Seconds before the door opened, Ifi heard his footsteps as he made his way up the stairs. Only then did she drag herself to the kitchen, giving the pot of soup one final turn before shutting it off and filling two bowls deep with meat, mushrooms, and greens. She had made his favorite soup, an apology of sorts. Emeka had cleared things up for her. How could she ever forgive herself for not believing in her husband? He was right about everything. Things would happen. In time. After the baby.
“Kedu, how are you?” she asked.
His voice was a muffle. He headed straight to the bathroom. Water burst from the showerhead.
“You will not eat first?” She made her way to the bathroom. “Your food will be cold,” she said to him in exasperation. And then you will complain without words, she thought to herself. He would sigh and chew with demonstrative difficulty, giving his bowl vigorous stirs with his spoon after each bite. Then, This is not the village. You people come to America . . . he would begin. Ifi laughed to herself as she stepped into the bathroom.
Inside, the sink was splattered with droplets of watered-down red. Job’s clothes were crumpled in a soiled heap on the tile floor.
Her hands felt gummy and thick at her sides. “What has happened, oh?” She swiped the shower curtain back. Water came down in sheets, blurring Job’s features.
She shouted into the rain, “What is this?”
With force, he shut off the water. He yanked a towel from the metal bar. She grabbed another. Together, the two dried his body in struggling turns. She couldn’t see any scrapes or cuts on his body. “What did you do?” Ifi asked.
Finally he turned to her, and she gasped. Gashes were spelled out across his face.
“Chineke!” she said. “Are you all right?”
Job tried to push past her, but she blocked his way with her girth. She had never been a woman of size, but now here she was, large the way mothers and women were supposed to be. Naked, he balanced on the edge of the tub, his belly drooped at his waist like a gunnysack. When she pressed the pale-blue towel to his face, it came away dark with his blood.
Without thinking she guarded her belly, the baby. “I will call hospital.”
“No!” Knotting the towel at his waist, he righted himself and stalked past her to the kitchen, to the pot, to the heaping bowls.
“What happened? Tell me, now,” she said. “We must call police.”
“I am fine,” he said. “It’s done.” One cut was set deeply into the side of his face, near his lip. Ifi tried to touch it with the towel. Job’s expression turned into a scowl. He snatched the towel from her hand and flung it across the kitchen. He returned to the pot and added a heaping spoonful to his bowl before sidestepping the kitchen table for the living room couch. Clumps missed his mouth as he swallowed. Ifi took her bowl and stood in the doorway gazing at him, unable to eat.
That afternoon, the storms began. Snow rushed past the window in flakes that grew in size, hour after hour. By night, the falling snow outside reminded her of the staticky television she had grown to hate. It talked, it gurgled like a live, breathing person, witnessing and judging their every misstep in America. From the living room, Ifi could hear the sounds of its babble, and eventually Job’s gurgling snores. Snowstorms were silent, but Ifi expected lightning, thunder, something dramatic to account for the snow that would meet her knees the next morning, something to account for the day ahead of her.
CHAPTER 7
HE MUST FILE THE POLICE REPORT IN PERSON. THIS WAS WHAT THE NASAL voice on the telephone said to Job. Slowly, loudly, for his immigrant benefit, the man pronounced the charge. Not only must he file in person, he must be examined, thoroughly, from head to toe, for a proper report of his injuries. None of this sat well with Job. But then, they had told him that a vehicle had been impounded, that it might be his, and so he must go. If the matter was handled correctly, he would have his car and the scrubs and nametag that were balled underneath the seat. He would warm his car, scrape it clear of snow, go to work, and Ifi would never know a thing. She couldn’t know a thing. How can a woman respect a man who has been treated in such a way by mere boys?
Standing in the doorway, her hands wet and red from the dishes, Ifi wore the frown of a child when he told her about the car. “They have asked me only to identify and sign. You see, this is why I drive the old car,” he joked. “A silly thief who suspected a doctor like myself is a millionaire is incorrect.”
