SHE SAID, in a similar tone, “The devil is a liar. He wants to start blocking our blessing, he will not succeed,” when Ifemelu’s father lost his job at the federal agency. He was fired for refusing to call his new boss Mummy. He came home earlier than usual, wracked with bitter disbelief, his termination letter in his hand, complaining about the absurdity of a grown man calling a grown woman Mummy because she had decided it was the best way to show her respect. “Twelve years of dedicated labor. It is unconscionable,” he said. Her mother patted his back, told him God would provide another job and, until then, they would manage on her vice-principal salary. He went out job hunting every morning, teeth clenched and tie firmly knotted, and Ifemelu wondered if he just walked into random companies to try his luck, but soon he began to stay at home in a wrapper and singlet, lounging on the shabby sofa near the stereo. “You have not had a morning bath?” her mother asked him one afternoon, when she came back from work looking drained, clutching files to her chest, wet patches under her armpits. Then she added irritably, “If you have to call somebody Mummy to get your salary, you should have done so!”
He said nothing; for a moment, he seemed lost, shrunken and lost. Ifemelu felt sorry for him. She asked him about the book placed facedown on his lap, a familiar-looking book that she knew he had read before. She hoped he would give her one of his long talks about something like the history of China, and she would half listen as always, while cheering him up. But he was in no mood for talk. He shrugged as though to say she could look at the book if she wanted to. Her mother’s words too easily wounded him; he was too alert to her, his ears always pricked up at her voice, his eyes always rested on her. Recently, before he was fired, he had told Ifemelu, “Once I attain my promotion, I will buy your mother something truly memorable,” and when she asked him what, he smiled and said, mysteriously, “It will unveil itself.”
Looking at him as he sat mute on the sofa, she thought how much he looked like what he was, a man full of blanched longings, a middlebrow civil servant who wanted a life different from what he had, who had longed for more education than he was able to get. He talked often of how he could not go to university because he had to find a job to support his siblings, and how people he was cleverer than in secondary school now had doctorates. His was a formal, elevated English. Their house helps hardly understood him but were nevertheless very impressed. Once, their former house help, Jecinta, had come into the kitchen and started clapping quietly, and told Ifemelu, “You should have heard your father’s big word now! O di egwu!” Sometimes Ifemelu imagined him in a classroom in the fifties, an overzealous colonial subject wearing an ill-fitting school uniform of cheap cotton, jostling to impress his missionary teachers. Even his handwriting was mannered, all curves and flourishes, with a uniform elegance that looked like something printed. He had scolded Ifemelu as a child for being recalcitrant, mutinous, intransigent, words that made her little actions seem epic and almost prideworthy. But his mannered English bothered her as she got older, because it was costume, his shield against insecurity. He was haunted by what he did not have—a postgraduate degree, an upper-middle-class life—and so his affected words became his armor. She preferred it when he spoke Igbo; it was the only time he seemed unconscious of his own anxieties.
Losing his job made him quieter, and a thin wall grew between him and the world. He no longer muttered “nation of intractable sycophancy” when the nightly news started on NTA, no longer held long monologues about how Babangida’s government had reduced Nigerians to imprudent idiots, no longer teased her mother. And, most of all, he began to join in the morning prayers. He had never joined before; her mother had once insisted that he do so, before leaving to visit their hometown. “Let us pray and cover the roads with the blood of Jesus,” she had said, and he replied that the roads would be safer, less slippery, if not covered with blood. Which had made her mother frown and Ifemelu laugh and laugh.
At least he still did not go to church. Ifemelu used to come home from church with her mother and find him sitting on the floor in the living room, sifting through his pile of LPs, and singing along to a song on the stereo. He always looked fresh, rested, as though being alone with his music had replenished him. But he hardly played music after he lost his job. They came home to find him at the dining table, bent over loose sheets of paper, writing letters to newspapers and magazines. And Ifemelu knew that, if given another chance, he would call his boss Mummy.
