Mr. and Mrs. Doctor

by Julie Iromuanya

  Once his shift ended, Job dialed Cheryl again. Two other men stood in line behind him, so he huddled with his back to them, covering the mouthpiece. Before she had an opportunity to speak, he said the first words. “You are an American. Talk to him.”

  “Job?”

  “Talk to him,” he said again. “Explain to him.”

  “Who?”

  “Talk to the landlord. My in-law will be here in one week’s time. Explain the misunderstanding. I work hard to pay my bills. Tell the man that it is your debt so he can rent me the apartment.”

  “Right, Job, I’ll walk right in the door and say, ‘Hello, excuse me, sir. My ex-husband that I married illegally for papers twenty years ago wants you to forgive our debt so he can rent your apartment.’”

  “I work hard,” he said.

  “Say what, Job? Say what?”

  “Talk to him like an American, I beg of you.”

  “Like an American. What does that mean? You talk to him like an American. You’re an American too. Because of me. I made you an American.”

  “Hurry up, man,” one of the men behind him growled.

  All Job could think of was standing in the examining room at the police station as they peeled off his clothes. All he could see was the police officer’s flashlight the night of the party. All he could remember was forcing a crooked smile and speaking broken English. All of this in spite of his education, his family name, and his success. A man from Job’s background stood stinking of pig in line with an illiterate Mexican and a famished Somali. “I am not an American,” Job said with ferocity. “I was born an Igbo and I will die an Igbo, no matter where I am, you hear me?”

  “Fine. You’re an Igbo.”

  “You can take your stinking papers back. Just call the man. Tell him what you must.”

  “Don’t talk to me like that,” Cheryl said. “I’m not your slave.”

  “Slave? What slave?”

  “Wasn’t for me, you’da been deported twenty years ago, so don’t you talk to me like that.” All that was left of Cheryl was the dial tone.

  Still, later that night, as Job readied for his shift at the hospital, the phone rang. With the shrieking baby slung on her back, Ifi brought the phone to him. Surprise filled her face. It was the landlord. Again. Job dragged the phone into the bathroom.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this Job Og-ban-ooya?” the landlord’s voice croaked.

  Job stopped himself from correcting the man. “Yes,” he said, feeling a twinge of excitement. “Yes, I am him.”

  “Well, Job, got a call from a lady says she’s your current landlord. Says you’re honest and good and dependable, and there’s a mistake with your credit report.”

  “I work hard,” Job said.

  “As it were, the place is rented. I got one more property left in that building, though. It’s a one bedroom, and I’d be willing to rent that to you.”

  “No, no,” Job said. “I need two bedrooms.”

  The man’s voice shrugged in nonchalance as he said good-bye.

  This is what he told Cheryl the next morning after his shift at the hospital, to which Cheryl replied that she had a plan. “Job, I’ve been thinking,” she said. “I’m going to lose my daddy’s house, and you need one. Both of our names are on the title. Isn’t there something we can do to help each other?”

  “Yes?”

  “I can’t talk now, but let’s meet somewhere.”

  “No, now. Talk now. I am here. You want money? I am Mr. Moneybags, eh? Say what you have to say.”

  “Job, this isn’t a matter that can be discussed over the phone. But I will say this: I will do anything to save this house, and you need one. It only makes sense for us to talk.”

  Job suddenly understood. “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  “No, I am going to work.”

  “Well, we have to talk soon. There isn’t much time. There’s a diner around the corner from where I live. Let’s meet there.” She gave him the address.

  “Fine,” he said tiredly.

  “Sunday.”

  “My in-law will come.”

  “Well, Job, it’s the best I can do.”

  Again, Job marveled at this American woman. He was brought back to the day twenty years earlier when he had arrived with the money and the papers. He had entered into an agreement with her. She took his money and his name. He became an American citizen. Can I trust her? he wondered. She did speak to the landlord on his behalf, even if it was too late. Should I consort with riffraff once more? Emeka would know what to do. Perhaps Job should speak to him. Job paused at the phone only to be reminded of Emeka, back pressed to the snow outside of his house with Job’s money raining around him. Job couldn’t swallow any more of his boasts. Still, in spite of his doubts, Job determined that Emeka would have the proper response. After all, he had been in America far longer than Job, and he had known many more Americans than him. Sullenly, Job agreed. “Sunday.”

