Americanah

“The marketing director called me this morning. She had that really unbearable politeness that is worse than any insult, you know? And so she tells me how booksellers love the cover already and blah blah blah. It’s ridiculous,” Shan said.

“It’s the herd instinct of corporate publishing. They do what everyone else does,” Blaine said.

The elevator stopped at her floor, and she turned to Ifemelu. “Oh, sorry, I’m so stressed,” she said. “It’s nice to meet you. Blaine won’t stop talking about you.” She looked at Ifemelu, a frank sizing up that was not shy to be a frank sizing up. “You’re very pretty.”

“You’re very pretty,” Ifemelu said, surprising herself, because those were not the words she would have ordinarily said, but she felt already co-opted by Shan; Shan’s compliment had made her strangely happy. Shan is special, Blaine had said, and Ifemelu understood now what he meant. Shan had the air of a person who was somehow chosen. The gods had placed a wand on her. If she did ordinary things, they became enigmatic.

“Do you like the room?” Shan asked Ifemelu, with a sweep of her hand, taking in the dramatic furnishing: a red rug, a blue sofa, an orange sofa, a green armchair.

“I know it’s supposed to mean something but I don’t get it.”

Shan laughed, short sounds that seemed cut off prematurely, as though more were supposed to follow but did not, and because she merely laughed, not saying anything, Ifemelu added, “It’s interesting.”

“Yes, interesting.” Shan stood by the dining table and raised her leg onto it, leaning over to grasp her foot in her hand. Her body was a collection of graceful small curves, her buttocks, her breasts, her calves, and there was in her movement the entitlement of the chosen; she could stretch her leg on her dining table whenever she wanted, even with a guest in her apartment.

“Blaine introduced me to Raceteenth. It’s a great blog,” she said.

“Thank you,” Ifemelu said.

“I have a Nigerian friend who is a writer. Do you know Kelechi Garuba?”

“I’ve read his work.”

“We talked about your blog the other day and he said he was sure the Non-American Black was a Caribbean because Africans don’t care about race. He’ll be shocked when he meets you!” Shan paused to exchange the leg on the table, leaning in to grasp her foot.

“He’s always fretting about how his books don’t do well. I’ve told him he needs to write terrible things about his own people if he wants to do well. He needs to say Africans alone are to blame for African problems, and Europeans have helped Africa more than they’ve hurt Africa, and he’ll be famous and people will say he’s so honest!”

Ifemelu laughed.

“Interesting picture,” she said, gesturing to a photo on a side table, of Shan holding two bottles of champagne high above her head, surrounded by tattered, smiling, brown children in what looked like a Latin American slum, shacks with patched-up tin walls behind her. “I mean interesting literally.”

“Ovidio didn’t want it displayed but I insisted. It’s supposed to be ironic, obviously.”

Ifemelu imagined the insisting, a simple sentence, which would not need to be repeated and which would have Ovidio scrambling.

“So do you go home to Nigeria often?” Shan asked.

“No. Actually I haven’t been home since I came to the States.”

“Why?”

“At first I couldn’t afford to. Then I had work and just never seemed to make the time.”

Shan was facing her now, her arms stretched out and pushed back like wings.

“Nigerians call us acata, right? And it means wild animal?”

“I don’t know that it means wild animal, I really don’t know what it means, and I don’t use it.” Ifemelu found herself almost stammering. It was true and yet in the directness of Shan’s gaze, she felt guilty. Shan dripped power, a subtle and devastating kind.

Blaine emerged from the kitchen with two tall glasses of a reddish liquid.

“Virgin cocktails!” Shan said, with a childish delight, as she took a glass from Blaine.

“Pomegranate, sparkling water, and a bit of cranberry,” Blaine said, giving Ifemelu the other glass. “So when are you going to have the next salon, Shan? I was telling Ifemelu about them.”

When Blaine had told Ifemelu about Shan calling her gatherings “salons,” he had underlined the word with mockery, but now he said it with an earnestly French pronunciation: sa-lon.

