Americanah

“Why are you buying akara that you don’t want?” Obinze asked, amused.

“Because this is real enterprise. She’s selling what she makes. She’s not selling her location or the source of her oil or the name of the person that ground the beans. She’s simply selling what she makes.”

Back in the car, she opened the oily plastic bag of plantains, slid a small, perfectly fried yellow slice into her mouth. “This is so much better than that thing drenched in butter that I could hardly finish at the restaurant. And you know we can’t get food poisoning because the frying kills the germs,” she added.

He was watching her, smiling, and she suspected that she was talking too much. This memory, too, she would store, of Obalende at night, lit as it was by a hundred small lights, the raised voices of drunk men nearby, and the sway of a large madam’s hips, walking past the car.

HE ASKED if he could take her to lunch and she suggested a new casual place she had heard of, where she ordered a chicken sandwich and then complained about the man smoking in the corner. “How very American, complaining about smoke,” Obinze said, and she could not tell whether he meant it as a rebuke or not.

“The sandwich comes with chips?” Ifemelu asked the waiter.

“Yes, madam.”

“Do you have real potatoes?”

“Madam?”

“Are your potatoes the frozen imported ones, or do you cut and fry your potatoes?”

The waiter looked offended. “It is the imported frozen ones.”

As the waiter walked away, Ifemelu said, “Those frozen things taste horrible.”

“He can’t believe you’re actually asking for real potatoes,” Obinze said drily. “Real potatoes are backward for him. Remember this is our newly middle-class world. We haven’t completed the first cycle of prosperity, before going back to the beginning again, to drink milk from the cow’s udder.”

Each time he dropped her off, he kissed her on the cheek, both of them leaning toward each other, and then pulling back so that she could say “Bye” and climb out of his car. On the fifth day, as he drove into her compound, she asked, “Do you have condoms in your pocket?”

He said nothing for a while. “No, I don’t have condoms in my pocket.”

“Well, I bought a pack some days ago.”

“Ifem, why are you saying this?”

“You’re married with a child and we are hot for each other. Who are we kidding with this chaste dating business? So we might as well get it over with.”

“You are hiding behind sarcasm,” he said.

“Oh, how very lofty of you.” She was angry. It was barely a week since she first saw him but already she was angry, furious that he would drop her off and go home to his other life, his real life, and that she could not visualize the details of that life, did not know what kind of bed he slept in, what kind of plate he ate from. She had, since she began to gaze at her past, imagined a relationship with him, but only in faded images and faint lines. Now, faced with the reality of him, and of the silver ring on his finger, she was frightened of becoming used to him, of drowning. Or perhaps she was already drowned, and her fear came from that knowledge.

“Why didn’t you call me when you came back?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I wanted to settle down first.”

“I hoped I would help you settle down.”

She said nothing.

“Are you still with Blaine?”

“What does it matter, married man, you?” she said, with an irony that sounded far too caustic; she wanted to be cool, distant, in control.

“Can I come in for a bit? To talk?”

“No, I need to do some research for the blog.”

“Please, Ifem.”

She sighed. “Okay.”