by E. C. Osondu
Now he was asking her to return to Nigeria. He promised to send for her after a couple of years; by then he would have gotten his American citizenship, and she could join him as his fiancée and he would marry her all over again.
As she watched the daytime talk shows, she wished she could take her problems to Oprah or Dr. Phil. The guests on the shows talked about problems that sounded like trifles, so insignificant and minuscule compared to hers. She wondered if they would understand. Americans did not overly concern themselves with the tortuous paths immigrants took to obtain a green card and citizenship.
She had confided to another Nigerian woman, the woman who owned the African store in Silver Spring. The woman had laughed out loud and told her that the day she left America would be the last time she saw her husband.
“Suppose I leave and you never send for me ever again, what would I do?” she had asked her husband.
“And if I chose to move in with Rhonda now and never return to this house, what would you do? How would you pay the rent? In a matter of weeks you’d be thrown out of the apartment, and Immigration would bundle you back to Nigeria,” her husband had responded.
She had watched the callous unfeeling words spill out of his mouth as if he had rehearsed them. He said the words without pity, looking at her straight in the eyes. And then his voice had dropped, and he had pleaded with her to trust him.
Every night she waited to hear the sound of his key turning in the lock. Was he coming back, or had he decided to move in with Rhonda? Only the click of the lock held the answer.
….
MALOBI’S HUSBAND WANTED a child. His family also wanted her to have a child, because her husband was an only child. They did not want the family name to disappear. Back in Nigeria, they pointed out decrepit houses that had been owned by rich people who had no progeny to inherit the properties after their death. Her mother-in-law sent her by courier all the way from Nigeria medicinal concoctions in dark bottles that stank horribly. How she managed to convince the courier company to ship the stuff, Malobi could never tell. One of the concoctions stank even more horribly than the previous ones. Her mother-in-law confessed to her that the base was from the urine of a female cow, and asked her if she had ever heard of a barren cow, to which she responded no. “Aha!” her mother-in-law had exclaimed, “I’ve been assured by the babalawo who prepared the medicine for me that just as there is no barren cow, you too will not be childless.” The conversation had left Malobi feeling like the proverbial cow without a tail, which was said to be at the mercy of all manner of flies.
Then her husband began traveling to Nigeria every summer. He had vaguely told her that he had a project in Nigeria. The nature of the project was never fully explained. At first she assumed he was building a house, but he had told her it was not that kind of project. The military had just handed over power to a civilian government, and she thought he was perhaps pursuing a government contract. She hinted at this, but he was not forthcoming, so she let it be.
He was away on one of his trips to Nigeria when she got a call from her mother-in-law.
“Your husband is dead. Yes, he died in a car accident on the road to Abuja.”
Malobi gasped and clutched tightly at the phone, her mouth suddenly without saliva, her palm clammy, and her breath becoming faster.
“What happened? How could he be dead, I spoke with him only two days ago….”
“Your husband is dead. He is my son, and I am confirming it to you.”
Malobi paused and tried to read her mother-in-law’s tone. There was something in that voice, some inflection she was missing, and days later, after the conversation, it came to her with the clarity of dawn. Not once had her mother-in-law said, “My son is dead”; she had kept saying “your husband.”
“I am going to try and get on a flight back to Nigeria tomorrow.”
“There is no need to trouble yourself with coming home. We have already buried him.”
“Buried him? How can you bury my own husband in my absence?”
“He’s been buried, he is dead, is all I can tell you. You have your own life to live. You are still young. There are many men in America, I am sure you will find a good man,” her mother-in-law said, and the line went dead.
Malobi called the president of the Nigerian Union in Philadelphia, a balding old man with bulgy froglike eyes and a kind face, known as “Baba” by members of the Nigerian community. Though he had lived in the United States for many decades, Baba still spoke English with a very thick Nigerian accent.
Baba had laughed out loud, tears streaming out of his froglike eyes, when Malobi told him of the call from her mother-in-law.
