New York, My Village

by Uwem Akpan

  I told Molly that for the longest time I could neither express any anger nor knew how to share this, because Mama herself had refused to judge my father’s rapists. All she ever wanted to talk about was how much I kicked in her womb as they raped him. If you pushed her, she said many of these soldiers looked hungry and tattered from rushed military boot camp—and arrived in our Annang villages angry and afraid. If you pushed her more, she told you how many times, between Papa’s capture and news of his death, she voluntarily cooked for the patrols, unlike other relatives of the disappeared. She had hoped they would in gratitude give her some hint of her husband’s destiny. If you pushed her even further, she laughed a hopeless laugh and asked you to prove that the Nigeria that won the war has been fair to the oil minorities today, or that my anger or “minority war-stories activism,” as she put it, would bring back my brother, who died of kwashiorkor in the last year of the war.

  Papa’s discarded bloodstained blue trousers had stood in for the corpse at the requiem Mass; it was a private arrangement in the sacristy of Our Lady of Guadalupe so our Igbo parishioners would not be offended. The night Mass was celebrated by our parish priest, Father Walsh, after he had gathered my extended family to say his fellow priests in Igboland reliably told him how Papa was executed.

  Mama had taken time to perfume and iron these trousers and had folded them neatly in a little brown carton box and given them to the priest, like an offertory gift. And he, in turn, had placed it on the edge of the altar, by the crucifix. The cross was hastily written on the four sides with charcoal by the emotionally wrought Father Walsh, and the top was covered with a square white linen, the Corporal, the shawl for the remnants of the Blessed Sacrament. Over the years, I got to know that the priest had asked the sacristan, Usen’s father, to leave because he was wailing for my father, his childhood friend. Caro’s grandpa, an Annang who voluntarily became a Biafran soldier, had staunchly disobeyed the priest and stayed on to spy on who did or said what. The man was already hated for masterminding the disappearance of two of Tuesday’s uncles, after he learned they had defecated on the Biafran flag.

  There was no incense, no flowers, no songs for the soul of my father. Usen’s mother said she heard from my father’s cousin that Mama, after Communion, had burst into one of those powerful Annang Catholic dirges. Papa had once been a choirmaster. But, when she mentioned Biafra, our relatives had quickly gagged her until she choked and fainted. They begged Caro’s grandpa never to report her to Biafra.

  I told Molly even the holy water that was sprinkled on the box tasted fake, because it had no salt. Most of our salt had been diverted to make Biafran bombs. Yet, all the same, even if the corpse had been there, who could dare sing at the burial of a saboteur, or sabo? Who could ring the church bell after his summary execution?

  This was only the beginning of the so-called war of self-determination. And Biafra had already changed the way we buried our dead …

  I STUTTERED AND STOPPED, because Molly was sweating like I was torturing her. She stood up and hugged me and told me to be strong and praised my marriage to Caro for surviving such family enmity. I stayed with her in the office till she recovered and dried her eyes and reapplied her makeup. “Such stories really get to me,” she apologized. “All this reminds me of the history of … Never mind.” Whatever she wanted to say was making her too emotional, so it was my turn to say I would not press her.

  Thus, I also held back telling her what I knew of the silent burial procession from the sacristy and interment by the atama plant beside our house: how Papa’s trousers were hurriedly buried like some little treasure in a hole, or a yam head hastily planted in the first dusty drizzle of our long rainy season; how Mama could not attend because I was pounding her womb like the bombs falling in Aba, which was precisely when she made the decision, if we survived, to call me Ekong, war; how, after the burial, Father Walsh had diplomatically resorted to scolding the soldiers in private, because each time he broached Biafran brutality in his homily, some Biafrans, soldiers and civilians, had stormed out of Mass; how angry our people were to see their Igbo neighbors, the owners of Biafra, had better salt rations. I could not tell her Caro and I did not discuss Biafra because of her grandpa’s surveillance of my dad’s funeral. Though we loved each other, and she supported my work, it was prudent not to dwell on such things. We kept mute each time Biafran quarrels flared up in our extended family.

