by Uwem Akpan
BUT UJAI, who had been following my eyes, stuck her mouth in my ear and whispered in disgust: “Uncle, he used to be a Black man with black hair till two years ago, when he moved to this city. He went and bleached everything away! Everything. Completely, uked-uked.”
“Oh no, girl, iya uwei!” I said, pulling both of us back as though to hide our whispers in the deeper murmurs of folks still greeting each other outside. The shock was such that my knees slipped from the kneeler and both of us fumbled till we grabbed on to the pew. While Tuesday remained buried in prayer, her parents glanced back. I signaled we were fine. I closed my eyes. I did not want to see Tuesday for a while. Yet I could not bolt from him. My stomach turned. My groin gave me the false signal of needing to pee. My chest tightened. I sweated in my palms like at the embassy.
“But, Uncle Ekong, it is true,” she said, scudding closer.
“Okay.”
“He just showed up in the Bronx one day like snow in summer. I thought he was one of those Halloween vector ghost characters, the ones in chains. He blamed it on the Biafran War. He mumbled something about always feeling white inside since Father Walsh saved him. He said this was how he wanted to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the war. But Daddy said he was talking BS, nnisime, and vomited a ton of swear words on him and pushed him out into the stairwell. Neighbors came out. Like Igwat, Mommy just wept and sat on the floor and shuffled her feet till Daddy changed his mind and Uncle Hughes himself stopped sobbing. It was not funny. You can ask Daddy, your BFF.”
“No, no, I believe you.”
“Because these white people don’t even know he’s Black. That’s why they’re only staring at us. But you know he’s really Black, right? Mommy said you’ve never seen him before?”
“Okay.”
She touched my arm.
“No, Uncle, please, could you stop praying for a sec and open your eyes and tell me you really understand things?”
“Of course, baby, I do.”
“I’ve something very important to tell you, when you open your eyes … If we don’t talk now, then when?”
Shaking my head, I felt my eyeballs gently with my sweaty fingers like they had sand under their lids. In my shoes, my socks felt like they were dripping with warm water. “My dear, you know, let’s talk after Mass, please?”
“But I just don’t want you guys to bring him to my school!”
My eyes popped open.
“Ujai, who said he was coming?”
“Well, Daddy really wants him there and I just don’t know why. You must totally sabo your BFF and Uncle Hughes’s plans. I know they hate that war word.”
“Ah, stop, wait—ah, maybe I should ask why you don’t want him.”
“Listen, my classmates remember him as a Black man! They’ll call him Mr. Gross and, worse, they can start calling me things like Niece of Mr. Gross or Niece of Reverse Oreo! My friends would be called the Real Friends of the Niece of Reverse Oreo of New Jersey. And how would I even explain it to all my minority friends?”
“Have you expressed this to Daddy?”
“He got really mad at me.”
“Mommy?”
“Daddy doesn’t listen to her. He keeps telling me, ‘Young girl, you don’t know what Uncle Hughes suffered in the war as a child.’ Uncle Ekong, did they leave him alone to bury the dogs? Is that what Father Walsh saved him from? Are all our war victims bleaching into white fifty years later? I just deserve to know. After all, you’re talking about my village, you know.”
“What did your parents say?”
“They say he buried no nothing!”
“Good.”
“But I overheard Mommy telling someone on the phone that Uncle Hughes himself said he began craving to be a white man because of Biafran patrols … Uncle, I just don’t understand why Uncle Hughes hates his real color while he’s helping lots of our Black orphans and women. I think they’d reject his help if they knew his new color. Please, tell me: Are my parents playing with my mind? Are my grandparents really still Black?”
“Honey, they’re telling you the truth.”
Ujai’s consternation cut deep into my heart. She had thrown up so many questions about Tuesday. I did not want to dwell on any of them or on the part of his story I did not know. Because, even if I did, whom could I ask? This was not the space to have a good conversation with Ujai. I tried to hide my anger at our Annang white man; I stared at the ceiling to avoid his shiny head.
“Daddy also says he doesn’t want me to get away with racism, to judge anyone by their skin color,” Ujai whispered.
