Mr. and Mrs. Doctor

by Julie Iromuanya

  “Come now, it is an American joke.”

  “Oh, yes-yes,” Ifi said back uncertainly. And then she laughed hard and suddenly, imagining bones thick enough to fill up her husband’s round belly. Job, caught up in the sound of her perplexed laughter, joined in.

  Just three hours remained until Job had to leave for his weekend shift at the hospital, so they moved along the various stalls and exhibits in haste, stopping only to pose for pictures in front of a clown, a cutout, and a glittery poster. Victor’s fingers and mouth were sticky purple from cotton candy, and he made the usual menace of himself, stuffing his fingers through the gaps in the fencing to grasp at a swinging tail or ear. Twice they had been warned by one of the bulldog-faced attendants to contain him. On Victor’s third move in the direction of a surly pig, Ifi grasped his sticky palms, only letting go after she had dragged him far from the tent. A row of portapotties was next to the tents, and Job disappeared into one while she and Victor waited outside.

  Facing them was one of the winners of a blue ribbon, the African boy. In one hand, an ice cream cone dripped; in the other, the hand of a girl with her back to them. Tall, with gangly legs, she fanned herself from the heat while flirting with a merchant, a teenage boy. Before Ifi could stop him, Victor scrambled at the boy, swiftly exchanging his dissolving cotton candy for the boy’s ice cream cone. At first, it looked as if the boy would cry or fight or yell.

  Ifi moved to grab Victor’s hand. “What is wrong with you, eh?”

  Another merchant, a grown man dressed head to toe in a striped uniform, admonished, “Hey now, hey now. Brothers shouldn’t fight. Gotta look out for each other.” It was enough to stop the two small boys from getting into a fistfight. The other boy took an uncertain bite at the cotton candy, shrugged his shoulders, and continued to eat without another thought. Victor licked furiously at the dripping cone he had claimed as his.

  Ifi made a move for the cone in his hand. “That is not yours.”

  “Boys,” the man said to Ifi, putting his hands up to stop her. “Listen, don’t sweat the small stuff, huh? They’re only being boys. I fought with my brother too, every chance I could. For no reason at all.”

  By then the girl had turned around. “That’s not his brother,” she said, screwing up her face. “He’s my brother.”

  Only then did Ifi see it, the striking similarity of the two boys with their identical bulbous heads, their wide, flat noses, full lips, and chestnut-brown complexions. Really, the only difference was that the other boy was slightly smaller, perhaps no more than a year younger. Openmouthed for a few moments, she gazed at the boy. “They could be brothers,” she finally said.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” the girl said. “Come on, let’s find Mom and show her your ribbon.” She took the boy’s hand and trotted away with him.

  Just then Job reemerged from the toilet. Halfway through telling Job about the small boy, Ifi abandoned the tale, remembering the confusion that big bones had caused earlier. Instead, they stood in line for a turn at the dunking booth.

  As the new school year approached, Victor spent his afternoons furiously pedaling through the neighborhood streets on his red Big Wheel. Only after dusk began to settle did he traipse home, ragged and damp with sweat, his stomach hissing in hunger. By now, his parents had relented. No longer did his father stand on the porch steps eyeing the neighborhood boys—the Mexican Americans and black Americans who, frankly, didn’t particularly like Victor. In fact, he was the neighborhood boy parents warily eyed as they watered their plants, plucked their weeds, and checked their mailboxes. Postal workers were in the habit of ducking and stepping aside or widening their legs so he could pass through. Trees retreated when he approached. Dogs that once barked without abandon withdrew just as they heard the grinding and swishing of his tires.

  One night, Victor did not return home for dinner. Ifi and Job exchanged glances across the table, but continued slowly swallowing garri. After all, they both remembered the Sudanese boy who had disappeared just months earlier. His mother had called 9-1-1 to report him missing. When he turned up playing basketball on the other side of town, she’d wept openly. Not because she had found her boy, but because the authorities made the boy’s single mother pay the expenses for the fire trucks, ambulance, and police cars; because they charged her for being an abusive mother—after all, what kind of mother doesn’t know where her boy is?; because they raided her home and, seeing that her three small children shared one mattress at night, fined her for negligence. Job and Ifi had agreed then, as they did now, that in Nigeria, there was nothing wrong with a boy being a boy, sef.