“Oh, soon, I guess.” Shan shrugged, fond and offhand, sipped from her glass, and then leaned sideways in a stretch, like a tree bent by wind.

Shan’s cell phone rang. “Where did I put that phone? It’s probably David.”

The phone was on the table. “Oh, it’s Luc. I’ll call him back later.”

“Who’s Luc?” Blaine asked, coming out of the kitchen.

“This French guy, rich guy. It’s funny, I met him at the airport for fuck’s sake. I tell him I have a boyfriend and he goes ‘Then I will admire from afar and bide my time.’ He actually said ‘bide.’ ” Shan sipped her drink. “It’s nice how in Europe, white men look at you like a woman, not a black woman. Now I don’t want to date them, hell no, I just want to know the possibility is there.”

Blaine was nodding, agreeing. If anybody else had said what Shan did, he would instantly comb through the words in search of nuance, and he would disagree with their sweep, their simplicity. Ifemelu had once told him, as they watched a news item about a celebrity divorce, that she did not understand the unbending, unambiguous honesties that Americans required in relationships. “What do you mean?” he asked her, and she heard a looming disagreement in his voice; he, too, believed in unbending, unambiguous honesties.

“It’s different for me and I think it’s because I’m from the Third World,” she said. “To be a child of the Third World is to be aware of the many different constituencies you have and how honesty and truth must always depend on context.” She had felt clever to have thought of this explanation but Blaine shook his head even before she finished speaking and said, “That is so lazy, to use the Third World like that.”

Now he was nodding as Shan said, “Europeans are just not as conservative and uptight about relationships as Americans are. In Europe the white men are thinking ‘I just want a hot woman.’ In America the white men are thinking ‘I won’t touch a black woman but I could maybe do Halle Berry.’ ”

“That’s funny,” Blaine said.

“Of course, there’s the niche of white men in this country who will only date black women, but that’s a kind of fetish and it’s nasty,” Shan said, and then turned her glowing gaze on Ifemelu.

Ifemelu was almost reluctant to disagree; it was strange, how much she wanted Shan to like her. “Actually my experience has been the opposite. I get a lot more interest from white men than from African-American men.”

“Really?” Shan paused. “I guess it’s your exotic credential, that whole Authentic African thing.”

It stung her, the rub of Shan’s dismissal, and then it became a prickly resentment directed at Blaine, because she wished he would not agree so heartily with his sister.

Shan’s phone rang again. “Oh, that had better be David!” She took the phone into the bedroom.

“David is her editor. They want to put this sexualized image, a black torso, on her cover and she’s fighting it,” Blaine said.

“Really.” Ifemelu sipped her drink and flipped through an art magazine, still irritated with him.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine.”

Shan was back. Blaine looked at her. “All okay?”

She nodded. “They’re not using it. Everyone seems to be on the same page now.”

“That’s great,” Blaine said.

“You should be my guest blogger for a couple of days when your book comes out,” Ifemelu said. “You would be amazing. I would love to have you.”

Shan raised her eyebrows, an expression Ifemelu could not read, and she feared that she had been too gushing. “Yes, I guess I could,” Shan said.

Obama Can Win Only If He Remains the Magic Negro

His pastor is scary because it means maybe Obama is not the Magic Negro after all. By the way, the pastor is pretty melodramatic, but have you been to an old school American Black church? Pure theater. But this guy’s basic point is true: that American Blacks (certainly those his age) know an America different from American Whites; they know a harsher, uglier America. But you’re not supposed to say that, because in America everything is fine and everyone is the same. So now that the pastor’s said it, maybe Obama thinks so too, and if Obama thinks so then he isn’t the Magic Negro and only a Magic Negro can win an American election. And what’s a Magic Negro, you ask? The black man who is eternally wise and kind. He never reacts under great suffering, never gets angry, is never threatening. He always forgives all kinds of racist shit. He teaches the white person how to break down the sad but understandable prejudice in his heart. You see this man in many films. And Obama is straight from central casting.