by Uwem Akpan
When our eyes locked, he nodded and turned away.
AS WE ROLLED AWAY, I called up Usen but could not get through. His line was busy. I called twice more, same thing. I felt like I wanted to stop the train to go see what the cops were doing to my people. I blamed myself for leaving, when there might have been safety in numbers. And how would I explain my callousness to Ikot Ituno-Ekanem? I called Caro thrice, but her phone was still switched off. Molly, too, did not respond. Ofonime, nothing. I went back to calling Usen until he sent a text complaining my line was busy, diverting his calls to voice mail.
“Are you OK in the train?” he texted.
“YES,” I wrote back. “Are they gone? Where are you guys?”
But my outgoing texts hung. I stared at my phone as my fingers began to tremble. I copied-and-pasted the texts. Same thing. I sent another: “I can’t forgive myself for putting you all through this.” I turned off the phone and restarted; it seemed to take years to reboot. I put it down to a bad network connection. I looked out the window, but the sight of trees flying past me made me woozy.
When the phone rang, I jumped from my seat. Usen told me the patrol car was truly gone and they were safe.
I breathed easy.
THAT NIGHT, in my apartment, as phone calls came in from Ikot Ituno-Ekanem, I knew Usen and Ofonime had been talking to our families. And, of course, our village had as many versions of what had happened as there were palm trees in my grandfather’s plantation. I tried to play down the whole thing, though, just because I was not in the mood to talk. I was also more worried about the news stirring the whole village awake late at night.
I was abysmally lonely, lost.
When Father Kiobel called to sympathize, I thanked him and told him to return to bed. “But, did my brother priest actually banish you?” he asked sadly, and added that Ujai’s grandmothers and Two-Scabbard, the youth leader, who escorted them to the rectory, were quite disturbed. I confirmed it happened but that he should tell them we were all okay. He told me he tried to reach Caro but could not. I called her again, but it went straight into voice mail. I texted and gave up, and once I called my family and in-laws, whom I also could not reach, I switched off the phone altogether in frustration.
I met Keith downstairs on my way to Academy Records to buy my first stack of Negro spiritual CDs. I blindsided him with a big hug. When he said I was trembling and asked whether I had a fever, I said I was just homesick and tired. I disappeared before he could see my pain. I bought hard Liquor. After I got the CDs, I avoided Hibernia Bar so I would not transfer my aggression to its manager, who had not banished me from his business, even though bedbugs had driven me to actual antisocial behavior. I also avoided the street of my Actors’ Chapel. Tonight, even the spectacularly lit spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral had lost their magic.
CHAPTER 19
The frenzied imagination of an old man
WHEN ALEJANDRA LEDESM A POUNDED ON MY DOOR IN the morning, I was still drunk. At first I thought it was Molly, because I was afraid something really evil had befallen her, to stop her from returning my calls. I knew she was the only person who could truly understand what had happened to me yesterday. Advising me to be as bullheaded in the church as at the editorial meeting meant she had a grasp of the broader context of my racial anguish in America.
Alejandra reminded me to hand in my keys for the super, her boyfriend. I did. She said we were all looking forward to sleeping on fresh bedding tonight. She was already dressed for work but was oozing with the patient excitement of Ikot Ituno-Ekanem’s town crier of yore trying to ensure that everyone showed up for the difficult coordinated business of cleaning up the village river and trimming the bushes around the beach.
But when I imagined masked people in yellow industrial overalls, gloves, goggles, and pressurized tanks blasting everything, I thought, What food would be fit for consumption after that? How did I know they would not spray inside the freezer or oven? I got rid of my frozen moi moi and etidot and atama soups. I emptied the pantry of everything, including my garri and poundo flours. I trashed even my sodas and bottled water. But when I got to my big Ziploc bag of ujajak, out of sentimental reasons I decided to smell the spice before disposing of it. Its aroma quickly told me I must keep my favorite Annang soup spice. I layered it in four other Ziploc bags and hid in between clothes in my suitcase in the living room and locked it.
