Ike was so livid that he bounded up the first flight of stairs before he remembered the mailbox. He had, by design, not checked it for more than a week. What mail he received was—almost without exception—bills. Bills he had little cash to pay. So, in the eleven months since his divorce was finalized, he had taken to picking up his mail only once a week. He’d figured out that a week and a half into a new month was when creditors sent out all the disconcerting mail: late-payment reminders, disconnection warnings, cancellation threats, repossession notices, eviction slips.
Ike descended to the landing where tenants’ mailboxes were located. Though unable to read his name in the pale light, he instinctively knew where the box for 2F was. The box was fuller than usual, just as he expected. He retrieved the mail and then began to climb the dank, poorly lit stairway. There was an ever-present frowsy smell. It was a commingling of spilled liquor, urine, cigarette smoke, perfumes, and the rich, leafy scent of marijuana. He stepped carefully to avoid the chewing gum stuck here and there on the stairs.
His living room sizzled with heat. He kicked off his shoes and flicked on the light. Instantly, a fly began to buzz about as if startled. He put the six-pack in the fridge. As he passed to the leather couch that Bernita had left behind when she carted away the rest of the furniture, he stopped and put on a CD. Brenda Fassie’s plangent voice filled the room, singing “Vulindlela.” He lowered himself onto the couch. Its caving softness reminded him of the time when he and Bernita had nightly bouts of turbulent sex. Fassie’s song had often served as the raunchy anthem, goading his body and Bernita’s to higher plateaus of pleasure.
HIS EX-WIFE HAD CRAVED sex with a voraciousness that at first flattered him. Her breasts seemed wired with some hypersensitive antennae. He had only to give her a long, tight hug, and her nipples would harden, her body quaking uncontrollably. If he cupped a hand over her breasts, or bit her nipples with chattering teeth, she went wild, croaked, groaned, and writhed. She dug her nails into his flesh, crooning, I’m your queen, Queen B, your Queen Bernita.
At the time of their marriage, he had not had any steady relationship for close to two years. His sexual appetite high, he welcomed their nightly romps. Each night, as he walked into the apartment, his heart quickened with anticipation of some amorous surprise. Bernita’s favorite maneuver was to sally to the door the instant she heard him fiddling with the key from outside. She’d then jump into his arms, her breasts positioned near his lips. When he took the bait and sucked at the swollen nipple, she’d let out a choked cry and fling her body back, forcing him to hold tight or risk both of them tumbling to the floor. Then, holding tight, he’d carry her to the couch.
Their first serious fight came the third week after his relocation to New York. It was triggered by his plea that he had a headache and was in no shape to make love.
“You been hanging with some bitch?” she railed.
“I’m just coming back from work. I wasn’t running around looking for—” He paused, the word “bitch” too heavy to pass his lips. She glowered at him, her lips twitching. “I’ve not been looking for women,” he said.
“You was, too!” she bickered. She stood akimbo, her breasts swelling and falling, her eyes fierce. “What kind of Zulu shit is you’re tired, Zulu?”
It was the first time she called him Zulu. That day, it dawned on him that she regarded the word as a pejorative in its verb, adjective, and noun forms. Her favorite curse—and the one that stung most—was “Don’t Zulu me your Zulu shit, Zulu!”
In retaliation, he began to call her Queen Bee.
IKE NEEDED SOME TRANQUILLITY to plan the next day’s errands, but the touch of the sunken couch scraped a raw sore. He’d long suspected that the same couch had hosted Cadilla and Queen Bee’s trysts.
As he lay on the couch, face up, he became impatient for the bottles of Guinness to turn cold. His thoughts roamed to Foreign Gods, Inc. He envisaged his next meeting with Mark Gruels. It would be a different encounter. He would have Ngene in his hand, and his voice would be strong and confident—even a bit commanding. He pictured Gruels gazing at the statue, sniffing it, fawning over it. Thoroughly fascinated, the man would make a solid first bid. He, Ike, would balk. And then Gruels would go higher and higher, jacking up his offer. And then, once they agreed on a price, Gruels would reach for his checkbook and Ike—overcome with euphoria—would faint dead away.