She didn’t believe him. But never mind that.
“I will come with you.” Ifi grabbed a bra from the laundry heap, lowered her wrapper, and began to snap the hooks into place.
“Stop this, now. You are nearly eight months pregnant,” he said. “There’s no need. I’ll collect the car and go to work from there. You are delaying me.” He glanced at the clock. In an hour his shift would begin.
His body was an open sore. It hurt merely to breathe. But he righted his legs and moved as swiftly as possible to disguise the pain. In the living room, he found his pants and his lab coat clean and ironed on the couch, the same place she laid his clothes out every day. Faded bloodstains marked the shame of the night before. She had no doubt scrubbed while he slept through the day and evening. Job gazed at the coat for a long, hard moment.
“You will have to buy a new one,” she said, softly. “No patient should see you this way.”
All but the jacket was on him now.
“It’s not clean,” she said, taking three unbalanced strides across the room. For a brief moment, the jacket was in both of their hands and they fought with it. Her will was stronger than Job’s, or perhaps he feared that his only white jacket would be split into two. He laughed. “Solomon’s judgment.”
She glared at him. A small orange container of baking soda was in the refrigerator. She dumped nearly the entire contents on the scarred cloth. Under the sink, she found a brush. She wet it and furiously scrubbed at the stain.
Nothing but the scratch of the brush fibers could be heard. The sound was like chalk on a board in Job’s ears. He snatched the jacket from her grasp.
“Give me time, now! No patient should see a doctor like this,” she protested.
“You have done good work,” he said. “In the proper light, no one will notice.” Indeed, obscured by the shadows of the room, it was barely noticeable.
“And your face. You’re so ugly.” An accusing finger jabbed at his raw wounds. “Who will see a doctor as ugly as you? Eh?”
“My junior brother received the looks in the family. This, I’m afraid, is improvement, plastic surgery.”
“You’re so funny. But you will not be so funny when they come back.”
“They won’t be back,” he said calmly. “They’ve taken my wallet, what good thieves are always after.” For good measure, he added, “You stay inside. Don’t make any foolish trips. Let my injury warn you of the dangers in America.” Even as he joked, Job felt his body rippling with the fear that he had felt that night, the moment when he had realized that he was trapped.
“Don’t patronize me. What type of clinic do you work where you will be attacked like this? I will have the baby, I will find work, and you will find a clinic elsewhere.” Gripping her wrapper, she faced him. “We’ll leave this place and go back to Nigeria. I will not die in this country.”
“What is this?”
“I don’t like this America,” Ifi said. “The food tastes of rubbish. Every day is cold, and there is no one, not even one person outside, except that nonsense old lady,” she said with a shudder.
Job saw the pain in her eyes, and he felt a twitch in his belly. But he hid his hesitation with a broad smile. “I believe the nonsense old lady is your friend, no?”
“You’re so funny,” she said again.
But suddenly, he felt himself giving in to the feeling and agreeing. “Let’s go back.”
“When?” After a moment, she said, “You are mocking your wife.”
“I’m not joking. Tomorrow. No, no, not soon enough. Today.” Ifi w
as frowning, but Job couldn’t stop himself, and suddenly he meant it. Such an outrageous idea, but why must they stay? Why must we stay in America to do humiliating work, to live among riffraff, far from our families? “Yes, that’s right. Instead of going to the police station, I will go to the airport and buy two airplane tickets. By tomorrow night, we will be home.”
Ifi was silent. Softly, she said, “You promised. We’ll open a hospital. I will be the nurse, and you will be the doctor.”
As he drifted back to reality, Job felt the air let out of his balloon. “We will,” he said, a whisper.
“But not today,” she said with finality.
“Not today.”
