by Uwem Akpan
Inside, I said to Caro, after pleasantries, I had rashes. She was quiet.
“Ekong Baby, anyie rashes k’America?” she said.
“Kind of.”
“My husband, what do kind-of rashes look like? You done drink and fuck the white bitch finish! You couldn’t even wait to land in America! Aa-kung ajen iban mbakara ade!”
“Listen, I’ve not even hugged her …!”
“For your information, last week they screened my blood at the hospice so I could donate. You’re on your own.”
“But I didn’t say you gave me anything.”
“So what else could you be saying?”
“I’m sorry if I sounded so—”
Jeff opened his door angrily, and even Caro could hear him stamping to switch the hallway light back on. She apologized that we had been too loud. She wondered whether Jeff would be angry with me in the morning. I said even if he was angry, he could not ask me to be quiet and I did not care. “Baby, it’s okay, don’t worry about him,” I said. She whispered she hoped the itches were nothing but, perhaps, an allergic reaction to American food that soon I would feel better. We said a hurried goodbye.
AFRAID EMILY AND MOLLY would be downcast if I skipped work, I arrived wearing the biggest smile in NYC. I gave folks high fives and pumped hands.
When Jack came to the door of his office, looking very contrite, I took his hand and went inside. “Just to say, Ekong, I’m so sorry about yesterday,” he said, offering me a seat. “There were things there we, no, I should never have said … I sounded like another person, racist and stupid and all. I should never have tried to hide under any culture bullshit. Last night, I really wished I had Father Kiobel’s phone number. Given what you said at the Japanese buffet about how he smooths over these kinds of misunderstandings, I would’ve begged him to apologize to you on our behalf!” I embraced and thanked and urged him to put everything behind him. I let him know how much I appreciated his blood drive work at the Humane Society with Angela and Emily, because, in my heart, I understood that NYC minorities and the poor benefited the most from it. I did not believe anyone who invested that much in us was racist. I was a believer in action rather than words.
I went on to ask about the reading. He said it was wonderful. He promised to invite me along to the next reading, which he said would be in two weeks. He said Emily would not be at work today due to a bad cold. “I think she’d appreciate a text or something,” he encouraged me.
By the water fountain, Angela was equally remorseful. “Look, Ekong, I apologize for my stupidity!” she whispered, grabbing my hands. “I apologize for insulting your family and continent, and I should never have belittled your embassy trauma. Listen, the word racist has been thrown around a lot, but I totally merited it yesterday. I sounded worse than Lagoon Drinker. I am sorry. And, for me, apologizing to you directly is more important than responding to the queries Jack and I rightly received.”
“You’re welcome … glad you brought this up,” I stuttered. “We learn daily. I was just telling Jack let’s put yesterday behind us, so it doesn’t destroy the beautiful hospitality I’ve enjoyed here since I arrived.”
Now Jack and a few people joined us, to chat. However, this time they were not asking polite questions about my background or bantering lighthearted stuff about their lives and the wonderful city. We were subdued, and even our laughter did not touch our hearts, as we say back home. And there was a distant echo of Emily’s confessions as the conversation veered into who had minority neighbors growing up and who did not—or when and where they first learned about slavery, and how their parents and teachers presented things. The mob justice was understated, sophisticated, as though our colleagues were subtly rebuking Angela and Jack for whatever they said or did not say.
Jack and Angela silently and unusually looked down, neutered. They were miserable, their countenance bruised with sorrow. She held my hand for support. Because they had apologized, in solidarity I hung my head and kept silent, too.
“BY THE WAY, have you been to the Nigerian restaurant in Brooklyn yet?” Angela whispered, when the others were all gone.
“Nigerian … what?” I said, my heart fluttering.
“Nigerian food. Fulton Street. Brooklyn.”
“I didn’t even know of it!”