He even imagined the shape of Gruels’s handwriting on the check: strong lines, straight and prim like soldiers at a parade, smooth and unbroken, devoid of squiggles. He pulled back only when his mind sought to snoop around Gruels’s imaginary shoulder to peek at the amount scribbled on the check. He was content to savor the eerie joy yielded by expectancy and sweet, lingering mystery.
He sprang up and fetched a bottle of stout and a glass. With his teeth, he pried off the cap of the bottle. As he poured, a fly zipped past, barely missing the glass. Years ago, there was a drunkard in Utonki who was fond of saying, “A fly in beer is meat for the mouth.” Ike once saw the man throw his head back and down a glass of beer with two dead, bloated flies.
Fly that craves beer, know that you court death!
The thought of flies in beer disgusted Ike.
After several swigs, he found the heat oppressive. He unbuttoned his shirt and then raised the latch of the window that overlooked the street. Clamorous sounds flooded in.
He switched on the standing fan and turned on the computer, his shirt fluttering from the steady breeze.
He had not checked his e-mail for three days. His Internet service was disconnected, but he poached somebody’s open wireless connection. As the Internet loaded, he went to the fridge for another bottle. This time he drank straight from the bottle. Flapping his shirt, he bared his chest to the gush of warmish air.
There were eleven new messages in his in-box. Five of them were from his sister, Nkiru—and each had the subject line, “Mama’s Message.”
He clicked open the most recent one.
Mama asked me to remind you, that you’re your late father’s only son, that your sister has gone away to her husband, and Mama doesn’t know when the good Lord might call her to His glorious kingdom. Mama is sad that, at your age, you have no wife and no son to take your place if anything should happen (God forbid!). Since you don’t seem to be concerned, Mama is looking into it for you (a wife). So make arrangements to come home soon, unless you don’t care what happens to your father’s compound and to the poor woman who gave birth to you. For a few years now you haven’t sent Mama (or me, your only sister) any money. Mama wonders if you want us to eat sand. Also, Mama says she has been telling you that there’s an important spiritual matter she must discuss with you in person, face-to-face. It’s about satanic Uncle Osuakwu. After killing Papa, he is now making diabolical plans against all of us, but especially you. Mama says it’s urgent that you come home as soon as possible. Then you will be fully informed of this demonic plot, and how to cancel it in the mighty name of Jesus. Every day I go to a cyber café to check for your reply, but you don’t write. Please don’t fail to respond this time. Mama’s prayer is that you may be covered by the blood of our Lord and Savior. Your sister, Nkiru.
He opened his older sister’s other e-mails. They were variations on the same message. Each ended with a plea for his reply in order to put their mother at ease.
Suddenly, an ache flared up on the right side of his head. With one thumb he pressed hard at the spot where the pain was sharpest. It hurt to read the e-mails. He didn’t reply because he couldn’t say a thing that would make sense to them. How could he explain that the “food money” he once sent each month had dried up because a woman named Queen Bee, whom he had married in order to get something called a green card, had developed an ever-insatiable appetite for shopping? And how to explain his gambling to them?
A year after arriving in the city, he’d taken to gambling. He had wanted quick cash to replenish some of the money Queen Bee lavished on expensive clothes and jewelry. And he had wanted extra cash to send to his mother and sister, to keep them quiet. But gambling brought him nothing but sorrow. No, his mother would never understand why her messages, sent in e-mails his sister wrote, went unanswered. He regretted having ever given his e-mail address to Nkiru, his only sibling, three years older than him. Over the last year, her e-mails came, by his rough calculation, at the rate of six or more per week. Some days, as if in the grip of malarial urgency, she sent two or three at once. Each one belabored the same point: Mama’s demand that he visit home “as soon as possible,” “without further ado,” “without any further unnecessary delay,” “in due haste.” And the come-home entreaties often addressed the need for him to take a wife and begin the race to produce an heir. Or they had to do with some “urgent spiritual matter,” to neutralize nameless persons plotting diabolical mayhem or combat others scheming to steal his inheritance. The specificities of the plots and the alleged schemers’ names remained stubbornly cloaked in secrecy. It was only the latest batch of e-mails that finally linked it all to Uncle Osuakwu.
