by Uwem Akpan
I was very relieved when Emily texted from a café in Tribeca to say that Cecilia Myers had assured her she was the perfect editor for the book. She had thanked Emily for the “most touching bid letter she had ever received, which really moved the author.” She had also made Emily understand that though there was a lot of interest in the book, she was the author’s first choice. I was hooked. I wished Emily would take me along the next time she went for coffee with an agent.
I began to dream that perhaps Liam would add the money we had saved by losing Mistress to that we were offering for Trails, so we could stay in competition. Father Kiobel, who had been using the story of Emily’s confessions to preach inter-ethnic reconciliation at Our Lady of Guadalupe, said he would pray for the project.
When I lifted my head to see the Humane Society Two whispering at the water fountain like they were plotting a terror attack, I suggested “The Divided Bubble” as the new title for the novella. But the thing was simply not publishable. In my gut, I understood the author’s burning need to mention the dozens of ethnic groups that made up Biafra. I felt his pain for all the invisible tiny groups fighting to be seen. My mind returned many times to my struggles at the embassy to prove the existence of the Annangs. But the piece was too chaotic and confusing. The author had failed in creating a gripping fictional narration. Finally, I threw out the novella and sent the author a rejection email.
I walked into the hallway to call Lucci to ensure my apartment was on the exterminator’s list. I left a voice mail, and he texted to assure me. I thanked him.
IN THE SUBWAY, on the way to the prize ceremony, Molly and I were giddy and loud, like folks who had escaped from prison. In no time, we had agreed to visit her parents in New Haven in mid-October. I called Caro from the sidewalk. She did not reply.
West Houston Street, though calmer than Times Square, looked older and used up to me. I was not even tempted by its Starbucks. It seemed in the wrong place. Our destination was a renovated beer hall, whose front wall looked unkempt and its façade dirtied by streaks of rust and grime. It reminded me of the front gate of Mapo Hall in Ibadan. Immediately I decided I would never visit this part of New York again. I thanked my ancestors I did not get all dressed up in my precious Annang outfit for this kind of environment. It was even too ugly for the moss senator attire I was wearing.
But inside we met an even more jubilant prize crowd than ourselves. Unlike my workplace, it was incredibly diverse. It was like someone had just cordoned off a part of Times Square and shipped it here, except that it was all so formal. Someone was pounding Sam Smith on a piano in a corner. The names and pictures of the nominees and past winners and the Uramodese plaque were continually flashing on screens on the walls. The stage was lit to perfection. Acquaintances and old friends greeted each other, while caterers served wine and finger food. Molly nursed a glass of red wine, but I was so happy to be here I did not want even water. She introduced me to fellow editors, agents, journalists, bookstore owners, critics, authors, publishers, translators, sponsors, special guests, and, of course, the prize nominees, resplendent and nervous in equal measure.
BUT THE BUZZ was about the two manuscripts that had turned Andrew & Thompson upside down. Everyone was talking about the agents and authors and, in the case of Mistress, its new editor, as though we had gathered to hand them the prizes.
One of the caterers, a big Black guy, kept staring at me, after I had declined his offering of appetizers twice. Fair-skinned, he had ceramic braces and a head of cornrows. His uniform had two Jewish tzitzits. Studying his dark elbows and knuckles, I suspected he had bleached his body, though not so badly as the dancing guy at the embassy. His accent left no one in doubt he was African American from the South. Each time he came around, I avoided him. Why was he not staring at other Black folks? Was it my senator outfit or accent?
Next, Molly introduced me to Paul Maher, a short lively guy, the editor of Mistress. He kissed her lightly on the lips. She hugged him. We shook hands. She congratulated him on winning the auction. I could see they still held each other in great esteem from their time together at FSG. “Emily is the most sensitive of editors, and an even better human being!” Paul said. And though I tried to smile like Molly, I could not process my feelings: it was as if his book had set me up for all the evil that had befallen me since that editorial meeting.