  CHAPTER 12

  ON THE DAY OF AUNTY’S ARRIVAL, IFI BURNED A CLUMP OF HER HAIR OFF while relaxing it over the kitchen sink. The boy was to blame—howling, crying, frothing at the mouth until she placed the plastic container of pinkish paste and the wooden stick aside to hold him. She rubbed Vaseline on the burn. Stinking of sulfur, Ifi made her way to the thrift store and reluctantly purchased a wig. The boy, in his stroller, cried the whole way there. Her scalp and neck itched where the wig touched them. The store clerk, an older white woman whose hair was a little too dark to be her own, stood behind Ifi, the woman’s large spectacled eyes peering at the mirrored reflection. Ifi gave the wig a jerk in one direction, adjusting it so the dark curls fell around her face giving her just a hint of bangs, resting the part to the side. “No, dear, like this,” the store clerk said, tugging the wig in the other direction.

  Aunty arrived later that afternoon, fitted like a sausage into a colorful dress of bright prints, her lips thickly coated in red lipstick. Her hair was draped in layers of cloth matching her dress’s print. Suitcases surrounded Aunty. Somewhere among the suitcases, Job clutched a stinking paper sack with the foodstuffs she had managed to finesse through customs.

  Before they embraced, Aunty took a long look at Ifi. One plump finger darted out and tugged Ifi’s wig hard in the other direction, the direction Ifi had her wig in to begin with.

  Aunty ambled through the narrow entryway, her neck craned, her eyes upturned. Ifi waited expectantly, but Aunty said nothing of the creaking floors, the holes in the walls. A cockroach boldly marched into the entryway and nodded his greeting to her, but Aunty only widened her step. When Ifi had the chance, she squished the roach under the heel of her foot.

  In shame, she could only think of the hours she had spent at Aunty’s home in Port Harcourt, sweeping the sand and scrubbing the rust buildup along the walkway where the water discharged during the rainy season. Many times, Aunty would purse her lips and send Ifi back a second, sometimes a third time because she had tracked the grainy pebbles in on the bottoms of her feet. “You have not finished,” she would say, pointing a red, lacquered fingernail at Ifi’s small, red footprints on the tile floors. Yet here, now, Aunty said nothing at all.

  It was a given that Aunty would visit for several months, but because Job worked the night shift at the hospital, they decided to give Aunty the bedroom and sleep on the living room couch in shifts; nonetheless, when Aunty heard of this, she was insulted. “American girl, Mrs. Doctor, are you so big that you cannot share a bed with your da?” she asked. “Your da that wiped nshi from your ass?” This was untrue. In fact it was Ifi, at eleven, wiping the bottoms of Aunty’s new babies when each was born.

  Eventually, they must attend to the real business. Ifi cringed and braced. Job leaned heavily against the kitchen wall. They were waiting, waiting for the eyes to burst, waiting for the mouth to rip, for the saliva, mucous, and breast milk to spray, waiting for invisible fingernails to scratch furiously. Ifi’s breasts and arms were lined with scars
from the boy’s outrages. Although she attempted, frequently, to clip his fingernails when he was asleep, he had won nearly every fight. For now, Ifi prayed as fervently as she ever had for the boy not to disgrace her.

  Forcefully, Aunty unraveled the boy from Ifi’s back, where he was secured by her wrapper. For once, the boy’s eyes were creased shut. At a plump four months, his cheeks were puffed out in sleep. She scraped her fingernails over the rectangular bald patch on the back of his head.

  “He is sleeping, Aunty,” Ifi said.

  Aunty swatted Ifi’s hands away and roughly bounced him back and forth. His eyes were still closed. “What is wrong with this boy?” Aunty asked. She turned him around and smacked his back hard, as if freeing food from his chest.

  “Aunty,” Job said, “let me help you.”

  “He has taken your hair, oh.” Aunty jerked at a tuft of the boy’s hair. “Don’t worry. In America, his hair will improve.”

  Ifi’s fingers slid up to the smarting bald spot under her wig.