“Okay,” I said.
“I think only you, his BFF, can convince him. I’m not a bad person. I’m not racist. I just want you to come alone and really finally explain Africa to my schoolmates … Uncle Ekong, do you remember our conversation last Sunday about governors building hospitals in our village?”
“I do.”
“Well, I’ve really, really thought about it. Here’s the plan: When you visit our school, just skip that altogether, even if my schoolmates ask you. But, if you can just let them know that people don’t die in our wars, that will be perfect, magical. As long as they don’t find Ikot Ituno-Ekanem on the internet, we’re good! And just sadly say we ‘kill really evil dogs who cause wars,’ though. You must include sadly and really evil so those who have pets won’t be offended. Uncle, you have to do things exactly right in my school; otherwise, you’ll mess up my entire life!”
“But Uncle Hughes can do things right, too.”
“Nope, his situation is really, really complicated. They could also ask him when he visited Nigeria last, and do you know how much they’d mock me on the playground if he admitted that he hasn’t been home since 1975? He said this three years ago! Whoever stays away from home for that long, if not serving a jail sentence?”
“Yeah, it’s complicated.”
“Worse, Uncle Hughes also blabbed too much about our food, even when I’d coached him, like we’re doing now, not to mention food. The bullies said our food smells like shit and looks like diarrhea and locked me up in the toilet. Daddy said to ignore them so they don’t know how much it hurts …”
“I, too, can’t stand any food insults! So, no food talk, period.”
“Please, please, one last thing? You’re not allowed to mention embassies.”
“Deal.”
AS THE SACRISTAN LIT the altar candles, Igwat suddenly started to bawl. The choir intoned the entrance hymn, accompanied by an organ, guitars, percussion, and cymbals. Usen carried the boy, and we rose as one and sang from the songbooks.
Just as Usen had managed to placate his son and another child took over behind us, an usher sidled up to us. She was college-age. She was in the most casual of moods and reached across Usen to greet her fellow white person warmly, without saying a thing to the rest of us. Then she turned to Usen and asked us to move to the column of outer pews, pointing somewhere near one of the side chapels or under the fixed scolding downward stare of the window saints. Usen looked at her and then at Tuesday and then furtively around the singing church. He leaned toward the usher like he did not hear her well. She offered to lead us to the new place.
“Iyo o, we’re not leaving,” Usen whispered, shrugging.
“Oh no, we’re not asking you to leave,” she said, her face pained by being misunderstood. “We would never do that.”
“So what’s the problem, then?” Usen said.
“Please, we’re just humbly asking you to move away from this central position because your child is really disturbing everyone.”
Tuesday turned to Usen and said, “It’s not a good idea to hold up Mass …”
“Well, you move yourself over, white man!” Usen said. “But for me and the other true children of Ikot Ituno-Ekanem, we shall serve the Lord right here. Usher, why don’t you go move other families whose babies are crying right now? Because my toddler is now quiet.”
“Young lady, I don’t know why you’re si
ngling us out!” I added.
“Sir, we don’t have any racial agenda,” she said, her eyes searching around exasperatedly, like a single cop in need of reinforcement.
“Ekong, I’ll handle it,” Usen said. “You don’t understand America.”
The choir continued to sing. Everybody was now gawking at us, craning and asking what was going on, their murmur eating away the fine edges of the beautiful singing, like a sudden background noise messing up an important phone call.
By the time five male ushers appeared, genuflected as one, and turned to us, while Usen avoided my eyes, my heart was pounding. I knew the number five was not coincidence but to handle each Black person here, including the toddler. A queasy feeling vacuumed my stomach. And, with everything I knew about Usen, I was sure, sooner or later, he would explode.
“Hey, it’s a win-win situation if you and your folks just scud over there,” the lead usher said brightly. “Liturgy is about helping everyone pray.”
“I see,” Usen said, moving the dialogue from the realm of speech into that of action by sitting down. We all sat with him, while Tuesday remained standing.
“This is not the place nor time for a Black protest sit-in!” another usher said like he was going to take over negotiations. The leader admonished him for saying “Black protest.” But the guy still stared at me as though I—this dangerous African American—had engineered this. Like the ill-dressed wedding guest in the Bible, I feared they would flush me out first.
