by Uwem Akpan
Finally, I took everything again to the laundromat. Brad and Keith were playing Scrabble, swigging big cans of cold beer dressed up in brown bags. Brad was telling Keith about the soldiers in his family. I silently retreated to the doorway, glad Keith was listening to him. But when Brad saw me, he started laughing that Alejandra had overheard me and the landlord talking soccer.
“Hey, the joy of finally becoming a legal subletee!” I said.
“It’s fucking sweet to have you in New York, you know!” Brad said.
“Not fair, you guys should’ve invited me along to this laundromat World Cup,” I said.
“Come on,” Keith said. “We didn’t think you could ever finish unscrewing your Twentieth World electrical outlets today.”
When I stretched and began to tell them how much my back ached, how my chest was pounded by sneezes, Keith nudged me to keep it low. After I stuffed my load in the machines, we went outside, where I finally thanked Brad for washing my vomit off the stairwell. The November skies were cheerless, and the black birds of New York had taken to them as though their mirth alone could poke holes in the bleakness to let a late afternoon sunshine drip down. It did not bother us much, because we believed the sun was up there anyway and, if it were not, we had imbued a long drab day with the energy of spring.
CHAPTER 31
The eye must learn to behold the sun
TUESDAY AFTER THE WAR ON BEDBUGS, I RETURNED TO my bed from the recliner like one forced to visit the site of his horrible accident as a confidence boost.
Later that day in the office, when Molly summoned me, I saw stacks of familiar books on the floor. Isidore Okpewho’s The Last Duty, Noo Saro-Wiwa’s Looking for Transwonderland, J. P. Clark’s Song of a Goat and The Casualties, Lindsay Barrett’s A Memory of Rivers, Igoni Barrett’s Blackass, Max Siollun’s Oil, Politics and Violence, Helon Habila’s Oil on Water, Tanuri Ojaide’s The Beauty I Have Seen, Fola Olewole’s Reluctant Rebel, Odia Ofeimun’s The Poet Lied, Ben Okri’s The Famished Road—all quickly caught my eye. I immediately squatted to admire the covers. It was like I was in a bookstore dedicated to Niger Delta issues.
“Ordered them as holiday gifts for friends,” she said impatiently.
“Wow!” I said.
“Ekong, I’m so sorry to tell you this, but Liam has canceled your lunch meeting.”
I rose from my seat.
“Oh no … wait,” I said.
“Yeah, rather unfortunate,” she said.
“Any reason?”
“Ekong, his email said he had a scheduling conflict.”
I shrugged and lowered myself onto the couch.
“That’s okay, I can wait,” I said.
“No, no, there are some crazy politics going on here. He didn’t offer to reschedule.” She read out the complimentary parts of Liam’s email, I supposed to soften the blow: Molly, we’re very honored to have provided Ekong with the space to work on such an important project! I know you’re really impressed by his gifts and graciousness and industry and boldness. His presence has been great for Andrew & Thompson. Please, let him know that, like you, I look forward to more collaboration with Mkpouto Books.
I was going to ask Molly to thank him for me, but she shifted angrily in her chair. “I’m so disappointed because I got you all psyched up,” she said, her freckles redder than beets. According to her, Paul said Chad said Angela said Liam was backing out because he was afraid I would bring up Emily’s firing. Angela had accused me of being so angry I had shouted that Liam was an “incurable racist.” She was also telling folks I had threatened to beat up Jack over egusi, how she found him quite shaken when she responded to his SOS right after my visit to Jack’s office, how scared she was I might similarly invade her office.
Though I could see how all of these lies could scare Liam off, I was humiliated. Suddenly his sweet letter felt bitter, like untreated etidot. There was no need to say anything, though, because Molly was even more upset. I held on to my knees and breathed slowly. As they say, if you have nothing else to hold on to, your knees are always there. I could never get used to how the crazy politics of Andrew & Thompson always left me exposed as a minority. The head voices, these stupid noises that emanated from these same offices, taunted me for not listening to their cancel-the-fucking-lunch advice when I canceled the marketing and publicity rotations.
