And so it was the natural order of things, that the gods should match Obinze and Ginika. Kayode was throwing a hasty party in their guest quarters while his parents were away in London. He told Ginika, “I’m going to introduce you to my guy Zed at the party.”
“He’s not bad,” Ginika said, smiling.
“I hope he did not get his mother’s fighting genes o,” Ifemelu teased. It was nice to see Ginika interested in a boy; almost all the Big Guys in school had tried with her and none had lasted long; Obinze seemed quiet, a good match.
Ifemelu and Ginika arrived together, the party still at its dawn, the dance floor bare, boys running around with cassette tapes, shyness and awkwardness still undissolved. Each time Ifemelu came to Kayode’s house, she imagined what it was like to live here, in Ikoyi, in a gracious and graveled compound, with servants who wore white.
“See Kayode with the new guy,” Ifemelu said.
“I don’t want to look,” Ginika said. “Are they coming?”
“Yes.”
“My shoes are so tight.”
“You can dance in tight shoes,” Ifemelu said.
The boys were before them. Obinze looked overdressed, in a thick corduroy jacket, while Kayode wore a T-shirt and jeans.
“Hey, babes!” Kayode said. He was tall and rangy, with the easy manner of the entitled. “Ginika, meet my friend Obinze. Zed, this is Ginika, the queen God made for you if you are ready to work for it!” He was smirking, already a little drunk, the golden boy making a golden match.
“Hi,” Obinze said to Ginika.
“This is Ifemelu,” Kayode said. “Otherwise known as Ifemsco. She’s Ginika’s right-hand man. If you misbehave, she will flog you.”
They all laughed on cue.
“Hi,” Obinze said. His eyes met Ifemelu’s and held, and lingered.
Kayode was making small talk, telling Obinze that Ginika’s parents were also university professors. “So both of you are book people,” Kayode said. Obinze should have taken over and begun talking to Ginika, and Kayode would have left, and Ifemelu would have followed, and the will of the gods would have been fulfilled. But Obinze said little, and Kayode was left to carry the conversation, his voice getting boisterous, and from time to time he glanced at Obinze, as though to urge him on. Ifemelu was not sure when something happened, but in those moments, as Kayode talked, something strange happened. A quickening inside her, a dawning. She realized, quite suddenly, that she wanted to breathe the same air as Obinze. She became, also, acutely aware of the present, the now, Toni Braxton’s voice from the cassette player, be it fast or slow, it doesn’t let go, or shake me, the smell of Kayode’s father’s brandy, which had been sneaked out of the main house, and the tight white shirt that chafed at her armpits. Aunty Uju had made her tie it, in a loose bow, at her navel and she wondered now if it was truly stylish or if she looked silly.
The music stopped abruptly. Kayode said, “I’m coming,” and left to find out what was wrong, and in the new silence, Ginika fiddled with the metal bangle that encircled her wrist.
Obinze’s eyes met Ifemelu’s again.
“Aren’t you hot in that jacket?” Ifemelu asked. The question came out before she could restrain herself, so used was she to sharpening her words, to watching for terror in the eyes of boys. But he was smiling. He looked amused. He was not afraid of her.
“Very hot,” he said. “But I’m a country bumpkin and this is my first city party so you have to forgive me.” Slowly, he took his jacket off, green and padded at the elbows, under which he wore a long-sleeved shirt. “Now I’ll have to carry a jacket around with me.”
“I can hold it for you,” Ginika offered. “And don’t mind Ifem, the jacket is fine.”
“Thanks, but don’t worry. I should hold it, as punishment for wearing it in the first place.” He looked at Ifemelu, eyes twinkling.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Ifemelu said. “It’s just that this room is so hot and that jacket looks heavy.”
“I like your voice,” he said, almost cutting her short.
And she, who was never at a loss, croaked, “My voice?”
“Yes.”
The music had begun. “Let’s dance?” he asked.
She nodded.
