Mr. and Mrs. Doctor

by Julie Iromuanya

  “We’ll call you if we apprehend the suspects.”

  “You will just let them go free?”

  “Like I said, if you can give us any other information you think will help, call the number on the card.”

  “But my car . . .” Job felt a shake beginning low in his body. “How will I go to work? I am late already.”

  “There’s a phone in the lobby. Call someone. Your wife? A friend?”

  “No,” Job said, grimacing as he imagined Emeka’s smirk.

  Large fluorescent overhead lights cast deep orange pools on the tiled floors of the lobby. Little else was in the room except for two flags that hung limply from their pedestals over a carrel of hard-backed plastic chairs. Job flipped through the phonebook and found the number for a taxicab company. But when the cab arrived with a “Cash Only” sign glaring through the back panel, remembering that he had given all of his cash to Cheryl for her car repairs, Job abashedly admitted that he could only pay with credit card or check. He tried to explain that he had been the victim of an assault; they stole his cash, beat his face—he was not a criminal—but even dressed in his crisp doctor’s suit with his stethoscope dangling from the front pocket of his jacket, the driver cursed him, shouting that Job was supposed to request a cab with a credit card machine, and he had wasted his time and cost him his gas and a fare, and for that Job was a motherfucker. The driver spat out the window and squealed around the corner, leaving Job to stand limply in the cold.

  One last time, he reentered the police station and braced himself before dialing Emeka’s number. But when he heard Emeka’s arrogant voice, Job couldn’t bear the thought of his friend’s admonishments: Have I not taught you anything? Job slammed the phone down. Reluctantly, he dialed the only number he could think of: Cheryl’s. After all, she did not know Emeka, Gladys, or Ifi. He had even given her money to repair her car.

  As he waited, the entire scene reminded him of the day they had married: a room cold with the thud of empty footprints across the tile floor, flags hanging limply against one wall, a potted plastic tree on another end, and the sound of telephones ringing from distant rooms. Like then, everything had a fakeness to it. Important business could not possibly happen here. For a moment, he locked eyes with a janitor who brusquely swept the floor.

  The man whistled and shrank back at the sight of Job’s face. “Sonny, it looks like you were doing business from the wrong angle.” He set the mop aside. “Look-a here. Put a pack of tenderloin on that, press it in real good, and it’ll be gone in no time.” Setting the mop aside, the man encouragingly motioned where Job should place the meat on his face. Of course he had nothing to do with the attack, but instead of the wrinkled face, chin ashen with gray hairs, and body stooped with age, all Job could see and hear was the man’s skin color and the voice carrying the rhythm that sounded so similar to the young boys’ voices. A fresh chill of fear climbed up his spine. Long ago, this old man had been one of those young boys, wearing women’s hose over his plaits and trousers so low they exposed his underpants. Akatta, he said to himself. A black American. Riffraff, Job decided with such bitterness and anger that it turned to hate, just like those criminals.

  “Those bastards!” Cheryl exclaimed as Job climbed into her 1980 Ford Thunderbird, a rusted red, the pieces of its frame fitted together like Legos. As they pulled away, the Thunderbird let out a metallic screech. When he had called, Cheryl had answered after three rings. At the time, he had oscillated between how to ask a favor of her, a woman he had been married to but still considered a stranger. Should I order her? he thought to himself—after all, he wouldn’t have needed her help if he hadn’t provided her with the last cash remaining in his wallet. Should he try to gain her sympathy by explaining that he had been brutally beaten by three black men? Surely she would empathize with his fear. Or should I treat the whole affair with nonchalance? She must remember that they had at one time shared a reluctant, though lawful, mutual union.

  In the end, he hadn’t needed to say any of those things. When Job mentioned that he was at the police station and that his car had been stolen, Cheryl arrived within twenty minutes. She knew the police station well. Luther, her brother, had been arrested on a number of frivolous charges over the years, and she had been forced to pick him up and bail him out on many occasions.

