by Uwem Akpan
I was numb. This was beyond gerrymandering.
“BUT ARE YOU HONESTLY banning us?” Ofonime said, kissing her son’s forehead.
“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Father said, looking from face to face. “Dear Biafran Nigerian Roman Catholics, the Lord has many rooms and tables in his house to accommodate everyone. You guys aren’t Black Americans, so I don’t expect nonsensical fights.”
“My son is playing with you, not fighting,” Ofonime said, her voice cracking. “Just tell us, today, what our crime is … us!”
“Again, it’s not about you,” he said, releasing his fingers gently from Igwat. “Just that if you return, then the next week more Blacks will be here, and our church will be even more divided.”
“We’re sorry my husband said the f-word in church,” she said. “He’s sorry. My son is sorry. My daughter is sorry. Even Ekong is sorry for the poison-chalice insult! Father. We. Are. Your. Children.”
He said we must then accept his judgment, his eyes clouded with tears of being misunderstood. Pleading he was almost late to his prison ministry, he said honesty demanded he acknowledge the white man, Dr. Hughes Ita, who accompanied us throughout our visit. He said even if we were fighting racism, like Dr. King, it would be nice to appreciate the whites who stood with us. As he began to switch off the lights, he said if we religious people were going to be the salt of the earth, we needed to begin by learning how to see people and issues, not colors and mirages.
This sudden change of lighting focused Usen’s eyes. As they squinted and followed the priest around the room like a doublebarrel gun tracking a target, infused by a sudden strength, I seized my childhood friend and dragged him out the door. By the time we stumbled to the bottom of the steps outside the church, I myself was sweating and dizzy, my chest hurting. A certain darkness descended on my vision. Still, I held Usen tight. His wife shook her head and abandoned the toddler in the field to contend with her husband, as if he were the most vulnerable child. Together, we pulled him behind the building, to nurse him back to sanity.
“Yeah, ‘jen Annang, jen-eka, hold yourself together,” I pleaded. “You told me, on my second day here, I couldn’t fight everything.” I secured him in a tight chokehold, like those days of our childhood when we wrestled on the narrow beach of our river in moonlight dripping with fireflies, or the day I knocked the knife out of his hands before he could stab our Biafran classmate the second time. Now, like a lullaby, I hummed “Ikworo Ino” straight into his skull, to remind him of home. I told him the fact that racism had stolen our universal Church from us did not mean it could steal our God from us. But I could not break the tension in his body. When he wanted to overpower me and fight for his church, his wife panicked, jumped in, and snatched Usen from me. She shook him like the leaves of a tree caught in a bad wind. And then she slapped him, a hard forehand across the face. Like good CPR, it jolted him out of the dangerous befuddlement that had masked his anger.
Ofonime and I were startled by the sound of a rectory window snapping shut. We looked up in time to catch the shocked gnarled expression on Father Orrin’s face—before he moved away with his phone and drew the red blinds. Ofonime and I exchanged glances. “Listen, Ekong, we must leave here fast before Father panics and calls the cops to stop this nonsensical fight!” she railed as Usen’s body finally relaxed.
He wanted to sit on the grass to recover, but we dragged him away like he was a soldier being evacuated from incoming fire by his colleagues. When he exhaled and shook the stupor from his head and smoothed his clothes and asked where the children were, I released him guardedly. Ofonime said he must look for them himself. He scanned the area to discover Ujai by Tuesday’s Maserati, entertaining him and other children with spirited dance moves like the embassy boy on his way to Montana. Finding only Igwat’s cap where Ofonime had put him down, we scurried around to the front of the sacristy. We saw him crouching and prattling and pounding on the cement with an open palm, having toddled across the field and crawled back up the steps to the locked door.
Usen yanked him away like from the lip of a cliff.