He took her hand and then smiled at Ginika, as though to a nice chaperone whose job was now done. Ifemelu thought Mills and Boon romances were silly, she and her friends sometimes enacted the stories, Ifemelu or Ranyinudo would play the man and Ginika or Priye would play the woman—the man would grab the woman, the woman would fight weakly, then collapse against him with shrill moans—and they would all burst out laughing. But in the filling-up dance floor of Kayode’s party, she was jolted by a small truth in those romances. It was indeed true that because of a male, your stomach could tighten up and refuse to unknot itself, your body’s joints could unhinge, your limbs fail to move to music, and all effortless things suddenly become leaden. As she moved stiffly, she saw Ginika in her side vision, watching them, her expression puzzled, mouth slightly slack, as though she did not quite believe what had happened.
“You actually said ‘country bumpkin,’ ” Ifemelu said, her voice high above the music.
“What?”
“Nobody says ‘country bumpkin.’ It’s the kind of thing you read in a book.”
“You have to tell me what books you read,” he said.
He was teasing her, and she did not quite get the joke, but she laughed anyway. Later, she wished that she remembered every word they said to each other as they danced. She remembered, instead, feeling adrift. When the lights were turned off, and the blues dancing started, she wanted to be in his arms in a dark corner, but he said, “Let’s go outside and talk.”
They sat on cement blocks behind the guesthouse, next to what looked like the gateman’s bathroom, a narrow stall which, when the wind blew, brought a stale smell. They talked and talked, hungry to know each other. He told her that his father had died when he was seven, and how clearly he remembered his father teaching him to ride a tricycle on a tree-lined street near their campus home, but sometimes he would discover, in panic, that he could not remember his father’s face and a sense of betrayal would overwhelm him and he would hurry to examine the framed photo on their living room wall.
“Your mother never wanted to remarry?”
“Even if she wanted to, I don’t think she would, because of me. I want her to be happy, but I don’t want her to remarry.”
“I would feel the same way. Did she really fight with another professor?”
“So you heard that story.”
“They said it’s why she had to leave Nsukka University.”
“No, she didn’t fight. She was on a committee and they discovered that this professor had misused funds and my mother accused him publicly and he got angry and slapped her and said he could not take a woman talking to him like that. So my mother got up and locked the door of the conference room and put the key in her bra. She told him she could not slap him back because he was stronger than her, but he would have to apologize to her publicly, in front of all the people who had seen him slap her. So he did. But she knew he didn’t mean it. She said he did it in a kind of ‘okay sorry if that’s what you want to hear and just bring out the key’ way. She came home that day really angry, and she kept talking about how things had changed and what did it mean that now somebody could just slap another person. She wrote circulars and articles about it, and the student union got involved. People were saying, Oh, why did he slap her when she’s a widow, and that annoyed her even more. She said she should not have been slapped because she is a full human being, not because she doesn’t have a husband to speak for her. So some of her female students went and printed Full Human Being on T-shirts. I guess it made her well-known. She’s usually very quiet and doesn’t have many friends.”
“Is that why she came to Lagos?”
“No. She’s been scheduled to do this sabbatical for a while. I remember the first time she told me
we would go away for her two-year sabbatical, and I was excited because I thought it would be in America, one of my friend’s dads had just gone to America, and then she said it was Lagos, and I asked her what was the point? We might as well just stay in Nsukka.”
Ifemelu laughed. “But at least you can still get on a plane to come to Lagos.”
“Yes, but we came by road,” Obinze said, laughing. “But now I’m happy it was Lagos or I would not have met you.”
“Or met Ginika,” she teased.
“Stop it.”
“Your guys will kill you. You’re supposed to be chasing her.”
“I’m chasing you.”
She would always remember this moment, those words. I’m chasing you.
“I saw you in school some time ago. I even asked Kay about you,” he said.
“Are you serious?”
“I saw you holding a James Hadley Chase, near the lab. And I said, Ah, correct, there is hope. She reads.”
“I think I’ve read them all.”
“Me too. What’s your favorite?”
