by Uwem Akpan
“HOW COME YOU’RE NOT SCARED of my infestation today?” I said when she got a hold of herself. “Is your shrink that good?”
“He’s good, but I think it came down to wanting to talk to you. You have no idea how embarrassed I am that I couldn’t listen to you that Monday. And let me tell you what is even sadder: how frightened I’ve been this could blow up and Andrew & Thompson would see I’m not even qualified to be talking diversity. I just wanted to lay everything before you. It shouldn’t be about how to protect my image or interest. I’ve already messed up. I’m sorry hiding my bullshit only makes it worse.”
She said she needed to do more than write a long angry letter to the embassy to prove I existed or scream at JFK immigration to process me in. “I thought I needed to change publishing,” she said. “But now I see I am also publishing … I’m so lost.”
At her prompting, I began to lay out our New Jersey mess. But by the time I got to the usher asking us to move, she was already disoriented, looking like she wanted to puke. She blurted out that she was ashamed of her color. I said I was ashamed I was religious. I adjudged she had suffered enough already from Emily’s departure. I felt an obligation to save her from the full wrath of our pain, though this in itself hurt, like forcing down a vomit. I edited out Tuesday Ita’s whiteness and reduced the sacristy episode to “Father banished us from his church.” When she sobbed, I cut out the police shit.
“I’m so sorry about Father Orrin,” she said. “And, fuck, I should never have asked those questions.”
“Put those behind you, please.”
“Not when I sounded like Jack and Angela or even Lagoon Drinker.”
“You know, we don’t even need to be perfect to fight for others. My only worry is, with your polling system of picking books here, where are you going to get the votes to publish fresh, unapologetically Black books? What if the best you could do for this world, which literature seeks to improve, is to stay right here? To push that door open?”
WHEN I RETURNED to Hell’s Kitchen, I was in a panic.
My door—which I had left unlocked—was locked. I tried the handle multiple times, like I had memory problems. I believed Lucci had finally come to lock me out or reoccupy his apartment. So, after a while, I knocked gently, because I did not want to startle him by using my keys. And who knew what could happen if I walked into an ambush from his crazy cop nephew? I looked into the peephole as though I could see through from outside. I was consoled that my passport and a few clothes were in my cubicle at work. Then I tapped the door some more, before I went to stand by the stairwell to google possible hotels to spend the night.
But then I noticed a brown envelope by my threshold. Picking it up, I realized it was from Alejandra. She had left my spare keys, wrapped in a note that said Brad had to lock up my apartment when the landlord stoutly refused to touch it and Keith’s. It clicked immediately that my neighbors still had my spare keys. I turned around to stare at their door, the keys and note pressed to my heart. The knowledge that they still had my back comforted me.
I sent a thank-you text and lingered in the stairwell. But neither of them came out.
I COULD NOT FIGURE OUT why Keith was excluded, as he was a tenant in good standing, a friend of Canepa’s. Well, whether I liked it or not, Keith was more than my racial ally. I went to look down the stairwell at Keith’s landing. Yet the silence only seemed to grow. Was he home? Did he know already his place had been skipped? The best thing would have been to call him, to surprise him with kindness as Alejandra and Brad had just done for me, or even to look for him and apologize as Emily did with her primary school victim. But I lacked the courage even to forgive myself.
Not even the voices in my head knew what to name the angst between Keith and myself. It was not racism. It was not tribalism. As my friend Okey Ndibe, the Igbo writer of Never Look an American in the Eye fame, liked to say: “Ekong, I know what I have with the Yorubas or Hausa-Fulanis or you minorities, and I know what I have with other races. But this other thing between us and our Black American brethren is nameless, unsayable. It’s so shameful, I guess, no one is brave enough to name it … but we must name it before white people name it for us!”
Once inside, after reading Molly’s long text thanking me for our conversation, I called the Bronx. Usen said everyone except Igwat was recovering from the flu. I wanted to visit, but he said no, to save me from infection.
