” she said, looking at him, her handsome cousin, and the curl of wet hair on his chest made her sad, because it implied his new, tender adulthood, and she wished he would remain a child; if he remained a child then he would not have taken pills and lain on the basement couch with the certainty that he would never wake up again.

  “I love you, Dike. We love you, you know that?”

  “I know,” he said. “Coz, you should go.”

  “Go where?”

  “Back to Nigeria, like you were planning to. I’m going to be okay, I promise.”

  “Maybe you could come and visit me,” she said.

  After a pause, he said, “Yeah.”

  Part 7

  CHAPTER 44

  At first, Lagos assaulted her; the sun-dazed haste, the yellow buses full of squashed limbs, the sweating hawkers racing after cars, the advertisements on hulking billboards (others scrawled on walls—PLUMBER CALL 080177777) and the heaps of rubbish that rose on the roadsides like a taunt. Commerce thrummed too defiantly. And the air was dense with exaggeration, conversations full of overprotestations. One morning, a man’s body lay on Awolowo Road. Another morning, The Island flooded and cars became gasping boats. Here, she felt, anything could happen, a ripe tomato could burst out of solid stone. And so she had the dizzying sensation of falling, falling into the new person she had become, falling into the strange familiar. Had it always been like this or had it changed so much in her absence? When she left home, only the wealthy had cell phones, all the numbers started with 090, and girls wanted to date 090 men. Now, her hair braider had a cell phone, the plantain seller tending a blackened grill had a cell phone. She had grown up knowing all the bus stops and the side streets, understanding the cryptic codes of conductors and the body language of street hawkers. Now, she struggled to grasp the unspoken. When had shopkeepers become so rude? Had buildings in Lagos always had this patina of decay? And when did it become a city of people quick to beg and too enamored of free things?

  “Americanah!” Ranyinudo teased her often. “You are looking at things with American eyes. But the problem is that you are not even a real Americanah. At least if you had an American accent we would tolerate your complaining!”

  Ranyinudo picked her up from the airport, standing by the Arrivals exit in a billowy bridesmaid’s dress, her blusher too red on her cheeks like bruises, the green satin flowers in her hair now askew. Ifemelu was struck by how arresting, how attractive, she was. No longer a ropy mass of gangly arms and gangly legs, but now a big, firm, curvy woman, exulting in her weight and height, and it made her imposing, a presence that drew the eyes.

  “Ranyi!” Ifemelu said. “I know my coming back is a big deal but I didn’t know it was big enough for a ball gown.”

  “Idiot. I came straight from the wedding. I didn’t want to risk the traffic of going home first to change.”

  They hugged, holding each other close. Ranyinudo smelled of a floral perfume and exhaust fumes and sweat; she smelled of Nigeria.

  “You look amazing, Ranyi,” Ifemelu said. “I mean, underneath all that war paint. Your pictures didn’t even show you well.”

  “Ifemsco, see you, beautiful babe, even after a long flight,” she said, laughing, dismissing the compliment, playing at her old role of the girl who was not the pretty one. Her looks had changed but the excitable, slightly reckless air about her had not. Unchanged, too, was the eternal gurgle in her voice, laughter just beneath the surface, ready to break free, to erupt. She drove fast, braking sharply and glancing often at the BlackBerry on her lap; whenever the traffic stilled, she picked it up and typed swiftly.

  “Ranyi, you should text and drive only when you are alone so that you kill only yourself,” Ifemelu said.

  “Haba! I don’t text and drive o. I text when I’m not driving,” she said. “This wedding was something else, the best wedding I’ve been to. I wonder if you’ll remember the bride. She was Funke’s very good friend in secondary school. Ijeoma, very yellow girl. She went to Holy Child but she used to come to our WAEC lesson with Funke. We became friends in university. If you see her now, eh, she’s a serious babe. Her husband has major money. Her engagement ring is bigger than Zuma Rock.”

  Ifemelu stared out of the window, half listening, thinking how unpretty Lagos was, roads infested with potholes, houses springing up unplanned like weeds. Of her jumble of feelings, she recognized only confusion.

  “Lime and peach,” Ranyinudo said.

  “What?”

  “The wedding colors. Lime and peach. The hall decoration was so nice and the cake was just beautiful. Look, I took some pictures. I’m going to put this one up on Facebook.” Ranyinudo gave Ifemelu her BlackBerry. Ifemelu held on to it so that Ranyinudo would focus on her driving.

  “And I met someone o. He saw me when I was waiting outside for the mass to end. It was so hot, my foundation was melting on my face and I know I looked like a zombie, but he still came to talk to me! That’s a good sign. I think this one is serious husband material. Did I tell you my mother was seriously saying novenas to end my relationship when I was dating Ibrahim? At least she will not have a heart attack with this one. His name is Ndudi. Cool name, abi? You can’t get more Igbo than that. And you should have seen his watch! He’s into oil. His business card has Nigerian and international offices.”

  “Why were you waiting outside during mass?”

  “All the bridesmaids had to wait outside because our dresses were indecent.” Ranyinudo rolled “indecent” around her tongue and chuckled. “It happens all the time, especially in Catholic churches. We even had cover-ups but the priest said they were too lacy, so we just waited outside until the mass ended. But thank God for that or I would not have met this guy!”

  Ifemelu looked at Ranyinudo’s dress, its thin straps, its pleated neckline that showed no cleavage. Before she left, were bridesmaids banished from church services because their dresses had spaghetti straps? She did not think so, but she was no longer sure. She was no longer sure what was new in Lagos and what was new in herself. Ranyinudo parked on a street in Lekki, which was bare reclaimed land when Ifemelu left, but now a cavalcade of large houses encircled by high walls.

  “My flat is the smallest, so I don’t have parking space inside,” Ranyinudo said. “The other tenants park inside, but you should see all the shouting that happens in the morning when somebody does not move their car out of the way, and somebody else is late for work!”

  Ifemelu climbed out of the car and into the loud, discordant drone of generators, too many generators; the sound pie
rced the soft middle of her ears and throbbed in her head.

  “No light for the past week,” Ranyinudo said, shouting to be heard above the generators.

  The gateman had hurried over to help with the suitcases.

  “Welcome back, aunty,” he said to Ifemelu.

  He had not merely said “welcome” but “welcome back,” as though he somehow knew that she was truly back. She thanked him, and in the gray of the evening darkness, the air burdened with smells, she ached with an almost unbearable emotion that she could not name. It was nostalgic and melancholy, a beautiful sadness for the things she had missed and the things she would never know. Later, sitting on the couch in Ranyinudo’s small stylish living room, her feet sunk into the too-soft carpet, the flat-screen TV perched on the opposite wall, Ifemelu looked unbelievingly at herself. She had done it. She had come back. She turned the TV on and searched for the Nigerian channels. On NTA, the first lady, blue scarf wrapped around her face, was addressing a rally of women, and crawling across the screen were the words “The First Lady is Empowering Women with Mosquito Nets.”

  “I can’t remember the last time I watched that stupid station,” Ranyinudo said. “They lie for the government but they can’t even lie well.”

  “So which Nigerian channel do you watch?”

  “I don’t even really watch any o. I watch Style and E! Sometimes CNN and BBC.” Ranyinudo had changed into shorts and a T-shirt. “I have a girl who comes and cooks and cleans for me, but I made this stew myself because you were coming, so you must eat it o. What will you drink? I have malt and orange juice.”

  “Malt! I’m going to drink all the malt in Nigeria. I used to buy it from a Hispanic supermarket in Baltimore, but it was not the same thing.”