“The reviews say it’s the best Nigerian restaurant in New York. Someone at the reading mentioned it, so naturally I thought of you. I think it’s about time we took advantage of the wonders of the city. I’m going to beat Jack and Emily to sampling your dishes. Actually, my kid brother in Houston, Texas, is hitting Calabar Cuisine, a Nigerian restaurant, this weekend. I think he loves the photos of stewed beans and afang soup.”
“Wow!”
The positive vibes had more than dialed back the tension; it had restored our usual amiable office environment. I needed this, especially since Hell’s Kitchen was like a loaded gun to my head. “Hey, I love your stripes-of-the-zebra image!” I remarked, hugging her.
I MET A LITTLE folded white piece of paper on my desk. It was unsigned and read: “Our business manager is on their case. He’s also consulting our outside lawyer.” I looked around but, unable to decipher the leaker, I trashed the note. Not knowing what official sanction was enough for their behavior, what stayed with me was our heartfelt reconciliation.
During lunch break, I found my way to a community CityMD in Hell’s Kitchen for an HIV test. After filling out so many long forms like I wanted to buy a house, the wait was horrendous. The center was not even crowded, but the bureaucracy was as cumbersome as sharing the parts of a slaughtered cow according to blood lineage in the Ikot Ituno-Ekanem village square or in the Torah, too many workers milling around, taking care of too little.
When the nurse finally weighed me, I learned I had lost more than twelve pounds. My body had endured so much that the usually frightening sharp prick of the needle to take blood meant nothing. In fact, I was even giggling because, I thought, they were holding the needle like the Tuskegee experimenters in Trails. I had to tell them I was just nervous, though it would have been more correct to say I was thinking of how it must feel for the descendants of Tuskegee to visit hospitals—or whether it was possible for anybody, of any race whatsoever, to listen to Emily’s childhood story and never have these thoughts cross their mind when visiting a health facility. On remembering that Tuskegee was in Alabama, where Keith’s roots were, I thought of asking him about it. But I did not think we had yet developed the kind of relationship that would allow that sort of conversation.
The CityMD said the HIV result would be ready tomorrow, and they would call or text. If I was positive, I would have to come in for counseling and more paperwork, and since my Seven Corners international insurance plan did not cover stuff like this, I would have to pay out of pocket.
I asked whether, if I had HIV, I could embrace people. They said it would only be a problem if I was bleeding anywhere. On my way back, I texted Emily, but she called instead, to jubilantly tell me she had just had a lovely conversation with Cecilia, Trails’ agent, and they were planning coffee together. I told her again how moved I was by her testimony, how Father Kiobel had promised to pray for her, and how her testimony had encouraged him to open up a tad about our war. She modestly said she was humbled her story had inspired someone. She repeated her desire to visit Ikot Ituno-Ekanem with Jack.
“Ekong, I’m glad you had so much fun at the reading yesterday,” she said, giggling shyly.
“I didn’t attend any reading!” I said.
“But Jack said the three of you were together.” Lost, I stopped by a street corner, two blocks from our offices. “Perhaps I’m mixing things up … Anyway, they’re attending another reading today.”
“No, they’re going in two weeks … he’s just told me this in his office this freaking morning!”
“Actually, they’re leaving in five minutes.”
“Emily, are you sure?”
“Yes … why?”
I sai
d goodbye and hurried back. I was eager to meet them, just to kill off the suspicion and anger that was teasing my imagination.
But, turning the block, I froze because I heard Jack’s angry voice. He and Angela were standing on the curb, their backs to me. I hid behind a street vendor stand. Jack was shouting into his phone with one finger plugging his other ear, while Angela was having the laugh of her life, her tall imposing frame dancing. He was telling the caller about “our fucking African Fellow who’s using diversity to twist. Every. Damn. Thing.
“Chad, we’ve already been put on probation, you know. I tried to call our outside legal counsel, but he wants everything written down, no phone calls, no meetings. Even Liam Sanders has bought into the bullshit. For the first time, he didn’t return Angela’s call either. She’s really traumatized. We need to quit Andrew & Thompson. We need new jobs.