  One time in particular stood out in her mind, and as they headed for the hospital, Cheryl lit a cigarette out the window and stuttered the first words to the story. “He had too much to drink. He was having a hard time dealing with our mom’s passing. Anyway, the police, they pull him over, he gets out. They tell him to put his hands up and all that. He does. And they’re asking all these stupid questions. And he can’t say anything.” Her hands shook as they gripped the steering wheel. “So they beat him, you know? They beat him up because he wouldn’t talk,” she said. “He tried to show them his wallet, to explain that he couldn’t talk, you know? He’s mute, so they almost killed him. When I arrived, he was still unconscious. Said they thought he was reaching for a weapon, the bastards.” She paused at a red light. “That was the day something changed in him. He didn’t give a shit about anything after that. He didn’t give a shit about me, about the house, about our parents. That was it.”

  Job let the weight of her confession sink in. A white man born and raised in this country had faced such a fate. What are the chances of me, a Nigerian, receiving justice if a white man receives such treatment? It stunned Job. They passed his hideaway lot on the way, and he glanced out the window, glaring at the muted brick façade of the office buildings.

  When they arrived at the hospital, Cheryl gazed at him with somber eyes. “They did that to you too, didn’t they? Some bastards steal your car, and they find you guilty of that shit. I hate those fuckers. I hate them.”

  She thinks the police have beaten me! Job thought in alarm. Admittedly, he felt relief. He preferred not to rehash the story, not to tell her how children, mere beggars, had pushed his face into the snow, stepped on his back, and beaten him. Enough, he decided, remembering the probing eye of the camera and the officer’s accusatory questions. They treated me as if I was the criminal—me, Job Ogbonnaya, whose father is a chief. Suddenly, he realized that the officers might well have beaten him the way they had beaten Cheryl’s brother. One thing Job understood that made him feel strangely akin to Luther, a man he had never laid eyes on in his life, was that, like Luther, he would never again look at a uniformed officer in the same way. “Yes,” he lied, “the officers beat me for no reason.”

  “You know, Job.” Cheryl flicked the cigarette out the window, and they watched as the orange light flickered through the dark sky and then died. “Just because me and you are . . .” She paused, then continued with care. “Different, it doesn’t mean the world hasn’t flung some shit in my direction.” Rolling back her coat sleeve, she revealed her luminescent skin, dotted only by the occasional winter freckle. “They always prejudiced me because of my red hair and pale skin. That’s kinda like being black, don’t you think?”

  Job nodded uncomfortably. It seemed to satisfy her.

  In quiet awe, she gazed at him. “What I can’t understand is how you can sit here so dignified after they did all that to your face, after they treated you like a dog.” She shrugged. “But what do I know? You’re the doctor.” She turned up her finger as if drinking from a teacup.

  She still believes I am a doctor. Job looked over his uniform: the white lab coat, the dark pants, the stethoscope. He sat up higher in his seat and silently agreed with a confident nod.

  As if struggling to piece his world together, she continued. “My mother always said I didn’t have the manners of a lady—I’d be hauling ass, I’d be cussing someone out. But I can’t help it. When something isn’t fair, my emotions just take control, and all the logic runs away from me. I lost it when they beat my brother. They probably would have hauled me off to jail if I hadn’t told them I’d sue their asses off.”

  “Did you?” Job asked
with fresh curiosity.

  “Nah, no money. I looked in the Yellow Pages and everything. I called a few places, but nah. Besides, Luther wouldn’t have it. He just wanted to be home. He wanted the whole thing behind him.”

  Job nodded slowly as he climbed out of the car, once again surprised by how the woes of Cheryl’s life had somehow made her more real to him, someone more than the freckle-faced liar with knobby knees, maybe even someone to take seriously. Knowing Cheryl was still watching, perhaps in awe, as she pulled away, he straightened his jacket and walked purposefully, his briefcase swinging at his side like the men in the suits outside his hideaway.

