by Uwem Akpan
A white priest was outside greeting his white flock and hugging crying babies and gracing selfies like Father Kiobel. Though he also had the Ogoni priest’s height and carriage, his Father-Duffy-of-Times-Square face was dulled by a mustache that ate up his upper lip. His simple vestments were nothing compared to Father Kiobel’s embroidery and frills that drove parishioners to complain that the man could not stop buying clothes. I could hear the ushers encouraging people to stop by the basement for coffee and doughnuts, just the way their Ikot Ituno-Ekanem counterparts of yore invited people after Sunday Mass to the sharing of sweet palm wine, something so sweet even children could sample it. I went and stood near this priest, waiting for him to finish with the family he was greeting so I could say hello. They called him Father Orrin, and he seemed to know each person’s name and what they did last week and the week before and whose cousin missed Mass.
Yet, each time a family went away and I got my smile ready and stepped forward, he grabbed the next family and next woman and next man and next child, or even the next tree. It was like there was a bone in his neck that prevented him from turning in my direction, much less seeing me. But I told myself perhaps there was an invisible line Father Orrin was attending to, something I could not work out, a Catholic protocol the Irish missionaries forgot to teach Nigeria. I waited patiently, hoping that at the end of the line, my elephantine patience would get me somewhere, that I would be seen.
But, just when the line had ended and there was a huge opening and I moved in, the priest exploded in a laugh. When I also smiled, he pointed behind me, to someone else who had not even seen him. “Mary, Mary, my friend!” he called out.
She was an old frail woman in a wheelchair. Her nails were long and curved and were painted in mixed colors, futuristic talons. She was wrapped up in blanket, her sharp mouth meticulously painted in red like an American white ibis. Her face only gave you peace when she smiled. When she spoke in a little grating voice, she moved her hands like Angela Stevens. Now the priest took off toward her in such a great hurry that the back hem of his chasuble bucked and expanded behind him, riding the light wind, the tail of a bird.
I shrugged and continued to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was greeting only worshippers leaving the church, maybe he knew I had not said hello to Jesus yet and so he was reluctant to supplant the Most High. Then I felt stupid, like folks were staring at me for doing something bad, and when I looked around they actually were staring at me, though I could not catch their eyes. Even if I turned abruptly, their eyes were already elsewhere, including those of teenagers. If this was what Tuesday was enduring every Sunday, I encouraged myself, then I must submit my soul for his sake.
The only people who gave the game away were the little children, who slowly came close to gawk at me. I appreciated their openness, their honesty. It confirmed I was reading the alienation right. But, I did not believe they could not have seen Black people before, or been in school with some, or been to Times Square and seen its daily global carnival, for that matter. No, I believed their problem was that I was out of place, like a pagan statue roaming through their holy premises: I had shown up at the wrong shrine, my blackness falling, as it were, like a shadow, a stain on it. Their innocence reminded me of the stories of Emily and Alejandra’s childhoods.
SUDDENLY SOMEONE WAS HAILING my name and walking toward me. I turned around. But I was so shocked I could not tell who he was. The children greeted him, “Dr. Hughes, Dr. Hughes!”
I stepped back when he stopped before me.
He was a white man—totally white, mbakara, onyibo. If this was Tuesday Ita, he had completely bleached off his Black skin. While some of the people wore a tan, Tuesday’s skin was already an irreversible lily whiteness of a sunless dead of winter. The whitening job was so good, so thorough, I would never have suspected anything if I knew nothing about him. He was nothing near the photos of his earlier years in America, which I had seen in Ikot Ituno-Ekanem, or of his relatives. Unlike the quack bleaching of the embassy dancer or the Biafran waiter at the prize ceremony, Tuesday’s knuckles were as light as Brad or Alejandra’s. All I could think of was the frightening transformation of Gregor Samsa into a giant bug in The Metamorphosis.
Though I was appalled, like Gregor’s relatives, I pretended not to notice his change. Such was the depth of my betrayal.
“Call me Hughes and nothing else, please!” he emphasized to break the awkward silence.