WHEN WE RESURFACED in front of the church, our supporters walked toward us with their children. The smiles were genuine and fresh like the rising sun. It was good to see them. Their presence allowed us to breathe, to be. They strengthened our spirits. They were not in a hurry. It was like we had known them all our lives. Indeed, these friends did constitute the true Eucharist for us today, the Word made flesh. We chatted about all manner of stuff. But seeing how excited they were that their priest had given us this long audience on a busy Sunday, we were too ashamed to tell the truth. It would be too much for them. Sometimes there are things you cannot even tell friends, I consoled myself. So we made do with small talk and told them about the beauty and diversity in our church back home.
It was going to be a tense goodbye. Yet, for me, it was in the midst of these friends that my heart thawed and the sacristy events began to hit home. I fought back tears and looked around the premises like it was my last visit to any church.
Then, in belated shock, I followed Usen’s lead because, ironically, he was managing things better now. His embrace of the parishioners was tight, his eyes almost teary, a man saying goodbye to the best of comrades-in-arms. We copied him to the letter while the exuberance of the children saying goodbye to one another in the little Annang Ujai had taught them lightened the mood. Ofonime took more selfies of our embraces. Then Mary assured us again that, despite our beautiful sacristy reception, she would still personally lead a delegation to Bishop Salomone the following morning just for the record.
A POLICE CAR DROVE into the near-empty church premises as Father Orrin himself was heading out to the prison waving to us. We all waved back. He gave the cops a thumbs-up when they turned toward the back of the church where Ofonime had just slapped Usen.
They revved the car around the tight place like the criminals were hidden in the wind or under some rock. Then, they began to radio God knows where. A second car arrived, the officers in it consulted with the others, and then the second car left. Then the first car drove by our happy crowd, the officers staring at us like we were a strange movie. There were two cops, one Arab American, the other white. Not knowing what to do, they drove into the field and parked among the Stations of the Cross, in between “Simon of Cyrene Helps Jesus Carry the Cross” and “Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus.” From there, they kept a steady eye on us.
We joined Tuesday in the parking lot. Soon, with the number of white people on the property reduced to just him, the cops stepped out and leaned on their car, to make themselves more visible, to protect him. Now, each time Tuesday asked in Annang what had happened in the sacristy, Usen sniped that we no longer understood him. Finally, Usen told him we were too tired to eat the lunch he had offered to buy for us, and his tone warned us not to contradict him.
CHAPTER 18
Ujai, agwo nwuaan Annang, agwo uko
USEN AND OFONIME DECIDED TO DROP ME AT THE TRAIN station. I was in the backseat with the kids. Ofonime drove, because she seemed the least disturbed of the two of them. Usen sat beside her. We were all quiet, enjoying the music from a soft rock station. The afternoon sun was out and had burned up the morning chill. Though my stomach was totally empty, I was not hungry. I was dizzy but not tired. Ofonime wound down our windows, and the soft warm air filled the car, as if to remind us of what it meant to breathe the air of freedom.
I had peace for the first time since I’d left home that morning. I was also brought back to earth by a text from Alejandra suggesting I leave my spare keys with Brad that night so he could let in the exterminators the next day.
BUT AS SOON AS I arranged Igwat’s head in his car seat, for he had fallen asleep, Ofonime calmly announced in Annang that the patrol car from the church was trailing us. We did not look back. We did not want Ujai to know. Ofonime rolled up the windows, monitored the police in the rearview mirror, and set our car to cruise control to be sure we were driv
ing within the speed limit. Other cars overtook us. To say we were afraid was an understatement. I called Caro, but her phone was switched off.
When Ujai complained that we had not said when we would return to Tuesday’s church, Ofonime said they would have to go to the African American Mass in the Bronx first, to reconnect with longlost friends. She dug out three Negro spiritual CDs from the glove compartment and stuck them in the player. Ujai lashed onto that first clear voice asking whether we were there when they crucified the Lord; she sang and hummed like she needed to practice for the trip to the African American church. The music filled me like nothing had before. It dragged my floating anxiety about the police car down like lead and anchored me back in my being. Then it became too heavy and began to crush me. The music smelled of bruises. It smelled of blood. It smelled of burst blisters. It smelled of iron, rusted and heated, pounded through flesh. It smelled of bones, exposed and cracked and snapped. I had never been so scared in my life.
