by Sefi Atta
“Why?”
“Don’t worry, I’m fine.”
“Thank God. What did you do that for?”
“I had to know.”
“Know what?”
“Forty is fast approaching and I may have to be artificially inseminated someday.”
Subu laughs. “You’re not serious.”
“It’s true. We have to start thinking about these things. You should do it, too.”
“Do what?” “Get tested.”
“Why?”
“To know your status.”
Subu hisses. “You’re not serious.”
“What? Everyone should know.”
“What if I’m positive?”
Deola snaps her fingers. “I reject that in the name of Jesus!”
“Silly girl,” Subu says. “Where do you even go to get tested?”
“To a doctor, or a clinic.”
“Me, go to a clinic?”
“I went to one.”
Subu laughs. “You’re a bad girl!”
She tells Subu what happened at the clinic. “I couldn’t even walk straight. I almost collapsed. I thought, what will I do? How will I tell my mother?”
Subu sighs. “As for me, my mother would be the first person I would tell. I would tell her to get herself here as fast as possible, with her holy water, novenas, candles, all of it. She can come and pray for me.”
Subu’s mother is a veteran at prayer, and she loves rituals. She doesn’t care what Christian denomination they are from. She was in London when Deola and Subu got their exam results. They went to Leicester Square that night to buy The Times, where the PE II results were published. Newspaper vendors started selling copies around midnight. Before they left, Subu’s mother made them kneel down in Subu’s flat and she prayed while touching their heads.
“Merciful Father,” she began. “King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the God of all possibilities, let your children rejoice in the land of the living, in Jesus’ name.”
Her prayer was eloquent, but it made no sense chronologically. Their papers had already been marked.
“I actually prayed to be used as a conduit,” Deola says, scratching her thigh.
“Really?” Subu says. “Maybe you will soon start coming to fellowship with me?”
“That I can’t promise. But come…”
“What?”
“Doesn’t it make more sense to pray before the fact rather than after?”
“Before and after.”
“You are covered on both ends, then,” Deola says. “Nobody can pray like your mother.”
She calls herself a skeptic, yet she has never taken the time to read a holy book. She tried to read the Bible, but she couldn’t get past the “begats.”
Subu is traveling to Shanghai again this month. She is still considering buying a flat there and will make up her mind on her trip. Deola feels honored. Subu doesn’t normally reveal her plans in case someone gets jealous and jinxes her. She may believe in Jesus Christ, but she also believes in the evil eye.
“I don’t have any plan to be artificially inseminated,” Subu says. “But with all these long-term investments I’m getting into, maybe I should get tested.”
“Promise?”
“Only if you promise to come to fellowship with me.”
“That can’t happen.”
“You know there is no hope for you?”
“I know.”
Normally, Deola would ask, “How would you know?” and that would be the beginning of a religious war between them.
Tonight she lies on the couch listening to the CD until the final song, “Don’t Go to Strangers.” She thinks of Wale again. His composure hides his sense of humor. He might come across as dull. She indulges herself this way, examining him from different angles, and plays the song over and over, telling herself this is due to her loneliness in London. She hopes that by morning, he will be as stale to her as the song will inevitably sound.
She goes to bed early and not until the purgatory hour does she begin to worry, when she wakes up after dreaming that everyone at her father’s memorial is lying dead in the garden. Her fridge is humming and a car roars past on the main street. Her bedroom is not entirely dark: the gaps in her curtains allow some moonlight in. She senses a sympathetic presence, which may or may not be her father’s. She is virtually asleep again when she imagines the consequences of one of her friends getting a positive result. Her duvet gets hot, her stomach pulsates and her skin moistens. She says a prayer, raps her knuckles on her headboard and buries her face in her pillow.
z
This week she has dinner with Anne Hirsch at a pizzeria. The pizzeria, on Baker Street, has spaghetti Western posters and blown-up black-and-white photographs of Hollywood stars like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren. Dean Martin is singing “Volare.” On the table is a candle inserted into a wine bottle covered with an avalanche of melted wax. The atmosphere is camp.
“I can’t get away from American pop culture,” Anne says. “I turn on the television in my hotel, and it’s all garbage.”
“American culture is everywhere,” Deola says. “It’s your biggest export, come to think of it.”
“No,” Anne says. “That would be war and violence.”
Anne flew in on Monday. She is returning to Atlanta in the morning. A waiter comes to their table to ask what they would like to drink.
“Wine for you?” Deola asks Anne.
“Water will be fine.”
“I’ll have water, too, thanks,” Deola says to the waiter.
The waiters here pretend to be harried to create an Italian ambience. This one keeps twitching. He has blond highlights in his hair.
Afterward, Anne explains, “I’m a teetotaler for now. You know Ali and I are trying for a baby.”
“Yes,” Deola says.
She would classify this as personal information, but Deola has known colleagues to confide with her at office functions, only to walk past her in the office the next day.
“We’ve decided that I’m carrying,” Anne says. “My insurance coverage is better. In the States, we don’t have a national health service as you have over here. I think I mentioned that Ali is a florist, didn’t I?”