  That day in New York, when I came back to my cubicle, I felt better, if totally exhausted. But the musky scent of Molly’s perfume was so over me that Jack cocked his eyes and joked I smelled too much like her. I slouched on my desk, too sleepy to join those who laughed.

  I WOKE TO THE BEEP of Molly’s text. She suggested I go home to sleep properly and thanked me again for sharing. But I stayed on, for she had no idea how comfortable these offices were—as opposed to Hell’s Kitchen, where I feared a confrontation.

  I liked the Japanese buffet where Jack and Emily took me. Eating my smoked blue fish with a can of Crush, I shared a bit about my project; they asked some questions as they ate their grilled Spanish mackerel and Chinese tong choy. When they brought up the passage I sent them the previous day, nothing angered them more than the stupidity of the Hausa-Fulani elite’s self-sabotaging refusal to educate their masses or decision to keep forcing ten-year-olds into being someone’s third or fourth wives. Once Jack knew nothing had changed in the fifty intervening years since the war, he was very disappointed. “The shit reminds me of pre-1880 Delaware,” he hissed, “when the age of consent was seven!” His anger was such that Emily moved the conversation to our village life. They both said they wished they could visit. “That would be really wonderful!” I said.

  I told them about our complex multi-ethnic, multi-racial parish church, and they seemed fascinated by Father Kiobel’s personality and ability to manage such a diverse congregation. But they were offended that he had no interest in my publishing project. They went on to tell me about their volunteer work in animal shelters and blood banks, through the local Humane Society where Angela was on the board. I was so impressed I promised I would join them for a day.

  I said how much I wanted to hit Broadway for the spectacle of seeing if the Newsies urchins would live up to the Times Square mega-ads. They said they were interested, too, and would love to go with me.

  I GOT HOME WITH too much energy for my own good.

  I could not sit down to work. Not even listening to audiobooks or drinking Lucci’s two Budweisers settled my spirit. To cope, I started cooking. I pulled out the Food Emporium yam tubers and started peeling, to make porridge, mmun-edia. Though they were different from our yams and even smelled different, I felt I could swing it, though I was not much of a cook.

  Like I was practicing for the day I would cook for Emily and Jack, I improvised, chopping the tubers into big dices. A badly cooked mmun-edia was better than no mmun-edia at all, I encouraged myself. I made a stock from two dried smoked catfish, palm oil, onions, Maggi cubes, ground crayfish, and periwinkle—from my Sunday gifts from the Bronx. With a cleaver, I broke an ujajak, the spice, into three, to unleash its strong flavor, and tossed them in the pot. When the pot boiled and floated a froth of crayfish and the skin of the catfish softened and swelled and the ujajak scent bloomed, I knew the broth was ready. The only setback was, since I had no real pepper, I had used Lucci’s black pepper: it skewed the taste.

  Well, undaunted, I poured the diced yam into the stock and closed the pot for a short while. Certain that the spice had “entered” the food, as we say, I opened the pot to add dried nton-aku leaves, another spice, and chopped lettuce. But I intentionally overdid the spice, trying to cover the black pepper defect.

  When I caught myself eating from the pot as I waited for the food to thicken, I burst into laughter. I was already drunk on the scent of the spices. I went over to the boom box to play Solototo and Timaya.

  Of course, this American yam did not taste like our Nigerian yam at all. But I was bent on
enjoying whatever I found in my sojourn. I had finished the first serving and was about to begin the second when Lucci called out of the blue to say he was just checking in on me. He started out by admiring my background music, and when he learned of what I had just cooked, he was so thrilled he sounded like he might crash my dinner. “Just great, how quickly you’ve made yourself comfortable around here!” he said.

