“Nigeria.”
“I could tell you wasn’t from here. You sure is pretty. That your baby? He’ll sleep through anything, huh? Like my nephew, Jamal.”
“Jamal?”
“Slept through anything. You should try my barbecue. It’s that good, and I don’t mean to brag.” He talked nonstop, and Ifi was forced to sway one way and the other, avoiding the bodies that soon filled in around them.
Suddenly, a door swung open, and in walked Mary. She had indulged in her celebration a little too much. Her watering eyes slanted under the firm hold of her slicked-back bun. Wandering children, mouths pink with Popsicle juice, were snatched into her clumsy embrace. “You’re gonna be bigger than your aunt tomorrow,” she said. This was not true. At nearly six feet in height, Mary was the tallest woman in the room, perhaps the tallest person Ifi had ever known. Why have I never noticed this? Ifi thought. All those times she had gazed out the window with Mrs. Janik, following Mary’s movements, reaching unfounded conclusions about her.
Mary fumbled her way to Ifi, gushing and throwing her into an awkward hug. “Jamal’s been out of trouble just like I said, didn’t I? He was just messing with the wrong boys. Stupid boys he’s too young to hang with anyway.”
Ifi nodded. Then she handed the toolbox to Mary. Mary grasped the box, then clumsily dropped it at her side and leaned over the stroller, cooing and ahhing over the boy. “Can sleep through a hailstorm, huh?”
Ifi bobbed her head delicately, gazing at the boy’s closed eyes and his vibrating chest. “We must go.”
“Come on, you don’t want to go yet.”
Ifi looked about the room at the swinging bodies. With a heavy heart, she thought, This is what it is like to be surrounded by your own people. She imagined her cousins all gathered on the front stoop, swatting away mosquitoes, listening to the sounds of the cracking church megaphones, the clucking chickens and roosters, the vendors in the streets, a sound that swelled with life. She missed them terribly.
“It’s my birthday party,” Mary said, following her eyes. “Stay awhile longer. Be my guest.”
“Happy birthday,” Ifi said.
Someone produced a Dixie cup with warm, tasteless beer, and Ifi was so thirsty and self-conscious that she forgot that she was nursing and sipped from the cup until it was gone, then someone placed another cup in her hand. Most of the afternoon was spent tramping from group to group at Mary’s side as they laughed loudly at jokes, as they mused about years past, the relatives who were too far away to make it, and the plans for the rest of the week. Each time, the crowds clustered around the stroller, smiling at her son. Ifi pretended that the brown faces surrounding her belonged to her relatives and neighbors in Nigeria.
Strangely, it was as if the boy felt the same. Anytime Ifi peered into the carriage, she expected to see his red, bawling face, but the energy and life of the room filled him with peace. He must believe he is among family, Ifi thought.
Eventually, Ifi began to feel the effects of the beer. Before she knew it, she had lost Mary and all sense of time. Although it was too loud with the music playing, a television was on in a back room, surrounded by a collection of balding men and older women shrunken under teased wigs. Ifi felt warm with the life of the room, the generous smiles, the compliments, so much so that when she found an empty place on the couch and said “Good afternoon” to the elders, she was astonished to feel the harshness of their scrutiny—bold, direct glares.
Now is the time to go, Ifi thought. She had officially worn out her welcome. Ifi wheeled the stroller out of the room. But the house was a maze of leaning bodies clutching paper plates and plastic cups. Blurred oversized lips, hips, and feet flung into the darkened hallways. The stroller slipped away from Ifi, clipping toes, jarring the angleless hips. Apologies escaped her lips and drowned into the cacophonous swirl of sounds. Hot and out of breath, Ifi groaned as the boy began to cry, a wild, feverish pitch that was lost in the harshness of the new music. Counter to the music’s melody, he jerked and twisted. Sick with the heat and the beer, Ifi limped through airless rooms until she was boldly thrust into the light of a kitchen.