“Before we forget, Ujai’s classroom visit is the Friday after Thanksgiving weekend,” Ofonime said when Usen had put the phone on speaker.
“Great, I’ve got weeks to plan.”
“You better!” Ofonime said. “Because she’ll stop calling you uncle if she can’t show you off.”
“Well, we’ve also acceded to Ujai’s wish not to have Tuesday at school,” Usen said. “Smart girl, she worked it out in her head and came telling us that though she’s trying to accept Tuesday, she thought since you’re only here briefly, you should be given the honor to come alone this time, and meanwhile we should strongly suggest to Tuesday to suspend his bleaching, to get back his Black skin, so he can visit the school in the future. When we agreed, she was relieved. It was like she was coaching us on what to say, how to manage the living confusion that is Tuesday Ita. He gets so defensive about these matters that he’s sworn never to forgive Father Kiobel for insulting his white skin.”
Ofonime said she was just tired of dealing with Tuesday because he had become too angry and unreasonable and was accusing all of us for telling people back home he had become white. Afraid Tuesday may call to blast me, she wanted her husband to tell me what had really happened the day the Biafran patrols went to Tuesday’s house to conscript him as a child soldier. “Ekong, I just want you to understand him, if he calls you,” she pleaded.
Her husband agreed with her. “But Ujai says she even asked you, Ekong, in church to beg me not to invite the guy to her school,” he said. I explained I did not know what to do, as I myself was still struggling to accept him. They said he was upset with the calls from home to quit Father Orrin’s church. He was mad with Nigerian newspapers and bloggers pestering him for interviews.
CHAPTER 26
Punishment of an unpatriotic un-Biafran Biafran
AS I HEARD THE CLINKS OF GLASSES, I KNEW OFONIME and Usen were serving themselves vodka, to tell me the story. “Ekong,” Usen said, after ensuring Ujai had gone to bed, “Tuesday told me when I got to America, long before he became white, that he’d refused to follow the soldiers who tried to conscript him because he wanted his parents, at least, to know his real grave, to bury his real body.
“I’m sorry, nobody wanted to be disappeared like Tuesday’s two uncles and your father. And, as you know, child soldiers weren’t coming back from the forests where Biafra, this Igbo-thing, had sent them to spy on the Nigerian army. And the stories of the torture of child soldiers who ran AWOL but were recaptured and raped had frightened everyone. Tuesday just wanted Father Walsh to anoint his real corpse and bless his grave—a real interment, at least!”
“I totally agree!” I blurted out as Usen paused to sip his drink. “I would equally have done everything to avoid the shit memories of my father’s trousers burial. Then the bullies wouldn’t have called me Ajen Arukpo ofong-ukod, Child of Bloody Trousers, in school!”
Usen went on to say he learned from Tuesday that, when the soldiers left, one angry one had stayed behind like a bad ghost. He tore Tuesday from his parents and dragged him behind the house to rape him till his eyes softened and rained tears. To stop the bleeding, the soldier had plastered his anus with wet sand, packing it in with his rifle barrel. That was when Tuesday’s mother herself fainted, thinking the soldier was playing Russian roulette with her son’s organs. Next, the soldier came inside and trashed the pots and saucepans by using them to wash his dick and rifle.
For days, Father Walsh had visited the boy with the Eucharist in a worn golden pyx in a frayed green leather case. Since the Nigerian air force had bombed out the n
earest hospital, Tuesday continued to bloat from his inability to go to the toilet. He twitched at the sound of every distant bomb.
No one knew what to do till one drizzly night when Tuesday began to pant. When the ukebe, enema, of crushed okra his mother performed on him did not relieve him, his father laid him on the floor, gagged him, and climbed on his son’s stomach like that of a drowning victim. He heaved till Tuesday defecated and tore off the gag and screamed till the soldiers ran over from our primary school barracks. In no time, they had secured the house and were already dragging the family toward the valley. Tuesday’s mother led the way while his father followed, carrying Tuesday piggyback, while Tuesday was still bleeding and bleating, a boy wailing his own dirge.