OFONIME WHISPERED TO USEN to relent, but he wiped his ears with both hands like a cloud of gnats was trying to perch there. She became really restless when I, too, refused to meet her eyes. She pulled out her phone and started to record the proceedings, to the discomfiture of the ushers.
Ujai leaned on me, placing her head on my shoulder snuggly. Her headgear came off, landed on the pew and tumbled to the wooden floor and rolled under a kneeler. I picked it up and set it next to her, while the ushers followed my movement closely. Ujai stood up and grabbed and untied the headgear and straightened and rolled it into a long band of cloth. She tied it around her stomach. She was ready for a fight; this was how the women of Ikot Ituno-Ekanem, especially Awire Womenfolk, showed they would not back down. She kept searching my face, her lips trembling like the embassy boy’s who urinated on himself. I held my breath and looked at the ceiling, because I did not know what to tell her. In America, I was getting increasingly unable to articulate the fissures between the races to myself, much less to others.
But suddenly, undaunted, Ujai bent down to remove her heels. She set them on the pew, spikes up. She stood like Tuesday and had one hand on the spikes, her eyes fixed solely on her brother, as if God had created her for the sole purpose of protecting him. She was sweating, her upper teeth biting down on her lip, defiant, like she wanted to bite someone. Her breath could not enter her stomach anymore, as we say in Annangland. Even her toes on the kneeler were bunched up like folded fists. I pulled her close to me till she sat down and lay her head on my shoulder. I untied the cloth around her stomach so she could breathe easy. I held her hand and told her everything would be fine, till she let go of the shoe.
“Please, go and tell the priest to begin Mass!” Usen said.
“This is sabotage,” the usher said.
Sabotage hit Usen like a bullet. He jerked and then steadied himself in the pew, his elbows out like he was on some throne.
“Who’s fucking saying this Mass?” Usen roared over the choir.
“Father Orrin, Father Orrin,” the ushers whispered, stepping back.
“Efiig ijire nyine … may hernia swell your testicles!” Usen said, cussing them both in Annang and English.
The choir hushed.
The church went totally silent as he stood down.
ON REALIZING HIS MOUTH hung open, Usen himself used his two palms, one against each cheek, to shut it, the very effort making his eyes pop. Then the church slowly released its breath in mutters, then in consumed consternation, then uproar. But we remained still, and nobody looked backward, except Usen’s wife, who continued to record everything. However, the people I could see in my peripheral vision seemed to be pelting me with glares, like I had said the f-word or forced Usen to.
Embarrassed, Usen said: “Okay, I need to go to confess to Father Orrin right now, so I can worship in spirit and in truth!” But the ushers blocked and locked him into the pews. A big gasp echoed through the church. I placed both hands on Usen’s shoulders, to steady him. I filled his ears with pleas in Annang to stay put.
“Listen, guys, Father Orrin is my confessor,” Tuesday finally intervened, scratching his head. “I believe I should meet him on behalf of our African guests. You’re just doing your job, ushers, and our visitor is really sorry to detonate the f-word in church.”
This made the ushers feel better.
My intestines settled as the lady usher led him to the sacristy while the rest stood guard over us. Some parishioners also trooped out to the sacristy, including Mary, Father Orrin’s friend, whose tiny scratchy voice harassed ushers to push her there. “We must deal with this evil delay right away!” she said in a screech worse than a baby’s cry. Ujai plugged her ears with her fingers. She turned and knelt on the pew, her back to the altar, to watch the chaos. Yet now we also deciphered that some were going to the sacristy to support us, because they had announced their intention quite loudly. We were relieved to know we had had such silent support all along. It gave us the grace not just to stop being ashamed of ourselves but to look at each other again.
MOLLY CALLED. “They’re shitting all over us!” I whispered into the phone. She pleaded for me to step outside so we could talk. I said it might be dangerous for a Black person to be outside. She began to text in full sentences as though to underline the seriousness of the situation: “This sounds like some really racist poisonous shit. I don’t even know what took you to Jersey. Anyway, Ekong, just to be sure: did you pick up anything that doesn’t belong to you …?”