I had no appetite and went earlier than usual to Andrew & Thompson. It was my most depressing Monday morning. I was not myself. I could have been sleepwalking. And I hated the fact that I was going to shadow the marketing department, Angela’s domain, this week.
But seeing a handwritten note by Molly on my desk—apologizing for not responding to my texts, calls, and emails and asking to see me—boosted my spirits, like my drunkenness had deserted me.
I could see the light in her office under her door, though the whole place was quiet and dimly lit. This meant she had come in early. I thought it also meant she wanted to see me soonest. There was no other person around. My heart was beating. We could have a little private time, I thought. I fantasized about telepathy and Paul’s light kiss. My fingers tingled, and my toes felt stretched. I was going to tell her not just everything that happened yesterday but how every twist compounded my feelings. I knew only she could begin to let me see light in this darkness. I looked at her handwriting again. It was neat and shy, more personal than all the texts she had sent me. I folded it as gently as a man trying to pick up a just-laid egg whose shell was yet to harden. I put it in my drawer.
I picked up on her perfume. But, to protect her, I went into the restroom to quickly study my bedbug scars. The scars were not that bad. I was sure by the time I told her everything there would be more hugs and tears in that office, like when I told her about my father’s rape and disappearance, and after everything I would gently sit her down and let her know I did not appreciate how her desire to rescue me from church quickly slipped into racist stereotypes—questions about whether I stole or whether I sexually harassed their white women.
I believed she would apologize profusely, because many well-meaning folks who wanted to obliterate racism from the earth did not know they had a bit of it within them, a blind spot, a conditioning over time. I did not think one mistake like this made her a racist. I believed also it would embolden her dream to fight racism.
I was already thinking about how we would plan our trip to New Haven in four days’ time, when my penis went rogue, shooting up in an erection, arching my zipper like a bow. It was like it had been taken over by my inebriation. Now I tucked in my shirt properly, straightened my trousers with two little kicks, and made sure I was presentable even from the back. I wiped my shoes with a swath of toilet roll so that they would shine in her office. I moved my belt’s pin one notch deeper, to give my waistline that tight snug look and my butt its true sharp muscular sculpt. “Today na today,” I whistled.
Yet, as I walked in, Molly cringed, her face drained of color. She sat like a statue. When we shook hands, she did so from behind her desk, giving me only a few fingers, like she was holding something in her palm.
“Listen, Ekong,” she said icily, “Greg Lucci is terrified you’re bent on helping the landlord cancel his lease because of ‘a little incidence of bedbugs,’ as he put it.”
I was so shocked the booze cleared from my head. My erection collapsed.
“Hey, good morning, Molly—”
“The thing is, I myself have a huge, huge aversion to crawling things, a bad phobia!” she interrupted me, folding her arms. “I’m disappointed you didn’t tell me you had bedbugs! Good morning.”
“I’m really sorry. I can see the phobia on your face. Normally you would’ve offered me a seat.”
She told me she was sure I understood why we did not need to sit down today and why we needed to postpone the trip to New Haven till things improved. I said I understood. “But I can assure you,” I swore, “I’ve already fixed my really, really ‘little i
ncidence of bugs.’ And the exterminator will treat the whole floor, if not the entire building, this afternoon!” I promised I would be the last person to jeopardize Lucci’s lease, knowing it was her connection that got me the apartment. She said he was afraid I might turn him in since I was not returning his calls or texts.
She studied my face carefully as a warm sweat covered my butt. She was unusually frightened, her eyes were reading my every movement, and her fears had eaten up all rational spaces in her mind.
I knew immediately this was not the time to bring up her racist questions.