Women in oversized tops, spandex leggings, and wedge heels cluttered the room. One or two babies peered through the fans of their mothers’ glossy weaves. Each of the women drank warm red Kool-Aid from Styrofoam cups. Opening the spigot on the cooler, Ifi filled a cup and drained it. Panting, she asked for the toilet. The boy was hungry, and he needed to be fed.
The women sent an assembly of frozen stares her way. Ifi mopped the sweat collecting around her brow and glanced into the stroller in confusion. He was sound asleep.
“You Mary’s friend,” one of the women said.
“Yes.”
“You from Africa?” She flung a baby from one hip to the other. He clutched a strand of her hair in his little fist, and she swatted it free without losing eye contact.
“Yes,” Ifi said, “from Nigeria.”
“I know someone from Africa.” Another, softer in the face, slightly younger. She threw out a strange-sounding name, asked did Ifi know her.
“No, dummy,” the first woman said, “Candis is from Jamaica. That’s another continent altogether. Read a book.”
Thoroughly chastised, the younger girl hung her head. “Sound just like her.”
“So how long you been in America?” the first woman asked.
“Five months’ time.”
“Dang.” The younger girl. “So why you come here?”
How to answer such a question? Should she tell her about her plans to be a nurse, to work in her husband’s hospital, to raise her boy, to send him to the best schools? Knowing the facts of their present life, it all sounded foolish, like some fairy tale. Ifi searched for a face that would understand. These women would never grasp her world. With the simplest and most complicated response of all, she said, “To join my husband.”
“What he do?”
Again, Ifi struggled to answer. His late nights, the evening homecomings strong with the scent of animal on his body. She lied. “He is a doctor.”
They’ve heard enough of me, haven’t they? Ifi thought. Now it was her turn to ask a question. But their questions continued, and Ifi realized that they had never meant to converse with her at all. They had only meant to cross-examine her. And if her answers didn’t meet their expectations, they would simply prod and force more questions on her. Why must Americans, even the black Americans, ask after the most intimate details of one’s life without shame? Ifi thought. Perhaps we are not so alike after all.
“How you join him here? You met in Africa, right?”
“No, well, yes. We met immediately before we married.”
“So wait, you mean like an arranged marriage?” the first woman asked.
“Yes,” Ifi said in relief. “We met in Nigeria, married, then I joined him here.”
“I don’t know how you could do it. I wouldn’t let nobody sell me like that.”
“Sell? What do you mean sell?” Ifi frowned. They had misunderstood.
“I’m just saying. I’m glad that don’t happen here. How can you stand it? Being treated like a man’s property? If my man even looks at me the wrong way, I have no problem telling him where to go.”
A chorus of agreement followed, women tripping over one another’s voices to add their horror and disgust at such an arrangement.
A boy entered the kitchen, headed straight to the fridge, and rifled through it until he found a bottle of mustard.
“I just couldn’t. In America, people are free. American women wouldn’t stand for that mess.”
“I am no man’s property,” Ifi said in anger. “I have come from my own free will.”
“I mean, I guess I don’t blame you. It’s a better life here, right?”
Again, Ifi was stunned. “What do you mean ‘better life’?”
“You get to live in a house and everything. You get to wear clothes.”
“We live in houses in Africa,” Ifi said, i
mitating the woman’s voice. She slammed the half-drunk cup of Kool-Aid on the countertop. It rose to the top and left a pink ring on the counter.
Ifi pushed the stroller past the group into an empty hallway, fuming. Job had warned her not to trust them. He was right. It was time to go home.
“They don’t mean nothing.” The voice belonged to Jamal. He met her eyes, grinning. His eyes pulled and flattened in the same slant as Mary’s. “You probably the first African they ever talk to.”
“Where is Mary?” Ifi asked.
“Somewhere,” he said with a roll of his eyes, “probably bossing someone around.” He smiled. “She my aunty, but she think she my mama.”
“Oh?”
“Since my dad went away, feels like she has to make up for everything.”
