I'm feeling a little weepy, though.
It was just a fantastic introduction.
Thank you so much.
I am so honored and excited to be reading in front of you
tonight.
And it is long overdue, I think.
So I am going to read a little bit from the beginning of Mr.
and Mrs. Doctor.
I know some of you have heard the beginning of it already,
so I'm going to be reading some brand new work
that I have not read in front of any audience at all.
So, it's going to be very-- it's going to feel very new.
So, Mr. and Mrs. Doctor, as Manuel has said,
it's a novel about a Nigerian immigrant couple
in an arranged marriage and kind of all the trials
and tribulations that they encounter in America.
The first chapter, really, is like the first time
this arranged-- this couple and this arranged marriage
are together for the first time alone.
And so the character, Job, had been with me
for a very long time.
Ifi, wife, sort of came to me a little bit later,
but I kind of put them together, really,
as a result of my experiences visiting Nigeria and being
forced to go on a series of really awful dates, blind dates
that my aunts tried to put me on.
So, I just-- the story sort of grew out of that.
And I should say none of this happened to me,
because sometimes people--
sometimes, people ask that.
"Everything Job Ogbonnaya knew about sex
he learned from American pornography.
So, on their first unchaperoned meeting,
Joe brushed his new wife, splitting her thin body
against the papered wall of their lavish honeymoon suite
at the Presidential Hotel in Port Harcourt, Nigeria.
Job tore at her lacy pink panties and only released his
lips from her face to haltingly shout,
'You are the dirty slut girl.'
Ifi punched his gut with a sharp heel of her sandal.
He crumpled.
Together, they landed on the floor
in a tangled heap, legs splayed in every direction.
'You are ugly,' she said, glaring at him,
potato sack head, stout shoulders, hog's gut, bushy,
curling eyebrows, thick glasses pushed into the lips of his
nose.
'Eh!
And now, I married a beast.
Hey!' She wound up her fist and struck him squarely on an ear.
Job clutched his throbbing ear.
For a moment, he struggled to unwind the underwear
from his wrists before handing them back to her.
When Ifi attempted to put them on,
the ripped elastic band left the underwear lopsided on her hips.
'You see what you have done, oh?'
She thought of the time and care she
and Auntie had put into her appearance for this day,
the matching underwear set, the hours
cooking her hair in an egg-smelling relaxer
and then curling it.
Her lipstick and eyeliner were now a streaky veneer finish
on her face.
A solid fist banged at the door.
Ifi disappeared into the bathroom,
clutching at the panties.
When Job opened the door, a man in a too tight suit
stared up at him with liquid eyes.
'Is everything fine, sir?'
The man took in job's appearance,
his trousers with the zipper open
and belt dangling, his face prickling with beads of sweat,
his slack bare chest.
A smile gradually spread over his face.
Job cleared his throat and heard his father's voice in his ears.
'What is this?
You have come to disturb me on the day of my honeymoon with
this nonsense?'
'No, sir, my apologies, sir,' the man said.
Job and the man stood in the doorway,
awaiting the next line in the script.
Finally, Job let the door close on the man's teasing grin.
He turned back to Ifi, who now sat on the bed
with her legs crossed, her face turned away from him.
He positioned himself so that his body
was turned away from hers, too.
Then gradually, he made his way toward her.
Still, she remained unmoved.
His hand snaked toward her bare brown thigh.
Her skin gleamed, shiny.
Just before he touched her, his hand dropped short.
He thought of her words.
She looked prettier in the photographs,
even light-skinned, not this tall,
skinny thing with no buttocks.
She was lucky a man like Joe Ogbonnaya
would even consider her appropriate for marriage.
Although Job's life had been bare in America,
he had never convinced himself that what he felt
was loneliness.
She looked tossed apart to him, like the two
legs of the goat his grandparents had butchered
in honor of the engagement.
On the day of the celebration, Job
had stood back wearily as the butcher knocked
the goat unconscious before they pulled its insides apart
and prepared it for roasting.
He'd always loved goat meat, so much so that as a child
he'd earned the nickname onye ohi, thief, from his mother
and sisters, because he would always
let his hand slip into the large pot and steal bits of meat
as it cooked.
Still, he'd wanted no part of the killing.
'I can give you back to your people,' Job said.
Ifi turned a furious glare on him, one eye widening.
Auntie and Uncle would be angry with her.
After all, they had found her a doctor
husband who lived in America.
He had even promised to send her to an American University
so that she could be a nurse in his clinic.
Auntie would say, how can you, an orphan, be so ungrateful?
Auntie would say that all their hard work in raising her
since her parents died had been in vain.
Still, Ifi could not take this.
She was nearly 30, almost a decade older
than he believed, not a child.
