Mr. and Mrs. Doctor

by Julie Iromuanya

  If they didn’t do well in school: Victor, your brother, he excelled in his studies.

  After soccer practice: Victor, your brother, he could’ve played for the Super Eagles.

  When it came time for university: Victor, your brother, he would have been a doctor.

  But now, how to put things on the right course? What would Emeka do? What would Samuel do? What would his father do? It’s supposed to be easier here, he thought. In this America. Everything is supposed to fall into place. Opportunity is a ripe melon swinging from a tree. Wasn’t that what they had always told him when he was growing up—his father, the boys at school, his mother? A knock on the tree, and opportunity would fall into your hands and split open. No effort. You would take its seeds, its juice, its marrow, and eat as you pleased. Not this.

  He must set things right. He must walk over, turn off the music, and tell Cheryl to leave. That is what Ifi is waiting for, he thought. She was waiting for him to be the man and handle this. He did that. He walked over and pulled the plug on the player. The music halted. Cheryl stopped dancing, arms midswing.

  “You bastard,” she said. Purpler than he’d ever seen her, even at the height of climax, she was out of breath. Cheryl took his record player, not that fake digital shit, and slammed it to the floor. The translucent lid popped off and cracked in three places. Fela rolled out to the middle of the floor and whirred before landing flatly. The rest of the player—the handle, the needle, all of it—split into pieces all across the floor. It was an ugly, heavy sound. His record player, broken to pieces. Fela scratched.

  In three steps, Job was on her. She glared into his face, ready, but not really. He picked her up by the shoulders.

  Ifi gasped. “Job!” she said.

  There wasn’t time enough for Cheryl to react before he’d pushed her out the door and onto the stoop. All he heard was her sopping-wet cry as he bolted the door. Three locks.

  A pause. A breath.

  He reached for Ifi’s hand. His hand lingered for a moment before she accepted it. They could move forward as one.

  Each of the locks came undone. Three locks.

  Cheryl stood there, the keys shaking in her trembling fingers. She kicked the door open, placed her hands on her hips, and glared at Job. “Excuse me,” she said, her voice wavering. “I’m not going anywhere, okay? This is my house too. This is mine.”

  “Go before we call the police.” Ifi rose to the center of the room. She stood face to face with Cheryl with the tough, stubborn look Job had grown used to seeing on his mother, his sisters, his aunts. He remained behind her and allowed them to have it out. “You get out of here, you crazy woman. Out of my house,” Ifi said.

  Cheryl stammered. Her voice trembled and warbled. “B-but, that ain’t fair!” Her gaze implored, full of tears. For a moment, it was almost as if she was begging Ifi. “What he’s doing, it ain’t fair. It ain’t fair.” Composure finally came to her. “I ain’t going anywhere. This is my house too. I own it. Job owns it. We both own it.” She cut through the room and picked up a worn leather handbag next to the dining room table. Sure enough, there was the deed to the house. She held it up triumphantly.

  For the second time that day, Ifi looked at Job with that look, a look that said, What have you done?

  “You can’t kick me out of my house,” Cheryl said. “I’m your ex-wife. This is our house.” She glared at Ifi, the look of a child who has stolen bubblegum. “Did you know that? Your ol’ man here. Me and him were married. Before you were ever even in the picture. And you wouldn’t be here. And him neither. If it wasn’t for me.” She looked to Job. “Don’t think for a second that I still love you,” she said. “It’s business. It’s all business. It’s papers.” There was a familiar ring to it, like the day they met.

  “You refuse to go?” Ifi seemed truly confused.

  But Cheryl didn’t look at Ifi. Instead, she forced her glare on him, a plaintive expression that said, Don’t make me. “Job, you fight me on this, I’ll call the cops. They’ll come get you. You know it.”

  It was true. They’d see his color, they’d hear his accent, and they’d take him away and lock him in a cell. They’ll beat me, he thought. They’ll search my body. A ring began in Job’s ears as the flashing camera bulbs blinked in his eyes. Heat filled his face. She’d take him to court, and she’d win everything.