“You did.”
Deola also remembers that Anne will take any opportunity to apologize for America. She seems to admire the English, though. Another waiter returns with their drinks and takes their orders. Anne nods as if she is in the presence of a lecturer as he goes through the menu mispronouncing dishes like prosciutto funghi e panna and pomodorini rucola e prosciutto. She playfully changes her “tomay-to” to “tomah-to” and finally orders a pizza Margherita, so Deola orders a pizza Napoletana.
“Markeriter,” the waiter says, scribbling. “Naplitaner.”
Other customers in the pizzeria are seated around circular tables similar to theirs. They are well dressed. They would have been called yuppies back in the eighties and are reappearing in London under a European guise.
Anne is eager to tell Deola about Dára’s botched interview. She stares through her contact lenses as she justifies why she thinks he ought to be dropped as a spokesperson.
“He was specifically asked about AIDS in Africa and he said, and I quote, ‘Polygamy helps. When men have several wives, they don’t sleep around.’”
Deola laughs. “I don’t know about that.”
“I thought, how sexist.”
“He must have been drunk or high.”
“I can’t even begin to get my head around it. It makes me very nervous about what he might come up with next.”
Deola tries to understand Dára’s reasoning. He probably came up with any answer he could think of. In Nigeria, no one would have paid him any mind, as a college dropout. Overseas, people are asking for his opinions on Africa.
“Don’t you have polygamists in the Bible Belt?” she asks.
Anne nods. “They practice it as part of their religion, but in the States
, a man cannot legally be married to more than one woman at a time.”
“Not even Muslims?”
“I’m sure they have ways of getting around the law and you can’t stop people from cohabiting.”
Deola pushes the ice in her glass into the water. “In Nigeria, Muslims are free to practice polygamy. It is legal under customary law.”
Anne shrugs. “Religion and culture, they’re one and the same. How was your trip there anyway? Kate says you were concerned about one of the NGOs you reviewed.”
Kate Meade had to go home after work. Her daughter had a stomachache. Whenever her daughter falls sick, so does her husband. Deola is beginning to think he is a saboteur not an inventor.
“I was concerned,” she says. “The CEO wants to raise money for a community. Her VP, who is from the community, is interested in microfinance. I thought that was a good idea.”
“Yes, but that’s a shift from what we do. Personally, I think microcredit is a wonderful idea and it’s catching on, but within Africa we focus on charity.”
Of course, Deola thinks. LINK is not in the business of making their beneficiaries look self-sufficient. They must evoke sympathy to raise money. This is how charity works. No one gives money to people they are on par with, so someone has to be diminished in the process.
“It would be nice, though,” she says, “to show communities like that in a more encouraging light.”
“The reality is,” Anne says, rearranging her fork and knife, “these communities are at risk and someone has to respond to their immediate needs.”
“But the aim is to enable self-sufficiency in the long run, isn’t it?”
Deola asks only because she expects an accusation like, “It is all right for you to say that.”
“I guess,” Anne says, “but you would have to be involved in fieldwork to fully understand how bad things are. Women and children are especially vulnerable in Africa. Mothers become sex workers and they pass the virus to their babies. Babies die before they reach their second birthdays. Grandmothers are raising orphans. It is awful what is going on. It makes you so angry.”
Deola interprets this as, “Shouldn’t it make you angry?” It makes her sad. It also makes her scared, too scared to dwell on how much Africa suffers, and it has the same paralyzing effect on her as selfishness would. She does not represent Africa and Anne does not represent the West, but Anne swings easily from guilt to having a monopoly on compassion.
And always over a fairly decent meal, Deola thinks. The manner in which Anne relays these facts is unsettling. Back home, people are more dispassionate when they talk about other people’s suffering, which may be more honest. They drop their voices and avert their eyes. They speak with humility, not compassion, and Nigerians are not naturally humble, but they do understand that someone else’s suffering could so easily become theirs.
“When are you traveling to Rio?” Deola asks, desperate to change the topic.
“At the end of the month,” Anne says.
“Have you succumbed to a Starbucks latte yet?”
Anne smiles. “Not yet.”
Deola pretends to be interested as Anne rehashes her fears of corporate invasions. She is suspicious of package positions and Anne seems to have one. She can predict, for instance, that Anne is vehemently opposed to zoos.
Their waiter returns with their pizzas. “Markeriter?” he asks, and Anne raises her hand. “Naplitaner,” he says, and Deola raises hers.
z
The next day, she calls the clinic to find out the results of her remaining tests and she is given the all-clear. She does not see her period, though, which normally begins on the twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth day, but the progestin pills might be responsible for the delay.
At work, Kate Meade calls in sick. Her husband and daughter have a stomach virus and she is feeling under the weather. So is Deola throughout the day and this evening at home, she is more tired than she usually is midweek. She grills lamb chops with rosemary for dinner and eats them with salad sprinkled with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. She considers having water with her meal and opts for wine, telling herself she has been around too many women who are preoccupied with motherhood. Yes, this is the problem. She is only a day late.