She would find her own way to her dreams without him.
'I will go,' she said.
Their bags were open on the floor of the hotel room.
Ifi began indiscriminately to dump article after article
of clothing into her suitcase.
Job saw his tan slacks disappearing into the bag.
'That belongs to me,' he said.
As if in rewind, Ifi flung clothes out of the bag.
'It belongs to you,' she said. 'It belongs to you.'
Job ducked, barely missing the flying clothes.
'Ifi,' he started, then clumsily, he added, 'darling.'
Although she didn't turn back, she
stopped flinging objects from the bag.
He thought of his virgin wife tensed against the wall
and wondered, surely, she had been
schooled in the responsibilities that came with the marriage.
But perhaps she hadn't.
No one had explained it to him.
He had been a boy of 19 when he first came
to America all those years ago.
Job sifted through his bags until, from far
beneath the clothes and shoes, he produced
a faded, well-worn magazine.
He slid the magazine across the bed to Ifi and flipped it open.
It was a simple enough story, page one, the doctor
and the patient.
The caption read, 'Doctor, it hurts here,' followed
by 'Let me examine you.'
Ifi flipped the page.
The doctor's milky buttocks stared back at her.
The patient had her arms and head back
and was chortling wildly.
'What is this?'
Ifi exclaimed.
Was this how Americans paid for medicine?
She covered her eyes, but couldn't help
peeking through her fingers.
She'd been with one man before, but it was over in seconds,
and she'd never actually seen him completely disrobed.
Suddenly, there was a flickering of lights,
a gasp, and the room filled with darkness.
They waited for the generator to click on,
Ifi curious to turn the page, and Job
expecting to consummate the marriage
without further complication.
When the generator did not turn on,
Job instead suggested that they leave the room for a meal.
They ate at an outdoor restaurant, partially shaded
from the elements by skinny, frayed umbrellas.
Fela Kuti roared from a radio.
A big man in khaki pants and a loud printed shirt
owned the restaurant.
He wrapped Job in a thundering embrace.
'Oga, Doctor,' he said, 'Mr. Doctor,
how long are you staying with us?'
Job told them he was with his wife on honeymoon,
and the man proceeded to rattle off
all the years he'd known Job and his family.
'This man's father is my father's cousin.
I have known him since before he could stand.'
Job ordered two Coronas.
When the bottles arrived, sweating
cool wet pearls down the sides, he paid in US dollars.
Ifi and Job sat silently across from one another,
as he swallowed his Corona and then hers.
Job sucked the layers of slippery flesh free
of the fishbone as Ifi nibbled.
She sat quietly, thinking of the magazine and wondered,
is this how Americans pay my doctor husband?
Light streamed in diagonally, cutting his face
into odd patterns.
His features seemed to surrender to his surroundings.
Is this what America does to a man?
Finally, she spoke, Her voice low.
'Are Americans so poor that they must--' she couldn't finish
the question without thinking of the naked doctor and patient.
Job sipped the beer and told her,
'Money is time in America.'
Then he launched into telling her
about the shops, the ladies' clothes, the shoes,
and Ifi was no longer listening.
A beggar boy of perhaps nine moved from table to table
with a pan full of peanuts.
His lean, meatless face was filled with long lashes,
and his sinewy limbs were shiny and exposed
through the holes in his wrinkled Michael Jackson
t-shirt.
Many of the dining couples flagged him away in annoyance
or simply ignored him, but he refused to go unnoticed.
He leaned into a table where a large woman and a thin man
took up the seats.
They were dressed well.
He winked flirtatiously and clicked his teeth at the lady.
'Ma,' he said, smiling.
'Ma.'
'I will buy you a fur coat,' Job said to Ifi.
He would have to get one of fake fur.
'Ma,' the boy said again.
'I am not your mama,' the woman said,
drawing her wobbly chin back.
I am not old enough to be your mama.
Shifting her wig back, she turned away from him.
'This foolish boy,' the man said.
Still, with his knees pulled close together,
he smiled and hunched forward, scraping the floor with a cane.
He was old enough to be the woman's grandfather, much older
than Job.
Ifi wondered how this man and woman had met.
Ifi had met Job only once before their honeymoon.
Even during the wedding, Job's junior brother
had stood in while he was in America.
All Ifi had remembered from her one meeting
with Job was that his face was nothing
more than a jagged relief etched on the dark.
He'd sat across from Ifi, Auntie, and Uncle
all squeezed together on the smaller couch,
so that he could have a large one.
Auntie and uncle had unsuccessfully
tried to borrow a generator for the occasion,
and had been forced to settle on kerosene,
so they stiffly argued about NEPA, the oil truck driver's
strike, corrupt politicians, and the ongoing teachers' strike,
in a bash at explanation.