  She was crying again. “You take this house away, I have nothing.” There was penance in her tone, but it couldn’t erase what they’d all acknowledged. All of what she said was true. They would take him away. They would leave her, the woman, the white American, the house.

  “I’ll have nothing. Can’t you see?” She was sorry. Very sorry. She must have known she had done it all wrong. Job hated her. He could tell that she saw it on his face. She pressed harder. “I’ll have nothing. Nothing.” Actually, she was begging. “No home. No Luther,” she said. “No Victor.”

  At the sound of Victor’s name, something in Ifi broke. Job could see it happening before his eyes. Her face moved, just a piece. The rest of it was still. And then he knew he’d lost her, completely this time. It was over now. He felt sure of it. Suddenly, he hated Cheryl. She had ruined everything. She had ruined his chances at a future. How could he and Ifi grow together? How could they rebuild their future? Victor was never Cheryl’s. She bought him a teddy bear, candy, ice cream. She fixed him apple slices with peanut butter. That was it. The boy didn’t even like the apple slices. He always spat them out when she wasn’t looking. He buried the seeds, said he wanted an apple tree to grow. That was it. That’s not a mother, he thought.

  He advanced on her.

  “Job. No,” Ifi said. A wrinkle rested on her brow as she thought. All of a sudden, she was all action. A roll of electrical tape was on the floor, near the back wall.

  For the first time, Job noticed that the hole in their living room wall was no more. He gawked in surprise. Even the room was tidy, everything put away. From his place by the door, he could see that the dishes were washed and stored in the cabinets. It was as if in his absence their life had been lifted up and set almost right. Almost. Until this, he thought.

  In awe, Job and Cheryl watched as Ifi ran a thick, jagged line of electrical tape down the middle of the hardwood floor, from the front door through the dining room and the kitchen. Solomon’s judgment.

  “It’s all business,” she said.

  He saw his life as Solomon dictated: On one side, a couch, half the cracked television, half the dining room table, half the kitchen; Cheryl on one side, Ifi on the other; Cheryl crouched to the floor, nothing but a soggy towel; Ifi with a hard look on her face, a look so hard that Job knew he’d never be able to penetrate it. Maybe they’d divorce. Maybe they wouldn’t, not in the courts anyway. Instead, Ifi would continue on at the motel and make her half of the mortgage payments. She’d send money home to her cousins. Cheryl would make the other half of the mortgage payments, but she’d always be a little late. Ifi would cook jollof rice and egusi soup on her half of the stove, and Cheryl would boil hot dogs and drink Slim-Fast shakes on the other side. Over one half of the sink, Ifi would straighten her hair with a pressing comb; over the other half, Cheryl would suds hers with strawberry-scented shampoo. A neat stack of cookbooks and newspapers would rest on one side of the dining room table. On the other, a messy stack of detective novels, romance novels, books about traveling the world.

  His face felt hot. His ears were thick. Suddenly, he couldn’t tell the two women apart. He’d reversed their faces and bodies, Cheryl’s bleached face on Ifi’s ashy brown legs. Ifi’s plaited hair wisping around Cheryl’s freckled forehead. This will be my world, he thought in horror. It can’t work. It can’t possibly work.

  “Nonsense,” Job said. All he needed was to undo this, reach over and undo this. The Great Wall of China. The Berlin Wall. It would come down. It must. He began to unstick the tape. But it wouldn’t come up. Not easily, anyway. He marched over the line. A silly line, just tape, he told himself.
In the kitchen, he shifted through drawers, looking for a knife, any knife. A butter knife. Peeling at the tape did no good. It was fixed, hard and fast. On his hands and knees, he worked himself up into a sweat, scraping at the tape, peeling with the bits of his fingernails. Dirt and dust trapped in the floorboards itched his nose, his face leered that closely. He glanced up. It was a long line. I’ll never remove it all. Yet he couldn’t stop.

  A knock. The door. Three sudden sharp pings of the doorbell.

  Through the screen, they all could see him standing there, his round gut set on two spindly legs. Never in his life had Job been so glad to see his dear friend. Emeka.