For the first time, I googled Liam. I wanted an image to which to direct my anger. His photos showed a tall lean modest man, almost shy of the camera. He wore a smile behind dark glasses in all of them, which seemed to fence him off from my bitterness, while he enjoyed the privilege of peering at every pore on my face.
Knowing Angela Stevens could deceive even Satan, I swallowed hard. I tried to imagine what I could have advised Liam Sanders, my fellow bedbug victim and diversity advocate, at lunch beyond sharing my American experience: Would I have said: “I honestly urge you to go ahead and visit your foreign charities, the soup kitchens of India and fishing villages of Togo and the banlieues of Belgium, wherever. Periodically, too, I urge you to do a spell or two of voluntary community service on Indian reservations and former slave plantations across this beautiful country. Because, if humane people like you or corporate boards who have sunk untold wealth into creating these important literary companies did not feel comfortable around people of color, or POCs, how could you open the doors of your precious businesses to us? Mary of New Jersey went against her bosom friend and pastor. Are you ready to fire your Harvard classmate Angela to have Andrew & Thompson run right? Like Alejandra Ledesma, my Latina neighbor, would you sacrifice the comfort of extended family to change the toxic conversation about minorities …?”
“Don’t worry about Liam,” Molly said, like she was reading my mind. “Our colleagues know better than to pay attention to Angela.” And though she added that some of them had confirmed Jack was in distress after my visit to his office, he himself preferred to talk about the shoddy way Emily was axed. And he was still trying to recruit volunteers for animal shelters across the city. Molly also said the grapevine said Jack actually resigned because he thought Angela had leaked to me his “private-comic” phone call with Chad.
“God bless our colleagues, mbok!” I said.
“Amen.”
“And diong a-Jack-am as well, but k’ukpok utong!”
“That must be a blessing, too. Of course, I knew you never called Liam racist because of the very sensitive way you handled my issues. You know, we’ll have a diversity training workshop in mid-December, to really sit together to thrash stuff out.”
I almost shouted this was bullshit. What was the point of running a diversity workshop for all these intelligent white people, instead of simply hiring minorities? My disappointment stirred in me a distant echo of Father Orrin pleading he needed time to prepare his church “slowly towards becoming the kind of Church you have in mind.” It baffled me that publishing houses, these shrines where literature is manufactured, celebrated, and worshipped, was leaving itself so open to ridicule from other industries which had diversified long ago. I thought we were too smart for this kind of shit.
TODAY, MY PATIENCE SAVED ME from expressing my anger because Molly herself had always been honest with me. I cleared my throat and bitterly laid out my story, from the Humane Society Two’s fake apologies to Jack’s “private-comic” phone call to the urge to puke on Chad to my visit to Jack’s office. When I finished, Molly, who had since sunk into her seat and clasped her fingers as if in prayer, was tense. “Lord … what you’ve described here, ah, disturbs me,” she stuttered, mopping sweat from her brows, looking around disgustedly like she was sitting in a dump. “I think … I’m truly depressed this is happening under my watch. Please, um, if I may ask, how did Emily react when you told her?”
“I’m still working out how to tell her. When ekpa-mkpud, the gnat, comes from the sky, the eye must learn to behold the sun. But, you know, they’re planning to visit Ikot Ituno-Ekanem.”
“Ugh, no! Emily just has to
hear the things you’ve just shared.”
“Now, Molly, listen!” I stood up and leaned onto her desk with my two palms flat on it and calmly spoke my mind. “Scrap this diversity training shit! You know, in my research I’ve discovered that minority authors and editors like Kacen Callender, Preeta Samarasan, Roxane Gay, and Vanessa Willoughby have been lamenting the lack of a ‘diversity agenda’ in publishing for donkey years … It really hurts that now you can’t even hear us.
“Okay, my supervisor, tell me, after this training, on whom are you white folks going to practice? The Yorubas, the owners of Lagos, say you cannot shave a man’s head in his absence. Or, how long is Andrew & Thompson going to use me, the naïve Fellow, as a guinea pig to help you grow your humanity? Where are the minorities you promised to bring in, to make this really a world brand? Have we all forgotten Dr. Zapata’s speech?