For the first time in a long time, Ifi spoke of her own mother. “My aunty raised me too,” she said. “My mother died. My father died. I was too young.” Ifi paused. Except for a faded wedding photo, she did not know her mother’s looks. In her mind, her mother had taken Aunty’s shape and Aunty’s voice. Thinking of the two women, she felt pain and quickly diverted the conversation. “Your aunty sounds like my aunty.”
“That letter, was that your aunty in Africa?”
“Yes.”
Ifi remembered the letter with her shaky penmanship, the tears. She spoke sharply. “You want to know what made me cry that day?”
“None of my business,” Jamal said with a shrug. “Just wanted to know where the letter with all them stamps come from.”
“But you can see where it comes from right on the envelope.”
“Yeah.”
“So then you are asking me a question you already know the answer to.”
“I guess.”
“Is that not silly of you?”
“I guess.”
“So, tell me, boy, what is it that you want to know?” When he didn’t answer, she continued. “You want to know what was in the letter that made me cry that day. Well, I will tell you. Nothing at all. Nothing.”
Jamal was silent. He wiggled his toes in shoes that were too large for his feet.
“I brought your box to Mary.”
“Okay.”
“So you have no reason to come back to my home.”
“I didn’t mean no trouble.”
“You will not break in anymore or knock on my door to impress your friends.”
“No,” he said, “it wasn’t them. They don’t know nothing about it.”
“Then to steal from me?”
“No, you don’t have nothing I need.” His voice was sharp. “Just forget it.” Jamal turned to walk away.
“Wait, wait,” Ifi said. Perhaps she had been too harsh. Anyway, she was alone, and suddenly the walls in the house felt too large, the music too loud, the voices too jeering. Simply put, she needed a friend. “Please. Don’t leave. I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m just angry with these women. And tired.” And drunk, she admitted to herself. “No one can make me do anything I don’t want to do,” she said indignantly, thinking again of the women in the kitchen. “I am here, after all. Even he could not stop me,” she said of Job. She peered down at the stroller, at the sleeping baby.
“So why you come to America, then, if nobody made you come, like they say?”
Ifi knew he was referring to the letter in her own shaky hand. “First, you tell me why you came in my home and fixed the crib.”
Jamal paused, looked around. He smiled his soft smile. “My daddy. He told me to. My aunty told him about the trouble with your husband—always in somebody’s business—so he said, ‘Make it right.’ So I come to your house to say sorry with my aunty. She thinks it was cause of her, but it wasn’t. I did it ’cause I know my daddy wanted me to. Then I come to fix your crib. Then I come to see what the baby look like. And that’s all. That’s the whole story. Now, you tell me why you come to America if nobody made you. I never been anywhere but here my whole life.”
“How old are you?”
“Almost fourteen.”
“Then you’re only a boy,” Ifi said. “You have time.”
“You think so? Hope so. I hate it here. I hate the way it smells. I hate the busted cars. I hate the trains at night. I hate the white people staring at me all the time. Don’t know why anyone would want to come here.”
Ifi was amused. She grinned. “Have you not heard of the American Dream?”
A loud crack, perhaps lightning, like a revolver’s report. The music halted, and Ifi heard the sounds of confused voices shouting at one another. Jamal ducked around the hallway and turned back to her, groaning. “It’s the police.”
Two stalwart officers in snug-fitting uniforms balanced in the doorway, their hands clutched at their waists. They were speaking to the chef, who made animated gestures with his hands. His words climbed atop one another. His gesturing arms grew bigger and bigger. He was drunk, and Ifi knew immediately that it would go badly. Someone will die tonight, she thought in fear. Mary came up behind the chef. She accused the officers of looking for trouble, and the officers accused her of being drunk. Neither side was willing to admit guilt. And the whole time they were yelling at one another, and the sounds were getting louder, and they were moving farther away from the opening of the doorway and into the interior of the room.
Another crack, and the officer’s baton crunched over the chef’s head a second time.
The chef crumpled to his knees in front of them. “Now why’d you have to do that?” he asked. Then he was out.