“It is the way of our people; she means that the marriage is over,” he told her. “She means her son is no longer your husband. It is the way of riddles, the way the elders spoke to each other. When the man of the house dies, they say the big tree has fallen, the thumb has been cut off, we can no longer snap the fingers. I still have contacts back home; I will make a few calls and get back to you.”
He indeed made the calls, and confirmed that her husband was still alive. A few months later Baba brought her a copy of one of Nigeria’s soft-sell magazines. There was a picture of her husband and his new bride beaming into the camera at the christening ceremony of their new baby at Christ’s Church Cathedral.
THESE ARE OUR stories, and the stories of the men we married. Once we had dreams of growing old together and reminiscing of our early days in this land of big dreams; how could we have known that the underbelly of the black snake is white, and that the land of big dreams is also the land of huge nightmares? It is a good thing that we share our stories with the world, because we also have daughters and sisters, and they will hear these tales, our stories, and say to themselves, This will not be our fate; we will never become married widows in our own lifetime.
Nigerians in America
I was thirteen when Uncle Siloko came to live with us in Belts-ville, Maryland. Siloko was the nickname he and my father called each other, both of them having attended Siloko Grammar School back in Nigeria. He had a one-semester lectureship position in the English department at the state university. His family was in Minnesota, where he had done his graduate studies. His plan was to leave his family, a wife and a daughter, in Minnesota because he could not yet afford to rent a place. He would send for them as soon as he was settled in.
I went with my father to pick him up from the Greyhound station. He wore a well-cut black winter coat and a two-tone brown-and-black beanie. He was carrying a small bulging suitcase and another large blue bag that had “Safari” written on its four sides.
“How was the trip?” my father asked him.
“Tortuous,” he responded, and laughed, a big booming laughter that made a few people at the bus station turn around and stare at us. As he laughed, he took off his beanie, folded it and put it in one of the pockets of his coat, and brought out a pack of chewing gum. He unwrapped a piece, put it in his mouth, and was about to start chewing it when he turned to my father and asked, “Why have I not had the honor of meeting the beautiful young lady?”
“My daughter, Adesua,” my father said.
He looked at me and smiled and chewed vigorously on his gum. It was my first experience of meeting a grown Nigerian man who chewed gum. He smiled, and I could see the deep dimples on both sides of his face.
I curtsied and said, “Welcome, Uncle.” I had been taught by my parents to address every older Nigerian male as “Uncle,” and older females as “Auntie.”
“Adesua, the pleasure is all mine,” he said, and his laughter boomed once again. He offered me a piece of gum. I took it and threw it into my mouth and was pleasantly shocked by its strong strawberry flavor.
As we drove off in Father’s car with the heat turned on full blast as usual, he began to wind down the glass on his side of the car.
“Are you hot?” my father asked.
“Oh, yes, quite hot, or have you forgotten I’m coming
from Minnesota, where the major economic commodity is snow?”
He spoke like a character in a play. He had a way of making everything he said interesting. He would sometimes say something very serious and laugh, and when he was joking, he wore a very serious expression. For the entire time that he lived with us, I could never tell when he was joking and when he was serious.
I had heard my parents say that Uncle Siloko would be staying in the basement; for some reason, by the time we got home, my father had changed his mind. He moved into the room upstairs, the room next to mine and opposite my parents’ bedroom. He did not stop my father from carrying his bags upstairs for him. He no doubt expected people to do things for him.
He went into the bathroom, which until that morning had been mine, to take a shower and was soon whistling in the bath. He came out smelling strongly of aftershave and was still whistling as he walked into his room. When I walked past my old bathroom, I could see through the half-open door that he had swept my cream and other stuff to one side, and his bottles and lotions now occupied half of the space before the bathroom mirror. There appeared to be such a wide array of stuff, three kinds of face cream, an aftershave lotion, aftershave balm, and other tubes and bottles.
