Chimamanda Adichie - Americanah

“Yes, I guess so,” he said, and shrugged, as though to say it was already too late.

Some days before he left, he asked her, “What was my father really like?”

“He loved you.”

“Did you like him?”

She did not want to lie to him. “I don’t know. He was a big man in a military government and that does something to you and the way you relate to people. I was worried for your mom because I thought she deserved better. But she loved him, she really did, and he loved you. He used to carry you with such tenderness.”

“I can’t believe Mom hid from me for so long that she was his mistress.”

“She was protecting you,” Ifemelu said.

“Can we go see the house in Dolphin Estate?”

“Yes.”

She drove him to Dolphin Estate, astounded by how much it had declined. The paint was peeling on buildings, the streets pitted with potholes, and the whole estate resigned to its own shabbiness. “It was so much nicer then,” she told him. He stood looking at the house for a while, until the gateman said, “Yes? Any problem?” and they got back into the car.

“Can I drive, Coz?” he asked.

“Are you sure?”

He nodded. She came out of the driver’s seat and went around to his. He drove them home, hesitating slightly before he merged onto Osborne Road, and then easing into traffic with more confidence. She knew it meant something to him that she could not name. That night, when the power went off, her generator would not come on, and she suspected that her driver, Ayo, had been sold diesel spiked with kerosene. Dike complained about the heat, about mosquitoes biting him. She opened the windows, made him take off his shirt, and they lay side by side in bed talking, desultory talking, and she reached out and touched his forehead and left her hand there until she heard the gentle even breathing of his sleep.

In the morning, the sky was overcast with slate-gray clouds, the air thick with rains foreboding. From nearby a clutch of birds screeched and flew away. The rain would come down, a sea unleashed from the sky, and DSTV images would get grainy, phone networks would clog, the roads would flood and traffic would gnarl. She stood with Dike on the verandah as the early droplets came down.

“I kind of like it here,” he told her.

She wanted to say, “You can live with me. There are good private schools here that you could go to,” but she did not.

She took him to the airport, and stayed watching until he went past security, waved, and turned the corner. Back home, she heard the hollowness in her steps as she walked from bedroom to living room to verandah and then back again. Later, Ranyinudo told her, “I don’t understand how a fine boy like Dike would want to kill himself. A boy living in America with everything. How can? That is very foreign behavior.”

“Foreign behavior? What the fuck are you talking about? Foreign behavior? Have you read Things Fall Apart ?” Ifemelu asked, wishing she had not told Ranyinudo about Dike. She was angrier with Ranyinudo than she had ever been, yet she knew that Ranyinudo meant well, and had said what many other Nigerians would say, which was why she had not told anyone else about Dike’s suicide attempt since she came back.

It had terrified her, the first time she came to the bank, to walk past the armed security guard, and into the beeping door, where she stood in the enclosure, sealed and airless like a standing coffin, until the light changed to green. Had banks always had this ostentatious security? Before she left America, she had wired some money to Nigeria, and Bank of America had made her speak to three different people, each one telling her that Nigeria was a high-risk country; if anything happened to her money, they would not be responsible. Did she understand? The last woman she spoke to made her repeat herself. Ma’am, I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. I need to know that you understand that Nigeria is a high-risk country . “I understand!” she said. They read her caveat after caveat, and she began to fear for her money, snaking its way through the air to Nigeria, and she worried even more when she came to the bank and saw the gaudy garlands of security at the entrance. But the money was safely in her account. And now, as she walked into the bank, she saw Obinze at the customer service section. He was standing with his back to her and she knew, from the height and the shape of the head, that it was him. She stopped, sick with apprehension, hoping he would not turn just yet until she had gathered her nerves. Then he turned and it was not Obinze. Her throat felt tight. Her head was filled with ghosts. Back in her car, she turned on the air conditioner and decided to call him, to free herself of the ghosts. His phone rang and rang. He was a big man now; he would not, of course, pick up a call from an unknown number. She sent a text: Ceiling, it’s me . Her phone rang almost immediately.

“Hello? Ifem?” That voice she had not heard in so long, and it sounded both changed and unchanged.

“Ceiling! How are you?”

“You’re back.”

“Yes.” Her hands were trembling. She should have sent an e-mail first. She should be chatty, ask about his wife and child, tell him that she had in fact been back for a while.

“So,” Obinze said, dragging the word. “How are you? Where are you? When can I see you?”

“What about now?” The recklessness that often emerged when she felt nervous had pushed out those words, but perhaps it was best to see him right away and get it over with. She wished she had dressed up a bit more, maybe worn her favorite wrap dress, with its slimming cut, but her knee-length skirt was not too bad, and her high heels always made her feel confident, and her Afro was, thankfully, not yet too shrunken from the humidity.

There was a pause on Obinze’s end — something hesitant? — which made her regret her rashness.

“I’m actually running a bit late for a meeting,” she added quickly. “But I just wanted to say hi and we can meet up soon …”

“Ifem, where are you?”

She told him she was on her way to Jazzhole to buy a book, and would be there in a few minutes. Half an hour later, she was standing in front of the bookshop when a black Range Rover pulled in and Obinze got out from the back.

THERE WAS a moment, a caving of the blue sky, an inertia of stillness, when neither of them knew what to do, he walking towards her, she standing there squinting, and then he was upon her and they hugged. She thumped him on the back, once, twice, to make it a chummy-chummy hug, a platonic and safe chummy-chummy hug, but he pulled her ever so slightly close to him, and held her for a moment too long, as though to say he was not being chummy-chummy.

“Obinze Maduewesi! Long time! Look at you, you haven’t changed!” She was flustered, and the new shrillness in her voice annoyed her. He was looking at her, an open unabashed looking, and she would not hold his gaze. Her fingers were shaking of their own accord, which was bad enough, she did not need to stare into his eyes, both of them standing there, in the hot sun, in the fumes of traffic from Awolowo Road.

“It’s so good to see you, Ifem,” he said. He was calm. She had forgotten what a calm person he was. There was still, in his bearing, a trace of his teenage history: the one who didn’t try too hard, the one the girls wanted and the boys wanted to be.

“You’re bald,” she said.

He laughed and touched his head. “Yes. Mostly by choice.”

He had filled out, from the slight boy of their university days to a fleshier, more muscled man, and perhaps because he had filled out, he seemed shorter than she remembered. In her high heels, she was taller than he was. She had not forgotten, but merely remembered anew, how understated his manner was, his plain dark jeans, his leather slippers, the way he walked into the bookshop with no need to dominate it.