Hidden Empire (Empire 2)

No wonder the teacher had told Father there was no reason to keep Chinma in school. Only Mother's stubborn insistence had kept him there. And what had Chinma done with her hardwon victory? Spent every moment he could up in trees. That had worked out so very well.

He still had his money from monkey-catching, but when he exchanged it, his 27,000 naira had turned out to be only 180 dollars. Nick and Lettie had been impressed that he had so much, but Mark had told him just what his money would and wouldn't buy. Forty-eight Big Macs, or one iPod Nano and forty-five tracks from iTunes, or a round-trip train ticket to New York plus a couple of cab rides.

Why would he want any of those things? But he could see Mark's point—that his 180 dollars would disappear very quickly if he spent any of it. He could see how useful it was to know how to do the numbers and figure things out, but Lettie's math book didn't talk about the things he wanted to calculate. And yet when Mark told him what his money would buy, he had understood instantly how Mark figured it out. He just couldn't do it.

Chinma didn't like being stupid in Oyi, and he didn't like being stupid in America. He wasn't stupid, he was sure of it. But everything came so much more easily to other people than to him.

The army doctor had given him glasses, but they were no good, they made everything blurry. Maybe that was because when the doctor had him look through the machine at the eye chart, none of the settings worked to solve his problem of letters that ran away. So Chinma finally told the doctor that the setting he had right at that moment was perfect. It wasn't, but what could he do? The doctor was so eager to help him.

I see everything, Chinma wanted to say. I see things mat other people miss. I see perfectly. But when I look at something very small and close to me, it disappears. Do you have a lens for that? But that would have been rude and presumptuous of him. The doctor never asked him anything to which that information would have been the right answer.

I should have said it anyway, Chinma thought. Americans say what they want to, instead of politely waiting to be asked the right question. Americans are rude. But they get their point across quickly and easily and then things work out right.

"There you are," said Aunt Margaret.

Chinma looked up from the book.

"Why don't you wear your glasses?" asked Aunt Margaret. "You look all bleary-eyed."

"I forgot," said Chinma.

"I need to tape them to your head," said Aunt Margaret. "You always forget."

Chinma had no answer to this, so he continued to look off into space—not challenging her by looking her in the eye, but not turning back to what he had been doing before, as if she were unimportant.

"Oh, yes," said Aunt Margaret. "I received the oddest email

from Cecily—Mother—"

"Mrs. Malich," Chinma prompted.

"She wanted to know if you could write to her. She has some questions. Did you have an email address in Nigeria?"

"I don't think so," he said, truly distressed to disappoint her, for he had no idea what she was talking about.

"Don't they have the internet in Nigeria? They must, or Cecily could not have emailed me!"

If I knew what it was, perhaps I could tell you. But she seemed to take it for granted that he knew what she was talking about, so if he admitted that he didn't, he would look stupid.

"Well, you can write her a letter using my account."

That was how Chinma ended up in front of a computer screen, staring at a bunch of letters, all of which fled when he looked at them. Plus the screen was too bright.

"Just type what you want to say, I'll take care of addressing it."

But I don't have anything to say, thought Chinma. It was Mrs. Malich who wanted to write to me. "All right," he said.

He looked down at the keyboard. He could see that all the keys had letters and numbers on them, and sometimes tiny words, but whichever one he looked at became invisible. This was not going to work.

He bent closer to the keyboard and now he could see the letters.

"What in the world," said Aunt Margaret. "Where are your glasses?"

They won't help. "I don't know," said Chinma.

"Did you lose them?"

He could see her wasting time searching for the glasses, and if she did, he'd have to wear them, and then there was no hope of his seeing the keys. "What should I write?" he said.