IT WAS a Sunday morning, early, and somebody was banging on the front door. Ifemelu liked Sunday mornings, the slow shifting of time, when she, dressed for church, would sit in the living room with her father while her mother got ready. Sometimes they talked, she and her father, and other times they were silent, a shared and satisfying silence, as they were that morning. From the kitchen, the hum of the refrigerator was the only sound to be heard, until the banging on the door. A rude interruption. Ifemelu opened it and saw the landlord standing there, a round man with bulging, reddened eyes who was said to start his day with a glass of harsh gin. He looked past Ifemelu at her father, and shouted, “It is now three months! I am still waiting for my money!” His voice was familiar to Ifemelu, the brassy shouting that always came from the flats of their neighbors, from somewhere else. But now he was here in their flat, and the scene jarred her, the landlord shouting at their door, and her father turning a steely, silent face to him. They had never owed rent before. They had lived in this flat all her life; it was cramped, the kitchen walls blackened by kerosene fumes, and she was embarrassed when her school friends came to visit, but they had never owed rent.
“A braggart of a man,” her father said after the landlord left, and then he said nothing else. There was nothing else to say. They owed rent.
Her mother appeared, singing and heavily perfumed, her face dry and bright with powder that was one shade too light. She extended a wrist towards Ifemelu’s father, her thin gold bracelet hung unclasped.
“Uju is coming after church to take us to see the house in Dolphin Estate,” her mother said. “Will you follow us?”
“No,” he said shortly, as though Aunty Uju’s new life was a subject he would rather avoid.
“You should come,” she said, but he did not respond, as he carefully snapped the bracelet around her wrist, and told her he had checked the water in her car.
“God is faithful. Look at Uju, to afford a house on The Island!” her mother said happily.
“Mummy, but you know Aunty Uju is not paying one kobo to live there,” Ifemelu said.
Her mother glanced at her. “Did you iron that dress?”
“It doesn’t need ironing.”
“It is rumpled. Ngwa, go and iron it. At least there is light. Or change into something else.”
Ifemelu got up reluctantly. “This dress is not rumpled.”
“Go and iron it. There is no need to show the world that things are hard for us. Ours is not the worst case. Today is Sunday Work with Sister Ibinabo, so hurry up and let’s go.”
SISTER IBINABO WAS powerful, and because she pretended to wear her power lightly, it only made her more so. The pastor, it was said, did whatever she asked him. It was not clear why; some said she had started the church with him, others that she knew a terrible secret from his past, still others that she simply had more spiritual power than he did but could not be pastor because she was a woman. She could prevent pastoral approval of a marriage, if she wanted to. She knew everyone and everything and she seemed to be everywhere at the same time, with her weather-beaten air, as though life had tossed her around for a long time. It was difficult to tell how old she was, whether fifty or sixty, her body wiry, her face closed like a shell. She never laughed but often smiled the thin smile of the pious. The mothers were in reverent awe of her; they brought her small presents, they eagerly handed their daughters to her for Sunday Work. Sister Ibinabo, the savior of young females. She was asked to talk to troubled and troublesome girls. Some mothers asked if their daughters could live with her,
in the flat behind the church. But Ifemelu had always sensed, in Sister Ibinabo, a deep-sown, simmering hostility to young girls. Sister Ibinabo did not like them, she merely watched them and warned them, as though offended by what in them was still fresh and in her was long dried up.
“I saw you wearing tight trousers last Saturday,” Sister Ibinabo said to a girl, Christie, in an exaggerated whisper, low enough to pretend it was a whisper but high enough for everyone to hear. “Everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial. Any girl that wears tight trousers wants to commit the sin of temptation. It is best to avoid it.”
Christie nodded, humble, gracious, carrying her shame.
In the church back room, the two tiny windows did not let in much light, and so the electric bulb was always turned on during the day. Fund-raising envelopes were piled on the table, and next to them was a stack of colored tissue, like fragile cloth. The girls began to organize themselves. Soon, some of them were writing on the envelopes, and others were cutting and curling pieces of tissue, gluing them into flower shapes, and stringing them together to form fluffy garlands. Next Sunday, at a special Thanksgiving service, the garlands would hang around the thick neck of Chief Omenka and the smaller necks of his family members. He had donated two new vans to the church.
