Julie Iromuanya - Mr. and Mrs. Doctor

Huber Lane was a cavalcade of faded brick apartments alongside fall-apart houses, their faces a study in patchwork — shattered windows patched over with tape, peeling siding, missing tiles on the roof, and cracked concrete for steps. Of the houses, most of the porches were empty, except for one, populated only by a mossy living room couch. Job stopped before this one.

This was the fourth of the residences Job had occupied since his arrival in the United States at nineteen years of age. Before this, a basement apartment with a separate entrance. At every month’s end, the old man had cornered Job to make sure he paid the rent on time: We’re all living under the foot of the Man, right, man? He’d also lived in a closet of a room in a dormitory-style men’s residence hall, complete with communal showers. It was a place where walls were so thin that he was troubled by the most intimate of sounds: tears, passionless sex, and yes, farts. One of his homes had been on the topmost floor of a building scarred by the scents of mingled garlic, curry, and stockfish, regarded with collective disgust by guests of this nation, international students like himself, unlucky in their ability to smell American.

All of these places had been available to Job then. When he found the advertisements tacked to bulletin boards in campus buildings or in the American Classifieds, he needed only to tell them that he was a medical student who commuted to UNMC three times per week for his studies. The thin voice on the other end of the telephone would dismiss the accent. He needed only to arrive for the interview in scrubs, and the eyes would forgive the dark skin. But that was long ago.

He took Ifi’s two bags from the trunk. Snow so high it reached her ankles filled Ifi’s sandals with dampness. Neighbors did not welcome Ifi as she had expected. When she stopped to look over her new home, Job, with her bags in each hand, nudged her forward.

Only the light that filtered through the cracked door windows led the way. Spirals of dust flaked down and around. On Job, the potbelly, Ifi discovered, was merely a disguise. After three flights of narrow stairs, Ifi was winded while Job fumbled through his pockets for the keys.

The phone was ringing as they entered. Almost immediately he dumped her bags on the floor and disappeared into a bedroom, leaving Ifi undisturbed in her assessment of her new home.

“Hello?” she could hear him asking. “Who is this?”

Well, it was not exactly The Cosby Show. One small room with a kitchen to one side and a doorway leading to the bathroom. One more door could lead to a closet or a bedroom; from the size of the room, one could not be sure. Warped laminate floors creaked underfoot. Grayish walls were riddled with holes and splatters of paint. From the scent alone, it was obvious that someone — perhaps Job — had attempted to paint the room before Ifi’s arrival. Along the walls was a line of overfilled boxes of newspapers, a bicycle even. A couple of plants hung from the center of the ceiling.

“I have said you are not to call again,” he was saying.

Set imperiously alongside the couch was the only new object in the room: a baby’s carriage. Ifi redirected her eyes. He must have known then, she realized. She had, after all, spent the past few months in his family’s care as they waited for her papers to be processed. In alarm, she suspected now that her private moments had ended long ago.

He concluded, “If I see your face this time, I promise I will pepper you. You will never see the light of day. You understand?” Ifi heard the phone slam into the receiver.

At just that moment, Job stood in the doorway, sweating. Before she could say a word, he stammered, “That was a telemarketer trying to sell me nonsense. You must be forceful with them.”

“Oh.” But she was not concerned about the phone call. Without lifting her gaze from the carriage, she asked, “You knew?”

His gaze followed hers. He said nothing.

In the months she had spent with his family in Port Harcourt, almost daily, she had vomited. Still, she continued to collect Kotex, to carefully wrap them in tissue and deposit them in the rubbish bin. She had hoped, in some small way, to pretend that it wasn’t true, so she could go forward with her plans. Having this child would only get in the way. “You knew.”

He laughed. “Of course. You are my wife.”

“Jenny spoke to you.”

“Florence.”

Ifi took a step toward the carriage. She rolled it forward, then back. Lush, green tendrils spiraled from the stems of one of the plants, reaching for the one window where light poured in through its gaps. In awe, Ifi wondered, Is it true that a man can grow something with such care? She decided that perhaps it would be okay. She would be a nurse, and they would open their clinic. Only it wouldn’t happen overnight. She would raise this baby in America with this man, her husband. She had nothing to fear. As a doctor, he could make her dreams real. She would be his nurse, and one day they would return to Nigeria, to Aunty, to her cousins, and open the clinic.

“Come now,” he said. “Put your box here.” He leaned one suitcase against the wall alongside some of the newspapers and stacked the second suitcase atop it. Unpacking was finished.

He did not lead her around the apartment, showing her the ins and outs: how to light the gas stove; how to turn the showerhead to one angle if she wanted a steady, uninterrupted stream; how to set the mousetraps and plug the holes in the walls; how to arrange the pots in such a way that on rainy days the incessant drips from the leaky roof would not keep her awake. These Ifi learned on her own.

She was wearing the yellow dress from their honeymoon night, but it was all wrong. He had stretched it out with his broad back and hairy belly when he’d put it on and done the strip tease that night.

Or she didn’t have the body for it and never had.

Job didn’t say anything at first, but Ifi realized almost immediately that he didn’t approve. When he was younger, he might’ve said something right away. But he was older now, nearly forty. And anyway, there wasn’t time. Dinner would have begun already. He put off his explanation about the merits of time, something he would share with her later. Instead, he said, “Wear it like this.”

After all, it was not the dress. He hadn’t even noticed the dress. It was the fur coat. Job stood before her. Like a mother with her child, he carefully fitted each button into place and finished by jerking the furry collar so that it sat upright around her neck. Ifi lifted her jaw, threw out her chin. Already she felt taller, composed, like a woman of consequence, a big woman.

Just before starting the car and pulling away, he decided that she would have to hear the speech after all. “You people come to America and still believe you are living in the village. Time is money in America.”

Reservations were hard to come by at Divine Davinci’s. A low brick building trimmed with a striped green awning was surrounded by an empty patio space, its newly shoveled walkways gleaming. Gladys and Emeka were already waiting outside with four girls in a row like goats with their kids. Her first glance at Gladys, wearing a printed ichafu headscarf and regally positioned alongside Emeka, her pregnant belly held before her like a bouquet of flowers, made Ifi realize why Job disapproved of her. Gladys was wearing a fur coat, but not just any coat. It was exactly the coat that Ifi was wearing, and the collar was pulled to her jaw.