Julie Iromuanya - Mr. and Mrs. Doctor

“I thought so at first,” Emeka said. “All those years sending money away, coming home to find chicken bones collected by the door, semen collected in condoms, hair collected in Ziploc bags. Then one day the boy comes. Just like that. No explanation. We went and looked at the ultrasound, and there it was, the image of my son. Even at her age, after nine months, she gave birth to a live, healthy boy. Just like that, I began to believe it all. Maybe my wife has been right all these years, you know?

“But now, no uh, I have had enough of juju, ogbanje, spirits, and native doctors.” He glared into her eyes intensely. “But what am I to do? I have been losing my wife inch by inch all these years. And now it has come to this. You see, I am here driving you to bring your boy’s dishes only because that is what will please my wife. That is all. I am only the messenger.” Again, he paused, his face imploring. “Come now, you cannot believe all of this. You’re a woman like her. She listens to you. Talk to her. Tell her to stop this nonsense.”

“And what if we are right?” Ifi asked. “You have it all figured out, eh? But what if we are right about this boy? He is special,” she said. “He belongs to us all, and it is my duty to protect him.”

Shaking his head, Emeka blew out the window. “Right,” he said. He smiled at her kindly. “Go home. Rest. Take care of yourself.” They pulled up in front of the house. From inside, a forgotten light glowed. Probably the light in the kitchen over the stove. It had likely been on for days. Now Ifi wondered if the bathroom faucet still ran. Has it been running the entire time I have been away? By now, the floor would be high with water. It would leak through the tiles and pass into the crawl space. Well, let it go. She said to herself. Let it all go.

Emeka still smiled a half frown, like he was stiff with a thought. Perhaps he still needed proof. Why do I feel the need to convince him? she wondered. Deep down, she knew why. She needed to say something so that he believed. After all, where am I without hope? she asked herself. “He is the image of my Victor. Just look at him. How can you deny that?”

“Yes. That I cannot deny.” Emeka stared at her for a long moment. Finally, he asked, “What of Job?”

She stiffened. “He’s fine.”

“He is in Nigeria burying the boy?”

“Yes.”

“And you are here?”

She didn’t answer.

“When will he return?”

“Tomorrow.”

“When he comes home, what will you do? Will you continue with your potions and prayers?”

When he comes home? Ifi thought. There was no home. There was nothing. For the first time, it occurred to her that she had no plan. Surely she could not stay in the house with Job when he returned. It could not be just the two of them and the empty spaces that Victor used to fill.

“The dishes,” Ifi said back to him. “Come tomorrow evening, and I will be ready.”

The knock came an hour earlier than expected. All the light of the day was gone. In its place was the artificial orange from the porch bulbs along the block. Just the same, Ifi was ready. Everything she would ever need, everything that mattered to her, fit in two small suitcases: In one bag, Victor’s dishes, his Spider-Man cup, his blanket, his sneakers, his toys. In the other, her toothbrush, hair grease, and a few changes of clothes. She would leave the keys in the mailbox for Job. She would never need to see his face again.

When she opened the door, Ifi immediately glimpsed the cornrowed hair fringed with thick knots of flyaways and knew that it was not Emeka. When he observed her examining his hair so intently, Jamal raked a finger through the space between each braid and nodded almost apologetically. He had, Ifi discovered almost immediately, the look and movements of a man who was used to being watched.

“Gotta get them redone,” he said. He held his steel box of tools.

Standing there, she thought of the time many months ago that she and Job had stood in the doorway watching Jamal drive away, the shock of seeing the thirteen-year-old boy suddenly a man. Today, there was no shock. There was only Jamal, aged to eighteen years, standing in front of her with his steel box.

Had he seen the newspaper? Had he come, like Gladys and other figments of her past, to pay his respects? Ifi searched for the answer in his face, the sleepy eyes, the gaunt frame, the barrel shoulders. Looking at him, she suddenly recalled that day, panting at the bottom of the stairs, the cold outside, and this boy — now a man — holding her up with his slender wrists and big hands.

“You were there the day he was born,” she said.

His face softened.

“And now he is gone.”

“The kid?”

“My son, my Victor,” she started again, thinking of Job, thinking of Jamal walking away that day. “My husband would be very angry if my Victor wore his hair like yours.” Would my Victor have grown to be like this man, with his cornrows and low-hanging pants? she wondered. Would he wear his hair low like his father? Or would he attempt to slide his fingers through his hair like the American white boys?

“I see,” he said with the remnants of a frown on his face.

In that instant, she knew that he knew about Victor, that in spite of the way they had turned Jamal away, he had come to pay his respects. Knowing this, she explained anyway. “My son,” she said, “a car hit him. He was just playing. But everything is okay now.”

Jamal nodded. “I’m sorry.” What else could be said? “Sorry about that.” There was a pause, then Jamal widened his stance. Ifi was blocking the door, preventing him from entering.

“I have found my Victor again.”

“Okay,” he said.

“I do not need any condolence.”

“Okay. I’ll just fix your wall and then go.”

Ifi nodded.

Lifting the metallic toolbox easily, he strolled past her into the entryway. Hardwood flooring, ugly with scars, creaked as he made his way in. “You can do something about that,” he said, pausing. His heel connected with the flooring, the raised rubber of his work boots thudding hollowly. “A little lubricant.”

Ifi pushed past him into the living room. Old boxes of takeout, tin cans, and dirty plates had accumulated over the past few weeks. Ifi rushed about the room shifting and reshifting the items until the clutter, rather than disappearing, was merely displaced. In each of her movements, she could feel the weight of his gaze.

“Damn,” Jamal said, “how you do that?” Cold air breathed through the gaping sore in the wall.

Ifi shifted the weight at her feet. The table, broken into three pieces, remained underneath the hole. Jamal knelt alongside her, clearing the debris.

“The first time was my Victor. An accident.”

“A tough kid.”

“Yes, like you say, a tough kid. He was always bouncing his head on everything, but nothing could break him.”

Jamal nodded. “Oh yeah. Got two of my own. Girls.”

Ifi’s eyes widened in shock. “You? But that’s impossible.” What happened to the thirteen-year-old boy? she thought.

“Yeah. They with they mother now. I take these jobs on the side to get ahead of the bills.”

Something about the way he said this, “got two of my own,” stayed with her. Girls with floppy braids wrapped in clips and streamers, pretty girls with their father’s sleepy eyes, their mother’s lips, their father’s broad shoulders. Ifi smiled to herself, thinking of the strangeness.

Away, hidden from sight like a dirty magazine, Ifi had stowed the mangled Big Wheel in a box. While Jamal waited, she climbed the stairs to the small storage closet and retrieved the box. She set it down in front of him.