“Join that group, Ifemelu,” Sister Ibinabo said.
Ifemelu folded her arms, and as often happened when she was about to say something she knew was better unsaid, the words rushed up her throat. “Why should I make decorations for a thief?”
Sister Ibinabo stared in astonishment. A silence fell. The other girls looked on expectantly.
“What did you say?” Sister Ibinabo asked quietly, offering a chance for Ifemelu to apologize, to put the words back in her mouth. But Ifemelu felt herself unable to stop, her heart thumping, hurtling on a fast-moving path.
“Chief Omenka is a 419 and everybody knows it,” she said. “This church is full of 419 men. Why should we pretend that this hall was not built with dirty money?”
“It is God’s work,” Sister Ibinabo said quietly. “If you cannot do God’s work then you should go. Go.”
Ifemelu hurried out of the room, past the gate, and towards the bus station, knowing that in minutes the story would reach her mother inside the main church building. She had ruined the day. They would have gone to see Aunty Uju’s house and had a nice lunch. Now, her mother would be testy and prickly. She wished she had said nothing. She had, after all, joined in making garlands for other 419 men in the past, men who had special seats in the front row, men who donated cars with the ease of people giving away chewing gum. She had happily attended their receptions, she had eaten rice and meat and coleslaw, food tainted by fraud, and she had eaten knowing this and had not choked, and had not even considered choking. Yet, something had been different today. When Sister Ibinabo was talking to Christie, with that poisonous spite she claimed was religious guidance, Ifemelu had looked at her and suddenly seen something of her own mother. Her mother was a kinder and simpler person, but like Sister Ibinabo, she was a person who denied that things were as they were. A person who had to spread the cloak of religion over her own petty desires. Suddenly, the last thing Ifemelu wanted was to be in that small room full of shadows. It had all seemed benign before, her mother’s faith, all drenched in grace, and suddenly it no longer was. She wished, fleetingly, that her mother was not her mother, and for this she felt not guilt and sadness but a single emotion, a blend of guilt and sadness.
The bus stop was eerily empty, and she imagined all the people who would have been crowded here, now in churches, singing and praying. She waited for the bus, wondering whether to go home or somewhere else to wait for a while. It was best to go home, and face whatever she had to face.
HER MOTHER PULLED her ear, an almost-gentle tug, as though reluctant to cause real pain. She had done that since Ifemelu was a child. “I will beat you!” she would say, when Ifemelu did something wrong, but there was never any beating, only the limp ear pull. Now, she pulled it twice, once and then again to emphasize her words. “The devil is using you. You have to pray about this. Do not judge. Leave the judging to God!”
Her father said, “You must refrain from your natural proclivity towards provocation, Ifemelu. You have singled yourself out at school where you are known for insubordination and I have told you that it has already sullied your singular academic record. There is no need to create a similar pattern in church.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
When Aunty Uju arrived, Ifemelu’s mother told her what had happened. “Go and give that Ifemelu a talking-to. You are the only person she will listen to. Ask her what I did to her that makes her want to embarrass me in the church like this. She insulted Sister Ibinabo! It is like insulting Pastor! Why must this girl be a troublemaker? I have been saying it since, that it would be better if she was a boy, behaving like this.”