“Being the only Black person here is too much pressure. It would kill me at that diversity training. How am I even sure you won’t bring in an all-white cast of facilitators to run the fucking shit for you white folks, the owners of publishing? Are they, too, going to use me as an example or ask for my experience here or simply feel sorry for me? I never want you guys coding and mouthing identity politics, multicultural books, diversity plans, etc., when I know you are damn well talking about me and racism and Black books. It’s like being forced to smile over your pain in a torture chamber, to shoulder the added burden of denying your experience. And all the while, Angela would be sitting there, gesticulating and asking her little cute questions? How do I not publicly shame her for lying to Liam Sanders …? Please, could you delay this diversity training till after I leave?”
I said the only bits of consolation left for me in America were finishing the anthology, brainstorming from afar on the Biafran memorial event, and confronting Emily about Jack. Beaten, Molly worried I might leave the next day. I said I wished I could, to escape their ruinous white bubble politics. I told her even their shadows were white at Andrew & Thompson, something that could happen to me if I stayed longer. I said she could not be happy that Angela still worked there.
AFTER MY NOVENA PRAYERS in the Actors’ Chapel, I called Tuesday to find out how Ujai was doing. But he was in a bad mood: he blamed me for the calls he was getting from Ikot Ituno-Ekanem begging him to change his color back to Black. I told him I had not discussed his color with them. When he revealed he even heard all my evil whispers to Ujai in church, I said I never disparaged him. “Do you seriously think I’d allow you and Father Kiobel to celebrate this memorial with such hate in your hearts?” he threatened. “And then you want to rehabilitate Caro’s Biafran family?”
I said I was sorry for his rape and near-execution in the valley. “Having heard your entire story, I’d never judge you for changing your color,” I sympathized. “But, please, do nothing to thwart our desire to reconcile our peoples back home.”
I explained why he needed to give peace a chance and gently reminded him I, too, was a victim of Caro’s grandpa’s spying on Papa’s burial Mass, which was so traumatic Mama almost miscarried me. I begged him to allow my wife some closure and not punish her forever for being born into the wrong family. I said if he foiled our plans, his new color would totally galvanize our people against him, that they would shift all the pain of colonialism and racism to him, from the scramble and partitioning of Africa in the 1800s, which resulted in bundling all these disparate rivaling African ethnic groups together, to the neocolonial exploitation of our natural resources, to France’s insistence that Francophone countries must pay colonial tax forever for the civilization they brought Africa. “Please, Hughes, my brother, the current political climate would not allow Ikot Ituno-Ekanem to hear your pain,” I concluded.
But again he changed the topic: he became suspicious that, now that Father Kiobel had begun to share his war stories, I was going to ask the priest, not him, for the foreword to my anthology. He hung up and blocked my number.
I emailed the Bronx for an update on Ujai’s health and to ask them to prevail on Tuesday not to sabotage our memorial plans. They did not reply.
TWO DAYS LATER, everybody’s itches were totally gone in Hell’s Kitchen.
I trashed my bottles of Advil and bleach and sprays. I did not have to visit the restroom at work or restaurants to inspect my clothes anymore. And to be free of my jury of head voices litigating every difficult moment was to be free from a bit of the burden of that meeting whence they originated. It did not bother me that, though my cubicle powder had disappeared, I still felt monitored, watched. I smiled as I sneezed from the alcohol on my desk, for the cleaners, I supposed, were swiping it with Steri-Fab.
Bob Hamm got fired next. I would miss him for the abiding memories of him almost vomiting at that editorial meeting, of him hugging me to steady my spirit that drunken Monday, of him making everyone laugh and relax the day after the egusi visit to Jack’s office. He thanked me for my report on Thumbtack and said he hoped he would have another chance to publish the author at his next job, if he could find one. As for Angela, whenever she came close for a chitchat, I secretly recorded it on my phone.
