Julie Iromuanya - Mr. and Mrs. Doctor

“Fucky, fuck that, fucker, motherfucker,” Job sputtered.

And she laughed harder. His features were a mixture of confusion, surprise, and pain. It seemed, for a second, that he might join in with her laughter. But once more rage surged through him. “Help me up! What are you laughing at? Stupid woman!”

Ifi tried, unsuccessfully, to bite back her laughter. She set the boy down on the bed and helped Job up. “Job, darling, what is the meaning of this?”

“You laugh, but I am the breadman in this household. Other men force their wives to work. Emeka forces his wife to work and kills their child, but me, I leave you here like a queen, and you treat me like a joke.”

Regret showed on her face.

“Any man would see what they had done to me and make it an excuse to stay home,” he said, pointing to the scars on his face, to the scar on his hand. “But night and day, I work. For you.” He turned away. “And him.”

“Ndo, I am sorry,” she said softly. “What happened? You are not at hospital.” Ifi rushed from the room and returned with a plastic bag of ice cubes and set it on Job’s thigh.

Avoiding her gaze, he looked out the window before grasping the bag and setting it against his throbbing kneecap. Finally, he turned back to her, speaking quietly and seriously. “Ifi, tell me now, who assembled this crib? It was not Emeka or Gladys as I thought. Who then? Tell me.”

At first, Ifi gazed at him strangely. Then relief spread across her face. “The boy,” she said, simply.

Anger clouded Job’s face. “You think I am an idiot.”

“Not our son. The criminal, Jamal. It was him.”

“That thief broke into our home? That gangster.”

“Job, what is this? The baby. You are waking the boy.”

The boy sputtered, spat, and flung his arms every which way. Ifi claimed him in her arms, but he wouldn’t relent, struggling to free himself from her grasp. She swung him this way and that until finally she angled her breast into his mouth.

“Under my dead body will that thief ever enter my house again. Do you understand?”

“What is wrong with you?”

“What is wrong with me ? That boy and his gangster friends nearly killed me and you are asking what is. . What has happened in your head? Tufia!”

“How can you hate him, eh?” Ifi asked. “He is just a child. You must forgive him.” After a moment, she continued in a whisper, “He came with his aunty and begged your forgiveness. He arranged our crib. Is that not enough?”

“You think I am silly? You are the fool. They’ve done nothing to you, but they will one day. You wait and see.”

“Job,” she said quietly, patting the boy’s back, pushing a cloth across his dripping mouth. “Who took me to hospital? Eh? You don’t know?” she implored. “It was that criminal boy. I say, he has begged for your forgiveness, arranged our crib, and taken me to deliver our first son. You must forgive him!”

As the truth of her words sank in, he struggled to cling to what he had previously held as the facts. “You took the taxicab.”

“Do you know, if that boy had not come when he did, only to arrange the boy’s crib after all, I would not have been able to deliver this boy? Who knows what might have happened? I am, after all, alone in this country.”

“I’m here,” he started to say, but the words ran from him. “Well, what of Gladys and Emeka?”

Silence. Even the boy, in a strange stupor, vibrated against Ifi’s heaving chest. Strange how the stars that had hidden away from Job earlier that night seemed to appear just then. Jagged rooftops cut sharply into the lightening sky, and Job realized that the old houses along his street, each filled with various apartments, were taller than Emeka’s house. But none of the houses belonged to Job.

“This thing will go back to Emeka and Gladys tomorrow. I will buy you a new one,” he said with finality. “And that boy will never enter my house again, you hear?” Still, even as he said the words, he knew the crib would remain. It would be there, blocking the last ounce of free space in the small room, like a stubborn in-law.

LATER THAT AFTERNOON, WHILE JOB WORKED, WHILE THE BOY SLEPT IN HIS crib, Jamal returned. Except for the hum of the fluorescent lightbulb over the stove, the apartment was still. Grainy particles, split by the permanent crack, floated across the mute television screen. Between rushing back and forth to feed the boy, cleaning the living room, and fixing Job’s dinner, Ifi was run ragged.

Her first thought in response to the knocking was that it belonged to Mrs. Janik again. Mrs. Janik had come, twice, to see their son while Job had slept. But each time Ifi had announced herself at the door instead of Job, Mrs. Janik had settled on peering through the crack in the doorway at the boy, who was tied to Ifi’s back, where he bobbed with her heaving shoulders, deep in slumber. Mrs. Janik had never recovered from witnessing Ifi speak to Mary and Jamal. Each time, she refused to come in. Ifi refused to come out. So the two merely traded wary glances at one another through the doorway until Mrs. Janik found some excuse to slink away.

This time, Ifi flung the door open in impatience, intending to shout harsh words at the woman— Do you mean to wake the boy? — but in Mrs. Janik’s place was Jamal. Hands squashed into the pockets of a pair of jeans too large for him, he hunched forward so that his skinny shoulders pushed through a lean sweatshirt that was too small.

Ifi regarded him carefully. “Why bother yourself with knocking when you can simply come and go as you please?” The words that tumbled from her throat surprised her, but Ifi felt, in spite of herself, like she could say anything to this boy, who, after all, was nothing more than a mere child, a tall thirteen or a short fifteen.

“Sorry,” Jamal said shyly. “I won’t do it again.”

“How many times have you broken into this place?”

“Only once,” he said. Then he added, “When he first moved in.” He nodded toward the back room. “But not since then. And anyway, I didn’t take nothing.”

“I see,” Ifi said. She shouldered the door, and for an apprehensive moment, Jamal remained in the hallway. She glared fiercely until he dropped his eyes.

“Can I see the baby?”

“No.”

Jamal nodded. “He don’t want me in there, huh? He still don’t like me.”

“No,” Ifi said again, slowly. “I don’t like you.”

His lean shoulders pinched at his ears in a forced shrug.

“He has every right not to like you. You’re a troublemaker.” And then Ifi launched into a furious lecture, shouting at Jamal, jabbing her fingers into his face. Aunty’s intonations and movements swayed her body. Just once, exactly one week before the day Ifi was to be married to Job, she remembered Aunty speaking to her in such a way. Before that, Aunty had assumed that Ifi cherished the opportunity to marry and move to America. It had all been settled by then, that she would be married to the face marred by the flickering kerosene lamp; that she would be married to the Wal-Mart handbag with the gold chain and the jeans and the sweaters; that she would be Mrs. Doctor. That day, Ifi had been turned away from Aunty, beating dough flat with a large wooden rolling pin. Aunty had stood behind her, slicing raw onions, and the juices from the onions left Ifi’s eyes watery. Aunty must’ve thought Ifi was crying, so she furiously spun her around to face her, yelling about everything and nothing at all.

“A boy such as yourself,” Ifi said, following the sway of Aunty’s large hips, “with many opportunities here in America, and you would rather follow riffraff.”