It was my unending day in the life of this African American.
And, perhaps for the first time, I viscerally glimpsed the bottomless melancholy in African American spirituality. White and Black American Catholics were singing from two different songbooks, as it were. And, for me, it was not even about completely understanding Black American issues or white American issues, for that I could never do. It was just the pain of being profiled daily like you were in minority Biafra, just the pain of knowing Biafra tracked Papa’s coffin from the sacristy to the grave. To avoid a total meltdown, I refused to think of Keith, the only Black American I knew, especially our last chat about how some days gave him this nightmarish longing to escape to Africa.
I regretted my decision to stay on in America after that editorial meeting and street phone call I had overheard. I saw these as a foreshadowing of our Calvary today. If I had left then, I would never have visited the Bronx. We would not have fought over Biafra today, nor would I have had to smell New Jersey.
THE PATROL CAR PARKED behind us at the train station. It was a small park full of evergreen trees, and we were not far from the platform, yet with these guys around the platform felt like a thousand miles away. Ofonime kept the car running and the windows rolled up. We were all singing now like Meshach, Shadrack, and Abednego in Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace.
The police officers got out of their car. We dodged their eyes and pretended we had never seen them before. But when one of them, the white cop, bent down and yanked up the leg of his trousers to scratch his calf, Ujai stopped singing and pointed and said she knew him from church. I beat down her hand and said it was impolite to point at people. She wanted to say why she thought he was scratching, but the parents said they did not want her to talk about him at all, that she should keep singing because Saint Cecilia said those who sing pray twice.
Then the Arab American cop pulled out a pair of black gloves and slid them on and flexed his fingers like someone who was ready to commit a crime. He looked at us like we were dirt before taking a black mask from his pocket and pulling it on. Then he climbed the stairs and disappeared onto the train platform. I was so freaked out knowing he was on the platform, it seemed I was watching this happen to another person, in one of those distant stories we used to hear in school about American cops and African Americans.
As Ujai continued to watch the scratcher cop with consummate sympathy and we feared she might catch on to why they were trailing us, we debated in Annang whether they should drive me straight back to Hell’s Kitchen. But these cops looked like folks who would follow you even to the real Hell. I was afraid of getting on the train and said perhaps we should call Tuesday. Ofonime said the man would only make us feel worse by doubting us or blaming the whole thing on African Americans. “Ekong, there are just too many of Tuesday Itas who got to America and became whiter than white folks!” Usen said sourly. They rejected my suggestion that we should get out of the car to explain to the cops we had not been fighting under the priest’s window.
“Baby, you remember all our monthly lessons about the police?” Usen asked Ujai in an eerily peaceful voice, as though it belonged entirely to another. “Like not staring or pointing, so they don’t think it’s a gun?”
“Yes, Daddy,” Ujai said.
“What do you do with your bro if things get bad?” the mother added, joining in the covert preparation of the daughter in case the police did us in.
“Yep … love him forever, Mommy,” Ujai said, snapping back into her seat. “Oops—I’m not staring at the cop anymore. I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay, dear,” Ofonime said.
“You know we have always and shall always love you whether we’re here or not, right?” Usen said.
“I love you, too!” Ujai said.
“And, look, even if we don’t take you to the village or die today, you must find your way there when you grow up,” Ofonime said. “Ikot Ituno-Ekanem loves you … can never stop loving you. The earth, the river, the meadows, the masqueraders, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Awire Womenfolk, everything.”
“Yep, Mommy.”
“If you call my name in the valley, the valley will always answer you,” Usen said. “If you call Mommy and Uncle Ekong, it will answer you then, too. If you call the dogs of war from their cemetery, same thing. When you grow up, the village will tell you their names and stories.
