Julie Iromuanya: Mr. and Mrs. Doctor

“Ọ dị mma,” she said.

“Speak in English. The ones who do well in America learn to adapt.” Ifi nodded and he suddenly clapped, a broad grin filling his face. “Now then, Florence and Jenny, they have taken care of you?”

“Yes,” Ifi said carefully, smoothing her face into a smile. Florence and Jenny had taken care of her, if it could be called that. After the honeymoon, Ifi had been summoned to stay with Job’s family, at least until the immigration papers were processed. Ifi had known no brothers or sisters while growing up, though she had tended to her young cousins since she had been sent to live with her aunt, so the thought of her in-laws becoming her sisters had filled her with joy — until she arrived. Florence and Jenny had regarded her with impassive politeness, nothing more. When Ifi entered a room, their laughter stilled, and they took on cold airs. Once she even tried to help the housegirls prepare a meal, and the next day, when she returned, they barred her from entering the kitchen, shakily insisting that the sisters didn’t approve.

Still, gazing into Job’s expectant face, Ifi took a deep breath and reminded herself that perhaps his sisters had meant well. She was not lying when she replied, “They watched me very carefully.”

“Good.” He beamed. “Have you eaten?”

“No.”

“Come now. We’ll drop your baggage at the house, and then we will meet other Nigerians at a restaurant. Emeka and Gladys. You’ll like them.” He paused for a moment, as if choosing his words with care. “You will like Gladys immediately. She is a classical lady. But Emeka, you must become acquainted with him before you can understand his foolish humor.”

A pale-blue skyline rimmed with ash gray guided the Audi along the interstate. Job drove in silence until they reached a junction and turned off onto a two-lane road. Zonta, the town that would be Ifi’s new home, was twenty or thirty miles south of the Red Cloud reservation, and south of Zonta was Omaha, where Job said he went to medical school. They would meet Gladys and Emeka in Omaha for dinner. This was also where Job commuted to for work each night. Zonta, Nebraska, was a town whose name meant “trusted flat waters.” The Indians had named it that. Job told her this as they sped over concrete roads surrounded by flats ankle deep in snow. One year, he said, in the middle of winter, there were several hot days, and it all melted. “River drained into street,” Job said, thrusting one finger along the skyline. He had finally understood what the name meant.

All the way to town they passed trees, skinny, brown, and gnarled like old hands. Snow wetted the fingers. Overnight, there would be such a freeze that from a distance the trees would look silver. Later, this was the feature that pleased Ifi most when she stared out the window at night while Job was away at the hospital.

Dusk melted into a chalk white that floated and exploded into the sky. Job clicked the wipers, and they flipped back and forth at a frenetic pace, splitting the flakes. In defiance, they grew fatter and rimmed the windshield with dust that scattered on the wind.

“Snow,” Ifi said as it slowly dawned on her. She had only read of it in books. This was snow, flaking on the car, the same as the blanket laid on the grass. This is America, she said to herself. She would scoop it into an envelope and mail it to Aunty. No, she would not do that. She laughed. Instead, she would take a picture for her little cousins. Without thinking, Ifi reached for the door handle.

Job swerved the car. “What are you doing? Are you crazy?”

Save for a pickup truck that had passed many miles before, there was no one else on the road. “Let’s stop. I would like to touch it.”

He gave her a strange look. “We cannot be late to dinner.”

“Darling,” Ifi said, settling on the word she had heard Aunty and Uncle use in the middle of quarrels.

“Okie, okie,” he said. “We will stop. We are not far from home.”

They pulled off the road and parked in a clearing surrounded by twisted metal piping for a fence. Clapboard sheds were spread across the fields. These were the county fairgrounds, where twice a year, during the fair and on Independence Day, everything was lit up. Farther still was just the outline of a string of corrugated-iron warehouses.

Ifi opened her palms and let snow fall into them. She scooped it into her hands, pressed them together. She placed it in her mouth and tasted. It was cold and wet, like rain. That was all. She felt foolish.

At first he sat in the car, wiping away the fog on the inside of the windshield. Then he came out, his back against the car, as she rose from the snow. She looked to him like he imagined himself at nineteen, walking the curious, ginger walk of feet unfamiliar with snow. She shivered. When her eyes met his, he said softly, “I did that as well.”

Snow was in her hands. It melted and ran along her palms and evaporated into the white at her feet. Again she looked at him, and it suddenly occurred to her. “I can do anything here,” she said, her eyes large and bright. When he looked at her again with a queer expression, she elaborated. “I can be anything. Like you,” she said. “I can be a doctor in America if I like.”

Job watched her face. After a moment, he cleared his throat. “You can be a nurse. I am the doctor.”

She thought it over. “Yes. And we will build a hospital here and in Nigeria. Together.” An infection took her mother, even though it supposedly had a simple cure. It didn’t even cost a lot of money. Her father had had the money, but she died anyway. All they’d needed was a clinic, a good one, equipped with the right medicines and a real doctor. Her mother would have survived. Ifi was sure of it. After a moment, Ifi added, “Jesus brings people together for good reason. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes,” he said absently, a nod.

“That’s why I am here with you. Is that not it?”

Job said nothing.

She looked away. “My mother could have lived, if she had been in a real hospital. And if she had lived, my father would surely live.”

“Allow me time,” he said. “You will be trained as a nurse, and we will build a clinic in Nigeria. I promise.”

She believed him.

And he believed himself. It was all very simple. The tuition money was there in the savings bond, two thousand for every semester his father sent him money. Job hadn’t touched a cent. He would reapply, take the proper classes, and go back to school — all this without her knowing. Even at his age, he could do it. Americans did it all the time.

He pointed out the warehouses in the distance. “The house is on the other side,” he said. They lived on the fringes of a town where industry came and went. What were left were the meatpackers, and with them came the Somalis, the Mexicans, the Ethiopians, and everyone else. They couldn’t even wear proper clothes. They couldn’t even wash off the smell. It was a job for those with nothing, not even shame, he explained. “Can you smell it?” he asked.

Ifi sniffed deeply and was startled by the taste of meat in the back of her throat.

“In summer,” he said as they walked to the car, “the scent will be raw and angry.” At noon, the workers would trudge home bloody with flesh and lard up their arms where the gloves pulled away from their elbows. “You will get used to it,” he said. “What you will not get used to are the young men.” They camped out on the fairgrounds and drank in shifts. They bayed at the moon like wild dogs. They stank of blood and guts, and they were hungry for trouble. “You must avoid them. They are useless men,” Job added. As if to prove his point, he thrust a finger at the twisted metal fence surrounding the fairgrounds, where a row of broken beer bottles and squished cans rested along it.