  He was happy I had thrown myself into my work and my colleagues liked me. And since he was sniffling, I asked whether he had seen the doctor, and that attention pleased him as well. When we discovered we both shared a love for soccer, I put my food aside. He was very tickled as I explained what world soccer and Roman Catholicism meant to our 1970s Nigerian childhood. I told him how we learned about the samba dance from watching Brazilian fans at World Cups, how we learned of the greatness of Italian footwear because we heard Gucci made the Pope’s red shoes, how we learned of the enduring tensions of the Spanish Civil War from following Real Madrid–Barcelona rivalries. “Oh Lord, my friend the landlord and I are also soccer fanatics!” he said, his laugh as pleasing as his photo on the shelf. “Caught a few games together in the Red Bull Arena in New Jersey.”

  Lucci was proud of the U.S. women national team, praising them for winning the World Cup many times, these ladies whose profiles we knew so well in our villages. And he was not only calling up past legends like Mia Hamm, Michelle Akers, or Christine Lilly, but extolling the versatility of Megan Rapinoe and Hope Solo. I was equally touched when he took time to applaud goalie Briana Scurry’s resilience as “the only minority on all those snow-white teams across so many World Cups and Olympics.”

  I loved his worldview.

  I DUG INTO MY READING for the editorial meeting. Trails of Tuskegee, the title of one of the four manuscripts I was given, grabbed my attention. It was a black comedy fictionalizing the Tuskegee syphilis experiment on Black men by the U.S. government, something I had faintly heard about in college. The manuscript was sponsored by Emily.

  Like some of the stories in my anthology, the book was full of biting humor, which I loved, especially whenever the charming boy narrator, who was two years older than Ujai, described the needles that were used to supposedly draw blood samples, or when he captured the victims’ initial excitement as they thought their government had brought them free health care. I loved how he slowly made sense of the tragedy from eavesdropping into adult conversations. The cast of vibrant characters showed how this terror had trashed this community for forty long years and through seven American presidencies, progressively altering the bones of the narrator’s father and grandfather’s faces, as it boiled and ate away their genitals. The narrator’s anger was tangible as he slowly discovered why the men of his community could no longer ride their bicycles or dance the Twist or cut their lawns. Yet, I was lifted by the author’s vivid exploration of what hope the people of Tuskegee held on to even after discovering the war waged against them.

  So, midway into Trails of Tuskegee, I resolved to support this book at the editorial meeting—if an outsider had a voice. Tuskegee took away a bit of my Biafran War victim’s shame. I googled the American presidents who were in power during this Tuskegee mess. When I counted the iconic Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy among them, it humanized America for me.

  I wanted to send a text to Emily, to give her a heads-up. But since it was late, I began to take long notes on how to fix the novel’s flaws. I got on the internet to learn more about syphilis and the subsequent public reaction to the experiment. I yearned to know about the “collateral damage” on, say, the women who got the disease from their men, or their congenitally deformed babies. I made suggestions on the possible evolution of the single white character. But the pain from the novel’s final scenes, of the protagonist peeping through a keyhole to see his dickless uncle tearfully negotiating sex with the aunt, seeped into my bones and clogged my lungs.

  I needed distraction. I needed fresh air.

  It was past midnight when I stood up, scooped out, and microwaved my mmun-edia. I spooned it into a thermos, which I put in a plastic bag so I could go eat in the square, like I had seen some folks do. I knew the crowd’s vivacity would revive my drooping spirits.

  MY PEEPHOLE REVEALED Jeff and Brad chatting and yawning by the stairwell. I opened the door with so much force it shocked them. I jumped out, my face as blunt as a mallet, my mouth ready to scream the roof down at any sign of provocation or disrespect, my feet like unpinned grenades. This time I was ready. My sights set on them, I mightily slammed the door shut. This also jolted them, like giving someone two quick slaps.

  They stood frozen as I slowly locked my door, one key after another. Alejandra, Brad’s girlfriend, came out, smiling. She was in lacy white pajamas, and her hair looked like Santa Judessa’s. She began to speak but the tension stopped her midsentence; she rushed back in and closed the door. I unlocked my door and locked up again. Then, whistling, I skipped downstairs, my heart warmer than the thermos.

