New York, My Village

by Uwem Akpan

  “Jeff, are you still drunk?” I gave him a thumbs-up.

  “No, Ekong, you were the bombed one. Well, how are you enjoying my chair?”

  “What chair?”

  “Ha, did you take it to Africa?”

  “Fuck you!”

  UPSTAIRS, THE FIRST THING I noticed was Jeff’s lovely piece of furniture standing in my living room, one leg stuck in the broken floor. But all my chairs were also there. The whole thing looked like voodoo, so I called Jeff immediately. He said I actually joined him the previous night to drink by the stairwell and explained that at the end I wanted to borrow his beautiful chair because I complained I was tired of Greg Lucci’s old ugly worn stuff. “Ekong, you said you were homesick because mine reminded you of home,” he said. “So I let you have it … Listen, save your ass and spray that shit and keep it till after extermination!”

  That was how I knew I had been totally drunk.

  I hated what was happening to me.

  In frustration, I grabbed the anti-bedbug spray and hit his vintage chair at close quarters till it was completely wet and the liquid came streaking down its beautiful legs. I turned the chair upside down and sprayed all over its gray soft-clothed butt. Sometimes I put the nozzle directly on the cloth and pushed in and sprayed, overdosing it as though to compensate for its long hours in my home. Then I dropped and kicked the can away in shame and anger. It landed on the door of the fridge, but before it hit the floor and found its way into the bath, the dogs were up in arms. I flushed to calm them and walked around the apartment till my mind was spray-bulleted by details of New Jersey, till I began to think of how Father Orrin could have seen the Liverpool decal hidden, as it were, at the very bottom of the rear windshield of the Audi.

  From where he stood when Usen drove in, he could not have spotted it, period. In his busy Sunday routine, did he send his people to spy on the car then …?

  Caro’s texts liberated my mind from New Jersey. She told me Father Kiobel said not to worry about my outburst. She also said the priest had been thinking a lot about Emily and her Black Alabama primary school mate and Biafra. “You must thank Emily for me when she returns from vacation!” she said. “I can’t go into details now.”

  I was happy to hear Father Kiobel had picked Caro herself and Usen’s father to read at Mass on Sunday. The cop selfie had surely returned the Nigerian police to their beats, and Sister Augustina Ngwu of the Handmaid Sisters of the Child Jesus, recruited by Father Kiobel, had convinced the Awire Womenfolk to suspend their nude march. However, we were happiest that sharing our pictures on Our Lady of Guadalupe’s WhatsApp portal had brought some solace to the white parishioners. Indeed, they had teamed up with our New Jersey friends, who had just learned the truth about our sacristy reception, and had already had a Skype meeting with Bishop Salomone.

  CHAPTER 21

  Screw you all

  SADLY, THURSDAY WAS NOT WHAT WE HAD EXPECTED IN Hell’s Kitchen. At two p.m., Brad Parkes texted me at Andrew & Thompson to say, instead of exterminators, the landlord had sent in a private inspector.

  Since I had never heard of “bedbug inspectors” before, initially I thought their job was to count the bites and scars on the bodies of victims and report to the government. So I texted Brad that I did not fancy strangers poring over my hide and lied that my welts had healed. “Nobody is taking my photo!” I wrote. “I’m no poster child of bugs, period.” Once he reassured me the inspection had to do solely with our apartments, I told him I would call him back from downstairs, as I was already planning to meet up with Usen in a sports bar. I did not care that more white powder poured out from the socket when I unplugged my laptop cord.

  But, as I hurried out, Angela Stevens, who was also leaving her office, seemed to panic and rushed back inside her office like she wanted to scream. She banged and locked her door. Someone laughed, but when I turned, she hushed like an interrupted alarm. Bob Hamm cleared his throat to get my attention. He gave me two thumbs-ups. “I want to eat this egusi soup!” he whispered fondly and loudly, which made everyone laugh and clap and relax. I smiled and gave him a kiss in the air for letting me know that Angela was apparently running from the kind of egusi visit I had paid Jack.

  Outside, I felt worse when I called Brad back and he said my apartment had not been inspected because it was not on the list, even when Brad told the inspector “the tenant” had informed the landlord and reeled out the date and time Jeff made the call. The inspector insisted Canepa had specifically told him not even to speak with me. So Brad himself then had phoned the landlord but was told Lucci needed to have called directly.