  After their slow swallows had digested, Victor still hadn’t turned up. Their minds raced to all the things that could have happened to the boy. Most frightening was the thought of the men they had read about in the newspaper. Yes, they had heard of that sort of thing happening to girls, but a boy? Only in America. Ifi called in late to work, and she and Job staggered through neighborhood after neighborhood, mixing Victor’s name with threats.

  “Victor, boy, you come home at once!”

  “This is your father, Victor! I am not playing games!”

  “I will beat you, oh!”

  When the houses along the streets were nothing more than outlines, their threats were whimpers. “Victor,” his mother pleaded, “I will buy you candy.”

  On the way home, Job and Ifi turned on one another.

  Job said, “You see? Let the boy play in the house in peace!”

  Ifi said, “Why did you buy that foolish toy?”

  Just as they made a final loop around the block, heading for home, a girl hurrying past jostled Job. It wasn’t until they were halfway down the block, shaded by the tilt of trees, that Job looked back, suddenly putting the pieces together. Something about the girl’s lean, something about the whimper in her breath.

  “Hey!” he shouted at her back. “You come here!”

  She stopped short and turned to face them. She was no more than a girl, a teenager, pale wispy bangs dripping around her glasses frames. Suddenly he was struck with the image of a gleaming metal smile, the girl on their porch steps, grinning as she demonstrated an arpeggio on her clarinet not even two weeks before. She had been selling boxes of candy for a trip to band camp. By the time she had left, Job had succumbed to her entreaties, purchasing three boxes of overpriced gummy bears, which Victor had gleefully dissolved in a matter of minutes while Ifi complained that Job should never have opened the door to begin with.

  The girl was shaking, and Ifi was shrieking, “Where is he? What has happened?” But the girl quietly trembled as she gestured up the street.

  Then he was in a full sprint, running as fast as he could. Two blocks from them, he could already make out the frame of the silver Camaro and the glow of headlights bracketing the street. A burning climbed up Job’s sides as he sprinted past the lit windows, the faces of strangers gaping from their porches. He hadn’t the time to think of what could be wrong. He hadn’t the time to even catch his breath. The red Big Wheel, torn into pieces, was in one direction, and in the other, a small crowd had begun to form, leaning over what Job could only guess was his Victor. He pried apart the shoulders and thrust his way into the commotion.

  He let out a sigh of relief. No blood, he thought. The legs are even moving. If Victor’s legs were moving, then he was surely conscious. He was fine. There would be a broken bone that could easily be set and wrapped in a cast. He would hug his arms around his boy, scold him gently, and remind him of the danger in the world.

  “Victor!” he shouted.

  Just the bare whisper of movement in the boy’s chest was the only reply. Perhaps he was in need of CPR.

  “I’m the boy’s father,” he said to whomever would listen.

  “Please, you have to stand back,” someone said. “We called an ambulance. They’re on their way.”

  “No, no,” Job said. “There isn’t enough time.” Five minutes? Ten minutes? Twenty minutes? he wondered. Regardless,
it would be too late.

  He made a move for Victor, but the man restrained him. Then another and another came, each securing Job’s arms behind his back, keeping him from his only child, his only son. “It’ll be okay,” a voice gently whispered. “An ambulance is on the way.”

  “Let me go, you idiots!” Job hurled in fury. “I am a doctor, damnit!”

  They let go, eyebrows raised in surprise. One by one they stepped aside, parting the crowd. Job was close now, so close he could see the trickles of blood coming from Victor’s eyes, nose, and mouth. His legs will be broken, he thought, but those can be reset. His arms too perhaps. But it will be okay. He looked up. He found Ifi among the crowd, shivering, her eyes wide in alarm and fear. He exchanged a glance with her, a glance that said, “It will be fine. Trust in me.” For once, the hard look in her eyes softened, acknowledged, agreed. It will be fine, they said, together.

