Chimamanda Adichie - Americanah

“Nobody publishes in international journals,” she had said. “Nobody goes to conferences. It’s like a shallow muddy pond that we are all wallowing in.”

He wrote this in his e-mail to Ifemelu, how his mother’s sadness with her job had also made him sad. He was careful not to be too heavy-handed, writing about how the church in his hometown had made him pay many dues before her funeral, and how the caterers had stolen meat at the burial, wrapping chunks of beef in fresh banana leaves and throwing them across the compound wall to their accomplices, and how his relatives had become preoccupied with the stolen meat. Voices were raised, accusations flung back and forth, and an aunt had said, “Those caterers must return every last bit of the stolen goods!” Stolen goods. His mother would have been amused about meat being a stolen good, and even by her funeral ending up a brawl about stolen meat. Why, he wrote to Ifemelu, do our funerals become so quickly about other things that are not about the person who died? Why do the villagers wait for a death before they proceed to avenge past wrongs, those real and those imagined, and why do they dig deep to the bone in their bid to get their pound of flesh?

Ifemelu’s reply came an hour later, a rush of heartbroken words. I am crying as I write this. Do you know how often I wished that she was my mother? She was the only adult — except for Aunty Uju — who treated me like a person with an opinion that mattered. You were so fortunate to be raised by her. She was everything I wanted to be. I am so sorry, Ceiling. I can imagine how ripped apart you must have felt and still sometimes feel. I am in Massachusetts with Aunty Uju and Dike and I am going through something right now that gives me a sense of that kind of pain, but only a small sense. Please give me a number so I can call — if it’s okay .

Her e-mail made him happy. Seeing his mother through her eyes made him happy. And it emboldened him. He wondered what pain she was referring to and hoped that it was the breakup with the black American, although he did not want the relationship to have mattered so much to her that the breakup would throw her into a kind of mourning. He tried to imagine how changed she would be now, how Americanized, especially after being in a relationship with an American. There was a manic optimism that he noticed in many of the people who had moved back from America in the past few years, a head-bobbing, ever-smiling, over-enthusiastic kind of manic optimism that bored him, because it was like a cartoon, without texture or depth. He hoped she had not become like that. He could not imagine that she would have. She had asked for his number. She could not feel so strongly about his mother if she did not still have feelings for him. So he wrote her again, giving her all of his phone numbers, his three cell phones, his office phone, and his home landline. He ended his e-mail with these words: It’s strange how I have felt, with every major event that has occurred in my life, that you were the only person who would understand . He felt giddy, but after he clicked Send, regrets assailed him. It had been too much too soon. He should not have written something so heavy. He checked his BlackBerry obsessively, day after day, and by the tenth day he realized she would not write back.

He composed a few e-mails apologizing to her, but he did not send them because it felt awkward apologizing for something he could not name. He never consciously decided to write her the long, detailed e-mails that followed. His claim, that he had missed her at every major event in his life, was grandiose, he knew, but it was not entirely false. Of course there were stretches of time when he had not actively thought about her, when he was submerged in his early excitement with Kosi, in his new child, in a new contract, but she had never been absent. He had held her always clasped in the palm of his mind. Even through her silence, and his confused bitterness.

He began to write to her about his time in England, hoping she would reply and then later looking forward to the writing itself. He had never told himself his own story, never allowed himself to reflect on it, because he was too disoriented by his deportation and then by the suddenness of his new life in Lagos. Writing her also became a way of writing himself. He had nothing to lose. Even if she was reading his e-mails with the black American and laughing at his stupidity, he did not mind.

FINALLY, she replied.

Ceiling, sorry for the silence. Dike attempted suicide. I didn’t want to tell you earlier (and I don’t know why). He’s doing much better, but it has been traumatic and it’s affected me more than I thought it would (you know, “attempted” doesn’t mean it happened, but I’ve spent days crying, thinking about what might have happened). I’m sorry I didn’t call to give you my condolences about your mother. I had planned to, and appreciated your giving me your phone number, but I took Dike to his psychiatrist appointment that day and afterwards, I just couldn’t get myself to do anything. I felt as if I had been felled by something. Aunty Uju tells me I have depression. You know America has a way of turning everything into an illness that needs medicine. I’m not taking medicines, just spending a lot of time with Dike, watching a lot of terrible films with vampires and spaceships. I have loved your e-mails about England and they have been so good for me, in so many ways, and I cannot thank you enough for writing them. I hope I will have a chance to fill you in on my own life — whenever that is. I’ve just finished a fellowship at Princeton and for years I wrote an anonymous blog about race, which then became how I made my living, and you can read the archives here. I’ve postponed my return home. I’ll be in touch. Take care and hope all is well with you and your family.

Dike had tried to kill himself. It was impossible to comprehend. His memory of Dike was of a toddler, a white puff of Pampers at his waist, running around in the house in Dolphin Estate. Now he was a teenager who had tried to kill himself. Obinze’s first thought was that he wanted to go to Ifemelu, right away. He wanted to buy a ticket and get on a plane to America and be with her, console her, help Dike, make everything right. Then he laughed at his own absurdity.

“Darling, you’re not paying attention,” Kosi said to him.

“Sorry, omalicha,” he said.

“No work thoughts for now.”

“Okay, sorry. What were you saying?”

They were in the car, on their way to a nursery-primary school in Ikoyi, visiting during the open day as guests of Jonathan and Isioma, Kosi’s friends from church, whose son went there. Kosi had arranged it all, their second school visit, to help them decide where Buchi would go.

Obinze had spent time with them only once, when Kosi invited them to dinner. He thought Isioma interesting; the few things she allowed herself to say were thoughtful, but she often remained silent, shrinking herself, pretending not to be as intelligent as she was, to salve Jonathan’s ego, while Jonathan, a bank CEO whose photos were always in the newspapers, dominated the evening with long-winded stories about his dealings with estate agents in Switzerland, the Nigerian governors he had advised, and the various companies he had saved from collapse.

He introduced Obinze and Kosi to the school headmistress, a small round Englishwoman, saying, “Obinze and Kosi are our very close friends. I think their daughter might be joining us next year.”

“Many high-level expatriates bring their children here,” the headmistress said, her tone pride-tinged, and Obinze wondered if this was something she said routinely. She had probably said it often enough to know how well it worked, how much it impressed Nigerians.