“Ekong, just for your information, you know, Lucci has this stupid perception that African bugs must be many times more vicious than ours,” she said with anger toward Lucci. “I’ve already seriously warned him off such bullshit!” I laughed and responded it was the frenzied imagination of an old man at work and added that my neighbors—except the African American—all had the bugs before my arrival. Now she apologized for her discomfort, explaining she had never been around infested folks and had not slept all night. I apologized, too, I was just a poor confused immigrant who knew neither NYC culture nor the etiquette of infestations. I explained that even Mr. Lucci said New Yorkers had gotten used to bugs.
Finally, I braced myself and rubbed my palms and asked whether I should still show up for work, given her phobia. She said yes, but my hand movements only seemed to scare her more, like I was reacting to an itch or trying to disguise scratching.
IN MY CUBICLE, I put my head on my desk. I had a headache. I felt so embarrassed for those few minutes of drunken lust for Molly. I could hear my broken heartbeat against the desk, and a cold sweat glued my cheek to the wood laminate. I was a busted soul. I was sadder than last night.
I was angry. I wanted to strangle Gregory Lucci. What worse calamity could he bring upon me than to destroy my professional and personal friendship with Molly?
After an hour, Emily woke me up to say she was leaving for a vacation in Europe. She had dyed her hair black and white, instead of the spiky multicolor style she had been wearing. She said she was going to be doing a lot of pleasure reading and waved Anthony Grooms’s Bombingham excitedly in my face. She said it was a great American take on racism/tribalism and the Vietnam War, how African American soldiers went to fight for freedom, something they did not have at home. “You know the protagonist is from ‘sweet home, Alabama’!” Emily said. “Birmingham, actually. Just two hours from Tuskegee. Groom’s portrait of ’Bama is genius. The book was a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year.” As I escorted Emily downstairs, I told her I loved the book cover and would read it on my flight back to Nigeria.
She assured me I would be fine at the editorial meeting the next day. But on my return, I found a note on my desk with a NYTimes link: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/realestate/when-bedbugs-bite.html?hp&_r=0.
WORD WAS OUT.
It was a story of a Park Slope, New York, mother who fought bugs for a year while the housing authorities dallied and her two little children were bitten blue-black. I shivered when I imagined Ujai and Igwat being caught in this situation. The lady was saying she could not afford the cost of private extermination and was asking the New York Times whether to sue the authorities or the neighbor from whose apartment the menace spread. When the paper advised her to get rid of the pest first, it sounded like that old clichéd chicken-and-egg circular argument. I was thankful for the link, for I thought someone was sympathizing with me.
Yet, when I looked up, I caught a few people ducking my eyes. I could feel the tension. It had flattened our usually bubbly Monday morning. Like the day of the editorial meeting, nobody stopped by my cubicle. Nobody said zip to me.
My phone or laptop beeped with email. It was the marketing department announcing the afternoon meeting had been postponed, because “three key people could not make it …” I stretched in my chair and looked at the ceiling and stifled a laugh as I tried to figure out who these three people were. Who was Angela trying to deceive? So, was I now three people rolled into one, like a trinity of bad omens covering the Andrew & Thompson universe?
I stood up and walked the place like a man deep in meditation, like one inspecting the ruins of his once-priceless estate. But I was able to account for everyone in their offices or cubicles—except Molly, who had closed her door for the first time since I had arrived. Phobia or not, closing that door transformed my sadness and alienation into anger and despondency.
Then Angela and Jack really got under my skin. I was approaching them in the hallway, to ask her what the marketing department needed me to do; I heard them talking about death before they changed the subject and walked away. Were they talking about their death from bugs? Were they talking about mine? I texted Molly twice to thank her for sharing her phobia with me. She did not reply, though my phone showed delivered. If she had even acknowledged my texts with a simple “Tx,” I was going to beg her not to mention Lucci’s special African-bug fear to our colleagues, as belated as that was. I just wanted to be accused of having the same bedbugs as the rest of NYC. Any other thing was going to make me feel I now had six eyes and twelve limbs, being “three key people.”