Seconds passed in silence as the blackened beads of each eye shined on the officers in horror. An elder dragged her cane into the room, scratching the scuffed hardwood floor, one of the severe-looking old women from the TV room. When she was just inches from the officer’s face, she lifted the cane and dropped it on his head. It thudded loudly against the carton thing that was his hat. Everyone laughed at the officer, an eruption of cheers and jeers. He bent to retrieve his cap. The music began again, pulsing, indignant. And the baby joined in with the crowd, wailing, shouting, hollering his protest.
“Turn that off!” one of the officers shouted. If they hadn’t heard him, he made sure, clapping a pair of handcuffs on the old woman first, then the chef.
Everyone howled and shouted at the officers as they backed out of the room with the two captives. The officers shouted for no one to leave. They wanted to know the owners of the disorderly house. They said everyone would be cited. They were calling backup. By then the crowd had begun to thin, forgetting their protests. And the baby was spitting and shrieking, clawing the air.
“There’s a back door.” Jamal took Ifi’s shaking hand and led her through a series of hallways and down a bank of stairs until she was facing a short door at the top of a steep set of stairs. Ifi pressed the boy to her chest and climbed the stairs. Jamal carried the stroller up after them. At the top, he dropped the stroller at her feet. Then he took off at a full sprint in the other direction. So red and angry, the baby’s breath came in furious gulps.
Dusk was just beginning to settle. Ifi pushed the stroller up the backside of the street; she was surprised by how it appeared from a different angle. A graveled alleyway, barking dogs, and giant rusted dumpsters lined the street. Lights were on in each of the old apartment buildings. Screened doors swung open. Faces pressed into windows, taking in the shouts of the old woman as the officer dragged her to his cruiser.
“Arrest me, officer,” she shouted. “I did it in the fifties. I did it in the sixties. I got a record. I’m trouble. Arrest me, officer.”
Ifi knelt to the baby. “Biko,” please, she said. “Stop this crying.” She lifted him out of the carriage, but he only raged on. Ifi placed him back in the stroller. A shake rose through her, and she vomited in the snow. Spit foamed at her mouth.
As she pushed the stroller in a jagged line, Ifi’s hands trembled uncontrollably—until someone came from behind and pushed the stroller away from her. An officer or criminal were one and the same
to her in the encroaching night. Ifi spun and punched with all her might at the darkened figure, until she heard Job’s quivering voice speaking to her in Igbo. Never in her life had she felt so much relief to see her dear husband. Never in her life had she felt so protected. As he pushed the stroller toward their apartment, she followed, and the words finally began to come.
“They took her,” Ifi said. “They took the old lady. An old lady. A lady old enough to be your grandmother, sef. What kind of man arrests an old lady? Take the young boy instead. Not the old lady.” In America, what happens to people who are jailed? she wondered. “Why did they speak to police like that? Why did they not listen? What is wrong?” She struggled for a way to justify what she had just witnessed, but the questions choked her. Jamal, where is he now? Where has the boy gone? All the good things he’d done would mean nothing if he was arrested. He would find himself in prison with his father when the police caught up with him.
As they crossed from the back of the street to the front face of their building, a pool of cruiser lights swirled in the street. A siren wailed. In the darkness, shadows flickered in and out of the headlights as figures dashed through the street. A light shined on Ifi and Job’s faces, an officer.
Job smiled and bowed up and down, deeply, so low that his shirttail untucked and his naked backside bore witness to the cold. In choppy, broken English, he spoke like a man whose mouth was unfamiliar with English sounds, though he had been speaking English his entire life. “Me so-rry, Off-ee-sar.”
What is he doing? Ifi thought. Why doesn’t he claim to be a doctor?
To her astonishment, the officer nodded them away and stopped another black couple who had been watching the commotion. He yelled at them to go into their house with such ferocity that Ifi stumbled back in alarm. He even threatened to arrest the couple. And then it made sense to Ifi. She suddenly felt stunned at how well Job’s performance had worked. In a matter of seconds, they had gone from being two menacing black faces to helpless, and moreover invisible, foreigners.
Mr. and Mrs. Doctor Page 19