After a moment, Sheryl narrowed her eyes at Ifi. “He’s waiting for you.”
Heat rose from the grille of Emeka’s SUV. Before entering the car, Ifi gazed at Sheryl one last time. She was propped up against the side of the building. She lit a cigarette and waved her hands in front of her face, fanning the fumes in all directions. She took two long, stirring sips, and then the cigarette met the others on the pavement. All the cigarette butts were hers, so why had she lied? Ifi frowned.
“Where do you two ladies live,” Emeka said. It wasn’t a question.
Ifi hesitated, but she played along with him. They would be strangers to one another. Perhaps he would not say anything to Job. She wondered why, but decided it wasn’t worth pursuing. She gave him the address. The whole ride home, Mrs. Janik moaned about the pains in her legs. She said nothing about Sheryl or prostitutes or her man. Ifi waited for Emeka to ask her what she had been doing there, but he said nothing. Then it suddenly occurred to her that he hadn’t said what he had been doing there.
They stopped in front of the apartment building. “Well, ladies, we are here safe and sound, no?” Emeka gave them a tight smile.
With an overpronounced limp, Mrs. Janik thrust out her hip and made her wobbly way toward her building. “Too much excitement for a lady my age.”
Emeka laughed heartily.
Ifi’s eyes met his.
He grinned. “So this is it.” He surveyed the big old building that housed their flat. “You know, your husband has never allowed me to follow him home.”
Ifi thought of Gladys’s fur coats and the palace of Ifi’s imagination drawn up from her interior design magazines: mansions of marble, tapestries, and archways. In spite of her anger with Job she felt guilty, understanding now, as she had the night of their dinner, that whatever Emeka and Gladys possessed was real.
“A very comfortable home,” she said defensively. Immediately she felt anger. How can I defend him, even now? But the smug look on Emeka’s face infuriated her. She couldn’t let him go without saying something. What of Gladys? She felt her anger shifting from Job to Gladys and finally to Emeka. What of his six girls and the little boy in the incubator? What of Gladys? Ifi remembered the look of Gladys’s vacant eyes staring out the window, but at what? Nothing more than a parking lot and short houses all along the road. This is the America we have all come to? For this?
“Chai! Is this what our men are doing in America?” Ifi shook her head.
Emeka’s grin tightened. His forehead was shiny. “Little mama, you are tired.”
“Both of you?”
Emeka frowned for the first time.
“What is this Sheryl?” Can such a woman tempt both Job and Emeka?
Emeka suddenly laughed. Hard. “Little mama, go to sleep now. Your husband will be home soon.”
“I have no husband,” Ifi said.
“No?” Again, Emeka laughed. “Well, I believe your husband will disagree.”
He was teasing. Ifi didn’t like it.
“Go home now and sleep. He will be home soon. Today is an uneasy day for all of us.” He rested a palm on one of Ifi’s shoulders. Gradually, the pressure hardened until he was pushing her toward the door. But Ifi didn’t budge.
“She is an ugly prostitute.”
“What is this talk of prostitutes, eh?” Again, he laughed heartily. “I have just taken you home. Now if you hurry, you will go inside before your husband returns. He will never know that you have left.”
Ifi reached into her pocket and thrust the letter at Emeka. He read slowly. At first he looked confused. Then he laughed suddenly, so hard and long that tears started in the corners of his eyes. Spittle filled the corners of his mouth, and he wiped at his face with his dry, crackling palms. “This is nonsense! A crackerpot. The American Job married for papers many years ago.”
“Papers?”
Emeka nodded slowly. “You see, in America it is easy to marry quick-quick and then irreconcilable differences.” After a pause, he explained. “Divorce. The American way.” He patted Ifi’s shoulder. “You people forget you are in America, oh.” After a moment, he gazed at her carefully and soberly added, “Your husband has not paid his full debt. But I am his friend, and so I go and meet her, so she will leave him.”
“Eh?”
Emeka nodded. “Now, it is not wise for you to tell him about this. He is a man. He will be ashamed to see another man paying his debt, even his brother.”
