by Uwem Akpan
I was pleasantly surprised when Molly handed me a box of chocolates as my Thanksgiving gift. It came with a note apologizing that “by the time everything settled” we could no longer visit New Haven, as her parents were already in Florida for the winter. On my way back home from work, we texted back and forth, something we had not done in ages. When it felt silly, I called her and told her about Lucci’s gift certificate. “That’s so nice of him!” she said. “You know, he sent me a gift, too, and said to apologize again about his superbug comments.”
“Oh nice,” I said, laughing.
“Well, now that we can laugh about all this, I want to say I think he really likes you. Actually, that New Jersey Sunday, he’d called me because he was worried you might be suffering culture shock in America. Almost in tears, believing you were depressed, he’d told me how you were cooking up a storm of Nigerian dishes, how he was using your mutual love for our U.S. women’s soccer to calm you. I said, on the contrary, you were having a ball, either taking long night walks to the pier with your finger rosary or relaxing on the bleachers of Father Duffy Square, that Starbucks and the Food Emporium were your favs, that you’d visited your friend’s family in the Bronx, that you preferred the Actors’ Chapel to the cathedral. I even said you were making great progress on editing your war stories, some of whose victims you knew. Then he brought up the little incident of bedbugs—”
“No, wait, what, I … ah, understand what you mean,” I fluffed my lines, realizing how this crook had scammed her for my details. “Well, Molly, Lucci is as inscrutable as the proverbial fowl in our proverbs. As the ancestors say, who can tell whether the fowl is dancing or scratching the earth for food? Hey, you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!”
“You, too.”
When I hung up, I was seized by uncontrollable and inexplicable laughter, the very opposite of my feelings, the “Laughter of Ridiculous.” Canepa was right: his fellow Italian American was a born gouger—an apt description for anyone who could deny me the joys of Starbucks by lying that I was being spied upon. I really missed Father Kiobel, who would have laughed with me. I texted him my good wishes. It was no use telling Caro; she thought Lucci was a saint. And I was afraid to tell Molly because she could call up Mr. Lucci, to scold him for bullying me. I could not stand another sleepless night in NYC. As they say, the crab that has just escaped a fishing net should not throw a party until it has finished counting its legs.
I HIT STARBUCKS at dawn on Wednesday as if to make up for lost time, because I had not been there since Mr. Lucci said I was being followed around NYC. My problems had melted away overnight, and the spirit of Thanksgiving hovered over the city, pure and festive. I could not remember the last time I’d had so much peace or anticipated a holiday with such gusto. I was halfway into my Chestnut Praline Latte when Caro called to give me an update on the parish. Armed with Emily’s advice, she was adamant in telling the parishioners and even the cops—who could not relate with the new Father Kiobel—to give him space. It was the first time since the war so many weddings, baptisms, and confessions were postponed. Caro was emotional that they were listening to her, she who had been hitherto excluded.
My great feelings for NYC lured me back to Chelsea. Just to see the place again. Just to relive that dinner, where New Yorkers first helped me laugh at my woes.
In daylight, Chelsea was as enchanting as that night. But what excited me most was the unique view of the city I got walking the High Line. Today, I could understand Brad and Alejandra’s obsession. Its elevated platform made me feel like I was a slow-moving train cutting through exclusive neighborhoods, peeking into homes and hotels and businesses. I got the distinct feeling of being in a park, and yet it was like no park I had seen before, a hallway with different walls. And the evergreen plants made it seem as though the denuded winter trees below us were fake, or vice versa. The whole atmosphere was so relaxing, so carefree, it did not feel like New York to me at all. I knew when I returned with Caro to NYC, we must certainly come here.
When the cold sun shrugged off the clouds, I sat on a bench and, from a distance, soaked in the water taxis and the birds skimming the brown choppy waters. The waves crashed on the piers, but the faint smell of the river reminded me of, not our village river, but of the sea at Oron. I became homesick, as though I were back in the Niger Delta. And reading my emails, I was happy to see the author of the novella “Biafran Warship on the Hudson” had accepted my suggestions and mailed me back a rewrite. Then I heaved out a loud laugh when a Thanksgiving e-card from the Bekwarras said their patriarch had safely arrived in NYC, was responding to treatment, and already was bugging his son for another gold tooth.