  After all, his legs were moving. There was the slight murmur that echoed up to Victor’s chest. Job crouched and lifted Victor’s neck toward him. “I am here,” he whispered. He parted Victor’s lips, cleared his mouth so that he could swallow his father’s breath. But there was blood, so much blood, and it would not stop. He turned him on his side. Victor’s legs were trembling. It will be okay. Sirens were sounding in the distance. But they were so far away. Job lifted Victor’s chest off the pavement. A ring of blood marked the concrete.

  I am a doctor, he told himself. I am a doctor.

  The longer Victor was without oxygen the worse it would be, and so he must elevate his head. He must proceed to breathe his life into his only son. He placed his mouth over Victor’s, tasting the blood in his throat. He fixed his fist against his Victor’s chest and pumped as hard as he could. Now, more than ever, he wished for his stethoscope. He wished for the whisper of Victor’s heartbeat.

  But the moving had stopped. There was no more tremble in the legs.

  Job lifted Victor off the concrete, first his shoulders, then his head. He shouted air into his son’s lungs. He beat harder at his chest. And then he felt it, a sudden hard ripple of breath, the starting of the boy’s engine. Soon, I will have my boy, he thought—and the smile, the dull smile, and the pranks, and the unruliness.

  “Let him go.” Someone grabbed Job’s arms.

  Without looking, Job angrily batted at the arms. “I am a doctor,” he said.

  “Doctor, let him go.”

  “I am performing CPR.”

  A pair of arms knocked him back off his feet. A calm whisper in his ear: “Doctor, you did all you could.” Two sets of arms paralyzed him, grinding his face to the concrete until the deafening peal of sirens, the swirl of lights, the glowing haze of headlights was cutting through the night air like a fog. Now the street was filled with neighbors, all whispering among themselves; and there was the girl, standing with her back to a police car, the arms of her mother wound around her as an officer questioned her. And Ifi, her eyes filled with that unmistakable frown of disappointment.

  Above it all, Job could hear the man’s voice: “Doctor, you did all you could.”

  Soon, the ambulance was taking his Victor away, and the men were leading Job to one of the police cars; and Ifi was standing with her back to him, talking to one of the officers; and Job was wailing and angry and hating himself, wishing for his stethoscope, flipping through the channels of his mind, trying to replay every minute, trying to find the moment between the last tremble and the sudden release, realizing that for just one moment, he had his boy’s life in his hands, and he let it slip away.

  CHAPTER 17

  IF ONE APPLIES, THERE IS PAID TIME FOR GRIEVANCE. WHEN AUNTY DIED, IFI thought to apply then; she didn’t. How to explain that her father’s sister—her surrogate mother whom Ifi had hated all those years without even knowing it until her aunty’s one visit to America—had died from a heart attack? Now in Aunty’s place was another woman, half her uncle’s age and half her aunty’s size. From then on, Nigeria was no longer home.

  When the baby girl died inside Ifi’s body, how to explain that a child who had never been born needed proper bereavement, that somewhere inside her, she knew that she would never recover from the pain? She could never have another child.

  The exchange never made sense to her then, as it didn’t now: a penny for every second of pain. With the forms spread out in front of her, Ifi imagined the stacks and stacks of pennies filling the room, rising from the dusty, hardwood floors past the gaping hole in the wall to the ceiling. What can I do with these pennies? she asked herself. She could never spend them, because they would continue to replicate forever, like a cancer. Under the bold heading, REASON, Ifi left the space blank. Her application was denied.

  A night before Job planned to fly to Nigeria alone, to bury their son, Ifi parked the car outside the junkyard where the damaged vehicle that had killed her boy rested. Bats screeched well into the night. It had just rained. Mist salted the air. A high chain-link fence wrapped around the junkyard. It was secured with a rusted padlock.

  Ifi’s mind was a revolving door of blame. Yesterday it was Job’s fault. He bought that foolish Big Wheel. If Victor had never ridden it, he would never have wandered into the street. If they had never moved into that big, ugly house, they would never have lived in such a neighborhood where a boy couldn’t play in the streets without fear. If she had never met Job . . .

  Today it was Ifi. Why didn’t I allow the boy to play in the house? She should have permitted him to be as rough as he pleased. Then he would never have had any reason to be out in the street. He was a boy, sef. Anything he broke in the house could be repaired or replaced. Why was I so insistent on scolding the poor boy for a mere scratch on the wall?