Naked from the waist up, Job straddled a white wall. The camera bulb flashed, capturing the bruises all along his body. A black whorl spewed from his chest, another near his ribs, where the boys had kicked him. Several swollen knots rose on his back. Each time the bulb flashed, Job flinched. He was humiliated. Not because of the cameras, but because of the cold, clinical gaze of the eyes inspecting each part of his body, as if he were a lab rat. He couldn’t be here feeling this, so in his mind, he retreated to an image of him standing before a patient, dressed in his lab coat, recording numbers on a chart.
This would not have happened in Nigeria. I am respected. I am Mr. Doctor. Again, his stomach went rigid with anger. They will pay, he decided. Job imagined the three boys in a lineup. He saw himself identifying them as he’d seen it done in many movies. From behind a glass screen, he eyed their hardened glares. He pointed to the first, the boy with sleepy eyes, then the mouth flaky with potato chips, then the boy with cigarette ash for breath. They will never make me afraid, he decided. He would have them locked up for the rest of their natural lives. He would say whatever he needed to say to make sure they never saw the light of day. They would sit on the bottom of a cold cell, and he would spit on them from above. He decided on a sum for the distress that he would claim at the time of his civil lawsuit, because surely he would sue the three boys and their families for everything they were worth.
And then he would take their money and resume his classes, somewhere expensive and prestigious like Harvard or Yale. He could see himself presiding over the groundbreaking ceremony for his clinic in his father’s village. He could see himself with Ifi, his assistant, standing alongside him in her nurse’s uniform, their three children, all boys, alongside them. He could see himself in black pants, a white lab coat, a tie, a briefcase, a stethoscope. This will all be worth it in the end, he assured himself. After all, this is America.
“I took your photographs and filed the report,” Job said to the photographer, a frail man with bulging eyes. “Where is my car? I’ll be late for work.”
“Listen, call them and tell them you’ll be a little late. You need to be treated first.”
A physician’s assistant began the process, a younger woman with a doughy face fixed in place by thick glasses. “Ice on and off for twenty minutes,” she said of the bruises and bumps. “Most of these lacerations are superficial, except this one. This one needs stitches, but you’ve waited too long.” With her gloved hand, she rubbed an antiseptic ointment across the gash and applied butterfly bandages to it. “Keep it clean and dry. You’ll have an ugly scar, but you’ll live.”
Job slipped his shirt, tie, and jacket back on. A knock at the door jolted him to attention. A wide-bottomed officer with square teeth split by a gap waddled in and spoke to him. “We just need you to clarify a few details.”
“Where are you taking me? I gave you my report.”
Panting and wobbling the whole way, he hurried Job down the hall to an airless room. Two hard plastic chairs were angled around a table. Only after Job sat did the officer take a seat across from him, and in that moment Job had just enough time to take in the man’s massive rear, his unzipped fly, and the sweat stains at his armpits. Not exactly the image Job had in mind of the long arm of the law. Instantly, he recognized that any chance he had for justice would not happen today, not in the hands of such a man. Job’s sense of righteousness turned to disappointment, and finally anxiety.
His words tumbled out of him. “Three black Americans attacked me. I was not finding any trouble, and these three black Americans beat me.” Before the man had a chance to say a word, Job began with his description. “They had cornrows and women’s hose like this covering their hair. They walked like this.” He began to ape their swinging steps. “They wore trousers like this.” Job pulled his down just low enough so that the top of his underpants was exposed. “But you see, they wore boxer pants and big coats, like thieves.”
“So they were African American, like you?”
“Yes. I mean no. Not African American. I am not African American. I am from Africa. I am a citizen. I am an American, but I am no African American.”
“I see.” In apparent confusion, the officer frowned. “But they were black, though. Black like you?”
“No. Not like me.”
“Were they my color then?”
“No.” Job glared at the officer’s pale pinkish flesh. Then his. He stared for a long time. “They were this color. One maybe a little lighter. Two maybe the same.”
“Black, like you.”