“Of course, Chad, I know we were never going to compete with the big houses. But we can’t even seem to prioritize Mistress over, what … Yes, you told me you turned down that Tuskegee piece of shit last year … Yes, I remember you saying those atrocities didn’t even happen. Personally, I believe they were exaggerated, cartoonish. I believe there are limits to fiction! Well, thanks for even submitting Mistress to us!
“You know that Nigerian fucker monopolized the whole damn meeting, passive-aggressively keeping people from saying what they thought. We couldn’t breathe. You should’ve heard him defend his dysfunctional country. Whoever said Black people are ashamed of Black-on-Black violence or their shithole wars over land and oil? After the meeting, some of our colleagues attacked Angela and me like nasty dogs all the way to the reading yesterday. Again, this morning, they were still trying to guillotine us with guilt at the water fountain. It was funny Ekong himself spared us. He kept quiet and avoided their eyes and held Angela’s hand, can you believe it? But, to be honest, that made us even more uncomfortable: the puppeteer controlled the situation with his silence, like when he refused to opine on that Tuskegee crap!
“Well, from his application for the Morrison Fellowship, I was quite confident he would be different—fresh, peaceful, logical, not resentful like African Americans. Liam wouldn’t comment on any of this, but Angela thinks he accepted the jerk just so that Molly gets her checkmark—her virtual badge of virtue, so she can boast that she employed a person of color in publishing this year. I even helped with his visa through an acquaintance in our congressman’s office. Huge mistake. I think we need to stop demonizing ICE or Lagoon Drinker—remember the Lagos consular officer?—for keeping some of these crazy assholes out of America … Yes, yes, you’re right: we’re making plans to quit. We have developed publishing, so I don’t understand why we are being forced, blackmailed, to allow other races in—”
“Absolutely!” Angela shouted for the first time. “Can’t work here anymore.”
“Chad, since I told Ekong how Emily petitioned Yale and Columbia to establish his fucking Annang ancestry,” Jack continued, “he’s had the hots for her. You could see it in his deranged eyes! He even gave her a hug at the editorial meeting. Who does that? He almost kissed her. Maybe African editorial meetings are orgies … Emily has to be careful. And she was needlessly insensitive when she presented on Trails. She made it sound as though white folks were poisoning Black babies when she said they learned of the atrocities of racism from their mother’s milk—”
“No, Jack, screw her irresponsible race imagery!” Angela said. “Just confront Ekong man-to-man to leave your babe alone, period!”
“Chad, Angela says I must confront him, period,” Jack said. “Everybody knows he’s already in Molly’s panties! On conference call last night, she educated us for hours about diversity.
“Well, fortunately, knowing how much Ekong wants to cook for Emily and me, I urged Angela to learn to pronounce the names of a few Nigerian dishes from the internet. We needed to do something dramatic to reverse the lynching we knew was awaiting us … Chad, did you say egusi … egusi soup at the Nigerian book festivals looked like, what, vomit …?”
I backed off, turned around, and scurried away.
I wanted to flee. Yet, since the whole thing felt like a dream, I wanted to confront them, at least, to authenticate it for me, to let it sink in.
I chose to run around the block, so I could approach them from the opposite direction, like some sort of new beginning, like I could go back to my first lovely days at Andrew & Thompson. It gave me time to think, the chilly fall wind hurting my eyes. I hated these two Americans—especially now that I realized that they hated me even more for bailing them out of the water fountain rebuke. Still, a part of me felt guilty I had invaded their very private moment, to ruin the fruits of our beautiful reconciliation. But then I got angry and ran faster, blaming myself for not cutting into the phone call to shame them.
ANGELA SAW ME FIRST. She smartened up and snatched the phone from Jack to end the call. She waved to me. I waved back.
“Hey, I told you in the morning our next reading would be in two weeks’ time, right?” Jack said.
“Yes, indeed,” I said, panting, holding my knees. They said they had to make an early dinner with a publicist friend from Little, Brown. “Oh, well, we’ll still do Broadway together, Jack,” I said.
“Absolutely,” he said, looking away.