  Because he was dressed only in his black pants and white lab coat, with the stethoscope dangling from his pocket, the nurses on the station didn’t recognize Job at first as he hurried from room to room doing rounds. Balled together in his bag and squeezed under the front seat of his car, his clothes were, as the officer had said, likely on their way to South Dakota. At that thought, he hurried through his rounds: A young girl in the south end of the station who had a fever—he administered Tylenol and listened to her rabbit heartbeat with a stethoscope. A man down the hall, a diabetic—he needed new dressings around the sores at the base of the stump where his leg had recently been amputated. Job dumped the urine-filled bedpan of yet another patient.

  Near the end of the night, Captain’s light came on. Job hesitated, shivering at the memory of the strong scent of his feces, before reluctantly pushing the door open. Captain was asleep, a letter torn to shreds at his side, another one directed to his “son.” Job picked up the pieces and put them together, but the words were nothing more than scribbles. Gazing at the prone man, Job shook his head. Growing old is without dignity in America. Not the way he remembered it back home: the old men, tall in robes; old men smoking and chewing kola nut; old men surrounded by wives and children meant to bring them soup, porridge, and palm wine. Here, it is withering under twisted sheets, a man of pimpled flesh.

  Job shook his head. He shouldn’t be seeing any of this. This was the work of the poor. Not someone like him. This is the work for illiterate savages, like the three black boys who will amount to nothing when they grow old, nothing at all, he told himself. They will be janitors, like the man at the police station. Feeling the anger rise in his gut, he left the room.

  None of the other nurses on the station looked him directly in the face, and Job thought, with relief, that the night would continue in the same manner, with his head bent forward, his charts clipped together, his stethoscope in his pocket—until a nurse passing by asked, “Doctor?” Recognition crossed her face as her eyes ran from Job’s face to the white lab coat and stethoscope. He tried to pass, but she grabbed his shoulder, spinning him around. “What on earth?”

  And then a second, a third, and a fourth nurse were surrounding him. Now they saw his face, raw with the young men’s work, a congealing scar. Each drew in a sharp gasp. At first, he couldn’t decide which they would respond to first: the fact that he was out of uniform or the look of his fresh scars.

  “What happened, Job?” one asked.

  “It’s nothing,” he said.

  “Are you in some kind of trouble?” a second asked.

  “I was assaulted, but I am okie now.”

  “Oh my God. But you’re O.K.?” a third asked. “Did you file a police report?”

  “I was assaulted,” Job said. What good did filing the police report do? He was still without his vehicle, and his body had been searched. They treated me like a criminal, a drug dealer. Cheryl’s brother had been a drunk alcoholic; it made sense that they would arrest him. But Job had done nothing. Why must they find me trouble, oh?

  “Did. You. File. A. Police. Report.” All the voices blended into one. All he could hear was the menacing arch in the officer’s voice, a question that sounded more like an order than a request, a question that sounded like an accusation. “Job, I think it’s a good idea for you to go home tonight. Call personnel tomorrow morning, and we’ll try to straighten this out.”

  “I did nothing.” Sweat prickled down Job’s face. His heart beat wildly, and his chest tightened. The room went black. He shouted over the flurry of flashing camera bulbs, “I am not a drug dealer!”

  Then, a nurse’s voice: “No one said you’re a drug dealer.”

  A second nurse: “Why are you suggesting that?”

  A third nurse: “Are you hiding something?”

  He was suddenly back in the nurse’s station surrounded by the crowd of his coworkers. Won-der-ful! he thought in panic. Now they will inventory all the medications in the supply closet. He didn’t even own a key to the supply closet, because he didn’t have the certification to distribute medications. But never mind that.

  “Job, I need to ask you to leave.” His charge nurse.

  “I call the police, but because of my color, I am a drug dealer. Is that it?”

  “Job, come on, don’t play the race card. Nobody’s picking on you. Have we ever treated you differently?”

  “No,” Job said with resolve. “No, I will not leave.”

  “If you don’t leave now, I’ll have to call security.”

  Job collected his things. He shuffled out the door.

  When the cab pulled up to the curb of his apartment, Job froze in awe. Could this all have been a dream? he thought to himself. Parked on the street in front of his building, as if it had never been moved, was his Audi. All of it, even the dent in its side, even its cracked taillight. Without his eyes leaving the sight before him, he hastily threw a few bills to the driver. As the cab screeched away, his brow furrowed in bewilderment. Maybe there had never been any troublemaking youngsters. Maybe there had never been a police station.