  Aunty jerked his toes. Still the boy slept. Ifi and Job exchanged a glance and finally began to step back. Suddenly, the volcano erupted. Fluids spewed from his crimson face directly onto Aunty’s dress. He flung his head, arched his back, scratched furiously. Aunty nearly dropped him. “Chineke!” she hollered.

  Ifi and Job simultaneously stepped forward, arms out. Still holding the boy, Aunty turned away. He twisted from her. The button holding his onesie together unsnapped, and his diaper fell away, swollen with urine. His flabby brown thighs were prickled. In all the chaos, Aunty couldn’t help but to pull him back a few inches to inspect his naked lower half. “Ehe!” she said in triumph.

  Just like that, the boy let a full-bodied arc of urine spray her.

  “A-ah! What is this?” Aunty said, but she continued to shield the boy from Ifi and Job. “Bring me a bottle,” she said. “Have you not fed this boy today?”

  “Aunty, he is tired,” Ifi explained.

  “Bring me a bottle,” Aunty said again.

  “He will be like this until he sleeps,” Ifi said.

  Job was caught between wife and in-law.

  He reluctantly heated a bottle of milk for the boy under the running tap. Aunty complained that the bottle wasn’t warm enough, but took it anyway. “You see?” she said. “You see why the boy cries.”

  For his act of betrayal, Ifi refused to look at Job the remainder of the day. She wanted nothing more than to announce to Aunty that Job was not really a doctor. Because of this, he was onye ohi, a thief, a crook. He had lied to her, to everyone, and he continued to lie to his own family. Their very marriage, arranged so meticulously by Aunty, was a sham. But to share this with Aunty would ruin the visit and infuriate her. In her anger, Aunty would shout Job’s failures through the streets.

  To the boy, who relaxed into calm when the bottle was in his mouth, Ifi was cold. Later that day, he clawed for her breasts, but she refused, still smarting with rage at the alliance the small boy had already formed with his great aunt. Ifi only relented when Aunty suggested that if she placed her own ample, yet milkless breast in the boy’s mouth, he would be calmed.

  The next day, Aunty and Ifi stood barefoot on the cold kitchen tiles, leaning over the sink, the wig flung on the counter, as Aunty clipped away at Ifi’s hair. “American women do not know anything of hair,” Aunty said. “Mrs. Doctor marries a big man and forgets her Igbo ways.”

  Ifi bit back tears. Why am I crying? She thought of the difficulty of relaxing her hair once every two months on her own, the hassle of sleeping on curlers each night, her achy muscles after attempting to part straight braids on the back of her head with only the aid of a broken hand mirror.

  When the task was finished, Ifi’s hair was cropped so close that in some places she could feel her scalp. The site of the offending burn was an accusatory scaly patch of pink that flaked until Aunty spread a dollop of petroleum jelly over it. Ifi’s eyes were full moons. Her ears stuck out from the sides of her head like they had when she was just a girl. Aunty folded one of Ifi’s ears in her fingers. The two laughed. This was how Ifi wanted to remember herself, before the baby, before Job, before America.

  When she washed off the bits of hair from her neck and shoulders, she felt, in spite of herself, as if a weight had been lifted. She enjoyed the pleasure of the warm water running over her scalp in the shower. It reminded her of the kerosene-heated baths of her childhood. Since the night before her honeymoon, when Aunty had relaxed Ifi’s hair for the first time, Ifi had never washed without a shower cap. She had been relegated to the kitchen sink, pushing her relaxed hair as far under the tap as she could manage. After the rinse, Ifi sat, chin between her knees, as Aunty scratched and moisturized her scalp. Aunty updated Ifi on matters at home that had happened since her last letter.

  “Uncle is sick again,” Aunty said with a sigh. “Medicine is so expensive. Life is hard in Nigeria, Mrs. Doctor.”

  As Aunty attempted to gesture and massage at the same time, Ifi nodded her agreement, her head tugged one way then the other.

  “Your brothers,” Aunty said of Ifi’s cousins. “Such intelligent boys. I am not lying, Mrs. Doctor. The instructors would not allow the boys to sit for their exams last term. Simply because your uncle paid the school fee late.”