“I hope you’re liking New York,” Paul said cheerily, rearranging his bow tie. “Molly and Emily are so happy to have you here, after all the visa bullshit.” Then he whispered in my ear: “It’s too bad your lovely colleague, Emily, is still dating Jack …”
“Oh, you know Jack?” I said.
“Yap, but that’s a tale for another day. I must say, though, I really love his absolute commitment to the Manhattan animal shelters and blood banks, you know.”
“Well, as the Egyptians say, a beautiful thing is never perfect.”
He told me he had been to literary festivals in Nigeria thrice, and in fact had been all over Africa, most times getting his visas on arrival. “No one had ever made me feel like a criminal or prostitute or pimp,” he said. “Molly told me what you went through at the Lagos embassy. And how they let that starving small boy pee on himself.” The people around us squirmed in anger and embarrassment. Ashamed of being pitied, I changed the subject to compliment him on Mistress.
To allow others do the same, Molly nervously guided me toward a man standing alone in a corner. My elation dissipated once she introduced him as “Chad, Jack’s friend, another regular at the Nigerian book festivals.” Suddenly all the glitter and prized smiles and sharp dressing around me seemed empty. He was short and rotund and completely bald. His thick round glasses were a shade smaller and magnified his lifeless brown eyes, the two handles biting into his bloated face. His tie was badly done like a machete dangling from his neck. He was supremely calm, though periodically his eyes livened up, restless, scanning any new person who came through the door.
Our handshake was limp, in some sort of mutual antipathy. I guessed we knew too much about each other. I stood right before him, knowing, certainly, this was not the agent I wanted to ask to explain what agents do—or the one Molly should suggest for me, if I wrote my memoir.
My deepest desire now was to hack and puke all over him, from head to toe, for comparing our egusi—the most popular West African condiment—to vomit. I wished I could ban him from setting foot again in Africa. I wished I could grab the PA and shout at him, to let everyone know he did not believe America infected Tuskegee with syphilis. But my lips were actually pursed, locked against releasing a word, as the memory of his long phone call with Jack turned my stomach and reproduced too much salty saliva for my mouth.
Molly stepped in to offer a million congratulations to Chad over Mistress. “Jack says you guys are really into Trails of Tuskegee!” he responded scornfully. “As you know, I turned it down last year. It’s not just that it doesn’t resonate with me. There’s something wrong with the structure. It can never be fixed!” She laughed it off and tried to ignite a conversation the idiot had no interest in, till she herself recoiled and dragged me away to our seats.
“Ekong, by the way, if Cecilia comes, please just let her know how much you love the manuscript,” Molly said. “Talk up how you and Emily first encountered the Tuskegee story from very different parts of the world, what this means to the fight against racism in the international community, how emotional you were after Emily praised it at the editorial meeting, how we would be a great home for the book and the author’s career.”
“Will do,” I said.
“But, hey, you should’ve just said ‘Big congratulations to you, Chad!’ We all try to get along around here, okay? We’re small. We’re like an invisible minority tribe: we eat the humble pie.”
“I’m sorry … Molly, are there Black agents? Just curious.”
“Met one in my whole career.”
“Okay.”
“You can say she looks like an orphan or alien, a hid
den blemish on an immensely white beast. But Cecilia isn’t Black.”
“Agents are mysterious animals to me. I don’t even know what to compare them to in Nigeria. I want to say the capricious housing agents of Kaduna, but, at least, when they get you the house, they are gone from your life. Let’s just say I prefer Cecilia to Chad.”
“Don’t we all! I hate to say this: if Chad Twiss agented Trails, it would’ve been sold along with Mistress. Now that the applause for Trails gets only louder, Satan alone can read Chad’s mind. Who knows why he’s watching the door? He’s so slippery, a complete cutthroat of a guy. Not that he cares, but you won’t find a single fellow agent greeting him!”
AS THE PRESIDENT of the Uramodese Awards, Dr. Marcus Zapata, an elegant Latino American, welcomed the audience, tension spread in the hall. The nominees, their agents, and their editors sat like statues, knowing the winners would be announced soon.
