Americanah

“Ten cents.”

“Ten cents.”

“I’ll give you a jacket and bedding stuff, but at least you need tights. The cold is coming.”

“I’ll manage,” Ifemelu said. And she would. If she needed to, she would wear all her clothes at the same time, in layers, until she found a job. She was terrified to spend money.

“Ifem, I’ll pay for you.”

“It’s not as if you are earning much.”

“At least I am earning some,” Ginika quipped.

“I really hope I find a job soon.”

“You will, don’t worry.”

“I don’t understand how anybody will believe I’m Ngozi Okonkwo.”

“Don’t show them the license when you go to an interview. Just show the Social Security card. Maybe they won’t even ask. Sometimes they don’t for small jobs like that.”

Ginika led the way into a clothing store, which Ifemelu thought too fevered; it reminded her of a nightclub, disco music playing loudly, the interior shadowy, and the salespeople, two thin-armed young women in all black, moving up and down too swiftly. One was chocolate-skinned, her long black weave highlighted with auburn, the other was white, inky hair floating behind her as she came up to them.

“Hi, ladies, how are you? Is there anything I can help you with?” she asked in a tinkly, singsong voice. She pulled clothes off hangers and unfurled them from shelves to show Ginika. Ifemelu was looking at the price tags, converting them to naira, exclaiming, “Ahn-ahn! How can this thing cost this much?” She picked up and carefully examined some of the clothes, to find out what each was, whether underwear or blouse, whether shirt or dress, and sometimes she was still not certain.

“This literally just came in,” the salesperson said of a sparkly dress, as though divulging a big secret, and Ginika said, “Oh my God, really?” with a great excitement. Under the too-bright lighting of the fitting room, Ginika tried on the dress, walking on tiptoe. “I love it.”

“But it’s shapeless,” Ifemelu said. It looked, to her, like a boxy sack on which a bored person had haphazardly stuck sequins.

“It’s postmodern,” Ginika said.

Watching Ginika preen in front of the mirror, Ifemelu wondered whether she, too, would come to share Ginika’s taste for shapeless dresses, whether this was what America did to you.

At the checkout, the blond cashier asked, “Did anybody help you?”

“Yes,” Ginika said.

“Chelcy or Jennifer?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t remember her name.” Ginika looked around, to point at her helper, but both young women had disappeared into the fitting rooms at the back.

“Was it the one with long hair?” the cashier asked.

“Well, both of them had long hair.”

“The one with dark hair?”

Both of them had dark hair.

Ginika smiled and looked at the cashier and the cashier smiled and looked at her computer screen, and two damp seconds crawled past before she cheerfully said, “It’s okay, I’ll figure it out later and make sure she gets her commission.”

As they walked out of the store, Ifemelu said, “I was waiting for her to ask ‘Was it the one with two eyes or the one with two legs?’ Why didn’t she just ask ‘Was it the black girl or the white girl?’ ”

Ginika laughed. “Because this is America. You’re supposed to pretend that you don’t notice certain things.”

GINIKA ASKED Ifemelu to stay with her, to save on rent, but her apartment was too far away, at the end of the Main Line, and the commuter train, taken every day into Philadelphia, would cost too much. They looked at apartments together in West Philadelphia, Ifemelu surprised by the rotting cabinets in the kitchen, the mouse that dashed past an empty bedroom.

“My hostel in Nsukka was dirty but there were no rats o.”