  As Aunty moved on to discuss the pains in her ankles and wrists from early-onset arthritis and the mounting costs for her analgesic rubs, Ifi remembered standing, as a little girl, in front of her uncle’s favorite sagging living room couch. Uncle sat back in the chair, his face furious.

  “You say the girl did not wash the rice at all?” he asked Aunty. “On purpose?”

  Aunty stood over Ifi with the offending bowl of rice in her hands, her chest and backside pushed to opposite extremes. With one hand knotting her wrapper together at her chest, she exclaimed, “This child, my brother’s child I am raising, who is ungrateful.”

  “Ungrateful,” Uncle added—with a wink.

  “Spoiled,” Aunty said.

  “Spoiled,” Uncle agreed. “What is this slipper? Bring me a belt.”

  When Aunty returned with a belt, he sent her to bring him a bottle of Heineken to calm his blood pressure. In the time that she made her way to the refrigerator and opened the bottle with the opener—a task she completed with difficulty—he raised his hand to an exaggerated height and slapped the tiled floor in fury. With each jerk, he nodded to Ifi and she let out a tremendous wail. By the time Aunty returned from the kitchen, the deed was done. Ifi scrunched herself into a ball on the floor and continued to wail and beg for mercy on her life.

  “Darling,” Aunty said, gentleness returning to her voice as she looked over Ifi’s writhing figure, “you don’t think you have been too harsh with the girl?”

  “A-ah! I am trying to train her. It is you who will spoil the child,” he said. “Women are too weak.”

  Aunty agreed. “Yes, we are too weak.” And as evidence of the weakness of her sex, Aunty reluctantly apologized. “Ndo. Your uncle is only trying to teach you.” Ifi continued the charade, balking each time Aunty tried to touch her until Aunty returned with a warm bottle of Fanta and presented it to her.

  When Uncle protested, Aunty said, “Darling, you do not want our neighbor to think we are killing my brother’s only child.” It worked every time.

  Now, as Aunty’s coarse fingertips raked over Ifi’s scalp, Ifi laughed to herself, thinking of the way her scalp burned with each touch only to subside into calm, like Aunty, whose harsh ways came from a tender place. Ifi realized that Aunty had known of their charade all along. Perhaps, she thought to herself, my husband is the same. In his own way, he was a soft man.

  Patches of snow clumped the brown earth, but in spite of this and the cold, the sun shone brightly overhead. Mrs. Janik arrived with a basket of stale rye bread, and, in her choppy, suspicious manner, inquired after Aunty’s trip, fondled the baby, and spent the greater part of the morning ignoring Ifi. By afternoon, Mrs. Janik had gone. After a bi
te of rye bread nearly chipped Aunty’s tooth, she hissed over the inferiority of American food before launching it across the kitchen at the trash can. With a metallic clunk it landed in two pieces. As Aunty started a large boiling pot of stew, Ifi retrieved the two pieces, haughtily carried them outside to the large, metal, rubbish bin, and neatly placed the pieces atop the lid, where Mrs. Janik would surely see the bread.

  Across the street, Jamal was sitting on the porch alongside two similarly sized boys, wringing his hands at his waist. When he saw Ifi, he leapt down the stairs and crossed the street. Before she could turn away, he was at her side, stopping only to collect the mail from the box. He thrust the letters into her hands.

  “Is that her?” he asked breathlessly. “All the way from Africa?”

  “Yes,” Ifi said carefully. Job would be home soon, and she’d had enough of their fights. Now that Aunty was here, she felt a bit more whole, like the fragments of her new life in America were finally coming together into one. How strange that the past and the present came together in such a place, a cold, snowy America. Yet with all the pieces coming together, Ifi still yearned, more than ever, to return to her real home.

  “I saw her yesterday,” he said. “She was wearing a big, colorful hair tie, like my people in the south.” In response to Ifi’s bewildered frown, he continued. “They from the Gullah. They talk and dress so different from anybody up here. That’s what Mary says. She says they look African or Caribbean. They even dance the same. It all looks the same.”

  “Oh.” Ifi was reminded of the women in the kitchen at Mary’s party, the snideness of their interrogations and accusations about Africa. “You should tell the women in your family about this.”