After a late lunch in Blue Fin, I relocated to Father Duffy Square to watch the intense Thanksgiving shopping until the cartoon characters came into view. Their presence rekindled in me that initial blinding obsession with the King Kong lady during my first days in New York. Today I did not mind seeing all these Scooby-Doos and Mickey Mouses in one place, like the ceremonial masqueraders of Ikot Afanga. However, when a Scooby and a Mickey started shoving each other, it was no longer fun to me. But the two cops nearest to them were laughing, pointing. Then, to have Hermit the Frog—whom I never warmed up to as a child because I liked to trap and roast bullfrogs in the valley—step in to beg Mickey to let go of Scooby’s goatee almost spoiled my afternoon.
With earphones pumping out Rhianna, I bought bracelets and a handbag for Caro. I also bought colorful scarves and cards and endured long lines at the post office to mail them to Molly, Emily, and Jack; I felt he deserved something for not corroborating Angela’s lies that I had threatened to beat him up over egusi and called Liam an “incurable racist.” In their card, I specifically thanked Jack on behalf of the poor New Yorkers who benefited from his blood drive volunteer work. “Jack, God is pointing you to something,” I wrote, “for I understand most of these poor folks are minorities.”
And though Brad and Alejandra were going away for Thanksgiving, in memory of our Chelsea dinner I gave them a bottle of Riesling. They regretted this would have been a perfect chance to cook me Alejandra’s carbonada or asado. Keith, Jeff, and I decided to feast in Jeff’s apartment and do dessert in mine.
BUT, ON THANKSGIVING, I woke up still debating what to cook. Should I prepare Yoruba egusi or one of the six kinds of Annang egusi soups? I decided on jollof rice, but it became two things in my head—Ghanaian jollof and Nigerian jollof. Would these American friends of mine even eat any of this? The word jollof might even scare them, I worried, though it was one of the most popular West African dishes worldwide! Should I improvise a name, then, for them, like Tuesday calling himself Hughes? What if I called jollof rice Kelly King Rice, or Better Than Sex Rice?
I remembered Alejandra and Brad’s little silence in Chelsea when the subject of my food came up, something I had not thought about since. Could I stand that kind of silence with my dishes served and steaming before us on such a glorious day? Would the silence grow into avoidance? Would they come very close but then scram like the Indonesian family of Times Square? The worst would be someone making fun of or trembling around my food, like I had boiled stones. Like Ujai after Tuesday’s school visit, I thought of the jokes Keith and Jeff might make. I was more nervous than my village folks who asked if the Native American selfie cop had actually tasted our food.
I had never felt so vulnerable and restless.
Suddenly I knew there was not even a margin for humor in this business. I thanked my ancestors Brad was not home, with his fuck-this-fuck-that ways. That morning, just to rid myself of useless anxiety, I jogged to the New York Times Building, to the New York Public Library, to the UN building, to Waldorf Astoria and back. After doing that Hudson River–East River rickety rectangle twice without a drop of sweat because of the cold, my sense of being in uncharted waters was only heightened.
My food fears coupled with longing to hear about Father Kiobel made me call his cook. After coyly saying the boss was okay, the cook complain
ed jollof rice was even “too American, too white.” He insisted if these were really my friends, I should risk something, go totally Nigerian or Annang on them. He said if they pooh-poohed my food, I had only a short time left anyway in NYC. He told me their inability to eat the food would not bother him but mocking it in my presence would kill him.
Come party time, I showed up with coconut rice, chicken peppersoup, a pot of chopped goat head, iwuo-ebot, which the Igbos call isiewu, spiced with ujajak. I had bought the goat head in Queens the day after the Chelsea dinner. My coconut rice was vegetarian, though, not because we eat it so in Ikot Ituno-Ekanem, but because I wanted to impress Hell’s Kitchen. Keith brought sweet yam casserole, lobster stew, Thanksgiving meat loaf, and pumpkin pie, while our host served a half turkey, dumplings, rice cake, braised pomfrets, and shrimp fried rice, mashed potatoes, and spring rolls. We had a great feast.