“No, Molly,” I texted back.
“What about hugging or chatting up the women?”
“I touched no one, not even men. But, just hearing from you strengthens me in ways you’d never know!”
“You know what, let me come get you! Where are you? If you don’t know the address, just text the name of the church and priest and I’ll google.”
“Please, don’t bother.”
“No, wait, I’m going to call the cops …!”
“We’ll work it out. Aren’t we all Catholics?”
Ujai wanted to use the restroom. Ofonime asked her to put her shoes back on and went with her. They were accompanied by an usher, who reminded them to genuflect before leaving the Sacred Presence. It was the first time I saw an usher guarding the church toilet.
“Ekong, like at that editorial meeting, don’t accept any bullshit!” Molly wrote. “And, please, keep me informed.”
In my heart, I wanted her here. It would be nice to be in the company of a white person we could relate with, as opposed to Tuesday Ita. Then I could begin the serious conversation about how inappropriate were her two questions about theft and sexual harassment.
“FATHER ORRIN HAS DECIDED you must stay exactly where you are, whether the child cries or not,” the lady usher said, with Tuesday nodding beside her. “But, most importantly, all of us ushers owe you an apology. You deserve better … please, Father would love to meet you in a private sacristy reception after Mass, to personally apologize.”
“God bless you!” Usen quickly accepted, standing up to shake hands with her. Tuesday beckoned the rest of the ushers to come shake Usen’s hand, too. When they left, Tuesday confirmed it was the parishioners who crashed the sacristy summit who made the difference. By the time Ujai and Ofonime returned and the choir restarted the opening hymn with real gusto, the prayerful atmosphere was totally restored. When my eyes met Usen’s, we winked and nodded.
We had made our Biafran peace.
After Father Orrin and
his procession arrived to begin the Mass, he apologized profusely for the delay and praised Tuesday as an embodiment of the Beatitudes. The congregation thunderously applauded Tuesday, who turned around and waved and bowed and distributed eye contact, like Communion, to everybody.
And then, with a wide smile, Father Orrin welcomed us and asked the people to also applaud us. But, apart from a few people who responded and pounded their pews like there was no tomorrow, the response was muted, like the applause of fingerless lepers. What pleased our hearts was Mary’s high-decibel joyous laugh riding it like a rock guitarist’s experimentation. It confirmed she was in our corner. We waved into the air without looking back.
Nervous, the priest fidgeted with his mustache and tried again to rally their spirits for worship: “My friends in the Lord, we’re most happy to have our colorfully dressed visitors today, because, as Hughes Ita said in the sacristy, these are the people we’ve been helping in Africa.” Now true applause rang out. “In fact, our association with them started during the Biafran War in the late sixties.” A bigger applause. “Our older parishioners will remember all the prayers and relief materials we shipped to them through Catholic Charities and the Red Cross.” There was great jubilation, as old people suddenly remembered our war and told the younger people of the posters of Biafran starvation.
Father Orrin paused to encourage the chatter. The atmosphere was so charged that I thought, if not for the sacredness of the space and liturgical restraint, they would have swamped us with hugs. Some surged forward to fill up the three empty pews behind us, and a few reached out and rubbed Ujai’s back, saying sweet things to Usen’s family. I was ignored, I guessed, for leeching onto the Umohs.
They could never relate to my presence.
“So, my dear parishioners, here we have before us the Biafrans, the children and grandchildren of the survivors of genocide,” the priest continued. “It’s very important to emphasize here that they’re neither Yorubas nor Hausa-Fulanis, who did everything to steal their oil and coastlines! So, please, let’s really welcome the Biafrans—in their magnificent tribal attire. Without the Quaker oats and Incolac dried milk you generously sent them, they would’ve been starved to death. But man shall not live by bread alone: you also saved their culture from extinction because of the T-shirts and khakis you donated during the war, till they could resume making these beautiful native costumes.” He paused and pointed at me, as though to confirm my suspicion: “As we also welcome the African American friend behind them.”