But Father Walsh, alerted by Usen’s father, his sacristan, had run after them from the rectory. He was in full black vestments, barefoot, complete with a metal Mass box, ready to celebrate the ancient Liturgy of Excommunication at the execution site against the soldiers, ready to blow out their baptismal candles if Biafra did not back down. Stumbling down the muddy slope of the valley, he startled them in a torrent of full-throated Irish-English-accented cusses. That night, the valley echoed his pain so clearly that the surrounding villages, which had learned to sleep despite the shelling of Aba by Nigerian forces, stayed up in a vigil.
I descended on my brandy as Usen said the priest swore he was tired of our so-called sabos being disappeared across the Igbo-Annang border. Of having to say our burial Masses using pants and shoes and shirts in place of bodies. Of not waiting for the Canon Law–sanctioned seven years before doing the requiem for the missing or disappeared, because even God knew the Igbo border was a point of no return. His voice was hoarse and defiant and sick, ripping through that wet valley, denouncing our Igbo colonization. But Tuesday had told Usen the soldiers had retorted that Black-on-Black colonization was better than what his white people had given us, that God had decreed that everyone must bow to Ojukwu, King of Biafra, instead of Elizabeth II, Queen of England.
The standoff on our river’s narrow beach was so intense that some villagers had even blamed Usen’s father for bringing the priest in; they feared Biafra might kill him to increase our terror. Father Walsh had called the soldiers by name, warning that it was one thing for them to come crying to his confessional for forgiveness—blaming their spray-bulleting on fear and anger over supposed minority betrayal, or direct orders from above—and quite another to kill members of his flock, fellow Catholics, against the direct intervention of the confessor.
Father Walsh explained that, just as no one could force the Igbos to love Nigeria, and just as no one could force Black people to love white folks, their colonizers, the Igbos could not force Biafra down our throats. He said Ojukwu should listen to the outspoken Jaja Wachuku, his fellow Igbo and first speaker of the House of Assembly, who was dead-set against using child soldiers. He said his fellow Irish priests and nuns in Igboland had told him even the Igbos were beginning to hide their boys, too, because they could see this was not the Biafra Ojukwu had promised the world.
“Now, why isn’t it fucking enough you gobshites have already performed your specialty on Tuesday?” Usen mimicked Father Walsh’s Irish-accented screams as Biafra refused to back down. “May you anus busters burn in the hottest part of hell, beyond the Four Last Things’ recall! How does Tuesday ever recover from this? And does the punishment for unplugging their son’s ass, for reversing the punishment of an unpatriotic un-Biafran Biafran child have to be death to child and parents? How much fucking pain must one family endure? Can you even imagine the pain of Mrs. Udousoro, whose husband you disappeared last year? Oh Laudy Daw, how many examples do you need to set of so-called sabos in this very valley, how many graves, before you realize these tactics are about as much use as a back pocket in a shirt …! Okay, go ahead, kill us all.”
“TUESDAY SAYS HE FUCKING started craving to be a white man that night!” Ofonime jumped in, her voice full of anger. “I don’t think he has ever recovered from what his fellow Blacks did to him. He’s so ashamed of folks back home knowing his new color …!”
“Baby, you’re jumping ahead of the story,” Usen said.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Ekong, Tuesday told me the soldiers only relented and left the valley when the white man swore if they killed anyone, he would scoop the blood to say Mass as a curse on the soldiers.”
But the villages were still on edge: without the sabos or priest returning or hearing gunshots, who could tell whether maybe the family was drowned? Usen’s father had hid behind the wet ixora hedges near the rectory all night, awaiting the return of the priest. He told Usen, as the soldiers finally emerged with their flashlights to announce their return, they fired into the skies in front of the church. Yet the echoes were completely different from when they executed sabos in the valley. Nobody was deceived; the last thing everyone heard had been, Okay, go ahead, kill us all.