  October advanced, yet it still felt hot and humid. Out in the bush, it stank of cow dung. Emeka and Job sat in his SUV riding 75. Job had bragged over beers—made it sound more like a silly anecdote, something to laugh over, made it sound like once the night was over, he could go home—and Emeka ate it up. “Crazy women,” Job said, “A-mer-eeka. Nigeria. Alaska. They are all crazy.”

  They were filled with beers and the sight of strippers with bruised thighs. They both had liked one the best, shiny blond hair, lithe movements. Twenty-two at most. Only he couldn’t remember if it was him who liked her or if it was Emeka who liked her. Emeka had a thing for blondes. Said she was Swedish in a laughable mixture of Irish and Australian syllables. Like the rest of the dancers, she was some girl from Seward or North Platte. None of that mattered, though. All he could remember was her look when Emeka introduced them both, an engineer and a doctor. They were sweating. She hung on to them all night, until close. They just kept paying up, charging the night to their MasterCards. At the end of her song, she even slipped them her number. She told them she would blow job their brains in.

  Now she’d gone, and they were singing and laughing out the window, talking about the way her breasts jiggled, taking in the hot night air. Emeka held up the scrap of paper with her number on it. Just about to flick it out the window, Job snatched it from him and stuffed it in his pocket. “No, uh,” he said.

  “She was an ugly elephant with a stinky ass,” Emeka said.

  He’s only angry because she gave me her phone number, Job thought. No way was he letting this go. She had a choice. “She gave it to me,” he said aloud.

  A black sky overhead freckled with stars. Ifi and Cheryl. Job groaned. Would they go on spoiling his night by intruding on his thoughts? What were they doing now, erecting a wall with poles, wrestling, or baking lasagna filled with goat meat and American cheese? He shuddered. No matter what, it looked bad to him. He couldn’t go home. He would go anywhere Emeka took him.

  Emeka had the tight look on his face Job had seen many times before. He was thinking. As he drove, Emeka reached behind his seat and slipped his hand into the back pocket. He pulled out a handkerchief and mopped up the streaks on his face. He tasted something bad and spat out the window.

  Emeka chuckled. “So your two wives have come to you, eh? Your chickens have come home to roost.”

  Job laughed uncomfortably.

  “Think about it, my friend. This is perfect. In Nigeria, I tell you, no one would punish you for this. Only in America. A man can have two wives, split the house equally. And everyone will be happy. Today you service one. Tomorrow you service the other. Equal. They are both happy.” He placed a slippery palm on Job’s shoulder. “You know, this divorce business is only in America. Cheryl is senior wife. Ifi is junior wife. Ifi knows. She is only a traditional woman. You should praise her for agreeing to share.” Again, he laughed hard.

  But that wasn’t what Ifi had in mind when she drew the line on the floor. Was it? he wondered. In a strange way it was funny. Wasn’t it? He could almost imagine it, his obi, a room at the center just for him, the husband, and his two wives in their bedrooms with their children. His parents hadn’t done it that way, but their parents had and their parents before that. Strange how things come full circle, he thought. He couldn’t help but laugh.

  “You are laughing, my friend, but what will you do? Have you learned to please one woman, sef?” Emeka asked.

  “I have taken three at once.” They both knew it was a lie.

  “Oh yes? When was this?”

  “In 1970. After the war. They were traveling dancers for Fela. I was just a boy, yet I was already a man.”

  They pitched forward into the black night, choking with laughter. A fly crushed its wings on the windshield. Emeka squirted water from the wipers. Bits of fly washed away in the water. Emeka chuckled. It is impossible, Job thought. Three women at once? Just a boy? Maybe he’d gone too far with that justification. Still, no matter. They’d been at it all night, laughing, reminiscing over things that had never happened rather than the things that did.

  Job: I wrestled five men at once, beat them all in. They were akatta basketball players, tall as giants.

  Emeka: Donald Trump, that man is asking me to work for him, but me, I have no time for this. I told him, me, I will think it over.

  “And what of you?” Job was still laughing.

  Emeka was not laughing. “What of me?”

  “What would you do?” He was asking about Emeka’s life, and Emeka knew it. What would he have done in such a situation? Job needed a blueprint, though he couldn’t admit it, not to Emeka, not even to himself.