As she eats on her couch, she listens to a Maze and Frankie Beverly CD, Live in New Orleans. She holds the lamb chops with her fingers and sucks on the bones. She would not give up moments like this. It was just a matter of time before she got used to being on her own again. She thinks of Wale as she burps with her mouth open and picks her front teeth with her fingernails, imagining his reaction if he could see her. She sings along to “Before I Let Go.”
After dinner, she calls Subu, who has the latest multi-band cell phone with this and that feature. Shanghai is hours ahead, but Subu wakes up early to get her prayers in before anyone else, which makes Deola wonder if Australian Christians benefit from waking up before Chinese Christians.
“Shoe Boo,” she says.
“How now?” Subu asks. “Where are you?”
“At home, but see me, see trouble yesterday.”
She tells Subu about her dinner with Anne Hirsch, struggling to keep her voice low. Her block is quiet and her neighbors might overhear her.
“The woman didn’t want to hear anything about self-sufficiency. Anything at all. You think I’m being paranoid here?”
“I don’t think she wanted to hear your opinions.”
“I mean, she said Dára’s comment was sexist. How can that be sexist? He’s just daft.”
“Don’t mind these oyinbo women. They come with their feminism. When push comes to shove, they turn to their men. Don’t trust them.”
“Actually, she’s gay.” “To.”
To. End of matter. Nothing left to be said. Deola regrets bringing this up. She should have known how Subu would react.
“I mean, she went on and on trying to take me on her guilt trip, women and children, this and that. ‘You’d have to be involved in fieldwork to fully understand how bad things are.’”
“Oyinbos. That’s their stock-in-trade. They can’t get enough of our suffering. We exist so they can feel good about themselves.”
“It’s not that I’m against charity.”
“I am.”
“Since when?”
“Since since. Where has charity ever got us?”
“No, no, Subu. We need charity. We need charity in Africa. Don’t tell me this. Aren’t you a Christian? Don’t you give tithes?”
“Okay, please tell me, ” Subu says, “did you see any beggars when last you were at home?”
“Of course! Plenty, plenty! In fact there were more of them. You know how you normally see beggars on the streets or outside church? This time, I saw them everywhere.”
“Thank you,” Subu says. “So all these years people back home have been giving beggars money, how come we have more of them, not less?”
“That is a different issue.”
“How?”
“It’s a different issue, Subu. That is because our economy is getting worse.”
“Exactly. So why don’t we solve our economy problems instead of begging for funds all over the place? Why should Africa always be seen as a charity case? Can’t people invest in Africa instead?”
“Invest? Are you investing in Africa?”
“The Chinese are.”
“For what purpose?”
“I don’t know, but make no mistake, these charities are dangerous for us.”
“Subu.”
“They are!”
“Subu, why?”
“It’s true! I blame them for the lack of progress in Africa. They make us dependent on the money they keep handing us. They do, and their ultimate aim is to hold us back.”
Deola shakes her head. She never expected to get into another leftwing–right-wing argument with Subu. She forgot Subu is as financially conservative as she is Christianly. Her friends are stubborn. They are as stubborn as she is. The fact that t
hey sometimes vehemently contradict themselves proves this. For her, all it takes is for someone to make an assertion and she is ready to object. Perhaps this is partly due to her boredom in London.
“Hear me out,” she says. “The only Africans I hear complaining about foreign aid are Africans who don’t need aid. I don’t see Africans who receive aid complaining. I don’t see Africans helping each other that much either. How many of us are well off? How many percentage-wise? They expose us, that’s all. That is why charities annoy us so much.”
“Expose us how?”
“To the world, for who we are and what we can live with. We don’t care about each other.”
“Who said?”
“We don’t. If we did, we would be in a better situation than we’re in. In fact, all I see around me is contempt. The contempt we have for one and another, and every humiliation we have abroad is to remind us of the mess we have left behind.”
Subu hisses. “Giving never cured poverty and Africans should stop begging for funds from developed countries. What is it? Isn’t our continent the cradle of civilization? And this same Mandela that they keep using his name to raise funds, wasn’t he the one they once branded a terrorist? No. They don’t want us to be self-sufficient. They don’t want us to be powerful. That’s all. What you are seeing is the contempt they have for us.”
It is getting dark in the sitting room. Deola switches on her lamp and rubs her eyes until the framed batik on her wall and the photograph of her nephews and niece on her side table come into focus.
She couldn’t care less if Africa is the cradle of civilization. What difference does it make to the state Africa is in? How could any reasonable person be comforted by the fact that long ago civilization began in Africa? Subu doesn’t want to go back to Africa. Even black Americans, who champion the whole “civilization began in Africa” business, don’t want to go back. The Egyptians they credit with starting civilization barely identify with Africa.
“Naijas,” she says. “That’s the trouble with us, talk, talk, talk, no action.”
She curls up on the couch. She is too tired to argue. Why is she so tired?
“I hear our friend Dára says polygamy is a cure for AIDS,” she says.
Subu sighs. “What do you expect? Someone who didn’t finish his education. He is even in the Internet news this morning.”