“Under my dead body will that thief ever enter my house again. Do you understand?”
“What is wrong with you?”
“What is wrong with me? That boy and his gangster friends nearly killed me and you are asking what is . . . What has happened in your head? Tufia!”
“How can you hate him, eh?” Ifi asked. “He is just a child. You must forgive him.” After a moment, she continued in a whisper, “He came with his aunty and begged your forgiveness. He arranged our crib. Is that not enough?”
“You think I am silly? You are the fool. They’ve done nothing to you, but they will one day. You wait and see.”
“Job,” she said quietly, patting the boy’s back, pushing a cloth across his dripping mouth. “Who took me to hospital? Eh? You don’t know?” she implored. “It was that criminal boy. I say, he has begged for your forgiveness, arranged our crib, and taken me to deliver our first son. You must forgive him!”
As the truth of her words sank in, he struggled to cling to what he had previously held as the facts. “You took the taxicab.”
“Do you know, if that boy had not come when he did, only to arrange the boy’s crib after all, I would not have been able to deliver this boy? Who knows what might have happened? I am, after all, alone in this country.”
“I’m here,” he started to say, but the words ran from him. “Well, what of Gladys and Emeka?”
Silence. Even the boy, in a strange stupor, vibrated against Ifi’s heaving chest. Strange how the stars that had hidden away from Job earlier that night seemed to appear just then. Jagged rooftops cut sharply into the lightening sky, and Job realized that the old houses along his street, each filled with various apartments, were taller than Emeka’s house. But none of the houses belonged to Job.
“This thing will go back to Emeka and Gladys tomorrow. I will buy you a new one,” he said with finality. “And that boy will never enter my house again, you hear?” Still, even as he said the words, he knew the crib would remain. It would be there, blocking the last ounce of free space in the small room, like a stubborn in-law.
CHAPTER 10
LATER THAT AFTERNOON, WHILE JOB WORKED, WHILE THE BOY SLEPT IN HIS crib, Jamal returned. Except for the hum of the fluorescent lightbulb over the stove, the apartment was still. Grainy particles, split by the permanent crack, floated across the mute television screen. Between rushing back and forth to feed the boy, cleaning the living room, and fixing Job’s dinner, Ifi was run ragged.
Her first thought in response to the knocking was that it belonged to Mrs. Janik again. Mrs. Janik had come, twice, to see their son while Job had slept. But each time Ifi had announced herself at the door instead of Job, Mrs. Janik had settled on peering through the crack in the doorway at the boy, who was tied to Ifi’s back, where he bobbed with her heaving shoulders, deep in slumber. Mrs. Janik had never recovered from witnessing Ifi speak to Mary and Jamal. Each time, she refused to come in. Ifi refused to come out. So the two merely traded wary glances at one another through the doorway until Mrs. Janik found some excuse to slink away.
This time, Ifi flung the door open in impatience, intending to shout harsh words at the woman—Do you mean to wake the boy?—but in Mrs. Janik’s place was Jamal. Hands squashed into the pockets of a pair of jeans too large for him, he hunched forward so that his skinny shoulders pushed through a lean sweatshirt that was too small.
Ifi regarded him carefully. “Why bother yourself with knocking when you can simply come and go as you please?” The words that tumbled from her throat surprised her, but Ifi felt, in spite of herself, like she could say anything to this boy, who, after all, was nothing more than a mere child, a tall thirteen or a short fifteen.
“Sorry,” Jamal said shyly. “I won’t do it again.”
“How many times have you broken into this place?”
“Only once,” he said. Then he added, “When he first moved in.” He nodded toward the back room. “But not since then. And anyway, I didn’t take nothing.”
“I see,” Ifi said. She shouldered the door, and for an apprehensive moment, Jamal remained in the hallway. She glared fiercely until he dropped his eyes.
“Can I see the baby?”
“No.”
Jamal nodded. “He don’t want me in there, huh? He still don’t like me.”
“No,” Ifi said again, slowly. “I don’t like you.”
His lean shoulders pinched at his ears in a forced shrug.