His mother and sister could never know how their barrage of e-mails tormented him. They accused him of shirking his duty to provide for his widowed mother. Yet, he had spelled out his acceptance of that responsibility in a long, earnest letter to his mother after his father’s sudden death a month into his sophomore year at Amherst. He had beseeched her to harbor no fears but to remain confident that he would secure a good job after graduation. And that having done so, he would take care of all her needs. It was perhaps the hardest letter he’d ever written. The words poured out of him through spasms and tears. As he wrote, he was haunted by the image of his father, gaunt and inert in a coffin, and of his mother gazing at what remained of her husband, too stunned to wail her grief, her eyes drained of life, forlorn.
Having made that promise, Ike pushed himself at Amherst College as hard as he could. And when he earned a cum laude in economics, he trusted that he’d made himself an attractive hire for any Fortune 500 company. He had hardly anticipated any of the adversities that stood in his way, up to and including the moment the judge in his divorce case allowed Queen Bee to cart away his little savings and any of his possessions she fancied.
There were times when he regretted failing to confide his woes in his mother or sister. He had tried once or twice, alternating between anger at his situation and a tenderness for his mother, fed by memories of the nights during childhood when he could not sleep unless cuddled up against her body, which reeked of smoky wood, warm like sun-baked clay. But what end would confiding have served? Would the knowledge that he too had suffered reduce their own pain and hunger?
He read Nkiru’s latest e-mail again. This time, he felt not the old indignation, but a sense of mellowness. He smiled. His plan had been to surprise his mother by showing up in Utonki, unannounced. He took another long gulp, emptying the bottle. Then he composed a reply to his sister: Dear Nkiru, Tell Mama that I will come home within a week. Love, Ikechukwu.
As he poured from another bottle, squeals broke into his reverie. He placed the bottle and half-filled glass on a small side table and dashed toward the window. He glared down at the youngsters hard at their nettlesome game right in front of Cadilla’s store. As he cupped his mouth to scream at them, he heard three sharp knocks on his door.
“Who’s that?” he barked.
“Is me, Big Ed,” came the response in a familiar Jamaican lilt. “You didn’t see my text, man? Janet finished cooking, you know. You come quick, you still find some curry goat. You come late, I’m eating fast.”
Ike gathered two bottles of Guinness and headed out to Big Ed’s apartment, 2C. As usual, the two huge color posters that dominated the left wall of Big Ed’s living room caught his eyes. One was of Bob Marley chasing down a soccer ball, the locks of his Rastafarian hair stretched backward as if in flight. The other was of Jimmy Cliff, arms spread out, head raised to an endless, blue sky, mouth wide open, seduced by a song.
As they settled to their drinks, Ike spoke about being mad at a passenger who had ignored his greetings.
Big Ed stared at him as one might a puzzling object. He had this way of fixing his face into a blank plasticity, so that his restless, roving eyes seemed hyper-animated.
Disquieted, Ike spoke again. “I was tempted to stop the car and order the man out. That’s how angry I was.”
Big Ed perked up, threw his head back, upended a bottle, and drained its contents. Ike was riveted by the push and pull of the man’s Adam’s apple, the gurgling sounds emitted by his throat. Putting down the bottle, Big Ed broke into his signature laughter, a carefree boom accompanied by stamping of feet and clapping. Ike wore an expectant smile, for he knew that Big Ed’s eruption was a prelude to some captivating anecdote.
After a moment, Big Ed’s laughter ceased. Sharp, inquisitive eyes fixed on Ike, he asked, “Why you even worry about that, man? What you seeking the passenger face for?” His face took on an expression of avuncular patience as he awaited Ike’s explanation.
“I just think—” Ike began.
“You think?” Big Ed interrupted. “What you think?” His eyes roved, now settling on Ike, now on his wife Janet, who sat on a wooden chair near the living room door, a bemused grin on her face. “Listen, man, you ever seen a one-legged man winning an arse-kicking match? I turn gray doing cab. I loss half my hair doing it. I send two daughters and a son to college, and I bury my first wife, Martha, and marry this puppy of a gal here who don’t know half the time whether she’s my daughter or my wife.” Janet laughed, and Big Ed paused and fixed her with an endearing gaze. She was petite, with a youngster’s tight, defined arms, hair done up in tiny, shoulder-length braids, their tips decorated with beads of different colors. The first time Ike met her, he mistook her for Big Ed’s daughter. Even now, he found it hard to believe she had given birth to two girls, eight and five. Big Ed waited until she quieted down, then he addressed Ike. “I have done low and mighty things, my brother, driving cab. So, therefore, I can tell you this one truth: It’s not how many dogs you have in the fight; it’s how much fight your dogs have in them. So, tell me now, what you say you thinking?”