“And Angela, perhaps we could visit the Nigerian restaurant on Fulton Street,” I said.
“Yeah, I’m sorry, my schedule has just become horrible right up to the holidays,” she said, her gesticulation in full swing today, like that of a praying mantis.
I straightened up and said: “Your kid brother will be addicted to our dishes by then, ha!”
“Please, we’re running late,” she said. “That’s why I disrupted Jack’s important call.”
I nodded and lumbered around Times Square to catch my breath, everything eerily clear in my head. I was a boast, a checkmark, a badge of virtue for my boss. But I was also hugely comforted that Molly had undertaken to try to “educate” Jack and Angela on my behalf.
The voices of the colleagues who berated Jack and Angela at the water fountain also strengthened my steps.
I thought about Toni Morrison, the name on my fellowship, the only African American editor I had read about. When I imagined that she worked in publishing forty years ago, I could only think of how alienating it could have been back then, or was I to believe publishing had gotten less diverse over time? What was it like for her to excel in that white space? Or, as an African American, was she more familiar, more prepared for the shock of this white space than I, an African, would ever be? Or was it even more painful to her because of her close-up-and-personal experience of racism, something the depth of which I was only beginning to fathom? Today, my admiration for Morrison soared beyond her powerful books, beyond her indomitable courage, beyond her unforgettable quotes.
I googled current Black editors in American publishing and their profiles. I found a few; they were mostly young. Some of them hinted at the alienation of their workplaces. They did not elaborate. I did not blame them: in their shoes, if I wanted to progress in the system, I would be the same. My joy was that they all wore happy hopeful faces.
But by the time Emily phoned to say Jack said I declined to accompany him and Angela to the reading, it was as though I were listening to the Jack-Chad phone call afresh. My heartbeat was as fast as in that moment at the meeting when I knew I would have to fight Jack and Angela over Trails. My biggest worry now in New York was how to work with them—or even exist in the same building with them. And just thinking about it was more disconcerting, more frightening than what was happening to my skin.
THE FOLLOWING DAY, after checking my phone nonstop for a CityMD notification, I put up a brave front until I entered Molly’s office. She herself seemed more exhausted than me. I was so guarded that she asked what was wrong. I avoided talking about itches.
When she said Angela and Jack told her they had apologized, I nodded absentmindedly and went on to a
sk what Liam thought about the two manuscripts. She said they did not want to prioritize one over the other but wanted us to pursue each manuscript as far as possible. “Ekong, I must say, I’m quite pleased with the speed with which he’s making decisions and responding to my emails,” she said. “By the way, our colleagues who overheard Jack and Angela’s apologies yesterday were really moved by your graciousness! Thanks. But if anything comes up, honey, I need to know. I mean anything!”
“Thanks.”
She said on behalf of her company she wanted me to know that Liam was completely mortified by what had happened. The company was ready to roll out sanctions without meeting with me, because they did not want me to relive the trauma. She held out her two hands like she was opening an invisible door: “We hope to be a publishing house that doesn’t merely put out minority books but actually lets people of color into the intimate processes of shaping them. Ekong, our dream is to be a truly world brand. Personally, I’m really excited about this. Liam also hopes to get us into a bigger space so that someone like Emily can have an office of her own, you know.”
I nodded.
I did not know how to tell her Angela and Jack had fooled everyone. It was no crime they no longer wanted to attend the readings with me—or eat my Nigerian food. More than anything else, I thought, my pride in our food had tied my tongue from bringing up these street gossips. I could just not bring myself to speak of vomit and our dishes in the same sentence. “Molly, all that’s important to me is a conducive environment,” I said. “You know, I need not be the friend of the Humane Society Two.”
She leaned back and struggled with a nervous giggle. I could see her throat vibrating, pulsing, flushing up the noise, yet her face was frozen in misery like one with facial stroke. I was happy we could find any humor at all. The laugh returned some color to her face. When I lifted my gaze and our eyes locked, I smiled because I never wanted her to feel defeated.