“Miss Shumway Waves a Wand.”
“Mine is Want to Stay Alive? I stayed up one night to finish it.”
“Yes, I like that too.”
“What about other books? Which of the classics do you like?”
“Classics, kwa? I just like crime and thrillers. Sheldon, Ludlum, Archer.”
“But you also have to read proper books.”
She looked at him, amused by his earnestness. “Aje-butter! University boy! That must be what your professor mother taught you.”
“No, seriously.” He paused. “I’ll give you some to try. I love the American ones.”
“You have to read proper books,” she mimicked.
“What about poetry?”
“What’s that last one we did in class, ‘Ancient Mariner’? So boring.”
Obinze laughed, and Ifemelu, uninterested in pursuing the subject of poetry, asked, “So what did Kayode say about me?”
“Nothing bad. He likes you.”
“You don’t want to tell me what he said.”
“He said, ‘Ifemelu is a fine babe but she is too much trouble. She can argue. She can talk. She never agrees. But Ginika is just a sweet girl.’ ” He paused, then added, “He didn’t know that was exactly what I hoped to hear. I’m not interested in girls that are too nice.”
“Ahn-ahn! Are you insulting me?” She nudged him, in mock anger. She had always liked this image of herself as too much trouble, as different, and she sometimes thought of it as a carapace that kept her safe.
“You know I’m not insulting you.” He put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him gently; it was the first time their bodies had met and she felt herself stiffen. “I thought you were so fine, but not just that. You looked like the kind of person who will do something because you want to, and not because everyone else is doing it.”
She rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a self-affection. He made her like herself. With him, she was at ease; her skin felt as though it was her right size. She told him how she very much wanted God to exist but feared He did not, how she worried that she should know what she wanted to do with her life but did not even know what she wanted to study at university. It seemed so natural, to talk to him about odd things. She had never done that before. The trust, so sudden and yet so complete, and the intimacy, frightened her. They had known nothing of each other only hours ago, and yet, there had been a knowledge shared between them in those moments before they danced, and now she could think only of all the things she yet wanted to tell him, wanted to do with him. The similarities in their lives became good omens: that they were both only children, their birthdays two days apart, and their hometowns in Anambra State. He was from Abba and she was from Umunnachi and the towns were minutes away from each other.
“Ahn-ahn! One of my uncles goes to your village all the time!” he told her. “I’ve been a few times with him. You people have terrible roads.”
“I know Abba. The roads are worse.”
“How often do you go to your village?”
“Every Christmas.”
“Just once a year! I go very often with my mother, at least five times a year.”
“But I bet I speak Igbo better than you.”
“Impossible,” he said, and switched to Igbo. “Ama m atu inu. I even know proverbs.”
“Yes. The basic one everybody knows. A frog does not run in the afternoon for nothing.”
“No. I know serious proverbs. Akota ife ka ubi, e lee oba. If something bigger than the farm is dug up, the barn is sold.”
“Ah, you want to try me?” she asked, laughing. “Acho afu adi ako n’akpa dibia. The medicine man’s bag has all kinds of things.”
“Not bad,” he said. “E gbuo dike n’ogu uno, e luo na ogu agu, e lote ya. If you kill a warrior in a local fight, you’ll remember him when fighting enemies.”
They traded proverbs. She could say only two more before she gave up, with him still raring to go.
“How do you know all that?” she asked, impressed. “Many guys won’t even speak Igbo, not to mention knowing proverbs.”
“I just listen when my uncles talk. I think my dad would have liked that.”
They were silent. Cigarette smoke wafted up from the entrance of the guesthouse, where some boys had gathered. Party noises hung in the air: loud music, the raised voices and high laughter of boys and girls, all of them looser and freer than they would be the next day.
“Aren’t we going to kiss?” she asked.
He seemed startled. “Where did that come from?”
“I’m just asking. We’ve been sitting here for so long.”
“I don’t want you to think that is all I want.”
“What about what I want?”
“What do you want?”
“What do you think I want?”
“My jacket?”