The kerosene had scrubbed roughly
at Ifi's nostrils and throat.
Outside, she'd heard the sounds of church services going
on despite the dark along the length of their street.
Children had been playing outside, chasing the rooster
and dirtying their bony knees and the muddy roadway.
She thought of how the ankles of the man who
sat before her would in light appear like the children's,
bloodied from the wet dirt road.
Before they met, there were packages of gifts.
At the time, Ifi knew nothing of the letters, pictures,
and conversations with the people
who would become her in-laws.
All her life, Ifi had been instructed
to tell neighbors, friends, age mates that her father was away,
whether they believed it or not.
So, she fooled herself into believing
that the packages were from him, that he really
did live in America or London or Germany,
that he had never been arrested for suspicion of fraud,
that he had never been investigated
and then murdered before his arraignment.
As her cousins paraded through the potholed streets
of their neighborhood in blue jeans and sweaters that
were too big for their slight frames and too bulky
for the thick Nigerian heat, Ifi had imagined her father
sitting behind a large desk in London, paper stacked neatly
around him, awaiting his signature.
Of the sweaters, blue jeans, and jewelry,
Ifi kept nothing except for a red gold
chain handbag that she took out only for church, and today.
Only after the package's contents
had been spread across the couches
did Auntie and Uncle inform her that a man was
coming to visit her.
Auntie had watched her closely that day.
'You see all the good things we've done for you, you,
a skinny girl with nothing, no parents,
and now you will see America.'
Ifi needed to ask Job about this America.
Before leaving her cousin's laughter,
Auntie's gossip, and Uncle's stories,
she needed to know everything.
But the skinny beggar boy was standing at her table now.
Ifi began to shoo him away, but Job stopped him.
The boy dumped the peanuts into his palms,
tumbling his hands in such a way that he magically
released the shells.
He was grinning, proud of his work,
but how could he be so pleased in his condition?
She imagined him curled into a tight ball
underneath the bridge near the hotel.
The ground would be muddy, a deep red where the rain had
softened the Earth.
If he slept deeply, he might not notice how close
his face was to the water, the shit,
the dead malarial mosquitoes.
Ifi shuddered.
Instead of sitting at a fancy table alongside her doctor
husband, she would have been under the bridge girl had it
not been for Auntie and Uncle.
The little boy before her, too small for his shirt,
the shirt with all its holes, he would have gnats and lice
in his hair, his skin his lips chalky
from the residue of dusty dirt.
Job was still smiling a distracted amusement
at the boy when Ifi thrust forward the bowl of peanuts.
Ngwa, go!
The peanuts splattered across the table and the floor.
The boy's eyes met Ifi's in desperation just for a second
before he averted his gaze to the ground in deference.
The restaurant owner was on them in seconds.
He knocked the boy's head with the back of his hand.
'Why must you disturb my customer?
He is a doctor, here from America for only a short time.
I will beat you today.'
To Ifi and Job, he said, 'I am so sorry.'
The boy tried to run, but the man shoved him to the ground
with his foot and began to beat him.
The boy whimpered and heaved tearless cries.
'No, sir.' He turned to Ifi. 'Sorry, Auntie,' he said.
On his knees he begged, his thin quivering frame
on the floor before her.
Ifi's voice was small as she spoke.
'Leave him.' Everything stopped.
A chill rose through her body.
This was what it meant to be a big woman.
Half bowing, half filling the bowl,
the boy attempted to sweep up the mess as he left.
He would go hungry for the rest of the day, maybe
the rest of the week without the money he would
have earned from the peanuts.
'Leave him,' Ifi said again with force.
'Ego,' she said to Job, 'we will pay for the nuts.'
Job retrieved a few naira.
He tossed them on the ground.
'Go,' Ifi said, 'go.'
The boy collected the money and ran as fast
as his bony legs allowed.
When he was gone, the fat lady laughed
into the skinny man's ears.
The bartender brought Ifi and Job two more bottles of Corona,
on the house, and Job said to no one in particular, 'In America,
boys like that are in school.'
By the time they started back to the hotel,
a steel gray had enveloped the orange sun
as night began its descent.
All around, the breeze interrupted the calm
of long-necked palm trees.
With their wares balanced on their heads,
hawkers darted across the streets.
Job's driver swerved through the gaps in the roadway
with practiced turns that knocked
Job and Ifi into one another.
Each time they touched, Job felt the softness of her skin
against his.
He tried to reconcile this gentle touch
with her harsh way with the boy, telling himself
that he had been in America too long.
Even the boy with his tearless cries
had walked with his head erect.
He would likely brag to the boys in his gang
about how his crocodile tears had earned him
double what they had earned.
Now, more than ever, Job was glad to be home."
OK.