“He has every right not to like you. You’re a troublemaker.” And then Ifi launched into a furious lecture, shouting at Jamal, jabbing her fingers into his face. Aunty’s intonations and movements swayed her body. Just once, exactly one week before the day Ifi was to be married to Job, she remembered Aunty speaking to her in such a way. Before that, Aunty had assumed that Ifi cherished the opportunity to marry and move to America. It had all been settled by then, that she would be married to the face marred by the flickering kerosene lamp; that she would be married to the Wal-Mart handbag with the gold chain and the jeans and the sweaters; that she would be Mrs. Doctor. That day, Ifi had been turned away from Aunty, beating dough flat with a large wooden rolling pin. Aunty had stood behind her, slicing raw onions, and the juices from the onions left Ifi’s eyes watery. Aunty must’ve thought Ifi was crying, so she furiously spun her around to face her, yelling about everything and nothing at all.
“A boy such as yourself,” Ifi said, following the sway of Aunty’s large hips, “with many opportunities here in America, and you would rather follow riffraff.”
Just then, the baby’s furious wail climbed over her voice, but Ifi couldn’t stop. “One day you will grow old, and nothing but missed opportunities will await you. You will wish that you had taken every opportunity. If nothing is as you had hoped, at least you will have tried. There is nothing wrong with that now, is there?”
Siren shrieks punctuated Jamal’s nods. “You should get that,” he said.
Ifi began to speak again but changed her mind and raced to the room. From inside his crib, the boy groaned and screeched, flailing blindly in every direction. Ifi grasped him, hoping her warm body would calm him. But it didn’t. Instead, he thrust and kicked in all directions. As she attempted to calm him, she fumed. Jamal joined them. “You see? You woke him, and I spent the whole morning making him sleep. Take him.”
Clumsily, Jamal’s arms rocked back and forth in attempts to contain the boy’s flailing and twisting body. Jamal glared into the boy’s face, and the boy snarled and crowed back.
“You think it’s so easy?” Ifi asked in satisfaction before reclaiming him. “Go in the other room.”
Jamal went. Ifi shut herself in the bathroom, propping a foot against the closed door, just in case. She squatted onto the toilet seat, opened her shirt, undid her wrapper, and nursed the boy until he fell into a fitful sleep punctuated by sudden angry jerks and bends. Ifi placed him back in his crib.
“You shouldn’t lay him like that. It’ll cause SIDS. I read that.” Him again. Jamal arced his lean body just over the crib gate for a good look at the boy. Suddenly, Ifi was reminded of how similar the boy’s movements were to her own son’s, his back coiling. One day, it dawned on her, my son will grow to the size of this boy. She couldn’t imagine such a time. Remembering the pamphlets she had received at the two Lamaze classes Job had skipped sleep to attend, she warily dismissed the fear that growled in the pit of her chest. “Let him sleep.”
After a moment, Jamal pointed to a corner of the room, where a small metal toolbox rested. “That’s mine, forgot it.” He knelt, picked it up, carefully opened it, and showed Ifi its contents before leading the way into the living room.
From the splintered window, they gazed out at the cold, barren street. How empty it seemed. Outside the sky was gray, and the mashed-up snow was tinged brown from the wet earth. A light freezing rain drizzled.
“What’s his name?”
“Victorious . . . Victor.”
“Victorious Victor. I like it.
”
“Only Victor.”
The boy stirred again, and Ifi ushered Jamal to the door, suddenly remembering the crib and the split on the television screen, and Job’s ineffectual rage. When they made it to the door, Ifi paused. “Who taught you to open doors that way?”
“No one.” He paused. “My dad. But he’s different now. Found religion. But I won’t do it again. I promise. Anyway, I just come with these.” He thrust some envelopes to her.
Ifi received the mail, but he didn’t leave. “And?”
He handed another letter to Ifi, a letter in her own shaky handwriting. “I found it, when you had the baby.” The envelope was open. “I didn’t know where it was going.”
She remembered her tears that night, the frustration, the anger and loneliness, and her desire to leave right then. She glanced back at the silent bedroom. Looking at the letter, she was alarmed to find that her feelings had changed once she bore her son. He would do everything he could in America. He would go to the best schools. He would make his family proud. He would do all that she could not do. Ifi crumpled the envelope into her pocket.