  Emeka’s face grew serious, almost somber. “Whatever makes her happy.”

  “You liar!” Job shouted.

  “It’s true,” Emeka said halfheartedly.

  Job stewed with rage. Emeka always said one thing and did another. He was always on a quest to make a fool of Job so that he could sit around with his family, with Gladys, and laugh at him one more time, so they could all talk about silly Job in his house with two women ruling over him.

  “I know what you would do: You would go to Nigeria and marry another wife. You would forget this nonsense and start over.”

  Emeka laughed again. “You are right, my friend. You know me too well.” He laughed again and dabbed at the corners of his eyes.

  Headlights glowed on the other side of the road, something big, a truck maybe. It blared a horn. They’d crossed over the line. They swerved back over. Emeka had had too much to drink. They both had. Still, Job should probably take over. He laughed. They’d battled this way many times: My friend, you drive like a woman, Job would say one day. On another, Emeka taunted, Come now, my grandmother has faster legs.

  “Pull over,” Job said. “Let me drive before you kill us.”

  Emeka’s laughter caught up to Job’s. He didn’t make any indication that he’d even heard him. His eyes were tight again. Only his lips moved. “Job, my friend. You know, I felt sorry for you only until a day ago.”

  Now Job was not laughing; Emeka was. “I felt sorry for the man who failed at everything he tried. I felt sorry for his simpleness. ‘What a simpleton,’ I have said to myself many times. ‘His plastic bag. His white coat.’” Another laugh, deep and throaty.

  But Job was silent.

  “Come now. This is funny, no?” A glare crossed Emeka’s face, but he still chuckled. His eyes were thin, drunken slits. He was sweating too much for the heat.

  “No.” Job crossed his arms over his chest. “You are not funny. You are drunk and silly. Let me drive before you kill us both.” He’d get Emeka home, then he’d go to a motel for the night. That would be the plan. He could piece everything together tomorrow morning after a night of rest.

  Job waited for the fight, but there was none. Emeka threw up his hands. “Okay. You are right. I’ll pull over.” He drove up ahead and began to pull over onto the shoulder. Another car, another Nebraska truck, streaked past them as they slowed. Another horn blared. The sound rattled the engine. The driver flashed his lights this time.

  Emeka’s brights were on. “Your lights,” Job said.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming.” Emeka didn’t understand, or he refused to pay attention, or he was too drunk for it all. But at least he was finally pulling over.

  He di
dn’t cut the engine off completely. He didn’t get up from his seat. Instead, Emeka left the keys in the ignition. He leaned back, took a deep breath, and chuckled softly to himself. He sang a little: “Zombie o, zombie.” He had a good voice. He could sing backup for King Sunny Adé or Femi. Like Samuel, Emeka was good at everything.

  “And she was playing Fela,” Emeka said with a giggle. “The white woman was dancing to Fela. Why was I not there to witness this? A-mer-eeka!” He glanced at Job through half-closed eyes wet with tears. “But could she dance? That is the question. Did she have the rhythm?”

  “Sadly, no.” Job laughed with Emeka. It felt normal again. It’s early, he reminded himself. There was a saying. How did it go? It’s five o’clock somewhere. He took the long descent down the running board and into the night. He felt smooth. Over his shoulder, he shouted up to Emeka. “Let’s go to your house, my man, and drink whiskey.”

  “You know, my simple friend,” Emeka bellowed out the door to him, still laughing, “I felt sorry for my simpleton friend until I saw his simpleness in my simpleton boy. And then . . .” he looked at Job. His face was suddenly long and still; he almost looked sorry. “And then I looked at my son, my Michael, and I put two and two together.” He’d reached the punchline. He laughed, a hard, guttural sound.

  Job didn’t understand. Not right away. All he saw were the blinding lights of the SUV swerving at him, the passenger door flapping. Job pitched over the side of the shoulder into an embankment. His heart raced. Blood pumped in his ears. It’s impossible, he thought in astonishment. Is this a joke? Like the two of them wrestling in the snow that day. So he laughed with Emeka.