She laughed. “Yes, your famous jacket.”
“You make me shy,” he said.
“Are you serious? Because you make me shy.”
“I don’t believe anything makes you shy,” he said.
They kissed, pressed their foreheads together, held hands. His kiss was enjoyable, almost heady; it was nothing like her ex-boyfriend Mofe, whose kisses she had thought too salivary.
When she told Obinze this some weeks later—she said, “So where did you learn to kiss? Because it’s nothing like my ex-boyfriend’s salivary fumbling”—he laughed and repeated “salivary fumbling!” and then told her that it was not technique, but emotion. He had done what her ex-boyfriend had done but the difference, in this case, was love.
“You know it was love at first sight for both of us,” he said.
“For both of us? Is it by force? Why are you speaking for me?”
“I’m just stating a fact. Stop struggling.”
They were sitting side by side on a desk in the back of his almost empty classroom. The end-of-break bell began to ring, jangling and discordant.
“Yes, it’s a fact,” she said.
“What?”
“I love you.” How easily the words came out, how loudly. She wanted him to hear and she wanted the boy sitting in front, bespectacled and studious, to hear and she wanted the girls gathered in the corridor outside to hear.
“Fact,” Obinze said, with a grin.
Because of her, he had joined the debate club, and after she spoke, he clapped the loudest and longest, until her friends said, “Obinze, please, it is enough.” Because of him, she joined the sports club and watched him play football, sitting by the sidelines and holding his bottle of water. But it was table tennis that he loved, sweating and shouting as he played, glistening with energy, smashing the small white ball, and she marveled at his skill, how he seemed to stand too far away from the table and yet managed to get the ball. He was already the undefeated school champion, as he had been, he told her, in his former sch
ool. When she played with him, he would laugh and say, “You don’t win by hitting the ball with anger o!” Because of her, his friends called him “woman wrapper.” Once, as he and his friends talked about meeting after school to play football, one of them asked, “Has Ifemelu given you permission to come?” And Obinze swiftly replied, “Yes, but she said I have only an hour.” She liked that he wore their relationship so boldly, like a brightly colored shirt. Sometimes she worried that she was too happy. She would sink into moodiness, and snap at Obinze, or be distant. And her joy would become a restless thing, flapping its wings inside her, as though looking for an opening to fly away.
CHAPTER 5
After Kayode’s party, Ginika was stilted; an alien awkwardness grew between them.
“You know I didn’t think it would happen that way,” Ifemelu told her. “Ifem, he was looking at you from the beginning,” Ginika said, and then, to show that she was fine with it all, she teased Ifemelu about stealing her guy without even trying. Her breeziness was forced, laid on thickly, and Ifemelu felt burdened with guilt, and with a desire to overcompensate. It seemed wrong, that her close friend Ginika, pretty, pleasant, popular Ginika with whom she had never quarreled, was reduced to pretending that she did not care, even though a wistfulness underlined her tone whenever she talked about Obinze. “Ifem, will you have time for us today or is it Obinze all the way?” she would ask.
And so when Ginika came to school one morning, her eyes red and shadowed, and told Ifemelu, “My popsie said we are going to America next month,” Ifemelu felt almost relieved. She would miss her friend, but Ginika’s leaving forced them both to wring out their friendship and lay it out newly fresh to dry, to return to where they used to be. Ginika’s parents had been talking for a while about resigning from the university and starting over in America. Once, while visiting, Ifemelu had heard Ginika’s father say, “We are not sheep. This regime is treating us like sheep and we are starting to behave as if we are sheep. I have not been able to do any real research in years, because every day I am organizing strikes and talking about unpaid salary and there is no chalk in the classrooms.” He was a small, dark man, smaller-looking and darker-looking beside Ginika’s large, ash-haired mother, with an undecided air about him, as though he was always dithering between choices. When Ifemelu told her own parents that Ginika’s family was finally leaving, her father sighed and said, “At least they are fortunate to have that option,” and her mother said, “They are blessed.”
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