After Buchi was born, he had agreed to a thanksgiving service at Kosi’s church, a crowded hall full of lavishly dressed people, people who were Kosi’s friends, Kosi’s kind. And he had thought of them as a sea of simple brutes, clapping, swaying simple brutes, all of them accepting and pliant before the pastor in his designer suit.
“What’s wrong, darling?” Kosi asked, when he remained limp in her hand. “Are you feeling well?”
“Just tired.”
Her hair was covered in a black hair net, her face coated in a cream that smelled of peppermint, which he had always liked. He turned away from her. He had been turning away since the day he first kissed Ifemelu. He should not compare, but he did. Ifemelu demanded of him. “No, don’t come yet, I’ll kill you if you come,” she would say, or “No, baby, don’t move,” then she would dig into his chest and move at her own rhythm, and when finally she arched her back and let out a sharp cry, he felt accomplished to have satisfied her. She expected to be satisfied, but Kosi did not. Kosi always met his touch with complaisance, and sometimes he would imagine her pastor telling her that a wife should have sex with her husband, even if she didn’t feel like it, otherwise the husband would find solace in a Jezebel.
“I hope you’re not getting sick,” she said.
“I’m okay.” Ordinarily he would hold her, slowly rub her back until she fell asleep. But he could not get himself to do so now. So many times in the past weeks he had started to tell her about Ifemelu but had stopped. What would he say? It would sound like something from a silly film. I am in love with another woman. There’s someone else. I’m leaving you. That these were words that anybody could say seriously, outside a film and outside the pages of a book, seemed odd. Kosi was wrapping her arms around him. He eased away and mumbled something about his stomach being upset and went into the toilet. She had put a new potpourri, a mix of dried leaves and seeds in a purple bowl, on the cover of the toilet tank. The too-strong lavender scent choked him. He emptied the bowl into the toilet and then instantly felt remorseful. She had meant well. She did not know that the too-strong scent of lavender would be unappealing to him, after all.
The first time he saw Ifemelu at Jazzhole, he had come home and told Kosi, “Ifemelu is in town. I had a drink with her,” and Kosi had said, “Oh, your girlfriend in university,” with an indifference so indifferent that he did not entirely trust it.
Why had he told her? Perhaps because he had sensed even then the force of what he felt, and he wanted to prepare her, to tell her in stages. But how could she not see that he had changed? How could she not see it on his face? In how much time he spent alone in his study, and in how often he went out, how late he stayed? He had hoped, selfishly, that it might alienate her, provoke her. But she always nodded, glib and accepting nods, when he told her he had been at the club. Or at Okwudiba’s. Once he said that he was still chasing the difficult deal with the new Arab owners of Megatel, and he had said “the deal” casually, as if she already knew about it, and she made vague, encouraging sounds. But he was not even involved at all with Megatel.
THE NEXT MORNING, he woke up unrested, his mind furred with a great sadness. Kosi was already up and bathed, sitting in front of her dressing table, which was full of creams and potions so carefully arranged that he sometimes imagined putting his hands under the table and overturning it, just to see how all those bottles would fare.
“You haven’t made me eggs in a while, The Zed,” she said, coming over to kiss him when she saw that he was awake. And so he made her eggs, and played with Buchi in the living room downstairs, and after Buchi fell asleep, he read the newspapers, all the time his head furred with that sadness. Ifemelu was still not taking his calls. He went upstairs to the bedroom. Kosi was cleaning out a closet. A pile of shoes, high heels sticking up, lay on the floor. He stood by the door and said quietly, “I’m not happy, Kosi. I love somebody else. I want a divorce. I will make sure you and Buchi lack nothing.”
“What?” She turned from the mirror to look at him blankly.
“I’m not happy.” It was not how he had planned to say it, but he had not even planned what to say. “I’m in love with somebody. I will make sure …”
She raised her hand, her open palm facing him, to make him stop talking. Say no more, her hand said. Say no more. And it irked him that she did not want to know more. Her palm was pale, almost diaphanous, and he could see the greenish criss-cross of her veins. She lowered her hand. Then, slowly, she sank to her knees. It was an easy descent for her, sinking to her knees, because she did that often when she prayed, in the TV room upstairs, with the house help and nanny and whoever else was staying with them. “Buchi, shh,” she would say in between the words of prayer, while Buchi would continue her toddler talk, but at the end Buchi always squeaked in a high piping voice, “Amen!” When Buchi said “Amen!” with that delight, that gusto, Obinze feared she would grow up to be a woman who, with that word “amen,” would squash the questions she wanted to ask of the world. And now Kosi was sinking to her knees before him and he did not want to comprehend what she was doing.