I was downstairs watching television when he came down. My father was in the kitchen, bringing out different soups and stews from the fridge, and a half pot of water for fufu was boiling on the stove.
“Siloko, what will it be for you? Wetin you wan chop?” my father asked him.
“Rice, eba, anything—I don’t care, the point is to fill the stomach,” he replied.
He turned to me and began to ask me about the program I was watching on cable. He was familiar with the program and told me the name of his favorite character. He laughed at the Trix yogurt commercial and completed the slogan—“Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids.”
My father called to tell us that dinner was served, and we moved to the dining table. Uncle Siloko asked for a fork and a knife to eat his fufu. Our visiting relatives often used their fingers to eat fufu. He fell on the food with gusto. He licked his lips and remarked that the soup tasted so good. He asked my father if he was the one who had made the soup, or my mother. Dad said that he was the one who cooked most of the time. He said that Mom was still at work; she was a licensed practical nurse and would be coming back late.
“You know, even when you were in boarding school, you were a remarkable cook. I remember the magic you performed with a tin of Geisha canned mackerel and a pack of Uncle Ben’s rice,” he said to my father. He picked his teeth and covered his mouth as he burped.
“And you, Siloko, what were you? Were you not the expert writer of love letters? Or have you forgotten how we used to bribe you with a tin of condensed milk to help us compose those special lines that never failed with the girls?”
“Ah, don’t even go there,” Uncle Siloko said. “I wrote the letters, but you guys got the girls.”
Dad closed his eyes and began to recite in a voice that seemed to be from the past: “I write to ask if you are swimming perfectly in the ocean of good health, if so doxology. The lungs in my body flapped with joy when my orbs rested on your beautiful form. My heart is perambulating, and time and ability and double capacity has forced my pen to dance automatically on this benedicted sheet of paper. Please do not say no so my medulla oblongata does not stop functioning, until we meet, accept this blue blood on paper as a sign of my unquenchable love.”
“So you still remember that after all these years?” Uncle Siloko asked my father. My father’s eyes twinkled, and they appeared to be glowing. Uncle Siloko went upstairs and came down with a bottle of red wine.
“There is beer in the fridge; why did you bother to buy a bottle of wine?” my father asked.
“American beer does not fill the mouth like our Nigerian brands Gulder and Star; besides, red wine is better for the heart, or have you forgotten we are not getting any younger?” They both laughed and began to drink. Dad turned to me and asked if it was not my bedtime, but Uncle Siloko told him to let me stay around, and added that the best way for me to acquire Nigerian wisdom was by sitting at the feet of elders.
I heard the lock turn downstairs; it was Mom, returning from her job. She soon came upstairs. As she walked in, her eyes turned to where I was sitting.
“Oh, you are still awake,” she said, looking up at the clock. I was about to respond when she looked toward the dining table and saw Dad with Uncle Siloko. She smiled and stretched out her hand, but Uncle Siloko brushed the proffered hand away and gently embraced her.
“Ah, you are the powerful Nigerian woman that has succeeded in taming my rascally friend?” he asked, laughing loudly.
“To God be the glory,” Mom said, using one of her stock phrases that sounded like words out of a hymnal.
“Ah, who said I have been tamed?” Dad said mockingly, puffing out his chest.
“None is so hopelessly tamed as he who thinks he’s not been tamed,” Uncle Siloko said, and laughed.
“Do not mind my husband, jare,” Mom said with the kind of jollity I had never heard in her voice.
“Come have a glass of wine, I’m sure you’ve had a tiring day,” Uncle Siloko said to Mom.
“Ah, my wife hardly ever touches alcohol,” Dad said.
“Haba, you chauvinistic Nigerian man, have you forgotten this is America? Let the woman speak for herself.”