What he said made sense. Men and women married for papers. It was true. Had it not been for such an arrangement, Ifi’s only course to come to America would have been the lottery. In her lifetime, Ifi had only heard of one person who had received papers that way.
Suddenly, Ifi couldn’t meet his eyes. Instead, she gazed down at her belly. With nothing to do with her hands, she rubbed, willing the baby to remind her with a kick that she wasn’t alone, that he had seen it all. What a fool I have been. She laughed to herself. She would never make such a mistake again. Of course Emeka had gone to meet the woman in the early hours of the morning. Of course they had exchanged the money quietly. Of course her insecurities had taken the place of common wisdom. Hadn’t Aunty called her jealous and ungrateful as a child? Well, perhaps Aunty had always been right. How would they ever pay such a debt back to Emeka? Job would need to take more patients. Work more hours.
“And the old lady?” Emeka asked.
“Mrs. Janik. Our neighbor.”
“Hmm. She must not speak.”
“Don’t mind her.” A pause. “And how is Gladys?”
For a moment, his expression clouded. Then, like a sun breaking through clouds, his grin resurfaced. “My dear, Gladys is a champion.”
“And what of the boy?”
“Marry, bury, and retire in your native land.” He smiled. “His burial is set for two weeks from today. We will go and return in three weeks’ time.”
“I am so sorry.”
“Don’t worry yourself,” Emeka said softly. “We have talked. Gladys is strong. In fact,” he gazed at Ifi almost tenderly, “she has decided that it’s time. We have six children. That is enough. Healthy children, all beautiful, all intelligent. What of if they are all girls? We have been blessed enough, and Gladys is not so young anymore, like you.” He smiled at her. “I have spoken to her, and she has agreed to dash you the boy’s crib.” He grinned triumphantly.
“What?”
“I will drop it before we leave for Nigeria.”
Ifi didn’t know how to respond. “That is kind of you.”
“Don’t say anything to your husband. Just accept the gift. I know him. He will appreciate it once he sees it, not before. And it will be good for my wife if it is gone. She will be reminded that our family is already complete.”
Outside, whiteness spread across the clouds. Ifi tried to remember her first night in America. Was this the first sign of a heavy snowfall, like cool, dusty Harmattan winds in Nigeria? Was this the sign of an ending and a new beginning? “Do you believe Gladys? Is she finally done?”
Emeka’s face shined. He looked away out the window, up at the clouds. “We will move forward. The sun will rise tomorrow as it rose today.”
“And how are you?”
His laugh was thick, from a place in the back of his throat. “I will tell you this, little mama: you must always look around you, because your enemies are watching.”
What must he mean? Ifi started to ask, but Emeka stopped her with a gaze up to the apartment window. “How are you enjoying your television?”
When Job returned to Captain’s room for the last time during morning rounds, the old man was so knotted together under his sheets that Job panicked and believed he was dead and rigor mortis had set in. Many times he had seen it before: the blinkless, lifeless eyes of the dead, the turning of the flesh. At age seven, Job had seen those eyes on his brother when he peered down into his face in the open casket and lifted away the buttons that had been placed over each eye. To look and to be looked at by
such eyes. At the time, Job had believed that Samuel died from fright, not the bullet. He had been a coward. His arrogance had been a cover.
Before he reached Captain’s bed, the smell told a different story. Today it was only a thick paste that made it as far as the fitted sheet. Job’s jaw tightened. Right at the end of my shift. If I don’t clean him, the morning shift will accuse me of leaving him filthy on purpose. Job would be written up and reprimanded in front of everyone by the charge nurse, a woman ugly and mean enough to be a boy’s uncle. She had done it before.
Shivers rose on Captain’s scrawny, hairy legs as Job, with a wipe, followed the path of the feces along Captain’s leg. He pretended the old man felt as ashamed as he did. He pretended he was the doctor and Captain was the patient, and that he was examining him, and that he could hear the slow drum of the old man’s heartbeat through his stethoscope. Like Ifi. Ifi’s stomach had been a steel drum, and the baby’s foot had felt like the flutter of a heartbeat. As he worked quietly, Job didn’t tell Captain about what he felt when his boy kicked through Ifi’s stomach. Instead, he told Captain about his television.