  In the square, no red table was free, so I walked around till I remembered to take photos of the beautiful war citation of uncommon service on Father Duffy’s statue. It would help me invoke Father Walsh’s dedication to our minorities during the Biafran War when I wrote the promo copy. It was great to be already thinking about publication, though the book was far from completion.

  When I finally sat down to eat, I ignored all the stares—until a cop I thought was Latino peered into my thermos to ascertain that it was not a terrorist’s last meal. Now I was ashamed, because the world began to gather like I was a spray-paint artist. Nonetheless, I smiled and asked the cop for a selfie. He readily agreed and pulled me into a pose. He asked where I came from and proudly told me he was Native American. He clowned and held up my fork and thermos, as though he enjoyed my mmun-edia, his mouth as if filled with food and laughter.

  Suddenly there was a huge cheer, with folks pointing at the King Kong lady, who had extracted an image of the two of us, as if she were going to swallow us eating mmun-edia, or like she was going to smell it. Though I had longed to be picked up, it was so eerie. I wanted to join those screaming in excitement, but I got a lump in my throat: the display of my steaming food on that big screen, the fish and periwinkles tender and succulent. I could not breathe as the camera kept zooming into the food till it momentarily filled the screen. It was as if the Statue of Liberty lady had finally freed me after a long and arduous trial.

  I flinched and staggered, trying to figure out where the camera was. The cop left, a bit embarrassed, as though he had overstepped his professionalism. My startled face on the screen covered the square in laughter. Before I remembered to photograph the screen, my image was gone.

  SOME TOURIST, who had been recording the whole thing, asked what kind of seafood I was eating. “Seafood mmun-edia, or yam porridge seafood!” I announced. She said she thought as much; she said she was from Indonesia and a lover of anything seafood. She was more excited than me to see yam on the screen and went on and on about the many ways she cooked it. Her family gathered. I was grateful she promised to send me the recording. I was even happier she asked to taste the food. And she was already bending and complimenting the spices when her family said I had an African accent. She lost her composure and backed off. Then she threw my fork on the table, which rolled and fell to the ground. She disappeared.

  On my way back, I ran into Keith and his dogs. I excitedly showed him the cop selfie with date, time, and place. But he pushed it away like another look might blind him, mumbling expletives about cops and African Americans. I disliked his reaction, especially since my food was involved.

  Yet I held back as he went on to ask what time of the year was best to visit southern Nigeria and what prophylaxis he could use against malaria. Well, while talking about visas, we got into my embassy shit. Shocked, he said I must immediately sue the U.S. government for “tribal profiling.” I said it would be useless. He insisted some sharp American lawyers could find a legal loophole, not just to
sue on my behalf, but to bring the old Bekwarra man and the G-string-belt-ibok Muslim to America. He bit his lips as I explained that American immigration was not in a hurry to change its ways and cited Ofonime’s torment a decade earlier.

  “As an African American, I thought I understood everything about profiling!” he said. “Teach me, because I don’t want to be totally lost when I visit home, Africa!”

  “Immigration is protected even against the sick, like the old Bekwarra man. And, you know, as our ancestors said, even if you are homeless you cannot sue your neighbor for locking his doors!”

  He laughed and repeated the proverb, like he was cramming for a test.

  “Is that a real proverb?” he asked.

  “Yes, but I made it up,” I said.

  “Then why attribute it to the ancestors?”

  “Because ancestral attribution gives it power, like a biblical quote!”

  By his apartment door, he stopped and took one long look at my empty thermos.

  “What?” I said, bracing myself.

  “Oh, nothing,” he said, stepping back.

  “No, hey, spit it out, bro.”

  “I like the scent from the thermos. You know, I’ve seen so many Nigerian dishes online. Please, is there any chance I could try your food … if you don’t mind?”

  “Absolutely!”

  I relaxed, realizing he had only been disgusted with the selfie—not my food. I asked for time to plan a meal; I was excited by the prospect of having him, Jack, and Emily over.