One great gift for the Zipped-Up Negro is The White Friend Who Gets It. Sadly, this is not as common as one would wish, but some are lucky to have that white friend who you don’t need to explain shit to. By all means, put this friend to work. Such friends not only get it, but also have great bullshit-detectors and so they totally understand that they can say stuff that you can’t. So there is, in much of America, a stealthy little notion lying in the hearts of many: that white people earned their place at jobs and school while black people got in because they were black. But in fact, since the beginning of America, white people have been getting jobs because they are white. Many whites with the same qualifications but Negro skin would not have the jobs they have. But don’t ever say this publicly. Let your white friend say it. If you make the mistake of saying this, you will be accused of a curiosity called “playing the race card.” Nobody quite knows what this means.
When my father was in school in my NAB country, many American Blacks could not vote or go to good schools. The reason? Their skin color. Skin color alone was the problem. Today, many Americans say that skin color cannot be part of the solution. Otherwise it is referred to as a curiosity called “reverse racism.” Have your white friend point out how the American Black deal is kind of like you’ve been unjustly imprisoned for many years, then all of a sudden you’re set free, but you get no bus fare. And, by the way, you and the guy who imprisoned you are now automatically equal. If the “slavery was so long ago” thing comes up, have your white friend say that lots of white folks are still inheriting money that their families made a hundred years ago. So if that legacy lives, why not the legacy of slavery? And have your white friend say how funny it is, that American pollsters ask white and black people if racism is over. White people in general say it is over and black people in general say it is not. Funny indeed. More suggestions for what you should have your white friend say? Please post away. And here’s to all the white friends who get it.
CHAPTER 41
Aisha pulled out her phone from her pocket and then slipped it back with a frustrated sigh.
“I don’t know why Chijioke not call to come,” she said. Ifemelu said nothing. She and Aisha were alone in the salon; Halima had just left. Ifemelu was tired and her back throbbed and the salon had begun to nauseate her, with its stuffy air and rotting ceiling. Why couldn’t these African women keep their salon clean and ventilated? Her hair was almost finished, only a small section, like a rabbit’s tail, was left at the front of her head. She was eager to leave.
“How you get your papers?” Aisha asked.
“What?”
“How you get your papers?”
Ifemelu was startled into silence. A sacrilege, that question; immigrants did not ask other immigrants how they got their papers, did not burrow into those layered, private places; it was sufficient simply to admire that the papers had been got, a legal status acquired.
“Me, I try an American when I come, to marry. But he bring many problems, no job, and every day he say give me money, money, money,” Aisha said, shaking her head. “How you get your own?”
Suddenly, Ifemelu’s irritation dissolved, and in its place, a gossamered sense of kinship grew, because Aisha would not have asked if she were not an African, and in this new bond, she saw yet another augury of her return home.
“I got mine from work,” she said. “The company I worked for sponsored my green card.”
“Oh,” Aisha said, as though she had just realized that Ifemelu belonged to a group of people whose green cards simply fell from the sky. People like her could not, of course, get theirs from an employer.
“Chijioke get his papers with lottery,” Aisha said. She slowly, almost lovingly, combed the section of hair she was about to twist.
“What happened to your hand?” Ifemelu asked.
Aisha shrugged. “I don’t know. It just come and after it go.”
“My aunt is a doctor. I’ll take a picture of your arm and ask her what she thinks,” Ifemelu said.
“Thank you.”
Aisha finished a twist in silence.
“My father die, I don’t go,” she said.
“What?”
“Last year. My father die and I don’t go. Because of papers. But maybe, if Chijioke marry me, when my mother die, I can go. She is sick now. But I send her money.”
For a moment, Ifemelu did not know what to say. Aisha’s wan tone, her expressionless face, magnified her tragedy.
“Sorry, Aisha,” she said.
“I don’t know why Chijioke not come. So you talk to him.”
“Don’t worry, Aisha. It will be okay.”
Then, just as suddenly as she had spoken, Aisha began to cry. Her eyes melted, her mouth caved, and a terrifying thing happened to her face: it collapsed into despair. She kept twisting Ifemelu’s hair, her hand movements unchanged, while her face, as though it did not belong to her body, continued to crumple, tears running from her eyes, her chest heaving.
“Where does Chijioke work?” Ifemelu asked. “I will go there and talk to him.”
Aisha stared at her, the tears still sliding down her cheeks.
“I will go and talk to Chijioke tomorrow,” Ifemelu repeated. “Just tell me where he works and what time he goes on break.”