“Hughes, amesiere!” I greeted him, just to be doubly sure, and put out a hand.
“Asiere nde,” he said, grabbing it. “Welcome to America and thanks for coming out to your brother’s end. Irung-o?”
“Mmode … everybody is fine. It’s really my pleasure. I’ve been hearing of you since I was a kid! I know you don’t like to be complimented for all your charity back home, but the village really wanted me to thank you in person …”
“Ikud, the tortoise, knows how to embrace his wife, as our ancestors say. You never forget your people no matter where you are.”
“Gwoden Annang, agwo uko!” I began to hail him with Annang traditional praises and proverbs.
“Se-nyien do-ng,” he responded timidly.
“Gwoden Annang, agwo esit mbom!”
He raised his hand to stop me, shaking his head, looking away.
“Ekong, aa-gwoden Annang, agwo Ifiok, aninge inua iko!” he said, taking over the praising, beaming.
“Nsinam ikpa ekpe?” I responded, relieved.
“Unyie agwo ade mfon emama o!”
“Anesthesiologist ajid, irung anyie inyang enyie ubom.”
“Aa-gwoden Itiaba.”
I offered him a little bow with a two-handed rigorous handshake. “Mmo ntom, mbo-om … after all these years, you speak iko Annang better than some of us back home!”
“Sosongo.”
“Hughes, your church and city are beautiful!”
“Thanks, da Ekong.”
Then I thought, oh no, this man must have a skin disease. Nobody with such a clear pride and grasp of our culture and language would destroy his skin like this. Besides, I doubted any bleaching could have succeeded so thoroughly. Then I felt bad I had prejudged him. I tried to pay attention to other aspects of his appearance. He was cleanshaven and in a black suit, black shoes, white shirt, and red tie. He wore a black bowler hat, the type the minorities of the Niger Delta call “resource control,” because this was how our politicians fighting for oil ownership in the national assembly dressed. But the headgear did not stop me from seeing that he was bald or had shaved his hair.
He led me to the front of the church, where a few people now greeted me, and even shook hands with me, seemingly emboldened that one of them had taken the risk. I could not imagine they knew he was once Black—or, should I say, was now still Black? Had this whiteness been part of him all along?
The fact that I did not even know how to phrase the question in my heart meant that, as strange as it sounded, I felt more at ease with these other white folks than with my village man, because I thought I knew what or who they were. But while Tuesday’s accent was exactly like theirs, mine seemed to alienate me or increased the distance between how they saw him and me. When I had to repeat things twice or thrice for clarity, Tuesday did not speak up or “translate,” as though it would be a crime for him to claim an understanding of my accent.
I felt lost.
“Ekong, just to let you know, there are Black folks in our city though they don’t come to our church,” he confided in me when they were gone, avoiding my eyes.
“Yes, I saw them on the train and bus,” I said.
“I used to attend their parish, you know. But many of them thought they must remind me we Africans sold them into slavery four hundred years ago. But, somehow, they just fail to understand that I am not—that we are not—descendants of slaves!”
“Is it that bad?”
“Mmayin, I swear, they really rub it in. Africa this, Africa that.”
“That’s awf
ul! But it would seem you traded in a four-hundred-year itch for the forever itch of racism? So they need visas to worship with you, then? I do hope you didn’t say all of this descendant-of-slaves stuff to their faces.”
“Hey, I had to at some point, to breathe! I had to tell them I’m an African, always … not Negro today, tomorrow Afro-American, next week Black American, next month African American, and now just Black or something called ‘Black with capital B’? Except a few people like Usen and Ofonime—who still stop by their churches—Africans would rather go to hell than worship with African Americans. Well, since I changed a few things about my life and relocated to this side of the city, I’ve had peace. Look, I’m done with all this multicultural diversity shit.”
I wanted to say I was sorry about his skin and even more sorry about his trauma in the war. But, afraid this might embarrass him, I swallowed the idea. I realized he was still avoiding eye contact no matter what I did to warm up the chat, so I reached out for a belated embrace. It startled him. But he accepted it awkwardly, holding me off, giving me two back slaps that felt more like something designed to shock my body from bedbug itches than to welcome me to the Eucharist.
