Chimamanda Adichie - Americanah

“They don’t train these telemarketer folks well at all. I bet he’s a temp with no health insurance and no benefits.”

“Yes,” she said, chastened. “I felt kind of sorry for him.”

“So my department moved buildings a few weeks ago. Yale hired professional movers and told them to make sure to put everything from each person’s old office in the exact same spot in the new office. And they did. All my books were shelved in the right position. But you know what I noticed later? Many of the books had their spines upside down.” He was looking at her, as though to experience a shared revelation, and for a blank moment, she was not sure what the story was about.

“Oh. The movers couldn’t read,” she said finally.

He nodded. “There was just something about it that totally killed me …” He let his voice trail away.

She began to imagine what he would be like in bed: he would be a kind, attentive lover for whom emotional fulfillment was just as important as ejaculation, he would not judge her slack flesh, he would wake up even-tempered every morning. She hastily looked away, afraid that he might have read her mind, so startlingly clear were the images there.

“Would you like a beer?” he asked.

“A beer?”

“Yes. The café car serves beers. You want one? I’m going to get one.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

She stood up, self-consciously, to let him pass and hoped she would smell something on him, but she didn’t. He did not wear cologne. Perhaps he had boycotted cologne because the makers of cologne did not treat their employees well. She watched him walk up the aisle, knowing that he knew that she was watching him. The beer offer had pleased her. She had worried that all he drank was organic pomegranate juice, but now the thought of organic pomegranate juice was pleasant if he drank beer as well. When he came back with the beers and plastic cups, he poured hers with a flourish that, to her, was thick with romance. She had never liked beer. Growing up, it had been male alcohol, gruff and inelegant. Now, sitting next to Blaine, laughing as he told her about the first time he got truly drunk in his freshman year, she realized that she could like beer. The grainy fullness of beer.

He talked about his undergraduate years: the stupidity of eating a semen sandwich during his fraternity initiation, constantly being called Michael Jordan in China the summer of his junior year when he traveled through Asia, his mother’s death from cancer the week after he graduated.

“A semen sandwich?”

“They masturbated into a piece of pita bread and you had to take a bite, but you didn’t have to swallow.”

“Oh God.”

“Well, hopefully you do stupid things when you’re young so you don’t do them when you’re older,” he said.

When the conductor announced that the next stop was New Haven, Ifemelu felt a stab of loss. She tore out a page from her magazine and wrote her phone number. “Do you have a card?” she asked.

He touched his pockets. “I don’t have any with me.”

There was silence while he gathered his things. Then the screeching of the train brakes. She sensed, and hoped she was wrong, that he did not want to give her his number.

“Well, will you write your number then, if you remember it?” she asked. A lame joke. The beer had pushed those words out of her mouth.

He wrote his number on her magazine. “You take care,” he said. He touched her shoulder lightly as he left and there was something in his eyes, something both tender and sad, that made her tell herself that she had been wrong to sense reluctance from him. He already missed her. She moved to his seat, reveling in the warmth his body had left in its wake, and watched through the window as he walked along the platform.

When she arrived at Aunty Uju’s house, the first thing she wanted to do was call him. But she thought it was best to wait a few hours. After an hour, she said fuck it and called. He did not answer. She left a message. She called back later. No answer. She called and called and called. No answer. She called at midnight. She did not leave messages. The whole weekend she called and called and he never picked up the phone.

WARRINGTON WAS a somnolent town, a town contented with itself; winding roads cut through thick woods — even the main road, which the residents did not want widened for fear that it would bring in foreigners from the city, was winding and narrow — sleepy homes were shielded by trees, and on weekends the blue lake was stippled with boats. From the dining room window of Aunty Uju’s house, the lake shimmered, a blueness so tranquil that it held the gaze. Ifemelu stood by the window while Aunty Uju sat at the table drinking orange juice and airing her grievances like jewels. It had become a routine of Ifemelu’s visits: Aunty Uju collected all her dissatisfactions in a silk purse, nursing them, polishing them, and then on the Saturday of Ifemelu’s visit, while Bartholomew was out and Dike upstairs, she would spill them out on the table, and turn each one this way and that, to catch the light.

Sometimes she told the same story twice. How she had gone to the public library the other day, had forgotten to bring out the unreturned book from her handbag, and the guard told her, “You people never do anything right.” How she walked into an examining room and a patient asked “Is the doctor coming?” and when she said she was the doctor the patient’s face changed to fired clay.

“Do you know, that afternoon she called to transfer her file to another doctor’s office! Can you imagine?”

“What does Bartholomew think about all this?” Ifemelu gestured to take in the room, the view of the lake, the town.

“That one is too busy chasing business. He leaves early and comes home late every day. Sometimes Dike doesn’t even set eyes on him for a whole week.”

“I’m surprised you’re still here, Aunty,” Ifemelu said quietly, and by “here” they both knew that she did not merely mean Warrington.

“I want another child. We’ve been trying.” Aunty Uju came and stood beside her, by the window.

There was the clatter of footsteps on the wooden stairs, and Dike came into the kitchen, in a faded T-shirt and shorts, holding his Game Boy. Each time Ifemelu saw him, he seemed to her to have grown taller and to have become more reserved.

“Are you wearing that shirt to camp?” Aunty Uju asked him.

“Yes, Mom,” he said, his eyes on the flickering screen in his hand.

Aunty Uju got up to check the oven. She had agreed this morning, his first of summer camp, to make him chicken nuggets for breakfast.

“Coz, we’re still playing soccer later, right?” Dike asked.

“Yes,” Ifemelu said. She took a chicken nugget from his plate and put it in her mouth. “Chicken nuggets for breakfast is strange enough, but is this chicken or just plastic?”

“Spicy plastic,” he said.

She walked him to the bus and watched him get on, the pale faces of the other children at the window, the bus driver waving to her too cheerfully. She was standing there waiting when the bus brought him back that afternoon. There was a guardedness on his face, something close to sadness.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, her arm around his shoulder.

“Nothing,” he said. “Can we play soccer now?”

“After you tell me what happened.”

“Nothing happened.”

“I think you need some sugar. You’ll probably have too much tomorrow, with your birthday cake. But let’s get a cookie.”

“Do you bribe the kids you babysit with sugar? Man, they’re lucky.”

She laughed. She brought out the packet of Oreos from the fridge.