  I apologized for all the pain I had caused them, saying I was ready to cope without fumigation. But Brad asked whether coping meant getting totally drunk like Jeff and I were Monday night. “If I didn’t fucking come out to ask Jeff to allow you to have his chair,” he said, “you’d still be screaming at him now!” He warned that public drinking was a crime that could invalidate my visa, and ICE could either deport me in short order or put me in a detention center for years.

  When Brad and I invited Jeff and Alejandra to a conference call, our tone was surprisingly good, almost humorous, different from the shame and anger I felt. We pondered calling the city bedbug hotline but decided against it because the city would still send their inspectors first. Brad and Alejandra proposed we approached Keith to place a call to the landlord, his friend, on our behalf. They said the landlord was always using the African American as an example of a model tenant. “But how do we get Keith interested since we don’t talk to him, duh?” Jeff said. “Personally, I can’t stand his arrogance!” Brad asked whether I could approach my fellow Black man. I said no, without giving reasons; I had not yet recovered from Keith’s accusations of selling out.

  Next Jeff ran his big mouth, declining to join the delegation. He still had some ill feelings about “Blacks in this country” refusing to side with Asian Americans in the late 1960s on the issue of affirmative action and quotas. He said Blacks refused to back them because they claimed Asians first snubbed Black marches. “God knows how long Black folks are going to blame their failure on others!” he grumbled. These comments rankled. He spoke as if he could not see I was Black; it would have hurt less if he said African Americans, instead of Blacks in this country.

  “Please, could I advise you guys to drink less?” Alejandra said suddenly.

  “Gosh, you sound like our father!” Jeff said.

  “We need to protect Ekong’s fucking visa,” Brad said. “I’ve already told him.”

  “Okay, that makes sense,” Jeff said. “I didn’t even think of that.”

  There was silence.

  But when I said I needed to go, Jeff exploded: “Ekong, why didn’t you tell them you were already drunk when I knocked on your door?” Though I apologized, Jeff accused us of backbiting and ambush.

  “This is really, really fucking Biafran shit!” Brad said.

  “No, Brad, don’t go there!” I said.

  “Exactly my point,” Brad said. “Of course, it’s no longer funny on our floor … I say it’s a wonderful adjective. A state of complex dysfunctional self-sabotaging fucking reality. Ekong and Jeff, I’m also fucking begging you not to turn our stairwell into a bar ever again! This isn’t acceptable in America.”

  “Brad, how insensitive of you to insist on using Biafran!” Alejandra said. “Ekong, I’m totally on your side on this!”

  “Screw you all!” Jeff said, and hung up.

  I WAS STRUCK BY the gold and green motif of the front of the Australian Bar & Restaurant & Lounge on Thirty-Eighth Street, where Usen and I were supposed to meet, some color in a dull midtown street. But the dullness could have been in my mind, because any place that was not as intense as Times Square no longer excited me. The colors reminded me of the Australian national soccer team, the Socceroos. We had always thought they had mistaken soccer for rugby, until Harry Kewell pulled on our Liverpool jersey and Mark Viduka and Tim Cahill lit up the English Pr
emiership.

  The presence of two Black patrons comforted me, and hearing some of the workers speak their Australian English with accents heavier than a stutter felt like I had run all the way to Australia to escape my woes. Usen said I should order, as he was running late, yet I went into the restroom to check for bugs on my clothes.

  In the opening exchanges of the Liverpool match on TV, I could see this was going to bore me to death. I studied the menu, their grilled Kangaroo entrée offering me the distraction I needed from the fight with my neighbors. I thought this sort of steak would have gone down well with one or two great Australian beers at the bar: Coopers Sparkling Ale, Foster’s Oil Can, James Boag’s Premium, etc. But the fear of ICE bundling me back to Nigeria blocked any temptation. I asked the waiter whether they served specialties like the kangaroo pouch, that thing the animal carries the young in. I was craving something really unusual because I was disoriented. Startled, the guy said no, that they only had kangaroo skewers and steak. I ordered something called “Kangaroo Loin dish” well done.

