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.
“Do you play soccer with the kids you babysit?” he asked.
“No,” she said, even though she played once in a while with Taylor, kicking the ball back and forth in their oversized, wooded backyard. Sometimes, when Dike asked her about the children she cared for, she indulged his childish interest, telling him about their toys and their lives, but she was careful not to make them seem important to her.
“So how was camp?”
“Good.” A pause. “My group leader, Haley? She gave sunscreen to everyone but she wouldn’t give me any. She said I didn’t need it.”
She looked at his face, which was almost expressionless, eerily so. She did not know what to say.
“She thought that because you’re dark you don’t need sunscreen. But you do. Many people don’t know that dark people also need sunscreen. I’ll get you some, don’t worry.” She was speaking too fast, not sure that she was saying the right thing, or what the right thing to say was, and worried because this had upset him enough that she had seen it on his face.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It was kind of funny. My friend Danny was laughing about it.”
“Why did your friend think it was funny?”
“Because it was!”
“You wanted her to give you the sunscreen, too, right?”
“I guess so,” he said with a shrug. “I just want to be regular.”
She hugged him. Later, she went to the store and bought him a big bottle of sunscreen, and the next time she visited, she saw it lying on his dresser, forgotten and unused.
Understanding America for the Non-American Black: American Tribalism
In America, tribalism is alive and well. There are four kinds—class, ideology, region, and race. First, class. Pretty easy. Rich folk and poor folk.
Second, ideology. Liberals and conservatives. They don’t merely disagree on political issues, each side believes the other is evil. Intermarriage is discouraged and on the rare occasion that it happens, is considered remarkable. Third, region. The North and the South. The two sides fought a civil war and tough stains from that war remain. The North looks down on the South while the South resents the North. Finally, race. There’s a ladder of racial hierarchy in America. White is always on top, specifically White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, otherwise known as WASP, and American Black is always on the bottom, and what’s in the middle depends on time and place. (Or as that marvelous rhyme goes: if you’re white, you’re all right; if you’re brown, stick around; if you’re black, get back!) Americans assume that everyone will get their tribalism. But it takes a while to figure it all out. So in undergrad, we had a visiting speaker and a classmate whispers to another, “Oh my God, he looks so Jewish,” with a shudder, an actual shudder. Like Jewish was a bad thing. I didn’t get it. As far as I could see, the man was white, not much different from the classmate herself. Jewish to me was something vague, something biblical. But I learned quickly. You see, in America’s ladder of races, Jewish is white but also some rungs below white. A bit confusing, because I knew this straw-haired, freckled girl who said she was Jewish. How can Americans tell who is Jewish? How did the classmate know the guy was Jewish? I read somewhere how American colleges used to ask applicants for their mother’s surnames, to make sure they weren’t Jewish because they wouldn’t admit Jewish people. So maybe that’s how to tell? From people’s names? The longer you are here, the more you start to get it.
CHAPTER 18
Manama’s new customer was wearing jeans shorts, the denim glued to her backside, and sneakers the same bright pink shade as her top. Large hoop earrings grazed her face. She stood in front of the mirror, describing the kind of cornrows she wanted.
“Like a zigzag with a parting at the side right here, but you don’t add the hair at the beginning, you add it when you get to the ponytail,” she said, speaking slowly, overenunciating. “You understand me?” she added, already convinced, it seemed, that Mariama did not.
“I understand,” Mariama said quietly. “You want to see a photo? I have that style in my album.”
The album was flipped through and, finally, the customer was satisfied and seated, frayed plastic hoisted around her neck, her chair height adjusted, and Mariama all the time smiling a smile full of things restrained.
“This other braider I went to the last time,” the customer said. “She was African, too, and she wanted to burn my damned hair! She brought out this lighter and I’m going, Shontay White, don’t let that woman bring that thing close to your hair. So I ask her, What’s that for? She says, I want to clean your braids, and I go, What? Then she tries to show me, she tries to run the lighter over one braid and I went all crazy on her.”
Mariama shook her head. “Oh, that’s bad. Burning is not good. We don’t do that.”
A customer came in, her hair covered in a bright yellow headwrap.
“Hi,” she said. “I’d like to get braids.”
“What kind of braids you want?” Mariama asked.
“Just regular box braids, medium size.”
“You want it long?” Mariama asked.
“Not too long, maybe shoulder length?”
“Okay. Please sit down. She will do it for you,” Mariama said, gesturing to Halima, who was sitting at the back, her eyes on the television. Halima stood up and stretched, for a little too long, as though to register her reluctance.