Silent, Ike followed the darting dance of Big Ed’s eyes. Then he said, “In my culture, people always exchange greetings—”
Big Ed cut him off again. “Your culture got nothing to do with it. This ain’t your culture. It’s NYC. Let me tell you some’in, bro.” He lifted another bottle to his lips and drained its content. He turned to his wife. “I loss me leg, Janet. Look in the fridge and grab me another beer.” He took a sip from the new bottle, then took up the thread of his talk. “Whether a passenger says hi or no hi to me don’t bother me none. Listen now: so long as the passenger pay, I could care less.” He paused, delivered himself of a quick guffaw, and used a finger to pry a strip of meat caught between his teeth. He slurped more beer. Ike knew that as Big Ed became tipsy, his speech was apt to drift deeper and deeper into Jamaican cadence.
“Cabdrivers, we are two kinds, you know,” Big Ed continued. “One kind likes to grovel and search for the passenger’s face. But why do I have to look the passenger face for? Is the same mother born both of we? A cabdriver looking for passenger face is hoping for a big, big tip. Then it’s another kind of driver, my kind. I tell you, bro, my kind don’t give a shit about tips and all that. My job is to do my job, which is to get the passenger from point A to point B—end of matter.” He permitted himself another interlude, to accommodate his wife’s laughter. Then, after a quick sip, he said, “Is the same two kinds of people in the world. There’s the lawyer who is holding you by the shoulder and squeezing like he’s your best buddy. But he’s billing you merciless by the hour all the same. And he is expecting you to pay every last cent. You don’t pay, he is dragging you out to magistrate to be judged. Or the doctor who is smiling and making jokes when it’s you lying and dying in his hospital bed. Lying and dying and still yet paying that bill. Look man, some people trying to tell you it’s a sunny day, have a great day, even though life got you down in the dirt and thrashing the hell out of you. Why you wanna dabble in converse with a passenger, like he is a friend of you? A man doesn’t stop your cab ’cause he wanna jump into friendship with you. Passengers don’t care whether you say good afternoon or bad afternoon, so long as you getting them to their destination. Me, it’s my friends I do the saluting shit with. As for my passengers, they wanna greet, fine; they start and it’s I who answer. They don’t wanna greet, fine with me, too. I ain’t fussing. I ain’t even expecting no shitty tips. Just pay me what the bloody meter say, go your bloody way.”
Big Ed shrugged and grabbed his beer.
“Anyway,” Ike said, “today’s my last day.”
Big Ed laughed. “You’re fixing to die, my friend?”
“Last day as a cabdriver. No more insults from passengers.”
“You’ve finally got a big man’s office job?” Big Ed’s tone was excited.
“I’m traveling to Nigeria.”
“You’re going to the continent! When?”
“In two days.”
“Two days! And you’re just telling? You’re taking a job there?”
“No.”
“So how you going to do to pay the white man’s bills?”
“I’m going into business.”
“Oh, business?” Surprise and disappointment rang through in the words. “What kind of business you fixing to do?”
“Buying and selling.” Ike lifted a bottle to his lips. As he drank, he thought, Snatching and selling.
Big Ed belched. His wife sneered at him.
“You not going to bed, little gal?” he teased. Then he looked at Ike with dulled eyes. “This thing you’re buying and selling—it have a name or not?”
“Anything that people would pay me good money for,” Ike said, letting out a nervous laugh.
“Fine with me—so long you’re not selling people for make the money.”
“No!”
“And so long you’re not selling the ancestors.”
“No,” Ike said in a subdued, tired voice. Then he announced that he had to leave to get started with packing.
“Take two Red Stripe for drink in your pad,” Big Ed offered. “When you fixing to return from Africa?”
“Less than two weeks.”
“Get me a danshiki from the continent. Janet see me wear the danshiki, she learn to respect me.”
Janet walked up to him, stuck her tongue out, and playfully smacked his arm. She fled, shrieking, as Big Ed pretended to rise from his seat.