“Didn’t think you’d want to send it,” Jamal said.
He was right. After he left, she would tear it into pieces and force it down the garbage disposal. But she did not say this to him. For now, she simply said, “You open letters too.”
“It was an accident.” His words were snuffed into silence. After a moment: “I won’t come back again. Just wanted to see what the baby look like.”
“And what do you think? Does he look like his mother or father?” For this was a thought that had puzzled Ifi since the moment the doctor had produced the baby, wiped clear of her fluids. His puckered lips, slanted eyes, large nose, and misshapen head had gazed back into her face in a type of terror.
“No, he don’t look like anyone at all,” Jamal said.
Honest, Ifi decided. After all, the boy is honest.
“He look like a baby,” he continued. It was decided. The boy belonged to no one.
Most of the letters were addressed to Job, bills no doubt. But there was one letter in an unmistakable long, pale-blue carrier envelope with a multitude of colorful stamps covering its face. Aunty’s tall, looped penmanship filled Ifi’s chest with a strangled cry. She tore the letter open and turned away from Jamal, leaving him standing there until he slipped away unnoticed. The letter was dated from almost two months before:
Dear Ifi,
Soon you will be a proud mother. I will come to bless you and the boy in America. Jesus has blessed you in this life. Who would have thought? An orphan with no one, and now you are a doctor’s wife.
Tears started down Ifi’s face. She looked away. Then she read on.
All my years of sacrifice have paid. You see, Jesus is listening to my prayers. I know that my ways were harsh, but I trained you well to make an obedient wife, an intelligent woman, a suitable doctor’s wife.
Please, do not forget us now that you are in America. Your Aunty is not well, and hospital fees are mounting. Uncle is working hard, but you know that there is no money in Nigeria these days. It shames me to ask Mr. and Mrs. Doctor for money, so I will not, but please do not forget your people, who starved to pay for your school fees and train you to be an excellent wife.
The boy began to cry.
Ifi placed the letter on the table and went back to the bedroom. Only after she returned did Ifi notice Jamal’s forgotten metal box. Shiny metal hammers, pliers, and screwdrivers with hard plastic handles were neatly fitted into the grooves of the container. Carefully, Ifi ran her fingers over each instrument. Her fingers traced the scarred body of a hammer until they reached the mallet that helped Jamal piece together the crib just days before. Hammer in her hand, she stood before the crib. Job had been so furious. It would please him, she realized, if I were to take this hammer to the crib and finish the task that he started and failed. But as she stood there, she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Before Job returned from work, Ifi searched for somewhere to hide the metal box. Ultimately, she settled on the location where it had gone unnoticed for so long, behind the crib’s back legs. During dinner, she still sighed and fretted, worried that he would find the toolbox, and then he would shout and spit and kick at the crib once more.
Job asked Ifi if something was wrong. She seemed strange. She wasn’t humming or singing. The house was silent. She turned on the radio. Carefully, he asked her what she had done all day. She told him she had received a letter from Aunty. Then his words were swallowed into a pit of silence.
After dinner, with the trickling sound of freezing rain outside, they lay on the bed, the sleeping baby between them. Ifi gazed at the boy’s face, looking from Job’s to the baby’s, inspecting for signs of his mother or father, until Job fell asleep. Three hours later, Job woke again for his night shift.
In the morning, Ifi waited for Jamal to return for his toolbox, but he never came. After three days, Ifi surmised that her words might have had an impact on the boy after all. Perhaps he would stop his troublesome ways and go to school. Still, she wondered what to do with the box. Eventually, Job would find it. Eventually, he would ask questions.
That evening, she placed the box outside on the porch, away from their flat, so Jamal could retrieve it on his own. But the next morning, Job returned home from work, lugging the toolbox in with him and wondering where it had come from. Ifi said never mind it. Perhaps it belonged to a neighbor. She told him to put the box back where he found it.