After a moment, Job gulped. His eyes fixed on the officer’s open fly. He wanted badly to reach forward and yank the zipper up, to teach this insolent man something about what it meant to be a professional, to walk like a man. But there was nothing. He couldn’t think of a single word to describe the boys, other than akatta, a word the officer would never understand. “Yes, they were my color, but no, not like me.”
“I see.” The officer scrawled some things on his pad. “There’s just one thing I’m unclear about. You said earlier that they didn’t take your money. They didn’t even take your wallet. But they took your car.”
Job thought it over. With anger, he decided, once again, I will make them pay. “They didn’t take my wallet,” he paused, and the lie tumbled out. “But they took my money.”
“Now they took your money. An hour ago they only took your car.”
Sweat built on Job’s brow, and it stung against his raw face. “I said they took my money, my car, and they beat my face.”
“So they took your money and your car and then they assaulted you, Mr. Og-ban-ooya? In that order?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell me, does this make any sense even to you? Again: they took your money, your car, and then they just suddenly decided to return and attack?”
Job felt it slipping away. A deep breath steadied him. “They beat me. Then they took my money and car. They did not want my wallet. They threw it at me.”
“I see, Mr. Og-ban-ooya. And how much money did you have on you? Ten dollars? Twenty?”
Job’s voice was suddenly low. “Are you accusing me of lying?”
For a long, silent moment, the officer looked him over. “I’m gonna ask you one final thing. Just answer as completely and honestly as you can, and we’ll let you go.”
“Let me go? Am I the victim or the assailant?”
“Mr. Og-ban-ooya.”
“Doctor.”
“Doctor.” There was a sardonic ring to his tone.
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Dr. Og-ban-ooya. Did you have any drugs or paraphernalia in your possession at the time of the . . .” He paused. “Assault.”
“You are asking if I am a drug dealer?”
The officer’s eyes remained unmoved. “Did you know the assailants?”
Job quivered. “You do not believe.” He swallowed. Words were a tumble in his mind. He started from the beginning. He started from the beginning of what the boys looked like; he started way in the beginning, when he had no more years than the boys who attacked him, when he came here on his own with nothing but his father’s tuition money and two suitcases. Then he started at the beginning of that night. He needed to tell the man about arriving at the gas
station, about the ball of clothes under the seat of his car, but to tell the officer that, he must tell him about his clandestine retreats to the parking lot, where he changed his clothes each night and every morning so that his wife would not know, so that the world would not know. And to say this, he must describe the failure he suddenly felt, realizing for the first time that he would never be a doctor.
So he said none of these words. His tongue was in knots. He did not tell the officer about the potato chip, or about the way he swore at the boys. He did not even tell the man that they were boys. Were they even old enough to purchase alcohol in this country? He did not tell the officer about the things they had said to him.
Instead, Job heard himself repeating, “I am a doctor, and I find no trouble from these black Americans. I am not illegal like the Mexicans. I am a citizen.” He dug into his pocket and retrieved his wallet, showing him the card.
After a long sigh, the officer scrawled a number onto a card and handed it to Job. “That’s your case number. I’m Officer Peete. Right there. That’s my number here at the station. You call if you can provide any other information.”
“That’s it? What of my car?”
“On the report, you gave a description of your car being a blue-gray, two-door Audi, dent on the driver side, cracked taillight.”
“Yes.”
“That’s not your car in the impound.”
“Yes it is.”
“And I believe you.”
Job was stunned, silent.
“And because I believe you, I suggest that you file a report with your insurance.”
“No, no, no! You said you have my car.”
“Mr.—Dr. Og-ban-ooya. The vehicle we have is suspected in a botched narcotics transfer.”
“No, you have my car. Allow me to see it!”
“We’ll do our best to recover it, but I can tell you now, it’s a long shot. By now, they’ve probably stripped it for parts that are on their way to South Dakota. Your best bet is to call your insurance and report the loss.”
Job swallowed. “What of the thieves? Won’t you arrest them?”
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