He spoke quietly. “It has the latest digital technologies.” When Captain didn’t reply, Job continued, describing the detail of its make, its size, the color saturation, the reception—all that he had learned from reading the manual during his meal break.
As he spoke, Job unwound the soiled sheets and pulled them loose from their corners. He wrapped a new sheet over the edge and did the same for the other end, smoothing and flattening it out with the back of his gloved hand. He gagged as he dumped the soiled sheets into the laundry basket. All the while, Job recounted the television in detail. Captain was so silent and still that Job no longer listened to his own voice. True, he had spent the night debating if he should return the television or keep it, tell Ifi something was wrong with the color tube, something as simple as that. He had wondered if instead he should pay for it with his father’s money. It was money he couldn’t afford on his own. But finally he had settled it, reminding himself that if he paid the minimum every month for the next eighteen months, he would finish the payments. Ifi’s next letter to Aunty will describe the television, he thought to himself, and for once it will be truth.
Job parked his car one block away from St. Ignatius Rehabilitation Hospital. In the dark, he peeled off the scrubs and their stink. Gagging, he balled the clothes up and placed them in the plastic grocery bag he tucked underneath his driver’s seat every morning on his return home, a secret place Ifi would surely never find. Even without the clothes on, he thought to himself, I smell of nshi. Captain’s shit. Its stink would never leave his body. Rocking back and forth, naked except for his underwear, he shivered. Then, before he knew it, he was sobbing.
I can’t do this anymore. Today, he decided. Today will be the day. I will try again. After all, it had been a long time. Nineteen years. He would go to the bank and take out the money, minus what he had given to Cheryl. Forget their faces, all those years ago, when he had arrived at the admissions office and told them it was a mistake. Yes, he had seen the academic probation notices, but wasn’t there someone he could speak to? Where was the chair, the dean, the provost, someone important, not the silly secretary? And so he had gone to see the bald-headed dean, sitting there in his suit and tie. An important man. The man his father was. The man Job would be one day, if he only had the chance. A man who could make things happen. He had heard of it being done in Nigeria quite easily. Although he had never admitted it to himself, he wondered now if his father had done just that for him, had spoken to the right man, negotiated in the right way for him to easily pass his JAMB, the highest standard, and then the TOEFL.
Standing before the dean, Job reached into his pocket and slid a hundred-dollar bill to the man. The dean took the money and stared. Not enough? Job slid another hundred-dollar bill to him, then another. As it dawned on the dean what was happening, he shifted back into his rolling chair behind the desk. Then he bellowed, “You lazy, immigrant bastard! Go back to Africa.”
Forget all of this, Job said to himself. Now is the time. Many years have passed. The money was still in the account. This morning. He would not even sleep. He would go directly to the bank and then the admissions office. He would finish his classes before Ifi knew it. Before long, he would be making real money. And then he wouldn’t suffer each time he sent his family a check, nor would they ache in their silent poverty. They would rise to the station they once had when Job began his life in America. He pulled on his trousers and lab coat. His body trembled. He released a long, drawn-out breath. What have I been so afraid of? What is keeping me from following my dreams? Job smoothed out his stethoscope. He placed an eartip in each ear and listened to the beat of his own heart.
Job’s thudding heartbeat was still on his mind as he filled his car with gas. It was there, in the palm of his free hand, that he saw the first signs of the great snowfall that would come that night. He released the pump and met the eyes of the stars that descended on him, tiny and moist. The ash-gray sky was pierced only by the wavering glow of the headlights he had forgotten to turn off. He tried to think of his child, but all he could think of was the childlike look in Ifi’s eyes during her first snowfall.