My fears were baseless. Keith and Jeff tore into everything and swigged the palm wine. They thought it was funny the way I spread the mashed potatoes, their American food, on my plate, patterning it with my fork like Martha Stewart’s tahini cookies, before overloading my plate with assorted stuff. We did not spend time trying to teach each other how to eat the different dishes. We went at them the best way we could.
We were free.
The only thing that mattered to them was the names of the spices. They practiced these like kindergarten rhymes, and Keith said he wished he could capture and preserve the admixture of the scents from all three cultures. It was my best day in America, the day I was not ashamed to eat my food in public.
KEITH WAS POURING the peppersoup’s broth over his sweet yam casserole, when Caro called with holiday wishes. My celebration was complete. Though she did not like the fact that she heard that her husband was cooking for the whole of Manhattan from the mechanic, who heard from the palm-wine tapper, who heard from Father Kiobel’s cook, she was chatty and called me “Ekong Baby,” nonstop. Jeff tossed a slice of goat ear into his mouth and blew out his cheeks and exhaled because of the pepper. I explained to Caro I had mistakenly put too much pepper in the food but that I was relieved it did not bother my companions.
“Well, Ekong Baby, you need to come home for the sake of Father Kiobel,” she said, changing the subject.
“Ade rie?” I asked, cutting into the pomfret.
“He’s lost his loud laugh. He comes late to Mass. Even his homilies are all over the place, a market chatter of sorts.” She lamented the Ogoni priest was driving longer and longer distances to buy clothes, to avoid scandal. I said he would be all right.
But when I said good night, Caro complained I had dismissed her too soon and insisted on greeting everyone, as if she wanted to bust Molly for cavorting with me. “Is it today you know I’m a jealous wife?” she said, laughing as I put her on speakerphone. Keith got her to laugh even more by saying the names of our spices, and Jeff said the large eyeballs in the goat-head dish were like over-boiled eggs, a favorite of his. She thanked Jeff for helping plan the Chelsea surprise dinner and photos.
WHEN JEFF LODGED a slice of goat tongue in his mouth and insisted on talking, Keith said he had a forked tongue like a snake. Keith and I were laughing like mad, but when he wanted to join us, we begged him to swallow the food first. As we were physically holding him, Keith worsened things by chirping that, being the dude with the baddest mouth in Manhattan, Jeff might actually have two tongues.
I did not remember how we got into the subject of my stairwell religion. But at this point I was comfortable with them, with the way they made me feel around my food. So I told them the truth about my religion. Initially, they thought I was kidding and continued to laugh. I repeated it nonstop and added I was Catholic. Finally, Jeff said he felt stupid. This allowed me then to share the import of the Chelsea photos on our villages. This brought a big dose of solemnity to our celebration.
Keith called up Brad and Alejandra to simply say this was his best Thanksgiving since childhood. But they blamed us for excluding them from the food and from talking to Caro. I promised to cook for them and gave Alejandra’s phone number to Caro.
We went to my apartment to eat pecan pie with ice cream. We drank Mr. Canepa’s wine. And that night, we layered up and walked around Times Square, taking in the early Black Friday madness. The King Kong lady was already in a Christmas outfit dancing to carols. I thought the rowdiness was worse than the Eleven-Eleven roundabout in Calabar before Governor Donald Duke came to power. My neighbors told me to move my wallet from my back pocket to the breast one to avoid pickpockets. I said I would return the next day to buy our J.Crew boots.
CHAPTER 33
Lead us through that beautiful valley
CARO INSISTED I TAKE MY NEIGHBORS ALEJANDRA AND Brad and others the following weekend to the Buka Restaurant on Fulton Street for the sake of variety. On the way, Alejandra spiced things up by saying she had been chatting with my wife since Thanksgiving and they had a surprise for me. When they all nodded, I knew the crooks were going to pull another Chelsea on me. Alert, I searched for clues.
We were among only a few in the train that Saturday evening, and this part of Brooklyn was the emptiest part of NYC I had seen. I could not imagine any commercial part of Ilorin or Warri being that dead. While I could tell apart Hell’s Kitchen from Times Square, Chelsea, my part of New Jersey, and the Bronx, I did not know what to make of where I was. It was not beautiful. It was not ugly. It was not even boring. It was just Brooklyn, a place I was going to with friends, and already I loved the name so. Like the food joints of Urua Anwa, Buka was full of excited people, the sight of folks of all races a happy surprise. I ordered family-style and made it as diverse as possible, as though I were trying to represent all the ethnic groups of my country.