In a powerful speech full of anecdotes from his birthplace in northern Colombia, he expressed the power of stories to change minds and shape our world, and most importantly what it had meant to him to be elected the president of the prize. His little Colombian village invited him home to celebrate as though he had won a huge new literary honor for his country of prizewinners and original literary voices. “The atmosphere was that of a victory parade after winning a mini–Copa América,” he said. “For them, one of theirs had finally gotten into a position whence he could influence the very processes of rewarding great literature! Colombians were no longer just prizewinners but kingmakers. And where else in the world is this even possible except in America!”
The hall rose to applaud. I hugged Molly. When he expressed a deep hunger for diversity in every aspect of publishing, the positive energy was so palpable that people like Molly and Paul lifted their ovation by continually standing up, like at a political rally. The feel in the hall was like the folks in Oedipus’s town pining for the solution to the riddle of the Sphynx. “More and more, we’re celebrating the diversity of books and authors!” he had said. “But how do we make publishing itself as diverse as this crowd or this blessed capital of publishing? We must never rest or forget that, like in the larger society, anti-diversity forces can roar back to squash our little visibility.” This drew the biggest applause, and even my nemesis of a waiter, now standing by the far wall, was banging his empty trays like cymbals. Chad, too, was cheering and nodding, though his eyes were still on the door.
Next, Dr. Zapata introduced and thanked the prize judges, again a diverse group, who went onto the stage to introduce the finalists in each category and praise their works. The hall erupted as the judges announced each winner and Zapata presented the citations.
MOLLY HAD DISAPPEARED into the evening with Paul without inviting me. But what could I do? I lined up to compliment Dr. Zapata on his speech and the wonderful Colombian soccer tradition. When I said I could not forget how Colombia beat Argentina 5–0 in the lead-up to the USA 1994 World Cup and the national party that followed it, he guffawed and winked and gave me a fist bump, like an old acquaintance. I laughed louder when he said Nigerians and Colombians should have a competition over who had the crazier post-match celebrations. He was so warm that my prejudice against Latino people, rooted in my visa interview with Santa Judessa, melted away.
Then, seeing the Black server was still monitoring me, I decided to reach out, to ask for a glass of Coke. “Your accent tells me I’m from your part of the world!” he responded. I looked at him a second time. He had his hands in his pockets, a bench separating us.
“I’m a proud Biafran!” he said.
“Ntere … and you think I’m a proud what?” I said in total shock.
“Nah, you Nigerians don’t understand. My granddad came to Mississippi in 1965, before the war, when he was still a Nigerian like you, before we became Biafrans. My pops was born here. He and my granddad have never visited Africa. But my granddad has been to Israel five times, because we Biafrans are Jews.”
“And you? Will you visit Africa?”
“Oh nah, never! I said I’m Biafran, not African. Our real ancestral land is in the Middle East. You know, we Jews by blood. Some Igbos say the Jews originated from Biafra itself. But since we Black, maybe somebody is fuckin’ with our history, as usual.”
“I admire these strings you’re wearing … By the way, Ekong is my name—” I reached out for a handshake, but he shrugged and kept his hands in his pockets. I ended up holding and admiring the tzitzits, saying, “Mr. Biafra, it’s like holding what Abraham, our Father of Faith, wore!
“I’d really love to be inside the synagogue, you know. I’d give anything to participate in a Jewish liturgy …”
“I don’t give a damn about synagogues. I go to a Catholic church. I’m tellin’ you.”
“Well, I’m Catholic, too, but from minority Biafra.”
“What the fuck, my granddad says our minorities betrayed Biafra … anyway, nobody does Roman Catholicism like us. You know, we are Jews by blood. But once we settle in Israel, then we’ll return to save all of y’all from that Dark Continent. Tel Aviv will soon issue all thirty million Igbos Israeli passports!”
“Did you ever ask the Ethiopian Jews, airlifted with such fanfare to Israel, whether they feel accepted?”
“Grandpa says the Blessed Virgin Mary has appeared to many in Onitsha with the message that the Israelis shall finally accept us in 2025. And to step shit up, to be more visible to Israel, Grandpa also says that in Onita … no … Olinishashajota, our people are already flockin’ to embrace Judaism—”
“Onitsha!”