Bank. Admissions office. Today will be the day. Elated, he smiled. He dried his palms across the thighs of his dark pants and brought them to his face. The scent was strong, like kerosene. It reminded him of his grandmother’s kerosene lamp back in the village. It reminded him of the darkened home he had visited on that humid summer day, with the lamp flames casting shadows on the walls, the girl with the slim hips and pointed breasts sitting on the couch between her guardians.
In the gas station, he stalked back and forth between the aisles, his back straight, an important man making a decision, letting his fingers rest on bags of potato chips that he knew he’d never had a taste for. He stopped only after the clerk, a boy in dark frames, sent him a sidelong glance.
“You got gas on two?” the clerk asked.
“Yeah,” Job said, in his best imitation of an American.
Just then, three tall black Americans came bursting into the store. They were young and loud, wearing baggy pants, their hair in plaits or hidden under pantyhose covers. They were boys, no more than seventeen in age. Job had been in America long enough to know of this type. They took off in different directions. One disappeared into the cooled Spirits section, another shuffled through the potato chips Job had just grazed. As Job hurried to the register, the third broke for the register as well. They arrived at the same time, and there was a tense moment as Job shifted from one leg to the other. The boy had calm, sleepy eyes. He was small, the youngest of the gang, likely no older than twelve or thirteen. He nodded to Job, and Job paid the clerk before hurrying out the door, away from trouble. On his way, he bumped into another boy. They were just feet from Job’s car.
“Motherfucker, get the fuck out of my way,” the boy said to him.
He was nothing. A boy of such a young age and low education would not speak to Job like this anywhere else. Only in America. It angered and humiliated him. He should have hurried away, but he didn’t. Not this time.
“Why he looking at you like that?” one of the other boys said, egging him on. “Like he want to kill you.” Foil crunched in his hands as he opened his bag of chips. A chip crunched loudly in his mouth. Flakes drifted from his face. His cheeks were slick from its grease. “Want one?” He held a chip out to Job and grinned. “They tasty. Smell it.”
When Job didn’t respond, the boy put it so close to his face that he could smell its salt. His mouth watered. Between them, the potato chip hovered, a bullet in slow motion.
The filth. The filth on his hands, on his body, the stink of Captain, the stink of gasoline. It filled Job with rage, and the rage tasted like shit in his throat.
“I ain’t playing. They good,” the boy said, laughing. As he pulled the chip back, it fell from his hand, landing in a puddle of shrinki
ng snow. “Aw, man, you made me drop my chip.” He reached into his bag, found another, and chomped loudly, his mouth open.
Now all of the boys were there. “He should say sorry,” the first boy said. Initially it sounded like he was joking. One or two even laughed. But Job knew better.
The skinny attendant was bolting the door. He didn’t say, “I don’t want any trouble.” He didn’t say, “I’ll call the police.” He simply clicked the door locked and returned to his post at the register.
“Motherfucker,” the boy said, getting close to Job, so close he could smell cigarette ash on his breath, “say you’re sorry.”
Sleepy Eyes shrugged.
“Naw,” the boy said in reply. “I want this motherfucker to say it. And then he gonna eat that chip he knocked down with his funky breath.”
In the back of his throat, Job heard the word forming. By the time it left his mouth, he was stunned by it. He’d never said it, except to make fun of the kind of boys who were in front of him now. “Motherfucker,” Job said.
A pause.
Then Potato Chips laughed. Sleepy Eyes joined in. Finally Apology laughed, hard, a revolving laughter that didn’t stop, but only grew.
“Say it again,” one said, and the others chimed in, imitating his accent. “Mudd-ah-fock-ah!”
As the impotent word shrank in the folds of their laughter, Job burned with humiliation. These boys, nothing but riffraff who know nothing, who cannot even speak their first language correctly, have shamed me. They should fear him. They should respect him. In his mind, Job rehashed a million scenarios that ended with the boy’s face cracked on the pavement, the jeering faces of his friends frozen in fear. Job, still carrying the stink of Captain on his hands, still pinned with the badge that read Job Ogbonnaya, Certified Nurse’s Assistant, thought to himself, They will fear me.
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