Julie Iromuanya - Mr. and Mrs. Doctor

Many of the dining couples flagged him away in annoyance or simply ignored him. But he refused to go unnoticed. He leaned into a table where a large woman and a thin man took up the seats. They were dressed well. He winked flirtatiously and clicked his teeth at the lady. “Mah,” he said, smiling. “Mah.”

“I will buy you a fur coat,” Job said to Ifi. He would have to get one of fake fur.

“Mah,” the boy said again.

“I am not your mama,” the woman said, drawing her wobbly chin back. “I am not old enough to be your mama.” Shifting her wig back, she turned away from him.

“This foolish boy,” the man said. Still, with his knees pulled close together, he smiled and hunched forward, scraping the floor with a cane. He was old enough to be the woman’s grandfather, much older than Job.

Ifi wondered how this man and woman had met. Ifi had met Job only once before their honeymoon. Even during the wedding, Job’s junior brother had stood in while he was in America. All Ifi had remembered from her one meeting with Job was that his face was nothing more than a jagged relief etched on the dark. He’d sat across from Ifi, Aunty, and Uncle, all squeezed together on the smaller couch so that he could have the large one. Aunty and Uncle had unsuccessfully tried to borrow a generator for the occasion and had been forced to settle on kerosene, so they stiffly argued about Nepa, the oil truck drivers’ strike, corrupt politicians, and the ongoing teachers’ strike in abashed explanation. The kerosene had scrubbed roughly at Ifi’s nostrils and throat. Outside, she’d heard the sounds of church services going on despite the dark along the length of their street. Children had been playing outside, chasing the rooster and dirtying their bony knees in the muddy roadway. She’d thought of how the ankles of the man who sat before her would, in light, appear like the children’s: bloodied from the wet, dirt road.

Before they met, there were packages of gifts. At the time, Ifi knew nothing of the letters, pictures, and conversations with the people who would become her in-laws. All her life, Ifi had been instructed to tell neighbors, friends, agemates, that her father was away, whether they believed it or not. So she fooled herself into believing that the packages were from him — that he really did live in America or London or Germany, that he had never been arrested for suspicion of fraud, that he had never been investigated and then murdered before his arraignment. As her cousins paraded through the potholed streets of their neighborhood in blue jeans and sweaters that were too big for their slight frames and too bulky for the thick Nigerian heat, Ifi had imagined her father sitting behind a large desk in London, papers stacked neatly around him awaiting his signature.

Of the sweaters, blue jeans, and jewelry, Ifi kept nothing except for a red, gold-chained handbag that she took out only for church — and today. Only after the package’s contents had been spread across the couches did Aunty and Uncle inform her that a man was coming to visit her. Aunty had watched her closely that day. “You see all the good things we’ve done for you? You, a skinny girl with nothing. No parents, sef. And now you will see America.”

Ifi needed to ask Job about this America. Before leaving her cousins’ laughter, Aunty’s gossip, and Uncle’s stories, she needed to know everything. But the skinny beggar boy was standing at their table now. Ifi began to shoo him away, but Job stopped him. The boy dumped the peanuts into his palms, tumbling his hands in such a way that he magically released the shells. He was grinning, proud of his work, but how could he be so pleased in his condition? She imagined him curled into a tight ball underneath a bridge near the hotel. The ground would be muddy, a deep red where the rain had softened the earth. If he slept deeply, he might not notice how close his face was to the water; the shit; the dead, malarial mosquitoes. Ifi shuddered. Instead of sitting at a fancy table alongside her doctor husband, she would have been an under-the-bridge girl, had it not been for Aunty and Uncle.

The little boy before her. Too small for his shirt. The shirt with all its holes. He would have gnats and lice in his hair. His skin, his lips, chalky from the residue of dusty dirt.

Job was still smiling in distracted amusement at the boy when Ifi thrust forward the bowl of peanuts. “Ngwa, go!” The peanuts splattered across the table and the floor. The boy’s eyes met Ifi’s in desperation, just for a second, before he averted his gaze to the ground in deference.

The restaurant owner was on them in seconds. He knocked the boy’s head with the back of his hand. “Why must you disturb my customer? He is a doctor, here from America for only a short time. I will beat you today!” To Ifi and Job he said, “I am so sorry.” The boy tried to run, but the man shoved him to the ground with his foot and began to beat him.

The boy whimpered and heaved tearless cries. “No, sah!” He turned to Ifi. “Sorry, Aunty!” he said. On his knees he begged, his thin, quivering frame on the floor before her.

Ifi’s voice was small as she spoke. “Leave him.” Everything stopped. A chill rose through her body. This was what it meant to be a big woman.

Half-bowing, half-filling the bowl, the boy attempted to sweep up the mess as he left. He would go hungry for the rest of the day, maybe the rest of the week, without the money he would have earned from the peanuts. “Leave him,” Ifi said again, with force. “Ego,” she said to Job. “We will pay for the nuts.”

Job retrieved a few naira. He tossed them on the ground.

“Go,” Ifi said. “Go!” The boy collected the money and ran as fast as his bony legs allowed.

When he was gone, the fat lady laughed into the skinny man’s ears. The bartender brought Ifi and Job two more bottles of Corona. On the house. And Job said to no one in particular, “In America, boys like that are in school.”

By the time they started back to the hotel, a steel gray had enveloped the orange sun as night began its descent. All around, the breeze interrupted the calm of long-necked palm trees. With their wares balanced on their heads, hawkers darted across the streets. Job’s driver swerved through the gaps in the roadway with practiced turns that knocked Job and Ifi into one another. Each time they touched, Job felt the softness of her skin against his. He tried to reconcile this gentle touch with her harsh way with the boy, telling himself that he had been in America too long. Even the boy, with his tearless cries, had walked with his head erect. He would likely brag to the boys in his gang about how his crocodile tears had earned him double what they had earned. Now, more than ever, Job was glad to be home.

When they reached the hotel, they did not immediately return to their room. Instead, they made their way across the marble lobby floor that Job explained was imported from Spain, France, somewhere like that. A dull light glowed from the gift shop across the lobby. The gift shop was a boxed-in room with shiny glass walls. From the outside, the glass walls, illuminated by shocks of overhanging lights, gave the illusion that the cramped space was larger than it actually was. Nearly every inch of its shelves was loaded with trinkets: jewelry, clay figurines, wood-carved masks. Paintings of women with baskets on their heads were hanging or leaned against the walls, filling every available space. As Ifi gazed at the objects, her eyes stilled on a painting of a couple in an amorous embrace.

“Do you like?” Job asked.

“No.” A necklace of shiny shells and beads was the first item within Ifi’s reach. She grabbed it.