Yesterday, after the editorial meeting, by the water fountain, Angela confided in me in tearful joy that Andrew & Thompson had accepted her proposal for a diversity workshop. I replied in Annang.
I EXTENDED THIS SAME nonchalant attitude to Usen when he phoned ten days before Thanksgiving, from a restricted number. He said though once I was deported he had canceled my Thanks-giving reception party, he was not having any get-together whatsoever because his family was exhausted. I thanked him all the same because I knew he feared I might gate-crash.
But I jumped up and clapped and raised my fisted hands like Fela Kuti during his performances when Usen confirmed the children were now sleeping well, for his building truly got fumigated. I said the curse I had brought upon them had finally been broken, a world of guilt off my shoulders. I exploded in the singing of “Ntiboribo-o.” Usen sang the response.
Ntiboribo-o
Oho oho
Ntiboribo-o
Oho oho
Ekiwo iboko bedbugs
Yak iboko, iboko, iboko ammo
Yak iboko
Ntiboribo-o
Oho oho
Ntiboribo
Oho oho
Ekiw’idem osong Ujai m’Igwat
Yak osong, osong, osong ammo …
We only stopped because Usen was laughing too much, all choking and gooey with nostalgia. He said, just like “Ikworo Ino,” which I used to placate his madness in New Jersey, he had not heard the folk song since our childhood.
Then he said Bishop Salomone had decided to send Father Orrin to Nigeria and Israel after his suspension, to learn how to live with Blacks and Jews. I doubted these foreign “immersion tours” were enough or appropriate, but Usen sounded conciliatory. He regretted that the bishop only had the anti-Semitic comments Father Orrin had made at Mass as evidence of his crime. “Well, Usen, tell him to send the racist to Black America, not Nigeria!” I said. “I suggest the other side of his own town—or Tuskegee, Alabama. Before then, he shouldn’t even be allowed to visit the grave of his missionary relative in Onitsha. Tell him visiting us doesn’t prepare him to live with his African American brethren.”
“That reminds me,” Usen said, “we’ve finally decided to hang out with the bishop in a Harlem Starbucks after Christmas! Your friend Ujai cannot wait to actually see him laugh that deep funny laugh. If that coffee goes well, we shall bring Bishop Salomone home. Look, we admire his patience and care; he’s proven he’s the good shepherd who wouldn’t rest till all the sheep are back in the fold. But we’re breaking him in slowly, so he doesn’t arrive in our home like a field trip to Exotica! It would still hurt even if he himself wasn’t aware of his body language. If I sound crazy, it means you don’t understand the minefield race has become in America.”
Next, Usen whispered conspiratorially that Tuesday’s supporters had indeed dug up Father Kiobel’s
war childhood, especially how he came to obsess about clothes. “This shit really sucks,” I screamed. “Tuesday is paying people to discredit the priest.”
“Blame Father Kiobel, too!” Usen said.
“Why?”
“I mean, who tells that kind of refugee story halfway?”
“Fuck, you tell your story the way you can … Okay, now that Tuesday is a white man, does he understand how racist it is for him to thwart our plans for Black reconciliation in Ikot Ituno-Ekanem?”
Usen said there was no cause for alarm and promised to get Bishop Salomone to speak to Tuesday if need be. He explained he only wanted to share Father Kiobel’s story because he had just learned that pro–Father Kiobel parishioners had already blunted Tuesday’s attack: Ujai’s grandparents had gone straight to warn the local bishop that if he transferred Father Kiobel just because of his fixation with new clothes, Awire Womenfolk had vowed to defecate on the bishop’s court; they would feel the bishop was punishing him for enshrining rape discussion in our catechesis. The international parishioners had also told the local bishop they supported the reforms. “Usen, since Tuesday is a rape victim himself,” I said, “I expected him to back Father Kiobel, at least in this regard!” Usen said, well, the bishop had finally left our dear priest alone “to buy all the clothes in the world” because Two-Scabbard hinted that the youths wanted the bishop to account for Tuesday’s diocesan donations.