  Usen was so passive-aggressive when he arrived that he refused to hug me. “I hate how the Australian Embassy is also shitting on Nigerians!” he sneered, his eyes counting the colored customers. “Anyway, Ekong, Google says Australia has treated the Aborigines worse!” I said if we used these criteria, we would not eat any Western or even Asian food. I urged him to take solace in Australia’s reparation program for the Aborigines. He shook his head and ordered salad and a James Boag’s.

  He said Ofonime was right in insisting he must meet with me, because my eyes were swollen like I had not slept since Sunday. He said I was losing weight. “God bless her!” I said. “The good news is I’m having a private lunch with our boss on November seventeenth, just a month from now!”

  “Wow.”

  “Anyedede.”

  MY LUNCH ARRIVED as we watched the boring Liverpool game, the kind of midfield quagmire that would produce no goal even if it went on for a year. The food was a sizzling, glorious pan-seared fare with smoked cheddar gratin, buttered green beans, and a cherryred wine glaze. It smelled great, and I wished I could hold this smell forever in my mind. It was like the night my nostrils filtered a procession of novel food smells in Chelsea. I descended on the food as soon as the waiter assured me the “red wine glaze” had no power to intoxicate.

  The meat’s flavor was really stubborn, strong, gamier than buffalo, yet more tender than I knew how to describe. I finished a container of black pepper on it. My pleasure buds were in a crisis! On any other day, I would not have been able to taste even the pepper, because I would be thinking of that funny pouch and powerful tail and sturdy hind legs that align with the ground like the legs of a rocking chair. But I was on an adventure to escape my desolation. Even as I ate, I was strangely pining for kangaroo skewers marinated with Cameroon pepper and ujajak and ata, because our native tastes are deeper in our psyche than we would ever understand. And I thought, among our Annang soups, the gaminess of kangaroo could only be paired with the assertiveness of atama.

  Knowing that I was not an adventurous eater, Usen stared at me like I was someone who had completely lost his bearings abroad. “Boy, you’re changing so fast!” he scolded me, and pulled away his seat. “If you stay longer, you might go on to ‘burn up’ your body like Tuesday.” I shrugged and ate my kangaroo. I could tolerate his insults as long as he did not attempt to shame the Australian waiters. Having become quite sensitive about our food, I hated to see anyone humiliate another on this score. So when Usen’s order arrived, I dropped my cutlery and got ready to shut him up. But he respectfully got the waiter to assure him his seasonal quinoa salad had no kangaroo meat.

  I only figured out Usen’s passive aggression when he complained I had not returned his calls since Monday. I said that at least I had replied to his texts. “’Jen Annang, you sent me a text meant for someone else!” he scolded me. I apologized for how he felt, too embarrassed to ask what I said in the text, tired of the unending consequences of my drunkenness.

  HE THOUGHT IT WAS FUNNY Father Kiobel had called him to get a picture of the Liverpool decal on their Audi, to aid in retelling our story, because village Liverpool fans had accused the priest, a Manchester United fan, of scapegoating their club. In their letter to the church and police, they asked to attend the Mass “in a big way, to launder the image of our dear Liverpool from the odium Father Orrin, the evil fan, had poured on it worldwide.”

  Usen compared this to wartime soccer obsession. He told me a story Tuesday had just heard from an Annang friend in Texas: In late October 1968, the Biafrans in Ikot Ekpene had suddenly agreed to a cease-fire and even suggested a friendly match* in honor of the Olympic Games going on in Mexico. The traumatized and starved folks had trooped to the stadium to cheer and dance like this foolish civil war between Nigeria and Biafra had ended. They chanted, “One Country United We Stand” the whole match. I was already laughing when I heard that a sprightly dressed Father Tom Flannery, twenty-six, a giant of a man, was the special guest of honor. He rode his Honda in from Port Harcourt Diocese and distributed little Olympic flags to the children before kickoff.

  Team Biafra, the home team, made Team Nigeria welcome by volunteering to play shirtless to distinguish the teams, since both could not wear the national jerseys. And Biafra started the stronger side, scoring first via a sweet bicycle kick from the edge of the penalty box. Stung, the Nigerians threw everything at them, peppering the Biafran goal with shots—not knowing they had walked into a trap. The Biafrans went defensive, enacting a low block and sandbagging the Nigerians. By the time a Nigerian player bundled in the equalizer from a goal-mouth scramble, his team was already exhausted. The Biafrans staged a loud quarrel among themselves and even with their coach. The Nigerians mocked them and swiftly doubled their tally, leading 2–1 by halftime.

