Julie Iromuanya - Mr. and Mrs. Doctor

His first laceration. It had happened fast — on the day he received the call about Ifi and the boy. Job had been slicing, panting, with quick turns of his frozen hands and wrists, when he heard the click over the intercom, a grainy voice interrupting the rhythm of his movements on the floor to say he had a call. Just that bit of distraction broke the wires of Job’s machine, and he was human again, looking at his hands and looking at the lump of flesh on the table. His hands were cold, ice cold, and his joints were sore and pink from curving around the knife handle. Where they weren’t sore, his fingers and palms were numb with tingles that ran up the length of his wrists.

Regaining his composure required all of his attention, and so Job pressed on, ignoring the urgent call over the speaker until a supervisor tapped his shoulder, after first, according to the man, calling Job’s name over and over. Then it happened. One turn, too fast, and Job sliced a tear that landed through the thick, rubbery protective gloves.

Not until he was standing in the office overlooking the floor with the phone cupped to his ear did he notice. As he listened to the voice, he stared out at the teeming swarm of workers spread across the floor, albino cockroaches with quick, precise movements. Looking out, trying to make out the faces of the Somalis, the Mexicans, the Vietnamese, the Sudanese, the Bosnians, they all looked the same, faceless behind the masks and underneath the white jackets and white hairnets. Without the sound of the whirring knives, the cold, the slickness of the floors, he saw how the floor looked to him from the ground when he was a machine, just those moments before the intercom took him out of his dream. It was peculiar, as if Job was watching himself on the floor, working the knife one way and the other, dropping the bits into the sorting bins. He didn’t know what to make of it all— Do I feel insignificant? Do I feel like a giant? As he gazed out, a nurse was saying that Ifi was giving birth. “That’s wrong,” Job had said, and he explained that it was too soon. “No, no,” the nurse had said in excitement. “The baby is premature. God help us, we can’t tell them when to come. Some babies come when they’re good and ready.” And Job knew that she didn’t understand. She couldn’t understand.

He hadn’t had time to put the pieces of his life together in the right order. He hadn’t saved money for a new home. He hadn’t restarted classes at the university. He hadn’t obtained a degree. Instead he was alternating shifts at a meatpacking plant and at the hospital as a nurse’s aide. He lived in a home infested with roaches, with a wife swollen and fast approaching the permanent middle-aged frown he had seen on too many women.

When he put the phone down, he sucked in a deep breath, his face pitted with such a scowl that when the secretary said, “Oh, Job,” she thought he was grimacing from the wound in his hand. Only then did he notice the smear of blood filling the opening in the glove. When he peeled back his gloves, he found the blood had traveled up to his elbow. A spot of blood dribbled down the body of the telephone. After, as the medic cleaned and stitched his tingling hand, he watched maintenance wipe away his bloody print with a few sprays from a clear, bleach-smelling agent.

Cleaning and stitching hadn’t taken long. What took a while was the succession of workman’s compensation forms. Job had to report the “incident,” and they wouldn’t allow him to leave, even for Ifi’s delivery, until the forms were signed with the appropriate signatures. Each of Job’s urgent protests was pacified with the stubborn politeness that Midwesterners seemed so expert at when a situation required contention. They could make the most humiliating and painful information sound so pleasant. Then it was all done, and Job looked at the neat square bandage on his hand.

He was released into the cold air, a flat, starless night, and told to report to work as usual the next day. Air, sweet with the antiseptic smeared on his chapped hands, filled his nose. He drove through the night, his hand throbbing from the cold. Along the stretch of highway, Job felt the residue of the glare on his face. He felt the grooves of his face deepening into resentment. Too early, he repeated to himself. An impatient child! He hoped it was a girl — if it was a girl, he would at least have the time to make things right before his boy entered the world. A girl could survive on watery, tasteless soup and dry biscuits, but not a boy; a boy who was to be a success needed the proper ingredients.

Now, in the hospital room, as he looked into his son’s angry face, Job felt the ice in his chest thaw, the grooves in his face fill. His hardened features softened under the boy’s bleary eyes. When he opened his tiny mouth to yawn, Job peered into his son’s throat, at his soft, slippery tongue. Job swallowed back the tears that began to form in his throat. I am a father, he thought to himself, sore, exhausted, but suddenly exhilarated. In the old days, it was thought that you hadn’t reached full adulthood until you had created the life of another, until you had extended the cycle of your name through another. Well, Job had finally reached his manhood. What now? He needed a name for this, the greatest achievement of his life. The child needed a name to reflect the enormity of his birth to a father who loved him so completely that it hurt. His name, Job though triumphantly, will be Victorious Ezeaku Ogbonnaya, the victorious king.

Three days later, Gladys and Emeka arrived. Job was away at work. Their youngest daughter dumped a crumpled heap of flowers on the nightstand and promptly disappeared, her hand in her father’s in search of crackers and lemonade. Gladys stopped them in the hall, and Ifi could hear the tops of their voices. She could imagine the girl with her hand pressed into her father’s, forgotten. Their voices swelled in and out of the waves of Ifi’s fatigue. They spoke in Igbo.

“Where are you going?” Gladys.

“You heard the girl,” Emeka.

“Aheh, you are leaving without saying good morning to the woman?”

“Dear, let’s not quarrel like this. In front of the Americans.”

“We are not quarreling.”

Ifi ran her hands over her belly, a sagging paunch now. She glared out past the sun into the clear sky, over the tops of cars. In spite of the noise, the boy slept soundly. Right now, at home, Ifi thought, Aunty probably stood over a pot in the kitchen, instructing the housegirl in a halting whisper, telling her to hold the knife in her palm at this angle, not that, when cutting the onions. Her words would be wet, like the sprays of onion that watered the girl’s eyes. Ifi hated the smell of the onions in the girl’s hands. She knew that no amount of washing would rid her of the scent for the rest of the day. If she had any imagination at all, the girl would rub her hands with dirt and leaves. She would sprinkle lemon juice on them, with the hopes that the smell would be gone by the time she took her lover late that night.

Immediately after delivering the baby, Ifi had phoned Aunty. Every third word the connection broke, and Ifi found herself repeating, again and again, “boy,” “tall,” until they eventually lost the connection all together. She cried until her eyes were swollen. Had Ifi lived in Nigeria, Aunty would not stand over a pot instructing the housegirl. She would be by Ifi’s side. She would be holding the boy, pressing her lips to his forehead, cupping his small head in her palms. There would be uncles, cousins, neighbors, all surrounding Ifi and the boy. Each one would shout their praises about the delicacy of his skin, the pinkness of his cheeks, the tufts of charcoal hair, the size and shape of his large nose. Noise, laughter, and admonishments would fill the air.