Once he left for work, however, Ifi dragged the box back into the flat, behind the crib. It could have been stolen, she thought in alarm, and then that will be on my head too—like the limp Job left with each day and night as he headed to work. She should never have allowed the boy in the house, but Ifi couldn’t help but gaze at the crib in satisfaction. In spite of Job’s attempts to dismantle it, the crib remained sturdy and unharmed.
After so many months together, it was strange how Job’s injuries could send them sprawling apart and then bring them closer than they had ever been. Just that morning, Ifi had stopped him in the doorway. Darkness still held daylight at bay, and so it was the glisten of his dark eyes on the light that she had held with her gaze as she pressed a pack of ice to his knee. Under her kneading hands, the lumps stubbornly resisted like the scowl on his face. Still, a small wave of delight had roused through her body. Perhaps their time was finally here.
By midday, the freezing drizzle of the last few days had cleared, and sunshine glared through the parting clouds, reflecting brilliantly against the white snow. This tiny break surely must be a sign. Brightness nearly blinded Ifi, and it occurred to her that in a given day, she spent nearly all of her hours indoors—bent over the sink sponging the boy, before the oven slicing okra, in the bathtub, and peering out the window at the empty streets below. Even as a child, during the rainy season, her chores had allowed her opportunities to go outside—to dodge the blood-red crags between the pebbled streets and, in the dry season, to dust the grains of sand against her feet. Ah-ah, will winter last forever in America?
Before setting out for Mary’s house, Ifi bundled herself and placed the sleeping boy in his stroller, talking to herself the whole way, telling herself that she was doing the right thing. After all, Jamal had rushed her to the hospital and put the boy’s crib together, two things that Job couldn’t or wouldn’t do. Once outside, Ifi was overcome by the strong scent of cooking meat and pulsing music. Along both sides of the street, secondhand cars were parked nearly on top of one another. Music blasted from a doublewide stereo tailed by a handful of colorful wires dragging up the stairs and in through the bottom of the door. Ifi jerked the stroller up the three steps. She took a deep breath. Before she had a chance to knock, the door swung open and two giggling teenagers charged out, tripping over a cord. A shout rang through the air as someone called to a voice in another room to reconnect the cables. An explosion of rap music that Ifi couldn’t follow blared through the hall
s.
In spite of the wide-open door and the blaring music, Ifi pressed the doorbell. When no one answered, she tried again and again. It would surely be wrong to simply walk in. After a moment, she decided to set the toolbox by the door. Jamal would find it and know she had returned it to him. Just as Ifi turned, she faced the young couple again, lugging a large cooler up the stairs.
The girl: “What you got?”
“This is for Jamal,” Ifi said, and immediately the boy and girl reached for the toolbox. Ifi stepped in front of it. “This is for Jamal.”
The boy: “He inside.”
The girl: “Yeah.” And just like that, they tumbled through the doors, scraping the cooler along the melting snow on the porch.
Inside, a rush of scents and sounds, pulsating electricity, charged the air. Where to begin? A crowd of elevated bodies—some leaning, some dancing—swallowed the teenagers whole. Harsh chandelier lights were broken apart by colorful streamers and balloons, and the music raged on. A beet-faced man in a tall chef’s hat and apron stalked across the room from the arched kitchen doorway. He made his way to the staircase and disappeared. When he reappeared, the music had changed, a mixture of Teddy Pendergrass, Al Green, and the Supremes. Now the bodies on the scuffed hardwood floor split apart. Scowling teenagers fell to the sides. Older couples replaced the teens’ hard, jerkish moves with soft, stirring hips. Ifi couldn’t help but smile—until a group of grade-school girls rushed past, nearly knocking her over.
“You get back here.” The chef had three of the girls by the backs of their shirts. One escaped. He thrust the two remaining girls at Ifi, and the girls echoed noncommittal apologies before breaking away and sprinting out through the back door. Now the chef scrutinized Ifi. “You one of Mary’s people?” he asked.
“Yes.” Without thinking, she thrust the toolbox at him. “This is for Jamal,” she said. “I’ve come to return it.”
As if he hadn’t heard her, he continued, “Mary’s around here somewhere, celebrating, dancing it up. You only turn thirty once. Where you from?”
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