“And you must greet everyone, especially Auntie Caro, whom you must tell everything you saw in this parking lot today. You must remain very close to her, going forward. You also know, when we came out of the sacristy, we were very pleased to see you chatting away with Uncle Hughes. He cares about us, you know, no matter his color. He loves you and your bro. We love and trust him, too, now and when we get to heaven. Next time you see him, you must also tell him and even other cops these were the same cops you saw in church … but, whatever happens today, never forget Father Orrin’s befriend-all-people homework!”
“Yeah, ‘To love our complex world, befriending people of all colors and orientations,’” the girl recited. “Me and my new friends call it The Father Orrin Pledge. Uncle Hughes made us cram it when you were in the sacristy.”
“Good, you must keep those friendships, no matter what happens here today,” Usen said. “They’re innocent children like you.”
“Yeah, they’re so cool and fun,” she said. “You know, we kids really talked. We’ve decided to all sit together next time right there in the front pews! I really love them! They really understood when I told them I was afraid the ushers would hurt Igwat.”
“We love the way you love them … never forget that!” Ofonime said.
“Yes, you’re a good child,” I said.
“When are we going back?” Ujai said.
Silence.
Usen said: “And, of course, you and your bro shall always be the good kids of Ikot Ituno-Ekanem, okay …?”
“Yay!” Ujai said, and kissed his head. “Hey, people, everything is fine now. But where’s the masked cop?”
“Ujai, agwo nwuaan Annang, agwo uko!” I began, singing her praises to distract her.
“Se-nyien do-ng!” she responded, gurgling with laughter.
“Nniruok-nniruok abaikpa Annang!”
“Ah … mbok wait … Daddy, what shall I respond?”
“Say nniruok, say amen, say anyedede,” he said.
“Uncle, could you sing my praises again?” the girl said.
“Abaikpa oniong m’ifiok!” I said.
“Nniruok!” she responded, dancing in her seat.
“Nniruok-nniruok mbobo ati-Annang!”
“Ami ndem o …? Mommy, does that work?”
I hushed as I saw her mother’s face rain down tears in the rearview mirror. To hide it from Ujai, I stretched and turned away the mirror.
WHEN THE TRAIN ARRIVED, I got out of the car.
The cop in the patrol car stepped out, too, and yawned like he wanted to swallow me.
I leaned back inside the car to kiss Ujai and Igwat each on the forehead. She pu
lled up and whispered, “Please, no cop selfies, okay?” I nodded. Usen got out, too, to replace me in the back with the children in case the cops continued to trail them. I wanted to say how much I loved him, to thank him for our childhood, how much his words to his daughter had calmed me. I wanted to hug him. But we were both too tense, because we both knew it was not over yet. We could not even look each other in the eye. Shame and fear had estranged us, denying us the dignity of saying a simple goodbye.
Ofonime rolled down the window and increased the stereo’s volume, like a dirge accompanying me to my noose. As her daughter told her not to cry because I was returning to Manhattan, not Nigeria, I walked stiffly across the parking lot and joined others going up the stairs to the platform.
I saw the cop from the back; he was leaning on a metal post, one hand on his handgun, the other jangling his cuffs. I walked past him like I did not see him, putting both hands behind me to show I was unarmed.
But I felt he was following me. I steeled myself so that I did not look back or run toward the train. When I got on it, I slipped from coach to coach till I got to a crowded one at the end of the platform. I found a seat and lowered myself into it and put my hands in between my legs and looked down. When the driver announced a few minutes’ delay, my mind raced. I thought they wanted to search for me. I tried to figure out what it meant to hear yourself being shot, or how long it took for the pain to hit, if you did not die right away. Then, again to show I was unarmed, I brought out my hands and put them on my chest in the mea culpa position …
The train doors snapped shut, and I exhaled and rubbed my palms together and opened my eyes. I took the risk and raised my head slowly to look out the window in the hope of catching a glimpse of the Audi. Yet the cop was standing there, outside, facing me; he had indeed followed me. His hands were still on the handgun and cuffs, his legs parted. The eye holes on his mask accentuated his hard stare.