WHEN MOLLY SIMMONS WALKED IN wearing a yellow business suit, I did not recognize her, until Alejandra called her name and ran to embrace her.
“What are you doing here, Molly?” I exclaimed, standing up to introduce her.
“Oh, Alejandra invited me!” Molly said, giggling conspiratorially, as a waiter brought her a chair. She apologized for dressing a bit too formally, explaining she had just come from an author event. We told her it did not matter.
“This is a wonderful surprise, I must say,” I said, and then raised a glass of Coke to toast her: “Hey, everyone, cheers to my great and only boss, Molly Simmons, my oga at the top, as we say in Nigeria!”
“Cheers!” everyone said.
“Don’t listen to the boldest Fellow we’ve ever had!” Molly retorted as Keith quickly put a beer in her hand.
I made a toast: “Without her fighting for my visa and fighting off JFK immigration, I’d never have met you, great people of New York. Cheers again to you, Molly!”
“Cheers!” everyone said.
Alejandra told me how Molly did not want to come until Caro stepped in. “Molly, you’ve been talking with Caro?” I said, surprised, almost choking on my Coke.
“Yes, since Thanksgiving!” Molly said, laughing, explaining she could not say anything earlier, since it was a surprise. She added that they could not refuse Caro because they were all touched by our heartbreak about Father Kiobel’s unsuccessful attempt to complete his story. She said Caro had also spoken to Emily, who could not come because Jack was sick.
I went to the restroom to make a call to Caro, to thank her for the gathering. She herself was in high spirits and said she was texting with Emily even now, while Jack was asleep. I became more emotional when Caro said arranging the dinner was also to apologize for all her bedbug accusations; Alejandra had finally convinced her America had bedbugs. Though I assured her I had no more infestations, I worried about these ladies chatting nonstop. I prayed that even if Molly knew I was drunk that bedbug Monday, she would shut her big mouth for Caro’s sake.
The restaurant brought washbasins because everybody wanted to eat with their hands, like the Nigerians at other tables. Nobody wanted to touch the rice or bean dishes, complaining they looked too fa
miliar. No, they went crazy and mixed things like we were competing for the weirdest combos. They did not bother to look up and see how the Nigerians at other tables were handling things. It did not worry me when Brad began his evening by sprinkling salt on amala to chew with Star beer, or when Keith ate afang soup with akara as entrée, even as he saw me moving from peppersoup to amala with okra soup.
Molly, who ate ewedu soup with stewed beans, was a different person here, unshackled from the officiousness of work. The more Nigerian beers she tasted, the chattier she became. She was already texting to thank Caro. Unlike Molly, though, Keith did not say a word or drink even water. He was lost in his world of ogbono and egusi and oha soups. He did not mix them. He just kept eating studiously from the different bowls as though he were judging a cooking competition. No one knew how he kept that level of focus in this atmosphere. When we distracted him, he impatiently said he was trying to decipher which one had ujajak. I said none, but he nodded and continued as if he had not heard me. It seemed the more we ate together, the more we learned about ourselves.
By the time Alejandra, like our Nigerian kids, wore little balls of pounded yam on the tips of her left fingers and eba balls on the right, the voices of my Nigerian compatriots from other tables had gone up in a cheer. Bending each finger into the bowl of edikangikong soup before transporting it to her mouth, she looked like someone experimenting on a strange harp. The restaurant owner came over to greet us.
We were on top of the world.
WE WERE WALKING MOLLY to her train. Brad, who was a bit drunk, said since I had outed myself about my stairwell “religion,” he also wanted to confess that this outing was a greater occasion to appreciate my food than during the American Thanksgiving—something he said he and Alejandra no longer celebrated. Alejandra said they had been avoiding the holiday because it felt like a celebration of Native American colonization. “We always wish we could leave the country altogether on Thanksgiving!” said Brad, slurring and throwing an arm around Keith for support. “I’m sorry, but I guess I’m just tired of simply feeling this fucking guilt, you know. I get fucking mad because any white person asking people of color to return home should be the first to fucking pack up and ship back to fucking Europe! We need to do more than vote for Obama!”