Meanwhile in the valley, with a flashlight, the priest and Tuesday’s parents had washed the boy in the river and discarded his soiled clothes. From the Mass box, Father Walsh poured wine on the Purificator and Corporal, which he used to wipe the boy’s ass. The parents moved away, protesting the sacrilege of turning sacred linens into toilet paper. But he calmed them down and pressed on, the scent from wildflowers as thick as burned incense. He took off his vestments and wrapped them around the shivering Tuesday before feeding him with the bread, both consecrated and unconsecrated. And, after the boy had finished drinking from the water cruet, he laid him down with the box as pillow. When Tuesday still trembled, the old man laced his feet together with the stole and amice.
“I liked how, In the morning, the villages scrambled for the least painful way to haul Tuesday out of the valley,” Ofonime said as her husband paused to pour himself more drink. “They decided on ikatebot, goat cage, padded with ekpat isighe, burlap sacks …”
There was a knock on my door. I excused myself and told the Bronx I would be back shortly. I opened the door abruptly—only to be startled by Keith Jim-Stehr’s presence.
It was like seeing a ghost.
I switched on the chandelier, to see properly, and backed inside and simultaneously apologized that I could not invite him in for obvious reasons. “Though I’m already infested, I understand,” he said, nodding. He looked comfortable, while my heart raced with guilt as I tried to quickly forget the trauma of Tuesday Ita so I could attend to Keith. I poured a whole glass of brandy into my throat to steady my nerves.
He was in a black suit, light blue shirt, and loosened red tie. We had nothing to say to each other. We did not shake hands. He looked tired, his eyes beset with sorrow, just as I might have looked to him. I returned to lean on the doorpost. We were both looking at the floor. Though his cologne was in the air, all I could think of was the yolk of a farm-raised chicken, which was what he said his trashed body smelled like.
New York City had beaten the hell out of us.
“Look, Ekong, let’s forget our disagreement for a moment, so we can really talk,” he said, clearing his throat.
“You’re very gracious … thanks,” I said, straightening up. “Keith, talking is good, talking is really good, bro.”
“Yes.”
“No, I’m sorry for my outburst and attack! I didn’t have to say that about slaves and your ancestors—our ancestors—and the word nigger. Thanks for keeping your calm. And I didn’t even have the courage to apologize, you know.”
“I guess we can’t resolve four-hundred-year-old bad blood by screaming at each other on the streets.”
“I know.”
“Bro, how was your day?”
“So-so.”
“Mine, too.”
He suggested I come outside and close my door. I apologized to the Umohs, who were relieved I needed to attend to Keith and not Brad and Jeff. I said a quick goodbye before Keith and I settled into our positions on either side of my door. He told me he had a good chat with Brad the night before. B
ut, of course, this afternoon he felt humiliated by his friend the landlord. While the exterminators were buzzing all over the place, he had tried to reach Canepa, to include his place, without success. Later, the workers said the landlord had called them, instead, to say Keith had reported the case too late to make the list. Now Keith moaned that he had paid a dog shelter to house his brood for two days for nothing.
“ACTUALLY, EKONG,” he said after a pause, “part of why I knocked on your door was to inform you I had called the city’s bedbug hotline to report your place is also infested.”
I moved away from him.
“Why entangle me with your government when you damn well know I’m in this apartment illegally?” I said.
“Legit or not, we’re a sanctuary city, for Christ’s sake. They just want you to call. To ensure the place isn’t overrun by bugs or rats or bullying landlords. Please, I had to act for the sake of my schoolkids, call it a sense of civic duty. But the city is complaining of a week’s backlog. They’ll come next Monday. I thought Jeff said he clarified things when you panicked because he called the landlord on your behalf the week of the Chelsea dinner—”
“Wait, does it mean you also spoke with Jeff?”
“Oh yeah, we bumped into each other Saturday night on my way to sheltering the dogs so the exterminators could spray. He was leaving to squat with friends because he couldn’t sleep. But, hold on a sec, you got a problem with me talking with Jeff?”