I held on to him till his body softened and I could feel his breathing. I did this for my own good, too, I must say, because I wanted him to feel I had accepted him. I held him till our necks jerked back like two snakes and our eyes finally met.
USEN AND HIS FAMILY arrived in their beige Audi sedan, a gift from his brother in Burkina Faso. To get to the parking lot, Usen drove so close to us I could pick out the Liverpool FC decal on the lower corner of the car’s back window, even as I juggled my attention between the car and Father Orrin, who was still lost in a conversation with Mary. After finding space in the crowded parking lot, they stepped out. Ujai had spotted me immediately and wanted to dash hither, but I could see Usen stare her down.
They were all in ravishing traditional Annang attire, over black turtlenecks and other layers to beat the chill. Ujai was dressed in the same style and colors as her mother. In her double-layer wrappa and aqua-blue lace blouse and shiny black heels and outrageous headgear, afong-iwuo, or what the Yorubas call gele, the girl walked gracefully with her parents, continually searching my face and their faces, hindered as much by the tension between me and her dad as by her wrappa. I could tell immediately that she had not stood with her legs apart, like the embassy Muslim lady, to tie her wrappa, hence her constricted stride.
The guys, Usen and the toddler son, were decked out in long-sleeved white shirts whose tails flew over their single-layer ofong-isin iden, or usowo or male wrappa, and flat-sole black shoes. Each man’s wrappa was gathered to the right side of the waist in a big knot, skewing the shape of the shirt. Their black hats matched their shoes, though they were different from Tuesday’s.
Of course, all eyes were on them, but I thought they were so colorful that the gaze was more benevolent, kinder, than what had been lashed on me. Even the priest had stopped the chat with Mary, to see and notice the newest visitors who seemed to be straight from Africa. And the children now clapped and cheered like the day my food was raised up and celebrated in Times Square. There were phone cameras flashing.
Unyoked from the punishing attention, I felt like jumping and hailing them, too. I silently cursed our stairwell for making it impossible for me to ever celebrate my outfit in America. When my eyes met Tuesday’s, he was fighting like mad to maintain his disguise, to hold in his ringing laugh, covering his mouth like Lagoon Drinker. When I pushed away his hand from his mouth, he joked that I should yodel their arrival like the women did for important visitors back home. I said he should do it, so I could see whether he still remembered how. But he straightened up to join the white people clapping for them.
When they came to a stop where we were, more people gathered around to welcome them. Ofonime hugged me and Tuesday, but between Usen and myself there was a needless nervous Biafran energy, which could neither be diffused by the sacredness of the locale nor the buzz occasioned by their arrival. As the whites receded, Ofonime, chatty and affable, did her best to paper over things. Ujai, already looking so grumpy and bored, found a way to give me a good hug and ask about Keith, Molly, and Emily. “Uncle Ekong, unlike in the Bronx, you smell really great today!” she whispered. But she refused to hug Tuesday till her father intervened.
We all beamed with smiles when Father Orrin ghosted in from behind to greet us. A crescendo of noise struck up as the whole premises acknowledged his arrival. He gave the African family a quick handshake and then plucked the toddler from the mother. Father Orrin still did not welcome or see me, even though I was the only person who greeted him by name. He hoisted Igwat in the air, and the collective excitement peaked and broke into an open cheer at his big long wet kiss on Igwat’s forehead with the kisser’s eyes closed.
As he returned the kid decisively to a startled Usen, not Ofonime, the priest told Tuesday, “Good job, good job!” for making us welcome. Tuesday nodded and executed a deep bow but did not introduce us as his people. I thought his estimation before Father Orrin, as a parishioner who could manage international chaos, could have only grown.