I was beginning to think Molly might even cancel my meeting with Liam Sanders when Bob Hamm, the sponsor of Thumbtack, enveloped me in a big embrace. “Please accept my bedbug sympathies!” he whispered. “How overwhelming all this must be in a new city.” I thanked him; his kindness confirmed I was reading things correctly. Jeff was right: the mental effects of being infested could steal your mind.
CARO’S TEXT ASKING WHETHER this was the right time to call brought me down to earth. It filled me with so much guilt.
The long text said she was sorry about New Jersey, and sorry to have gone silent, but she had developed malaria. Her phone had been dead all yesterday because there was no electricity in the whole state and a fuel shortage had ensured she could not run our generator. She said she had gone to spend the night with an auntie in Ekparakwa, which was why Father Kiobel could not reach her. I was very ashamed of those wild thirty seconds I lusted for Molly in the restroom. I swore never to drink again in America.
I went into the hallway to sit on the floor with my back to the wall like a beggar, to ask how Caro was treating her malaria. Then I told her the full story of New Jersey, closing my eyes like I was not worthy to hear her voice.
“Listen, dear, you must stay on, even though, in your position, I would scram home immediately,” she said, sobbing.
“I still dey shock o …”
“But ana finish the anthology! It’s a must.”
“I know I don’t deserve you.”
“Don’t think like that. Please, be careful you don’t transfer your anger to your workplace. Because if this arusat akeme ee-happen ke church, why do you think ke Andrew & Thompson can’t call cops on you? How are we even sure the cops aren’t still tracking you like the King Kong lady?”
“It’s scary, right?”
“Keep a low profile, okay, and avoid even jaywalking. Absolutely no drinking!”
“Will do.”
She told me the youths were gearing up to protest our New Jersey shit in a way the international media could not ignore, to send a strong message to America. She prayed it did not lead to our white parishioners being abducted or killed the way Biafran soldiers had killed Italian oil workers in 1969, to make a point to the world. I tried to lighten the mood by talking about my editing progress and sharing Dr. Zapata’s uplifting speech. However, when she asked of Lucci and I dismissed him as a skilled racketeer, she did not buy it. She said I was spiking her malarial headache by tarring an old man who did everything to welcome me. Afraid of losing the fragile trust we were rebuilding, I changed the topic to our families, Nigeria’s scarcity of gas, power cuts, new hip-hop hits.
KEITH HAD JUST MESSAGED me to know how I was doing, when Brad called to say the exterminators would come on Thursday instead of today. “We just have to call fucking city hall, if the landlord hangs us out
to dry on Thursday!” he thundered. “I’m going to handle this like a fucking full-time job.”
That night, Molly’s replies came in. They were meaningless at this point. Keith’s dogs were purring with so much happiness they were almost singing. It was as though the noise were coming from the holes in my floor. I drank myself to stupor while listening to “Hold On,” the Negro Spiritual, my misery and shame centering mainly on those moments before my meeting with Molly. In all that had happened to me in America, this was my own personal failure. But drinking and listening to this song was like mixing two opposing elements in an experiment—a new kind of concoction to rinse my soul of my New York woes. It would have been better to separate the music from the booze, or to have no booze, but I could not help myself.
Jeff knocked on my door. He was drunk and had a bottle of gin and had pulled a chair from his apartment onto the landing. He wanted me to pull out my chair, too, so we could drink together. But I declined and thanked him all the same. “Listen, my mattress smells like shit because of the bleach!” he slurred. “I must buy a plastic bedcover to keep the reek off my nostrils.”
“What’s your bedbugs secret?” I asked.
“I thought I had a secret but, fuck, nothing is working.”
“Okay, what did you try?”
“Not good for your health. Just tell Brad and Alejandra it’s not good for health.”
He shook his head and put down his chair on my threshold and kept drinking. Usen called twice. To hide my own drunkenness, I texted I would call him later. Then, gently, I unsat Jeff and moved him and his chair back into his apartment.
CHAPTER 20
The Handmaid Sisters of the Child Jesus