“Whatever. But, please, listen, my bad for sticking my nose in your shit: I overheard you tellin’ the bow-tie white guy you’re homesick. Homesick for Africa? For real, man? Let me break it down for you. You managed to escape from that zoo called Nigeria, right, you managed to secure a visa, and now you tryna go back? What are you really missin’? Should I lend you, Mr. Minority, my Igbo or Biafran brains? Shit, you know what, we probably shouldn’t be kickin’ it, for real. I detest unreasonable people!”
I walked out on him.
CHAPTER 13
Make your prayer sessions longer
JEFF’S TEXT SAID MY A PARTMENT WAS NOT ON THE exterminator’s list. Lucci declined my call. I left a voice mail threatening to contact the landlord myself. Suddenly Lucci phoned. I did not pick up because it was too noisy on Forty-Second Street. He texted me not to call Canepa before we talked. I texted to say I agreed. Yet he kept calling, as if to make sure I had no time to dial the man. When I answered, after apologizing he had been distracted by an important phone call from his cop nephew, he said it was illegal to go straight to the owner. He warned I did not understand New York enough to start fighting landlords or calling city hall. He said since my rent was less than half the market price, I should hire my exterminators, and finally that the landlord could evict me and none of my so-called neighbors would harbor me. “Hey, I take you in, out of the kindness of my heart,” he sobbed, “and now you want to hand Canepa the bullet for my execution? If not for Saint Joseph, the patron saint of tenants, the man would’ve finished me off.”
“I just don’t want another bite in this apartment. That’s all.”
“Don’t trash-talk my apartment as though you live in a castle in Africa. You Nigerians are the most ungrateful people on earth! I hope you pay for special cleaners to exterminate the stink of your African food.”
I laughed because I thought he was joking.
“Sir, you were supposed to call Tony Canepa yesterday, no?”
“Where did that come from?”
“Where did what come from?”
“I mean, I never said such a thing.”
“No, Mr. Lucci, you did, and today you even texted I was on the list!”
“I meant the list of my squatters who pay promptly.”
“Really?”
“Look, I may be eighty years old, but I remember everything I’ve ever told you, from the first phone
call. Yesterday, I even clarified the landlord isn’t my friend-friend. Now, if you don’t believe the bit about the reputation of our cops, just ask the next Black American you meet. My nephew knows what he knows about our police departments. I swear by my wife’s cancer, I never ever said I would call Canepa …”
I took the phone off my right ear, where I once had the little plaster, and looked at the screen incredulously. It was misty because my ear was sweating. Did the bedbug bite affect something inside my ear? I felt inside the ear for a new outgrowth. I put down the phone, pressed down my nostrils and pinched my lips and blew out my cheeks to pop my ears. Nothing happened. I was fine.
“You can’t just lie about something we talked about for two long days,” he bellowed. “You can’t bring your Nigerian four-one-nine scammer mentality here. Worse, you’re making me doubt my memory like I have Alzheimer’s.”
I felt this was a dangerous situation, not just because of my guilt from his weeping, but from the acute feeling that New York was affecting my memory, too. His culture-shock comment underlined this feeling. To reorient myself, I started thinking about my conversations with random people, like the African American at Bed Bath & Beyond, Paul Maher … “I swear I shall never call the landlord or tell anybody,” I said, capitulating. “And I solemnly promise to hire a firm.”
I RAN INTO KEITH JIM-STEHR outside our block. I apologized for causing his dogs sleepless nights. But he said he had been worried that I myself looked sleep-starved. Clearly, he wanted to catch up; however, I told him I needed to get to my apartment to make a quick call to Usen.
Before seeking Usen’s advice about the bugs, first I told him about Jeff’s bereavement and apologies for being rude. He was very quiet and cold, before asking whether I was now friends with Jeff and Brad. Before I could answer, he put the call on speaker and said he was terribly disappointed and warned me never to tell him anything about Hell’s Kitchen again.