Chimamanda Adichi - The Thing Around Your Neck

“No, it’s fine.” She wanted to offer to clean up for Tracy, anything to remain here.

“Neil says you’ve only just moved to the States? I’d love to hear about Nigeria. I was in Ghana a couple of years ago.”

“Oh.” Kamara sucked in her belly. “Did you like Ghana?”

“Very much. The motherland informs all of my work.” Tracy was tickling Josh but her eyes were steady on Kamara. “Are you Yoruba?”

“No. Igbo.”

“What does your name mean? Am I saying it right? Kamara?”

“Yes. It’s a short form of Kamarachizuoroanyi: ‘May God’s Grace Be Sufficient for Us.’”

“It’s beautiful, it’s like music. Kamara, Kamara, Kamara.”

Kamara imagined Tracy saying that again, this time in her ear, in a whisper. Kamara, Kamara, Kamara , she would say while their bodies swayed to the music of the name.

Josh was running with a paintbrush in his hand and Tracy ran after him; they came close to Kamara. Tracy stopped. “Do you like this job, Kamara?”

“Yes.” Kamara was surprised. “Josh is a very good boy.”

Tracy nodded. She reached out and, again, lightly touched Kamara’s face. Her eyes gleamed in the light from the halogen lamps.

“Would you take your clothes off for me?” she asked in a tone as soft as a breath, so soft Kamara was not sure she had heard correctly. “I’d paint you. But it wouldn’t look much like you.”

Kamara knew that she was no longer breathing as she should. “Oh. I don’t know,” she said.

“Think about it,” Tracy said, before she turned to Josh and told him she had to get back to work.

“Time for your spinach, Josh,” Kamara said, in a voice too loud, and went upstairs, wishing she had said something bolder, wishing Tracy would come up again.

Neil had only just begun letting Josh have chocolate sprinkles, after a new book claimed his sugar-free sweetener was carcinogenic, and so Josh was eating his dessert of organic frozen yogurt dotted with chocolate sprinkles when the garage door opened. Neil was wearing a sleek dark suit. He placed his leather bag down on the counter, said hi to Kamara, and then swooped down on Josh. “Hello, bud!”

“Hi, Daddy.” Josh kissed him and laughed when Neil nuzzled his neck.

“How did your reading practice with Kamara go?”

“Good.”

“Are you nervous, bud? You’ll do great, I bet you’ll win. But it doesn’t matter if you don’t because you’re still a winner for Daddy. Are you all set for Zany Brainy? It should be fun. Chum the Cheeseball’s first visit!”

“Yes.” Josh pushed his plate aside and started to look through his schoolbag.

“I’ll look at your school stuff later,” Neil said.

“I can’t find my shoelaces. I took them out in the playground.” Josh brought out a piece of paper from his bag. His dirt-encrusted shoelaces were tangled around it and he pulled the laces apart. “Oh, look! Remember the special family Shabbat cards my class was working on, Dad?”

“Is that it?”

“Yes!” Josh held the crayon-colored paper up, moving it this way and that. In his precociously well-formed hand were the words Kamara, I’m glad we are family. Shabbat shalom .

“I forgot to give it to you last Friday, Kamara. So I’ll have to wait till tomorrow to give it to you, okay?” Josh said, his face solemn.

“Okay, Josh,” Kamara said. She was rinsing off his plate for the dishwasher.

Neil took the card from Josh. “You know, Josh,” he said, giving the card back, “it’s very sweet of you to give this to Kamara, but Kamara is your nanny and your friend, and this was for family.”

“Miss Leah said I could.”

Neil looked at Kamara, as if seeking support, but Kamara looked away and focused on opening the dishwasher.

“Can we go, Dad?” Josh asked.

“Sure.”

Before they left, Kamara said, “Good luck tomorrow, Josh.”

Kamara watched them drive off in Neil’s Jaguar. Her feet itched to go down the stairs, to knock on Tracy’s door and offer something: coffee, a glass of water, a sandwich, herself. In the bathroom, she patted her newly braided hair, touched up her lipgloss and mascara, then started down the stairs that led to the basement. She stopped many times and went back. Finally she rushed down the stairs and knocked on the door. She knocked again and again.

Tracy opened it. “I thought you’d gone,” she said, her expression distant. She was wearing a faded T-shirt and paint-streaked jeans and her eyebrows were so thick and straight they looked fake.

“No.” Kamara felt awkward. Why haven’t you come up since Monday of last week? Why have your eyes not lit up at seeing me? “Neil and Josh just left for Zany Brainy. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for Josh tomorrow.”

“Yes.” There was something in her demeanor that Kamara feared was an irritated impatience.

“I’m sure Josh will win,” Kamara said.

“He just might.”

Tracy seemed to be moving back, as if about to shut the door.

“Do you need anything?” Kamara asked.

Slowly, Tracy smiled. She moved forward now, closer to Kamara, too close, her face against Kamara’s. “You will take your clothes off for me,” she said.

“Yes.” Kamara kept her belly sucked in until Tracy said, “Good. But not today. Today isn’t a good day,” and disappeared into the room.

Even before Kamara looked at Josh the next afternoon, she knew he hadn’t won. He was sitting in front of a plate of cookies, drinking a glass of milk, with Neil standing beside him. A pretty blond woman wearing ill-fitting jeans was looking at the photographs of Josh posted on the fridge.

“Hi, Kamara. We just got back,” Neil said. “Josh was fantastic. He really deserved to win. He was clearly the kid who had worked the hardest.”

Kamara ruffled Josh’s hair. “Hello, Joshy.”

“Hi, Kamara,” Josh said, and stuffed a cookie into his mouth.

“This is Maren,” Neil said. “She’s Josh’s French teacher.”

The woman said hi and shook Kamara’s hand and then went into the den. The jeans dug into her crotch and the sides of her face were stained with a too-cheery shade of blusher and she was nothing like Kamara imagined a French teacher would be.

“The Read-A-Thon ate into their lesson time, so I thought they might have the lesson here and Maren was sweet enough to say yes. It’s okay, Kamara?” Neil asked.

“Of course.” And all of a sudden, she liked Neil again and she liked the way the blinds sliced up the sunlight coming into the kitchen and she liked that the French teacher was here because when the lesson started, she would go down and ask Tracy if it was the right time to take off her clothes. She was wearing a new balconet bra.

“I’m worried,” Neil said. “I think I’m consoling him with a sugar overload. He’s had two lollipops. Plus we stopped at Baskin-Robbins.” Neil was whispering even though Josh could hear. It was the same unnecessarily hushed tone that Neil had used to tell her about the books he’d donated to Josh’s pre-K class at Temple Beth Hillel, books that were about Ethiopian Jews, illustrated with pictures of people where skin was the color of burnished earth, but Josh said the teacher had never read the books to the class. Kamara remembered the way Neil had grasped her hand gratefully after she’d said “Josh will be fine,” as if all Neil needed was to have somebody say that.

Now, Kamara said, “He’ll get over it.”

Neil nodded slowly. “I don’t know.”

She reached out and squeezed Neil’s hand. She felt filled with a generosity of spirit.

“Thanks, Kamara.” Neil paused. “I better go. I’ll be late today. Is it okay if you make dinner?”