When the priest left, Usen, who had seen him snub me, glared and nodded maliciously, like God was already punishing me for my iniquities. “When you understand America, you shall be noticed!” he gibed. Tuesday tried to cover for Father Orrin, saying he must have thought I was an African American from across town, because I was not in our traditional wear. He blamed himself for forgetting to give me the dress code. I hated his little speech, though I smiled to hide my alienation.
Was he happy, then, that a disease had made him acceptable here, unlike the rest of us healthy Blacks? Had the disease affected his brain? I began to think of Tuesday as one of those Blacks who hate their color. But then again, I backpedaled, because I did not want to judge him. So many things in this country were taking me out of my depth.
Moreover, when I remembered that at the award event I myself had mistaken the Biafran waiter for an African American—because of his accent and dressing—I shrugged and blew out my cheeks in shame. Dealing with this white Annang brother was already more daunting than discussing race with Jeff Wengui.
I was tired.
CHAPTER 16
Niece of Mr. Gross or Niece of Reverse Oreo
THERE AND THEN, I MADE UP MY MIND NOT TO RECEIVE Communion from the hand of this priest. Actually, I wanted to run home. But for the sake of Usen’s family and Tuesday, I stayed on and all these voices in my head for the first time made peace and said in unison, Ekong, if you could stay on to fight this white-thing in Andrew & Thompson, why not here in your precious Church?
I texted Molly to say it was a pity we lost Trails. But she was more surprised I had found my way to New Jersey; she praised my spirit of adventure with lots of questions. And I said, well, it felt unapologetically Tenth or Fifteenth World. She asked whether I was being mugged; I said I felt worse than that even though I stood at the entrance of a church. She called, but I texted I could not talk now. She said I should slip inside to avoid the “riffraff of New Jersey” and must call a taxi shortly before the end of Mass to spirit me back to civilization.
I dragged our group inside ahead of time, arguing we had to put ourselves in the mood for worship, as we did back home. In the comfort of the familiar, we picked up the bulletins before lining up to dab our fingers in the baptismal font, to cross ourselves. Ujai grumbled her mother had usurped her job, that is, making the sign of the cross on her brother’s forehead. Usen held up the line. Ujai opted to administer it at the back of Igwat’s hands and on the laces of his shoes but when she got to the right side of his body, the little thing, tickled, served up a loud bubbly giggle that echoed in the main church. We laughed, for it reminded us of the echoing valley of Ikot Ituno-Ekanem.
The cavernous church was arranged in four columns of pews, the outer ones closely overseen by all the saints on the stainedglass Gothic windows and side chapels. Whe
n we got to the front, we genuflected to the Blessed Sacrament in the sanctuary, its presence signaled by the little ghostly light near its golden tabernacle. As Ofonime, Igwat, Tuesday, and Usen filed into the first pew, I cut into the second, not because their pew was full but because I wanted to sit right behind Tuesday, to study his skin. But then Ujai cleverly slipped in to join me, so that our whole sitting arrangement flushed toward the central isle, bunched up like a bouquet of beautiful foreign flowers with black petals and one disturbing white stalk. Tuesday’s body language expressed a pride that he was accompanying these strange Catholics through the sacred liturgy.
Seeing most people also genuflecting before branching into their pews confirmed to me that these folks, at least, knew their Roman Catholicism and perhaps were in a calmer, more relaxed environment “to do church” than the restless worshippers at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Actors’ Chapel. But when I looked back, unlike in those places, there were three empty pews behind us and the white world—a no-man’s-land had been established between the colorful alien masqueraders and the blessed People of God. Well, I shrugged and consoled myself that we were still in the same boat, as it were. Besides, our front row would also allow me to see the altar clearly, which was how I loved being at Mass, whether I received Communion or not.
A few babies began to shriek in different parts of the church.
As we all knelt down to pray, and now that Tuesday had taken off his hat, I craved to really meditate on his misfortune. I could see that the horrible disease had either completely eaten his black hair or had made it a total eyesore and so he had to shave it. Whatever the case, it was an excellent Caucasian look glowing in a sheen of oil, even though the man’s head was anything but smooth, with the kinds of little hills and valleys that tested the genius of barbers.