  But the crowd was still singing and the Irish priest was still sipping palm wine and playing yo-yo with the children, when the Biafrans sprang a well-coordinated attack to recapture Ikot Ekpene. The Nigerian army and the spectators fled, scattering toward Ukana and Ikot Atasung and Ikpe Annang Junction—which Biafra had changed to Umuakpara Junction. The priest lost his Honda and yo-yo.

  It was the first time Usen or I would ever laugh over any account of the war. And that was certainly a more interesting match than what brought us here. I told Usen, well, today our national preoccupation with soccer had reached another level altogether. I recounted how, during a Nigeria–England match at the 2002 Japan–Korea World Cup, a certain part of Lagos had suffered the usual power cuts and how Lagosians marched upon the local power station to murder the manager. But by the time I told him how, in 2008, after the European Champions League final in Russia between Chelsea and Manchester United, the fans had clashed all over Nigeria, leaving more than fifty people dead, Usen had lost his laugh.

  Now he called up our mutual friends in Nigeria to say he was happy our Liverpool fans would protest against New Jersey at our Mass. Everyone was optimistic the American speeches would go well, because Father had assembled a committee, including Caro, to show them how to dress in our Annang traditional attire, how to walk up to the podium remorsefully and respectfully. Not to show up in T-shirts and shorts and flip-flops as usual, just because it was the tropics. Not to impolitely stick their hands in their pockets while addressing the people, as they did even while receiving Communion on the tongue. We quickly sent a joint text to Father Kiobel to remind him to drill the Americans on our local eye contact etiquette, the very reverse of their expectations at the embassy: they must look down as a show of humility on arrival and during the speeches.

  “USEN, DO YOU FEEL BAD we didn’t tell our New Jersey friends what happened in that sacristy?” I asked as soon as the horrible TV match ended.

  “Not at all,” he said.

  “I do.”

  “But if you’d picked up your stupid phone Monday night, I was going to update you on their visit to Bishop Salomone’s court! He got my phone n
umber from Tuesday and called right away, full of apologies and all.”

  “Iko irien?”

  “Yes, he even called again after dinner because Ujai was in school in the morning. That was when I kept calling you, leaving long voice mails and texts! Well, he also wanted to visit our home—and yours—to hear us out. To spend the day with us. But, look, I have no interest in any of this drama. I refused to give Bishop Salomone my address. I politely thanked the chief shepherd and assured him we had put everything behind us, because he’d already suspended Father Orrin based on what he said about the Jews, which everyone heard. A probe is under way, but it’s useless because the ushers have refused to say the priest sent them to move us and the children are buzzing he taught them the Father Orrin Pledge … Nobody can make me revisit that whole sacristy stuff with anyone, not even God!”

  Usen asked the waiter for two shots of vodka. When I declined, he downed both, cleared his throat, and continued. He said it was not about the bishop, whom Tuesday described as kind, soft-spoken, but that since Sunday, his head had been playing Negro spiritual medleys nonstop. He was afraid that, at the end of the day, the Church would figure out a way to blame us, the victims.

  I disagreed and blamed him for not giving my number to the bishop. But he reminded me of how the bishop of Ikot Ituno-Ekanem in 1975 had punished the whole of Our Lady of Guadalupe for the sins of those who went to listen to pagan masqueraders sing of “Father McQuinn raping the altar boys like he had three dicks.” He rehashed the legendary standoff between our villages and the bishop, how the ekpoakpara masqueraders—our native investigative cult—outed McQuinn but protected the names of the minors, how the bishop ignored the reports, how most Catholics shunned McQuinn’s Communion plate, how the police refused to step in, how the bishop finally had to evacuate the white man to Igboland when the main ekpo threatened to “abduct and machete his trinity penises down to one, like normal humans.” Some say the bishop was not really afraid of his castration, but of the threats of the women of Awire Womenfolk. They had vowed to invoke the Defecation Curse on Our Lady of Guadalupe: women from nearby villages were to shit all over the church and Stations of the Cross. This was no small thing, for no premises ever recovered from this curse.