Americanah

Aunty Uju had taken up yoga. She was on her hands and knees, back arched high, on a bright blue mat on the basement floor, while Ifemelu lay on the couch, eating a chocolate bar and watching her.

“How many of those things have you eaten? And since when do you eat regular chocolate? I thought you and Blaine eat only organic, fair trade.”

“I bought them at the train station.”

“Them? How many?”

“Ten.”

“Ahn-ahn! Ten!”

Ifemelu shrugged. She had already eaten them all, but she would not tell Aunty Uju that. It had given her pleasure, buying chocolate bars from the newsstand, cheap bars filled with sugar and chemicals and other genetically modified ghastly things.

“Oh, so because you are quarreling with Blaine, you are now eating the chocolate he doesn’t like?” Aunty Uju laughed.

Dike came downstairs and looked at his mother, her arms now up in the air, warrior position. “Mom, you look ridiculous.”

“Didn’t your friend say that your mother was hot, the other day? This is why.”

Dike shook his head. “Coz, I need to show you something on YouTube, this hilarious video.”

Ifemelu got up.

“Has Dike told you about the computer incident at school?” Aunty Uju asked.

“No, what?” Ifemelu asked.

“The principal called me on Monday to say that Dike hacked into the school’s computer network on Saturday. This is a boy who was with me all day on Saturday. We went to Hartford to visit Ozavisa. We were there the whole day and the boy did not go near a computer. When I asked why they thought it was him, they said they got information. Imagine, you just wake up and blame my son. The boy is not even good with computers. I thought we had left them behind in that bush town. Kweku wants us to lodge a formal complaint, but I don’t think it’s worth the time. They have now said they no longer suspect him.”

“I don’t even know how to hack,” Dike said drily.

“Why would they do this sort of rubbish?” Ifemelu asked.

“You have to blame the black kid first,” he said, and laughed.

Later, he told her how his friends would say, “Hey, Dike, got some weed?” and how funny it was. He told her about the pastor at church, a white woman, who had said hello to all the other kids but when she came to him, she said, “What’s up, bro?” “I feel like I have vegetables instead of ears, like large broccoli sticking out of my head,” he said, laughing. “So of course it had to be me that hacked into the school network.”

“Those people in your school are fools,” Ifemelu said.

“So funny how you say that word, Coz, fools.” He paused and then repeated her words, “Those people in your school are fools,” in a good mimicry of a Nigerian accent. She told him the story of the Nigerian pastor who, while giving a sermon in a church in America, said something about a beach but because of his accent, his parishioners thought he had said “bitch” and they wrote to his bishop to complain. Dike laughed and laughed. It became one of their stock jokes. “Hey, Coz, I just want to spend a summer day at the bitch,” he would say.

FOR NINE DAYS, Blaine did not take her calls. Finally he answered the phone, his voice muffled.

“Can I come this weekend so we can cook coconut rice? I’ll do the cooking,” she said. Before he said “Okay,” she sensed an intake of breath and she wondered if he was surprised that she dared to suggest coconut rice.

SHE WATCHED Blaine cutting the onions, watched his long fingers and recalled them on her body, tracing lines on her collarbone, and on the darkened skin below her navel. He looked up and asked if the slices were a good size and she said, “The onion is fine,” and thought how he had always known the right size for onions, slicing them so precisely, how he had always steamed the rice although she was going to do it now. He broke the coconut against the sink and let the water out before he began to nudge the white meat off the shell with a knife. Her hands shook as she poured rice into the boiling water and, as she watched the narrow basmati grains begin to swell, she wondered if they were failing at this, their reconciliatory meal. She checked the chicken on the stove. The spices wafted up when she opened the pot—ginger and curry and bay leaves—and she told him, unnecessarily, that it looked good.

“I didn’t overspice it like you do,” he said. She felt a momentary anger and wanted to say that it was unfair of him to hold out forgiveness like this, but instead she asked if he thought she should add some water. He kept grating the coconuts and said nothing. She watched the coconut c

rumble into white dust; it saddened her to think that it would never be a whole coconut again, and she reached out and held Blaine from the back, wrapped her arms around his chest, felt the warmth through his sweatshirt, but he eased away and said he had to finish before the rice got too soft. She walked across the living room to look out of the window, at the clock tower, high and regal, imposing itself on the other buildings of the Yale campus below, and saw the first snow flurries swirling through the late evening air, as though flung from above, and she remembered her first winter with him, when everything had seemed burnished and unendingly new.

Understanding America for the Non-American Black: A Few Explanations of What Things Really Mean

1. Of all their tribalisms, Americans are most uncomfortable with race. If you are having a conversation with an American, and you want to discuss something racial that you find interesting, and the American says, “Oh, it’s simplistic to say it’s race, racism is so complex,” it means they just want you to shut up already. Because of course racism is complex. Many abolitionists wanted to free the slaves but didn’t want black people living nearby. Lots of folk today don’t mind a black nanny or black limo driver. But they sure as hell mind a black boss. What is simplistic is saying “It’s so complex.” But shut up anyway, especially if you need a job/favor from the American in question.

2. Diversity means different things to different folks. If a white person is saying a neighborhood is diverse, they mean nine percent black people. (The minute it gets to ten percent black people, the white folks move out.) If a black person says diverse neighborhood, they are thinking forty percent black.

3. Sometimes they say “culture” when they mean race. They say a film is “mainstream” when they mean “white folks like it or made it.” When they say “urban” it means black and poor and possibly dangerous and potentially exciting. “Racially charged” means we are uncomfortable saying “racist.”