“Well, it is not that I hate alcohol, it is the smell that I dislike. You know I grew up with my grandmother in Sapele, and she used to sell ogogoro, what the colonialists called illicit gin. She stored it in big blue rubber jerry cans behind the door of her room. One day I went into the room, opened the gallon, and took a little sip. It burned my throat a bit but tasted so good, so I took another sip and then a large gulp. I did not know when I passed out. My grandmother came into the room and with one look noticed what had happened and forced a large quantity of palm oil down my throat. I threw up, but did not wake up until the next day. Since that day, I’ve never really liked the smell of alcohol, but that has not stopped your friend here from drinking his beer.”
“Well, once bitten, twice shy,” Uncle Siloko said in a sober tone, but then quickly added, “If you try and you do not succeed, try, try again.” This time the three of them laughed together.
Turning toward me, Dad said, “You have picked up enough wisdom for one night—you had better go to your bed.” Mother looked up at me in mock horror and rolled her eyes, appearing surprised that I was still awake. I left them and walked to my room. As I brushed my teeth, I could still hear their laughter from the sitting room.
That weekend, my father’s friends and relatives came from Dorchester, Upper Marlboro, and as far as Virginia. I was told to call all of them “Uncle” as a way of showing respect, even though I could not say exactly how they were related to me. Uncle John Oba, the most jovial of the lot, who would usually introduce himself by saying, “My name is John Oba or Oba John, whichever you prefer,” was the first to arrive. He came in carrying two cartons of Guinness Draught. I knelt down in greeting before him, but he looked unhappy and had no jokes for me today.
“Oba John or John Oba, which should I call you today?” Dad called out to him, smiling and stretching out his hands.
“I don’t know, Uncle; I don’t know who I am anymore. That foolish African American girl Sheniqua wants to ruin my life.”
“Our lives are in God’s hands; no human has the power to destroy them,” Dad responded.
“She called up the INS and told them that the marriage I contracted with her was fake. She told them that I paid her for the purposes of getting a green card.”
Uncle Siloko, who was taking a nap upstairs, soon walked into the sitting room. He had showered and shaved and was wearing a blue cotton dashiki. Father introduced him to John Oba as his friend the professor. Uncle Siloko objected to being called a professor; he said he was only a visiting lecturer. That still makes you a professor, John Oba said, and shook h
is hand while bowing slightly.
Soon the others arrived, Uncle Sunny and Uncle Ikpanwosa, who had shortened his name to Ik. The conversation turned once again to Uncle John’s problem.
“What really happened, or should I say, how exactly did this happen?” Dad asked him.
“I did not know that the yeye girl had opened over four credit card accounts in my name. She has all my information, including my social—you know my mail goes to her house, a few of my clothes and shoes are there too, you can never tell when the INS will visit just to be sure we are living together. When they sent the applications for the cards to her address, she filled them out and blew the money, she maxed out all the cards, and I did not even know about this. It was only when I tried to open a charge account with Sears and my application was denied that I sensed something was wrong. I sent off for my credit report that same week and discovered what she had done. I was very angry and rushed to her house and confronted her. I called her names. At first she seemed contrite; then she got angry and swore she was going to send my sorry ass back to Africa. This is the same girl who I’ve been paying four hundred dollars every two weeks.”
“I think you overreacted. You know what we say in Nigeria—when you want to kill a tsetse fly perched on your scrotum, you approach the task gingerly,” Dad said.
“Do you mind if I say something?” Uncle Siloko asked.
“Haba! Siloko, you do not need anyone’s permission to say something, or aren’t you one of us anymore?” Dad said.
“Money is at the root of this problem, and money can be used to resolve it too. Just call her, apologize, and offer her more money—tell her you are increasing her biweekly payment by an extra hundred dollars, and you’ll see what happens.”
“But she’s already called the INS, and they’ve written to me to appear before them within ninety days.”
“Have you forgotten what we say in Nigeria, that the same people who invented the pencil also invented the eraser? Just the same way she called them, she could still call them back and tell them that she lied, that she was only angry with you. You can even convince her that she should go with you to their office.”