“Obinze, this is a family,” Kosi said. “We have a child. She needs you. I need you. We have to keep this family together.”
She was kneeling and begging him not to leave and he wished she would be furious instead.
“Kosi, I love another woman. I hate to hurt you like this and …”
“It’s not about another woman, Obinze,” Kosi said, rising to her feet, her voice steeling, her eyes hardening. “It’s about keeping this family together! You took a vow before God. I took a vow before God. I am a good wife. We have a marriage. Do you think you can just destroy this family because your old girlfriend came into town? Do you know what it means to be a responsible father? You have a responsibility to that child downstairs! What you do today can ruin her life and make her damaged until the day she dies! And all because your old girlfriend came back from America? Because you have had acrobatic sex that reminded you of your time in university?”
Obinze backed away. So she knew. He left and went into his study and locked the door. He loathed Kosi, for knowing all this time and pretending she didn’t know, and for the sludge of humiliation it left in his stomach. He had been keeping a secret that was not even a secret. A multilayered guilt weighed him down, guilt not only for wanting to leave Kosi, but for having married her at all. He could not first marry her, knowing very well that he should not have done so, and now, with a child, want to leave her. She was determined to remain married and it was the least he owed her, to remain married. Panic lanced through him at the thought of remaining married; without Ifemelu, the future loomed as an endless, joyless tedium. Then he told himself that he was being silly and dramatic. He had to think of his daughter. Yet as he sat on his chair and swiveled to look for a book on the shelf, he felt himself already in flight.
BECAUSE HE HAD RETREATED to his study, and slept on the couch there, because they had said nothing else to each other, he thought Kosi would not want to go to his friend Ahmed’s child’s christening party the next day. But in the morning Kosi laid out, on their bed, her blue lace long skirt, his blue Senegalese caftan, and in between, Buchi’s flouncy blue velvet dress. She had never done that before, laid out color-coordinated outfits for them all. Downstairs, he saw that she had made pancakes, the thick ones he liked, set out on the breakfast table. Buchi had spilled some Ovaltine on her table mat.
“Hezekiah has been calling me,” Kosi said musingly, about his cousin in Awka, who called only when he wanted money. “He sent a text to say he can’t reach you. I don’t know why he pretends not to know that you ignore his calls.”
It was an odd thing for her to say, talking about Hezekiah’s pretense while immersed in pretense herself; she was putting cubes of fresh pineapple on his plate, as if the previous night had never happened.
“But you should do something for him, no matter how small, otherwise he will not leave you alone,” she said.
“Do something for him” meant give him money and Obinze, all of a sudden, hated that tendency of Igbo people to resort to euphemism whenever they spoke of money, to indirect references, to gesturing instead of pointing. Find something for this person. Do something for that person. It riled him. It seemed cowardly, especially for a people who otherwise were blisteringly direct. Fucking coward, Ifemelu had called him. There was something cowardly even in his texting and calling her, knowing she would not respond; he could have gone over to her flat and knocked on her door, even if only to have her ask him to leave. And there was something cowardly in his not telling Kosi again that he wanted a divorce, in his leaning back into the ease of Kosi’s denial. Kosi took a piece of pineapple from his plate and ate it. She was unfaltering, single-minded, calm.
“Hold Daddy’s hand,” she told Buchi as they walked into Ahmed’s festive compound that afternoon. She wanted to will normalcy back.
She wanted to will a good marriage into being. She was carrying a present wrapped in silver paper, for Ahmed’s baby. In the car, she had told him what it was, but already he had forgotten. Canopies and buffet tables dotted the massive compound, which was green and landscaped, with the promise of a swimming pool in the back. A live band was playing. Two clowns were running around. Children dancing and shrieking.