“Sister, you know her problem is that she doesn’t always know when to keep her mouth shut. Don’t worry, I will talk to her,” Aunty Uju said, playing her role of pacifier, soothing her cousin’s wife. She had always got along with Ifemelu’s mother, the easy relationship between two people who carefully avoided conversations of any depth. Perhaps Aunty Uju felt gratitude to Ifemelu’s mother for embracing her, accepting her status as the special resident relative. Growing up, Ifemelu did not feel like an only child because of the cousins, aunts, and uncles who lived with them. There were always suitcases and bags in the flat; sometimes a relative or two would sleep on the floor of the living room for weeks. Most were her father’s family, brought to Lagos to learn a trade or go to school or look for a job, so that the people back in the village would not mutter about their brother with only one child who did not want to help raise others. Her father felt an obligation to them, he insisted that everyone be home before eight p.m., made sure there was enough food to go around, and locked his bedroom door even when he went to the bathroom, because any of them could wander in and steal something. But Aunty Uju was different. Too clever to waste away in that backwater, he said. He called her his youngest sister although she was the child of his father’s brother, and he had been more protective, less distant, with her. Whenever he came across Ifemelu and Aunty Uju curled up in bed talking, he would fondly say “You two.” After Aunty Uju left to go to university in Ibadan, he told Ifemelu, almost wistfully, “Uju exerted a calming influence on you.” He seemed to see, in their closeness, proof of his own good choice, as though he had knowingly brought a gift to his family, a buffer between his wife and daughter.
And so, in the bedroom, Aunty Uju told Ifemelu, “You should have just made the garland. I’ve told you that you don’t have to say everything. You have to learn that. You don’t have to say everything.”
“Why can’t Mummy like the things you get from The General without pretending they are from God?”
“Who says they are not from God?” Aunty Uju asked, and made a face, pulling her lips down at the sides. Ifemelu laughed.
According to the family legend, Ifemelu had been a surly three-year-old who screamed if a stranger came close, but the first time she saw Aunty Uju, thirteen and pimply faced, Ifemelu walked over and climbed into her lap and stayed there. She did not know if this had happened, or had merely become true from being told over and over again, a charmed tale of the beginning of their closeness. It was Aunty Uju who sewed Ifemelu’s little-girl dresses and, as Ifemelu got older, they would pore over fashion magazines, choosing styles together. Aunty Uju taught her to mash an avocado and spread it on her face, to dissolve Robb in hot water and place her face over the steam, to dry a pimple with toothpaste. Aunty Uju brought her James Hadley Chase novels wrapped in newspaper to hide the near-naked women on the cover, hot-stretched her hair when she got lice from the neighbors, talked her through her first menstrual period, supplementing her mother’s lecture that was full of biblical quotes about virtue but lacked useful details about cramps and pads. When Ifemelu met Obinze, she told Aunty Uju that
she had met the love of her life, and Aunty Uju told her to let him kiss and touch but not to let him put it inside.
CHAPTER 4
The gods, the hovering deities who gave and took teenage loves, had decided that Obinze would go out with Ginika. Obinze was the new boy, a fine boy even if he was short. He had transferred from the university secondary school in Nsukka, and only days after, everyone knew of the swirling rumors about his mother. She had fought with a man, another professor at Nsukka, a real fight, punching and hitting, and she had won, too, even tearing his clothes, and so she was suspended for two years and had moved to Lagos until she could go back. It was an unusual story; market women fought, mad women fought, but not women who were professors. Obinze, with his air of calm and inwardness, made it even more intriguing. He was quickly admitted into the clan of swaggering, carelessly cool males, the Big Guys; he lounged in the corridors with them, stood with them at the back of the hall during assembly. None of them tucked in their shirts, and for this they always got into trouble, glamorous trouble, with the teachers, but Obinze came to school every day with his shirt neatly tucked in and soon all the Big Guys tucked in, too, even Kayode DaSilva, the coolest of them all.
Kayode spent every vacation in his parents’ house in England, which looked large and forbidding in the photos Ifemelu had seen. His girlfriend, Yinka, was like him—she, too, went to England often and lived in Ikoyi and spoke with a British accent. She was the most popular girl in their form, her school bag made of thick monogrammed leather, her sandals always different from what anybody else had. The second most popular girl was Ginika, Ifemelu’s close friend. Ginika did not go abroad often, and so did not have the air of away as Yinka did, but she had caramel skin and wavy hair that, when unbraided, fell down to her neck instead of standing Afro-like. Each year, she was voted Prettiest Girl in their form, and she would wryly say, “It’s just because I’m a half-caste. How can I be finer than Zainab?”
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