Chimamanda Adichie - Americanah

“We’re entering University City, and that’s where Wellson campus is, shay you know? We can go for you to see the school first and then we can go to my place, out in the suburbs, and after we can go to my friend’s place in the evening. She’s doing a get-together.” Ginika had lapsed into Nigerian English, a dated, overcooked version, eager to prove how unchanged she was. She had, with a strenuous loyalty, kept in touch through the years: calling and writing letters and sending books and shapeless trousers she called slacks. And now she was saying “shay you know” and Ifemelu did not have the heart to tell her that nobody said “shay” anymore.

Ginika recounted anecdotes about her own early experiences in America, as though they were all filled with subtle wisdom that Ifemelu would need.

“If you see how they laughed at me in high school when I said that somebody was boning for me. Because boning here means to have sex! So I had to keep explaining that in Nigeria it means carrying face. And can you imagine ‘half-caste’ is a bad word here? In freshman year, I was telling a bunch of my friends about how I was voted prettiest girl in school back home. Remember? I should never have won. Zainab should have won. It was just because I was a half-caste. There’s even more of that here. There’s some shit you’ll get from white people in this country that I won’t get. But anyway, I was telling them about back home and how all the boys were chasing me because I was a half-caste, and they said I was dissing myself. So now I say biracial, and I’m supposed to be offended when somebody says half-caste. I’ve met a lot of people here with white mothers and they are so full of issues, eh. I didn’t know I was even supposed to have issues until I came to America. Honestly, if anybody wants to raise biracial kids, do it in Nigeria.”

“Of course. Where all the boys chase the half-caste girls.”

“Not all the boys, by the way.” Ginika made a face. “Obinze had better hurry up and come to the U.S., before somebody will carry you away. You know you have the kind of body they like here.”

“What?”

“You’re thin with big breasts.”

“Please, I’m not thin. I’m slim.”

“Americans say ‘thin.’ Here ‘thin’ is a good word.”

“Is that why you stopped eating? All your bum has gone. I always wished I had a bum like yours,” Ifemelu said.

“Do you know I started losing weight almost as soon as I came? I was even close to anorexia. The kids at my high school called me Pork. You know at home when somebody tells you that you lost weight, it means something bad. But here somebody tells you that you lost weight and you say thank you. It’s just different here,” Ginika said, a little wistfully, as though she, too, were new to America.

Later, Ifemelu watched Ginika at her friend Stephanie’s apartment, a bottle of beer poised at her lips, her American-accented words sailing out of her mouth, and was struck by how like her American friends Ginika had become. Jessica, the Japanese American, beautiful and animated, playing with the emblemed key of her Mercedes. Pale-skinned Teresa, who had a loud laugh and wore diamond studs and shabby, worn-out shoes. Stephanie, the Chinese American, her hair a perfect swingy bob that curved inwards at her chin, who from time to time she reached into her monogrammed bag to get her cigarettes and step out for a smoke. Hari, coffee-skinned and black-haired and wearing a tight T-shirt, who said, “I am Indian, not Indian American,” when Ginika introduced Ifemelu. They all laughed at the same things and said “Gross!” about the same things; they were well choreographed. Stephanie announced that she had homemade beer in her fridge and everyone chanted “Cool!” Then Teresa said, “Can I have the regular beer, Steph?” in the small voice of a person afraid to offend. Ifemelu sat on a lone armchair at the end of the room, drinking orange juice, listening to them talk. That company is so evil. Oh my God, I can’t believe there’s so much sugar in this stuff. The Internet is totally going to change the world . She heard Ginika ask, “Did you know they use something from animal bones to make that breath mint?” and the others groaned. There were codes Ginika knew, ways of being that she had mastered. Unlike Aunty Uju, Ginika had come to America with the flexibility and fluidness of youth, the cultural cues had seeped into her skin, and now she went bowling, and knew what Tobey Maguire was about, and found double-dipping gross. Bottles and cans of beer were piling up. They all lounged in glamorous lassitude on the sofa, and on the rug, while heavy rock, which Ifemelu thought was unharmonious noise, played on the CD player. Teresa drank the fastest, rolling each empty can of beer on the wood floor, while the others laughed with an enthusiasm that puzzled Ifemelu because it really was not that funny. How did they know when to laugh, what to laugh about?

GINIKA WAS BUYING a dress for a dinner party, hosted by the lawyers she was interning with.

“You should get some things, Ifem.”

“I’m not spending ten kobo of my money unless I have to.”

“Ten cents.”

“Ten cents.”

“I’ll give you a jacket and bedding stuff, but at least you need tights. The cold is coming.”

“I’ll manage,” Ifemelu said. And she would. If she needed to, she would wear all her clothes at the same time, in layers, until she found a job. She was terrified to spend money.

“Ifem, I’ll pay for you.”

“It’s not as if you are earning much.”

“At least I am earning some,” Ginika quipped.

“I really hope I find a job soon.”

“You will, don’t worry.”

“I don’t understand how anybody will believe I’m Ngozi Okonkwo.”

“Don’t show them the license when you go to an interview. Just show the Social Security card. Maybe they won’t even ask. Sometimes they don’t for small jobs like that.”

Ginika led the way into a clothing store, which Ifemelu thought too fevered; it reminded her of a nightclub, disco music playing loudly, the interior shadowy, and the salespeople, two thin-armed young women in all black, moving up and down too swiftly. One was chocolate-skinned, her long black weave highlighted with auburn, the other was white, inky hair floating behind her as she came up to them.

“Hi, ladies, how are you? Is there anything I can help you with?” she asked in a tinkly, singsong voice. She pulled clothes off hangers and unfurled them from shelves to show Ginika. Ifemelu was looking at the price tags, converting them to naira, exclaiming, “Ahn-ahn! How can this thing cost this much?” She picked up and carefully examined some of the clothes, to find out what each was, whether underwear or blouse, whether shirt or dress, and sometimes she was still not certain.

“This literally just came in,” the salesperson said of a sparkly dress, as though divulging a big secret, and Ginika said, “Oh my God, really?” with a great excitement. Under the too-bright lighting of the fitting room, Ginika tried on the dress, walking on tiptoe. “I love it.”

“But it’s shapeless,” Ifemelu said. It looked, to her, like a boxy sack on which a bored person had haphazardly stuck sequins.

“It’s postmodern,” Ginika said.

Watching Ginika preen in front of the mirror, Ifemelu wondered whether she, too, would come to share Ginika’s taste for shapeless dresses, whether this was what America did to you.

At the checkout, the blond cashier asked, “Did anybody help you?”

“Yes,” Ginika said.

“Chelcy or Jennifer?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t remember her name.” Ginika looked around, to point at her helper, but both young women had disappeared into the fitting rooms at the back.