  He shook his head. Of course it had all happened. The officer, Officer Widebottom, had proven to be competent after all. He must have tracked down the assailants and returned Job’s car to him. Job would have to thank him—and he would have to stop thinking of him as Widebottom. At that, he rushed to the windows and peeped in, taking in the cracked leather interior. A loud creak answered as he swung the door open. Everything was just as he had left it. Even the old tape deck was still in place. A deep breath of relief escaped his lungs. Every tight knot, every ache in his body melted away. Feeling more alive than he had in months, Job started for the apartment. My wife, he could hear himself saying, yesterday’s matter has been resolved.

  But when he reached the steps to the building he froze. There was one thing he had forgotten. He swallowed, turning slowly to face his car once more. Feeling the cold snow rush past his ankles, up his thighs, he crouched to the ground and slipped his hand into his secret place under the driver’s seat. Nothing. He gulped deeply and felt again, pushing farther. Surely there has been a mistake, he told himself. Still nothing. It is here, he insisted. But after searching all the seats, he was finally forced to give up. Won-der-ful! he thought as the horror began to set in. Of all the things, his plastic bag with his scrubs and nametag had to be missing.

  Kneeling before the old car, he whispered a prayer: “Take the car, but please do not take the bag.” One last time, he splayed his hands and reached as far as he could under the seats in search of the bag. But his hands only met the cold metal surface of the seat rails. Someone knew his secret. But perhaps it is only this Officer Peete! Perhaps he had swept the car for the drugs that he had accused Job of taking, and after finding nothing, he had sheepishly returned Job’s vehicle to him. Yes, that’s it. As he made his way to the apartment, Job found himself smiling.

  Old Mrs. Janik glared at him from her porch, the only witness to his frantic search. Still wrapped in her bathrobe, with a shawl drawn across her shoulders, her curlers half-undone, she looked like a madwoman. Job shuddered, wondering yet again how someone with his father’s name could have ever ended up in such a place with such people. Only in America.

  “I wouldn’t trust them. They’re criminals. And prostitutes. All of them. Don’t believe a word they say,” s
he called out to him.

  Nodding, he called back, “Yes, that’s right,” as he hurried to his building.

  Mrs. Janik hobbled down the steps, cut across the snow, and blocked his path. “Oh, you think I’m crazy, but I’m telling you, that wife of yours is a fool dealing with those types. They’re corrupting her. You’re good folks. Not like them,” she said. “My folks were immigrant types, like you. Nobody gave us what we have. We worked for it. We didn’t take no handouts. Not like them.”

  “Not like them,” Job repeated her words. He sighed, giving in, and settled his lips into a patronizing smile. “Not like whom, Mrs. Janik?”

  “I waited right there on my stoop until I saw you pull up, because I knew they were up to no good. Niggers, that’s what they are.”

  Job jerked at the sound of the word. She had said that. The old madwoman had said that. Unable to find the words to respond to her, once more he hastily started for the building.

  Only she followed. “Trouble. Every one of them. I don’t blame her. She’s not been in this country long enough to know like you and me.”

  She is speaking of them, not me. Bright, flashing camera bulbs flickered in his eyes. A cold, clinical glare hardened on Job’s features. Officer Peete’s voice boomed above the clicking camera shutters. Black like you. “No,” Job protested. “Not like them.”

  “That’s right,” Mrs. Janik said, her voice filling with gusto. “It’s them and the Mexicans. Prostitutes. Drug dealers. Rapists. But you, you’re not like them. You’re like me. We’re good people. Good immigrant stock.”

  “Yes,” he said slowly, sadly. Because that was not him. That could never be him.

  All he could hear was the sound of those words, echoing in his ears as he took the stairs two at a time. Black like you. Not like them. At the top of the landing, he found his apartment door unlocked. He would have to warn Ifi to lock the doors at all times. Because of them. He yanked the door open and thrust it closed behind him, unknowingly putting the door between him and Mrs. Janik.