  Why must Job look at her that way with his probing eyes? Why couldn’t he go to work like a normal human being? After all, people lost children every day of the week in every part of the world. Immediately after it had all happened, Ifi returned to the motel. She went about cleaning each room as if nothing had happened. But Job stayed home. He hardly ate a thing these days.

  Until today. That morning, he’d collected himself and acted as if everything was fine. And suddenly it didn’t seem right for him to pick up and move on as Ifi had. Without her realizing it was the case, Job’s pain had been a comfort to her. It was as if everything that had been holding Ifi together began to crumble once she saw Job go about his day. She’d left the house and kept driving, even after she crossed the path of the motel’s flickering lights—until she was here, again, at the junkyard. And now, instead of remaining behind it as she had done for the past few weeks, Ifi found herself mounting the chain-link fence. Tonight she needed to be closer.

  Feeling a rip in her uniform slacks, she scaled the fence. A red gash on her thigh screamed. Puddles rippled beneath her heels. Cars were lined in rows, their broken frames pushed into the mud. A light glowed. The fading outline of a row of buildings some ways out was illuminated. Off in the distance farther still was the highway. Wet tires hissed on the pavement.

  In the newspaper, the article had been exactly one paragraph in length. Victor was unnamed. The first line, which Ifi remembered by heart, read “One boy dead in a vehicle-bicycle accident on the corner of Ash and Leighton.” There was no mention of Victor’s beloved Big Wheel. No mention of his antics. No mention of the light in his eyes. Silence hung between the words on the page. When reporters called the next morning, Ifi and Job refused to comment. In the place of words was a picture of a dented silver car. Missing from the picture were the pieces of Victor’s broken body.

  Dusk shaded the coup’s silver color. Although the license plates had been pried free, Ifi found the car immediately. Among the rows, it was obedient and cowed. At first she stood, simply gazing at the car. Ifi and Job had joked since Victor was born that he had a big head. His thighs were lumpy. He had been a plump baby and chubby for a boy of nearly six. As he had lived his life full of noise, he refused to go out in a whisper: the windshield was shattered where he had be
en flung.

  Ifi meant only to look at the car, to think about Victor’s last few moments pedaling through the streets, probably hollering like a fire truck’s siren. She meant only to run her fingers over the frame, to touch the parts of the vehicle that had felt her son last. Her fingers slid over the car’s surface. Wet with rust and dirt, Ifi brought her palm to her face and touched. The smell of metal and iron was so strong in her nose and throat that she gagged and hacked saliva on the ground. Her heel pressed into the spit. Then, as if by reflex, Ifi’s foot came forward and struck one headlight, then the other. Her fists closed over the hood. Ifi struck again and again until she was haggard and bloody with fury.

  She stepped away to inspect the damage. But for a dent and a few cracks in the headlights, there was none.

  Not more than five feet away, a metal rod was strewn among the debris. A surge of energy lifted Ifi, and she raced to the car, rod in hand. She shattered the windshield and pummeled the hood.

  Then she heard it, a whinnying. The sound stopped and started again. And stopped again. The broken vehicle that had killed her son offered the most immediate shelter, an irony that, even in the moment, Ifi had the wherewithal to recognize. From behind the car, Ifi watched as a teenage boy stepped out into the night. He was stripped from the waist up. His pale skin was wet and luminescent.

  “Listen, asshole,” the boy said after a pause. “I got a gun, so don’t fuck with me.” The boy peered around, knocked on a few cars, then, satisfied with his show of manliness, returned to a busted-out sedan.

  From where she was crouched, Ifi witnessed the rocking of the car. Throaty giggles. The whinnying resumed. He had acted the hero, and here was his reward.

  Safe at last. Ifi stepped out from behind the car.

  Suddenly, the boy returned. Sweat glistened on his shoulders. A large metal bar was raised over his head. It began to come down—on Ifi.

  A girl. “Danny, no! It’s a lady.” Her slim pale shoulders were drowned by the tan shawl draped across them. “What are you doing here?”